Anger briefly flared in Velsa’s heart, but mostly, she still just felt pity for Flower, who had so much attention but little else. Velsa could only see one of the girls she had grown up with, the fear in her eyes twisted to cruelty as more and more of those fears came true.
Flower snatched the book from Velsa’s hands and started running.
“Hey!” Velsa cried, her reverie of pity cut short. Grau was across the field; she couldn’t tell if he’d even heard her yell.
Velsa ran after Flower. More than anything, she was terrified that Flower would destroy the book and Velsa would never know what it said. It seemed unlikely that the book would be replaced.
Flower’s robe fluttered ahead. She ran faster than a Fanarlem should run. Velsa’s joints creaked; she felt the impact of her footsteps rattling up her whole frame. This is what she wants; she’s hoping I’ll break.
Velsa stopped before the field was out of sight entirely, reluctant to move beyond where Grau could find her. “Please!” she cried.
Flower stopped too, just out of reach. They stood on the edge of the tenting grounds. A few of the rougher men who slept in the tents were milling around, and quickly gathering into an audience. She dangled the book over the nearest campfire.
“I don’t want to get in your way,” Velsa said. “I’d be your friend if you let me. I know you’re mistreated—”
Flower shoved the book into the fire, underneath a simmering pot of beans.
“Oh no…” Velsa ran forward.
Flower laughed. She knew how carefully Velsa avoided the fire at night. Low flames lapped at the book’s cover.
Velsa grabbed the book and flung it on the ground, stomping on the spot where smoke trailed upward. She glanced at her hands, finding only a few smudges of ash. Her hands hadn’t gone up in a burst of flame like she’d feared.
Flower shoved her.
Some of the men whooped with excitement. “There you go, Flower!” one of them said. “Somebody ought to show her who’s boss!”
Velsa stumbled, her boot hitting the charred logs on the fire’s edge. Flower kicked her other foot, knocking Velsa off balance. She hit the ground and Flower flew on top of her, holding her down.
Grau and Rawly were right—Fanarlem girls were heavy, at least, if you didn’t expect the weight. Flower’s hair tickled Velsa’s cheek. “Fanarlem don’t read,” Flower snarled in her ear. “It’s forbidden.”
“No, it isn’t! They taught me at my House and I’m sure they wouldn’t have if—”
One of the men picked the book up from the ground. “Fanarlem Life!” he said. “Who needs a book on that? Do what we say, that’s Fanarlem life.” Chuckling, he moved to drop it in the fire again.
Velsa lashed out, hardly knowing what she was doing. She had saved Fern once—the power was there if she could dig it out. This time, she felt a wisp of control—of her own bending will, shoving past the golden band. Heat flashed in her temples, and her eyes filled with stars.
The man clutched his head with a cry of surprise. The book fell, undamaged, back on the dirty ground. “What in curses? That little wench used magic on me!”
The gathered men murmured with concern.
“Grau taught her magic,” one of them said, and it seemed like a threat.
They didn’t seem to realize it was telepathy.
Velsa was on the brink of ruining everything for Grau as well as herself.
Flower caught one of Velsa’s hands and shoved it into the smoldering ashes. The man Velsa had attacked eagerly joined her, grabbing Velsa’s other hand, pressing her skin against one of the flaming logs.
Velsa screamed. The stories she had once read, of wicked Fanarlem burning to death, had not lied about the pain. She didn’t want to show weakness but she couldn’t help the cry that broke from her lips. “Grau! Grau, please, help!”
“Can’t handle a little pain?” Flower hissed. “I imagine not. Grau doesn’t discipline you at all.”
The man grabbed the back of Velsa’s collar and yanked her back from the fire. “If you want that pretty sorcerer of yours to keep you safe, you’d better not give us anything to complain about.”
“Please,” Velsa said. “Lieutenant Dlara told me I could read—that I should read, to make myself useful.”
“I think Dlara’s a Fanarlem-lover,” the man hissed.
