9. First Choosing
First Choosing
Time passed in a blur of bruises and training.
The winter before my sixth name day came down harder than any before it.
Snow piled against the barracks walls until the lower windows disappeared beneath white drifts.
Children in the adjacent room died of coughing sickness within a single week.
The house physician never came to examine them.
The bodies vanished before dawn, carried to the bone pit beyond the eastern wall where all failed investments ended.
Our room received extra firewood that season.
The delivery arrived without explanation.
Two cords of seasoned oak, stacked against our wall by servants who refused to meet our eyes.
The other bastard quarters burned through their meager allotments while we kept our fire steady through the coldest nights.
Maise noticed first. She pulled me aside after the third delivery, her breath misting in the corridor’s chill.
“Someone’s watching over us,” she said. “Someone with authority over the quartermaster.”
I knew who. The same man who’d come barefoot through the nursery door with Storm-Cleaver in his hand. Henrik de Blaise kept his promises in ways that left no signature.
◇ ◆ ◇
The second attempt on my life came during that same winter.
A training accident, the instructors would’ve called it.
An older boy named Varen cornered me in the weapons shed during inventory duty.
He had a practice sword, and I had a clipboard.
The shed door locked from outside, and someone had turned the key before I noticed Varen stepping out from behind the rack of spears.
“Lady Meresin sends her regards,” he said. The name meant nothing to me then. Later I’d learn she was Henrik’s wife, mother of his legitimate heirs, and she’d never stopped trying to remove me from the succession.
Varen was twelve and strong for his age. I was five and weighed perhaps half what he did. He swung the practice sword with genuine killing intent, and I felt the wind of its passage as I ducked beneath the strike.
Warmth flared between my shoulder blades, the Knight Brand stirring against the threat.
I didn’t need its power to read him. Years of fighting taught me to see the tension in his right shoulder that telegraphed his next swing, the imbalance in his stance, the exposed throat above his collar.
Muscle memory from another life drove me forward before conscious thought could intervene.
I grabbed a training spear from the rack and drove the blunted end into his knee. He went down screaming. The second strike caught him across the temple, and he stopped moving.
I stood over his unconscious form, breathing hard, the spear steady in my grip. The door unlocked moments later. Master Rulfen stood in the frame, his expression unreadable.
“You heard,” I said.
“I was listening.” He stepped over Varen’s body and examined the weapon rack. “Clean work. Fast. You went for the knee first.”
I set the spear back in the rack. “Biggest threat was his reach advantage. Taking his mobility ended that. ”
Rulfen nodded once. “Varen will wake with a headache and a story about slipping on ice. Anyone who asks will hear the same.” He paused. “Lord Henrik will receive a different report.”
A few days later, Lady Meresin’s personal maid was dismissed without references. The lady herself retreated to her family’s estate for what the household records called an extended recuperation. She didn’t return until spring.
The message carried to every corner of the compound: the bastard remained under protection.
◇ ◆ ◇
Maise grew fiercer with each passing season.
Her blade work turned from wild swings to controlled savagery, and she learned to channel her fury into strikes that left opponents gasping even through padded armor.
Her flame-red hair became a warning sign in the training yard.
When that hair appeared, wise opponents found elsewhere to be.
The kitchen staff stopped trying to short her portions after she broke a server’s wrist over missing bread. The instructors called it excessive force. In House de Blaise, you defended what was yours or lost it forever. Maise understood this better than anyone.
Perrin’s gift for acquisitions evolved into artistry.
Extra rations appeared in our bunks without explanation, and practice weapons upgraded themselves overnight.
When questioned by instructors, witnesses developed convenient memory gaps.
He moved through the compound with the ease of someone who belonged everywhere and nowhere.
The quartermaster learned to lock his stores twice.
The locks never helped .
Grit became our ghost. During formation drills, he’d appear at the right intervals to execute movements, then fade before anyone noticed his technique. In sparring matches, opponents swung at empty air while his blade found their ribs from unexpected angles.
He spoke perhaps ten words per season. Those words carried weight. When Grit said “left,” you moved left without question.
Together we became something the instructors hadn’t expected.
