SHIRONNE WOKE BLEARY and exhausted. She lay in her bunk and suppressed the desire to cry.
Sleep had been elusive. She’d never before slept in the presence of anyone other than her sisters or mother. Being in a room with thirteen unfamiliar girls nearby had kept her on edge. A few of the girls snored. One snorted in her sleep, seeming to time that noise exactly to each moment when Shironne was about to drift off.
The bed was narrower than her old one, too, and the sheets so new they smelled of starch. They felt harsh against her bare arms and cheek, causing her to wonder what would happen when, inevitably, they had to be washed. Would they be thrown in with everyone else’s laundry to pick up bits of others’ dirt? She hoped someone had a plan for that, because she couldn’t find the answer in Mikael’s mind.
A few of the other girls were moving about, which was likely what woke her this time. A hand touched her shoulder—Tabita. “I know you didn’t sleep well,” the other girl whispered, “but some of us are going down to the sparring floor. Would you like to come?”
The sparring floor was on Six Down, the place where the Family went to practice their fighting skills. Not that Shironne herself had fighting skills; that wasn’t why Tabita offered. It was an offer of protection instead. Tabita wanted to keep her close to make certain none of the others hazed her, as Dahar had called it. That hinted some of the others were staying.
Although the yeargroup’s elderly sponsors—loud Agnes and faint-voiced Clara—had their rooms right across the guideline from the sixteens’ hall, they were far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to intervene quickly. The hope was that the sixteens would be able to tame themselves, but Shironne didn’t know the others well enough to guess whether that had worked.
“Yes, I’ll come.” Shironne pushed back the bedding and sat up, using her toes to locate her slippers. Her nightclothes—a loose pair of trousers and a sleeveless shirt—seemed warm enough to handle the temperature here. The Fortresses never got cold. It was cool. Chilly even, but not cold. Not cold like the palace, at least. And her current state of dress was actually acceptable in the hallways. The Family had few qualms about baring skin in front of each other, something she’d learned from Deborah the previous month. Even so, Shironne reached up to find the uniform jacket she’d left on the shelf and tugged it on. She wasn’t comfortable being seen in only a thin linen shirt even if all the others were. “Do I have time to visit the toilets?”
“I’ll go with you,” Tabita said. “We need to talk about your schedule anyway.”
“Oh, yes. I need to go visit the army,” Shironne said.
Tabita put a hand on Shironne’s jacket sleeve. “Do we need to talk about this again?”
In the dark of the night, Shironne had dared to reach out to Mikael’s mind and found him awake and worrying. About her mostly—why she’d been kidnapped, how she was fitting in Below, and what the others thought of her—but also about the mysterious body he’d handed over to the army, one with injuries suspiciously like Melanna’s. That meant the army would send for her to view it today, surely.
But she shouldn’t know about that. Not yet. “Would you rather I not say anything if I know something I’m not supposed to? Let you tell me everything instead, I mean?”
Tabita sighed, a hint of consternation leaking out. “No, just be careful there’s no one nearby.”
With the Family sometimes being silent in her mind’s perception, that might be difficult. “I’ll try,” she promised anyway.
Half an hour later she was dressed and following the endless stairwells to Six Down. Tabita and two of the trio had gone ahead of her, leaving her alone with Hanna. Hanna’s pleasant disposition helped bolster Shironne’s spirits. They talked as Shironne made her slow way down the stairwells. Apparently, it wasn’t dawn yet, another reason Shironne felt tired. Hanna offered the explanation that a large number of sentries would come off duty in an hour and crowd the sparring floors. Since sentries, guards, and quarterguards fulfilled the treaty, the rest of the Family—including the children—worked around their schedules. The sentries would have priority in the mess hall as well as the sparring floor, so the sixteens would wait for their breakfast, too.
They were between Four Down and Five Down on the landing where the main stairwell turned. The stairwell was huge, wide enough for twelve people to climb abreast, Mikael had once told her. Other people had passed her and Hanna, some going up, some down, more evident by the sounds of their feet and the scent of perspiration and warm wool than their intrusion on Shironne’s mind. All refrained from speaking to her and Hanna because of their brown uniforms. “So when the new year comes,” Shironne asked, pausing to rest, “you’ll become a sentry? Is that right?”
Hanna let her irritation be felt—or perhaps she couldn’t control it. “I’ll be stuck somewhere where no outsider will see my brown skin, but I’ll serve three years like everyone else.”
She’d forgotten that Hanna was Larossan, like her. Or part Larossan. The ancient treaty between the Family and the Anvarrid included a rarely invoked provision that the Family would take in orphans with Anvarrid blood. That meant any Larossan woman could claim her child had an Anvarrid father and pass that child off to the Family. Shironne suspected Hanna didn’t have much, if any, Anvarrid blood. She seemed far more Family than, for example, Maria, whose mind had a clear Anvarrid tinge to it. Should I call it a tinge? Characteristic? Perhaps an aspect?
