Once ensconced in the hole, the Eastern Shapers were left to their own devices, food and necessities lowered down once a day by the same winch that deposited Marta. Their leader was a man by the name of Joel Kearney, who Marta found beside her as the ekesh worked its way out of her system. Kearney might have been a paunchy man once, but the months in the Pit had filched the fat from his body. Somehow he had fashioned an ugly pipe for himself, and though there was no tobacco in their prison, he chewed on it with authority as he looked Marta over.
“You done been cast out, girl. Been cast into the Pit, and even Sol can’t find you here. He has no will here, the only rule that of me and my men. I’m the big bug here, the food comes directly to me each day. The first week you get for free. The next depends on how well we like you. And I like you well enough, girl.”
Kearney chomped down harder on his pipe, his smile obscured by the bowl’s edges. His smile might have been intended as benevolent, but Marta found it oily.
“We men-folk take in women on occasion. For the lady’s protection, of course, so everyone knows they belong to someone. There’s safety in that. Got one here already. May’s a good woman, but she’s not as pert as you, girl. Perhaps you’d like to take her place. It would mean double rations for you if you did.”
His eyes roamed over Marta, appraising her in the remains of her mud-soaked gown. Unable to move more than her face under the influence of the ekesh, Marta hoped it properly displayed her revulsion to his offer. It was all she could manage, but it was enough.
“Soon as you can stand, I’ll take you to your tent.”
It was Kearney who put them to work building their hovels and latrines. For a few weeks it had kept the prisoners of the Pit occupied, but now the rudimentary buildings were all fashioned, nothing for the Eastern Shapers to do now but wait out their time in the cold.
Though she shivered constantly, Marta hoped the cold would soon come in earnest and freeze the ground. Kearney had the latrines dug as deep as he could without the use of either tools or their Shaper abilities, but the Pit was a former quarry, and rainwater collected at the bottom. Eventually the latrines overflowed, the fetid liquid covering the ground in a cesspool of rank. With any luck the frigid Overhurst winter would come and put an end to the stench and sickness that galloped with it.
It was already colder than anything Marta had ever experienced, even in the Auld Lands. There, she had been outfitted with thick coats lined with marten fur. Here she only had the remains of her formerly fancy dress, her ring taken from her after her capture and sure to have been pawned to finance the war effort against the Covenant. Huddled in her hovel, Marta occasionally missed the ring when she was warm enough to remember it. Given the chance, she would happily part with it again were it enough to trade for something warmer to wear. But gold and jewels would be useless here, clothing and shelter the only form of currency.
There was, unfortunately, one other thing the men in the Pit were interested in. Newfield law was quite clear that all Blessed were considered equal despite their genders, their abilities granting women the same rights as Blessed men. As such, Blessed women were welcomed into the Covenant and Newfield armies. Yet fewer Shaper women were willing to risk their lives in warfare, making the female prisoners probably only one for ten of the captured men. Stripped of their abilities by the sharpshooters on the walls, the men took charge, their fists deciding any disagreement. So the few women here sought safety in the arms of the most powerful men, Marta subjected to a dozen proposals for protection in addition to Kearney’s own before he had even shown her to her tent.
He extended his offer again the next two times he passed out Marta’s rations personally. It would have been a wise decision to take him up of his offer, Kearney the most powerful male in the Pit. But Marta was the daughter of Norwood Childress and turned him down with another withering glance. Her derisive looks were enough for the next three rude suitors when she left her tent to collect her meager rations.
The fourth tried to take her by force, Marta leaving him crippled for his troubles. Using Armor the grounds for death from the sharpshooters, Marta retreated to her tent, feigning fear as he advanced upon her. Once protected from prying eyes in the folds of her tent, Marta’s anger raged, her clarity and training barely stopping her from killing the man outright as she pounded her gauntlet into him again and again. Dead, he might cause the guards to look into it, but alive he would provide an object lesson to the others. So Marta tossed his broken body to soak in the waste water outside her tent. His moans finally summoned Kearney’s lackeys, who hauled the wounded man away without a word.