We moved as a unit with purpose and covered each other’s weaknesses without needing to discuss it.
When larger boys tried to establish dominance through fists and theft, they found themselves facing four instead of one.
When instructors set impossible tasks, we divided the work and amplified our combined strengths.
The legitimate heirs noticed. Some watched with calculation, wondering if we might prove useful. Others saw threat in our coordination. They remained at distance for now, and older children from acknowledged bloodlines dealt with politics we couldn’t touch yet.
My own training split between public and private sessions.
Morning formations focused on the sword, where I learned the house style that built de Blaise’s reputation.
Pre-dawn sessions with Rulfen centered on the spear, where I remembered rhythms my body yearned for.
The two weapons spoke different languages, and I was learning to translate between them.
◇ ◆ ◇
The bell rang differently on the morning of my sixth name day. Long, short, long, long. The ceremony pattern .
Every bastard who survived the early years knew what this signal meant. The First Choosing had arrived, where we’d declare our paths before the assembled house.
No breakfast preceded the ceremony. Empty bellies and clear heads were requirements. We dressed in our best rough-spun tunics, the ones saved for when legitimate eyes might fall on us.
Maise yanked a comb through her fire-bright hair and cursed at tangles. Perrin checked hidden pockets twice to make sure whatever he’d lifted stayed hidden. Grit simply appeared ready, as if he’d been waiting for the rest of us to catch up.
“You’ll do fine,” Maise said, catching my stillness near the window.
“I know.”
She crossed her arms. “Then why the face?”
“Thinking about what comes after.” I turned from the window and straightened my tunic. “Declaration is just the beginning.”
She nodded, understanding without needing explanation. “We’ve got your back.”
“I know that too.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The assembly gathered in the main courtyard, a space normally reserved for the acknowledged heirs’ demonstrations. Rain fell in steady sheets, turning packed earth to mud. Most children huddled beneath the covered walkways, but we were expected to stand in formation under open sky.
I let the rain soak through my tunic and run down my face. Cold was just sensation. Discomfort was just information about what my body didn’t like .
Henrik de Blaise stood on the raised platform at the courtyard’s head, winter-pale eyes sweeping across the assembled household.
His wolf-pelt cloak shed water in dark streams. Behind him, the weapons masters formed a silent rank: Rulfen with his cane, Helene with her crossed arms, others whose names I’d learned but whose faces still blurred together.
Kasimir stood with the acknowledged trainees, his expression carefully neutral. He’d grown since our first meeting, taller and broader, his technique refined by years of proper instruction. His eyes still held the same calculation they’d carried when I put him in the mud years ago.
The naming began with the eldest. Senna, a girl of eight and one of the few who survived the early cullings, stepped into the circle of judgment. Rain plastered dark hair to her skull.
“I choose the ledger,” she said clearly. No shame colored her voice. She’d discovered that numbers made more sense than sword work. “I’ll serve House de Blaise through coin and calculation.”
Henrik nodded once. “Witnessed. Report to Master Cromwell tomorrow.”
She bowed and retreated. Several more followed, choosing the paths that led away from blood. Scribe work. Kitchen management. Stable duties.
Each choice was recorded, witnessed, and accepted. House de Blaise wasted nothing.
Then the fighters began declaring.
“I choose the sword,” said a boy of eight. “I’ll serve through steel.”
“Witnessed. Report to the Pale Yard at dawn. ”
One after another the declarations came. Sword, sword, mace, sword. Traditional choices. Safe ones. The weapons that built the house’s reputation.
“Danarre de Blaise,” Rulfen called.
I stepped forward. Mud squelched under bare feet. The rain tasted of iron and fresh earth.
I felt the weight of eyes upon me. Henrik’s winter-slate calculation. Kasimir’s open hatred from the platform. Rulfen’s careful interest.
“I choose the sword,” I began. Proper acknowledgment of house tradition was expected. “I’ll master the sword arts of my blood.”
Nods came from the platform. Expected. Accepted.
“I also choose the spear.”
Silence fell. Even the rain seemed to pause.
“Bold words,” Henrik said. His voice carried no emotion beyond the weight of winter. “The spear isn’t our way.”