Chapter 8 - Cold Humor
Wrenora
I was sold with two other female thralls to a countess in the heart of the city of Neeva.
I’d thought I’d been cold at the fortress, but Madam Ignes was far icier than the prince.
And she kept her home bone-chillingly cold.
Who would have thought a castle made of actual ice and snow could be warmer than one of stone?
Madam Ignes was ruthless in her tasks, demanding nonstop cleaning and cooking.
I’d been ordered to polish the banisters of the grand staircase, and as soon as I’d finished, she had me start again, insisting I’d missed a spot.
The amount of laundry was daunting. She must have changed her clothes at least eight times a day, and all she did was visit other dignitaries in Neeva or sit in her parlor to gossip.
It seemed like a boring existence, but I’d take it over my own.
I was exhausted after my third day. I changed from my filthy work dress into a clean chemise, more than ready to collapse onto my pathetic excuse of a sleeping cot.
Lorna was already sprawled out on hers, next to mine, rubbing her stomach.
I was beyond grateful we’d been sent away together.
Having her companionship meant more to me than I cared to admit.
“I swear I’m going to starve to death,” she said.
“I’d say you’ll get used to it, but...”
She glanced over at me, her eyes sad with acceptance, before she squeezed them closed. “You’d think after six months my stomach would learn to shut up.”
I giggled at the mental image of Lorna’s stomach yelling at her about how hungry it was.
She rolled over on her cot to face me. “What’s so funny?”
“A stomach yelling.” The silence that followed was so thick I worried she thought I was crazy.
Then she started laughing—loudly—and I joined her, unable to resist the unbridled mirth of her laugh. The other thrall, Derella, turned and glared as our eyes filled with tears. I was hunched over, clutching my sides, unable to stop.
“The two of you will get us all flogged,” Derella said, her voice a tight ribbon of frustration that cut through our giggling. “At least have the sense to keep it down.”
“If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry,” Lorna managed to say between giggle fits. “And I’d much rather laugh.”
She was right. How many times had I been on the verge of tears since my capture? The memory of that day haunted my thoughts. I flopped back on my cot to stare at the rickety boards over my head as I forced the memory to the front of my mind to help snuff out my laughter.
The day the humans surrendered was the coldest day of the war. It had snowed the night before, and I’d thought how beautiful the thin blanket of white was before boots and horse hooves turned it into a brown slush that was impossible to walk through.
My battalion hadn’t suffered the same losses that the others had—we were too far north from the bulk of the heavy fighting.
That didn’t mean the smell of burning flesh and viscera didn’t sting the inside of my nose, but it was the sound of a carnyx echoed by another and another from the elven ranks that would live in my memory.
Its eerie melody carried over the murky field smothered with fog and broken standards.
We’d been told to lie face down in the frigid mud with our hands behind our backs, weapons stabbed into the earth.
And there we lay for hours until we were chained and roughly yanked to our feet to be transported.
From there, we walked for days until we reached an outpost hastily built to house us—hundreds of filthy, starving, cold, and terrified humans.
Those of us who lived through the frigid conditions were split into groups.
The fire mages were pulled out from the others and systematically slaughtered before their bodies were thrown into a mass pyre and their heads were sent to the cities in Kaldaira.
The rest of us had our chains swapped out for enchanted shackles before we were herded into huge cages on wheels and sent off to our new owners.
I shivered. I should have died that day, but here I was, at my fourth assignment. Bought and sold like a prized pig. Still filthy, starving, and cold, but my terror had burned into resentment.
The memory calmed the laughter, and I tried to make myself comfortable.
We were below the first level of Madam Ignes’s manor in a low-ceiling cellar with just enough head clearance to stand.
Our sleeping cots had been hastily jammed into the only available spaces, leaving very little room to move around—a second thought, because how dare the servants have to share quarters with lowly thralls.
Instead of wisplights, we were given candles that sputtered from impurities in the wax.
The flickering light made the shadows dance like wraiths across the walls.
It might have been terrifying in any other circumstance, but the three of us had survived war, imprisonment, and now endured slavery.
There wasn’t much that scared us that didn’t have pointed ears or sharp blades.
Time slipped away, an elusive beast that seemed to stalk us around every corner.
It had been six months since the war. Long enough that we could assume our families thought we were dead.
And it was probably better they did, because if they knew the truth of our circumstance, another war might break out.
One the humans would never recover from.
“I’ve never asked.” Lorna’s voice ripped me from the calm quiet. “What did you do in the war?”
I took a deep breath, preparing my usual response. “I fought in the third battalion, usually on the north side, near Mariss.”
Lorna turned toward me again, pulling her threadbare blanket up around her shoulders.
“I was a cleric in the south. I saw a lot of—I guess you can’t really call frozen corpses carnage, can you?”
She’d been where the heaviest of the fighting was—near the road that led straight to Dyga. It had been an illustrious trade route at one point, long before the winter blight had started robbing the world of resources.
“I think you can call it carnage enough,” I said, rolling to my stomach and folding my arms under my face. “How do you even heal someone that's been frozen?”
“You don't,” she said quickly, as if she knew this was the direction my questions would turn.
I squeezed my eyes closed, the face of the frozen woman in Prince Callan’s throne room flashing through my mind, her mouth agape in a silent scream. Did it hurt to be frozen to death? Had she felt anything before her insides were literally turned to ice?
“Did you kill a lot of elves?” Lorna asked, her voice small, as if she didn’t actually want to know the answer.
“Not nearly enough.”
The silence that followed told me all I needed to know. This conversation was over. We probably shouldn’t have had it in the first place.
“Is your stomach still yelling at you?” I asked, smiling, but trying my best not to descend into another giggle fit for fear Derella would scold us again.
“Not as much.” Her blankets rustled as she rolled over again.
“I’ll give you half of my demiloaf tomorrow,” I whispered.
“Won’t you be hungry?”
“Probably, but we don’t need yelling stomachs. I’m not sure what would be worse, though. Dying of starvation or Ignes flogging us for giggling.”
A soft chuckle from Lorna made me smile. I liked her. Despite everything, she could laugh. Her spirit had not been completely broken, and I hoped it never would be.