Chapter 18: Life in Ostermark

However, after a couple of hours, and mindful of the danger of going hungry, he poked his head out of the door to ask a passing slave what he was meant to do for food. The girl informed him that she had just returned from the dining hall and that if he hurried down, there might be some left for him. Having received directions and assuming that he wouldn't be called on that night, as it would make quite a terrible first impression if he was nowhere to be found when first sought after, he headed downstairs. Somehow, perhaps being guided by a lust for something to eat, he failed to make any wrong turns through the winding servant corridors and arrived in a wide but low hall in the palace's basement.

Several long tables, with wooden benches drawn up to them, were arranged in rows before a counter where people queued with trays to collect various dishes. Snatching up a tray of his own, he was dismayed to see that most of the food was gone and anything left had long since cooled. Even so, the cold dregs of a potato stew that were wordlessly dished up for him were better than nothing, and he sat down by himself in one corner to eat and observe the other people.

By this time, the hall was mostly empty, and none of the remaining slaves came over to sit or speak with him as they all preferred to remain in their own small groups based upon the department they worked in. Learning this, Kira looked around and tried to guess which group he might find himself in, but none appeared like scribes, and so he assumed that there simply weren't enough of them to form their own dedicated department.

Slightly disappointed by this and having finished his meal, he sat quietly and wondered if it would be a good idea to go and introduce himself to one of the friendlier looking groups to try and make a few early friends. However, lacking the confidence on this particular night, he decided to head back up to his room, where he would inevitably have to meet someone anyway as it was shared.

After putting his tray in the pile that looked to be for used items, he headed back up to his room and, though by now the sky was darkening, the girl that he was supposed to be sharing with hadn't returned. This left him with another dilemma because he couldn't be sure when she would return, and so changing into some nightwear seemed to be a dangerous prospect as the door may open at any moment.

Eventually, tired of waiting and throwing caution to the wind, he quickly changed and neatly folding up his uniform on top of his chest for use in the morning. As it was getting late, he decided that he would have plenty of time to introduce himself to her on another day and so settled down for his first night of sleep in the palace. Compared to sleeping outdoors or in a baker's basement or a slave-holding cell, the mattress here was a luxury, and it allowed him to fall asleep quickly and soundlessly so that he slept the whole night through and was woken by a knock on the door.

Sitting quickly upright and looking around, it seemed that the girl sharing this room with him had been in because her bed was now untidy with the blanket lying crinkled over it, but she was nowhere to be seen. From the other side of the door came Eric's voice saying, "Kira, mind getting up now, I need to take you somewhere!"

As he jumped up and rushed to change into his uniform, Kira called back, "I'll be out in a moment!" before hurrying over to the door and stepping outside.

"That was a rather short moment." remarked Eric as he led Kira away and through the back alleys of the palace, "You'll be under James' care, so treat him well."

A couple of minutes of walking later, they arrived outside of a thick hinged door that was set high in a stone wall and had a flight of stairs leading up to it. Leading the way up, Eric halted at the top to bang a heavy dragon-faced locker releasing a cracking noise that resonated far behind it. Wordlessly, Eric then hurried back down past Kira, leaving him standing alone. Not certain if anyone had heard the knocking, he wondered if he ought to try it again but, as he went to do so, he heard the shifting of papers and then the clambering of feet and waited for the door to be opened.

When it did, it revealed a portly gentleman who was about an inch shorter than Kira. "You're to be the new helper then?" he asked by way of greeting.

"Yes," replied Kira, "James, right?"

James nodded in confirmation and led the way inside and past several wooden desks stacked high with leaning towers of parchment. Along this meandering path through the scribe's office, they passed several other slaves busily copying out parchments onto blank scrolls who demonstrated considerable skill in maintaining a conversation with one another whilst writing and seemingly making very few mistakes.

In one corner of the room was an empty desk that James gestured at, and Kira went to sit on the chair drawn up behind it whilst James gathered up a couple of quills and inkwells from his own desk. He then placed these in front of Kira saying, "I'll give you a parchment to copy out as practise – I want to see how neat you are." and he then turned back, snatching up several scrolls, "You don't have to copy them exactly as written, just make sure that it's legible."

Kira was quite relieved hearing this but was still anxious to see if his own handwriting could compare to the standards of the other scribes as, whilst he had received an education in Illyria, he had always thought that his own writing was nothing to be proud of. But, these concerns were brushed aside when he unravelled the first of the scrolls in front of him and saw that it was written with a similar level of neatness to his own writing.

Apparently, what James had said had been true, and the writing had to be little more than barely legible to be of acceptable quality. Drawing up a blank parchment beside him, he dipped his quill into an inkwell and began copying the writing. During this time, James and the other scribes continued conversation with each other and occasionally involved him within it. However, he struggled with this profusely and often found that he was forced to stop writing altogether to reply to them lest he sacrifice too much of his writing's quality.

Once he had copied out his first scroll, James walked over and gave Kira a few nerve-racking moments while he held it up in front of himself and before the light source that was a small window to read through it and declare that it was acceptable. Hearing this and seeing that, so long as he didn't try and converse too often, his work was of the same level as the others calmed him and allowed him to focus on the task at hand. By the late morning, he had amassed a neat pile of copied work at his left side and had gained enough confidence to dare talking a bit as he wrote.

This allowed him to learn more about the life in the palace as his fellow scribes seemed more than willing, eager even, to share all of the intrigues about the various lords and ladies and who had been seen sitting with who and the various unfolding scandals. During this time, he heard that the falcon on all of the slaves' uniforms was the symbol of Lady Meera, who was in charge of Ostermark.

