Page 5 of Daughter of the Ninth Line: Part One

Huffing, I sat in the chair in front of her desk. “People lie, Svenna. I want my information from a vetted source. I can make it worth your time.”

She frowned, the ridged scar on her face pulling tightly at the skin of her cheek. “You have nothing I want.”

That was untrue. Reaching into one of the many pockets of my pants, I pulled out a small jar. “The scar cream you wanted from the village, the one they said was no longer being made.”

Svenna eyed the cream, and something flashed in her eyes. Desperation. “You’re very annoying, you know that? Fuck the Third Line and their spying eyes. I’m using a more accessible tincture now, so you can take that cream and shove it up your own puckered assh?—”

I held up a hand to stop her tirade. Normally, I’d have had the hounds take a chunk out of someone for disrespecting my Line with so little care, but this was Svenna. She hatedeveryone, and that kind of removed a little of the sting.

Pulling out a piece of paper, I slid it across the desk so it sat next to the jar of cream. “And the recipe to make it yourself.” I was playing my hand a little early, but I was motivated. Besides, I liked Svenna. I didn’t want to extort her any more than necessary.

She muttered something under her breath. “Fine, but get your little furry minions to stop spying on me, or I’ll start making winter coats out of them.”

Yeah, my father wasn’t going to go for that. Svenna was a key figure in Boellium, and he liked to have his finger on the pulse of every major institution in this country. “I can’t do that. But I can give you a week?”

She made a rude gesture. “A year. The Third Line does know how invasive that shit is, right?”

I grinned. “We are all well aware, and don’t worry, we aren’t immune from it either. A dormouse told my brothers when I jerked off into a sock.” I smirked at the memory of the shit I’d gotten for months after that. Even now, I checked for little spies before I jerked off. “I can give you a month, but that’s it.” Reaching toward the cream and the recipe like I was going to take them back, I wasn’t surprised when she slapped her hand over them and dragged them back to her side of the desk.

“Fine. Dick.” She stood and grabbed a different ledger. This one, I recognised as the admissions ledger. She pulled it from the shelf with her one remaining hand, and despite the fact it was huge and heavy, I didn’t offer to help. I liked my balls where they were. She had incredible strength in her remaining hand and arm, and hardly struggled as she walked it back to the desk. “I’m going to leave this here, open to a certain page. Do not turn the page. In fact, don’t eventouchit. You get two minutes.”

She swept out of the room, and I chuckled.Surly.Walking around her desk, I looked at the page, open to the section for admissions for the Ninth Line.

Avalon Halhed.So nobility then, not that you’d know it from the way she dressed. You could definitely tell from the way she held herself, though. Youngest daughter of Baron Halhed, unmarried and twenty-three. A spinster.Interesting.Normally, daughters were married off in their teen years up there in theNorthern perma-frost, to keep the Line varied and to share around the mouths to feed during the long, cold winters.

She had three older brothers, none of whom had ever come to Boellium War College, I noted, along with one elder sister, who’d been married off to some other lordling of their backwater fiefdom. A description of her physicality—identifying features such as the birthmark at the base of her spine and the small scar she had on her chest—was listed on her page to help identify her body, should she be killed in training in a way that made her face unrecognizable.

A note was included under Psychological Fitness about the death of the Baroness Halhed. Just a brief line about Avalon being present at the death of her mother when she was a toddler. I guess growing up motherless could be a cause of some kind of psychological stress, but half of Boellium had lost a parent, either to infighting between the Lines, starvation, disease, or one of a multitude of other ways you could die in Ebrus. It was probably only listed because she was nobility. It was noted that she was the first female conscripted from her Line, however.

Other than that, her file was completely unremarkable, and I was a little pissed that I’d given up so much of my leverage for very little reward. It was the gamble you made sometimes in the information business.

Svenna stomped back into the room what felt like seconds later. “Time’s up, Taeme. Get the fuck out of my office.”

Giving her a cocky grin, I moved back around the desk toward the door. “A pleasure as always, Svenna.”

She flipped me a rude gesture. “Shut the damn door on your way out.”

Braxus was waiting for me outside the administration door when I stepped out. “Aren’t you meant to be watching the girl?” I asked him, quirking a brow.

He yawned and sent me a mental picture of Alucius lying in the shade of a tree, watching the new conscripts fumble with their swords, including Avalon Halhed.

Huffing a laugh, I tilted my head. “Fair. I guess it doesn’t take both of you to watch one girl.” I paused at the stairs. One set went up to my floor, with another set going down into the bowels of Boellium. “Actually, I have another job for you, and I think you’ll enjoy this one a little more. I know how much you love playing hide and seek.”

Braxus gave me a toothy grin, his tongue lolling out as I described what I needed. Maybe I had a better source of information after all.

Four

Avalon

I’d never hurt so much in my entire life. There were muscles in my body that I hadn’t known even existed until they felt like they were on fire today.

“Lift your fucking sword higher, Ninth, before someone chops off your damn head!” the instructor—Kika, a hardass originally from the Sixth Line—shouted at me. I gritted my teeth and did what was asked, despite the fact that I burned. I wanted to vomit, and I wasn’t the only one. Most of the class had already leaned over the rail of the training ring and lost their breakfast. I swallowed hard; I really didn’t want that to be me.

My older brother, Kian, had taught me a little swordsmanship, enough that I could protect myself if we were invaded. Or if my father got into a drunken melancholy and came after me again. It had only happened once, back when I was eight, but if Kian hadn’t stumbled upon us as my father pinned me to the hearth with the tip of his sword at my chest, I would’ve been dead.

Sure, Father had apologized—more to Kian than to me, but I’d taken it. That wasn’t good enough for Kian, though. After that, I was never alone in a room with my father without one ofmy brothers there too. From that point on, Father had looked at me with guilt mixed in with his normal sadness and hatred.

All this was to say that I’d been overly confident coming to Boellium War College. I had held a sword before, and there were people from the Eleventh and Twelfth Lines who didn’t even have that small experience.

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