Sword Sisters (3 page)

Vikki, the human assigned to make me presentable for social occasions—and, I suspected, serve as an example of how a well-behaved young lady was supposed to act), said, “You’re going to be impossibly late for dinner, you know.”

“I know,” I said, and I unceremoniously stripped off the now dirty and possibly smelly leather corset, careful not to let it get caught on my protruding ribs. There are no words to describe the feeling of relief after a snug corset removal. It’s like re-experiencing breath for the first time. My lungs could fully expand, and there was room for all my other organs once again. “Yaaaah!” I cried with satisfaction. My voice echoed off the stone around me.

“You can certainly carry a tune,” Vikki said dryly, taking the corset with her thumb and one finger. She tossed it into the basket with my other dirty clothes. “I’ll step out while you…” And she was gone. Vikki knew the routine. With the exception of that incident in the woods so many years ago, no human has seen me disrobed, not even partially. And none ever will.

As I undressed the rest of the way, I discovered she’d arranged a bowl of clean water, a sponge, and a bottle with an atomizer. Then I quickly washed my pits. “And put on a lot of perfume,” she called from behind the door that only she used. “Okay,” I called back, uncomfortable with even a mere conversation with a human in this state of undress.

This was one of the stranger aspects of my future role as king’s bodyguard. In order to both fit in and understand the king’s daily life, I had a servant, just as he would. But I never thought of her that way. If anything, I felt like her servant. Always watched. Never alone. Apparently, during the war, Reapers had issues with the lower-caste humans, unable to truly comprehend their function. After all, a warrior race bred from rape by their greatest enemies couldn’t help but have a skewed world view. But the Reapers and the humans had been living together in reasonable peace for a long time now—well, most of us anyway—and we understood each other much better. Still, the Reapers in power were worried that old animosities might surface, so they gave me a lady in waiting.

She would have washed me herself, as others of her kind did for their human masters. But I couldn’t bear it. After my years as a Demon plaything, any sort of touch was unbearable. So she stood quietly, outside the door, while I did it myself.

I surveyed the mess that my quarters seemed to always be. There were my clothes strewn about my room. Some weapons lay on the floor; some hung on the walls. A dead flower drooped in a small, crystal vase, left there by Vikki on a previous visit. Little Gray, the mouse that occasionally visited me, had chewed through a parchment Eldrid gave me to memorize. I giggled as I thought of standing before him and reciting, “Nom-nom-nom, burp!”

“And what is so funny?” Vikki demanded through the door as I wiped dirt from my face.

“Nothing,” I said seriously.

“You will one day be the guardian of our king,” she said, peeking through the crack. She knew how long it took me to wash and redress. “You can’t afford to be tardy then. Assassins and rivals will find openings if you’re not there. We have waited so long for our king, a full-blooded human king. Should anything happen to him, there would be riots in the streets, looting and mayhem the likes of which Ilan has never seen! The streets would turn red with blood, the sun would go black, Demons would rule again…” She was still talking, but I was lost in another thought even with the amused smile on my face.

Our king. Did she mean her and me or her and the other humans? I didn’t want to ask because I truly didn’t want to know. I liked Vikki and her company and appreciated the care she took of me when so many others around me seemed cautious and afraid. Vikki was probably afraid too, but she did a good job of hiding it. “You sound like Adonis,” I said finally, interrupting one of her infamous monologues.

“Adonis is a great Reaper,” Vikki replied as she handed me a brush. “He understands what the world must become as he has guided us all to this juncture. I wish he could be a bigger part of it, but the world is for humans now.”

That made me a little angry. “We exist in it too, you know.”

“Oh, Aella, you know what I meant. Obviously, if…”

“Yeah,” I agreed quickly but sullenly. “I know.”

When my hair was, if not tamed, at least cowed, Vikki quickly spritzed me with the perfume then attempted to straighten out the wrinkles in my gown. I examined myself for any ripped seams or unsightly exposed flesh. The bones of my spine could often snag and tear the fragile formalwear I was expected to don.

