Daughter of the Ninth Line, Part One (The Lines of Ebrus #1)

Chapter 1

One

Avalon

Conscription Day - The First Day of Spring

T here was blood pooling on the cobblestone entrance of the Boellium War College. I shouldn’t be surprised, given the baying of the crowd jammed into the front courtyard, and the man suspended in the air, bleeding steadily from his nose. The ruby liquid fell in huge drops, splashing on the ground beneath him with a gruesome dripping sound. Once the puddle of blood became too much, someone with water abilities seemed to wash it away.

That would definitely explain the pink stones.

The guy in the air, bound with invisible ropes, looked at me imploringly. “Help me,” he gasped weakly.

I met his eyes, keeping my face shuttered and neutral, then timed my steps to walk under his blood droplets so they didn’t splatter on me.

Someone huffed a laugh, and someone else muttered, “That’s cold,” but I ignored them all. I wasn’t here to be someone’s savior. I wasn’t here to change the status quo.

I was here because I was the useless daughter .

Every one of the Twelve Lines had to enrol a child into the Boellium War College every year, and once a decade, it had to send a young person from the leading family of that Line. If I had to guess at their reasoning, I’d say it was so they didn’t all send simple farmers’ sons and create an army of uneducated cannon fodder.

Some Lines sent their most gifted children, either physically or mentally, in the hopes they could make advantageous connections or better still, marriages.

But that was for the Upper Six Lines. I was the youngest daughter of the current Baron of the Ninth Line. I was barely better than pond scum to these people. The only thing worse would be if I was from the Twelfth.

So I didn’t care who was hanging up there, dripping blood for the cause; I couldn’t help them. I didn’t want to help them. I wanted to learn to fight, then go home to where there were fewer people and smaller egos.

I’d spent hours reading journal accounts of prestigious Ninth Line warriors, who talked about coming to Boellium War College like it was the best and worst time of their life, so I knew what to expect. I knew this was part of the hazing, helping to sift the weak of stomach and will from the strong contenders.

I knew that a little blood was going to become an everyday occurrence for me. That was why I kept walking. It’s why I avoided the eyes of the milling crowd, and closed my ears to their muttered commentary.

I wasn’t cold. I was realistic. A tender heart in Boellium would soon bleed out, and then it would be their blood painting the courtyard’s cobblestones red. That wouldn’t be me.

I hefted my pack further onto my back and pushed through the heavy front doors. Again, I wasn’t surprised that there was more carnage to walk through. There was a delicate balance in the power structure of this institution, and in the Lines themselves.

I didn’t see him in the crowd in the courtyard, but the second son of the First Line would be out there, traumatizing the new recruits like it was his right, and I guess it was. The ruling family of the First Line, the Vylan family, ruled Ebrus with unwavering ruthlessness, maintaining their position of power through any means necessary, including their elemental abilities.

Means like suspending a man in the air and slowly allowing him to exsanguinate.

However, the second show of power would come from the next most politically powerful family. The Third Line. The Second Line had been assassinated by the First Line centuries ago, thus securing their power as the ruling body forever. None of us could stand against their rule, and really, none of us tried.

That made them sound like dictators, but they weren’t so bad. They were ambivalent to the country outside of the Upper Six Lines, and their own lifestyles. They left the rest of us alone, except for taxes and the conscription of one person per year per Line to Boellium.

A deep growl let me know that my mind had wandered, which was dangerous in this institution. In front of me were two large hounds, easily coming up to my shoulders. Their fangs were bared, their ears pinned back. My limbs locked, but my face didn’t so much as flinch, a skill I’d been working on for as long as I could remember.

I didn’t think the college administration would let them tear me apart, but how could I really know? Still, I stood my ground, staring down those hounds, until a whistle pierced the air and they turned, moving with purpose toward their master.

I’d passed whatever test that was; it equally could have been an assessment of my courage or a measurement of my bladder control.

The Taeme family of the Third Line were the Lords of the Beasts, and rumor had it, they were little more than animals themselves. If the Vylans were cold as an ice wind, then the Taemes were their polar opposite. Hot-blooded and uncontrollable.

I was going to stay out of the way of all the Upper Six Lines. I meant less than nothing to them, and I intended to do my two years here at the war college and return home, not even a blip on their radar.

Forgettable. That’s what I was aiming for.

As I walked through the large atrium toward the administration offices, the hollering in the room echoed like a madhouse. Screams and cries, fighting animals and chilling sounds of pain. It grated along my already tightly strung muscles, but I kept my face impassive. This was nothing. The first few steps in going back to my life.

Show no weakness. I’d repeat it like a mantra until I believed it.

That was going great, until just outside the door I needed to pass through was a large war cat of some kind, cornering what looked like a stolt, a weird little hybrid between a tiny ferret and a rat, but a unique purple color.

