26. What of Trust
What of Trust
Sister Morrigan went back to watch as the match started. None of us received healing.
I flexed my swollen knuckles again. The skin had turned black where it split against Erik’s teeth, and dried blood caked the valleys between my fingers.
Each movement sent a jolt through the bones of my hand and up into my forearm, but I kept working the joint.
Stiffness in the fingers meant a weak grip, and a weak grip meant a dropped sword.
“Stop picking at it,” Maise said without looking up from her armor maintenance. “You’ll just make it worse.”
“It needs to move properly for the next match.”
“What it needs is rest.” She finally glanced over, and I noticed the bruises darkening around her throat where the hammer-wielder had come within a fist’s width of crushing her windpipe. Her voice carried a rasp that wasn’t there this morning. “But since when do any of us get what we need?”
In the circle, Ygritte’s team continued their systematic dismantling. She didn’t lead from the front like I did, didn’t inspire through shared danger. She directed from the edges, her voice carrying commands that her teammates followed without question.
“Hamstring, now,” she called, and one of her fighters dropped low, blade seeking tendons.
The targeted boy screamed as steel parted muscle from bone. He went down hard, clutching his leg while blood pooled beneath him. No killing blow followed. Ygritte understood the rules perfectly, and incapacitation served her better than death.
“Brutal,” Perrin observed. He’d gotten his shirt off, revealing the twin gashes along his ribs where those swords had found him. The cuts weren’t deep, but they were long, seeping red through the rough stitches he’d applied himself. “But efficient.”
Sister Morrigan watched from the platform beside Lord Henrik, divine light gathered around her hands but held in reserve. Her gaze swept over us without stopping, cataloging our wounds the way a quartermaster catalogs damaged inventory.
“Match complete,” Danzing announced. “Victory to Ygritte’s team. One hour until the final match.”
Morrigan descended to tend the eliminated fighters, her healing flowing into the boy with the ruined leg. She didn’t come to us, didn’t even glance our way despite our obvious wounds.
“She’s not coming,” Perrin realized. “The healing is only for the eliminated.”
“Another test,” I said, watching her pour divine power into injuries that would end careers. “Can we fight injured? Can we adapt to what’s missing?”
“Can we?” Maise asked, pressing her hand to her bruised throat.
I thought of Erik’s teeth scattered on stone, of the Knight Brand burning between my shoulders, of the fury that had nearly made me crush more than his hands. That kind of rage came from somewhere older than this body’s trained responses, and it sat in my chest like coals that wouldn’t cool.
“We can,” I told her. “We have to.”
◇ ◆ ◇
“She chooses teammates based on obedience,” Grit said quietly, watching Ygritte clean her blade. It was more words than he usually strung together in a full day. “Not skill. Not trust. Willingness to follow orders without hesitation.”
We watched her team form up around her, perfectly positioned, awaiting her next command. No one questioned, no one paused.
“Smart,” I admitted, though the word tasted bitter. “Can’t have internal conflicts if everyone knows their place and stays in it.”
“Is that what you think we are?” Maise asked suddenly. “Obedient?”
“No.” I took a moment. “Our team is different.”
“Is it?” She set down her oiling cloth and turned to face me fully. “Seven years we’ve been together. Training, bleeding, surviving. But what do any of us actually know about each other?”
She had a point, and it cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
We moved as one unit in combat, trusted each other with our lives every time Danzing put us in a circle.
But beyond that? I knew Maise fought like she had a debt to settle, that Perrin could acquire anything from anywhere and carried himself with a thief’s awareness of every exit, and that Grit communicated through positioning and rare, weighted words.
I didn’t know where any of them came from. Didn’t know what drove them beyond the next meal and the next fight.
“My mother sold me to a merchant when I was five,” Maise said, her voice flat as a blade laid on a table. “Said I had ‘potential.’ The merchant brought me here, to the recruiters.”
She picked up her sword and tested its balance. “They paid him thirty silver. I remember because I counted every coin while standing there in my smallclothes, being inspected like livestock. ”
“No de Blaise blood?” I asked carefully.
“I doubt it. At least none that anyone admits to.” She shrugged, a motion that carried the weight of years spent not caring about the answer.
“A river rat from the docks who showed promise with a blade. The house buys children like that sometimes. Cheaper than raising all the bastards, and some of us survive the training.”
Perrin shifted beside her. “They told me my mother was a cousin to someone who mattered. Close enough to have the storm-colored eyes, not close enough for anyone to care when plague took our village.”