Shironne cast her mind back over her childhood memories of seeing the Family. Like most citizens of Noikinos, she’d ridden past the palace from time to time in a carriage, leaning out to catch glimpses of the sentry line at the palace gates, stern faces and black uniforms. All blond, with their long hair worn in identical braids. No ranks visible. Their high collars even helped hide whether a sentry was male or female, although there were certainly other cues. But Mikael’s mind supplied her with the information that the Lucases put their most identical sentries in the public venues. The ones who were obviously different, like Hanna, would stand in hidden locations.
And for the first time, Shironne grasped why Mikael bleached his hair. His hair went darker every year, but among the Lucas Family, the need to conform was very strong. He felt the desire to conform just as Hanna must, even though he would never serve as a sentry here.
“What’s wrong?” Hanna asked.
Shironne caught her lower lip between her teeth. She could hardly admit she’d been thinking about Mikael. “I was just wondering if I would be asked to stand sentry duty next year.”
“I doubt that,” Hanna said coolly. “You’re too valuable. They’ll make exceptions for you.”
But not for her.
Hanna hadn’t said it aloud, even though it was the truth. At the end of those three years Hanna would be sent out of the Fortress to make her way in the Larossan world. From her interactions with Cerradine’s people, Shironne knew that suddenly having to figure out how Larossans lived was difficult and confusing and lonely.
It was the opposite of what she was doing now.
“I apologize for the way that sounded,” Hanna added with remorse. “It’s not your fault. Tabita said it’s unpleasant being a touch-sensitive. From what she’s read, a lot of them starve to death. Is that true?”
“Um . . . I had trouble eating at first,” Shironne said. “My mother had the cook boil milk for me, which helped. I survived on tea with milk for a couple of months.” That had been one of the more terrifying aspects of the eruption of her powers. She’d suddenly been able to taste everything, every impurity, and the traces of the hands of whoever had prepared the food. Each spice shifted in its taste, some more potent and some tasting only like dirt or bark. She’d had to relearn to tolerate foods. She rarely ate meat even now, as it carried too much of a sense of a living creature with it, full of impurities of its own. Fortunately, dinner in the mess area the previous evening had been some manner of bean soup—acceptable, although a little bland compared to Cook’s excellent fare.
“Apparently, you can do a lot of strange things that I can’t,” Hanna added, “so I’m sure they’ll make you work all the time.” Faint sorrow accompanied that prediction.
Shironne laid her hand on the wall and felt her way with one foot to the next flight of stairs. She’s trying to justify to herself why I’ll stay and she won’t.
Hanna didn’t talk the rest of the way to Six Down, her mind turning in slow circles, rehashing something she’d thought through a thousand times before. She stepped out of the stairwell. “Do you need me to lead you?”
Shironne had been on Six Down before. From Mikael’s mind, she had a vague idea of its layout. There would be dozens of large squares painted on the gray floor, some with pads made from old fabrics, others plain stone. Myriad voices spoke, and there were echoing noises of clashing of metal and sounds that reminded her of fistfights; that would be the sparring. The air was warmer on this level and bore the scent and humidity of many bodies. The light felt different on her face, as well. This was the floor where one could sunburn, even without the sun.
The main problem with the sparring floor, however, was that it was a shapeless void to her.
She had a vague impression now of where Tabita was—about the distance of a city square away from her, almost straight ahead—but she couldn’t assume there was a clear path between her and Tabita. “Yes, please. I don’t have any way to find anything here.”
Hanna took Shironne’s hand and led her to one side. Even through the glove, Shironne could sense Hanna’s determination to be pleasant and accepting and happy. Mikael did the same thing, she realized. As do I.
After some distance to the side, they turned and headed into the wide-open space. “We have to stay to the children’s side,” Hanna explained as she drew Shironne forward. They drew to a halt near where Tabita spoke with one of the other girls. “We’re at the edge of a square. We sit here and wait our turns.”
Turns? “Who else is here?”
“At this square? Just Tabita, Norah, and Hanna. Gabriel and Eli are two squares over, and Theo and Kasper and Iver. There are a handful of the fifteens here, too.”
“But not younger?”
“Not allowed to come down this early,” Hanna said. “We sit down right here to . . . well, to watch for now.”
Shironne sat carefully where Hanna told her to. Through her glove she could feel the painted line of the square, almost a foot wide, atop the not-stone of the floor. She leaned forward—her shorn hair brushing her cheek and startling her again—and touched a thick pad made of layers and layers of fabric, old and treated with camphor and lanolin.
