Chapter 4 #2
At least, the size of the bathing room suggested she wasn’t the only one sleeping in a stone chamber in this mystery building.
Perhaps this was already Ashthorn Ward: dark rooms like in an airless prison and the threat of being killed if she missed the meal she so desperately craved, no way to orient herself to even know when the sun would come up again…
Then there was the constant listening for the bell, the sound of which she’d never heard, and which could be less than a ping, too soft to wake her.
Yes, this was its own brand of torture. Even the promise of food and access to fresh water couldn’t outweigh that.
Another bang on the door made her bolt upright, hand on her hip where her knife would usually be sheathed in the sewn-in compartment of her clothes—clothes she’d left in the bathing room.
Gingerly, Lory got to her feet and snuck to the door the way she would when approaching her targets on the streets, her injuries still bothering her enough to make her sway, but not keep her from moving altogether.
It was when she opened the door with that Guardians-damned creak that a deep hollow sound reverberated through the building, making her bones tremble.
Lory froze on the spot, holding her breath as she waited for the walls to crumble and her blood vessels to burst, but the sound gradually faded, and in the wake of it, voices filled the air. Voices and footsteps. Many of them.
As she stepped out into the hallway, Lory narrowly avoided a collision with one of the black-clothed men and women rushing past her.
None of them paid her any heed as they rolled on like an avalanche, not looking left or right or even slowing when the bathing room door across the hall opened, almost taking out one of them.
Pressing her back against the wall, Lory weathered the storm of movement—not unlike market day in the poorer districts of Dunai—until only a few stragglers were left and her pulse returned to a non-critical rate.
Without any corners, columns, or crates to hide behind, she was more exposed than on days she needed to cross open spaces in brightest daylight to scout an area.
This was different. A new definition of being invisible.
No one seemed to care she was there, just like none of them seemed to dare slow down long enough to answer when Lory asked two women in functional black pants and shirts like her own, only theirs were fitting, if they were headed to breakfast.
On the contrary, they sped up, falling into a jog to either put distance between them or because they were already late.
“Can you at least tell me if this was the second ring of the bell?” she called after them as she followed at a slower pace, careful to mark the single file of doors to her right, matching the one to the room she’d slept in.
They turned a corner and were gone before Lory even finished speaking.
“First one,” a female voice answered from behind her, almost making Lory jump out of her skin.
When she turned, hand yet again at her hip, an athletic young woman fell into step beside her, assessing her with gold-flecked eyes, her heart-shaped, deep-umber face all business.
A cascade of thin braids bounced at her neck with every light step, and her full mouth twitched the tiniest bit as she finished scanning Lory and obviously didn’t categorize her as a threat.
“You’ve got about ninety seconds to get to the mess hall if you don’t want your head bitten off by the Triad.”
Lory stumbled along as the woman picked up her pace like she wasn’t ready to get her own head bitten off. “The Triad?”
“Leadership,” the woman explained with a shrug, pointing at the turn in the hallway where the rest of the crowd had disappeared. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the Triad.”
“Obviously not.” Or I wouldn’t be asking, Lory added in her mind. Her stomach growled loudly as they turned right, where people were filing through yet another blackened door, their chatter dying away.
“I’m Tabi.” The woman didn’t take her eyes off the open door as if a threat emanated from it, and she increased her pace a little more.
“Lory.” Lory didn’t bother holding out her hand the way she’d seen people greet each other. Those codes of demeanor didn’t exist on the streets.
“Pleasure, Lory. Now hurry. We’ve got about fifteen seconds before they close the door.”
Lory didn’t ask what would happen if they didn’t make it, instead breaking into a run, following Tabi as she followed the last of the group over the threshold, then leaped into the enormous mess hall after them.
Ignoring her aching muscles and sore bones, Lory didn’t hesitate as she stepped inside to the sound of the bell shaking the walls and the floor a second time.
The door closed, making her jump another foot farther into the dim room.
First rays of sunlight crept over rows of tables, illuminating furniture in the same blackened wood as the doors were made from and glinting from the plain steel cutlery and white dishes stacked by a counter on the far end of the hall.
