"Which of you would like to go first?" the man in white clothing, with a smile too wide for his face, asked, meeting the boys' eyes in turn.
It was a horrible question. No one ever wanted to go first in such situations, but someone had to. Ruin knew he wouldn't let it be Saln. He'd seen the look on his brother's face that morning—the fear shining there, the anxiety, the depleted appetite. No one ever wanted to be branded, especially when the branding made you someone else's.
And yet Ruin knew Saln too well. Saln would hate himself if he let Ruin go first as well, but he would also hate himself even more if he was the one to be branded first. He was, like all children, cowardly toward pain. And yet he would do it. He would do it.
So Ruin didn't let him. After a long moment—when Ruin could tell that Saln was just about to speak—he tentatively raised a hand. "I will." He tried to hide the fear in his voice, but he knew it leaked.
He caught Saln's eye, begging his brother not to fight his decision. Saln gently nodded, a look of anger overwhelmed by relief and gratitude boring into Ruin.
They took Ruin over to the massive chair—the chair with bindings for elbows, knees, ankles, and wrists. The leather was padded but still seemed to bite into Ruin's flesh as they tied him down.
"Now, if at any time you need to take a few breaths, have us let up for a little bit, just let us know, right?" the man said, glancing between Ruin, Saln, and their fathers. All four nodded. But Ruin knew he wouldn't accept the offer. Wouldn't let himself. At least it helped.
The entire room was whitewashed, peeling in places—overuse highlighting grime in the clean spots elsewhere. A big picture-frame-like panel in the wall swung down, revealing something like a kiln forge with bellows, which the man in white pumped, oddly making chitchat with Ruin's father as Ruin didn't listen. His eyes were fixed on the iron in the embers. It should be five seconds. Five seconds with the metal pressed against his flesh, his skin, leaving him with iron marks that could never be removed unless Ruin cut them out himself.
He could do it. He could show Saln what it was to be branded—to be marked—and he could do it without flinching, without showing the pain. Couldn't he?
He began to wonder more and more when they pulled the brand out of the fire, the wire brand almost cherry red from the embers, twisting the air and making it dance above it with sheer heat.
"We like to do a countdown. Is five long enough for you?" Ruin nodded, swallowing. He closed his eyes, not wanting to watch the pain descend on his body.
"One… two… three…" Maybe five was too long—too excruciating—for the anticipation hurt more than the iron. "Five." It came down. He breathed sharply, focusing on anything but the pain. It didn't matter. It seeped through him until it seemed to identify him, to make him of pain, one with the iron burning him.
Finally—after another five seconds that seemed an eternity—the iron peeled away, still sizzling, from Ruin's body. He breathed again, smelling the scent of himself in the air—like when your hand strays too close to a flame and it burns the hair on your wrist.
The burn stung even more as the man in white's assistant quickly applied a salve to the wound—something that, while taking a bit of the pain and soothing the inflammation of the skin, also ensured the brand scar was permanent.
Ruin heard Saln congratulating him nervously, already grinning, and the men in white telling him how well he had done. Oh so well indeed. But Ruin tuned them all out, focusing for a second on that one expression on Saln's face right after the brand lifted and Ruin opened his eyes: Saln almost smiling, his face turning from horror and disgust and near retching to admiration and inspiration. That made it all worth it for Ruin. He knew Saln well enough to know the boy had been able to take the brand painlessly and fearlessly all along. He simply needed an example—needed encouragement—and it was Ruin's job to give him that.
They untied Ruin from the chair and let them watch as they prepped Saln's chest—just as they had Ruin's—where the tendons of the arm and shoulder met the young boy's broad chest. The same place they had branded Ruin.
But before they tied Saln down, the boy met Ruin's gaze, smiling softly—the anxiety playing on his features, but only to Ruin, who knew what to look for.
"Go outside. I don't want you to watch." Saln was sheepish about it, but Ruin just smiled, the pain turning into a grin as he nodded.
The man in white smiled between the two of them. He shot their father a look that seemed to say, Brothers, eh? I wish my kids got along like that.
