Chapter 15
Einsa
Year Three
The acolytes called Instructor Akki’s sessions “Dungeon Class” but the correct title was something far less interesting that Einsa struggled to remember and occasionally to pronounce. “Extrication.”
Sometimes the object of the exercise was to get into a place in order to extract someone else.
Sometimes it was themselves the acolytes were required to remove from a situation, be it a set of chains, a locked room, or a tedious conversation.
The ability to navigate a social setting was, Instructor Akki maintained, as important as being able to open a locked door.
A Kindness frequently used intimidation to reach her target, but there were times when it was better to use a more subtle approach.
Justice might be enacted on the spot—after which the individual’s protectors often had far less interest in interfering—or the person in question might need to be removed from the setting and be dealt their reckoning elsewhere.
Kindness Marta said that in some cases justice must not merely be done, it must be seen to be done, and moreover it must be seen to be done by the right audience.
King Ardna of the Ottoths, who raped the daughters of Queen Amandanas, was taken from the pleasure gardens at the heart of his capital.
But he was not scourged before his court.
That message was delivered by the trail of bodies later discovered along the route from the river passages through the bowels of the palace, and by the shrivelled remains of his severed manhood, left on the royal throne.
Ardna’s appointment with the wire whips, salt, and fire waited for him back amid the ruins of the city he had razed, and he was offered up before what scant crowds the survivors could muster.
The Kindnesses were not, of course, given to policing wars, but the oldest laws, including those pertaining to hospitality, oaths, and blood loyalty, could not be broken without consequence.
Quite how the Kindnesses discovered the crimes they punished, and who decided when the moral lines that they patrolled had been crossed, Einsa’s mother had never revealed.
It was, she said, part of the mysteries into which acolytes were introduced should they survive long enough.
And becoming an acolyte was something that Einsa should avoid at all costs.
Einsa hadn’t ignored the warning, but when her mother died, she hadn’t run far enough or fast enough.
She had wasted whole hours grieving. She should have run immediately and kept going until she reached the farthest shore.
And if even that hadn’t proved sufficient, then she should have started swimming.
Although the Academy did have subterranean cells that might be called dungeons, the description extended to a whole range of chambers on several levels, reaching down to the Bone Garden, the place where the bodies eventually accumulated and where Kindness Undu was said to unveil the deepest mysteries of necromancy to a favoured few.
The dungeons proper were rarely occupied.
For any acolytes put there it might be considered a reward rather than a punishment, removing them as it would from the nightmare of their daily lives.
Infrequently, Kindnesses from the field would bring in prisoners to be kept in the cells.
The future for these captives was generally bleak, even by Academy standards.
Today’s lesson concerned extricating oneself rather than others.
Why the Academy owned ten hinged iron coffins that were lockable both from the inside and from the outside, Einsa had no idea.
But at some point Instructor Akki had commandeered them and had the lot transported to the sump chamber, where any overspill from the Academy’s stream-fed laundry would accumulate in times of unusually high rainfall.
The chamber lay empty now, apart from the coffins and a quarter-inch layer of dark, stinking mud that required constant vigilance to avoid slipping in.
Akki, the youngest of the instructors, aimed her lantern, the only source of light for the class, at the rusting coffins.
Save for her absent nose she could pass for one of the older acolytes, and Einsa had often wondered where this would place her on the sympathy scale.
She felt that those closest to the experience should have the most concern for the suffering of the girls still enduring it.
She had, however, yet to see a glimmer of compassion from any of the instructors.
Akki, if anything, seemed to be deliberately cruel, which most of the others weren’t.
They didn’t need to be since the system was cruel enough to satisfy most sadists without requiring additional torments.
“First ten.” The instructor waved them forward.
There was a logic to waiting and learning from other acolytes’ experience.
Some, like Mollandra, liked to get things over with.
Einsa watched as her friend and nine others, including Tmanga, went to lie down in the coffins.
