A Court for Thieves

“Already, you’re learning,” Siobhan replied. “I knew I didn’t make a mistake in choosing you for an apprentice.”

In choosing her? Kate had been the one to seek out the fountain, not once, but twice. She’d been the one to ask for power, and the one to decide to accept Siobhan’s terms. She wasn’t going to let the other woman persuade her that it had been any other way.

“I came here,” Kate said. “I chose this.”

Siobhan shrugged. “Yes, you did. And now, it is time for you to begin to learn.”

Kate looked around. This wasn’t a library like the one in the city. It wasn’t a training field with fencing masters like the one where Will’s regiment had humiliated her. What could she learn, here in this wild place?

Even so, she prepared herself, standing in front of Siobhan and waiting. “I’m ready. What do I have to do?”

Siobhan cocked her head to one side. “Wait.”

She went to a spot where a small fire had been laid in a pit, ready to light. Siobhan tossed a flicker of flame into it without bothering with a flint and steel, then whispered words Kate couldn’t catch as smoke rose from it.

The smoke started to twist and writhe, forming itself into shapes as Siobhan directed it the way a conductor might have directed musicians. The smoke coalesced in a shape that was vaguely human, finally burning away to leave something that looked like a warrior from some long gone age. He stood holding a sword that looked wickedly sharp.

So sharp, in fact, that Kate had no time to even react when he thrust it through her heart.

CHAPTER THREE

They left Sophia to dangle in place for the night, held up only by the ropes they’d used to tie her to the punishment post. The sheer immobility of it was almost as much of a torture as her ravaged back, as her limbs burned with the lack of movement. She couldn’t do anything to ease the pain of her beating, or the shame of being left out there in the rain as a kind of warning to the others there.

Sophia hated them then, with the kind of hatred she had always chided Kate for holding too close. She wanted to watch them die, and the wanting of it was a kind of pain too, because there was no way that Sophia would ever be in a position to make it happen. She couldn’t even free herself now.

She couldn’t sleep either. The pain and the awkward position saw to that. The closest Sophia could come was a kind of half-dreaming delirium, the past mixing with the present while the rain continued to plaster her hair to her head.

She dreamed of the cruelty she’d seen in Ashton, and not just in the living hell of the orphanage. The streets had been almost as bad with their predators and their callous lack of care for those who ended up on them. Even in the palace, for every kindly soul, there had been another like Milady d’Angelica who seemed to revel in the power her position gave her to be cruel to others. She thought of a world that was filled with wars and human-wrought cruelty, wondering how it could have turned into such a heartless place.

Sophia tried to turn her thoughts to kinder things, but that wasn’t easy. She started to think about Sebastian, but the truth was that it hurt too much. Things had seemed so perfect between them, and then, when he’d found out what she was… it had fallen apart so quickly that now Sophia’s heart felt like ash. He hadn’t even tried to stand up to his mother or to stay with Sophia. He’d just sent her away.

Sophia thought about Kate instead, and thoughts of her brought with them the need to cry for help once more. She sent another call into the first glimmers of the dawn light, but still, there was nothing. Worse, thinking about her sister mostly brought with it memories of hard times in the orphanage, or other, earlier things.

Sophia thought about the fire. The attack. She’d been so young when it had happened that she barely remembered any of it. She could recall her mother’s and father’s faces, but not what they had sounded like outside of those few instructions to run. She could remember having to flee, but could only pull together the faintest glimpses of the time before that. There had been a wooden rocking horse, a large house where it had been easy to play at getting lost, a nanny…

Sophia couldn’t dredge up more than that from her memory. The House of the Unclaimed had covered it almost completely with a miasma made from pain, so that it was hard to think past the beatings and the grinding wheels, the enforced subservience and the dread that came from knowing what it all led to.

The same thing that awaited Sophia now: being sold like an animal.

How long did she hang there, held in place no matter how she tried to get away? Long enough that the sun was over the horizon, at least. Long enough that when the masked nuns came to cut her down, Sophia’s limbs gave way, leaving her to collapse to the courtyard’s stones. The nuns made no move to help her.

“Get up,” one of them ordered. “You don’t want your debt to be sold looking like that.”

Sophia continued to lie there, gritting her teeth against the pain as feeling crept back into her legs. She only moved when the nun lashed out, kicking her.

“Get up, I said,” she snapped.

Sophia forced herself to her feet, and the masked nuns took her by the arms the way Sophia imagined a prisoner might be escorted to her execution. She didn’t feel much better at the prospect of what was due to come for her.

They took her to a small stone cell, where there were buckets waiting. They scrubbed her then, and somehow the masked nuns managed to turn even that into a kind of torture. Some of the water was so hot that it scalded Sophia’s skin as it washed away the blood, making her scream with all the pain that she’d experienced when Sister O’Venn had beaten her.

