17. Fourteen

Senna's brute squad dumped me in the dirt outside. It was dark, the deepest part of the night when all decent folk were asleep. My heart was pounding, adrenaline demanding I rise and fight.

Before me stood Ruith, my master, a torch in his hand. He looked down at me, his expression carefully blank.

"He raised his hand to the overseer," the brutes reported.

I looked up at Ruith in challenge. What are you going to do? Hit me with the rod? Send me to a cage? What pain can you inflict that I haven't already suffered? How will you spin this to your advantage? This thing you couldn't have expected or planned for.

The torch crackled, fire dancing in the dark.

"The punishment for raising a hand to the overseer is twenty lashes," Ruith announced. "Take him to the post."

An icy fear settled in the pit of my stomach. I swallowed it down. It was only pain. A lot of it, but I would endure.

"Someone roust the slaves," Ruith was demanding as I was yanked to my feet. "I want them all to see what happens to the insubordinate in this camp."

I walked rather than be dragged and put on a brave face as they hauled me toward the center of the camp. Near where they'd dug out the fighting pits, a large wooden post had been hastily erected. They were still pounding it solidly into the ground when we approached. Sleepy eyed slaves were herded like cattle out from their tents, shivering with more than cold. Fear colored their faces. They huddled close, unsure of what to expect.

Scanning their faces, I spotted a head of dark, curly hair and narrowed my eyes at Nessir. He simply smirked, thinking he'd won.

They hate you, Ruith had said. You'll find no allies among them. And he was right.

Yet I was to be their example. I supposed it was effective. If the prince's bed slave could be flogged publicly, it could happen to any of them.

Senna came forward and tied me to the post with thick leather cording. "I warned you," mumbled the old Savarran. Then he stepped aside, unfurling a leather whip with half a dozen thick knots in the tails. I flinched as hands belonging to unseen elves opened the back of my tunic. They didn't even take it off me, just ripped it open.

Senna stepped out of sight, and I braced myself, his footsteps halting a short distance behind me. The night was painfully silent. I looked up and found the distant glow of the moon and the wispy clouds crowding her.

"Wait," Ruith called, breaking the silence.

I twisted to look over my shoulder as much as I was able. The air grew tense enough I thought it might snap.

He stepped forward, claiming the whip from Senna. "Whomever gives the order should see it carried out."

Senna bowed and retreated, and the whip unfurled once more.

A cold wind whispered through the gathering. There must have been hundreds of people standing in that circle, yet the only sound was the slight creak of leather, the mild rustle of clothing, the bark of a distant hound. The night itself took a breath. I squared my jaw and looked for the moon again, but found even she had hidden her face.

The first bite of the whip was more shocking than painful. A dozen stinging lines burned their way across my bare back and retreated. It wasn't until they were gone that I felt the claw marks they left behind, and I had just enough time to acknowledge it before the whip fell again. The second time was worse. Some of the leather knots landed in the same place twice in a row. Rough edges of knots split open the flesh. I opened my mouth, but I had no voice to scream. There was only the impotent puff of air that might've been a shout of pain. My back arched on instinct, which only made the strikes hurt worse. My chest pressed into the rough wood of the post and my wrists twisted, fighting the restraints. A tingling numbness spread into my fingers from where I was cutting off the circulation with my fight. I blinked, and a tear fell, steaming against the chill of the night. My back wept tears of blood.

The only sounds were my rough, heaving breaths and the crack of the whip as it tasted flesh.

Pain blurred into pain and…something else. My body jerked with every impact, and I felt the sting, but it was as if my mind had separated from my body. The world came into focus, the edges of every sight, sound, and taste sharper. It was as if I were being given the chance to take a step back and consider my actions in the grand scheme of things. Defending myself had been pointless. It had changed nothing about my situation except to make it worse.

I thought of Nessir and the game he had played with me. It was a lesson. He was teaching me again how helpless I really was.

Time, pain, and the strikes blurred together. I teetered on the edge of consciousness, blackness throbbing at the edge of my vision. I didn't even realize the beating had stopped until the pressure on my wrists loosened.

Vaguely, I was aware of being carried somewhere. When I opened my eyes, I recognized Ruith's tent. I was lying on his bed while the camp physician applied a stinging ointment to my back.

"There will be scarring," the physician announced. "Without magic, it will take some time to heal. He should be on light duty to keep them from being torn open." He frowned and dabbed at a particularly tender spot. "You could have been gentler with the lash, Ruith."

"Yes," Ruith agreed quietly. "I could have."

