Court of Fives

As I begin to wash myself I think about Gargaron’s threat to sell me to the mines. Father once told us that prisoners and indentured servants sent to the mines are forced to work the most grueling and dangerous jobs.

But I don’t want to think about Father or anything he ever told me, so as I scrub myself down I pretend I am scouring all traces of him out of my flesh and my heart. After I’ve washed I rinse down my hair and blot out as much water as I can. The towel is a square of linen the length of my arm. It isn’t big enough to wrap around me so I sit and drape it across my lap.

Then I wait.

My thoughts scurry home. Has Lord Gargaron evicted Mother and my sisters? With their clothes burned, what will they wear? Can I run away and find them?

So abruptly I am not prepared for it, the curtain sweeps aside and three men enter. Two are Commoners and one is a Patron. Their skin is sheeny with sweat and gritty with sand and scrapes. They don’t see me in the corner as they begin stripping out of their Fives gear. The Patron is talking all the while.

“And then he said, ‘I’ll wager ten bars that the brown girl beats him,’ and Nar said, ‘Ten bars? I wouldn’t take that bet if it was for a sip of beer because it’s obvious she’s going to beat him.…’”

I cough.

Startled, they peer into the shadowed corner where I huddle.

The Patron waves as at a fly. “Girl! You can’t be in here. It’s men’s bath time now. Get out.”

“I have no clothes.”

As the words slide out of my mouth, I realize nothing but this scrap of cloth conceals my genitals. I grab a second towel and hold it over my breasts.

“Good Goat,” says the elder Commoner, a man with a shaved head who appears a bit older than my father. “You must be a fledgling.”

The Patron has an oddly familiar face but I don’t know him. He laughs. “How like Tana to forget about her. Is the old mare sucking shadow-smoke again?”

They yank their clothes back on and tromp out.

Sooner than I expect Tana reappears, muttering about goat-footed smoke-heads and their disrespect. She tosses a bundle of clothes at me, underthings, leggings, a Fives tunic, and a belt; she has a good eye for size. Last, she offers me several pairs of five-toed leather slippers, and I find the best fit.

“We eat at midday at the bell. I’ll show you where to get water.”

Beside the kitchen a pipe empties in a trickle into a brass basin surrounded by a decorative brass tree from which brass cups dangle.

I reach for a cup but she slaps my hand away. “You’ll get your own cup if you pass muster.”

She deserts me again. Each cup is etched with a different mark: a flower, a spiral, a hand. I’m so thirsty. I glance around to make sure no one is in sight, then cup my hands and drink in gulps until my thirst eases.

Looking around I spot a spectators’ terrace, a raised set of stepped benches under an awning. Tana climbs to the highest benches and joins the three men now sitting there. They are the ones who interrupted me in the baths. I sit below them at the edge of the shade so it doesn’t seem like I’m encroaching. Yet they pay no attention to me. Evidently I will remain invisible unless I pass muster. It’s better that way.

Everything seems distant and unreal, like my shadow has come half unmoored from my body. I can’t even recall when I was last happy until I remember how I felt while I was waiting to climb the ladder for my one chance at running a trial. The memory of the crowd singing drifts through my head as I look over the practice court. I’m so dazed that patterns seem to unfold across the course to the rhythm of the well-known song.

Canvas walls block out a maze in Pillars, throwing shadows along the ground as if they are pinned there waiting to leap out and swallow unsuspecting adversaries, as it says in the song: Shadows fall where pillars stand.

Traps is a series of balance and maneuvering exercises, beams and ropes and a bridge with basic traps, but when I blink, motes of light spin in my vision, sparks like grains of sand swirling along the dark lines of rope and beam the way blood rushes in veins through the body. Posts of various heights and with a mix of handholds and angles crowd Trees; standing at the pinnacle is like displaying your reputation of honor and glory to all people, your name so bright that everyone knows you.

I rub my eyes, trying to focus, and when I open them the world looks ordinary again.

Rivers is a shallow pool measuring twenty by twenty strides; painted wooden roundels just big enough to stand on are being drawn back and forth by ropes as a pair of lads no older than me try to jump from one to the next without getting their feet wet. The boys are fledglings. Once I might have scoffed at their clumsiness, but Anise taught us that scoffing at people who aren’t as skilled or as established is a sign of weakness. As the shorter boy splashes into ankle-deep water, the spectators laugh. I cautiously look more closely at Tana and the men.