Free 3: Black Blades by Ginn Hale

John in a sea of gray robes and black hair.
    A year ago he would have found it intimidating, but now he knew all of them by sight, if not personally. And he knew that most of them cared little about the outcome of these individual tests. They had each had their share of defeats and conquests. In their dormitory groups they practiced fighting together every day. They were more interested in the opportunity the gathering offered to chat and gamble.
    Their subdued conversations produced a low soft hum. It was a rare, comfortable sound, like distant radio music or birdsong. It offered John the sense of being at once surrounded by life and, at the same time, not having to be drawn into it.
    Some of the priests had stripped down to just the thin pants they wore beneath their robes. Others were still dressed in their robes and coats, keeping warm while they waited in the shadows of the armory building. A few, like John and his opponent, were spattered and streaked with mud.
    John steadied his opponent and watched him slog back to the steps. The other priest simply stripped all his clothes off and tossed them onto a step.
    John scraped a dried spatter of mud off his shoulder and waited for the prior to decide who he would fight next.
    Normally, with the grounds in such poor condition, the tests would have been called off. But today was special.
    Today, they were being watched.
    The highest-ranking priests in Rathal’pesha—the ushman’im and ushiri’im—were gathered on the walkways overhead to observe the tests. John easily picked out Ushman Nuritam; his long white braids were swept up in the wind and writhed like ribbons. Beside him stood Ushman Dayyid.
    Dayyid’s black coat formed a dark column behind Nuritam’s frail figure. His thick black braids cascaded down his broad shoulders, too heavy for the breezes to lift. The natural northern softness of his features was undermined by his sharp nose and arched lips.
    During the first weeks after John arrived in Rathal’pesha, Dayyid had gone out of his way to come down to the training ground and demonstrate the battle forms, using John as his practice opponent. John hadn’t known anything about the handholds or stances, and Dayyid hadn’t tried to explain them to him, either. Time and time again Dayyid had hurled him to the ground, twisted his arms back, kicked him in the ribs, and held him down with one foot placed over his throat.
    And John knew that Dayyid had done it simply to show John and the other priests that he could.
    After a week, John’s mouth had been split and too swollen for him to eat without tasting his own blood. Samsango had given him a balm to deaden the pain of his beaten ribs and bruised back. When John asked what he had done to offend Dayyid, Samsango had told John not to take the thrashings personally. Ushman Dayyid always beat new priests as a forewarning against insolence. He’d assured John that if he didn’t fight, Dayyid would eventually grow bored.
    Samsango had been right. After two days of meeting limp resistance, Dayyid hadn’t returned to the ushvun training grounds to abuse him further.
    He saw remarkably little of any of the ushman’im or the ushiri’im. They kept to the upper floors of Rathal’pesha, practicing their divine rituals and using the Gray Space to speak to Usho in the Black Tower and the Issusha’im Oracles in Umbra’ibaye thousands of miles away.
    Beneath them, the common ushvun’im saw to the day-to-day upkeep of the monastery. As an ushvun, John cleaned goat sheds, tended weasel coops, scrubbed statues, scrubbed floors, scrubbed walls, hauled urns of lamp oil, carried bags of raw taye, prayed until he could barely speak, and stood through icy nights of guard duty. He had worked in the kitchens, the gardens, the laundry, and the bell towers.
    At first, the constant labor had left him too tired to think. He had staggered through his first month in an exhausted daze. Once, Samsango had found him passed out with his