I am as begrimed as all the rest.

He had long been considered a fussy man; he was called “fastidious” by those who enjoyed his company, and “persnickety” by those who didn’t—and there were far more of the latter than the former, especially now. Actually, there were none who enjoyed his company now. Hadrien had no friends here, and suspected few of the churlish men he currently traveled with even knew what the word persnickety meant. He knew he should be grateful for that, at least. The men who accompanied him did not have a highborn’s cutting vernacular. The insults he would have to bear would be of the lowbrow sort, and beneath his regard.

But that, too, was a part of his current malediction. The company he kept at present was indicative of how far he had fallen. How could he be grateful for anything, given all he had lost? He should be. He knew he should be. The Master had given him a second chance at life. But Hadrien wasn’t feeling grateful at all right now. He just felt dirty.

Hadrien frowned at his reflection. His was still considered a handsome face by most, though it seemed to him that he had aged ten years in the past three. Even when I looked young, I felt old, he remembered, critically eyeing the dark circles beneath blue eyes that had, for so many years, been his greatest endowment. His gaze had oft been called “comforting”, and that, coupled with a winning smile (good teeth ran in his family) did much to add to the façade of a charismatic man. But he feared those comforting years were gone. Even now the mirror shook in his grasp, blurring an already distorted image. His hands betrayed him, as always. He could not control the palsy that occasionally took his extremities, save for clutching one hand to the other when the shaking got too bad, which in turn made him appear fretful or nervous to those who saw.

It was in truth a proper and pointed reflection—due payment for the lies his face had told over the years. I cannot hide from the mirror. He knew it. Not from the cracks, nor the memories the mirror brought.

Still, he worked hard to maintain the deception of calm control. Hadrien steadied the mirror once more, concentrating, and lifted the straight razor up to his cheek. The waning sun, hidden for most of the day by clouds, would afford him no greater light. A lock of sand-colored hair had fallen past his jaw, but he was loath to touch his hair with his filthy fingers—and wise enough not to try to flick at it with his razor—so he shook his head to move it aside, once, twice, thrice, but the lock remained troublesome. My hair has thinned to the point of absurdity, yet still manages to irritate, he silently groused. As a younger man he had prided himself in his hair, but now feared he would be bald as his father in ten years. Hadrien finally won the struggle by swiping at the offending lock with a knuckle, and even that was apprehensively done.

He took a deep breath. The task should not have been so difficult! Hadrien had high, sharp cheekbones and a narrow yet sturdy jaw; the stubble upon his chin was three days old and begging to be whisked away clean, but again his hand convulsed. He lowered the blade once more, despairing. It was no good. Another day would pass without a shave—another dawn heralded by another night’s failure. He blamed the dirty mirror and his unkempt coif for prompting his latest palsy.

“Forgot his ivory comb,” Rondan said in passing, sniggering at Hadrien and his silver mirror. Joreth, beside him, snorted a laugh. The two mercenaries trudged past, feed bags filled for the horses slung over broad shoulders, uncaring of the dust their shuffled boots bestirred to settle on his.

Raising dust on purpose, Hadrien groused. He tossed the men a withering glare, but only once they were beyond sight. He supposed he could have ordered them to respect him. He was, officially, the caravan leader—a commissioned leftenant serving the Master, Malacai, as Blackstone liaison and military attaché. He was supposed to be afforded respect, based on that alone. But he might as well be invisible.

Hadrien had no illusions as to who was really in charge—nor did any of his men. Lashmaster Threll, whose “advisorial” status would nominally place him beneath a leftenant in any real structured hierarchy, gave every command without consult, and Hadrien was afraid of what might happen if he even objected in the slightest. He had witnessed Threll’s handiwork more than once and was not eager for his pride to be further debased by a public whipping. He had seen what had become of poor Gabil, so hobbled beneath that lash, and even witnessed, firsthand, powerful Joreth (and his stout moustache) brought to heel by it.

Some men ruled with an iron fist, especially in these northerly lands. Threll’s fist was made all the more menacing by the whip that extended his reach. This was Hadrien’s caravan in name only. In all other ways it belonged to Threll.

Hadrien had joined the convoy just one day prior, accompanied by his own (miniscule) honor guard, meeting Threll’s band and its cargo on a lonely Zhadran back road, a day north of the small lake town of Mooring. Hadrien had been tasked with delivering the standing order to ensure stealth be maintained over haste, whilst still within the Black Wolf Duchy; secrecy was paramount, especially when part of their cargo included a Zhadran girl of noble birth. The Master’s orders were given to Threll, who dutifully accepted them…and then promptly ignored anything else Hadrien had to say.

