39. The Month without Shadow
One morning, Viola was sent to collect a giant who was taking too long with his morning meal. Despite the abundance of food here, his bowl was filled with nothing but slop—a watery concoction of oats, sometimes with other scraps thrown in. Viola couldn’t blame the giant for his reluctance. His knuckles were cracked, his face swollen and bruised, and he winced as he lifted the great bowl, like it pained him to move.
She slowed her walk down to a glacial pace, hoping that he’d finish before she arrived at his side, but he hadn’t.
Perhaps a command would be enough.
The giant paid her no heed. Aware that they didn’t have long before it would start to seem suspicious, she cracked her whip at him, not letting the leather touch him.
The giant slurped down another mouthful.
“Please,” Viola whispered, knowing this was not a word she should know how to use, not here. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
The giant’s dark eyes circled to hers. “Don’t, then,” he said.
But he clearly knew that if she didn’t, someone else would. He rose to his feet and resumed his duties.
And Viola resumed hers.
Later that week, Viola was assigned duty in the nursery. She assumed from the name and location that this was a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size, but instead she found herself and another guard in charge of three giant children, one just starting to crawl and already almost as tall as she was. The children were kept in a pen with a few soft toys and things to climb on—to develop their muscles, Viola suspected, and not for any kindness. The giant ragdoll one of them was clutching was missing an eye and most of its stuffing, the fabric grey and caked in filth. The rest of the equipment was little more than sanded wood.
The guards patrolled above them. A young giantess sat in the pit with the children, cooing to them when they were distressed, but never talking. Her blonde hair was shorn close to her scalp, and her eyes had a glazed, milky quality, like her thoughts were entirely elsewhere.
At one point, she nursed the baby. Its mother then, most likely. Had she had any say in carrying the child? Had she chosen its father? Or was she nothing more than a broodmare, made to provide the Crown with its next generation of workers?
How could Jax and Isabeau sanction this? How could anyone?
Viola wondered how long they let the children stay in the nursery before they sent them out into the fields. Slavery had never been legal in Auro—not until now, apparently—but children had been known to work in the fields as soon as they could walk when times were harder. The older giant child looked around four, though it was hard to gauge his age due to his height. Viola suspected he was only in here because they didn’t yet trust him not to rampage if he was out. She did not want to think about how that ‘trust’ might be instilled in him.
Viola spent the entire shift trying to work out how to break them out of there, and the entire night wondering if her inability to come up with a solution made her just as bad as the people who had imprisoned the giants in the first place.
The days bled together, uncountable. Viola half suspected she was falling prey to the enchantments after all. Her body acted like a puppet’s on a string, her thoughts numb and distant and yet still all too close. She knew she must still be sleeping, because otherwise she wouldn’t have the strength to get up in the morning, but each night unconsciousness seemed to evade her. It was smoke when she needed a flame.
She cursed the Crown, she cursed whoever came up with this idea, whoever enforced it, whoever didn’t speak up.
She cursed her family for leaving her, all over again, and cursed the gods she didn’t think she believed in.
She cursed Nico too, for making her care about him, for sending her here, for not preparing her enough.
And for not being beside her now when she needed him most.
Viola woke one night to the sound of jeering. Everyone else in the room was deep in heavy slumber. Checking that no one was watching, she slid her feet into her boots and crept towards the window, pulling herself up on the bars.
Red light emanated from beyond the wheat fields, along with the sounds of cheering and clapping.
Curious, she fetched the chimaera blade Nico had given her and fashioned it into a key. She’d moulded it into a tiny hairpin for the journey, worried it might be taken from her, and thankfully no one had noticed it crammed into her thick locks. It took a few tries before the malleable weapon slid itself into the correct place, but soon the door swung open, and Viola stepped outside into the cool night air. Strange how everything was large here, but the stars and moon were the same. Her world, and yet not her world—some other realm stitched beside it.
She stuck towards the shadows, careful not to be seen. If she was caught, she’d say she heard a commotion and instinctively went to inspect it. She’d lie and say the door was open. She’d act confused. They’d probably do little more than give her another potion and send her on her way.
It was still best not to be noticed.
Viola crept through the wheat field, the stems thinning as the light and sound increased. She crouched low. The ground opened into a massive, circular pit surrounded by crude benches cut into the ground, teeming with spectators. In the centre of the pit, two enormous figures clashed, their movements shaking the earth with every step.
