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:: It was a long, hot day and you're looking forward to an :: :: ice cold drink in the tavern before heading home. When :: :: you walk in all the tables are full, but there's plenty :: :: of room at the counter. Strangely, there's only one :: :: young woman sitting there. Even more strange is that :: :: she's not unattractive, and yet noone seems to be trying :: :: to make conversation. Shaking your head to clear it of :: :: these random thoughts, you sit down at the bar and order :: :: a drink. As soon as you do, the young woman leans over :: :: and, with that particular sort of deliberate speech of :: :: someone hip-deep in their cups, she starts to tell you :: :: her life story - loudly, and with feeling. :: :: :: :: "Well", you think to yourself, "At least now I know why :: :: there was nobody sitting at the bar.." "Ters bought me off a man in a market three towns over. I know because I heard him say the price out loud once, with all the emotion of someone quoting the cost of rope. I guess it didn't occur to him I was close enough to hear my own price. More likely, he just didn't care. Guessing if he'd realized how weak I was, he wouldn't have bought me at all. "Most of the kids Ters bought took to sneaking like it was breathing. You'd watch them cross a room and never hear a footfall, weight already shifting to the next stride before the last one landed, quick feet making it seem easy to slide a knife into someone's back. Ters called it a rogue's instinct. Said you couldn't teach it into somebody who didn't have it, only sharpen what was already there. "Yeah, I didn't have it." You eye the girl's bone structure and wonder if she realizes she was born a poet, not a rogue. But you don't say anything. Talking would only encourage her. "Whatever that thing was that let a body move like a gust of wind, mine didn't do it. I'd stand where I was supposed to duck. Step where I was supposed to glide. Grab where I should've waited a half-second longer. It wasn't for lack of trying. Baekho knows, I tried till my knees were bruised from falling over my own feet. My body just isn't built for that kind of work, never would be. No matter how many hours Ters and his boys put into trying to beat it into me. "So since I'm no good with knives or fists, he stuck me in the back room grinding roots and brewing poisons. Ters wouldn't waste stock he'd already paid for. A sick girl with steady hands and a marketable skill still sells better than a body in the river, so he found a job that fit what was left of me, and used me for it. Guess I'm just lucky I'm homely, eh? "There were maybe six or seven of us at a time. Bought, trained, worked, and sold out onto the street to earn back the price he'd paid plus whatever margin he figured he was owed for the trouble of raising us. Most of them I don't remember, but I remember Ren. "She came in smaller than the rest, all spit and vinegar and spite, and right away Ters started putting her up against boys twice her size to teach her what's what. I think that was his whole method, and it never changed. Break a kid all the way down, past the crying, and the begging, past that dark little hidey-hole place their mind where they still believe somebody's coming to make it stop. Then, when there's nothing left standing, he'd take whatever pieces were left and build the tool he actually wanted. Something that moves when and where you point, and doesn't ask stupid questions like "why?" | |