Her story seemed to be an unusual case. Despite women being able to attain high positions by becoming manipulators, her appointment to this high position by the king of Krinestadt was an unexpected one. In addition, it seemed that her family had had a low background and that her mother had merely been a courtesan of the previous king, and this was perhaps how she had first come into contact with the now reigning monarch.

Aside from the scandals surrounding Lady Meera, Kira also learnt a good deal about his fellow slaves, particularly Eric, who apparently had been a free man but inexplicably had decided to work for free as the organizer of the slaves at the palace. Despite all of this news, Kira found the whole job of copying out the various scrolls to be extremely dull and the time edged by slowly until midday leaving him to wonder if this was all that his job entailed.

Taking a break for lunch, he followed his fellow scribes back to the dining hall and sat with them at one of the long tables within it to eat what had been afforded to him by the palace. Here he noticed that all of his fellow slaves had a similar scar on the left of their neck that vaguely resembled the falcon symbol of Lady Meera. He had seen this somewhere before, but previously he had discounted it, and now he realized that he was probably the only slave on the grounds without such a scar.

This did leave Kira with something of a dilemma because if he mentioned this to someone else and got branded in the same way, then that would make it harder for him to live freely later on but, if he didn't, then he could get into some trouble whilst he was here. However, before he had decided what course of action to take, James was pressing a crumpled bit of paper into his hand.

"Your timetable," James said by way of explanation as Kira looked down at it. It certainly wasn't very comprehensive because on all days except one (Saturday), it simply said to report to James and the other scribes. Saturday was reserved as his off-day where, according to James, he was permitted to leave the palace for a short while to look around Ostermark.

Wondering about what he might like to do in Ostermark when the time came in three days, Kira was taken back to the scribe office where the afternoon passed much like the morning had, slowly. The only respite that he had had from the continuous five hours of writing after his lunch was when he was handed a scroll that needed to be delivered to Eric. However, making the walk outside, finding Eric and then going to hand the scroll over seemed to hardly take any time. Before long, he had returned to the office and was writing again, carefully scratching the nib of a quill over the surface of the parchment.

At the end of the day, he again made his way down to the dining hall with his fellow scribes and sat with them for his evening meal whilst nursing his right hand, which was sore from all the writing. Having finished their meal, the slaves seemed to stay in their own small groups in the hall and sit around playing cards and talking loudly. This filled the whole room with quite a friendly atmosphere that washed over Kira, making him drowsy after the whole day of working.

Despite knowing that he would have nothing to do back in his room, he didn't feel much like taking part in the ongoing games and so made his excuses to James and the others before heading back upstairs. This, he thought to himself, would probably be the only opportunity in the whole day to practise his manipulations. This was something he valued more than simply socializing with people that he would probably abandon at some point later in the future.

But, when he arrived back at the corridor that his room was situated upon, its door was held ajar by a woman. Seeing her, he was reminded that this room was supposed to be shared, and he wondered if this person was who he would be sharing it with. However, upon getting closer, it became apparent that she was merely talking with another girl inside the room. When Kira approached, she ended her conversation and walked past him down the corridor, leaving the door to swing shut.

Rather than immediately going in, Kira turned and leant against the wall next to it for a while as he wasn't particularly keen to meet this girl and was feeling a bit irritated at having this opportunity for practise taken away from him.

When thinking this through, he was made aware of how the corridor he was in was empty, and so, taking a bit of a risk, he started going through the exercises that Thea and Sadis had taught him. These began with practising forming shapes from his aura, and then he moved on to moving concentrations of his aura around his body as he knew that fluency with this would be essential for combat in the future. Having satisfied his need to practise for the time being, at least, he summed up the courage to walk over and open the door.

Inside, and sitting on her own bed with a book open in her lap, was a girl around Kira's age. She had brown hair, which was long enough to almost reach down and touch the mattress. As Kira entered, she looked up at him from her book and said, "Hey."

"Hi," he replied, "Erm, I'm going to be sharing this room with you…" and after that, he trailed off and went to sit on his own across from her.

"Yeah, I know," she replied, "I'm Aura, by the way."

Realizing that he should have probably introduced himself first but struggling to find the words on account of being tired after a day of working followed by practising manipulations, he simply said "Kira." Then, upon thinking slightly further about her name, he continued, "So, are you from a family of manipulators, then, it's just that…."

"I know, but if I was a manipulator, I wouldn't be here, would I?" Aura interjected rhetorically whilst lying back onto her bed and pulling the blanket over herself. Kira didn't want to continue the conversation, but he still noted the need to try and continue it some other time as he felt that they hadn't gotten off to the best start.

Assuming that this was all that would be said and being tired himself, he got into his bed and prepared to go to sleep early to be ready for the following day. Aura put an end to his plan by tentatively asking, "So, do you have any family?" evidently also thinking that the conversation had been slightly too short.

"I used to…" murmured Kira wondering if it was normal for someone to practically forget such a thing until they were reminded to think about it by the people around him. Realizing that he had probably put across the wrong impression, he said, with greater certainty, "I wasn't very close to them, so it doesn't bother me that much; what about you?"

"I guess that I'm the same," she replied.

Not being sure as to how to reply, and with Aura not seemingly wanting to continue, the night ended there. Kira was woken by a beam of light shining straight into his face through the window. Sitting up and looking around, Aura was already gone, and Kira wondered if this meant that he was already late.