Theirs was a mutually agreed coexistence based on a shared aversion to incurring Malacai’s displeasure, Hadrien reasoned. Though at one point, Threll took exception with Hadrien’s Gaultic livery; when Hadrien balked at removing it, the Lashmaster indicated he might use his blade to remove anything that would threaten their anonymity. Hadrien took the implied threat with outward stoic reserve, though he did remove the offending tabard quickly. It wasn’t until later, replaying the confrontation in his head, the tremors came upon him. They shook Hadrien so badly he nearly soiled himself.

I shall enjoy seeing how the Master castigates this dog when he finds out his loyal leftenant was treated with outright neglect, Hadrien thought, peevishly. Hadrien would gladly watch the Master wipe the sneer from Threll’s frightful face…even though he knew he would first have to report the exchange to the Master, which meant purposefully crossing Threll. And Hadrien was too frightened of the ferocious man to do that.

If the Master asks me directly, Hadrien amended. Then I will speak of it.

They had paused for the evening in their inexorable trundle north, halting on whatever unnamed deer trail Threll had chosen (at random, Hadrien maintained) to break their fast and tend the horses. Various mercenaries moved about, performing their assigned duties, but Hadrien, as leftenant, was thankfully exempt from the minutiae.

At least they cannot force me to demean myself with manual labor. A part of him feared that Threll would do exactly that, however, so Hadrien stayed quiet and kept his complaints to himself.

He was supposed to be above it all. His father had raised him with certain inalienable expectations. Leftenant Hadrien Derenford had been born Hadrien Latimus Derenford il’Marcain, the first son and heir to Lord Merendor of House Marcain, the fifth most influential house in the sovereign kingdom of Palador. Hadrien had been born and groomed to lead men, yet now woke every morning in fear of them. The life he had envisioned for himself, for so many years, was lost. He went to bed every night praying for just one chance to return to it.

But there were no gods on the earth who answered prayers, not the indolent gods of the south, nor the grim gods of the north. The dead gods of the east were as dust, and the Eternal Luminescence that was the Holy Light of the West shone only for those who stayed within the good graces of the Reformers. Hadrien most certainly had not. There were no gods for him, save for, perhaps, the Master, who seemed either divine or diabolic, depending on the hour. Hadrien’s most useful prayer might be a fervent benediction that the Hells his lady mother had warned him about were a lie—else he was surely bound for damnation. Mother would be so appalled at the content and compass of my prayers. Last night, he had only prayed to stay beyond Threll’s cruel notice.

Even then, the Lashmaster was ever-lurking, a feral spectre in the shadowy corners of his mind, brutish and brutal, sadistic and sinful. Threll was quite possibly the ugliest man Hadrien had ever met, both inside and out, and Hadrien had, of late, met quite a few despicable ones. This was the price he paid for his many sins. Hadrien wasn’t entirely certain Threll did not have an inhuman ancestor somewhere back in the bloodline. Probably an ork, he thought derisively. And, here I serve. Father would be so proud.

Truthfully, had Threll asked Hadrien his opinion on any matter whatsoever, the leftenant would have given it eagerly and with aplomb, so desperate was he for any pretense of esteem in front of the other men. As it was, he was consigned to bear the open disrespect of every lowborn reprobate beneath him. They laughed at him. It bothered him even when it shouldn’t; he was in the company of rogues, after all. Threll’s band of unwashed mercenaries was the lowest sort. What manner of creature would knowingly kidnap children and subject them to the horrors of this journey? He seriously doubted such open cruelty was the Master’s intent; not when their destination would demand students with sound minds and unbroken bones. Hadrien certainly would not have treated them thusly. He loved children, in fact.

But to any untrained eye, Hadrien would be judged as filthy and roguish as any of these men. It had been days since he’d washed, and nearly a month since he’d indulged in a proper bath. The dirt was everywhere—beneath his fingernails, inside his clothes, between his toes. He couldn’t escape it, but neither could he ignore it. The squalor of everyday overland travel was a nagging irritant perched on his collar, constantly pecking, pecking, pecking at the back of his mind.

He was made for better things; deserved a better life. But his affliction—his curse—was such that it stole from him all that he had been born into. Hadrien had consigned himself to an early grave, knowing that, in the wake of his crime, most civilized people would not want him in their presence—save for as a corpse, perhaps.

But he was saved.

“You are precisely what I need,” the Master had said to him, not so long ago—said it in such a way that Hadrien believed those words with all his aching heart.

He still believed them today. The Master was his salvation. A new door opened for him when all others before had been so cruelly closed.

