Unfortunately, she hadn’t kept her insight into his identity to herself very well. As she stood there, she glared openly at him and no one else.
The man’s lips rose in a sneer, and he turned to the trainer who had been babbling at him, even though it was obvious he hadn’t been paying attention.
“That one is rather bold, is she not?”
The trainer flinched and stopped whatever monologue he’d been in the middle of to glance back at Nark. She met his gaze flatly, ignoring the second slave who had joined her in the middle of the room and who was stretching his thick neck in preparation for the bout.
“Our… best fighters tend to be bolder,” the trainer said nervously, making excuses.
“They should still bow to their betters.”
“Of course.”
The trainer made a hasty movement, and two of the other trainers rushed to the middle of the room, pushing aside the second slave to grab Nark by her arms and yank her to her knees. She didn’t fight them, letting them put her head down.
Her master laughed humorlessly. “She doesn’t need to be free for me to see that she isn’t truly bowing. Boy.” He snapped his fingers.
Nark glanced up through her hair, head still bowed, to see who the man was talking to.
The boy had been hovering right behind the man and, after flinching, stepped forward. She’d seen him before, but had never bothered committing his face to memory, since he wasn’t the one who determined her fate.
“Yes, Father?” he asked warily.
“You fight her. Break her, make her bow.”
“Wait, my lord!” The trainer protested, stuttering over himself as the boy stood in frozen surprise. “If she’s damaged—”
“I’ll pay for the damages. Do it, boy.”
They let her go. As the boy was given a staff and the other slave was ushered away again, she retrieved her weapon and stood up cautiously. He was taller than her, older by a few years and practically a man, but with a gauntness around his eyes and cheeks that belied some deep, inner stress.
Well, that had nothing to do with her. She just had to survive.
Taking a stance across from him, she waited for the signal. It came with a clang to the gong, and they both moved at the same time.
He was good.
It took everything she had to fight off his blows and keep her fingers out of the way. Slowly, she allowed herself to be moved backward, aiming to be knocked out of the ring and maneuver herself into an illegal position.
Finally, when his blow would have broken her leg, she won her point. His stick stopped an inch from her flesh, quivering there as he breathed heavily.
She did not bow, sending a defiant glare at the master.
“Your son won, my lord,” said the trainer hesitantly.
Her master didn’t even look at the man. “Again. This time, boy, break her neck.”
Trainers grabbed her roughly, dragging her to the middle of the ring as the atmosphere in the room suddenly doubled in intensity. Her insides were cold.
They… he….
“But, sir—!”
“Insubordinate behavior cannot be tolerated. If she will not learn, then she will be eliminated.”
Once again, the boy stood across from her. She couldn’t read his face. She didn’t have time to. Her thoughts raced and she breathed in gasps.
Break her neck.
Did he mean for her to die? Would they heal her afterwards? No! She couldn’t leave that to chance. She couldn’t die.
She refused to die.
The gong sounded, and this time when the blows came, she didn’t just parry. She pushed.
Taken aback by her sudden, desperate aggression, she drove the boy five whole steps before he regained his footing and renewed his efforts.
The movement of their staves was so fast that they blurred, switching directions with a seamlessness that was almost like a dance. Her opponent didn’t back down, but strain became obvious as he fought to keep his own neck intact.
There was some laughter, but she ignored it.
She was an expert at ignoring spectator interaction. Otherwise the actual to-the-death bouts above ground would have killed her long ago.
Suddenly, she flipped the boy’s staff out of his hands and tripped him in one fluid motion.
He landed hard on his backside, staring up at her, not even raising an arm to defend himself as she swung her staff as hard as she could at his head.
She didn’t know exactly what happened.
Somehow, her staff was stopped. Piecing it together later, it was probably blocked by a trainer who’d been standing nearby with his own blunt weapon.
Next thing she knew, several trainers were on her at once. She tried to fight them off, and did a fair amount of damage with her well-aimed strikes, but then someone used magic. It only half worked as she instinctively pulled on it to lessen its impact. Then her conscious mind frantically intervened, falling as the spell had intended her to do.
The spell felt like a heavy weight on her shoulders.
But the intervention didn't stop there.
They pounded her with their weapons, hitting her from every angle. She raised her arms, covering her head against the senseless onslaught, but her head had already received a blow. She felt a wet trickle between her eyes, and a dizziness set in that made it difficult to track the other injuries.
“Stop.”
The voice sounded distant, but she knew who it was.
Especially when he got close enough to smell death on him.
Half-conscious, she gagged and curled into a tighter fetal position. A second later, she was hauled to her knees, and the man leaned close to her unfocused eyes.
“Bow,” he breathed.
Slowly, with no other choice if she didn’t want to be sent to the meal room, she bowed her spinning head in submission.
***
Present: 20 Years Old
The Amicus flopped onto her bed, grabbing her pillow to hug as she stared at the ceiling.
She did it.
She couldn’t believe she’d not only gone out to meet a stranger, but that she’d covered her face and actually had a good time.
