Chapter Four

With the arrival of the midnight hour came the great gusts of wind that often took visitors to the city by surprise. It rushed through the streets and alleyways whipping at the buildings and abandoned market stalls. It lashed at the silken banners left forgotten and stole away anything not tied down. This night the winds brought with them great flashes of lighting followed by the earth shaking crash of thunderheads releasing their fury upon the world.

These summer storms were received with mixed emotions. The wind blew in a sense of peace from the unending heat that could suffocate even the boldest of Nevarrans. The sickening weight of boiling, humid air was like a coffin on the worst of days of summer and these winds often brought a reprieve sometimes for days at a time. But the storms also afforded another cover. In the shadows and dark alleyways the storm's disturbance provided a mask for darker deeds. No one would hear the clank of shackles that bound a group of slaves together; a lot bound for the Imperium. No one noticed the body of a young girl brutally assaulted and left to die in an abandoned street corner until it was much too late. These storms could bring both life and death and the citizens knew that well.

Despite the raucous discord from above Madea was deaf to it all. She was unable to hear anything except the sound of her body suffering at the hands of some unknown assailant. The throbbing of her heart boomed in her ears followed by the whisper of blood and the excruciating rasp of air in her lungs. Pain blazed through her like molten glass. It pulsed and seared her veins until she was oblivious to anything else. It hurt to breathe, hurt to cry. Nothing had ever felt like this. Surely death would have been a kinder host.

Awareness returned to her in the form of an ice cold bath. Her body seized up as she hit the icy water. The pain was gone for the moment; at least she could be thankful for that. Two servants wrestled her clothes from her body and began scrubbing her with all the tenderness one might show a rock. They didn't seem to hear her pleas or protests at the cold water or when they scrubbed her skin until it bled.

"Please," she whimpered, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. "Please stop."

The women didn't notice or didn't care. They continued on with their tasks in silence. It was as if she were a doll simply there for them to toy with. With the pain gone and her indignation at the situation growing every second she jerked to her feet sending waves of water over the two women. "DON'T TOUCH ME!" she screamed at them.

"The mistress will be most displeased if you resist," one of the women said in a voice devoid of any emotion.

Madea's eyes widened. Her father had terrified her with tales of the tranquil when she was a child. It had been a way to enforce her to keep her magic hidden. It was a fate more cruel than death. But he had always described the emblem of the sun branded on their foreheads. It was the mark of the Chantry. The doing of the templars. These woman had no brands yet still they spoke as if they had shared a tranquil's fate.

"What's a tranquil, father?" Madea had asked quite suddenly one evening.

Her father's eyes had darted to her face and his voice was menacing as he demanded to know where she had heard the term. "Who told you about the tranquil?"

Madea cowered back from him, thankful her hair was unbound and that it fell into her face at the sudden movement. It hid the tears that she knew he would not tolerate. Fear was a part of their relationship. It always had been. Still she knew deep down that her father loved her, at least she told herself so.

"Madea! Tell me!"

"I heard you talking in your sleep, father," she replied meekly, wishing she hadn't said anything at all but her curiosity had bested her yet again.

His face had grown impossibly sad before her eyes and she wasn't sure if she was more terrified by this emotion he never let her see or by his anger, which she knew all too well. His hands covered his face as bent his head under the weight of emotion he had always kept locked away. "My darling," he murmured mournfully and Madea knew he wasn't talking to her.

She hadn't gotten an answer that night. It had been the next morning before he had spoken to her again. She had been pouring him a cup of tea when he spoke, his voice startling her and making her slosh the boiling water over her hands.

Without any other discernible display of sympathy he had taken her hands in his and soothed an icy balm over the burns. The cooling magic he had infused into the salve eased the pain. As he worked he spoke. "The tranquil are victims of the templars, Madea. They were mages once, like us, but for some reason or another the templars cut off their connection to the fade and in doing so their ties to emotions. They cannot feel, cannot dream." His voice had caught and he dropped her hands as if they had burned him. "They are pitiful creatures and the templars will always turn us into a tranquil should they have the opportunity! You must always be aware."

He had described the blazing sun branded on their foreheads in great, horrid detail. It had been more than enough to scare a five year old, even one so brave as she. From then on her courage waned, for in every dark corner of ill-placed shadow lurked a templar waiting to steal her ability to feel. It was something she was terrified to lose, even if all she felt those days was confusion and sorrow.

Her distraction was all they needed to wrestle her down into the tub again. She was too stunned to resist. Her father may have believed tranquility was a better option than death, but not her. She would rather die than lose the ability to feel. Terror blazed through her at the thought of what might be waiting for her.

"Please," she tried again, her voice pleading. "Are you tranquil?"

