Bere’s smile is satisfied. ‘Perfect. Shall we talk coin while she entertains us? I assume you’ll want to see how your new acquisition does?’
Kobeth nods. ‘Come. Take final refreshment, then. We’ll watch her with Maldred, see if she has enough spirit to be one of mine.’
Now, Bere makes a sound of annoyance. ‘No more trials, Kobeth. She’s yours. No returns. This grows tedious.’
‘Not a trial,a show, my friend. I’ll pay you top market value for her no matter the outcome. I give you a vow.’
Bere makes a sound of derision. ‘The promise of an orc does not carry the weight you seem to believe it does.’
‘And yet you’ll still come with me now to be amused,’ Kobeth chuckles.
The orc gestures with a finger at me and glances at the one who brought me upstairs. ‘Isen, have her taken to the baths. Ensure she’s washed. Her stink offends us all. Even Maldred will balk at having to be in the same room with her.’
Bere eyes me, giving me a wink, his blue eye flashing violet for a moment. I stare at him, taking in his thin face, the dark goatee.I do know him, and not just from the day he brought me here. Why can’t I remember?
I’m trying to understand what’s happening, but I can’t work it out. Rising from the lowest levels means I have promise as a fighter. I’ll win. I’ll make coin. But I haven’t had a fight yet, not a real one in the true pits. This isn’t how it’s meant to go. It’s notright.
Dread makes my belly clench as Isen, the orc who brought me up, nods and takes hold of my arm. My sack is left where it fell on the floor and I’m drawn along another hallway. We pass other orcs, some demons, and there are even, oddly, some pixies. They’re richly dressed, with imperious expressions, somehow staring down their noses at Isen though they’re much shorter. Me, they don’t even look at.
I’m thrust into a warm, steamy room. There’s no one else here that I can see. Just me.
‘Bathe,’ the orc orders in a lazy tone.
I look around the bathing room in wonder. I must waste too much time for Isen’s liking because I feel his boot connect with the middle of my back, and then I’m under the water.
I splutter to the surface, scrambling to the side because it’s much deeper than I am tall. The orc laughs loudly at me.
‘Humans,’ he chuckles as he moves away looking uninterested again now that I’m not half-drowning.
I make my way to the steps, finding soap and clean cloths. I’m not sure when I last bathed, and though I know this is not for my comfort, I take advantage. I soap my hair and my body thoroughly. I use the rough cloth to rid myself of the dirt and dust I’m caked in from however many days I’ve been in the training arena with the other human slaves.
Several weeks, they said just now, and yet that fae said something about only a sennight passing outside the pits.
It sounded as if time passes differently here, but I have no way of knowing the true variance. I haven’t seen the sun, and there are no seasons to feel down here, deep under the ground, nor is there any way for me to compare time here with the outside.
Something niggles at me deep in my mind. Again.
I’ve forgotten something. It’s important. I need to remember. But I push it away. These thoughts keep plaguing me and they’re getting stronger, more impossible to ignore. They’re going to get me killed.
Survive.
‘It doesn’t matter!’ I scream silently into the void of my mind, the places where everything is in disarray.
There is only where I am now. Here, in this bathing room. This is my present reality. It doesn’t matter what came before it, what I can’t recall.
The feeling fades away, leaving me in the hot water, the prelude to something that won’t be good for me, I’m sure.
I’ll need to fight. I’ll need to win. Prove my worth to the orc in charge of this place, Kobeth.
Survive.
‘Out,’ the overseer says a few moments later, picking himself up off the wall and gesturing at me with a lone finger to leave the water.
I’ve washed away all the soap, so I hasten to do his bidding, but, on the way out, I notice a pile of clean drying cloths, all folded and pristine. I grab one before he can stop me, wrapping it around myself.
He looks long-suffering, but doesn’t seem overly bothered at the liberty I’ve taken.
‘En’t me who gives a shit, slave,’ he says to me, ‘but the laundresses will be fucked right off they see one of you dirty human cunts from down the bottom with one of their clean linens wrapped around your soiled flesh.’
