Perhaps the upper rings can see a bit more of the sky? He didn’t know.
He leaned closer to the window, pressed his head to the slot, and peered upward. If he held himself just-so, sometimes he could see a wedge of sky—a blue sliver no larger than a nut. In his free moments, when he was certain no one watched, he would stare at that blue dot till his neck cramped, hoping to catch sight of a bird or an errant cloud, some sign that the world outside existed, that the breeze blew and the clouds drifted, but his neck was too stiff to find the sky that morning. He saw only rows of narrow windows, one above the next, five rings of arched windows, one for each level of the Priory, trailing far underground where the outside world never intruded—where the outside world, and all the people in it, were nothing but rumor.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe then I’ll be able to steal a glimpse of the world beyond these walls.
Dousing himself with a bucket of foul gray water, his morning shower, Ren sputtered, rinsing the sleep from his eyes, as well as yesterday’s dirt from his cheeks and his long hair, which was always flopping into his face. The water poured across the floor and out to a stone scupper, where it disappeared. He suspected that it was simply used again the next day, the same water with more grit in it. The men who ran the Priory were nothing if not stingy with the necessities of life.
Pain makes the man. The priors said it every day. The Soleri taught their people that pain built character. Pain makes the man. It was their mantra, but Ren didn’t think it was a particularly good one. If pain truly made the man, then he had been made a man many times over. I don’t think pain makes a man. I think we become men in spite of it. He had seen pain drive boys mad. He had seen it drive them to cruelty. He had never seen it make them into anything Ren thought a man should be, but what did he know? All Ren knew were boys. And all the boys he knew were ransoms.
In the distance a trumpet blared, high and tinny and full of self-importance. The Feast of the Devouring had begun; in five days the sun would blacken for a brief span, the daylight turning as weak and shadowy as twilight, the people hushed and awed at the yearly spectacle of the sun god’s blessings.
Mithra-Sol dims his light to acknowledge our emperor and the whole of the empire watches as if it were some great miracle. Ren didn’t care if the sun dimmed for a brief span. He’d never even seen the sun, not even a sliver. The fact that the sky blackened each year didn’t seem particularly special. He was well accustomed to darkness.
Ren Hark-Wadi, the youngest child and only son of Arko, king of Harkana, had not seen the world beyond his prison walls since the emperor’s soldiers had delivered him to the underground city of the Priory ten years earlier. Only three years old at the time, Ren could not recall the moment he had been taken from his family, could not remember his father’s face, or his mother’s, or his sisters’. He knew his sisters’ names, Merit and Kepi, his teachers had told him that much, but he could not remember what they looked like. He wondered if they remembered him. If they would recognize him now. If anyone cared that he still existed.
Am I a name without a face? An empty chair at the table each night?
Surely they would know him if they saw him, even if he was now nearly as tall as a man. His hair, once honey-colored, so different from the other boys’, was dull and mousy now from years of living underground, though it had attracted a lot of attention when he was younger. Ren had sharp cheekbones and a narrow, angular face marked by fox-colored eyes and a mouth that sometimes seemed set in a permanent frown. He was tall for his age, but surely there was something left in him of the boy he had been. Surely his father and his sisters would see it, if no one else could. He spent his nights trying to recall his childhood, searching his memories for a glimpse of their faces: his sisters, his father and mother. Did they love me? Were we a family once? Did they eat meals and tell stories and were the children held at night until they fell asleep? He longed for memories, but had none. Even a dream would have been acceptable, but he had never dreamed of them either. The idea was too foreign, too distant to conceive. He recalled only these rooms, the boys, the priors, and the bitter nights he had spent in this cell.
A prior tapped his door. “Out of your room, Hark-Wadi.” Already the boys were gathering for morning meal. Time to go, time to eat, time for lessons.
Ren removed a stone from the wall. Behind the rock, a blade occupied a stony niche. Ren palmed the knife, tugged a linen tunic over his head. He needed to hurry. Their rations arrived once daily and were seldom sufficient: thin soup with bits of tough dried meat or stringy vegetables; sometimes a paste of dried dates or figs and thin, unleavened wafers; sometimes nothing but hard bread with oil to dip it in. It had been a long time—a very long time—since they’d had enough to fill their bellies. That was how the men ran the Priory. “Pain makes the man,” a prior shouted as he walked past the boys’ cells, banging on all the doors, waking them up.
Ren stumbled into the corridor and caught sight of his young friend Tye Sirra of the Wyrre. An older boy, Kollen Pisk, was talking to Tye, going on about the Devouring. Ren slipped behind Kollen and shoved him playfully in the back. “Priors are calling for you.” It was a lie, but Ren wanted to get rid of the older boy, and a call from the priors was the surest way to do that. “Probably best be on your way,” said Ren, slapping the tall boy again.
“Later then,” Kollen said. He knocked Ren on the shoulder, but his eyes did not leave Tye, his gaze lingering up and down, as if taking measure. Then he laughed and disappeared down the corridor.
Ren waited until they were alone. “Do you think he knows?”
“I’m not sure—he might,” said Tye.
“Then we need to be more careful. You should grow your hair longer,” Ren said. “And maybe a different tunic?”
“My hair won’t grow any faster—or longer,” said Tye. “And this old tunic is the mangiest I could find. I already stink like a rat, do I have to look like one as well?”
Ren shrugged. “It’s better than being discovered. No one looks twice at a rat and they certainly don’t want to stand by one.” He pinched his nose.
“It’s no joke. Sooner or later someone is going to figure it all out and then—” Tye glanced around to make certain no one was listening.