Viola winced as one of them, a burly giant with a scarred face, took a hit that sent him sprawling to the ground. His opponent, a towering female giant with a braided mane, roared victoriously as the crowd erupted in applause.
Viola’s heart pounded in her chest, a mixture of fear and anger swirling within her. She watched as the defeated giant struggled to rise, only to collapse again, his strength spent. The crowd exchanged coins, opened a cask of mead, and began to disperse, satisfied with the spectacle .
As the last of the onlookers departed, Viola’s gaze shifted to a smaller, shadowed figure that had entered the pit. Another giant, younger and more slender than the fighters, approached the fallen warrior. The newcomer began to tend to the wounded giant, murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.
Viola scanned the area, realising that the guards and spectators were gone. The victor had been taken away, and the remaining two giants were shackled in place, their chains too small to reach the nearby collection of supplies. Bandages, ointments, and various herbs were scattered about the corner. Whoever was usually responsible for healing the fighters between bouts had clearly decided not to bother tonight.
Seizing the opportunity, Viola slipped down the slope and into the pit, keeping to the shadows. She made her way to the corner. With nimble fingers, she began to gather what she could, glancing frequently over her shoulder to ensure she remained unseen. The caring giant was still focused on her fallen comrade, oblivious to her presence.
The fallen giant groaned, and Viola froze, her heart leaping into her throat. But the smaller giant only murmured soothingly, adjusting a makeshift bandage around a swollen knee. Viola slowly made her way towards them, laying out the equipment at their feet.
Both giants stilled, staring at the offerings as though Viola were presenting them with a snake that might be poisonous.
“Go on,” she said. “Take it.”
The giants continued to stare. Realising she might have to gain their trust another way, Viola turned to the chains instead, transforming her key into an enormous set of metal cutters.
The younger giant reached out, shaking her head, still not trusting Viola with her words. She pointed to the collars both of them were wearing, and Viola understood that whatever they were prevented the giants from leaving.
She lifted her cutters. “I can try to—”
The giant shook her head again, pointing to the rune marks on the collars. They were spelled from being physically removed, which made sense. She imagined that there were giants here strong enough to crush the metal.
Viola hung her head. She gestured once more to the supplies, a gesture that now seemed empty. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning her back. She knew more than most how empty those words could be.
The young giant spoke at last. “You weren’t before.”
A giant fell in the fields and did not get up, no matter how much he was whipped. Eventually, two other giants were called to remove him. Viola accompanied them with a windmancer and two other knights to a colossal building at the far end of the compound. A mage came out to meet them, looked him over, and shook her head.
The windmancer sliced through the giant’s neck without a pause, the other giants still supporting the body between them. Tears trembled down one of the remaining giant’s cheeks, but he did not falter. He stood in his spot as the blood pooled at his feet.
The next day, Viola discovered the body of the fallen giant in a pit behind the building, along with a dozen other bodies, some no more than skeletons sinking into the earth. The oldest had been there long enough to be overgrown with moss.
She was sent there along with another knight and an able-bodied giant to dig out a skull. By the end of the day, it was placed on a pole in the fields like an enormous macabre scarecrow. Many a culture would display the heads of their enemies as a warning to others. Viola had never heard of such an act amongst slaves.
The message was clear: Do as you’re commanded, or this will be you.
Sometimes, Viola wondered why, if they couldn’t fight back, they didn’t just give up. She was almost certain she would have.
That night, she was on duty in the giants’ bunkhouse. She saw them huddle together, saw couples crawl into the same beds, saw younger giants rest their heads in their parents’ laps.
It was hard to give up when you still had family.
And their captors clearly knew it.
A giant fell and did not get up. Viola reached him first.
“Get up,” she told him, aware of Ariel hovering nearby—not yet close enough to hear. “ Please. If you don’t—”
But now Ariel was within earshot. Viola’s mask snapped back into place. “Up, creature!” she commanded. “If you do not—”
She brushed her hand against her whip, praying she wouldn’t have to use it.
Ariel was already raising her hands, gathering wind into a whip.
Viola took her own from her belt, and lashed it in front of the creature. She hoped it would be enough to motivate him like it had been in the past. It wasn’t.
“This one only knows pain,” Ariel said, almost boredly.
