Brann looked at him. He knew he could trust no one, but he also knew that he was in a city of strangers and alien customs. Trust or not trust, either path carried grave risks. He would decide when the moment came. If the moment came. Right now, he just raised his eyebrows. ‘You would do that for me? Knowing the consequences if it went wrong?’
Marlo shrugged. ‘I know everyone here. But I only have one friend.’
Brann’s breath caught in surprise, the answer touching at his fragile control over the sadness that sat within him, pushed deep and out of sight. Then Marlo brightened, his grin lightening the mood. ‘You must be hungry.’ Brann realised he was.
They followed the smell of lunch even above the perfume of the garden and, when they emerged with hands full of steaming bowls to sit on a bench, their backs against the building wall, Brann felt almost content.
‘No training today,’ Marlo grinned, stirring the meat of his stew with a hunk of freshly baked bread, ‘so this lunchtime you can stuff yourself.’ Brann already was.
They ate in silence, if silence meant no words. Such was Brann’s hunger that he ate with a desperation that produced a noise similar to the feeding pigs in the pen where old farmer Donnuld had kept them just south of his village. Even the thought of his village was unable to curtail his anger, however.
‘Oh, how good it is to see a young boy eat with such healthy gusto!’ Salus stood over him, beaming as ever. ‘You are feeling better, then?’ Brann nodded without missing a bite. ‘The lady of the house sort you out?’ He nodded again. ‘Your young companion given you the guided tour?’ He frowned in confusion. Marlo’s foot kicked his ankle. He nodded vigorously. ‘Good, good. I’d better get in there while you two have still left some food for the rest of us.’
Brann studiously mopped up the last of his gravy with the last of his bread until the big man had disappeared inside. ‘Guided tour?’
‘I was supposed to do that before you ate, but you wanted to spend too much time gossiping and sitting amongst flowers.’ He sat his empty bowl down, stretched and burped. ‘Anyway, this,’ he slapped the wall of the building they were resting against, ‘where they store the food, prepare it and serve it, is the Food House. Down across the end, where you woke up this morning, is the Sleeping House, and separate from the rest, of course, is the Shit House.’ He waved a hand straight in front of them. ‘Over there, where you got your weapons, is the Weapons House and beside the end of it, where our cheerful smith works away happily, is…’
‘Is the Smith House,’ Brann cut in. ‘I think I get it.’
Marlo looked at him. ‘… is the Forge. Who would call it a Smith House?’ He shook his head. ‘Down behind the Sleeping House is the Practice House, where the fighters can train if the weather drives us all inside, and beyond that are the Training Fields where you, well, train. Oh, and up at the top, where you were this morning, that’s the Big House. There you go. Guided tour done. How hard was that? Let’s get some cake.’
Food and a doze in the sun took them to the time to return to Tyrala. As they walked through the garden, Brann was reminded of the question he had unsuccessfully tried on their journey down, and reworded it.
‘Why are you with me? Were you not just supposed to be there when I couldn’t use my hands? And anyway, if I am a slave and you are free, why are you told to help me? Should it not be the reverse?’
‘Not in here. Slave and free are alike in here. All are men and women, all are members of Cassian’s School, no matter how we arrived here. You are further ahead than me, and so I help you. All apprentices are assigned to a fighter, to shadow them so we know what is expected when we start training. Normally we also clean any weapons you use but in your case, Cassian has decided that you should do that as weapons seem to be woefully unfamiliar to you and he thinks it will help you to get to know them.’
‘You have got off lightly, then.’
‘Not really. I also have to help you with the things you don’t know. Given your lack of knowledge so far, cleaning a few weapons seems trivial.’
Brann couldn’t deny it.
The afternoon session with Tyrala, he was delighted to discover, was more to ease his muscles rather than batter them back into shape. Still, he surprised himself at how early he felt ready for bed.
It was barely beyond dawn and scarcely with any warning when he found himself shouted awake. The routine for all fighters was the same, falling out of bed and following Salus on a run six times around a well-worn track immediately inside the perimeter of the compound, then wash shoulder to shoulder at a stone trough that ran the length of the outside of the Sleeping Building. Brann counted around two score fighters, a dozen of them women. They did everything as a group: sleep, wash, run, eat. Or, at least, they tried to. Brann had found himself detached behind the group by the time they completed two laps.
A leather-clad woman, almost as tall as Salus and broader, glanced sideways at him as she splashed water from the trough onto her face and rubbed it under her armpits with vigour. ‘Pity you’re not as good at running as dancing. Or maybe you need some wine to help you along? Even my arse was in your vision, when I should have been looking at your scrawny effort.’
His chest still heaving, he mumbled, ‘I’m just not a natural runner. I can walk up hills all day, but I’m not built for running.’
She snorted. ‘Not many hills in the contest circles. And your legs’ll need to go faster than a walk.’
A voice spoke up on his other side. ‘Leave him be, Breta. We were all new here once.’ It was another woman, but one who couldn’t be more different in size and shape from the first, her slender body that of a young boy and hair cropped to match. She grinned at him. ‘Mongoose.’
‘What?’
‘Mongoose. That’s what they call me. You know a mongoose?’ He shook his head blankly. ‘They bring them here for the shows, all the way from the lands over where the sun rises. Small, furry, cute things. But put them in front of snakes and they’re different. You know, the snakes that do this,’ she lifted her hand and formed her fingers into a wedge that darted to jab Brann on the cheek, ‘before you even see it coming? Well, the mongoose is quicker.’
‘What’s your real name?’
She returned to the trough. ‘Don’t know. Don’t care. I like Mongoose. It fits.’
Salus clipped the back of his head. ‘If you’ve finished trying to charm the local talent, new boy, I’d get to the food before it is gone.’
On the training field, Salus took them through a series of exercises that stretched every part of their body. They were a mixed lot, Brann saw. Men and women alike looked drawn from the length of the Empire as well as many of the free countries in the direction of his homeland. Shapes and sizes differed as much as colours of hair and skin, bit all moved through the exercises with a grace that spoke of familiarity. He, by contrast, constantly felt on the verge of toppling. They were watched all the while by Cassian and Tyrala, sitting in the shade of a canopy atop a small man-made ridge that afforded them a view of every person. Brann felt that neither pair of eyes missed a thing, and his balance grew even worse with the thought.
A shout from Salus split them into four groups. ‘Light sparring,’ he shouted, throwing a selection of wooden swords and shields beside each group. ‘Winner stays on.’ Four circles were marked out by ropes