Hero Grown

by Andy Livingstone

  ‘A wise man.’

  Brann smiled. ‘He was. And I’m sure he still is.’ He looked at the man before him, his height accentuated by his overly slim and angular frame. ‘So what is my course from this room?’

  ‘Prior to leaving your berth, and here I must leave behind the ship analogy, you may be best donning a tunic.’

  Once Brann was dressed, the Scribe led him through the passages and up what seemed like endless flights of stairs until he realised he was in an area behind the royal section of seating, but facing out over the city. Where the sun was dipping towards the horizon there was a copper glow to the sky that bathed the white buildings stretching before him in a soft glow. Brann stood, transfixed for a long moment. ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘There are many beauties here, particularly where prosperous people reside, but they cannot rival those that are free to all and created by the hand of nature.’

  Brann grinned. ‘Oh Narut, you are quite the philosopher now.’

  ‘As I said, I was not always a Scribe. I had many tutors, all of whom bestowed the knowledge that has allowed me to rise in my field. One important fact amidst that knowledge being the need for punctuality. Come.’

  He turned on his heel and walked towards an archway. Brann caught his breath as he followed him through it. Before him lay an impossibly tall bridge leading from their level, around two-thirds of the way up the giant Arena, to a corresponding archway set into the outer wall of the citadel. The width of two carts set side-by-side and supported by what seemed impossibly tall and slender arched columns, the bridge had a fragile grace despite being constructed of massive blocks of stone, carved to offer an almost perfectly smooth surface to the eye.

  ‘The Bridge of the Sky,’ the Scribe intoned expressionlessly. ‘Our passage to the palace and travelled only by the rulers of this city. As you will serve one of those rulers and may have to accompany her on this route at some point, it would be helpful for you to be familiar with it in advance.’

  ‘Helpful for the future, maybe, but easier for us right now,’ Brann suggested.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Brann paused. ‘Wait. I thought you said that my transport awaited me. Where is the transport?’

  ‘It stretches down from your torso to the ground.’

  ‘My legs?’

  ‘They transport you, do they not? I was making a point at the time. The definition of the word was wide enough for my purpose.’ He pointed at the length of bridge stretching before them. ‘Do you have a problem with heights?’

  Brann grinned. ‘Just as well I don’t. Just jumping off them, so as long as that isn’t involved, we’re fine.’

  He could have sworn he heard the Scribe mutter that it was best not to tempt him as he turned and started onto the bridge. As Brann trotted to catch up with him, a thought entered his head.

  ‘Isn’t this a defensive weakness?’

  ‘We are not a stupid people. The columns were constructed in a way that allows for them to be collapsed fairly easily by our military engineers.’

  Silence fell over them for the rest of the journey. The bridge led through the outer wall of the citadel and to a series of smaller versions from wall to wall until they had entered the royal levels of the keep. The Scribe took him on a similar path to the one on which he had led Einarr’s party at the start of their visit to the city. The familiarity was disorientating and Brann could not prevent his eyes from expecting to see the others if he only turned his head to look behind. Before long, though, they had reached the hallway where ten stern soldiers stared at them in front of the massive golden doors. Only their eyes moved, however, as the Scribe passed between them and through the doorway. Feeling vulnerable with no weaponry about his person amidst so much naked steel, Brann followed him quickly.

  He entered an oasis of opulence. The sight that greeted him rendered the luxury of the areas he had already witnessed as plain as a military barracks. Shining white stone formed the walls of a corridor that was as wide as most rooms, reflecting light from ornate lanterns that stood on tall slender stems or hung in clusters from the ceiling. The ubiquitous statues lined the walls or formed features in the centre of the passage, but were of such quality that it seemed that only the addition of colour to their whiteness would be necessary for them to come to life. Some were even carved into the very stone of the walls. Water trickled into basins cut into the walls, over stone leaves or from ewers held by petrified maidens from mythical tales, as much a source of refreshment as it was a visual attraction and restful to the ears. Colour was splashed around the feet of many of the statues in the form of fresh-smelling petals. And the murals: intricate and filling every space on the walls, they were picked out in precious metals and formed of pigments so varied, rich and, in some cases, unusual that they alone must have been worth more than an emperor’s ransom.

