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“One thousand.” Serel echoed the number that had been circling my thoughts all night, letting out a
whistle of amazement. He ran a hand through blond hair, pushing it away from his face. “You did it. How did you even manage that?”
“Eight years,” I murmured. Mostly to myself, because a part of me still couldn’t believe it. “Eight years of work.”
I folded my hands over my stomach, blinking up at the ceiling. Serel and I laid splayed out on the floor of my modest bedchamber, exhausted. The party had gone on until the small hours of the morning, and while Serel had clearly been ready to retreat to his own room and crawl into bed, I dragged him to mine. I had to tell someone, and Serel was the only one I trusted enough.
I wouldn’t sleep that night, I already knew. I was so excited that my hands still trembled now, hours later. It killed me that I couldn’t meet with Esmaris tonight, dump that pile of gold on his desk, and walk away. It would probably be another day or two before he had the time to arrange a private meeting with me.
“He never told me I could buy my freedom,” Serel
grumbled.
“I asked him.”
“Of course you did.”
“Well… demanded, I suppose.” “Of course you did.”
I let out a small chuckle. Esmaris had owned me for perhaps a year at that point, and I recalled feeling rich the first time I performed at one of his parties, where guests tossed a few silver coins at me here and there. Over the course of the year, I hoarded them until I had a grand total of fifty silver pieces — half a single gold piece. To me, a little girl from a village that dealt mostly in trade, that was a mind-boggling amount of money. The moment I got my fiftieth piece, I marched up to Esmaris, thrust the pile of coins into his hands, and announced that I was buying myself back from him. “Surely this is a good price,” I had told him, careful to sound much more confident than I felt. I had already learned by then that everything in this life needed to be a performance.
I was lucky. That stunt probably would have gotten me
whipped with any other owner. Now, I looked back and cringed because I didn’t even realize how lucky I was — lucky that Esmaris was, and has always been, genuinely fond of me. He had looked down at me then with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth, even as his dark gaze remained typically sharp.
“You are worth far more than fifty silvers, Tisanaah,” he had said.
“Seventy-five, then,” I countered, and he had sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.
“You are worth one thousand gold,” he told me, at last. “That can be the price of your freedom.”
At the time, I couldn’t even comprehend that kind of wealth. Even all these years later, that was still a struggle
— even now that I physically had it in my possession.
I watched the slave trade closely in the years since. I now knew that one thousand gold was actually grossly over-value for what I was. I had seen real Valtain, with uninterrupted albino skin and pure silver hair, go for nine
hundred. No matter how hard I worked at my magic or my dances, I was still Fragmented. That one green eye and splotches of golden skin reduced my value significantly. But I wanted my freedom more than anything, and if Esmaris wanted one thousand for that, well then, I would just have to make it happen.
And I did. Somehow, I did.
“He was handsome,” Serel mused. “That guest. You should have found him afterwards and thanked him.” He caught my eye and grinned, winking.
I scoffed. “That was all for show. He was more interested in you than me.”
“Really?” Serel sat up, shocked. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier? That never happens.”
“You don’t want to get tangled up in that.” “Yes I do!”
“Fine. I’m sorry. I was distracted.” I turned my head to meet his tired blue-eyed stare. “At least now you know for next time he’s here.”
“He probably won’t be invited back, after that display,” he sighed. What both of us knew but didn’t say aloud was that it was probably for the better. Dalliances with the wealthy were extremely risky for people like us. I had learned that the hard way, once, and was rewarded with a broken heart and ten lashes to the backs of my thighs. I could still count every individual strike in the scars.
If Serel was ever caught with a wealthy man? Death. No
question.
There was a long silence. I had thought that Serel had finally dozed off, until he asked, quietly, “So what now? The Orders?”
I nodded. “The Orders.”
“I’ll be honest,” he whispered, “I never thought it would happen.”
Neither did I, I wanted to say, but as a rule I didn’t
dignify uncertainty out loud.
“I’m proud of you, Ti. If anyone deserves it—” “You deserve it. All of us deserve it.”
Deserve. I hated that word, even though I had spent so
much of my life clinging to it.
“We’ll get there.” He said it so simply, so matter-of-factly.
I sat up, swinging my legs beneath me, looking down at him as he lay there with his hands behind his head. It was always so easy for him to assume the best in people, in life. At first I had thought it was a mask he slipped on, the way I slipped into my flirty dances and practiced my confidence until it was a begrudging part of me. But soon I learned that he really meant it — really believed it. Even though his story was just as bloody as mine.
I had recognized that kindness in him the very first time I saw him. I had traveled with Esmaris on a short business trip to a neighboring city, and I had sat behind him and watched as rows of slaves were marched through the marketplace. It was awful. The pain and terror in the air was unbearable, tearing through my head and my muscles as if I were experiencing the worst day in the lives of dozens of people, all at once — and on top of that, vividly reliving mine, too.
But even through that tangle of emotions, Serel had caught my eye. He had stopped to comfort a young girl beside him — younger than I was when I stood in their place — and even though it had earned him a shout and a vicious lash from the slaver, he had still offered that child such a genuine smile. Serel was tall and muscular, but all I could see were those big watery blue eyes, those features that were so kind and delicate that they were almost childlike.