“I think someone needs to teach you a lesson,” Flower added.
“Velsa!” Grau’s shout was so loud it seemed to bounce off of the ground. “Let—her—go.”
The man threw Velsa to the ground and rose to challenge Grau. Grau’s sword was drawn, but he didn’t use the sword nor magic—he came straight in with a fist striking the man’s face. “Don’t touch her,” he snapped.
“Oh, not so soft for once?” the man said, rubbing his cheek. “Usually I think you’re wrapped around your whore’s finger. Did anyone ever tell you it’s supposed to be the other way around?”
“Velsa is mine.” Grau pointed his sword at the man’s neck. “I’ll treat her how I like and it isn’t your business. Some men don’t get their kicks from abusing women, and if that makes me soft, I’ll take it.”
“You can’t abuse a Fanarlem,” the man said. “That’s your problem, there—forgetting that she’s cursed.”
Grau bared his teeth; she knew he was unable to retort without admitting that he didn’t believe this.
“How about dropping the weapon and I’ll test you man to man?” his opponent suggested. “No swords, no magic, and no pot shots.”
Grau handed his sword to Velsa. It was almost too heavy for her to hold.
The other man, who was not wearing his uniform jacket but just the shirt beneath, rolled up his sleeves. Some of the gathered crowd started chanting, “Fight! Fight!” Flower’s fingers were laced, her expression excited. Velsa glanced at her own hands, damaged by the fire. Her skin was blackened, with a few puffs of stuffing poking out from charred fingers, but the pain had vanished the moment her hands no longer made contact with the heat.
Grau and the other man circled a few paces, their eyes locked on one another. The crowd kept edging back to give them more room. Half the camp must have been here by now. The smell of burning beans was in the air as the campfire was completely ignored.
Grau made the first move, lunging at his opponent—but as the other man drew back and lifted his arms to block, Grau darted back a step and then tried to surprise with a kick. The other man dodged this, too, and tried to take advantage of the moment Grau withdrew his leg, throwing a punch that Grau tried to evade. The fist knocked against his cheek, but not hard.
Velsa tried to remind herself of the Ten Thousand Man Sacrifice, and Grau’s magical blood. He couldn’t really be hurt. Still, she cringed back as the other man followed his punch with an uppercut, and this time he struck Grau in the jaw.
Grau quickly tilted his head back and forth, shaking off the pain, and lunged at his opponent, almost knocking him into the fire. Now they were on the ground and Grau had the upper hand, getting in a few good, fierce blows so the man’s nose and forehead were bleeding—but then the man shoved him off. They rolled in the dirt. It was all happening so fast now, and turning into a wrestling match.
“What in curses is going on here?”
Lieutenant Dlara had arrived on the scene.
“Sorcerer Thanneau!” Lieutenant Dlara snapped.
Grau got to his feet, snatching up the hat that had fallen off his head and brushing dirt from his uniform. “Sir,” he said, but his tone was not apologetic.
The other man got to his feet more lazily, almost grinning. “Lieutenant Dlara,” he said. “I guess I got carried away.”
The gathered crowd, which had been eagerly chanting moments ago, were now attempting to look concerned and confused, like they had all just shown up that second.
“They burned Velsa’s hands,” Grau said, taking his sword back. He tried to put a hand on Velsa’s shoulder, but before she would let him, she took the opportunit
y to pick her book up out of the dirt and clutch it close.
“Velsa should not be reading that book,” Flower said, drawing herself up like a noble lady. “She shouldn’t know how to read at all.”
“I let her take it from the library,” Lieutenant Dlara said. “She’s just sitting around most of the time, so I wanted her to study information that may come in handy.”
“I was always taught that reading leads to willful thoughts,” Flower said, “and it seems to me that Velsa has enough of those already.”
“Velsa has willful thoughts? Who is arguing with an officer?” Dlara barked at her.
Flower dropped her eyes to the ground. “I am sorry, sir.”
“If I tell Velsa she may read, that’s the end of the matter,” Dlara said.
