Hooded

by A A Woods

  It was selfishness, really, that had allowed her to turn a blind eye. Selfishness and willful misunderstanding.

  “Aheya, we should go,” Carlette said, injecting more force into her words. “Now.”

  But a sharp voice rose over the crowd, as commanding as lightning.

  “What’s this?”

  The crowd parted and a tall, imposing woman strode through the slush, her boots clicking against the cobblestones. Silence echoed, a stillness so deep that it seemed to penetrate the very mountains.

  Grand Mera, the headmistress of Jemelle, the King’s assigned commander to the Order of the Hood, stepped into the circle.

  She walked like an inexorable truth. Tall and angular, collarbones as sharp as blades, the Delasir woman’s gray hair was pulled back, as always, in an unforgiving bun. Her austere clothing was plain, adorned with none of the frills or baubles that the Delasir merchants loved so much. She was chiseled, her expression fixed as her steel eyes moved deliberately from face to face.

  “What,” Grand Mera repeated, “is this?”

  “Lovers, ma’am,” said an older guard as the scout, Calixa, tried to cover herself. “Found them in the stables.”

  “Is this true?” Grand Mera said, turning to Sindur.

  The guards muttered, angry that their commander would ask a half-breed to verify their story. But Grand Mera’s eyes didn’t flicker.

  Sindur’s head dropped.

  Even from this distance, Carlette could feel Grand Mera’s disappointment. It was subtle—the slight dip in her shoulders, a decreased pulse—but Carlette could sense it. She had been around this woman more than half her life. She knew better than anyone how determined Grand Mera was that every child brought in from the Convent made it back to Tuleaux in one piece, ready to fight in the war across the sea. Carlette knew what this loss would mean.

  But to the crowd, Grand Mera was unchanged. Her neck remained straight and tense, lips pinched in disapproval.

  “You know the law,” she said, her voice closing over them like a cell door. “To be hooded is to be celibate. To abstain from the pleasures of the flesh. To never bear children and weaken the power that has been carefully cultivated in you. You fornicated with this woman in full knowledge that it might deteriorate our forces, slowly erode our power until the word hooded means no more than the word soldier. Do you deny it?”

  Carlette knew there was no point. The evidence was there, etched in the face of every watching guard. But Sindur raised his head and faced Grand Mera with a glimmer of rebellion in his eye.

  “I do not.”

  Grand Mera’s mouth pressed tighter. She nodded to the guards holding him.

  “No!” shrieked Calixa, spinning towards her lover.

  “Aheya, don’t look—”

  But it was too late. Before anyone could move, a guard pulled out his pistol and fired it into Sindur’s temple. A haze of red exploded from Sindur’s head. His eyes widened in surprise. Then froze that way. With a muddy thump, Sindur’s body fell into the slush, brain and blood staining the fresh snow.

  Calixa screamed.

  “No, no, no” she sobbed, unable to maintain her fierce veneer as she watched the handsome boy, his face a web of training scars, twitch one last time.

  “As for you,” Grand Mera said, turning to the scout, whose blade was now pointed uselessly at the ground. “You are no longer welcome in Jemelle. A full force of guards will escort you to Tuleaux for immediate deportation to Delasir, where you will answer to the king’s justice.”

  The old woman stepped over Sindur’s body, leaning down until she was eye-level with Calixa.

  “I will see to it personally that you hang for what you did here today. You are responsible for the destruction of Delarese property, the ruination of this boy’s life, and the disturbance of my school’s peace. Make no mistake, you will be punished accordingly.”

  Calixa’s face twisted as tears streaked through the grime on her cheeks.

  “Ignorant bitch,” she spat. “If anyone’s responsible for ruining his life, it’s you. It’s this place. It’s every fucking law the Magistrate ever signed. You don’t care about him. You don’t care about any of them.”

  Grand Mera straightened, gaze as cold and closed as the Wandering Pass in winter.

  “Take her away.”

