Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
I nforming the children went about as well as I expected. The younger ones don’t really understand yet, but I’ve known some of the older kids their entire lives, and their devastated faces made it all the worse.
You’d think being the Silent Assassin, I would’ve gotten a work assignment literally anywhere else, but I like it. These kids aren’t afraid of me. They don’t know the things I’ve done. Their unfiltered opinions and attitudes are usually the best part of my day, and they don’t hold back which never fails to make me laugh.
We spend the day tending to our herb garden, making new ferments and pastes, and cooking meals together. I've always wanted the kids to feel like they could survive by relying on themselves. Teaching them about the plants they can forage to feed their bellies and heal what ails them. How much of it stays with them, I don’t know, but their flushed cheeks and filthy smiling faces tell me they’re having a good time.
I remain upbeat with them despite the truth. While it may be wrong to give them a false sense of what our world is really like, it also seems unnecessarily cruel to add more fear and uncertainty to their lives.
Most kids manifest their Gift before they age-up and move to secondary housing the season they turn thirteen. A lot of what we do here in the children’s compound is about managing their Gifts. Some nannies are specifically tasked with encouraging Gifts to manifest through testing and trying to trigger something.
Obvious Gifts like an increase of abilities that already exist—strength, hearing, taste, vision—are easy and usually the first to manifest. Children whose Gifts don’t manifest until they’re in a unique situation and they feel the pull, are slightly more difficult. Healers tend to be like this, with most of them manifesting after they’ve aged-up into secondary.
Like me, some never feel the pull.
The children I nanny are all Junkies. Their Gifts are considered useless and they’re unlikely to be sold—if they are announced at all—in their coming-of-age, during the season they turn twenty-one.
One five-rev-old Nemorisborn kid can change the color of all the hair on his body. Hilarious and fun for a child, but useless to the monarchies paying gold for Gifts. Though Nemoris will surely still make a bid, as they do for anyone born of the forest.
Farra, a twelve-rev-old Mievaborn girl, is about to age-up. She knows she’s a Junky and will likely stay in Osraed forever as all she can do is make her fingernails grow at will. The news that I’m leaving is particularly hard on her. Being the oldest kid, she’s been my right hand for moons. I know she’s trying to be brave, but the devastation on her face is unmistakable.
I knew today would be hard.
Pulling Farra aside before I leave for the day, I hand her a small parcel. “I was going to give you this when you aged-up, but I won’t be here for that now. Don’t open it until then!” I order, playfully poking her ribs while she bats me away.
She gives me a tight hug and then sniffles her way back to her dorm. She’ll open it the moment she leaves my sight. I hope she loves the book on wild, edible, and medicinal plants across the Divine world. It’s full of beautiful diagrams of plant stages, their uses, and how to prepare them. I’ll miss her bright and sassy personality. I do not doubt she will thrive, even as a Junky.
As I’m leaving, I run into a woman I grew up with, a Gifted wet nurse. Some Gifted stay in Osraed simply because their Gifts are of use to the council, and Petia is one such Patron. I absolutely detest her, and the familiar flutter of rage in my chest becomes rampant the moment I hear her voice.
“Mika. What a pleasant surprise to see you on this side of the compound,” Petia says acerbically. A couple of other Patrons look over at us and then dash away, leaving me alone with Petia in the small receiving room off the hallway.
Around us are soft chairs, small tables, and a dresser with a pitcher of water and glasses—everything a grieving parent needs to hand over their child while the rest of the Patrons and children can walk by and look in. Not even the dignity of a closed door for privacy during the worst day of their lives.
“I’m taking some paperwork to Gamiyan,” I say, regretting that I didn’t plan to drop it off early tomorrow morning while fewer people are awake.
“Fascinating,” Petia replies, with an insincere smile plastered on her face.
She knows I was the Silent Assassin, and I wish she was afraid of me instead of this confident hostility. Petia thinks of me as the little girl I was, smaller than my peers, and desperate to be loved. Oh, how I’ve changed—that little girl is now only desperate to be alone. Maybe I can leave her the parting gift of a few broken bones.
She and I, and two other Mievaborn women of a similar age were best friends when we were young. Too little to be bullies or know the way of the Divine world we live in. As the four of us got older, my differences became more apparent, and I drifted further and further from them. Their Gifts came in early, including Petia’s wet nursing, though she didn’t have to start feeding the new Patrons until she was much older.
And of course, my Gift never manifested. My Patron life file was updated to Null & Void the season I turned sixteen, officially branding me a Null. Though, I’d already been teased about it long before I even aged-up into secondary.