Viola remembered the last time Ariel had wielded her magic, how she’d cut the flesh so deeply Viola swore she saw bone. She wasn’t about to let it happen again.
Pain had levels. She would keep it as light as she could.
But a whip was not a feather. It was made to bend and break.
And break, it did.
Viola didn’t know what was worse: what she was doing, or knowing that she’d done it all before.
One evening, the giants began to sing. The knights pause in their idle chatter, the song cutting through any remnants of the stupor that had held them all day long. The song was sung in a language Viola didn’t recognise, but the melody was soft and aching. It rumbled through the room like distant thunder.
The whole room seemed to hold its breath, brows furrowed, like they knew the sound but couldn’t place it. Viola had no idea what was going through their minds. She tried to mimic their expressions, all the while soaking up the sound, searching for the words to place to the music. It was sad, it was lonely. And yet, she thought, there might have been a note of hope in it too.
Soon, the voices lulled. The knights returned to their food.
No one remembered the sound but Viola, and she thought she would remember it for the rest of her days.
One day, Viola was assigned to guard the building next to the pit, where the dying giants were taken, their bodies subjected to experiments that made her stomach churn in ways she could not fathom. She stood above them as they suffered and screamed, wanting to be sick, to pass out, to never see any of this again.
She wondered if that’s what the first knights assigned to this place had begged for. Perhaps the Crown had assumed that the loyalty of their knights would stretch this far, and had only begun to wipe their memories when they realised that it wouldn’t.
“Magnificent, aren’t they?” remarked a nearby mage, as a colleague poured a concoction of powdered crystal onto the back of one of the dying giants, who writhed beneath it, skin smoking. “Giants have always been immune to most forms of magic, but we keep trying.”
Viola fought to keep her breakfast down. For years, she had hunted monsters. It had never occurred to her she could be in a room of them dressed like men.
Viola was no stranger to isolation. She was no stranger to wearing a mask, or pretending that she was all right when she was not. But this… this was something else. Something cold and dark and deadly. Vast, uncrossable. Every thought of hers a needle.
At night, she lay awake trying to come up with ways to set all the giants free, in ways that wouldn’t get her comrades killed—comrades who, like her, would surely be disgusted if they knew.
Yesterday, she’d witnessed Rainwood, who she’d always thought of much like Heindrich in terms of affability, whip a young giant until her back was no more than a bloody slab. The thought of Heindrich doing something similar was unthinkable. He ought not to have it in him. Yet the Crown’s mages had twisted his mind and forced him to do it. It was almost worse than wondering what she’d done, too.
The giant in the pit remembered her from the last time she’d come. She’d hoped she’d just been a shapeless uniform to them, indistinguishable from the masses, but clearly not. The giants remembered the faces of their oppressors.
It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, I didn’t know! She wanted to scream whenever their eyes met. But what did that matter to them? It didn’t change their reality.
But I will, she vowed. I will.
Three days before the knights were due to depart, a giant finally had enough. He caught the whip flogging him in his massive fist and yanked the knight brandishing it clean off her feet, tossing her into the cornfield. All other knights moved to assist. A windmancer hovered nearby, drawing a wind-whip, but the giant seized a nearby cart and threw it at her, knocking her clean out of the sky.
The airship hovering overhead moved closer. The giant didn’t seem to care. He scooped up one of knights nearby and squeezed him—
Boom.
Across the field was an awful, sickening explosion, and the sound of something enormous thudding to the ground. A scream ripped through the air.
The giant who’d caused the commotion sank to his knees, his expression vacant. The knight in his grip crawled away. Viola turned towards the sound, skirting the corner of the wheatfield, stopping when she saw the area awash with blood and something that looked like brain matter.
“Effective, isn’t it?” said Skyborn beside her. “They have a resistance to magic, but not explosions caused by one. When we first took over this place, we affixed the collars to explode at our command and kill anyone who got a little out of hand. We lost a lot of giants that way. We soon discovered it was far more effective to kill another, entirely at random.”
Viola’s gaze turned back to the devastated giant, still crouched despondently on the ground. Who had he just lost? Who had he got left to live for?
No, not to live for. Just to not die for. Nothing about this existence could be called living. Not truly.
But no wonder they didn’t fight back. No wonder most of them were so pliant.
The blood seeped into the dirt. The screaming died down.
Viola stared at the body.
I am working for a monster.