If Esmaris did not purchase him, he would have been bought by a mercenary faction. He would have become one of the men that yanked my family from their beds that night, years ago. And I couldn’t bear to see that happen.
“What about that one?” I had whispered to Esmaris. “He is just what you’re looking for.”
If Esmaris had given thought to why I had such an interest in this one handsome young man, or had any assumptions about why that might be the case, he didn’t show it. After a moment of thought, he raised his palm, and Serel was his.
I had spent a long time in his bed that night, as if he expected compensation for ceding to my request. But it was worth it, because Serel quickly became the best friend I had ever had — before slavery or after.
Now, I watched my friend with a lump rising in my throat, suddenly emotional for reasons I couldn’t explain. For a moment, the idea of giving him my money — buying his freedom — crossed my mind. He was better than I was. Deserved it more.
“I’ll come back, you know,” I murmured. “For all of you.
I’ll have connections, I’ll have resources—”
He reached up and patted my knee, as if he understood the guilt churning through my stomach. “I know you will.”
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EVENTUALLY POOR SEREL couldn’t take it anymore and wandered back to his own room to get some much-needed sleep, leaving me alone in mine. I was exhausted, but I knew there was no use even trying to rest. Instead, I paced.
This was a slightly dizzying endeavor, considering that my room was only barely larger than my bed. Still, it was clean and well kept, with nice furniture and a few decorations. Esmaris sometimes brought me little gifts from his travels, which lined the shelves around my room. But my most treasured possessions were the ones that came from Ara.
Ara, a little island thousands of miles away, primarily known as the home of the Twin Orders: the Order of Midnight and the Order of Daybreak.
Ara, the place I would be going the minute I purchased my freedom.
That thought — or the pacing, or exhaustion, or all three
— began to make me nauseous. I dropped to the floor, yanking a worn wooden box from the bottom of my bookshelf. In it were some pieces of junk (a stone from Ara’s beaches, a few pieces of paper with circular markings scribbled on them) and several books. I pulled out the one with the plain blue cover, unmarked other than the silver moon and gold sun insignias foiled on the front.
The symbols of the Orders.
I threw it open and flipped through its pages. My fingertips traced over the pictures, the raised ink, the still-unfamiliar writing, as I practiced my Aran beneath my breath. I paused at one sprawling illustration that covered a set of facing pages: a drawing of founders of the Order of Midnight and the Order of Daybreak, Rosira and Araich Shelaene. Blues and purples swirled around Rosira, framing her white hair against a moon silhouette, while fire circled Araich. Their palms touched across the seam of the binding.
Rosira represented the Valtain, magic Wielders with albino skin and white hair, who comprised the Order of Midnight. And Araich represented the Solarie, non-Valtain magic Wielders who comprised the Order of Daybreak. Their magic complemented each other even as it contradicted, like two sides of the same coin.
The book, along with all of my trinkets from Ara, had been a gift from Zeryth Aldris. He was a traveler from Ara and a high-ranking member of the Orders who would stay at Esmaris’s estate as a guest for a few days at a time. I was immediately fascinated by him. I had never met anyone who looked anything like me before, even though, unlike
me, his colorless skin and white hair were uninterrupted — a full Valtain. I took to following him around like a lost puppy, but he was kind to me and seemed to enjoy indulging my curiosities. I would listen to him for hours as he would tell me in fractured Thereni about the Orders and their history.
And then, during the days, I watched as Zeryth mingled with Esmaris and his nobles. I observed the way people smiled at him, deferred to him, looked at him with the same fearful respect that many reserved only for Esmaris himself.
Something had clicked into place, then. As a member of the Order of Midnight, Zeryth had resources. He had support. He had protection. And most importantly, he had power.
Everything I needed to make my survival worth what it cost my family. Everything I needed to become something.
“Could I become a member of the Orders?” I had asked Zeryth, later, eying my hands and the splotches of sand-colored skin that crawled across two of my fingers.
“Certainly,” he replied, giving me a dazzling smile that made my fourteen-year-old self melt. “Fragmented or no, you are still a Valtain.”
Well. That was all the encouragement I needed.
I threw myself into it from that day on. I researched the Orders obsessively. I practiced Aran in whispers at night, teaching myself what I could of their strange, frustrating language. Zeryth would visit several other times over the years, and with each return, he would bring me little gifts from the Orders and put up with my incessant questions.
He had promised me that if I made it to Ara, he would introduce me to the Orders. I hoped he was ready to make good on that promise.
A shiver ran through my body, and I looked down to see that my hands were trembling around the yellow pages.
No. No sleep tonight, that was for sure.
Instead I stayed awake until the beginnings of dawn seeped through my curtains. I read every book Zeryth had given me, cover to cover. I practiced every Aran phrase I knew, and repeated ones I didn’t until they sounded secure on my tongue. I filled my brain with plans until there was no room left for fear or uncertainty.
Hours. Only hours remained, before everything I knew would change.
I hoped they were ready for me. I hoped I was ready for them.