"You can use the back door. I'll send your friend out to grab you once we're done."
Ruin nodded and slipped out of the room.
It wasn't hard to imagine Saln's face—the locked jaw, the determined expression that Saln used so often.
The back door led to a small alleyway between shopfronts, the street cobbled tens of years ago and not re-cobbled since—some stones jutting up like stairs, others dipping down into the earth.
Ruin leaned against one wall, trying not to listen too intently to the sounds coming through the back door.
But there were no sounds of pain. And there probably wouldn't be, if Ruin knew anything about Saln.
They probably weren't even ready to brand yet, reheating the iron and resetting the digits—seventeen randomized numbers to create Imperial identification codes, unique throughout the Imperium and allowing them to be identified by name in almost any province.
Ruin was so focused on the sounds coming out of the clinic that he almost didn't notice a murmur behind him and the click of steel-shanked boots—expensive shoes on stone.
"Well, if it isn't Ruin." He recognized the voice. Very few of the children in the sea city or the villages beyond could forget it. Veer stood in front of his cronies, grinning with a catlike air.
Veer had tried to be his friend once. It hadn't gone well. Ever since then Ruin wondered if the boy was out to get him, if there was a grudge between them that would last years.
But it was hard to tell, as Veer treated everyone in a manipulative manner, as though he were in control. And maybe he was. At least of Ruin.
Ruin tried not to let fear show. But it probably did. Veer was like a horse or a mountain cat, able to sniff out fear—to know when prey was able to be controlled, manipulated, and destroyed. They were just children. Veer and his cronies—his gang of misfits—had found a place somehow in the growing popularity of Veer's shadow.
"What brings you into the city?" Veer asked, smiling gently down at Ruin, gesturing discreetly for his boys to fan out. Ruin tried to smile back, realizing—trying not to show it—that now six of them were all around him, and most were taller, stronger, pure-blood Sha'vin stock, Veer even standing a good four inches over Ruin's mixed Imperial blood.
And yet these boys thought they were the true Imperials. Maybe here, at least in the city, they were.
"Me and Saln came into town to get our Sunmarks." Veer's eyes sharpened.
"I see. And where is your little brother? I'm surprised to see the two of you parted." The voice wore the words so calmly that Ruin almost missed the hidden spike under Veer's glamour.
Almost.
"Not here," Ruin answered.
Veer chuckled at Ruin's closed-off manner. He was using that somehow.
"Well then, why don't you show me—and the boys—your new mark. You know I have one myself, don't you?"
Ruin backed up, suddenly extremely aware of the stone wall and the pack of adolescents closing him in.
"I will—if you show me yours," he said hesitantly. I have to get him to associate with me, or this will go badly, he thought.
Veer chuckled. "How about you go first."
"There's a bandage. You won't be able to see anything."
Veer's boys laughed—suddenly sounding like cackling, feral dogs, hungry.
"Oh, that won't be a problem." Then they were on him—pinning Ruin to the wall, pulling down his shirt, prying at the bandage.
They were children. The thought kept running back through his mind. They were children. They were children. And yet—in Ruin's eyes at that moment—they seemed more like monsters, and the worst part of it was that he wanted to join them. He lashed out, kicking with both feet into Veer's shins, sending the boy sprawling as Ruin relaxed and pulled the two boys on his arms down to the ground with him as they inadvertently held him up. He scrambled, kicking off the grasping boys before turning to face them. Veer was picking himself off the floor slowly, oh so slowly, his anger a slow and wrathful thing that Ruin had seen far too many times and knew to fear. The five other boys circled Ruin, wily.
They could take him. Oh yes, very easily. But they would probably get hurt in the process, at least to some extent. He could see it in their eyes—the way they looked at him, weighing the price, the likely cost against the satisfaction of leaving him in the alley with a black eye, a broken rib.
"I'm wounded, can't you see?" Veer asked—playing the victim as best he could, tugging upon whatever moral code was left to honor among them. Not that he was any better for what he was about to do.
"Can't you at least make the fight a little fair? Just you versus me—your honor and my honor?"