  Carlette watched as the crowd broke up, her expression hinting at none of the turmoil she felt. Sindur’s blood still trickled into the stone, filling the rivulets between cobblestones. His body would be hung on the wall, in clear view of all those coming into Jemelle on the Iron Road. A sign would dangle from his neck, warning travelers and hoods alike about the reality of life in Ferren.

  Reminding them the cost of stepping out of line.

  Straightening her cape, Carlette allowed the cold wash of training to clear her head. She was a tool, a weapon. This was her life.

  Stay the path.

  “Come on,” Carlette said, putting an arm around Aheya. “Come with me.”

  “Carlette, what am I going to do?” Aheya whispered. “I can’t… I don’t…”

  “Shhh, it’s okay,” Carlette said, trying to pull her friend away from listening ears. “Don’t speak.”

  Aheya’s eyes were huge as they turned to Carlette.

  “How can they treat us like this?”

  Carlette didn’t know what to say. She had often wondered if they were monsters, as the guards so often taunted. If perhaps she was an aberration, an unnatural blight on the world as the Church of the Hand proclaimed. Maybe then such brutality could be justified. Carlette took comfort in the knowledge that they were necessary. Unnatural or not, hoods served a noble purpose.

  But was it worth it?

  “Come on, Aheya, let’s go—”

  “Carlette.”

  Grand Mera’s voice cracked over them. Carlette straightened, pulled back her shoulders to face Jemelle’s commander.

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “Come to my office. I have a matter to discuss with you.”

  “Right away,” said Carlette, bowing her head.

  Grand Mera nodded, her hard eyes flashing to Aheya. The woman didn’t miss a thing—not the tears coursing down the girl’s curved cheeks, not the way her shoulders shook with repressed sobs. But there was nothing to be done. If Aheya was digging her grave, there was no way to stop her. Carlette saw the pain deep in her mentor’s eyes, the veiled ferocity that years of silent frustration had done nothing to quell.

  And Carlette loved her for it.

  “Very good,” said Grand Mera.

  With the tight shoulders of a woman trying to save the world all by herself, Grand Mera strode off, her boot prints staining the snow with blood.

  Chapter Three: A Duty to the Order

  When she first arrived in Jemelle, new to her power and learning about all the things that her upbringing hadn’t prepared her for, Carlette had been terrified of Grand Mera’s office. Situated between the Tierre and Requin towers, it was a squat stone building, austere and cold in every regard. Even the inside felt like an empty cave. No personal items, no embroidered blanket on the narrow bed, no maps or letters on the wall. Only one thing marked that a person even lived here—the stamped edict from King Asbel naming this woman head of Jemelle. It was such an old document that Grand Mera’s name had been smudged into illegibility, but some of the older students used to claim they could read it. They would make up fantastical titles and spin long, drawn-out tales about their commander as if a history could somehow breathe warmth into her callous, creased face.

  Carlette, though, had learned to see the warmth that was already there, the mercy that moved beneath layers of ice. She owed this woman her life, her future.

  Everything.

  Watching Grand Mera’s quill scrape away on a piece of parchment, Carlette wondered about Aheya. How could she have been so stupid? Clenching and unclenching her fists behind her back, Carlette glared at the stone wall behind Grand Mera, as black and barren as a
winter night.

  Soon, it won’t matter, Carlette thought. We’ll be across the sea. Dachen will be here. The temptation will be over.

  A nasty, uninvited voice in the back of Carlette’s mind spoke up.

  Can she wait that long?

  There was a click as Grand Mera put her quill down and leaned back in her chair.

  “You’ve been summoned by the Magistrate.”

  “Me?” Carlette asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. Of all the hoods in Jemelle, the Magistrate was least aware of Carlette.

  It was imperative that Carlette and Grand Mera kept it that way.

  “Not you specifically,” said Grand Mera, pushing to her feet and clasping her hands behind her back, a relic instinct of her military days. “But he demanded that I send my best Prederaux for a special covert mission. Everyone here knows that’s you.”