“Don’t cross the line,” Hanna whispered.
Shironne snatched her hand back. Mikael’s mind told her that Family were superstitious about crossing lines, and that offered another reason she shouldn’t walk directly across the sparring floor to where she wanted to go—she might cross a painted line.
She could hear Tabita explaining something to someone on the floor, the words indistinct at this distance. Hanna concentrated on whatever was going on in the square, leaving Shironne alone after a fashion. From the participants, she heard a grunt and then the unmistakable sound of a body hitting that fabric mat. What just happened?
Someone walked near her, and she heard the sounds of someone—no, him—lowering himself to the ground. Gabriel, she decided, recognizing the friendly young man’s open mind from their previous meeting a month before. “Hello, Gabriel.”
“Hello, Shironne.”
She felt his relief, probably that she remembered him, and a quick hint of concern from Hanna. He was tall, even sitting, and she caught the scent of his perspiration and damp wool. Hadn’t he been practicing with Eli a moment before? “Have you come to watch?”
“Yes, but more to explain,” he said. “Your own hand-to-hand training will be limited, but I suspect Tabita will want you to learn some ability to defend yourself.”
They’re going to make me learn to fight? Was Tabita in charge of that?
Shironne had learned a few tricks while working in the army offices, tips passed on by various young women who’d once lived in this Fortress as Hanna did now. She knew what to do if someone grabbed her from behind, or if someone held onto her arm. She explained that to Gabriel as she heard more movements from the square, followed by another body hitting the padding with an oof.
“Good. What she’s teaching Hanna right now is something you could do,” he said. “It relies on leverage rather than size or strength. Most of Tabita’s tricks use momentum and leverage, because she’s small.” His whisper had an admiring shade to it, like the bright lining of a cloud.
“Um . . . What is Tabita doing?”
“She’s flipping the other girl over her hip and onto the mat.”
“Is she a fighter like. . . ?” She couldn’t invoke Mikael as an example, could she?
“If you mean does Tabita fight in the melee, yes,” Gabriel answered anyway. “She’s smaller and light and has to worry about her opponent’s reach and weight. She has to worry that someone my size will simply sit on her.”
That last bit was said as a joke. Or perhaps not. “Have you done that?”
“Yes,” he said, “but only after she dumped me on the mats as if I were Hanna’s size.” There was affection behind those whispered words, telling Shironne that Gabriel respected Tabita, maybe more. He likes her. Shironne tucked away that bit of information. “I’ll be working with you,” he added, a topic that had nothing to do with the other girls on this practice square. “In the infirmary, I mean. Not on the sparring floor. So will Hedda.”
She did recall that he was a runner for the infirmary. That meant he carried messages about, fetched, and carried—essentially whatever the infirmarians needed of him. Since she would be spending time in the infirmary learning to reshape her powers to aid the infirmarians, she would likely see more of Gabriel and Hedda than the others.
Hanna clapped her hands together in response to a different voice—a male one—grunting in response to hitting the mats. “Well done!”
Gabriel chuckled, but almost immediately stifled that response. He leaned closer to Shironne. “Tabita just dumped Eli on the mat. Eli’s mother is a Fightmaster, and it’s a good thing she didn’t see him fall for that trick.”
Eli’s mother was a Fightmaster? Surprised, she asked herself if Mikael knew that, and discovered that he did. In fact, Eli’s mother had been the one to ask Mikael to teach Eli to fight with a long sword, an effort to keep Eli at a distance from his opponent. Getting close enough that Tabita could throw him—over her hip, as Gabriel said—meant he’d done exactly what his mother wanted him not to do. “Both of you came over to watch Tabita?”
“Well, Eli wanted to try what she was doing. He thinks he can outwrestle her, but she uses her brain better than he does.”
And yet he was First of the yeargroup? Shironne felt her brows draw together. “What do you mean?”
“Eli’s so busy with his overall strategy that he loses perspective . . .”
“. . . when he closes with an opponent,” she finished.
“It’s very strange when you do that,” Gabriel said softly. “Try not to.”
“What?”
“You finished that sentence using Mikael Lee’s words.”
Her cheeks burned. Fortunately, Hanna was no longer sitting nearby. Shironne was, more or less, alone with Gabriel. Among Larossans, men and women didn’t mingle much unless they were related, but the Families were different, so that was permitted. “What do you mean?”
“I’m fairly certain I know what’s happening between you and Mr. Lee, and that you can no more stop it than you can stop breathing. I’m not going to tell anyone. I don’t need to, because the elders already know . . . or at least Elder Deborah must know, and she’s your sponsor. So if someone in the yeargroup questions you, send them to talk to me.”