Veer dusted off his coat, then tugged it slowly off his shoulders, handing it to one of his boys. "All right. Just you and me. First to pin for five, good enough for you? Honorable boy?"
Ruin nodded, trying to hide the pain the earlier tugs on his bandage had caused; the brand stung viciously under his collar.
Veer's boys laughed and cheered, calling Ruin whatever names they could think of.
Slowly, he zoned them out, concentrating only on his breath and the steady beating of his heart. It was like a clock—tick, tick, tick—counting down every moment of every day to the time when Ruin would die. And they'd all forget him.
"What's so funny?" Veer sneered, hesitating a moment before going to it.
Ruin shook his head, trying to hide a soft smile. "Nothing."
It hurt to smile. They must have split his lip earlier. He tasted blood as it painted his teeth crimson.
"Are we ready then?" Veer asked with a mockery of gentlemanly lines.
"Ready."
Veer came in with a feint. It was clear by the way he approached Ruin that the boy had far too much experience for his age at boxing. Maybe his parents even paid for lessons. Veer's form was immaculate and proper—perfect for the broad shoulders that had seemingly spread like wings upon dawning manliness.
And Ruin remembered—as he did his best to block—the first punch as the pole.
He tried to remember how many weeks it had been since his father had made him dig the hole. Maybe three?
Every day since then his father had taken him into the woods where the pole stood about as tall as Ruin and made him defend it.
A jab to the jaw. His vision spun, blacking out for a moment before everything returned to clarity and Ruin was lying on the ground.
And Veer was still punching him.
He remembered, as a child, playing a game very similar to this—one he now had to play with his father day after day. Saln and Ruin would take turns trying to touch a tree, seeing how long they could go keeping each other off. Only now did he remember that that had been a game their fathers had given them—a game to play as children to prepare them for the game that would be played every day. Maybe even now here with Veer he played it.
They were children…
He wondered if he was still a child. But no, he was sure he wasn't. A good boy would never do as he was doing now.
Ruin checked Veer hard in the chest. The boy flew back, slamming into the hard wall of the clinic. The semicircle of boys was raucous now, laughing and jeering all the louder as Veer picked himself up, then easily slipped past Ruin's defenses and hit him hard in the gut, bending Ruin until he was almost kissing the cobblestones.
It hurt even more than when Ruin was hit by his father defending the pole because he'd been too slow or too dumb not to block with his training sword.
Every time, his father would tell him, "That's all right. You let me touch it. Don't, this time."
Ruin got back up, glaring at Veer, his eyes full of defiance—even as the boy hit him again, sending Ruin crashing into the wall.
I'm too slow. I'm too weak. I'm too much a child to win at war—even those wars fought by children in the back-corner streets and alleys of the city. I am too much a coward to win.
He tried to catch the fist before the next blow fell, but he was too slow. Ruin doubled over again, sliding down the brick wall—the side of the shopfront opposite the clinic—Veer looming over him, grinning, his right fist bloody from Ruin's face, the second ring digging into his flesh.
Veer grabbed Ruin by the collar, pulling him up and pushing him hard into the wall until they were almost eye-level.
The bigger boy leaned in close, letting Ruin smell the stench of spiced wine on his breath. "I thought Sunmarks were meant to make someone stronger. Maybe that's a myth. It is for you, at least."
And suddenly Ruin knew: this was exactly what they would do to Saln when he came out—or the day after—or the day after that. Maybe every day. They could avoid the bullies, try to stay away; they lived far outside the sea city. But eventually either Veer's group or another set of bullies would find them and their Sunmarks and ask for them—beat the two boys in the open. Ruin didn't care—at least, he didn't care about himself being injured or pulled. He cared about Saln. He had to prevent it—had to stop Veer, and all the other bullies, from ever touching Saln, his brother-not-blood, whom he had so solemnly sworn to protect.
Maybe even now he was playing the game of the pole, and Saln was the protected, and he was, as usual, trying not to let his enemies touch what was behind him—behind his shield of flesh and bone.
"Why are you smiling, little wolf?" Veer asked.