But what Lory truly couldn’t take her eyes off was the gigantic stained-glass window behind the elevated area at the end of the room, featuring a scene from a battle where swords clashed with sabers and scythes, and a good third of the panel consisted of the bright gold and oranges of a fire.
It was that part holding Lory’s attention most, for from the flames emerged a winged creature with the horned head of a lion and the slender, powerful body of a horse.
“Right on time,” Tabi noted, grinning and ushering Lory along toward the nearest of the tables, sitting down next to a guy with a shaved head and a menacing tattoo behind his left ear.
Lory dropped onto the bench, panting like she’d just been chased across the city in the scalding heat of the midday sun.
Four other people were sitting at the table, their faces curious as they watched Lory with the same cool assessment as Tabi.
“You picked up a fresh one on the way here?” the guy with the tattoo prompted without looking away.
Broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, he fit right into the group, but his unusually pale skin for this region set him apart.
Lory was certain that, if he grew out his hair, it would be the lightest shade she’d ever seen.
At least his eyebrows were a light brown that wasn’t merely bleached from exposure to the sun.
“Found her by the bathing room and figured I couldn’t let her die on her first day.” Tabi’s tone would have been terrifying had there not been a grin on her face that suggested she was joking.
“Scrawny little thing,” the other woman at the table commented with a pitiful glance.
“Where did they pick you up?” Before Lory could respond that it was none of her business, the woman continued, pulling her chin-length, straight, brown hair behind her unusually large ears, and continued, “I’m Ricca.
These are Thal, Brycon”—she gestured at two men her age who nodded at her with mild interest—“and Frost.” She jerked her chin at the man with the shaved head last, and his eyes snapped to Lory, two deep blue daggers, driving a shiver down her spine, while Ricca gestured at the woman who’d helped Lory find the mess hall. “You’ve already met Tabi.”
“Lory.” She attempted a smile, but the nervous dread in her stomach of what would happen to her in this place, combined with nagging hunger, made it turn into a grimace.
Thal’s chocolate brown eyes flashed as he wiggled his eyebrows at her from across the table, his golden features turning into a mischievous expression while Brycon shrugged his long, black hair back over his shoulder, his hazel eyes indifferent.
Lory quickly looked away, letting her eyes stray back to the massive window behind the three empty tables on the dais.
“So, what happens in here, apart from breakfast?” The counter showed no sign of food, yet the smell of fresh bread already filled the room.
“Those too slow to make it by the second bell meet their end,” Frost said, his face so smooth Lory couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic.
She didn’t need to guess because a door opened at the side of the room, a seamless rectangle in the panel of blackened wood, and out marched ten people, all dressed in black, and Lory’s heart leaped into her throat as she recognized Gray Braid and Observant Eye, among a few other familiar faces from the day before, who were all climbing the three steps onto the dais alongside the rest of the black-dressed group.
Lory couldn’t see all the way to the front tables where the rest of the crowd was sitting, but she could swear everyone in the room was holding their breath as Gray Braid waited for the others to sit, then picked up a small golden bell from the center table and rang it once.
Out of the hidden door walked a young man dressed in clothes like the beige rags Lory had left behind in the bathing room, his face set in stone as if he’d heard Frost’s statement and was now pondering his last words, and behind him, sword pointed at the man’s back, prowled Falcrest.
Lory’s heart missed a beat as he did a quick sweep of the room with his piercing gray eyes, his shoulders tight and his mouth pressed into a thin line.
She ducked behind Brycon’s tall form, not ready to be judged by that gaze, and Falcrest finished his scan, leading the man in front of him to the front of the dais.
“Pick a student, Captain,” Gray Braid ordered, and she could swear Frost turned slightly green as he cast his eyes to the table as if hoping the captain wouldn’t notice him there at the back of the room.
Tabi shifted in her seat while Ricca watched with rapt attention the way Falcrest did a second scan of the crowd that Lory realized had to be the student body of Ashthorn Ward.
Just as his gaze landed on their table, Thal leaned aside as if to avoid his attention, and Falcrest’s eyes found Lory’s.
