That was the very first day I saw Tamura. He was already something of a legend down in the Pit and I had heard his name spoken before. Never kindly. But I'd yet to see the old man. These days I know every line and scar on his face. I could sketch that leathery bastard from memory. I have done just that more than once. A person's face tells the story of their life with every crease, mar, and dimple. I've known people able to read a person's past simply by their face— I have never developed that skill, but I enjoy sketching and I have always been one to draw inspiration from those around me. Tamura's face was weather-beaten leather even back in those days. I sometimes wonder what that face had seen. What Tamura's past might tell us? What it might teach us? I know bits and pieces, the little things he can remember. The sad truth of it is, Tamura is as addled as a moonfish dropped on its head far too many times and can barely remember yesterday. He has forgotten more than most of us will ever know.
I was hurrying down a corridor, passing a number of tunnels running off in every direction. I knew the stairs down should be close by, and I still had another four levels to go before I reached my own home. I've always had a good nose for direction and, though I'd never been to that part of the Pit before, I knew where I was headed. Tamura was halfway down an abandoned tunnel. The old man had a small oil lantern burning away on the floor behind him. His skin was dark as night, but his hair was a pattern of whites and greys all clumped together in tight, greasy locks that hung down past his shoulders. He stood there, staring up at the roof of the tunnel. Still and silent. And quite mad.
I thought Tamura was crazy at the start. I still think he's crazy. Maybe it was the rigours of the Pit that shattered his mind or maybe it was something else. It was certainly something. If only I had thought to talk to him that day. If only I had listened to the madness he spewed out. I might have saved us all a lot of pain. But I was angry and confused, and I trusted no one, especially not a half-insane old man who lingered in dark tunnels to pass the time. I heard plenty of horror stories about people like that, and most of them ended with a very clear kernel of advice: Stay the fuck away. I left him there and spared his vigil of the tunnel roof no mind.
Josef was waiting for me back in our cavern. He was always waiting for me after my visits to the overseer. He knew the sorts of things I'd been through, had suffered through similar himself. Josef was always there for me in case I needed to talk or scream, or maybe just lend a shoulder when I needed to cry.
"What did he ask you this time?" Josef said as I slumped down next to him and accepted the heel of stale bread he offered.
"Where we trained," I said. "No. Where I trained. He didn't mention you."
Hardt and Isen were in another corner trading lazy blows. At least that was what I believed at the time. I know now that Hardt was helping Isen train. Pugilism is the art of fist fighting and it was extremely popular in the Pit. A scab could earn extra rations, alcohol, or a host of other rewards just by fighting in the arena below. They didn't even need to win, though losing was not advisable. Some men only fought when it was to the death. Yorin was one of those. The king of the arena, they called him, and he had never lost a fight. Strangely, there was never a shortage of scabs willing to challenge him. I wondered if some saw it as a way out. A final solution to their misery. I can think of a hundred ways less painful than challenging that monster to a fight.
I watched Isen duck and move. Watched him fire off a series of quick blows, staring at the way his muscles moved underneath his skin as they flexed, and I felt myself warm at the sight.
"Eska. What did you tell him?" Josef asked and I got the feeling it was not the first time.
"The truth." I saw no reason to lie to the overseer and I saw no reason to lie to Josef. Only after the words were out of my mouth did I realise it was a betrayal. Whether the overseer already knew the answer or not, I was a prisoner of war and it was my responsibility to fight him, no matter what. The truth was staring me in the face, but I had been to bloody stupid to see it. Of course he asked me an asinine question he already knew the answer to. It was never about the answer. The overseer was trying to establish a rapport. He asked a question, I answered, he gave me a reward. The fucker was trying to train me like an animal. Well, I would bloody well show him that this animal has teeth.
"Good," Josef said. He leaned forwards and hugged me. "No sense in angering him. We need to survive, Eska. Both of us. There's no shame in telling the overseer what he already knows."
I saw a strange thing in Josef's eyes then. I saw hope rekindled from embers I had long believed dead. I wondered what sort of power could put a man back together again after being broken for so long. And they had broken Josef the moment Orran surrendered. The answer to that question terrified me when I finally learned the truth, and it haunts my nightmares even to this day.
Chapter 6
I was just six years old when the Orran recruiters came for me. They knew what they had even before they started my training; the diviners told them I was special, a powerful Sourcerer in the making. All I knew was that one moment I was playing in the trees, not a care in the world as only a child can, then I was sitting on a horse in front of a woman I didn't know. Larrisa, was her name and she smelled of wood smoke, always of wood smoke.
When I think back now, I can't remember much else about Larrisa. I believe she was kind despite having just ripped me away from my family. I was scared. It was the first time I had ever really left Keshin, certainly the first time I had ever left the forest save for climbing above the canopy. I didn't even have my family for company. That was quite the shock. We grew up poor, as village folk often are. We had a small home, barely more than two rooms, really. We cooked in one of those rooms and slept in the other, and my parents hung a blanket across that second room whenever they wanted time for intimacy. My brother and I huddled together at night on the same pallet. I found that separation to be one of the most difficult things to deal with. I both hated and loved my brother. He was both a bully and a bore in equal measure, but those first few nights away from Keshin, I struggled to find sleep without the smell of him beside me. We cling to things, familiar things, not because they are good for us, but because we are scared that the unknown might be worse.
I cried a lot in those days, but then I've never been afraid to cry. Some people tell me it shows weakness. I have never seen having emotion as a weakness, nor showing them. My emotions have always made me stronger. My hatred and anger give me strength when it should fail. My love and compassion have made me allies that otherwise might have been enemies. I have known emperors who were trained to wear their face like a mask, fall. Yet I have sat on a throne of corpses, and it was my emotions that helped put me here.
It was a long, hard journey from my old home to my new. I remember that much, though not many of the specifics. Memory is a strange thing. I know the journey was a hard one. I know I felt exhausted and scared. I know I ached from long days atop a horse and how mysterious that beast seemed to me at the time. Yet, when I think back on those memories now, I see them as happy. It was my first time out in the world and I saw more in those weeks than in the past six years of my life. I missed my family, and I didn't understand why I had been taken from them, but the distractions of the world outside Keshin kept those fears confined to tears cried into the darkness each night.