Ruin couldn't smile back—either from the blood in his mouth or from the darkness suddenly in his vision, blotting out all thought until there was one choice left.
"Because that is what I am," he said, and he kicked hard.
Veer held there for a moment, still pinning Ruin against the wall, his eyes bulging in shock. Then he fell back on the cobblestones, and Ruin kicked again, overextending the boy's knee.
Veer's cronies weren't laughing now. They were silent, horrified.
Ruin wiped his arm across his face—wiping away the weight of blood—but there was something else, clear and salty, tasting with the blood.
Ruin was crying. He couldn't stop it, even as he stepped forward and hit Veer again—a sloppy blow to the face, sending the boy back down to the earth.
"One," Ruin counted.
Veer tried to rise again, his body so overwhelmed by pain that he could hardly react.
"Two."
Ruin hit his downed opponent yet another time, this time his fist coming away bloody from Veer's broken nose. He remembered the wolf. The blood reminded him of the wolf. And maybe he was the wolf—too weak both times to make the merciful decision, not strong enough to make what was brutally efficient now and here, to let there be pain.
"Three."
Ruin hit his attacker two more times, punctuating the blows with words—words he hoped justified him to these boys, justified him to God who was watching.
"Don't hurt—"
"Four—"
"—me or Saln again."
"Five."
Veer's face was a mottled mess, hidden beneath the blood from his nose, and he lay there breathing raggedly, watching Ruin with a wrathful, raging—not anger but something else Ruin never wanted to see directed at himself—a terror.
All the boys watched him with that look of utter fright, anger boiling behind it. Yes, they wouldn't move. They wouldn't take action. They feared what they had just seen.
Veer's boys weren't the monsters all along.
Ruin was the monster. Ruin was the wolf.
He stepped inside the clinic, leaving his would-be attackers to stare at the door where he vanished.
Ruin met Saln in the back hallway just as the boy was coming out to find him. Saln was smiling almost ear to ear—his quiet usual grin replaced by something much broader and deeper.
That smile faltered when he saw Ruin's bleeding nose and broken lip.
"What happened?"
Ruin mumbled something about doing a somersault and messing up. On a different occasion Saln would have noticed, would have seen the discrepancies—but not today. Today he had been branded, and he hadn't cried out—him and Ruin both.
Ruin and Saln's respective fathers apparently started back toward home, letting the boys take their time the same.
"We should head back," Ruin said, and Saln agreed.
It was a long, slow walk from the sea city through the village and up to their set of little cottages further back in the woods.
Saln tried to start conversations, and Ruin tried to humor him as best he could, but every time he looked at Saln he remembered the aching fists and exactly why they were hurting.
"Does your brand sting?" Saln asked, noticing Ruin's expression.
Ruin had almost forgotten about the brand—the pain of the fight making it seem like just another melody of fallen man—but even as he thought about it, the pain was chest-deep, burning as though the brand were being pressed once more into useful flesh. "Yes. Yours?"
"Mine too," Saln said, wincing as he rolled his shoulder.
Ruin didn't know what to say. Then he smiled and said, "I know my dad and your dad probably won't mind that much. Should we take a slight detour, you think?"
Saln smiled too.
It was a slightly quicker and shorter walk past the cottage, into the woods, and down a few hills to the stream. Ruin couldn't remember how long ago, but the two of them had built a small dam at one section right after a small waterfall, forming a swimming hole that was at least deep enough for them to tread water in.
The water was cool and clear enough that they could see all the way to the rocks at the bottom where small brook trout darted and threw, avoiding the humans in the water above. They left their clothes in a pile above, laid out neatly along a log they'd dragged from the woods for that purpose. In other circumstances, the water might have felt too cold—winter on the horizon. But now it felt just right, soothing the aching of their chests and the other singed feeling their new brands had.
"I never got a chance to thank you," Saln said after they'd been in the water a long time and, after a while, climbed up on the stones near the waterfall, their feet dangling out into the spray.
"For what?" Ruin asked.
Ruin felt his face beginning to betray him, so he shoved Saln into the water instead. For the briefest instant he imagined what could go wrong—imagined Saln hitting his head on the short way down to the water, imagined having to pull his brother out of reddening waters.