A whisper of adrenaline jolted beneath Lory’s skin as he held her gaze over the full room, face unreadable, and for a moment, the world became the stillness before a storm.
Heat crept up her neck like a caress of a flame, and the awareness of how beautiful he was, even holding a human being at his sword’s end, made her question her sanity.
Not me, not me, not me, she chanted in her mind. Please pick someone else.
She had no idea what would happen to the student Falcrest chose, but judging by the smirk now lifting the side of his mouth, Falcrest was enjoying the anticipation.
“Today, Captain,” Gray Braid prompted, and Lory’s stomach turned into a cluster of rocks, fear rising in her system.
Falcrest blinked, freeing Lory from the momentary jumble of sensations, and gestured at the side of the room. “Thornling Morgan.”
Across the table, Frost exhaled a slow breath while Lory slumped in her seat, relief and terror mingling as a black-haired, stocky young man with a stark tattoo curving along the back of his neck marched up to the dais, then the stairs, coming to a halt next to Falcrest.
Captain Falcrest—he looked too young to be captain, yet he was standing there, on the dais with the rest of what Lory assumed was leadership.
“Thornling Morgan,” Gray Braid said, gesturing at the man at the tip of Falcrest’s sword. “Kill him.”
Lory’s heart dropped into her knees. What?
Thornling Morgan’s face turned ashen as he was handed a dagger, Observant Eye stepping around his table and extending the weapon to him.
No. They couldn’t do that. They couldn’t just kill someone.
“What’s his crime?” Lory whispered at Tabi, unable to take her eyes off Thornling Morgan, whose hands seemed to be shaking.
Tabi leaned an inch closer, lowering her voice so much Lory had trouble hearing her over the pounding of her own heart. “He didn’t make it by the second bell.”
Impossible. This was all for show. The student with the blade wouldn’t be killing the man in the beige clothes, and Falcrest wouldn’t be standing there, doing nothing as a person was murdered in front of their eyes.
“On the third bell,” Gray Braid prompted, and for a third time, the room trembled as the bell sounded with reverberating force.
When Lory could gather her thoughts again, the man was slumping to the floor, a crimson stain quickly spreading on his tunic, and Thornling Morgan was handing back the blade to Observant Eye, who wiped it on his napkin and sheathed it out of sight behind the table.
“Morgan, Leyen, carry him out,” Gray Braid ordered, and a second student rose from a table at the front, sprinting up the dais to help Morgan drag the twitching body from the room, while Gray Braid rose to her feet and took the spot at the front of the dais, Falcrest stepping aside and sitting down on the last empty chair at the table.
“For the new ones among you, this is what happens when you fail to start your day on time,” Gray Braid commented, gesturing at the two students vanishing through the hidden door with the now-limp body between them.
Lory couldn’t tear her eyes off the limp form dripping blood onto the hard, dark floor. With the bell overpowering any and all sound, she couldn’t even tell if the man had begged or screamed when he’d met his end.
“Today marks the beginning of the eight-hundredth cycle at Ashthorn Ward. Over the past weeks, our empty tables have been filled with new ashlings while our old ashlings have risen to thornlings.
“Our new arrivals—” Gray Braid’s gaze rolled over the room, stopping at individual faces, and at Lory’s table, it seemed, longest of all.
“Whether you applied for Ashthorn or found your way here in a different manner won’t matter in these halls.
You will prove yourselves every day, or you’ll die trying.
“By joining this academy, you gave up your right to speak about what you see here, what you learn, and what you do with this knowledge. If you fail to keep confidentiality, you will die.
“If you change your mind and run, you. Will. Die.
“If you are weak… You get the idea.”
A few chuckles bounced off the gray ceiling while Lory’s mouth went from dry to drier.
“If you succeed, recognition and opportunities beyond your imagination await.” Gray Braid paused for effect, and surprisingly, Ricca and Thal’s eyes lit up at whatever they thought—or knew the reward for surviving this place would be.
“Whether you’ve been here a week or a day, today you become an ashling. From this day on, this is your home. Welcome to Ashthorn Ward.”