Sometimes in writing a story scenes come to mind that are part of a character’s history, but not a part of the current story. But sometimes those scenes demand to be written; the character demands to be heard. This is one of those. It may not be part of this story, but it is part of what made the character who he is. I think that merits recognition.

Anno Regni Gloriane Regina Aureae VIII

Their tormentors had left the room for a while; whatever the reason, it was of no matter. Damien went to work.

Bellarmée had taught him many tricks over the years, tricks that became habits and then second nature. Tricks like how to dislocate a finger, a shoulder, to be able to escape his bonds. The blood from the many cuts on his arms only helped, making his hand slick enough to slide out of the ropes more easily. Tricks like how to hide a tiny blade, no longer than his little finger, in the braids at the back of his neck. A tiny blade, razor sharp. Just long enough to cut a rope—or a throat.

“Boy.”

Damien’s eyes snapped to the man bound in the chair in the middle of the room. His mentor, Bellarmée. The man’s voice was hoarse, a rough whisper, made so by screaming in pain from the torture he had been subject to.

“M’ser.” Damien went to him instantly, and used the tiny knife to cut the ropes that bound the man. But when he went to cut the ropes on Bellarmée’s ankles, his mentor put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t bother, boy,” Bellarmée said. “You have to get out of here. Get out, and go back to Martagne. Kill them if you can, but go.” He took a sharp, harsh breath, and tried to stifle a bout of coughing. “This mission is over. We’ve failed.” When Damien started to protest, Bellarmée raised a hand and the boy stopped in mid-word. “It happens, boy. Take the loss and learn from it.”

He leaned against the back of the chair for a few moments, just breathing. Harsh, painful, wheezing breaths. His eyes drifted closed for a moment, and then he shook his head and looked at Damien. “You have to get out of here,” he said again. “Martagne will need you in the coming years. Boy,” he said, then shook his head and corrected himself. “Damien. You will be leaving me here. No!” he said sharply, shutting Damien down again. “They cut the tendons in my heels. I could never have walked out of here. And you know that I am dying anyway, from the wasting sickness, the cancer.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder as Damien knelt in front of him, looking up into his eyes. “You must kill me. I cannot survive this, I can withstand no more. And I cannot be left alive for another group to try their hand. What I know, the Brekken must never have.” He paused a moment, then went on, softly. “It will be a better death than either of those.”

Bellarmée raised a shaking hand and pointed over to the corner of the room. “They put all our things over there. When you are done, take what you need. Take my knife, it is yours now. Take any papers you find, and go home. Maybe there will be something there of use.” Then he pointed to the other side of the room. “There is kerosene there, for the lamps. Use it to destroy what else is here, so others won’t know what might be missing.” He looked down into Damien’s eyes for a long moment. His mouth worked, chewing on words that would never be said, but then he cleared his throat. “I’m proud of you, son. You’ve done well, always. But now there’s no more time, they could come back at any moment.” Then he put his hand on Damien’s shoulder once more, and squeezed. “Your little knife will be enough for this,” he said, and then put a finger on his neck, just below the point of his jaw. “Here. I’ve shown you this before.”

Damien shook his head, looking up into his eyes, his own gone dark, all pupil ringed with palest blue.

Bellarmée shook his head, too. “Do it, boy,” he said gently, “If they come back it will be too late. Do what you have to do, boy. Just do what you have to do.”

For a moment, the muscles in Damien’s face quivered, and then all emotion was wiped away, going to a still calm as Bellarmée had taught him. Damien rose and went behind the chair and stood for a moment, then reached around with one hand and covered Bellarmée’s eyes. His mentor reached up and took his hand away, then folded Damien’s fingers within his own. Another moment, and Damien bent and pressed a kiss on the top of Bellarmée’s head. And at the same time thrust the tiny knife home.

Bellarmée stiffened under his hands, then let himself relax as the blood flowed. Damien thought he heard him say, “Good boy…” on a long breath, and then a few long moments later Bellarmée’s hand let go of his and slid to his lap.