By the time they’d walked through the market district and picked up his gadget from a repair shop, it was late afternoon, so he’d asked her to dinner, too. Of course, she had to refuse. She had a shift tonight, and after what happened last night, she didn’t dare neglect it, not with the children in danger.
But, still, it had been nice.
Zanie.
He’d called her Zanie the whole time. Never the Amicus or Nark. Never like a man who was really interested in her, that was true, but that was fine. She didn’t want interest, and was perfectly fine with the teasing and flirting because it wasn’t serious.
She closed her eyes, unaware of her smile as she squeezed the pillow harder.
There was a small knock on the door, and she rolled over to watch Chloe sneak inside.
“You realize this is your room, too?” Zanie said cheerfully, her good mood spilling into more relaxed behavior. “You don’t have to be so quiet.”
Chloe stopped dead and stared at the Amicus for a long heartbeat.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened? I went out.” Zanie rolled off the side of the bed, landing cat-like before standing and tossing the pillow aside. She needed to change if no one was going to suspect what she’d done. “You helped me, remember?” she added teasingly.
She wasn’t aware of the way her friend gaped at her back as she undressed.
When she was done, now wearing her usual gray pants and vest combo, she turned back to Chloe.
“You had a good time?”
The Amicus sat down, beaming. “He wants to meet again next week.”
Then she started talking, describing everything that happened with girlish enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Chloe slowly sat down in her rocker, dazed as she listened to the uncharacteristic chatter. Twice, she wondered if someone had stuffed the real Amicus into a closet somewhere and left her with this stranger.
“And he wants to meet again next week?”
Chloe moved with a jerky, uncertain motion.
Zanie, once again holding a pillow against her chest, nodded. Then she finally got a good look at Chloe’s face. Her smile faltered, and something painful twisted in her gut. Oh, Tanya’s god! Had she gone too far?
“You think it’s a bad idea?” Her shoulders unconsciously shrank. “Should I not go?”
Chloe flinched and waved her hands, at first not saying anything as she tried to rearrange her thoughts. “No! You must go. Yes, go.”
“But—”
“No, this is good.” Chloe’s hands moved so fast that for a second the Amicus couldn’t understand what she was saying, catching only her repeated insistence that, “This is good.”
The Amicus was not reassured, since Chloe looked too distressed to really mean it. Dropping her eyes to the ground, the Amicus only nodded, not really agreeing, just trying to stop Chloe’s silent insistence.
Chloe reached over to touch her arm, trying to get her attention again.
Blessedly, they were interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Miss Amicus,” said a voice hesitantly on the other side.
“Yeah?”
“His lordship would like to see you.”
The Amicus felt her shoulders sag in relief as she raised her chin, facing Chloe’s distressed expression.
“I’ll be back. Do you have a shift tonight, too?”
It was a stupid question. The Amicus knew Chloe’s main job was to keep an eye on her volatile friend, so they usually had their shifts together. However, it finally changed the topic. Chloe didn’t seem at all happy to shift back to business as usual, so she glumly nodded without trying to speak.
“We’ll walk together, then.”
The servant hadn’t waited for the Amicus to come out, so she made her way to Ma’Shite’s office by herself.
About halfway down the hall, she realized she could hear voices from within. Ma’Shite’s voice, of course, but also a deeper, gruffer-toned male voice.
“... As I keep saying,” Ma’Shite said coolly as she stopped outside, “if she doesn’t want to talk to you, I won’t force her.”
“You realize that could seriously impede my investigation, yes?” came the annoyed answer.
“I’m aware. I hear you out there, come on in.”
The Amicus flinched. She’d been living in the same house as the elf for three years! That should have been plenty of time to get used to his unnatural hearing. Annoyed with herself, and with her lips pressed together, she pushed open the door further.
She didn’t recognize the man standing across from her master. Dark skin, close-cropped hair, and a neat suit, that was her first impression as he turned around. Her second impression was a controlled cynicism that told her he would be easily annoyed if she gave him grief.
After meeting his eye briefly, she quickly dropped her gaze to her toes.
“You are Amicus Nark?” said the stranger briefly.
She nodded wordlessly.
“I’m told you were the one who caught the intruder last night. I’m here to get your account of it.”
She shrugged. “Nothing to tell,” she said flatly.
“Sometimes the smallest details are the turning point in the investigation,” he said dismissively. “You could hold the key to catching whoever sent it.”
As he spoke, his whole manner rubbed at her and caused her insides to turn to iron. Before stopping herself, she raised only her eyes to shoot him a subtle glare. If she’d been a dog, she would have snarled and growled.
She could already tell that this man was a wretch.
Not a spill brain, though, so if he was serious about catching the perpetrator, then she’d help. Starting with the most important information.
“It was Regent Trovinski,” she said flatly. “Or one of his people.”
Instantly, the room took on the temperature of an icebox.
“Do you have proof of that?”
She kept her eyes on the ground, lips pressed together. No, of course not. She just knew the smell. It always hung around him, like he was carrying a long-dead rat in his pocket, and it clung to anyone he happened to have close ties with. Well, anyone he’d given his mana to, anyway.
But she couldn’t say that.
“Do. You. Have. Proof?”

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