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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Begin Reading

  The thin tip of the branding iron glowed a mellow orange, two gentle swoops intersecting near the top. I knew the symbol, just as I knew why it was being used. It was the Mal numeral three, and marked the number of cycles I’d been enduring Talenfoier—a very old word interpreted by modern linguists to mean torture of the captive. But I’d studied its Mal lingual root, so I knew better. Refinement through pain was its truer meaning. My skin would be written on to mark the duration of my suffering and tolerance to the seven cruciations of Talenfoier.

  “Be still, Sheason,” the refiner said.

  “I’ve outlasted your knives. I think I’ve earned the right to hear my name when you place your first brand.” I showed a weak smile. “I’m Vendanj.”

  The Mal man gave me the same impassive look he’d worn these hundred days while plying my flesh with his razor-thin cutters. Leaning close, he rested the heel of his palm on my chest to steady his hand. He then gracefully rotated the finely-tipped brand with his fingers. The smell of hot iron wafted up around my face.

  “Jaimen,” he replied, speaking his own name for the first time in our many torturous sessions together. He was a member of the Aerin Loh, those trained to deliver Talenfoier. “Now set yourself. Hot iron unnerves a man in a way knives never do.”

  He meant for me to take firm hold of the rods set into the armrests of the chair in which I sat. The rods reminded me of warping pegs on a loom. Pegs used by rugmakers to maintain thread tension. The reminder had proven useful. I’d learned from my grandfather that the key to a strong weave was moderate thread tension. Too tight and the rug would possess no give. Too loose and it wouldn’t knit together well. Forcing my body to relax under the artful application of blades parting my skin had helped me endure the first cruciation worthily.

  I’d only flinched once, and that had resulted from a rare mistake by my refiner, his blade cutting into muscle when he’d only meant to part the skin. As to worthily, I knew this because I was receiving my first brand, marking the end of knifework, and signaling a hundred days of slow, deliberate hot-iron branding to come.

  But it wasn’t just the weaver’s lesson that helped me relax as this first brand neared my flesh. Three cycles of Talenfoier knives carefully opening my skin had left me bone-tired. Exhausted mentally and emotionally, too. Which was, after all, its real purpose. The immediate pain of Talenfoier was a bridge to the real breakage: that of spirit. Only a broken spirit leads to refinement. Or so the Mal believed.

  Still … a brand.

  My muscles were tightening reflexively even before I gripped the rods. I forced myself to relax, like a viola string tuned down a pitch. I’d found that doing so also made these sessions pass more quickly. Not because my refiner worked any faster. Relaxing into the pain just seemed to change my perception of time. And a man lives by his perceptions, dangerous as they can be. So I let my body sink back into the chair, my hands wrapped loosely around the pegs. I held myself steady, but not rigid.

  Jaimen waited patiently for me to prepare myself. I let out a deep breath, then nodded. As his sharp eyes focused on my chest, I fixed my own attention near the neckline of his shirt. Brands rose from his chest in a careful column, twisting up the side of his neck and cheek.

  Before coming into the lands of Mal Valut, I’d seen others with such chronologies burned into their skin. Not many, but a few. And only a few because even modern linguists were generally accurate in one way about Talenfoier: Its intent, if you weren’t Mal, was death—the ultimate refinement, went the old jest. Since coming into Mal Valut, I’d seen a thousand branded necks. Every natural-born Mal seemed to have a column of numerals seared into their skin, each column unique. Some were short, some reached high on the face. And the symbols themselves varied in subtle ways. Talenfoier’s meanings, I realized, were several.

  During my first cruciation, I’d learned that a short stack of numbers was known as a brief counting. That’s what was expected of me, since I hadn’t been taught Valutara, the Mal technique for enduring Talenfoier’s pains. I’d studied the concentration methods of many paths—the Chae of the Nallan advance brigades, the Soma known of the Wynstout nomads, and even the Pliny Tu taught by Dimnian temple nuns. Most of them involved separating the mind from the body.

  Valutara was different. When the pain began, you went inside it. You inhabited it completely. Embraced it as readily as another man reclines in the shade at the end of a day’s labor.

  But I wasn’t Mal. I hadn’t spent a lifetime preparing for Talenfoier, as they did. And the cruciations weren’t practiced outside the Mal lands.

  So I’d had to rely on my Sheason skills to survive, rendering the energy of the Will in subtle, healing ways after each knife session. But now I would become familiar with the feel of a brand. I wasn’t sure if the techniques I’d developed would work as well with the second cruciation.

  And if I meant to win the honor I’d need to walk free, to complete my real purpose in coming here, my chest and neck and face would have to read like Jaimen’s. Like a long calendar.

  The brand finally touched my skin—a small, focused fire.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d smelled the sour stench of my own charred flesh. But those memories were far away and blurred now beneath the pain blooming across my chest.

  The sound of searing skin ended before Jaimen pulled his brand away. The burning went on, though, deepening into my body with each passing moment. Jaimen’s eyes locked on my own, assessing the effects. Enduring Talenfoier was only the first part, and not the most important. Enduring well was the thing. I was already weak, and this pushed me to my limit. It felt like I’d been shoved toward some kind of edge. An edge inside me. My grip on who I was.