The two women just stared at her before returning to their task. She told herself that had they been tranquil they would have told her, that they would have had no qualms with answering her question, but inexperience left doubt heavy on her mind.

The door banged open as the two women were toweling her dry and the biggest man Madea had ever seen filled the doorway. She squeaked and tried to cover herself, but her arms were quickly yanked back down to her sides. This only made the man laugh as he appraised her. "Ahh, she's a shy one," he said in a mocking tone that would have made the hackles on the back of her neck stand up were she not so bewildered. "That's cute. Heard you had a mouth on you; I guess we'll just have to see."

The women had barely pulled a plain, cotton dress over her head when he grabbed her roughly by the waist and slung her over his shoulder, "The mistress would like a word and I'd recommend you keep that pretty, little tongue of yours between your teeth unless you want to lose it."

He carried her up two flights of stairs and dropped her unceremoniously in a room empty of anything but a single chair in the center. The wooden floors had not been scrubbed or sanded in years and there were horrendous looking stains everywhere. She knew the dark, rust colored marks were blood, though she tried hard to rationalize an alternate explanation.

The door slammed shut, leaving her alone.

Sounds filtered through the walls and made her cringe. She heard moans and shouts, screams and slaps. She pressed her eyes shut, willing the noises away. All she wanted was to be gone from this place. She would go anywhere as long as it was far away.

After what seemed like hours the door banged open again and the noxious scent of perfume wafted in to announce the arrival of the woman who had bought her.

"Stand up!" she barked, when she caught sight of Madea huddling against a wall.

There was nothing overly alarming about the woman's appearance but she instilled a sense of fear in Madea that made her leap to her feet. Her instincts warned her that this woman was dangerous and not to be trifled with. That cloying perfume may have fooled everyone else, but Madea could smell the death on her. There was blood on this woman's hands and she was proud of it.

Talons dug into Madea's arm as she dragged her to the center of the room. Her bare feet scraped the rough floor and she bit her lip when slivers stabbed her soles, working their way deep into her flesh.

She was circled like a horse for sale. The woman's eyes never left her and they were always wandering, taking in every detail and every flaw. Fingers pinched her flesh, tested her teeth and peeled back her eye lids searching for signs of disease and weakness.

Madea stood quietly as the woman pushed and pulled, poked and—

"Are you a virgin?" the woman asked suddenly.

"I, uhh, yes," Madea stammered.

The woman frowned down at her and grabbed her arm, wrenching her around until she could grasp the hem of the dress to pull it up. Madea opened her mouth to scream her protest when she realized what this woman was about to do but they were both interrupted by the opening of the door.

Madea skittered backwards when the hold on her was released. Her salvation came in the form of a girl only slightly older than her being dragged into the room by her hair. Tears streamed down her face as she fell to her knees sobbing.

"Please Mistress, please! I didn't mean nothing by it!" she cried, her voice shrill with panic.

The woman looked to the man who had dragged her in. The same man who had brought Madea to this room of death. "She was caught keeping her tip," he told her.

He closed the door behind himself as the woman turned on her prey. "Is that so?"

The girl's sobbing quickly turned to screams and she writhed at the woman's feet. "You thought to steal from me, did you Analiese? After all I've done for you, provided for you, you still thought to take money from me?"

"Please mistress! It was for—my mother—she's so—sick!"

Her words were forced out through teeth clenched in agony. Madea could see no hint of pity on the woman's face as she stood over the girl, "I don't care what is wrong with your mother!" she snarled. "You work for me! Bring money into my purse and in return I keep you off the streets! I do not care about your mother!"

The screams turned into agonizing whimpers as the pain increased. Madea could almost see it searing through the poor girl's body and she now knew who had been responsible for the excruciating fire that had burned through her own blood just hours earlier. Somehow this woman was the cause of it.

"Maker, no," she whispered to herself, wishing Analiese's agony away to no avail.

The cackle of this evil creature in front of her made her realize she had heard her. "The Maker?" The woman threw back her head and laughed. "No god will help her… or you!"

A steady dripping drew Madea's attention to a growing puddle of blood that surrounded and immersed the woman's feet. Was Analiese bleeding? Had she been cut?

With a sickening dread she realized it was not the girl, but the woman standing over her that was bleeding. She had slit open her forearm with a delicately tooled silver blade. The magic swirled from the blood dripping from the wound and Madea pressed her hands over her ears as Analiese's screams resumed and increased in pitch as her blood boiled within her.

This horrible woman was a mage and not just any mage, a ruthless blood mage. And she owned Madea.

Analiese finally grew still, her pupils dilated in wide, unseeing eyes. At least she would never have to know that agony again. Madea hoped she was in a better place.

The woman turned and licked the blood from her arm with a savage grin as her focus returned to her latest acquisition.

"Now, where were we my little mageling?"