Word soon spread of Marta’s deed, and she hoped it would be enough to keep the rest of them away for good. If others came seeking revenge for their fallen friend, she assumed it would be in the next few days, and that they would come in force. She was not worried if they did though. If anything, she was hoping for it, her anger her constant companion and screaming for a violent outlet to purge her pique. Two days later, the flap to her tent slid back, Marta turning upon the invader with a smile on her face and the promise of violence in her eyes.
Instead, Marta made an ally in Abner Schlater.
He was not much to look at, a small, dark-skinned man with a plain face and white tipping his temples and beard. Abner gave every impression of a middling farmhand, his speech equally slow and with an Aiouan twang.
“How’d you break that man? How’d you turn him out?”
Her teeth clenched to keep from clattering from the cold, Marta hissed like a serpent. “Take another step and you’ll find out firsthand.”
The man wisely remained at the threshold, perhaps not as simple as he seemed. He looked her over again as if assessing the yearly yield of corn.
“I want to tie to you,” he finally drawled.
Other men had wanted the same of Marta, all more odious in their phrasing. This one was at least polite, and for that she would not break any bones. As she took her first step towards him, Abner held up his hands in surrender, his words coming quickly for a change.
“I ain’t here offering my protection. Well, I reckon I am, but in exchange for yours.”
His seeming sincerity took Marta aback, she expecting a trap as he went on. “Got a daughter about your age back home. A wife too, one I love dearly. One I fear more than you if ever I strayed, little thing.”
Marta studied him, still unconvinced as he broke into a grin. “In exchange for your protection, I’ll offer you my eyes, my mouth. Two sets of eyes see enemies in the night better than one, two chances to call out an alarm if they come. Plus, I make friends easier than you, little thing. Got a group already, good folk who watch out for each other, not beasts like some of them here. We pool our food, our eyes, and our voices. Only way we’re going to survive is as a group. We keep each other human. Otherwise we’re no better than animals caught in a cage.”
Her eyes narrowed as Marta considered his offer. It was true: another set of eyes would allow her to sleep again instead of keeping watch alone in the night from the attack she was sure would eventually arrive. Others watching her back might well ensure her survival.
Marta was not there to make friends though. She had expected her father to use his incredible influence to have her ransomed and released from this prison within a matter of days, but she had been here nearly two weeks and her nerves were worn nearly threadbare. A good night’s sleep would do her good, but the idea of tying herself to such common Shaper stock irked Marta to no end, at least until Abner cleared his throat.
“Thought you might want to know the full extent of what I’m offering. The man you put through the mill, Benny Doyle, he died today. Pneumonia, the sawbones said, but the state you left him probably came into play. He’s got a cousin in here, a man I wouldn’t want to make enemies of. Unless, of course, I had you by my side.”
Abner’s last pronouncement had its desired effect, Marta moving into his tent that night, not as his prison wife, but with her own
bedroll. Their new partnership did not stop Marta from staying awake throughout the night though, even with one of Abner’s friends keeping watch outside the tent. Part of it was to ensure Abner did not go back on his word and try and creep upon her in the dark. But Abner slept soundly, turning his back to her and his gentle snores soon filling the frigid air. Long after she was sure he was not faking, Marta could still not fall asleep, the fate of Benny Doyle rolling around her mind. He was dead and she was the cause.
Surely other men had died because of her. Marta’s transmission of Newfield secrets to the Covenant guaranteed that hundreds, if not thousands, died because of her actions. But these men and women were just numbers, lists of names of those who might or might not have fallen just as easily had she not taken action. Benny Doyle, on the other hand, had died because of her directly. It might have been pneumonia that finally finished him off, but it was the violence she did him that sparked the process. Part of her was glad: he was a bad man that deserved his fate, her anger threatening to roll to a boil when she remembered the look of glee on his face in response to her feigned fear.