They were elusive, and avoided people, so I knew someone must have brought it here purely to feed to the war cat, for whatever reason. The big cat had it cornered in front of the door, and the stolt looked terrified, standing up on its hind legs, slapping at the air like it was ferocious and not ten inches from nose to tail.

Something twisted in my gut, but again, I kept it from my face. I had to go through that door, the one blocked by the war cat. That was the only reason I stepped between the big cat and the stolt. The fact you didn’t cower in front of a predator was the only reason I stared down the enraged feline, baring my own teeth. I was just being stoic when I didn’t react to the tiny stolt running up the fabric of my long skirt, like it knew I was its one chance at survival. I put my hand on the door once it made it to my hip, and the soft scratch of its claws probably broke the skin.

Feeling eyes on me, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder at the crowd. A set of golden orbs met mine across the room, and I knew enough about public affairs to know that it was Hayle Taeme, the third-born son of the current Baron of the Third Line. I held his gaze for long enough to convey that I wasn’t scared of him, but not so long that it was a challenge. Turning away, I stepped through the door into a hallway.

The silence inside was almost as grating as the noise of the atrium. Only the clock ticking above the administration office door broke the sound vacuum. Checking there was no one around, I reached under my skirt and pulled out the stolt.

It scrambled against my hand, its whole body rigid with fear, and I looked at it dispassionately. I should just let it go here and be done with it. I’d given it a chance; the rest was up to nature. But for a reason I didn’t really understand, I found myself opening one of the wide, deep pockets of my skirt and allowing it to scurry in, hiding deep in the fabric like a burrow.

I’d take it out to the woods later and release it.

Straightening my shoulders, I hefted my bag back onto my back and knocked on the office door. Someone barked to enter, and I did so with my chin raised high. Boellium wasn’t a place to cower or show weakness. It gave you the respect you demanded. At least, that’s what the journal of Hildor Halhed had said.

I stepped through the door and met the eyes of a woman with a shaved head and a wicked scar curling her lip, the effects of which made her look like she was scowling. She only had one arm and wore modified battle leathers.

“This frog shit never balances.” Okay, maybe the expression on her face had less to do with her scar and more to do with the cursing she was throwing at the ledger in front of her. Slamming it shut, she looked at me and opened a different ledger on her desk with a heavy thump. “Name?” she snapped.

“Avalon Halhed, fifth child of the Baron of the Ninth Line.”

Flicking through the book in front of her, she reached the desired page and wrote down my name. I leaned over a little and saw name after name of people from my Line. Some were my kin. Some were people who fell within our Line’s fiefdom.

The administrator didn’t look impressed by my pedigree, and I wasn’t surprised. “Take this. It’s your classes. If you’re on time, you’re late.” She flicked her fingers at me, a clear dismissal. “Go down to the third subfloor. Surprisingly, you seem to be the only person from the Ninth Line in the college at the moment, so you might find it a little quiet.” The don’t complain was written so clearly on her face that she didn’t even need to say it out loud.

I knew that last year’s Ninth Line conscript had died in war games before he’d even graduated. It had upset the families in the fiefdom, which was why Father had promised to send his darling daughter this year as the conscript. Yeah, right. It had a double boon for Father; he appeased the fiefdom and got rid of me in one move.

If I played this right, I wouldn’t have to go back to the house I grew up in, the one that held nothing but bad memories. He’d promised that if I survived and wasn’t called up to fight in some imaginary war, he’d give me land on the very outer edge of Ebrus, right where our fiefdom turned into the wilds of the north. That’s all I had to do. Survive two years here and go home. I just had to hope that nothing went wrong.

I shuddered at the echo of an old memory.

Lifting my chin in acknowledgement of the woman behind the desk, I turned and left the administration office. Looking left and right, I searched for the stairs that would lead down to the Lower Line dorms. I knew from the journals in Father’s library that the Lines after the Sixth Line were housed in subterranean housing. The dorms went six floors below my feet, and the very idea made my skin itch. At least I wasn’t of the Twelfth Line, stuck down in the pits of hell.

To the left, there was a large sweeping staircase that went up to what I would assumed were the other six dorms. To the right was an archway, with stairs down. That would be my path then. Straightening my shoulders, I walked toward the curling stairs, but not before catching a glimpse of what was going on in the atrium.

Some other poor soul—who’d probably been forced to join Boellium too—was being confronted by the hounds. Instead of holding eye contact and standing tall like I had, this fool turned and ran.

You don’t run from a predator. That was the first thing they taught you where I came from. A predator will chase you down and tear you to pieces, just for the sport of it.

Which was exactly what those hounds did to the guy, dragging him to the ground before he’d even made it back to the door. Clearly, I was wrong—the college would allow them to tear apart new students.

Pushing down the kernel of pity that formed in my chest, I descended the stairs to my new home, and ignored the man’s screams as he was eaten alive.