He grinned without humor. “The recruiters said I had the bloodline look. Probably a lie, but it got me fed.”
“Mine’s simpler,” Grit added. “Bastard. My mother worked the kitchens, caught someone’s eye during a feast.” He adjusted his sword belt, movements economical as always.
“Never said whose. Left me at the gate when I was old enough to walk, with a note claiming de Blaise blood. Note wasn’t enough, so they dumped me with the rest of the maybes. ”
Three different stories, three different paths to the same walls and the same training circles. I could feel them waiting for mine, but they already knew the broad strokes: acknowledged bastard, son of Lord Henrik himself, carrying a name that opened doors and drew knives in equal measure.
“At least you know who your father is,” Perrin said, not unkindly. “Even if he barely acknowledges it.”
“Knowing doesn’t help much.” I flexed my wrecked hand and watched the blood crack and flake from the knuckles. “My mother died the night I was born. Poisoned, most likely, for getting too close to being more than just another one of Henrik’s women.”
Silence fell between us, the kind that settles when people realize they’ve stepped past the boundary where small talk lives.
In the circle, Ygritte’s team moved away to begin their preparations.
◇ ◆ ◇
“We should get ready for the match,” I said.
“Why?” The question came from Grit, which surprised us all. “Why do we have to? What are we fighting for beyond not dying?”
A fair question. One I’d been circling since I woke in this body with a dead man’s memories and a goddess’s leash around my soul.
The Red Gale fought for coin and for the brothers who followed him into places where coin was earned in blood.
Danarre fought because the alternative was becoming furniture in someone else’s house.
“Each other,” Perrin said before I could answer. “Maybe that’s enough for now.”
“Is it?” Maise challenged. “I’m here because the alternative was starving on the docks.
Grit’s here because his mother abandoned him.
” She gestured at the Stone Yard around us.
“Perrin’s here because everyone else died.
And you’re here because being Lord Henrik’s bastard means you get a sword instead of servant’s clothes.
None of us chose this. We’re all property with different price tags. ”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Property fights to preserve itself,” I said slowly. “People fight for reasons.”
“What’s the difference?” Grit asked .
I thought of the Pale Daughter’s bargain, of debts owed and vengeance promised, of the silver thread that had pulled me back from death’s threshold and bound me to a hunt I couldn’t name yet.
“Property gets discarded when it’s no longer useful. People matter beyond what this house says they’re worth.” I let that sit for a breath. “Or they should.”
“Pretty words,” Maise said. “But Henrik still sends children against monsters to see who’s worth keeping alive.”
She wasn’t wrong about that either. The Palisade trial killed more than half the candidates.
The Stone Yard had claimed more since. Even now, we were competing to determine who represented the house at Duke Hemmrich’s tournament, and the measure of our value was whether we bled standing or bled on the ground.
“Then we survive,” I said. “We get strong enough that they can’t throw us away.”
Maise laughed, and it came out bitter as cheap ale. “Listen to you. Already talking like a lord yourself.”
“Maybe that’s what it takes.” I worked my damaged hand open and closed, feeling the blood crack and flake with each motion. “Maybe someone has to reach the top before they can pull others up after them.”
“Or maybe,” she countered, “power just turns everyone into different kinds of bastards.”
◇ ◆ ◇
The hour passed too quickly.
Danzing called us back to the circle. Ygritte’s team had used the time to treat their minor wounds, adjust their equipment, and prepare themselves for what came next. We’d used it to tear open questions none of us had asked in all the years we’d fought side by side.
“Final match,” Danzing announced. “Victory grants tournament representation.”
I drew my sword, testing its weight against my swollen knuckles.
The grip sent fresh fire through my hand, but the blade moved where I directed it.
Across the circle, Ygritte caught my eye.
Her expression was blank: no rage like Erik’s, no tension, no anticipation.
She whispered to her fighters, too quiet for us to catch, and they nodded and spread into formation with the ease of people who knew exactly where they belonged.
“Begin.”
◇ ◆ ◇
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 828 | Age 13
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Stone Yard
「Knight of Swords」 — Burning
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: The trail leads to the Temple’s highest seat.
The pack traded scars tonight. Origins, prices, the specific weight of being purchased. Hel watched the vessel listen, watched bind each wound into the place where loyalty is built. He collects people the way his first life collected people. The dead would approve.