A dry, salty wind tore at Arn’s scarred face as he drifted across the Deep once more. The sky tilted between day and night—ahead of Arn was a low moon and behind him was the setting sun. With a long oar and bulging muscles, Arn pulled his raft across the scattered waves for hours. Glaring at one another across the ocean plane, the sun and moon did not set.
Arn finally grew weary as he began to remember that he had once been weak. He had nearly starved to death, hadn’t he?
A bubble burst nearby, popping like someone tapping their palm over their open mouth. Arn peered over the side of his raft to spot a familiar sight: a leather-backed water scale swam along beside the free-drifting boat. Arn looked around, but the horizon had not changed—no land. He started rowing again, curious how long the water scale could paddle along like it was.
He got his answer twenty minutes later, when a series of wooden scraping announced the reptile’s clambering onto the bumpy deck. With a small triangular head, a short, wide back, and a tail the length of Arn’s forearm, the meaty water scale chose a corner of the raft and curled its tail under its feet. It rested there, eyeing Arn hesitantly.
Arn’s exhaustion returned. “What?” he asked it and rested the oar across his shins. “Not going to attack me?”
When cornered, most water scales would try to snap their teeth or swing their claws at predators. This water scale just looked at Arn, tilting its head to listen. Did it even have ears? Then, raising Arn’s eyebrows, the water scale opened its mouth and said, “Wouldn’t work out well for me.”
Arn squinted. “Why? I’m pretty weak.”
“And yet still, Shar fell into the Deep,” the water scale returned. Its tone dripped with judgement.
Shar’s death wasn’t my fault, Arn thought, but he knew saying it aloud would be a lie. “I don’t have any metal on me,” Arn said, looking around. “This time is different.”
“There’s metal everywhere,” the water scale said.
Arn snorted. Then, he noticed that the raft was not moving. He rose to his knees, dropping the oar with a clatter onto the wooden deck. The surface of the Deep still showed waves, but they were not moving. The peak of each, like curved lines in the sand, gleamed in the sunlight. The valleys between were not glistening with tidal surf; they were matte and textured bronze, like Arn’s sword had been. His raft was stuck in the middle of a metal plateau. How was the water scale swimming? he wondered distractedly, but before he could speak his face was cast into shadow.
The moon had turned into a dark orb, smoking and sparking as it soared toward him. The circle soon encompassed half the horizon—then it struck him in the head and knocked him into the air.
Arn opened his eyes, panting and covered in a chilly sweat. He wasn’t on the ocean now, nor a metal plateau. He was lying in his cot under a wooden shingled roof. He was still Master Quenden’s property.
A distant rumbling had woken him—manifesting in the dreamworld as the annihilating impact of the moon. It sounded like the ships in the ocean were bombarding Starath again. Heavy wooden frames supported arching arms which cast stones half as tall as Arn against the enormous buildings of the city. They did it every few days.
“It’s good, you’re good,” said Massema. The young woman peaked in the cloth doorway. She had been one of many new faces Arn had met inside the walls of Quenden’s complex. Massema worked as a scribe, she had said. As such, she had been teaching Arn and Gamden almost since their arrival.
“What are you talking…?” he asked, but he forgot the word he needed to finish it.
“… about?” she finished. She smiled. “I heard you cry out. A nightmare?”
“A what?” Arn swung his feet out of bed.
“A bad dream?” Massema replied. She stepped into the shack. Gamden was gone—Quenden has tasked him with learning from a carpenter, a man who maintained their buildings. “You seem to have them often. You should ask Nevo or Ara for something to help with it.”
“Maybe,” Arn said. He didn’t say more. He thought the dreamworld came so easily for him in order to remind him of his past. Massema had only been kind to him, but she wouldn’t understand.
“Nevo was asking about you,” Massema told him. She turned to go. “Probably because it’s midday already.” She was wearing a backless tunic that tied around her neck—one given to most of the slaves, to display their brands.
Arn didn’t bother putting on a tunic at all. Nevo would want him for training—sweating, bruising, bleeding. He marched out of the shack briskly enough to nearly step on Massema’s heels. In his hand was a wooden sparring sword, clenched with white knuckles. Behind him, thrown stones battered the city like thunder.
The training yard was half of Quenden’s property, and Arn’s shack was already surrounded by slaves or guards who were training. Nevo stood cross-armed near the main house—Arn had never been inside—but Arn didn’t wait for Nevo to direct him. He spotted one of Nevo’s underlings, a man named Linim. Lin pointed at Arn in a way that would issue a formal challenge to most Razaad tribesmen. Arn accepted it.