I’m snapped out of my memories by the sound of a soft mewling coming from the bundle in Petia’s arms.
“A new Patron of the Divine just arrived. Can you believe it? I haven’t seen a new Mutt in revolutions!” The slur shamelessly rolled off her tongue.
I shouldn’t be surprised by the way she speaks, it’s not like she’s alone in her views. The child looks about a moon old with a head of pale blonde hair like a Mievaborn, however, their little face is covered in Nemorisborn freckles.
I shudder to think of the life this child would have suffered through if they hadn’t become a Patron. Petia is right, I haven’t seen anyone risk bringing a child into this world with someone from a different country in a long time. Certainly, not many of them are in Osraed.
“Actually, can you take that to Gamiyan since you’re going to see her? Thanks,” says Petia, with a small flick of her eyes to a folder on a side table as she strides off cradling the new little Patron. Clearly, it wasn’t a request as she doesn’t wait for my response.
I grab the folder she indicated and flip through it to find it’s the child’s intake paperwork. A Mievaborn mother and a Nemorisborn father. A little boy, given the name of Ketia. I’m not surprised since it must’ve been Petia who named him, and she’s conceited enough to name a stranger after herself. “Of the mountain” is listed next to his eye color, indicating he had gray eyes before they shifted to the violet eyes of a Patron of the Divine.
Gamiyan is still in her office when I arrive to hand everything over. The Sadoriborn woman’s velvet-looking skin—rich brown like fresh and fertile earth—is deeply wrinkled and her once-black hair is now entirely gray. She’s a highly respected Junky with the Gift of being able to dislocate and open her jaw grotesquely wide, like a snake. Obviously, her Gift is of zero use here in the children’s compound, but the elderly woman was the Director of Young Patrons long before I was even born.
When the petitions came in over my position as a nanny, Gamiyan was a steadfast supporter of mine. She spoke on my behalf at the hearing, and the nice things she said about me were unexpected. I wasn’t sure if she was making it all up to look after my well-being or to gain some kind of future leverage over me. I would never disrespect her to ask such a thing, she’s a woman of her own mind and has never called in the favor. But I couldn’t—and I still can’t—understand why she believed in me so much.
We exchange pleasantries, and her eyes crinkle with kindness when I hand over my notebooks. They contain all of my notes and observations about the children I nanny. Someone will be taking over their care, and I want the transition to be as smooth as possible.
As I pass her the intake file from Petia, I wonder where it will be kept—where any of the Patron’s life records are kept? Have they filed my bill of sale to Nemoris yet?
“Thank you, Mika. I’ll file this on my way home,” Gamiyan says, as she looks at me with trust.
It’s fortunate she knows me and my aversion to maintaining eye contact. Otherwise, she might have seen it written in my eyes when I looked away. I was going to follow her.
I race home and get changed into my sneaksuit while stuffing nuts and dried fruit into my mouth. The suit is essentially a form-fitting sock that covers my entire body and face, with a hood. It’s more like a second skin with reinforced feet that act as shoes. The Sadori-made fabric is dark and swallows the light like an endless void, making it perfect to sneak about in at night. My fingertips and the top half of my face are the only skin visible. I use kajal to blacken the skin around my eyes so they’re less noticeable, pull the hood down, and then I’m out the door.
It's well into the evening, and Gamiyan is still in her office. I’ve been blessed with a moonless night, so I get comfortable in my vantage point on a nearby roof shrouded in darkness. I find myself digging at a fingernail through the sneaksuit, frustratingly unable to chew my nails while wearing it. If I get this wrong and she leaves through the south exit, I likely won’t have another chance before I leave for Nemoris.
Fortunately, I’m not wrong, as half an hour later, Gamiyan is ambling her way past me. For an elderly woman, she is spritely, her shadow bouncing under the tall street lanterns at a quick pace. I need to move from my position almost immediately to keep up.
My footsteps are silent as I creep along behind her, keeping to the shadows. She takes an unexpected sharp turn to the left toward the Registry Office. When I’m no longer an Ofosraed citizen, I’ll have to come here to check in once a rev. They keep records of where everyone is supposed to be living, though I’d always assumed the Patron life records were elsewhere.
However, Gamiyan unlocks the door to Permissions and Requests, not the Registry Office. Unable to follow her into the building, I go around the side to watch her through the windows. She lights a lantern and I follow her shadow as she moves deeper inside where information like work assignments and travel permissions are stored. Like the Registry Office, these records are not guarded or protected by more than a locked door.