  Carlette shifted. The old woman’s voice was calm, but her words were a sharp reminder of their heavy, shared secret. Carlette had been born outside the Convent of Others. Her parentage was unknown. And with every passing year of her power growing and sprawling like a weed, Carlette wondered if Grand Mera regretted taking such a risk on her. Allowing an eight-year-old orphan to slip silently into Jemelle must have seemed safe at the time. After all, hooded men and, on rare occasion, Ferrenese natives were known to slip into the beds of lonely settlers. Sometimes a Tuleaux girl gave birth to a baby with white-rimmed eyes. It wasn’t unheard of.

  But, even with Grand Mera’s warnings tied to her conscience like so many stones, even knowing that a single false step could end with both their bodies on the wall, Carlette couldn’t hide the instinctual wildness of her power.

  It had made her life in Jemelle like walking a razor’s edge.

  “What’s the mission?” Carlette asked, gaze fixed on the empty wall, wishing there was something for her to stare at besides blank stone.

  “Prisoner escort. They’ve captured a Nuri flight engineer north of the city, the only survivor of a crash. They want Erebus to work on him, see if he can help us locate Caika.”

  “The Nuri mountain base? They still haven’t found it?”

  “No, and their influence here is getting stronger,” said Grand Mera with a sigh. “They’ve started taking captives, young women and children. It doesn’t take an army general to figure out that they’ve begun their own breeding program.”

  Carlette didn’t want to think about it. After almost a hundred years of Delasir claiming long-held Nuri territory—aided, of course, by magic—Nurkaij had finally discovered the secret to Delasir’s success. Ferren. Driven by desperation and the resource drain of war, Delasir’s southern and most hated neighbor had stumbled upon the remote island of strange beasts and white-rimmed eyes. Then, armed with their own understanding of enhabitation magic, Nurkaij had evened the odds. The war became a stalemate. And, to strengthen their hold on the island, the Nuri cowards had built their base high in the mountains, impossible to find, accessible only by their damn airships. Like spiders, they had used this headquarters to chip away at the tribes, thinning Delasir’s source while building a foundation of their own.

  The bastards.

  “I’ll do it,” Carlette said, trying not to think about what treatment Erebus would have for the unfortunate Nuri engineer.

  “Of course you will,” Grand Mera said, her voice a crisp clip as she turned to face Carlette. There was something glittering there, a restrained excitement that made Carlette stand taller. “Finish this mission and I will recommend you personally to the Woodsman for reassignment to the front.”

  Carlette’s jaw fell.

  “Close your mouth, you look like a simpleton,” Grand Mera snapped, chucking Carlette under the chin. “It’s for your own good. Every day you remain in this place is another day someone might ask the wrong question, and then where will we be?”

  “Of course,” Carlette said, bowing her head.

  The old woman sighed, laying a hand on Carlette’s shoulder.

  “I’ve always had a soft spot for you, child. From the day my sister brought you here as a knobby-kneed girl needing a place to hide, I’ve been a fool.”

  Carlette bowed her head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? For what, being born?” The weight of Grand Mera’s hand lifted and Carlette looked up to see the headmistress back behind her desk, stamping the letter she’d been writing when Carlette walked in. “I care for you, but I will breathe easier when you’re on the other side of the ocean. I don’t fancy ending my fifty years of service to the King at the wrong end of a firing squad.”

  “No one knows,” Carlette said. “I swear to you, no one suspects a thing. I keep our secret at all costs.”

  Grand Mera paused in her work, eyes slanting up with what could have been a sardonic glint.

  “I am aware. You almost killed that boy last year. Joram, wasn’t it?”

  “He was asking questions.”

  “He was teasing you.”

  “About not knowing their secret handshake from the Convent. I needed to make an example.”

  “And you did. I imagine that none of Joram’s fellows will ever linger in the same room with you again.”

  “I don’t need to make friends,” Carlette said. “I’m a weapon of the king, not a nanny.”

  Grand Mera straightened, folding the paper in half.

  “I wish I could offer you a different life, Carlette. But we all must accept what the ancestors saw fit to give us.” She held out the letter. “An edict of free passage and express permission to enhabit the prisoner, should he try to flee. Show that seal to anyone who gives you trouble on Durchemin.”

