Tarik tossed me into the brickyard and left me standing confused. He had thrown a standard-issue tunic at me on the way out of the infirmary. It was a stiff, sack-like garment that grated the raw, weeping wounds on my back with every breath I took. A hulking man with a whip, a sword, and a uniform was yelling. He must be Overseer Borin mentioned by Elias and Mara.
The ground was cracked, stained red by the clay collected from the streams up the mountain and from deposits laid down in distant past. A dust was roused by every footstep, contributing to the thick haze. Sunlight perforated in shafts where the guard towers broke the rays.
Overseer Borin saw me. He waddled forward, each heavy step rattling the chains at his belt. His broad belly stretched the front of his uniform, ribs deeply buried beneath layers of fat and muscle. He planted both fists on his hips, jowls quivering as he glared down at me. "You look terrible, boy. You stagger around like a wounded dog. Pathetic. Do you think you're too broken for work?"
I couldn't form a response. I was dazed, the world a swimming haze of pain and heat. I likely looked as pathetic as I felt.
He spit into the dust. "The Warden wants you alive in case the King wants to make an example of you again." He seemed to enjoy my silence. "Here's a gift, because I'm in a generous mood. I'll let you haul half the standard load today. Don't thank me. Just don't slow the others down. If you do, I'll bring the whip." He jabbed a thumb toward a pile of crude wooden boxes. "Move them to the kiln."
I blinked, trying to shake myself out of it. It was all a nightmare. It had to be. I was back in the loft with Dalia. Perhaps I'd gotten a fever and gone to sleep. But the stifling heat, the harsh clang of wood on stone, and the sweat trickling down my back told me otherwise.
My chest tightened. Each bin looked impossibly heavy. "You can't change your circumstances, you can control your response," Kael's message felt like a cruel joke. What good was my body now? I swayed, pressing trembling fingers against a wall to stay upright. What response was there but to break?
I stumbled to the first bin. The moment I tried to lift it, the raw, half-scabbed cuts across my back ground against the rough fabric of the tunic. A bolt of white-hot agony shot through me, so intense it stole my breath. My vision swam, a nauseating, disorienting blur in my one good eye, the world tilting sickeningly. A raw gasp escaped my lips and I nearly dropped the load. I couldn't do this. Panic began to set in.
Behind me, a rasping groan broke the din. I turned to see an older man collapse in the dust, forehead kissing the cracked earth. His breath came in ragged spurts before he lay still.
A gaunt prisoner nearby whispered, voice hollow: "His family sent a food parcel—Tarik Tax took most. No dried fruit for him."
Then Mara's voice echoed in my mind: "Stop chewing on yesterday. It's gristle." And Kael's precise words followed yet again.
It wasn't a thought, but an instinct born of pure pain avoidance. I remembered watching certain caravan workers in the city, the way they moved. Instead of yanking the next bin, I crouched low. The movement was clumsy and uncertain; with only one eye, the ground seemed to shift, and I had to place my feet with deliberate care. The crouch sent fire through my legs but kept the tunic from grinding into the worst of the lacerations. I kept my spine rigid, using my legs to drive the weight up and hugging the load tight to my core to keep it from swaying and throwing off my precarious balance. I moved slower than a tortoise, my every motion still a grinding misery.
Borin noticed the strange, slow way I moved. His voice cracked like a whip: "What's this? A new kind of dance, boy?"
He stormed over, his shadow falling over me. I flinched, expecting a blow. I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart hammering against my ribs. I couldn't look defiant. I was terrified.
"Overseer," I stammered, not lifting my head, letting my voice tremble. "Thank you for your... for your mercy of the half-load. I am just trying... trying not to fall."
My pathetic display seemed to please him. He grunted, a sound of contemptuous satisfaction. He saw not a clever worker, but a broken wretch finding a pathetic way to crawl. That, he could understand. So he huffed and left.
I got another bin. A man beside me faltered, arms trembling beneath the weight of his bin. I stepped closer, crouched low, and showed him how to lift as I had learned, spine straight, breath steady, the load tight to my core. I didn't speak. I just moved, slow and deliberate, at his pace. But he copied. He could tell it was better.
"What's this?" his voice cracked through the yard. "Giving lessons now, boy? Are you the new Overseer?" He stormed back over to me, his shadow falling like a great cloud. His hand rested on the hilt of his whip.
This was a different kind of test. Defiance was suicide. Silence was an invitation. I needed a third way. I saw the contempt in his eyes, the way he'd enjoyed my earlier weakness. That was the key. He didn't need to respect me; he needed to dismiss me.
I let my shoulders slump and did not meet his gaze. "Overseer," I stammered, letting my voice tremble. "Forgive me. He… he was about to fall. He would have slowed the line." I risked a quick glance up at him. "I was only trying to keep things moving… so you would not be troubled."
"Pathetic," he repeated, but without the immediate threat of violence. He swaggered off, leaving me trembling
Another man nearby watched me hoist the next bin with that same painful, crouching motion. He hesitated, then copied the movement. A grimace of pain crossed his face, but he didn't falter. He got the bin up.
Then I turned back to the bins. My hands were raw, my legs trembling. The sun had begun to fall, shadows stretching long across the yard. Around me, the others watched. Not with pity, but with something quieter. Something like recognition. By dusk, I was still standing. Not because I was stronger, I was anything but. Because I had bent, not broken. Because I had learned to move through the cruelty, not against it.