Revolt of the Gladiators by Heather Kushner

Author:Heather Kushner [Kushner, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-13T21:00:00+00:00

Halene, LiSun 9

If there was a way to tell time in utter darkness, Halene hadn't found it. The only light flooded in when her jailers pushed food and water in through a small door within the door. So far as she could tell, it wasn't at similar intervals of time, adding to the feeling of disconnect. Every time the little door opened, bright light poured in, as though broad daylight were behind the hulk of iron. What that meant, however, was known only to her jailers.

Boredom led to tedium. Her thumbs ached at times from constant twiddling. When she spoke, at times it was though she could see the words manifest in the complete darkness. Like puffs of smoke, they seemed to hold their shape for a moment, then dissipate. It was an odd sensation she couldn't quite discount, no matter how little sense it made.

This was the price for standing up to the crush of oppression. "No," she said, chuckling at her own righteousness. "I wasn't a bastion of freedom from oppression." Terrible decisions past, the most recent in forcing the removal of people from the southern courtyard, weighed heavily on her. No, she hadn't cared a fig for those people, many who had nowhere else to go. The excuse she was 'serving the greater good' was nonsense. What kind of greater good was served by tyrannizing those who had no power to resist?

Alone in this pit, her judgment no doubt hurrying to her on wicked wing, she had all the time necessary for reflection. That she didn't like what she saw in her mental mirror was a testament to why she was there. She'd tried to play both sides against each other for the benefit of only one person: herself. It was no longer possible to cloak her misdeeds from herself. Isolation brought it out better than any physical punishment Phonia could have prescribed.

"Not that I won't be dying soon," she said. Alarm coursed through her when she realized her voice sounded more than a little eager. "Treason is whatever those in power wish it to be," she said and nodded at the quaint piece of rhetoric. Her tutor would have been proud.

When her thoughts meandered to Astia, however, a different feeling washed over her. Regret, not at what she'd done to the gladiator, but what they'd missed with each other. Astia was one of the few people she'd been completely genuine with.

"That's not even true, now is it?" she asked her inner voice. "When Astia asked about the southern courtyard, I didn't tell her I was instrumental in ordering people removed." The gladiator had been a part of it, too, but as a prisoner used as club to knock over the heads of innocents caught in an inconvenient position by their own leaders. The new Magistry needed the land, she'd told herself.

"And so we sought to usher in a new age of oppression of some, by oppressing others," she said sullenly. "And only Ysander saw through it all.

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