The physician left, and the tent darkened. Ruith sat on the bed next to me, admiring his handiwork. He'd shed the clothes he'd been wearing out at the post, wearing instead a long, thin garment draped around his shoulders. His chest was bare and his hair down and unbraided. In the flickering light of some distant fire, he almost didn't look like the monster he was.

Somehow, I found the strength to shift my hand and make a gesture like writing, asking for my slate. He frowned. For a second, I didn't think he'd give it to me, but I saw the moment his curiosity won out. Ruith rose and returned a moment later, dropping the slate and chalk on the mattress.

It took a long time to write what I wanted to say. Not because it was complicated, but because moving hurt and I had to translate it in my head. When I finished, I passed him the slate bearing possibly the most dangerous message I had ever written. "You should have killed me."

He cupped my cheek in a gesture that was both possessive and far too gentle for a creature with such hatred of me. "I don't discard what's still useful to me. Not as long as I have the choice not to. Rest, now." He took the slate away and stretched out on the bed next to me. Despite lying just inches from his enemy, he slept without fear that I would kill him. Whether it was due to his arrogance or my weakness, I didn't know.

I woke briefly some time later to find his side of the bed empty. Voices carried from the main area of the tent. It was daylight, and I was cold.

"He should be healed," Katyr was saying. "Let me bring a mage healer."

"No." Ruith. "He'll get mundane treatments only. No magic."

"Why not? Is it not enough that you beat him soundly? Do you delight in having him lie there in pain?"

Ruith was quiet for a moment. "Pain is a good teacher, and he still has time yet to learn."

"He's running a fever. He could have an infection, Ruith. He could die! If you value his life, you need to—"

"He can't be given special treatment, Kat. He has to suffer like any other slave. They won't respect him if he's coddled."

Katyr said, "He'll learn nothing if he's dead. This is pointless suffering, and you are being cruel. You asked me to be your conscience if you went too far. This is too far. You will kill him if you continue."

Ruith sighed, and a long pause followed before Ruith relented. "Very well. I will allow a healer to treat him, but only enough to ensure he lives. Let the scars and the pain remain."

When I woke again, several more days must have passed. A thin sheen of sweat covered my body like I'd broken a fever and I lay on my side, facing Ruith. He sat on the edge of the bed, watching me.

I thought, in my half-awake stupor, that he was Torrin and reached out to touch him. But Torrin was dead.

"Why does your king wear a mask?" Ruith asked.

I blinked. The question seemed to have come out of nowhere, and it was too complicated to answer, even if he'd given me my slate. I lifted my head from the pillow that now smelled like sweat.

Ruith stood. Clothes landed with a heavy rustle on the mattress in front of me. "Dress," he commanded. "And come with me."

I soon learned that clothing was a crueler torture than the lash itself. My back had laid naked while I was healing except for healing ointments. Now, the rough linen of my slave garments grated over the scabs, shifting painfully with every step.

We walked through the camp together, Ruith and I, unspeaking. He went with my leash in one hand and the rod in the other. I frowned when I realized we'd taken the long way for some reason. He had guided us through the slave encampment.

Eyes that had before looked at me with disdain now held pity. No one spat on me. It was not a warm reception by any means, but perhaps a little more understanding.

At the infirmary, we were stopped several paces out and given cloths to cover our faces. The place seemed full to bursting, every bed occupied. Some were even standing in the eves of the tent, stripped down to nothing while elven soldiers in makeshift masks scrutinized their bodies. Careful hands prodded at small marks on the skin under spelled lights.

I smelled it before I saw it, the familiar rotten floral scent of decaying flesh on living things. When Ruith ushered me into a small exam room where a dead man waited under a pale white sheet, I already knew what had killed the man, but couldn't speak it.

The physician, masked, garbed, and careful, drew back the white sheet and I found myself looking at a familiar face. A human face, or what was left of one. The rot had eaten most of it, leaving the lip curled and much of the jaw exposed. Black rot ringed in white scabs stretched down the left side of his face where red angry scratches marked his jaw. There would be more under his arms, in his groin, over his chest. The itching was ceaseless.

The recognition must've shown on my face because Ruith said, "You've seen this before."

I gave a slight nod and gingerly took the slate when he offered it to me.

"What is it?"

They called it Reaper Rot in some cities. In others, it was Black Scale. Some simply called it the Pestilence. Wherever it took root, it spread like wildfire, and it killed one in three within a week. Those were the lucky ones. The unlucky went much slower, giving the disease its final and most sinister of names. The Slow Rot, or simply Rot. It could live on the skin for decades, slowly eating it away, leaving its victims alive and disfigured, but rotten like the living dead.

All of that was too much to write, so I put simply, "This is why Michail wears his mask."