came after him.
Most of the apprentices were full grown, with adult frames that hadn’t yet filled out, and faces that still contained an echo of childhood. At seventeen, Satyendra was not the fastest nor the strongest of them. He was small like his mother, but he had her steel, and one other advantage. For Satyendra was different. Not just because of his status but because of something deep inside him, something fundamental. He didn’t understand why or how, but he knew, in a way that he never articulated, that something inside of him was twisted.
As far as he could tell, the majority of people in the castle did not lie. It did not even occur to them. For Satyendra, deception was a part of everyday life. Every pleasantry was a lie. Every smile. Every kind word. It was a daily necessity to keep his secret. A lifetime of practice had made him the best deceiver in the castle.
And so, in the game, he lied. As he approached the first pair of apprentices, his body told them he was going left, and when he went right instead, they were wrong footed. He used the same trick on the second set. The third set were expecting a feint, they watched his eyes instead of his body.
They might as well scream their plans at me, so bright is it on their faces.
He told them with his body that he was going left, but hinted with his eyes that he was going right.
They believed his eyes, and he sailed past them.
Too easy!
He was halfway across the courtyard when he heard his mother’s voice from one of the upper windows. He was being called. Pretending not to hear, he put his head down and ran for the finish.
Chunk, one of the older apprentices came charging up behind him. Satyendra tried to weave to throw her off, but she was so much bigger and so much faster that it didn’t matter.
All he had to do was keep going a little further. The wall grew larger in his vision. Under the clouds, the sapphires set in the stones seemed dull and dark.
Just a few more steps!
The more it looked as if he was going to win, the more he could feel the frustration of the other apprentices, like a dam about to break. He wanted the sadness underneath, he needed it.
As his pumping arms swung out behind him, he felt a hand close on his wrist.
‘Got you!’
No!
Chunk pulled him backwards, away from the wall. His fingers had come tantalizingly close, another inch or two and he would have won. They skidded together, both working hard not to fall or get their legs tangled.
Satyendra could feel his momentum being stolen and it enraged him. He had to win!
‘I’ve got him!’ she called.
He twisted to get free but her grip stayed firm. When he tried to drag her towards the wall she simply leaned back and he was unable to shift her weight. The other apprentices were running over. If any two of them got their hands on him then he would lose the game. Their frustration had vanished, their sadness become like a memory of mist. His hunger clawed at him.
His mother’s voice called again, louder this time.
Neither of them paid the Honoured Mother any attention. Chunk grinned at him and he grinned back.
He was still smiling as he pressed his foot against the side of her knee and pushed. Braced as her leg was, it was easy for him to pop out the joint.
Her smile vanished into a scream.
The mix of surprise and pain was heady, and Satyendra drank it in. Their suffering like a physical thing, nourishing. Around him, everything came into sharper focus. He felt more alert, more alive. It was as if he’d been in a desert and forgotten how sweet water could taste. A part of him knew that this was going to make trouble down the road but when the rush was on him it was hard to care.
Her grip on his wrist was still strong, the shock making her squeeze even tighter. It didn’t matter. His strength grew as hers waned, and he broke free easily and took the last step to the wall.
While the apprentices were gathering around Chunk he touched his fingers to the cool stone. ‘I win!’ he declared.
When he turned back the others were staring at him. Most were dumbfounded but three were advancing with violent intent.
They look angry, he thought. Angry enough to forget the rules. Perhaps they were going to actually strike him this time. Let them try! He thought, I can do anything! Though bolstered by another’s pain, he knew that the odds were not in his favour. Behind his bold smile, a worm of sanity crept in, telling him he should apologize or beg, anything to stop the incoming beating. His fear smothered the rush, and the closer they got, the more he wished that he had not put himself in the corner of the courtyard.
His mother’s voice cut across the scene, half speaking Satyendra’s name, half singing it, stretching out the sound into several long notes. The apprentices froze in place immediately as the word seemed to bounce from the walls. Even the sapphires laced throughout the structure began to hum softly, setting Satyendra’s teeth on edge.
He hastily took his hand from the stone. ‘I am here.’
His mother seemed to glide towards them, her icy expression capped off with a delicate frown of displeasure. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
Satyendra assumed a respectful pose. ‘We were playing hunt the demon. The other apprentices didn’t like that I won.’
‘He only won because he cheated!’ exclaimed Nose, pointing at Chunk who was still groaning on the floor. ‘Honoured Mother Chandni, look what he did.’
‘Did you hurt her, Satyendra?’
‘Yes.’
Chandni shook her head. ‘The hunters will be most displeased to hear that.’
‘No they won’t.’
Her expression grew colder still. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said they won’t be displeased to hear what I did. If anything, they’ll be displeased with—’ Satyendra struggled to recall Chunk’s real name and resorted to gesturing instead, ‘the way the other apprentices behaved.’
She made a point of looking at all of the surprised and outraged faces before turning back to Satyendra and folding her arms. ‘Explain.’
‘Of course, mother.’ He looked at Nose. ‘What did I say before we started?’
‘That you were supposed to be having a lesson.’
Chandni nodded to herself. ‘You knew you were late and yet you still agreed to play. That makes it worse.’
Satyendra narrowed his eyes at Nose. The boy was such a dung head. ‘After that. After you’d begged me to play and I’d agreed to one,’ he glanced at his mother, ‘very quick game.’
‘Um, you asked which demon you should be.’
‘Yes, and after that?’
‘You …’ Nose looked up and stared hard at the clouds as if he could make out the suns twirling behind them. ‘You said you wanted to be the Scuttling Corpseman.’
‘And what does the Corpseman do?’
‘Oh! You said it kills any hunter it catches alone.’
‘Exactly. As Lord Rochant says, only a foolish hunter engages a demon alone. That’s why in the game it takes three of them together to tag the demon and win. If we had been in the Wild for true, she –’ he pointed at Chunk ‘– would be dead or taken. She failed once because she thought to take me alone. She failed twice when she let her guard down, and she failed a third time when she allowed me to look into her eyes.’
The other apprentices nodded at that, and some space opened between them and