Page 58 of Elvenbred

The cook gave the supervisor a look.

“Well, that’s what I heard,” the supervisor said in a defensive voice.

The cook grunted in a noncommittal way. “Hmm. Didn’t hear anything about that. I did hear Haldeen was all tossed up about having to make good on several days’ production.” He paused. “Perhaps it was mold. Maybe”

“See!” she said triumphantly. “I told you there are things going on here that ‘they’ don’t want us knowing about.”

The cook gave the supervisor a stern look. “And if you keep up that kind of talk, the lord will put you out. No ration, and no production means conscription.” He stopped ladling the liquid for a moment. “And I will tell you what I have heard about that. Conscripts’ job is to do their bit, and their bit might be some dumb dangerous work that gets enough killed to take the pressure off the food production, once and for all. Haldeen’s already run a rum lot off to conscription. Keep running your trap, and you could join them.”

The supervisor looked up, saw Triana, and frowned. “Got nothing better to do than listen when your betters’ talk?”

Triana shook her head. “Just getting a fresh cup.”

He ladled more into the cheap ceramic mug, and made a “go-away” gesture with his hand. She bobbed her head and followed the others towards the workroom. She considered what she had heard, and it confirmed where she might have some leverage, at least enough to get her out of her current predicament. Food. Haldeen completely relied on food production, and things weren’t going well. She could use that. Once.

She drank the cup quickly, and felt the butterflies well up in her stomach. She knew what she was about to do would toss the board into the air, but had no idea what the ultimate outcome would be. She hoped it would get her out of this stupid room before she got killed … Aelford had been crystal clear about that.

She sat at her station, set her form in front of her, and began to ladle the paste in. She saw a couple of the other women watching her under lowered brows. Oh, you bitches, you are going to get a show. She looked around cautiously while she made a show of smearing the paste into the form. Now, to time it right. Not the first brick, or the second, but not too close to midday meal either. She filled the form, then used the tip of the ladle to make a little curlicue in the top of the paste, just because she could.

She made her first ration brick, taking her time to reduce the amount of work she had to commit. She had no intention of overstraining herself, and worked just hard enough to keep from being called out. Aelford passed her once, a concerned expression on her face. Triana gave her a quick twitch of her lips, careful not to reopen the split. Aelford looked at her box, saw the single brick, and frowned. Triana shrugged.

She started on her second brick, still taking her time. She felt the butterflies surge up again, and her heart raced. She took a deep breath. It was time.

She abruptly stood, and called out in a loud voice. “I have had enough of this!” She followed this up with a burst of profanity as she took her hands, placed them under the edge of the table, and flipped it over into the station next to hers. Then, she kicked the chair into the path of a woman carrying a large bucket of paste, sending her stumbling into another table and crashing it to the floor.

The room exploded into chaos. The shouts and noise and clatter destroyed the room’s quiet like a hammer through a window. Women deep in concentration lost their focus, ruining the bricks they worked on, to Triana’s great satisfaction. The tumbling tables and falling paste buckets matched well with the rising tide of women’s cries of alarm and shouts of rage. Many scrambled out of their seats, uncertain about what had happened and alarmed by the noise and Triana’s drama.

She fed into the disruption, taking two quick steps and kicking one table into another, breaking a table leg and overbalancing it, and knocking the paste, bucket, and half-made ration to the floor. One of the women close to her tried to restrain her, grabbing her arm as Triana lined up on another table. She felt a deep seated joy in ramming her elbow back into the woman’s face. She was pretty sure she heard the crunch of a nose breaking. The woman let go. A second one of the producers angled in on her, also trying to restrain her. Triana felt no need to let a perfectly cocked fist go to waste. She gave it to the other woman, punching her right in the mouth.

The other woman staggered back, her hands going up to her face. Triana swore, her knuckles gashed from where she thought she had hit teeth. She doubted she was strong enough to break any, but that really hurts! She shook her hand several times and flexed her fingers to try and ease the pain. She heard a noise behind her and swung around. A table, angled out of its position, but otherwise upright, beckoned with its cute little form and paste bucket positioned just so. She swore and used the bottom of her foot to kick the table away, right into the path of a woman trying to flee Triana’s tempest. The table struck her on the hip, turning her, and slamming her into another pair of tables before going down in a heap.