Between the shelves and shelves of records, I watch Gamiyan’s lantern light slowly disappear until it’s gone entirely. This doesn’t make sense…I would still be able to see the lantern if she were between shelves.
I wait patiently, and after maybe fifteen minutes, I see the lantern light begin to flicker and dance around the room again. Gamiyan weaves her way back out of the storage area, through the offices, past the main reception area, and out the exit. She’s no longer carrying the file.
I test a few windows hoping to find one unsecured so I don’t have to pick the lock to the front door, and I’m in luck. I crawl through an office window on the far west side of the building, slinking into the inky darkness within.
I sit for a moment, allowing my eyes to adjust. I’m not even afforded a stream of light from the street lanterns as this office only faces another building. I don’t dare light a lantern yet for fear of being spotted, and make my way through the offices the same way Gamiyan had.
So far, it’s only rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves, and files upon files, of records. Crouching to the floor in the area where Gamiyan disappeared, I feel my way around the ground until my hand catches on something. A small indent almost under the shelves about the size of a small coin, and the gap in the planks is minutely wider along here. I follow the entire length, finding another small dip a few feet away.
I stick my finger into one of the shallow holes and feel some give, but nothing happens. I have the same result with the other one, so I press into both at once until I hear a clunk and a lip pops up along the gap. I lift, and the entire length of the boards swivel up, creating an even darker passage into the floor, where I’m greeted with the cold touch of concrete stairs.
Leaving the trapdoor open, I begin my descent. I've never heard of someone breaking into Patron life records before, but the effort to keep them hidden suggests it wouldn’t be a good idea to be found down here.
I reach what I assume to be the bottom when I stumble after expecting more steps down. Fumbling, I finally light the lantern, the opening above barely visible and the stairs look endless. Of course, the door at the bottom of the steps is locked.
I retrieve my set of picks that I carry with me inside the stretchy fabric around my chest and work on opening it. Luckily for me, it’s an incredibly easy lock—the type I first learned how to crack when I was being taught the ways of the sneak.
The irony of the situation is not lost on me. Jaena insisted I was taught to pick locks, and now here I am using that skill in defiance of her. The memory almost makes me chuckle—it was Gamiyan herself who taught me lockpicking. Why she knew the skill and why Jaena had her teach me remains a curiosity.
The lock clicks satisfactorily and I open the door with a rush of frigid air, my lantern light quickly swallowed by the sheer magnitude of the room in front of me. Rows of shelves extend at least as far as the lantern can illuminate in all directions, with a small set directly in front of me, perpendicular to the rest of the shelving in the room. Calling it a room is insufficient: it’s an underground field of records.
The shelves directly in front look the newest, and I spot the one for baby Ketia. These files are sorted in alphabetical order and appear to be for the children currently in the compound.
I start flipping through a few files on the next lot of shelves. These look to be for everyone who’s had their Patron file number assigned—and tattooed—but not yet come-of-age. When children age-up and move into secondary housing, Patron file numbers are tattooed onto our forearms. We’re also put through a procedure that changes us forever, so it’s a big season for someone who is essentially still a child.
A dusty, old set of shelves sits off to the far right within my lantern light. Looking separate from the rest, my interest is piqued. I grab a couple of files and realize quickly that these are the files of Patrons who died before they reached their coming-of-age.
Sickness, injuries, even murder. Osraed suffered a lot of disappearances before the children’s compound was built a century past, and missing Patrons were often merely presumed dead after a peacekeeper investigation.
Patrons were once executed, even before their coming-of-age ceremony, if they defected—though the last death was twenty revs past. Now they’re placed in an Osraed prison for life. I bet those files are down here somewhere too.
The rest of the shelves are large and looming but look to be totally empty. I walk down the first aisle and have to go past thirty rows of shelves before I start seeing files again.
I stop, grab a file and flip it open. It’s for an Erduborn man named Niko and he’s an Oflaguz fish catcher. The bill of sale says he was purchased on his coming-of-age with no contest, around two revs past. Putting that file away, I pick up one from the same set of shelves but from the top. It’s from the same coming-of-age season, this time a Mievaborn woman named Annikasia.
Testing a theory, I grab another file. Another name that begins with A, but their coming-of-age season was the one prior to the two other files I read. It’s definitely in date order, and then alphabetical.
Leaving this row, I move deeper into the record field until I find it.
The season I came-of-age.