More of the water was icy cold, in a way that made Sophia shiver with it. Even the soap the nuns used stung, burning at her eyes as they scrubbed her hair and bound it back in a rough knot that had nothing to do with the elegant designs of the palace. They took away her white underdress and gave her the gray shift of the orphanage to wear. After the fine clothes Sophia had worn in the previous days, it scratched at her skin with the promise of biting insects. They didn’t feed her. Presumably, it wasn’t worth it, now that their investment in her was at an end.

That was what this place was. It was like a farm for children, fattening them up just enough with skills and fear to make useful apprentices or servants and then selling them on.

“You know that this is wrong,” Sophia said as they marched her toward the door. “Can’t you see the things you’re doing?”

Another of the nuns cuffed her at the back of the head, making Sophia stumble.

“We provide the Masked Goddess’s mercy to those who need it. Now, be silent. You’ll fetch a worse price if your face is bruised from being slapped.”

Sophia swallowed at that thought. It hadn’t occurred to her quite how carefully they’d hidden the marks of her beating beneath the dull gray of her shift. Again, she found herself thinking of farmers, although now it was about the kind of horse trader who might dye a horse’s coat for a better sale.

They took her along the corridors of the orphanage, and now there were no watching faces. They didn’t want the children there to see this part, probably because it would remind too many of them of the fate that was to come for them. It would encourage them to run, when the beating last night had probably terrified them into never daring it.

In any case, they were heading into the sections of the House of the Unclaimed where the children didn’t go now, into the spaces reserved for the nuns and their visitors. Most of it was plain, although there were notes of wealth here and there, in gilded candlesticks, or in the shine of silver around a ceremonial mask’s edges.

The room they led Sophia to was practically plush by the standards of the orphanage. It looked a little like the receiving parlor of some noble house, with chairs set around the edges, each with a small table holding a goblet of wine and a plate with sweetmeats. There was a table at one end of the room, behind which Sister O’Venn stood, a length of folded vellum beside her. Sophia guessed that it would be the tally for her indenture. Would they even let her know the amount before they sold it on?

“Formally,” Sister O’Venn said, “we are required to ask you, before we sell on your indenture, if you have the means to repay your debt to the goddess. The amount is here. Come, you worthless thing, and find out what you’re actually worth.”

Sophia didn’t get a choice; they took her to the table and she looked down at it. She wasn’t surprised to find every meal, every night of lodging annotated. It came to so much that Sophia recoiled from it instinctively.

“Do you have the means to pay this debt?” the nun repeated.

Sophia stared up at her. “You know I don’t.”

There was a stool in the middle of the floor, carved from hard wood and completely at odds with the rest of the room. Sister O’Venn pointed to it.

“Then you will sit there, and do so demurely. You will not speak unless required to. You will obey any instruction instantly. Fail, and there will be punishment.”

Sophia hurt too much to disobey. She went to the low stool and sat, keeping her eyes downcast enough that she wouldn’t attract the attention of the nuns. Even so, she watched as figures came into the room, men and women, all with the sense of wealth around them. Sophia couldn’t see much more of them than that, though, because they wore veils not unlike those of the nuns, obviously so no one would see who was interested in buying her like chattel.

“Thank you for coming in at such short notice,” Sister O’Venn said, and now her voice held the smoothness of a merchant extolling the virtues of some fine silk or perfume. “I hope that you will find it worthwhile. Please take a moment to examine the girl, and then make your bids with me.”

They surrounded Sophia then, staring at her the way a cook might have examined a cut of meat at the market, wondering what it would be good for, trying to see any trace of rot or excessive sinew. A woman ordered Sophia to look at her, and Sophia did her best to obey.

“Her coloring is good,” the woman said, “and I suppose she might be pretty enough.”

“A pity they won’t let us see her with a boy,” a fat man said with a trace of an accent that said he’d come from across the Knifewater. His expensive silks were stained with old sweat, the stink of it disguised by a perfume probably better suited to a woman. He glanced over to the nuns as if Sophia wasn’t there. “Unless your opinion on that has changed, sisters?”

“This is still a place of the Goddess,” Sister O’Venn said, and Sophia could pick out the genuine disapproval in her voice. Strange that she would balk at that, when she didn’t at so much else, Sophia thought.

She reached out with her talent, trying to pick out what she could from the minds of those there. She didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish, though, because there was no way she could think of to influence their opinions of her one way or another. Instead, it just gave her an opportunity to see the same cruelties, the same harsh ends, again and again. The best she could hope for was servitude. The worst made her shiver with fear.

“Hmm, she does quiver beautifully when she’s afraid,” one man said. “Too fine for the mines, I guess, but I’ll put in my bid.”

He walked to Sister O’Venn, whispering a figure to her. One by one, the others did the same. When they were done, she looked around the room.