Ah, this is why he’s sitting with me. A month before, her cousin Kai had used her like a tracking dog to follow Mikael through the city. Gabriel had been in the infirmary with her when Kai came and dragged her away. He must have figured it out from what Kai said to her that day. “What about Eli?” she asked. “And Tabita? I told her I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
“I’ll talk with her after this,” Gabriel promised. “I won’t give her specifics, just let her know that I have some idea what’s going on and that the elders are permitting it. If you need to talk . . . make sure it’s to me. I won’t tell anyone else.”
This must be why the others thought he would be a chaplain. He would keep her secret, and it was a relief to know she could talk to someone in the yeargroup about Mikael.
“Good one!” he said loudly, dragging Shironne’s attention back to the combat that she couldn’t see.
She sensed more people around the square now, as if some had stopped their own practice to come watch Tabita. Excitement was growing in that crowd, an ambient, an emotional response that could swallow all the sensitives in the room. Shironne pushed it away, not willing to give in to someone else’s emotions. “What just happened?”
“Hedda’s turn to throw Eli,” Gabriel said, no longer whispering. “I think every girl in the yeargroup should learn that trick and take turns dumping Eli onto the mat. It would be good for all of us.”
“I heard that,” Eli’s deep voice returned testily from several feet away.
“I know you did,” Gabriel said more loudly.
Eli wouldn’t be able to feel the ambient that was making Shironne’s fingers itch to do something, nor would Hanna. They were deaf to it. She wasn’t sure about the other girls or the young men from the yeargroup she could feel standing nearby. “Which ones are sensitives?”
“Theo, Hedda, and Norah,” Gabriel said, back to his whisper. “And you and Tabita. Are you ready to take your turn on the mat?”
None of the sensitives would have missed her quick panic at that suggestion, but she wasn’t going to refuse. If nothing else, her years of working with the army’s investigations office had taught her that neither her blindness nor her diminutive size would deter an attacker. “Yes.”
“Good. Take off your shoes and socks.”
Shironne froze.
“I can’t,” she protested softly. Her bare feet weren’t as sensitive as her hands and face, but she would still sense the feet of everyone else who’d been on that mat. And their sweat and dirt and saliva, for that matter. None of those were particularly shocking in themselves, but there would simply be too much in this communal area. Her mind would be overwhelmed. “Can . . . can I leave the socks on?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “Sure, leave the socks.” As she removed her boots, she heard Gabriel get to his feet, a movement that sounded far more graceful than his bulk suggested. “Give me your hand.”
She held out her gloved hand. He grasped it firmly and helped her up, then waited while she got her footing on the mat. It wasn’t an even surface, and her socks created an added level of unpredictability, but she sensed Gabriel’s approval at her willingness to try.
“You said you know what to do if I come up behind you,” he said.
An elbow to the solar plexus and a stomp on the instep. Lieutenant Kassannan—Captain Kassannan’s late wife—had taught her that, and it had proven useful once. “Yes.”
“This is for a frontal attack instead,” Tabita said, caution in her tone.
She’s not sure I can do this. Shironne swallowed. It was a test, a way for them to gauge how hard she was going to work to fit in. How hard she was going to try to learn their ways. How cooperative she was, and how well she learned.
“I’m going to wrap my arms around you,” Tabita went on.
Tabita did just that, her worry swarming around Shironne as she did so. Shironne responded instinctively, using her own arms to try to break the other girl’s hold. One of Tabita’s arms brushed the side of her face, and Shironne knew what she was supposed to do, before Tabita even spoke the words. She stepped one foot across, twisted abruptly so that her back came up against Tabita’s chest, and used the momentum of that move to drag Tabita off her feet.
It didn’t work as intended. Shironne nearly lost her footing due to her socks slipping on the mat. And Tabita managed to get her feet under her again, although she lost her grip on Shironne in the process. No, she must have let me go.
Tabita stepped back, away from Shironne, her worry taking on a different cast. She suppressed it well, but it lurked under the edge of her control. “That was good for a first try,” Tabita said. “The socks are a definite problem.”
Shironne pressed her lips together. She could feel Eli’s annoyance, no longer with Gabriel’s joking, but with her. I should have let Tabita explain aloud before trying it myself.
“Not bad,” Gabriel said in the same loud voice he’d used to tease Eli. “Just like I told you.”
Shironne turned her head in his direction. That last bit had been directed at her. She’d stolen the idea from Tabita’s head, and Tabita suspected that, but Gabriel was offering her a way to explain away her mistake. Or to set Tabita at ease.
“Thank you,” she said in his direction. It was good to know he was willing to help cover for her slips.
“We’ll go talk to the quartermasters again and see if they can make some special shoes for the mats,” Tabita said in a milder tone, worry submerged under efficiency. “After your other assignment today. Infirmary, right after breakfast.”
Finally, something Shironne thought she could do.