In the warm crimson of the evening light that streamed through the window, my skin and hair looked the same color. I was called the Red Reaper, and at this moment, the name fit me perfectly. But it also made me look like a normal, human girl, demure and delicate, capable of things like tending a baby, arranging flowers, or giving a delicate kiss to the man I loved.

“There,” she said. “Beautiful.”

“Presentable,” I corrected.

Vikki didn’t look at me when she asked, “Do you think Andre will be there at dinner?”

“I’m sure he will be.” All the girls, human or Reaper, liked Andre. He was handsome and an incorrigible flirt. He was quick to compliment a new hairstyle or fetching gown, and you could always find him in the castle by following the giggles. That he was firmly fasted to, and desperately in love with, the beautiful Reaper Freya did not affect him, her, or the human girls around him. They all seemed to delight in the game.

Vikki twirled one strand of hair around her finger. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I understand that Reaper men…that their…well, you know…has the same sort of…well, spikes as their spines. Is that true?”

I turned to look at her. I suppose it should’ve been obvious that I was still a virgin, just as I imagined she was, but you could never be sure what humans thought of us. “Why do you think I would even know that?”

“Well, I mean, you…you’re…oh, I just assumed you talked or learned about it from Eldrid.”

“Eldrid!” I laughed. My teacher was old, prim, and so tightly-wound I couldn’t imagine her ever having a lustful thought in her life. I’d heard stories about her battle prowess during the Thousand Year War, but I had a hard time imagining the woman once being such a warrior. “We haven’t really covered much anatomy. Just history and philosophy. And mathematics,” I added with a scowl. I was really good at math, but I’d learned that saying so made people avoid me even more.

“Oh, well,” she said, and turned away. She looked disappointed. She turned back to me. “It’s just, well, I wanted to know…” If I let her continue, I’d never make it to dinner.

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I do know!” I sighed. “The spikes on our spine, ribs, and other protruding body parts—those are bone. It comes from our Demon fathers. Because they’ve been alive for so long, their bones have hardened and begun to protrude. It’s their tough skin that keeps the bones from protruding even more. This same tendency is passed down to Reapers.”

“Along with the Demon skin?”

“Yes, exactly. We have patches of Demon skin, usually covering the protruding bones. Not all Reapers have the same patches in the same place or the same amount of ‘spikes,’ as you call them. It all depends on how old the Reaper is and how much Demon blood they have.” Wow. I actually did learn something during the world’s most boring lecture. I mentally patted myself on the spikes.

Reaper men were exactly like human men in that particular department, I knew, but it was better for Vikki not to know that. Probably better for Andre that she didn’t know as well.

Then I left my room the same the way I entered it: out through the sky light. Vikki called after me, “Don’t tangle your hair!”

CHAPTER THREE

The great hall, as its name implies, was enormous. At one point, during and right after the Thousand Year War, it teemed with so many Reaper warriors that the servants had to eat crammed in a separate antechamber that had once been a large cupboard. Now, though, our numbers were so few that we pretty much ate wherever we wanted, with whomever we wanted. As long as we got there before the dinner bell rang.

When I reached the door to the dining hall, I found Jensa on guard. She wore formal armor and held a short spear at her side. She made no move to step aside and allow me in.

“Come on, Jensa,” I said.

She said, “You’re late, Red.”

“No, I’m not.”

The evening bell began to toll. Jensa smiled. “Now you are.”

During the waning days of the war, Jensa had defended a hilltop position all alone against a dozen Demon warriors, preventing them from flanking Adonis and the main force. She was known as the Defender because of this, or Lady D more casually. She also hated me because she felt her rightful place was guarding the new king. Most days, I agreed with her; she certainly needed no additional training. But she wore her contempt for me on her sleeve, and that had begun to seriously grate on my nerves. I said, “Jensa, get out of my damn way.”