Another one of the officers approached, a man named Kellen who always welcomed Flower’s attentions at dinner.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Is everything all right?”
Flower started to cry, lowering her head and turning her toes together a little so she seemed younger, more fragile. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Lieutenant Dlara, sir, it’s just that I can’t read and I was always told that Lord Jherin doesn’t approve of Fanarlem girls who can read. I thought it was sinful. I thought it was my duty to burn Velsa’s book because that’s what I’ve always been told. I didn’t know it belonged to the library.”
Lieutenant Dlara sighed loudly as Kellen went to comfort Flower.
“I’m not so sure Velsa should be reading,” Kellen said.
“She has a brain,” Dlara said. “It’s utterly pointless for her to sit around staring at the grass all day when she could be learning about medicine or tracking or useful plants, or in this instance, her own construction so she may be able to repair her injuries. There is no law against a Fanarlem reading.”
“I’m not so sure,” Kellen repeated.
“I am extremely sure, because I studied law before I came here and I had a class devoted entirely to the rights of slaves,” Dlara said. “And in fact, you know perfectly well this is true because we’ve hired Fanarlem slaves to record documents for us. Velsa and Flower can do anything their masters permit, besides owning property, voting, and matters of that nature. She can read all the books she likes, and in fact, I am inclined to think Kalan Jherin would approve. He encourages literacy and a Fanarlem who can read will surely have a better understanding of their place in the world.”
“This one sure doesn’t seem to understand her place in the world,” said the man who had fought Grau.
“She could occupy her time in other ways that would be equally useful,” Kellen said. “Mending uniforms, for example.”
“Do I need to remind you all that Velsa is reading on my order? We are sorely lacking in education around here.” Dlara gave Velsa and Grau a serious look. “Sorcerer Thanneau, you’re dismissed. Take Velsa to the barracks and see to her hands.”
“Yes, sir, thank you,” Grau said.
The skin of Velsa’s hands was ruined. Some of her fingertips had crumbled away, and a few of her fingernails had broken off. The fire must have burned off the spells that gave her skin more of a soft, human quality because now her palm wrinkled in a weird way when she flexed her fingers, which she kept doing, because she was ever so slightly fascinated by her own deconstruction.
“What should I do for your hands?” Grau asked.
“I’m sorry,” she’ll said. “I’ll need new skin. And it will cost a bit because of the spells… Where is the repair kit Dalarsha gave you when you bought me?”
He dug out the bag under his bed and found the smaller bag within. She found the seam ripper and cut the stitches at her wrists, pulling skin and stuffing off her skeleton until nothing remained but polished wood and tiny screws. She flexed her finger bones.
“They work?” Grau said. “Without skin?”
“Sort of. I can move, but if I touch something…” She rapped her fingertips together. “It doesn’t feel like much.”
“I didn’t think you could move without skin. I thought that’s why Fanarlem can’t move when they’re wet.”
“Well, we can move a little, but imagine trying to move if your muscles were suddenly replaced by sodden wool sweaters. My framework has motion on its own, but not much strength. Flower will probably make fun of my hands at dinner, too…”
“She’d better not. Your little skeleton hands are cute. But you should have let Flower go. It’s just a book. What if she’d shoved your whole face into the fire?”
“But it’s a book about me,” she said. “About Fanarlem, I mean. It’s written by a man who used to be flesh and blood, and I think it’ll help me learn how to pretend I used to be real, someday.”
“What a snake that girl is…” Grau paced angrily.
“I might be a snake too if I was treated that way.”
“Obviously I see how he treats her,” he said darkly. “But that can’t be helped. It can’t be helped just like everything else in the world.” He sat down, his face darkened, and took one of her charred hands, but he was looking into the distance. Despite the cold day, his hair clung to his brow from sweat; his uniform was grubby from the fight.
“Some things can be helped,” she said. “I wish Flower would let me help her. I would teach her how to read.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said. “She’ll only hurt you. I have to worry about you first. You understand, don’t you? We have to be selfish just to survive.”