He started with a leaping thrust, his sparring sword snaking over the man’s defending weapon and welting a circle onto the man’s bare shoulder. Lin stumbled back, grunting. He snarled and hacked wildly at Arn, but Arn ducked or side-stepped spryly. The warm breeze warmed the half-bald whiskers of Arn’s shaved scalp. The dirt crunched underneath each deft prance from Arn’s leather feet.
Arn’s next attack went for the back of Lin’s legs, but Lin managed to follow the speed of Arn’s attacks and lodge his weapon over one shoulder in order to block the hamstring slash. Lin smashed the pommel into Arn’s jaw and sent him reeling.
Arn barely kept his feet. A year ago, Arn would have rebounded with a furious slash or an unexpected grapple with claw-like fingers. Instead, he spat blood into the sand and tried not to fall to one knee. His unfair first attack had angered Lin—his adversary stalked him across the training ground as Arn reclaimed his balance with shambling paces. Arn kept it going, feigning further distress until Lin jabbed at his forearm.
Instead of taking the blow or reeling even further away, Arn spun around the thrust and smashed his wooden stick down on Lin’s upper arm. Splinters scraped away flesh and the man cried out. He lashed out defensively, a punch aimed at Arn’s bleeding mouth. Arn stepped back to give his fatigued frame the proper posture to take the impact—then he caught the fist with his off-hand. His skin rang, and his forearm shook. Twisting his sparring sword away from the inside of Lin’s elbow, he hooked the hilt over the guard’s outstretched wrist. Quickly shifting both hands onto the dangling blade of his own wooden sword, Arn yanked away from Lin until he felt a pop and heard the scream that followed.
Lin’s sword lay discarded in the dirt; the man fell to his knees, clutching his fractured wrist in shock. Arn turned back from his rotated position to face the subordinate and saw that the whole training yard had stopped what they were doing to watch him. He saw Gamden, carrying timber; he saw Massema, watching slack-jawed. Nevo was approaching red-faced, shouting curses and orders that sounded like bird calls in Arn’s blood-pumping ears. He was pointing at the sparring sword that Arn still held. When Arn didn’t drop it, Nevo pulled his own sword free of its scabbard. Metal screeched loudly, and bronze gleamed in the midday sun.
Arn shook his head bitterly. He wants me to train on his schedule, but he doesn’t want me to win? Nevo needed to be taught about the hierarchy. In this training yard, Arn was Stone Spear. In this fight, Arn was the screecher, prowling the forests of Scoa for easy prey. He strode behind the stunned guardsman he had crippled and placed the wooden sparring sword around his neck, hauling the man’s kneeling body back against his thigh. He could snap Lin’s neck without much effort now. Nevo froze, knowing it. Arn glared at him. “Sheathe,” he commanded.
Nevo cursed loudly—more words Arn couldn’t understand. He looked ready to charge at Arn.
Arn tugged gently with his death-grip—eliciting a moan from the injured fighter. “Sheathe now,” he murmured.
Nevo glanced at the house. Master Quenden had appeared, in the shadows of his home, watching with a gaze of fascination. He gave Nevo a nod. It was the slightest of nods, but it made Arn the second most powerful person on the property. Nevo sheathed his sword.
“I train when I want,” Arn told the head of the guards.
Nevo’s deathly glare did not waiver. He glanced again at Quenden, only to see his employer smiling. Nevo turned back to Arn and lowered his head one inch.
Arn released Lin—the man fell forward onto his good hand, whimpering as he cradled his broken wrist. It was a short walk back to Arn’s shack. The yard gradually returned to its normal sounds of training. Arn glanced up at the house to see Quenden walking his way, and to see Gamden’s look of disapproval. Gamden was not a fighter, but Arn was not sure if it was jealousy that was growing this bitterness between them or if it was Arn’s cooperation with their slaver.
Quenden didn’t say much. He just offered one point of advice: “If that had been a real sword, you would have cut your hands open trying to break his wrist.”
Arn regarded the old man with skeptical eyes. “It wasn’t.”
Quenden shrugged. “You may want a chance to practice before it is.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” Arn said. He wasn’t sure if he had mastered sarcasm in their language quite yet, but Quenden chuckled and started to leave him be.