  Brann stood, overwhelmed. As soon as his eye settled in one place, it was drawn to another. His head whirled until the Scribe’s fingers clicked in front of his face.

  ‘I would advise accustoming yourself to this quickly. If you think this unusual, their chambers will stun you further. And as a guard, your duties will not include being distracted at every turn.’

  Silently, Brann nodded, and followed the tall shape of the man who seemed to glide along the shining floor. Servants, most of them slaves, passed them by, slipping in and out of doorways to either side, in silence and without a sideways glance. He became uncomfortably aware of the quiet, the only sound that of trickling water, and conscious of every noise he made.

  The Scribe stopped before a slave girl who had approached from the opposite direction. After a few words, he turned to Brann. ‘This one will take you to your employer.’ Before the boy could reply, he was already several paces back the way they had come.

  Her eyes lowered to the floor, the girl turned silently and led him further down the hall before branching into a short passage to the right. A door lay on either side, and she rapped softly on the one to the right. It was opened by a tall slave, elegantly dressed in a light material that brushed her feet and floated in the slightest of breezes that whispered through the doorway. She dismissed Brann’s guide with a look and swept her eyes over the boy.

  ‘He’s here,’ she called diffidently over her shoulder. ‘He’s not as big as he should be.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of how well my money is spent,’ came a voice from within.

  The slave’s head tilted to one side and she raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d better come in, then.’ Brann had fought in two death matches, had razor-edged weapons slicing towards every part of his body and had men and women of all shapes and sizes snarling in his face with intent to maim, but he had never felt as intimidated as he did at that moment.

  He nodded and squeezed through the narrowest of gaps that she angled slightly to allow him, and stepped into the room, wondering at the terror that might be instilled by the mistress if the servant was so fearsome.

  He could not have been more wrong. A girl looking just slightly older than he reclined in a high-backed chair, one leg draped over the side and her opposite arm hanging almost to the floor, dangling a half-drunk goblet of wine.

  ‘Oh my.’ A lock of hair had fallen across one eye but the other was wide enough open to reveal that it was a perfect match of brown to the hair that obscured its partner. The almond shape of her eye and the angular cast of her cheekbone gave her a feline look, and one that her languid pose did nothing to dispel. It spoke of danger; a cat sizing up its prey. Sitting up, she brushed a hand across her face to allow full vision. ‘He looks just right to me.’

  The tall slave stalked around him. ‘Any merchant’s guard is twice the size.’ Brann could not have felt more like a lot at a livestock auction. And one destined for the dinner table, not a field.

  ‘Merchants are rich, Persione.’ She stood and sipped delicately from her goblet. ‘Their guards are meant to be big, to dissuade trouble from starting. The dissuasion on my part is the leve
l of retribution that would come the way of anyone who was discovered even thinking about bringing harm to me, so if someone is determined and mad enough to get close with violence in mind, I need someone who can actually fight.’ She trailed a finger down his chest. ‘And we all know that this one can fight, can you not, Brann of the Northern Isles?’

  All he could think was that her eyes were the largest and deepest he had ever seen. Dumbly, he nodded.

  ‘Oh look,’ Persione said in mock wonder. ‘His face is changing colour, just like the Hider Lizard. It would only really be any use, though, if we had walls that were a deep shade of red.’

  He blushed even harder.

  She smiled. ‘You will have had a long day, and I have no intention of being placed in danger tonight, so Persione will show you to your chambers. I shall be taking a walk in the gardens in the morning, two hours after sunrise. If you are outside my door for that time, that will suffice.’ She touched a fingertip to his forehead as one side of her mouth twitched into a half smile. ‘Sleep well, Champion of the Arena.’ Brann was certain he would not.