But another part of her remembered that he had family, and not just the cousin who might seek revenge in the Pit. He had parents and siblings, perhaps children of his own that would mourn his death in spite of his horrid nature. He had a face, one Marta remembered quite well. He had a mouth that would never again speak, eyes that would never see.
And all because of her.
***
To her surprise Abner was good to his word and proved to be as loyal as he was plain. In the morning he introduced her to his gang, including the quick-witted Reid Paxton. His hair as pale as a shock of corn silk, Reid was certainly easy on the eyes, even in his shabby state. More importantly, he was the son of a successful merchant from Meskon who had insisted on bettering the family name through his son. She took to Reid instantly, the man educated enough to trade snippets of poetry when the mood struck him. Within a matter of two weeks, they exhausted all the poetry in their collective memories, Reid instantly turning to riddles he produced each day.
“I have far too many teeth,” he called to her as they passed one morning, “but you let me kiss your head each day. If you’re pretty, that is.”
It took Marta a few hours until she discerned the answer, the mental diversion ingratiating Reid to her all the more.
Abner’s gang also included Tollie Pryor and Rupert Kelly. Hailing from Rhea, Marta could not imagine the soft-spoken farmer Tollie in battle, the man seemingly incapable of maintaining eye contact with anyone more than a fleeting glance. It was Rupert that proved invaluable though, the man’s skinny frame swelled by a black beard so bristling he appeared like a chimney brush. A former woodsman and master forager, Rupert swore that until the Grand War he had more fingers than he did nights spent indoors, and it was his knowledge that proved invaluable. Though their five rations were of equal size to the other prisoners, Rupert mixed them with boiled water to make the stew that sustained them. Although it was a far cry from the fine food Marta was accustomed to, they fared much better than their fellow prisoners. Each night they set guard around their tents, always on the lookout for Benny’s cousin. But if the man was seeking revenge upon Marta, she saw no sign.
Soon their success drew others, including the star-gazer Gonzalo Talreja, who would consult the heavens each night and make dire predictions as to their fate. Another woman, Ida Rombach, also joined their number, soon sharing Reid’s tent and sly looks between them during the day. In all they were a good group, people Marta could trust, even if she would not have chosen them as comrades. But it was only Abner that Marta taught her Cildra Shaping skills to.
She resisted at first, but Marta finally succumbed out of boredom. The winter winds raging around them, no one leaving their tents except to collect food and use the frozen latrines, they had to find a way to pass the endless hours somehow. It was the only way to stay warm and sane as the winds wailed.
Abner was a slow learner, which suited her fine since it killed more time. Although he had no gift for his Shaping talent, Abner was dogged and as unyielding as the Armor he favored. Marta’s first mistake in his education was to try and teach him the snake tongue she was introduced to her Blessed abilities by. They spent weeks at it, Abner unable to conceive of the fluid motion of the appendage. It was only a single element of Breath, requiring a minimum of mental plans to operate, but it seemed beyond Abner.
“There’s more ways than one to top the mountain,” she told him, trying her best to mimic Cyrus’ indifference when Abner again encountered an impasse. But she was no teacher, and Abner scarcely a student. Only when they had finally given up in frustration did Marta try to instruct him in constructing a blade.
Abner mastered it in a matter of hours.
She soon learned he preferred static forms, his mind unable to comprehend change, but latching onto dogmatic mental plans. Though the Cildra gauntlets required seven moving parts, Abner understood that complexity easier than the single mobile stalk of the snake tongue. He explained this paradox away by pointing out that his personal Armor had nearly a hundred joints, but Marta never truly understood his aversion to simplicity, which was the Cildra way. He learned the rabbit legs soon enough, never able to test the form properly in the confines of their tent, but the tongue forever eluded him, as did the flickering phantom blade.