  Each of the past hundred days I’d waited until they’d returned me to my little room to invoke the Will and heal the lacerations on my back. Lacerations made by careful, successively deeper cuts to the same patterns, reopening tissue that had just started to mend. Jaimen was reaching for a fresh brand. He’d place it precisely where he’d placed the first, to deepen the burn. The thought of it overwhelmed me.

  Today, I couldn’t wait.

  Without any outward sign, I called a portion of my Will, quietly rendered healing inside my body. Beneath the skin, the damaged tissue mended. It was a tricky bit of rendering, like diverting irrigation water from its regular path to a suddenly dry field. There’s only so much of the necessary element. A delicate balance had to be maintained to avoid compromising one for the sake of the other. I took great care not to damage part of my body while healing another.

  More difficult still was sustaining the effort. Like a Lieholan singer whose Song of Suffering lasts a full seven hours, I maintained a constant invigoration of the flesh beneath the brand, as Jaimen continued to work.

  A Sheason doesn’t usually self-heal. It’s not advisable. Still, the careful art of it was one I’d become rather good at. The reasons for that have their own stories. Stories of battle. Even other stories of torture.

  But the memories of my other tortures didn’t help me here. Being branded hurt like all the glories of hell, so-called. The burn didn’t sink inside me, though. I wouldn’t allow it. The pain of the brand took hold in my skin, but that was all.

  After the seventh iron had been pulled away, Jaimen’s eyes narrowed with slight suspicion. After a long moment, he nodded with satisfaction, and said matter-of-factly, in his thick Mal accent, “Next, branding.”

  The brand I’d just received was just the mark of completing my first cruciation. Jaimen was reminding me that the next three months would be a cruciation of hot iron.

  He then left me alone as he’d always done, to rest a few moments before I’d be escorted back to my room.

  I let go of the pegs, unwinding my tension like a weaver loosening his loom. The angry scar on my chest had risen, white, forming the numeral I knew, with some appended serifs I did not. Around it, patches of red and black. I fought the urge to accelerate healing in the skin, too. I’d need all my strength for tomorrow’s session, when the branding would begin in earnest. Over the next hundred days, a new pattern would be burned into my skin. I didn’t know where, or what that mark would signify. But it would likely be broader, hurt more.

  Silent gods, burned. Over and over. In the same place. Every day.

  And while I didn’t know what sigil they’d scar me with, the repetition itself was symbolic, reflecting the challenge to meet day after day beneath a hard sun. A succession of Mal suns. The routine of it maddening. Because while Talenfoier described these focused sessions of torture, it also represented—for the Mal—a way of living. Their routine was Talenfoier. Their routine was constant pain as an ever-present reminder of mortality. Their routine made them stoic, hard. Exceptional at war, which seemed just another routine to them.

  For me … my rout ine was about to change.

  I arrived back at my small room, supported by one of the refiner helpmates I’d come to call gray men. I’d never heard one speak, or even make non-verbal sounds in their throats. They wore shapeless clothing of an indistinct gray color, and walked with constant attention on where and how they placed their next step. This gray man saw me to my bed, then left in a prompt but unhurried fashion.

  When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I found myself staring at a young woman lying across from me on my room’s second bed. She looked all of eighteen, if I was any judge of age. At the foot of her bed sat a small trunk and a pair of shoes. The Aerin Loh had assigned me a roommate. I was dizzy still, so I didn’t fully trust my eyes, but the girl’s face looked like it had been taken to with a pair of brass hands. As had much of the rest of her naked, trembling body.

  I wanted to go to her. Wrap a wool blanket around her thin shoulders. But I was too weak even to do that.

  When the hours of night had grown small, I awoke to the sound of her near-silent sobs.

  I said nothing, lying still for quite a long time. I took in the shape of her, the wounds I could make out through the shadows. And knowing what it would mean for me the next morning, I rendered a portion of myself and added some strength to her form. Just enough to dull the aches of blood bruises, mend ripped skin, and true up a jutting bone. And that much left me entirely depleted.

  The woman drew a deep, sleepful breath, returning our room to the peace of the small hours. I soon followed her to dreams.

  * * *

  The still, mild air of summer morning had settled in around me. I sat just beyond the rear door of the small house where I passed my nights in Darles Hem. Hem was a Mal city nestled in amidst a long run of hillocks. It was unremarkable save, maybe, the excellence of its refiners at Talenfoier. But it had good mornings. Great mornings.

  The air had a dry quality to it. Not desert-like, but not humid. I neither burned nor perspired in the heat. Ground dew was enough to freshen the smell of shrubs and leaves, without leaving them damp. And hill aspen rose everywhere, some spreading their branches above me. Aspen leaves were the gods’ way of laughing—their flutter in even a mild breeze like the sound of a smile. Sunlight streamed through those leaves, their shadows dancing across my legs.

  I could smell parsley growing in moist earth nearby. And mint. They were clean smells that made the morning that much more pleasant. I’d slept fitfully, even after assisting the girl, pain flaring in my skin each time I rolled or stretched. So, now I dozed in the calm of this rear garden. Civil, I thought. This feels civil. Even if the moment was fleeting.