Damien stepped forward and knelt, cutting the last bonds at his mentor’s feet, then lifted him from the chair and laid him on the floor, away from all the blood. He closed Bellarmée’s eyes, and crossed his hands over his bare chest, then found a cloth in one corner and covered his body. He cleaned off the little knife and put it back where it belonged. Then he went to the corner Bellarmée had indicated and found his knife: a slim, double-edged stiletto with a razor-sharp blade as long as his hand and a silver hilt carved with the lilies and crown of Martagne, a gift, he knew, from the old Queen, Aurelie.

And then Damien went and made a space for himself under the stairs, standing utterly motionless, waiting for their tormentors to come back for them.

* * *

The first man came down the stairs, stamping his feet to make sure their captives knew he was coming and were properly cowed. But when he saw the body on the floor, and the pool of blood, he shouted an alarm back up the stairs, calling for the others. He turned back and started to take the steps two at a time—giving Damien the perfect opportunity.

Damien lunged and thrust the knife through the open-backed stairs, slicing across the inside of the man’s thigh, cutting deep and severing the great artery that lay beneath. The man shrieked in pain and terror, falling back down the stairs to bleed and die at their feet.

Damien ducked back into the shadows beneath the stairs, and waited for the next few men. He let the first three pass; one stopped at the bottom to check the one dying below, while the others piled up together behind him, gawking at the blood and the body to the side. When the fourth man started down the steps, Damien reached out and slashed across the tendon above his heel, crippling him. The man tripped and shouted with pain, overbalancing and toppling the others under him.

Then it was a dark dance, there in that little, windowless room, where Damien flitted between partners with that knife flashing silver, save that the partners fell and never rose again and red hung in the air in his wake. Screams and groans sounded in his ears, snarls and curses and gasps.

The sixth man had started down the steps, holding a pistol. He watched in disbelief as the slender, long-haired boy wrought a dance of death, and tried to bring the pistol to bear as the last man fell. But Bellarmée had trained Damien in that dance for seven years, and even as the man fired at him the silver knife bloomed in his throat and he fell like the toppling of a tree.

The bullet passed under Damien’s arm as he threw, cutting the flesh for a few inches, and kissing the rib beneath. Damien hissed as he raised his arm to look, but ignored it after. He would survive.

He stood in the room for several moments, looking around at what he had done. Then he cleaned the silver knife and found its sheath in the pile in the corner. It was all calm now, inside and out, just stillness. There was no anger, no hate. No remorse, only sorrow, and a regret great enough to fill an ocean. Sorrow at the loss of his mentor, the only father he had ever known, and regret at the need to kill.

Then Damien moved. He went around the room and dipped his hand into the blood of each man he had killed, until it was coated to the wrist. Then he went and crouched beside the body of his mentor. With his cleaner hand he pulled back the cloth covering Bellarmée’s body, and laid his other palm in the center of Bellarmée’s bare chest so the blood of his tormentors mingled with that of the wounds they had inflicted, as if to let him know he had been avenged.

Then he found a cloth and wiped all their blood off his hand, and went to the pool of the blood he had shed by killing Bellarmée. Once again he dipped his hand, but this time he laid it on his own bare chest, over his heart. Only then did he wipe off his hand and go to do what Bellarmée had told him to do.

There was one more thing he did before he left. He took the tiny knife and its sheath out of its hiding place in his braids. Took the knife and cut off each braid, one by one; cut them short, close to his head, then ran his fingers through his hair to loosen the final knots. He gathered all the braids and tied them together with the thong that held the sheath, and laid the bundle under Bellarmée’s hands. He would not ever use that knife again; it would dishonor the man whose life he had taken. The braids he left as well, as a sign that he left his youth behind.

When he left, the smoke was already rising high and black into the night from the old wooden warehouse. He wore as many layers of clothing as he could find against the cold, and over all the heavy greatcoat Bellarmée always used to wear. And over his shoulder he slung a battered leather scrip stuffed full of papers, his and Bellarmée’s kits, and some food he had found in the rooms upstairs from where they had been held.

He was only fourteen years old.

* * *