He offered to show her his Armor, perhaps teaching her a thing about the full form that the Cildra disdained. Marta turned him down as politely as she could, sure there was nothing of any value she could glean in his lumbering Armor. To his credit, Abner took her snub well, instead focusing on his new Shaper forms.
Abner asked again and again after where she had learned this understanding of Shaper abilities, Marta evading his questions with all of her available social guile. Finally, frustrated by his constant questions, she told him it came from her mother’s Mynian upbringing.
The lie seemed to satisfy him, Marta happy she was keeping the clan’s secrets, even if she revealed some of her own heritage. It was but a bit of truth to flavor her lies, her dedication to hiding her clan’s existence proving her loyalty. But as the months rolled on, she waited for her family to prove their loyalty to her, for someone to come and rescue her from the frigid wastes of the Pit. It had already been eight months, yet they were nowhere to be seen, and she was growing colder by the day.
Chapter 14
Winterfylled 20, 567
Marta was warm as she swam in her dark delirium.
The pain has been too much for her body, her mind recoiling into the recesses of her skull. The pain chased her through the darkness, persistent as a hound driven mad by the scent of blood. Marta retreated further, but still the pain came. So Marta summoned her will as if it were her Breath, solidifying it into a wall the pain crashed into. The pain broke like a wave upon a rock, but some spilled around the edges of Marta’s makeshift barrier to torture her further. So she encircled herself, the barrier of her will enveloping her and allowing the pain no hole to slither through. She imagined herself as a bird inside its egg, floating motionlessly in the fluid. Outside her protective shell something was shaking her body, but the fluid around her absorbed the shock, allowing Marta to rest for the first time in what seemed like ages. Outside her cocoon the pain seethed, but inside her shell Marta was safe and warm.
The warmth was intoxicating and Marta felt drunk on the stuff. As she drank the warmth in deeper, her body became less distinct and faded incrementally. At first it was the definition of her fingers and toes, their edges blending and becoming indistinct until they melded together like fleshy mittens. But then these new appendages faded, Marta vaguely aware she could no longer feel anything below her elbows or knees. She was diminishing, but she did not care as another shake came through her protective shell, Marta barely able to feel the outside world any longer.
Utter oblivion would be a welcome respite, but Marta held off giving herself to it fully. Hazily she becam
e aware her protective shell was not thin and fragile like the egg she initially imagined, but thick as stone. This stony cocoon dragged her deeper down, Marta becoming more indistinct as it digested her. Through her diminished appendages she was scarcely able to note the next round of shaking outside her protective world.
Aboard the Sanct Rosario on her trip across the Saulshish Ocean, Marta overheard a sailor claim that there was a peace that came in drowning. To fight against the inevitability of death was a futility, he said, and true freedom only came when one let go and succumbed to the enveloping waves. She had wondered then how it was he came upon this knowledge if he were still living, but now she knew the truth to his words. She certainly felt at peace as she drowned within herself, the totality of it only slightly disturbed by another shake to her body.
Something was summoning Marta back to the cold and vicious world, and Marta petulantly retreated further into the warmth. Growing fainter and fainter, the shaking still persisted, and Marta realized her life was at stake. She knew that she could die then and there, swaddled in her warm shell, or survive a bit longer in the harsh reality of Ayr.
She chose the latter, clawing her way through the stony shell then out of unconsciousness like a grave. The real world brought pain instead of peace, but Marta chose pain over the oblivion of death. Survival was not her choice, rather a compulsion she could not refuse.
Marta’s eyes fluttered open to spy Luca and Isabelle approaching, Caddie shaking her for all she was worth. Neither of the freebooters held weapons in their hands, and for that Marta was thankful as she sluggishly stirred.
Surprise flitted across Luca’s face before being replaced by his wry grin. “You’ve come back to us. Sol be praised, but we need to get moving soon as you can stand.”
The Woven Ring (Sol's Harvest Book 1) Page 15