Painfully, she did. Just like the Fanarlem slaves at his house…she felt like she should help them, but she didn’t know how. She didn’t even like them and she didn’t like Flower either, but she felt for them. She thought of their eyes, in the middle of the night, the memory of their dead gaze like a spoon hollowing out her own insides. Not her stuffing, but her soul.
Chapter 12
With Grau’s training finished, he started joining Lieutenant Dlara’s squad on patrol. Velsa was allowed with him, although she had to ride behind him to keep his hands unencumbered. It was for the best, she thought grimly. Her body could help to protect him from arrows, since they refused to give him any armor.
Within a week she found herself dreaming of arrows. Not too seriously, but it certainly would be exciting to see a single arrow fly into a tree, because the patrol proved just as dull as everyone had warned. They walked the same path every day, along the steep bank of the river, watching the Miralem nation on the other side. Every day, the same. Not only was each day the same, nearly every hour was the same, because the river offered almost no change of scenery. Rushing waters, rocky bluffs, barren trees. The skies whispered of winter. Occasionally, a Miralem village or stone guard tower offered a landmark.
“You look so bored,” Grau said, lifting her onto the horse on a cold morning. His breath emerged in puffs.
“Because it’s so boring.”
“You know what else is boring?” he said. “The marshes.”
“The marshes aren’t boring. We went on canoe rides and picnics and looked for animals. But here we’re stuck plodding along.”
“Remember your crystal,” he said. “This is our chance, now, when it’s quiet, to study the energies of this place. Even from the back of a horse, you can get a sense of the ground, the rocks—what minerals do they hold? The trees, the plants…it might be autumn now, and they are quieter than in the spring, but if you listen long enough, they’ll start to tell you what they’re about.”
Velsa wished she had Grau’s patience. She loved the sensation of activating the crystal and sensing all the life around her, but then her mind would wander. She couldn’t seem to listen the way he did, holding his crystal in one hand for an hour at a time and staying very quiet.
Even when they stopped for lunch, Grau would poke around, gathering rocks and seeds and the skull of a small animal. She enjoyed doing this in the marshes, but she had grown restless here. Maybe she just couldn’t relax with the other men around all day, and Flower waiting in the camp e
very night.
When they stopped for lunch, she watched Grau turn over a rock with his boot and stoop to examine what was beneath it, and could only think how handsome he was, and how she wanted to have a different life with him, building a house of their own.
Velsa had taken to playing cook. She didn’t really know how, at first, but the men in the squad seemed to find it a lot more fun to teach her how to cook than to simply cook themselves. She flipped sausages and stirred onions and cabbage, singing Dlara’s harmonica songs as she went, because they never seemed to leave her head. “City ladies sing this song, doo-da, doo-da…the palace walk is five miles long, oh de doo-da day…” And if she made the food, no one cared if she tasted it as she went.
One of the most difficult adjustments to the Fanarlem form is losing the need to eat, drink, or digest food. At first you might imagine this to be a positive. Most of us have had a day when the coffers were low or the harvest poor, and the food supply is short. At other times, our days are so burdened that we resent taking time from our work to eat.
One of man’s great satisfactions, nevertheless, is the enjoyment of a good meal after a day’s labors, and the rejuvenating properties of a glass of wine or spirits.
The newly reborn Fanarlem is likely to experience a sense of having a tenuous hold on the physical world, now that one’s body is no longer signaling these needs.
Spells are available that allow a Fanarlem to eat, by way of creating a passage in the throat that will make food vanish. But eating without saliva makes for a foreign and unpleasant experience, and one may find that without the sensation of food traveling down into a hungry stomach, all pleasure is lost.
Her book, which she read while the men were polishing off the meal, offered strong opinions on eating. Velsa wondered if this was true for every flesh-born Fanarlem. She had adored food from that first bite of pastry.
The Sorcerer's Concubine (The Telepath and the Sorcerer Book 1) Page 14