But Saln just landed with a splash—horrible images fleeing Ruin's mind as Saln pulled Ruin down with him.
"For going first, of course. I don't know if I would've been able to go through with it if you hadn't," Saln said, kicking back easily, gliding, floating over the water's surface.
"It was nothing," Ruin said, avoiding Saln's eye.
"Oh, but it was something," Saln said, swimming closer and poking Ruin—hard—near where the bandages had been.
"Ow," Ruin protested, nearly letting his head go under. Saln had always been a lighter soul, better at staying on top of waters while Ruin sank like a stone, though he might have been the better swimmer.
Ruin was finally smiling, ready to dunk or poke Saln back, when he paused.
There was an expression of confusion on Saln's face—one that Ruin could hardly place.
"What is it?" Ruin asked.
"Oh, nothing," Saln said, but his brow remained furrowed. "Actually, come over here."
Saln gestured to the rocks. They climbed back up and sat across from each other.
Ruin was suddenly aware of how dark it had grown. Their fathers were expecting them home soon, and the warmth of the sun was quickly dwindling. Soon they'd be shivering in the dark as they made their way home. That wasn't a problem, though. They knew the way.
Saln leaned close to Ruin, tracing—without touching—his brand, counting the dots and their pattern in the grey at the center of the planet-like circle surrounded by its rings, indicating the Sha'vin provinces. After a while, Ruin began to do the same to Saln, memorizing the digits involved until he was pretty sure Saln's seventeen-digit Imperial identification number was [insert Saln's identification number].
"What's my number?" Saln asked.
Ruin said the combination aloud without a second thought.
"And what's yours?" Saln asked.
Ruin hesitated. He didn't know. He looked down, trying to make sense of the pattern on his body, but it was all too close—too easy to mix up or read upside down.
When Ruin looked up, Saln was smiling—a soft, sincere smile.
"What is it?" Ruin demanded, waiting for the typical wry, cracked joke that would make him grin ear to ear or laugh until he had to push Saln back into the water.
"I think our numbers are the same."
Ruin's brow furrowed—just like Saln's. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said," Saln explained, glancing back and forth between his brand and Ruin's. "Our brands are identical."
"Of course they are. We're both from the same Imperial province, both from Sha'vin," Ruin said.
Saln shook his head. "Like I said—no, I mean our codes are the same." He repeated the line of seventeen digits Ruin had said earlier.
"That's your identifier," Saln said. "And mine," he added.
"But why would the clinic staff mess up? Why would they brand us with the same iron and combination?" Ruin asked.
Saln shrugged, toes brushing the surface of the water. "Think about it—your father did give that man in white quite a large bag of coin for just two brands."
Ruin thought for a moment, trying to relive the instant of the payment, and he had to admit, looking back on it, it was… unreasonable. Unless—
Saln grimaced now, mentally trying to shrug off the possible coincidence. This time it was Saln's turn to push. They both went down in a spray of water—Ruin clipping a stone on the way and hiding it by staying beneath the surface a few seconds longer than necessary.
When he popped back up, Saln was already treading water, splashing at him.
"I guess that settles it. Again—we are truly brothers now, I suppose. Despite our blood."
Ruin splashed back, laughing and smiling, trying to feed off Saln's energy.
All the while trying to forget…
"The eyes of the Imperium say we are the same person," Saln said.
"And for all that they care about us, it serves them right," Ruin said.
They played in the water for a few more minutes, ignoring the sun and the creeping cold of evening—both trying to stay in the moment, but Ruin struggling most of all.
Ruin struggled most of all, because he knew they were not the same person—whatever the Imperium might think.
Most of all Ruin knew what he was.
Wolf—young, already dark at the edges. He will do the ugly work so the lamb can stay clean.
And Saln was the Lamb. The Lamb kept for the morning, and somehow—though it should be impossible—Saln would be the Imperium's salvation.
That truth felt wrong in Ruin's bones, as the truth often did. And he knew the night ahead would ask for teeth. The Lamb would need his Wolf.