Free Benjamin Ashwood by AC Cobble

until she was officially enrolled as an Initiate.
    Meredith
kept silent and seemed to struggle with her role in the group.  Over the two
weeks it became clear she was Amelie’s handmaiden, but Amelie admonished her to
not act like it while they were travelling so they wouldn’t raise suspicion. 
She wasn’t going to study at the Sanctuary so she didn’t need to listen to Lady
Towaal’s lectures each night, but she listened many times anyway.  The other
nights she would assist Rhys with the camp and the cooking.  Unlike Amelie and
the others, she had a little chip on her shoulder when it came to Ben and
Meghan.  She was from a big city, lived in a house with Lords and Ladies and
she made it clear she considered Ben and Meghan country bumpkins.
    Lady
Towaal herself had very little to say to Ben.  To her, this trip was business
and she had no interest in making friends, particularly with a boy from a small
town in the mountains.  She wasn’t rude, just direct.  Aside from the lessons
with the girls she rarely spoke at length with anyone, she just made imperious
directives to the group as a whole.  She’d glare around the fire and bark out,
“we’ll leave a first light” or some other instruction.  Ben found it was easy
to follow her commands and pretend she wasn’t there the rest of the time.
    Saala
and Meghan were the only two that didn’t seem to have secrets.  Ben would walk
with Meghan while they were on the road but the two of them rarely spoke. 
Farview was too recent to reminisce about and neither of them knew what to
expect in the future.  They both enjoyed the comfort of a familiar face though
when both of their lives had been turned upside down.
    Saala’s
natural state was silence but he readily answered questions when Ben had them. 
Ben quickly found out that he didn’t know what to ask.  Saala said he spent
most of his time travelling and he didn’t keep a permanent home.  The concept
was foreign to Ben but he found the idea of hitting the road and moving towards
a new horizon each day to be invigorating.
    The
most interesting piece of information Ben got from Saala was how he became a
Blademaster.  A large part of Ben was still that boy who sat on the edge of his
chair in the Buckhorn Tavern picking apart every word of a story about
Blademasters and their adventures.  The opportunity to get the real details
from an actual Blademaster was a thrill he wouldn’t have believed possible.
    Saala
said he was from a wealthy family in the country of Ooswam.  Ben was afraid to
admit to Saala he had never heard of Ooswam.  Saala caught on and explained it
wasn’t part of Alcott, the continent they were on, it was far south of Fabrizo
and Farview – past the Blood Bay and the South Sea.  Ben kept to himself that
he didn’t know enough geography to know what that meant either.
    Saala
explained that when he was young, his parents sent him to a boarding school
where the sword was one of the subjects.  In Ooswam high society, poetry,
painting, music and swordplay were all pastimes of the wealthy.  It was
expected that young members of society would become adept at all of these
skills.  Saala admitted he had little to no skill in poetry or music but he had
surpassed all of his peers with the sword.  Ben gathered there had been some
sort of falling out between Saala and his family and he left Ooswam to travel the
world and learn the sword from masters anywhere he could find them.
    The
actual process to become a Blademaster it turned out was quite simple.  One
just had to defeat a current Blademaster in front of reputable witnesses.  Once
you defeated a Blademaster, you had the right to wear a Blademaster’s glyph on
your weapon and scabbard.
    “Wait,
what’s to prevent anyone from putting a Blademaster’s glyph on their blade or
buying a blade with one on it.  How would anyone know?”
    “Remember,”
Saala explained, “to become a Blademaster, you must challenge and defeat