  Carlette took the parchment with tentative fingers. She’d never been outside Jemelle alone before. In fact, she’d only left its walls a handful of times since arriving with Mya eight years ago. To be trusted with such freedom, to be allowed to walk Durchemin without an escort…

  “You honor me, Grand Mera,” Carlette said, passing four fingers across her forehead in the customary sign of respect.

  “You will repay me by surviving this mission and earning your place in the King’s Axe. The road is more dangerous than it used to be. Bloody Paws have been attacking even the most defended caravans, and one of last year’s graduates is missing.”

  “Who?”

  “Ina,” Grand Mera said, eyes flashing. “She was assigned to a group of Collectors coming back from Raebus territory. Didn’t make it through the Wandering Pass.”

  “Rebels?”

  “I imagine Yokan did this, although I have no proof. Those brutes have been sabotaging us every chance they get.”

  “The king will bring them to heel, just as he’s always done.”

  Grand Mera’s lips twisted in the faintest hint of a smile, withered with age and bitterness.

  “The king is ten, Carlette. It’s his generals we depend on. And unfortunately, a few Voka sympathizers on the edge of the settlements aren’t exactly their priority.”

  “If Jemelle falls, they could lose the war,” Carlette said, surprised and unnerved by the exhaustion in her mentor’s voice. “They have to care about us.”

  “That is exactly why they choose not to.” Grand Mera’s expression was wry. “No one likes their life to depend on something else, Carlette. Especially not civilized people.”

  Carlette pursed her lips, holding her breath for a moment. Then she exhaled, releasing words with it.

  “One of the guards almost set a sionach on my student today.” Carlette kept her eyes on the ground as she spoke. “They’re getting bolder.”

  Grand Mera sighed and rubbed a hand over her cropped hair. It was a sign of weakness that she only ever showed in front of Carlette.

  “Idiots,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Every few decades they forget what they’re dealing with, forget why they’re here. Do they imagine Voka’s rebellion was one woman standing alone against the city? Less than forty years have passed and they make the same m
istakes again.”

  “Do… do you remember Voka?”

  Grand Mera raised an eyebrow.

  “Careful, girl, or someone might think you’re sympathetic to the rebel cause.”

  “I’m not,” Carlette said with more force than she had intended. “I just wonder…” She wasn’t sure exactly what she wondered. What was beyond the fences? What her mother’s people were like? How Voka almost won?

  “Of course you do,” said Grand Mera. “Any child raised on fables wonders. But she was just a woman, just an Ebonal girl with a unique power.”

  “To enhabit the Amonoux,” Carlette said, hating how childlike her voice sounded.

  “Yes, to enhabit the Amonoux. But she was human, Carlette, and she died like one. And now countless women die every year for nothing more than a suspected heritage. If the Magistrate put as much effort into defending the pass as he did to hunting Voka’s descendants, I wouldn’t lose any more of my students.” Grand Mera’s face chilled. “You leave at dawn. Keep your hood up and your gloves on at all times. Stay the path.”

  “Stay the path,” Carlette repeated, bowing her head. She turned to leave.

  “And Carlette.”

  She waited, hands frozen in the act of pulling up her hood.

  “Don’t fail me,” Grand Mera said at last, dropping her gaze in dismissal.

  Chapter Four: Lethal Questions

  Sunrise found Carlette in the kennels, crouched in front of a new littler of scrambling puppies. They squashed themselves against the bars, eager for the chance to lick her fingers. Shipped in from Delasir, the hounds were used to train young hoods and guard the caravans that plunged into the Shadow Peaks, hunting rebels and collecting fodder for the Convent. Most novices never spent any time in the kennels, too spooked by the eerie winds and distant growls to explore the abandoned mining tunnels beneath the school. But Carlette had spent her childhood here, her lonely free hours filled with the comfort of warm animal breath, surrounded by the simple thoughts of beasts. Sneaking out of her dorm in Cerise tower always reminded her of nights with Quaina, prowling around Tuleaux, two orphans invisible to the world.