If Hadrien had ever doubted the Master’s plan, he did not doubt it now, not even when he was forced to endure Threll’s churlish mien. He had seen with his own eyes the children they had acquired; Hadrien had always prided himself in the ability to form special bonds with children, and he knew how to spot the unique ones. And these were special, to be sure, some more than others. It was as the Master said: they were akin to unrefined steel, ripe for the forge.

It was at the Blackstone the tempering would truly begin. “The Master’s little daggers will require sharpening,” Llandis once told him. He knew it would not happen overnight.

The sun was almost completely gone. Hadrien glanced over to the roller. He could not see the children within, but he could hear their voices, speaking softly, through the roller window. He knew they weren’t allowed to talk, but he did not see any harm in it, truly. He would not raise a stink for a few comforting words given to fight fear. Let them have their small moments, he thought. Hadrien’s heart went out to them again. Would that he could offer a word of comfort. He could not, though. He was already viewed as weak. Compassion was the death of a soldier’s repute.

And his words would only be empty lies, anyway. The children should fear where they were going, though they could not know why yet. He pitied them all the more.

If I have a chance, I will give them whatever comfort I can, he promised. But not here. Not in front of Threll.

“Watch those little sods,” Hadrien overheard Joreth mutter to Gasol in passing. The thick-armed mercenary rubbed his raw, reddened neck. “The mouthy one’s got an escape attempt left in ‘im, mark me.” Joreth still chafed that Threll had wrapped his lash around his throat, after the mercenary had nearly beaten one of the children to death. Alas for him; Joreth had chosen the wrong one to beat, else Threll might not have cared to interfere. Some of the children weren’t there for any reason beyond window dressing; “cage-stuffers” some called them. The mouthy boy—a young thief appropriately named “Filch”—had been captured for a reason, however, and to Joreth’s eternal regret was not seen as expendable.

But that did not make Joreth wrong. The escape attempt he correctly predicted happened that very hour.

The Lashmaster’s men had pitched tents and dug a latrine for the evening, and three small campfires were made. Some of the men fed and brushed the horses, watering them at a nearby stream. Hadrien did nothing and was content with that.

The children were ushered out of the roller, two at a time. As ever, they were tied with their wrists bound together, a chain looped through the leather collars around their necks and connected to stakes driven into the dirt in the middle of camp, two children to each. Hobble-kneed Gabil was assigned the tying, resigned to feeding and watering the children—his punishment for irritating the Lashmaster. Young Filch was brought out first, along with another boy, one of the two filthy, starving siblings. Hadrien did not much care for the skeletal boy (he did not even know his name, in fact) but was growing fond of his sister Mara, who would be passably pretty with a proper bath. The thin boy’s eyes were kept low, subservient; Filch’s head was kept down too, but beneath his mop of hair his eyes darted to and fro.

Hadrien saw what was coming a heartbeat before it happened. As Gabil knelt, concentrating on threading the chain through the spike loop, little Filch delivered a vicious downward kick to the man’s lash-damaged knee. Gabil cried out and went down, and Filch yanked backward, pulling free of the unsecured chain. The other boy stumbled back too, eyes widened in alarm, his chain now detached as well.

Filch bolted for the darkness, astoundingly fast, sprinting for the nearest copse of trees. His escape drew eyes and shouts. The other boy had a chance to flee too, but he was cowed by fear, and simply knelt in place.

Mace and Borzan quickly secured the cowering boy with rope, binding wrists and ankles, whilst four others, including Threll, mounted up and rode out after the escaped thief.

The lad thinks to outrun horses. Hadrien sighed. He would learn.

It took less than ten minutes for Threll to return, but return he did, horse lathered and spirited from the run, the mop-haired Filch bound and draped across the back of his saddle like a bag of turnips. The left side of Filch’s face was scraped and freshly bloodied, and his back bore fresh lash marks.

Filch was secured again, barely conscious. The rest of the children were brought out and tied as well.

But Hadrien knew the lesson was not done.

Threll went to the malnourished boy, Mara’s brother, still tied wrist-to-ankle. With something akin to disdain, the ugly mercenary pulled a thick boot knife from a sheath above his calf and severed the boy’s bindings. The lad’s eyes were wide and round, as Threll pulled him by the wrists, dragging him past his filthy sister. Skinny Mara could only stare after her brother in fear.

The Lashmaster’s rough features were made all the uglier by the firelight that threw hard shadows across them. His black eyes gleamed.