  The slave girl walked to the door. ‘Come.’

  In the hallway, she turned to the doorway opposite the one they had exited. ‘There,’ she pointed.

  Brann found his voice. ‘There?’

  ‘Oh, it speaks. Well done.’ She was already heading back into the princess’s chamber. ‘What if there is an incident during the night? You wouldn’t be much of a guard if you stayed at the other side of the building, would you?’

  It was a simple room, but the fact that he had it to himself instantly rendered it several levels better than the quarters he had slept in for the past year. Or at sea for that matter. He pulled off his sandals, tossed his tunic on top of the pile of his belongings that he noticed had been placed in one corner, and fell onto the bed.

  He was wrong about his prospects of sleep, but he wasn’t awake long enough to realise it. Though he did dream of huge brown eyes.

  Habit pulled Brann out of bed at sunrise, and he managed to surprise himself by finding his way down through the keep to the ground level. He worked his way through the gates to the outer wall where he found what he was looking for, and what he thought he had remembered from his first visit here: a path that ran along the inside of the wall’s base.

  As the track ran, so too did he. Pushing himself harder than he would have done at Cassian’s compound to compensate for the lack of competition around him to drive him on, he pounded along the length of the wall and back to where he started. Six times he did it, thinking all the while of the group of fighters who would normally have been surrounding him as he did so, and feeling alone.

  A guard directed him to the marshalling yard where he found a practice sword and a wooden post to batter it against, and enquiries with a total of four other passing servants enabled him to discover the bath house and his route back to his room.

  When Persione opened the door to her mistress’s chambers, Brann was waiting outside, wearing one of a selection of identical tunics, cream-coloured and emblazoned in dark brown with the hawk sigil of Myrana’s family, that he had found hanging in his room.

  Her disappointment that he was there on time was obvious. ‘In,’ she said, looking down the length of her nose at him.

  The princess was brushing her hair, and glanced at Brann in the mirror. ‘You worked hard this morning.’

  ‘You could see me run?’ He was even more surprised that she would have bothered to. ‘Er, My Lady,’ he added belatedly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I can’t see through the curtain walls of a mighty citadel. But I did see the state of you when you walked back up to here.’

  ‘I may just be unfit. My Lady.’

  ‘No one is unfit if they can fight as long as you did yesterday.’

  He said nothing. It was a fair point.

  Persione took the brush and tended to her mistress’s hair with long smooth strokes that spoke of a familiar action. ‘As long as he hasn’t tired himself out to the extent that he cannot protect you, My Lady.’

  Fatigue and unfamiliarity had dulled Brann’s brain the night before, but irritation retrieved some of his spirit this morning. ‘I’ll do my best not to keel over, My Lady’s slave.’

  He had heard once a fireside tale of a fearsome witch who could set fire to men from the inside out just by meeting their gaze. The look Persione gave him at that moment made him wonder if she was related.

  Myrana gave no hint that she had noticed the exchange, but she stood and walked over to Brann. ‘I’m sure you won’t, my guardian. But you will need to do more than just stay upright. If you need to defend me, you will find it easier with steel, I would think.’ She picked up a length of pale-blue fabric that matched the darker blue of her robe, and Persione wound it around her head to contain her hair and form both headgear and veil with such easy skill that Brann was caught in fascination. ‘We shall stop at the armoury on our way.’

  The armoury was both a delight and a relief to Brann, being an area of familiarity to him. With the Emperor’s niece making the request, nothing was too much trouble for the quartermaster who quickly presented a selection of swords to Brann’s specification. He tried each in turn: all were finely crafted but the weight and balance of each varied just enough to let him find one that felt right in his grip. He added a long knife to his right hip and a shorter one strapped to the inside of each forearm. He always felt better with something extra in reserve. Cassian’s brother had been right, though: it did feel strange to a gladiator to carry weapons on his belt.