  I closed my eyes and smiled. My prison here wasn’t piss-covered stone and rusting chains and dirty straw to wipe my ass. I’d known such places. Here, my prison was weariness. Day in, day out: Talenfoier. I had strength enough to endure each hour, and little more. No guard stood at my door. No bed checks or restraints. When my strength permitted, I was even allowed to walk the city. But the pain of cruciation and the weariness that followed were constant fetters.

  All I had to distract myself were these soft morning moments. They restored me more than anything else. There was even a small hare that foraged a patch of cabbage laid in near the rear fence. I’d come to think of it as a pet. I called him “Amen.” I took no small pleasure watching Amen move about, all twitchy-nosed.

  This morning, Amen was working at a snip of parsley when footsteps sent him scurrying down a hole. I opened my eyes, and saw first a set of bare feet. Looking up, my roommate came into view. She sat in a chair a few paces away, her legs likewise bare. Beside her chair, she laid a pair of ankle-high shoes she’d been carrying. She’d draped a loose shirt around her shoulders, but nothing more. Her breasts cast half-moon shadows across her ribs.

  We sat, unspeaking, for several long moments. Finally, she broke the silence, her voice husky as from overuse. “Why are you here?”

  I pulled up my own loose shirt to expose my first brand.

  She shook her head. “Why have you come here?”

  I gave a weak smile. The only kind I felt capable of. “I’m Vendanj. And I’m sorry, but what’s your name?”

  “Yes, rude of me. Seelia,” she answered.

  “Well, Seelia, are you interested for yourself, or for someone else?” I then pointed to her exposed breasts. “No brand. You’ve not started your Talenfoier.” I wondered if she’d prove to be a cell-mate confidante, the kind meant to garner trust by shared misery, extract information for a jailor. It was a clumsy device.

  Her return smile pulled at the cracks in her lips. She winced a bit. “Talenfoier starts at birth.”

  “For a Mal, you mean.”

  “For living things,” she replied, no hint of sarcasm.

  I pointed at several yellow-and-purple bruises across her face, legs, arms, chest, and neck. “Then your beating wasn’t random.”

  “Is any beating random?” She licked her lips to moisten the torn parts.

  I smiled a bit more broadly then. “I’m a bit obtuse this morning, I suppose.” I looked back to see if Amen had ventured out of his hole. “What I mean is, since you’re here, I assume you allowed yourself to be beaten.”

  She gave me a sharp look, one that softened a touch after a moment. “Some call it the cruciation before the cruciation. It makes one teachable.”

  “Being beaten,” I said, careful to keep judgment out of my voice.

  She shook her head, her eyes becoming distant as she stared into a patch of sunlit soil. “It’s any of a hundred things. And for a woman, it starts in earnest when she gets her blood.”

  I was suddenly reminded of the painters of Masson Dimn. The art schools there taught mastery over brush and oils. Canvas paintings as tall as bristlecone pines were created and shipped to the manors of those who could afford to pay. But no image ever left a Dimnian painter’s care before it was deliberately marred in some obvious way. The imperfection, they taught, kept them from arrogating to the stature of the abandoning gods—Noble Ones, they called them.

  The Noble Ones had framed the world, the old stories said. One of these gods had gone mad, ruined balance. Once they believed the world beyond repair, they’d abandoned it. So the story went. Dimnian artists purposely marred their art, considering it a visual prayer of deference to those gods. Others, who’d ceased to believe there’d ever been Noble Ones, viewed the imperfection as the right way of humility.

  And like a piece of Dimnian art, it seemed, each Mal was kept in a constant state of imperfection, enfeeblement. Pain to remind them, refine them. But of what? For what?

  “I saw your back,” the young woman said without any real tenderness. “It’s unusual to start with the cruciation of knives. Someone wanted you to give in quickly. Or die of bleeding. Your kind has thin blood. Runs fast.”

  “Sorry to have been a disappointment.” I managed a low chuckle at my own joke. “The brands will come next.”

  She had that faraway look again in her eyes. “The Aerin Loh find the right sequence for each of us. But for most the sequence is the same.”

  “Most Mal, you mean.”

  This time she nodded. “With you, it’s not … what’s your word … refinement?”

  I nodded. I knew what she’d say next.

  “With you it’s a way to die.” She shifted to face me directly. “You haven’t answered my question.”

  I stared back, hearing for the first time the yellow-billed swallows in the aspen above me. Theirs was a late-morning song, sung softly, as if for themselves and not to declare territory or attract mates. I remained silent, listening to the trill-yawt-yawt-yawt-soooooon, made over and over. I had no intention of talking during those first notes of song.

  In the lull between bird calls, I said, “You have something that doesn’t belong to you. Your war-leaders covet its qualities. But they’ve no idea how to use it. It belongs to me. To my kind.”

  “The ingot of steel,” she said. “Some call it the ThousandFold.”

  I nodded. “I’ll gladly leave when it’s been returned.”

  “That’s not likely.” She paused a long moment, her eyes bright with consideration. “You must have known that. Why wouldn’t the Sheason come and seize it by force?”

 

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