Threll glanced at each of the children, saying nothing. He then looked down at the trembling boy. “Just a poke,” Threll’s voice rumbled. “Easy, now…” He placed the tip of the knife against the boy’s stomach. The lad began to shake even more violently, terrified. He begged for mercy in his high, reedy voice, and tried to grasp Threll’s massive fist, tried to do anything to keep the blade from going in…but he had no strength to prevent the inevitable. Threll slid his knife into the boy’s belly with one easy push.

“Stop!” the boy’s sister shrieked, only now realizing that Threll meant to kill him. She began to sob, whispering, “No, no, no,” over and over and over. Hadrien’s heart went out to her, filthy as she was. A good bath, he thought, and she will seem as normal as any girl. He doubted she would ever get one, though. Mara and her brother were only cage-stuffers; the boy was serving one of his more basic purposes, right here and now.

Threll looked to each of the stunned children, holding the boy’s twitching frame up with one arm, keeping the knife buried and tight, as though showing the proper way to kill a child was part of the lesson here. He addressed the children even as the boy’s blood began to well around the knife’s hand guard and spatter the ground.

“That was one,” Threll growled. “Two get poked the next time any one of you tries that sod again.” He slid the knife back out and dropped the boy, who crumpled in the grass and dirt, lifeblood rushing out onto the earth in quick little surges. Threll walked off without another word, cleaning the blood off his blade with a rag.

Hadrien could not claim to be as stunned as the children, knowing Threll as he did, but he was no less horrified. The boy could only clutch his stomach, lying where he was dropped, whimpering. Hadrien wished he had learned the boy’s name now. Mara crawled to the end of her line and reached out for her brother, sobbing, tears streaking the dirt on her cheeks. Her shoulders shook as she reached imploringly to her dying brother. The boy saw her, tried to crawl to her, but only made it halfway before curling into a ball. He left a wide streak of blood behind him, darkening the dirt.

“That’s two you’ve killed, Filch,” the pale boy named Vheret said softly. “Are the next two going to be your fault as well?” It was the first time Hadrien had heard him speak at all. Vheret’s blackened eye had opened; his strange lavender gaze was furious.

For once, Filch had no retort. Hadrien thought he saw the glimmer of tears in his eyes, but his hair was too long to tell. Filch did not look away from Mara’s brother, however. He just watched him die.

When they were all led back into the roller, the children said nothing, and little else for the next day, or the next day after. Filch said the least of all.

Thirteen more days passed. The caravan had finally left dreary Zhadra behind, but only in trade for equally dismal territories. Their northern trek had curved northwest, taking them into the boreal nation of Baltanya. Border guards were paid off, but the convoy did not linger; the Baltanyans were notoriously protective of their wintry woodlands, and some of the men whispered of Baltanyan witches skulking in the shadows, hoping for a straggler to add meat to their cook-pots, so they moved with pace, traveling close together under cover of darkness, hiding in thick fir groves during daylight. They broke camp every twilight and traveled until dawn.

Threll ultimately steered them west, and within the week Gaultic banners were finally seen, though sparsely, in the scattered, sad towns and hamlets they passed through. The people here dressed differently than Zhadrans; the wool and flax garments seemed thicker, rougher. The Gaulten, like the land, had a subdued mien. The country itself seemed filled with dread. The sky was gray, but the clouds were far off and indistinct, lending an ashen pallor to everything beneath.

And absolutely no one looked at the caravan. Most of the indigenous populace here seemed to know what it was. Hadrien donned his Gaultic surcoat again and commanded one of the men fly the Hammer on his lance. It was the only command he gave, and Hadrien felt absurdly grateful it was followed without question.

Hadrien wondered if any of the children had ever had the misfortune of visiting Gault before. He doubted it. None of them would have any idea what was in store for them. They would find out soon enough.

Bloody Gault. This was not his true home. Even though, now, it was. Please, Master, don’t let me die here. He often feared he would.

In three days, they would arrive at the Blackstone, barring any unforeseen complications. Until then, the caravan would keep its schedule. The children remained subdued; none had tried to escape again. As expected, the death of the young boy had impressed upon them the seriousness of their situation.

The children would learn, those who had the will to. They would learn or they would die. It would be hard, yes, and his heart broke for it. They couldn’t know how hard; not yet. It struck Hadrien that they weren’t all that much different from himself, nor even different from vile Threll, or somber Yorea, or wily Llandis, or any of the others awaiting their arrival at the Blackstone. The young ones were merely in a different stage of learning. Their inner demons would be harnessed, whatever part was needed. Puppet strings to our souls.

Their lives were no longer theirs. Whether the children knew it or not, they were already bequeathed to the Master’s cause.