Jensa smiled. Although she was considerably older than me, she not only looked about the same age but acted like a human five-year-old most of the time. “Make me.”

“I would except I don’t want to mess up my dress. Does this make you feel powerful? You know, I have a wooden wedge that I use to block my door open when the weather’s nice. It does the same job as you do, but it’s better company.” With that, I turned on my heel and walked away.

“You don’t deserve your life!” she called after me. “You don’t deserve it! You couldn’t even fight your way out of the Demon’s realm. You had to be rescued, remember?”

I stopped and looked at her. It was no secret that I was still a child when the Demons took me. It was no secret what transpired while I was there. Demon torture is common knowledge amongst Reapers, even these, who weren’t raised by Demons like their half-breed parents. Jensa knew what pain, humiliation, and degradation I experienced at the hands of the Demons. And she mocked me.

“You’re cute when you’re angry,” she said.

“Keep it up, and I’ll be downright gorgeous.” I finished turning on my heel and marched around a corner in the corridor until I reached a servant’s entrance hidden behind a tapestry. I slipped through and emerged into the dining hall with no one, including Jensa, the wiser.

I took a moment to get the lay of the land. Andre, my recent tormentor, now sat at a table beside Freya. Keefe, another Reaper, was surrounded by a half-dozen human girls, all dressed in proper dinner attire. He was, as usual, in the middle of a joke.

“…so she said, ‘Does anyone have any spare wood they’re not using?’ And he said, ‘Sorry, honey. I use my wood for pitching tents.’”

Most of the girls laughed except one dark-eyed brunette, who said loudly, “I don’t get it.”

Keefe sighed. “Really? Well, it’s like this. When a guy’s laying under a sheet, and his—”

Before Keefe could finish, one of the other girls whispered something in the brunette’s ear. She instantly turned bright red and giggled.

“Of course, where most men tent, I pavilion,” Keefe said with mock pride, and everyone laughed again.

Keefe saw me across the room and nodded that I should join them. I shook my head. Instead, I drifted over to the serving line.

I felt a soft hand on my arm and turned to see Freya beside me. “You look lovely tonight, Aella.”

“Thank you,” I said. She certainly did with fresh flowers in her blond hair and a gown that left her shoulders bare. She had hardly any Demon skin and was proud of it. She was taller than me and so lithe it was hard to believe she’d actually killed more Demons than Andre during the war. I guess it’s true what they say: In battle, size really doesn’t matter. Sometimes, when I was feeling generous, I allowed that she considered me a younger sister, one who alternately aggravated her and required her protection. I knew I did the first, but I resented the implication that I needed the latter. It kept us from ever getting really close.

“Andre told me about your training today,” she said. I always liked her husky voice. I wondered if it was always that way or became that way after a certain number of battle cries. “I wanted to say, I have some oil that might help. It blocks the scent in your hair. Makes the tangles easier to get out too.”

I clenched my fists. Her know-it-all attitude drove me insane. I didn’t need help, especially cosmetic help. “That’s all right, Freya. I’ll work it out.”

“I know you will, but this would be faster.” She smiled that beautiful, kind, patient smile, which made everything worse. I gritted my teeth.

She started to say something else, thought better of it, and returned to her table. I let out my breath slowly, fighting to stay calm, wondering why the hell this pissed me off so much. Was I just incapable of accepting kindness at face value? Did I really believe there was always an ulterior motive?

I took my place at the end of the line behind Corboy, a Reaper blinded in battle during the war. He wore a black, eyeless mask to mark his injury although we all knew he didn’t need his eyes to see; he was a tracker like Andre, sensitive to things most people, and most Reapers, couldn’t fathom.

I’d never seen beneath the mask and often speculated about the trailing ends of the scars that peeked out around it. Were his eyes gone? Were they still there but oozing and milky-white, the way old dogs’ eyes turned? Or were they simply normal-looking but non-functional? In any case, his gnarled hands never missed a tankard or a utensil. Well, not until the tankard had been emptied and refilled several times.