She had, in a few short moments, reduced Haldeen’s well-ordered food production room to an absolute shambles. No one would be making their ration quota today.

She had put on her fair share of epic tantrums. Some had been real, others for show, and it was for her, and her alone, to know which and when. She’d started this one as a contrivance, and had done a good job of keeping her head. A paste paddle flew at her face, thrown by one of the hags on the far side of the room. She had just enough time to raise her hand up to arrest it in midflight before it struck her. Her contrived rage boiled into the real thing, a fury borne of anger, frustration, and mistreatment.

“How dare you,” she snarled, then made a quick gesture that flipped the paste paddle edge first, and launched it back in the direction it had come. She heard a scream as it struck, preferably striking the one who had thrown it, but in truth, she didn’t really care who she had hit.

She let her rage go then for real, lashing out at the women around her with her magic, launching table legs, paste paddles, broken crockery, paste buckets, and other oddments at the other workers. Alarm and chaos spread to panic as the ration producers tried to flee her wrath.

She called the storm around her, and the others fled before it. She was pretty sure that one of the women who’d accosted and beaten her the night before lay motionless on the floor. Women dodged around the tables that she sent careening and made for the exits. She saw Aelford helping another woman, little more than a girl, who limped and dripped blood through the rag she held to her face. The supervisor looked at her with an expression of utter shock.

Well, you kicked a worm and unleashed a dragon, she thought with grim satisfaction.

She saw the first guard enter the room, his truncheon held high. She reached down, and pulled her magic into herself. It came to her smoothly, in a way it hadn’t before, except when she did illusions. The tiny part of her mind not bound up in her rage noted the change. Perhaps the food-making had made her stronger. The rest of her exulted in her power, that after the idleness, the locked doors, and being at others’ beck and call … she was doing something.

The guard came for her. She closed her fist, cocked it back, and punched it towards him, channeling her rage into a tight stream. It wasn’t quite a levin-bolt … that might have killed him then and there … but it wasn’t far off. The force knocked him backward and off his feet, and the loud crackle stood hair on end and took what had been a hasty retreat from the room and turned it into a full-blown panic. Workers scrambled over each other, stepping on each other, and shoving others out of their way as they pushed and shoved towards the exit.

A second guard, pushing against the panic, forced his way into the room. He saw his fellow crumpled on the floor, and had the presence of mind to fling a table into Triana’s path as she let go with another bolt. It caught the table and blew it to flinders, but it bought him enough time to hurl his truncheon at her head. She was a bit slow in getting her hand up, managing only to catch the edge of the thrown truncheon. It grazed the side of her head instead of hitting her face-on.

The blow proved sufficient to knock her to her knees and momentarily disoriented her, enough for two more guards to rush into the room. The third, following them, pulled up sharply as he looked at the wreckage. Triana saw his shocked expression.

The closest guard was nearly on her, his face a mix of fear and anger. He had enough size and weight on her to badly hurt her if he tackled her. She got one hand up and sent a weak bolt towards him, not enough to stop or stun him, but sufficient to send him spinning off the wreckage of the tables. She started to get to her feet, shaking her head to clear the cobwebs from where the truncheon had clipped her, when the third guard who entered caught her in a diving tackle. He smashed her back into the fallen tables and wreckage strewn about in her rage-fueled magic attack.

She felt something crunch under her back, and a lance of pain over one kidney. She tried to force herself up, tried to push him away as he tried to pin her arms. She kicked and squirmed, trying to get a knee up between his legs. The second guard was on her then, stepping on one hand as she gripped a table leg to try and strike the one that lay on top of her. His weight drove the air from her lungs and she couldn’t draw breath. She felt the fight draining out of her, pressed under his weight, and lying on debris that she had created.

The guard standing on her hand took the table leg, and holding the thicker end, forced the thinner end between her teeth. “Move, and by all the gods, I will ram this through your throat and finish you.” She stared up at his furious face, and went slack. Fatigue washed over her. She felt drained and empty. She heard a voice to one side, shaking and tremulous. “His lor’ships been sent for.”

She recognized the Overseer’s voice and tried to turn her head to see. The guard pressed the table leg against her jaw. “Move again. Try me.”