They hadn’t been told to, but acting dumb with Instructor Akki had been proven on multiple occasions to be a bad idea.
Sharp remained with Einsa, apparently having used up her quota of crazy for the day.
The instructor went around closing and locking each coffin. “I hope you’ve all remembered to bring your lockpicks, or you’ll be here indefinitely.” After turning the key in the final lock, Akki straightened up and clapped her hands. “Go!”
Einsa knew she’d brought her picks but rummaged through her robe to check anyway.
The Academy did not provide picks. Acolytes learned that they were expected to acquire their own tools, or they didn’t learn and ceased to need them.
Most girls had spent many hours in the dormitory after lights out working to shape random bits of scavenged iron into new additions to their pick set.
They were also among the most prized items to be claimed from corpses.
“I should have taken those bitches’ picks,” Sharp muttered.
Einsa nodded. She should have. But they wouldn’t have helped here. Each new pick needed to be understood and practised with before it could be of much help.
They watched, and in due course the coffins began to clang open as first one acolyte and then another managed to spring the locks. Mollandra was the second one to emerge, rust-streaked and sweaty but looking relieved.
Each empty coffin was swiftly refilled. Some of them had had three occupants by the time the last of the first ten, Tremanay, managed to get out.
After a long period of failure there had been several minutes of hysteria before the girl calmed again at the urging of her friends and managed to free herself.
She hurried over to join the successful acolytes by the stairs, where Instructor Akki watched on, unimpressed.
Sharp and Einsa were among the last to take the challenge, with only half a dozen girls still hugging the wall. Many of the acolytes, as they emerged, would flash the pick or picks they’d had success with towards their friends. A risky act. But Instructor Maggery had taught them a bit of stealth.
At last Einsa stepped forward and lay down in the most recently vacated coffin.
She would have waited longer, but sometimes there were unpleasant surprises for the tailenders.
Sharp headed for the leftmost of a pair of coffins where the acolytes had escaped within moments of each other.
They elbowed past the two girls now heading for the freedom of the stairs.
Her temporary tomb clanged shut and the instructor’s key turned in the lock.
Escape, Instructor Akki had taught them, was always at least as much about waiting as it was about action, and very often waiting was by far the most important ingredient.
Einsa had listened to the lessons and certainly, if she were to be thrown into a gaol cell with guard rotas and a complex to navigate before she could reach freedom, she would wait and observe before making her move.
In the dank darkness of the coffin, though, she felt that her waiting had been done on the outside and already she was hunting for the keyhole.
Panic built distressingly fast as her fingers slid back and forth, failing to locate what she needed.
The inner surface was a mess of corroded pits, flaking rust, and rivet heads.
Finally, her fingertips returned to a dent they had rejected, and her nails revealed what had to be the keyhole.
The girl before her—Treecie, the daughter of a wealthy politician—must have crammed it full of mud and rust. Not enough to stop it being locked but sufficient to disguise the hole.
The bitch hadn’t even glanced Einsa’s way as they passed.
“I’ll put a new hole in her when I get out.” The loudness of Einsa’s voice surprised her in the enclosed space.
She set to digging the muck out of the mechanism.
The lid was just an inch or two above her nose, not allowing her to roll on her side, so the pickwork had to be done at an awkward angle.
Her left arm had to reach over her body, squeezed on every side.
Her right arm needed to be painfully crooked so that her hand could be level with the lock.
Little Mollandra probably could have rolled around, slid up and down… she’d had it easy…
“Last girl,” the instructor’s voice boomed. It was probably Meery. Meery had to be ordered into every trial and yet somehow survived them all. Not only that, she emerged more swiftly and in better shape than many who had gone before her.
Einsa jammed what she felt was her most suitable pick into the lock, gritting her teeth and imagining she was driving it into Treecie’s eye.
She began to wriggle it around. The scream from nearby fitted so neatly with her vision of revenge that for a moment Einsa accepted it as Treecie’s agonized cry.