  He followed a few paces behind Myrana and Persione as they strolled from the citadel to a nearby market, chatting more in the fashion of sisters than mistress and slave. Wary of every shadow, seeing danger in every movement, his eyes darted constantly until he realised that he was going to exhaust himself before they even reached the next street. Instead, he tried more to take an interest in the surroundings and be open to anything that seemed unusual. The trouble was, when in a country so far removed from the world of your upbringing and where the exotic lay at every turn, the unusual was the norm. He was surprised at first that not one person recognised him as the hero of the Arena until realisation dawned. He had been a distant figure in the middle of the gladiatorial sand, and anyone who had been in the crowd probably would not have had any idea of his appearance up close. And context seemed to be a powerful disguise.

  They drifted into a market that was in itself an education to Brann. Birds of sizes and colours beyond his imagination eyed him from cages and added their sounds, raucous or sweet, to the bustle of the market. Some even spoke like men, causing him to almost draw his sword in alarm the first time he heard it. And the smells: the heady aroma of spices at one stall mingled with the enticement of cooking meat drifting over from another, while the effect of a baker’s oven being opened as they passed was enough to make Brann drool. The noble girl had been struck by the smell, too, and paused by the stall. A short conversation with Persione and the production of a purse from within the slave girl’s robes resulted in a handful of fresh pastries being handed over. At a word from Myrana, one was tossed to Brann and he nodded his thanks, noting at the same time where Persione stowed the money pouch. If he had seen it, light-fingered passers-by would have seen it also, and he moved in close behind the pair as they passed deeper into the throng of market-goers, toying with his left wrist as he did so as if fiddling with his cuff; at the same time, it happened to keep his fingers close to the most easily drawn knife in a crowded situation. Such was his concentration that they were well through the area before he realised that he had not been affected by the situation as he had been when out with Marlo. He remembered Ossavian’s advice about thinking only about the distance he could see at any time. In a pressing throng like this, that was what he had been forced to do and once again the truth in the old soldier’s words had been demonstrated. He forced his attention back onto the pair in front of him, who had now reached a small stall, tucked be
hind the main area to the extent that it would go unnoticed if it hadn’t been sought specifically. Fabrics were piled in rolls of colour, from bold richness to subtle pastels, and all with a look of quality to them. The merchant nodded and smiled at the girls with more than just friendly encouragement to trade, suggesting that they were familiar customers.

  Myrana trailed her hand through the cloth and asked the merchant to pull to the top three of the rolls from deeper in the piles to allow her a closer look. She felt the material between her fingers. ‘They are all lovely. So lovely I can’t decide.’ She turned to Brann. ‘Which colour is the prettiest, fighter from the North?’

  Pretty colours were not Brann’s strong point. ‘Why not get all three? You are a…’ He realised proclaiming her high rank would negate the effect of the veil disguise and would not help in his role of keeping her safe. ‘A lady of means. You could add all three to your wardrobe.’

  ‘Oh, I do like your style, my guardian. I fear, though, that you are missing the point of this expedition. If I buy without choice and just because I can, I have nothing to be excited about.’ She swept her hand across the three rolls. ‘So, which one?’

  He realised his lack of knowledge would not be an acceptable excuse, and stared at the fabrics. With a mental shrug, he said, ‘The pale red and the green are very nice, but the soft brown will go with your eyes perfectly.’

  There was a snort of derision from Persione, but those eyes flashed in amusement. ‘I really do like your style.’ She turned back to the merchant. ‘The brown it is.’

  Persione was clearly a veteran of such situations and, without fuss or delay, determined the length of fabric to be cut, arranged delivery and paid the man. The pair walked again, in deep and animated conversation, until the slave girl pointed down a street away from the market. Two more turns and the area was becoming distinctly quieter and less salubrious. An unease began to creep over Brann, a feeling that grew considerably as the girls stepped into a alleyway, still chatting cheerily.