Our protagonist, for this chapter at least, is Amara, who's undercover as a slave girl. Acting as her master is Fidelias, her teacher, as this is actually an exercise that will let her graduate from...something. Assassin's school is my best guess. Maybe I've been reading too much Discworld. She'll be something called a Cursor, anyway. They have some nice banter, acting more like old friends than teacher and student.
Amara has some character establishing as she comes up with an elaborate cover story on the spot, and pokes some holes in Fidelias' own plan for dealing with the rebels they're approaching. So, she's actually training to be a soldier for the king, then. Who's called the First Lord; fairly ominous.
But she’s also quite insecure, doubting herself immediately after laying out her plan. That’s something you don’t see a lot, and I like it already. A huge guy manages to approach them silently using something called furycrafting, which I suspect is the thing that’s caused the comparisons to Avatar The Last Airbender that I’ve heard. They play their roles and get invited to the camp, also seeing more of the rebel forces, enough to indicate they have some powerful backing. Enough for six books, say?
Fidelias lets her know the man is actually Aldrick “The Sword” ex Gladius, the greatest swordsman in the world. And as they speak privately, Amara gets to know his own slave girl Odiana, who’s been with them a while but hasn’t quite been broken yet. She mentions something about a Wall with capital included; maybe a little A Song Of Ice And Fire influence there. They take out the garbage, including marching orders from one Atticus Quentin, High Lord of Attica.
Unfortunately, it seems despite everything Odiana is on the rebels’ side, and catches on quick. She’s also a waterbender or whatever the equivalent term is, and there’s quite the piece of Nightmare Fuel as Amara is attacked by a whole river. She was actually one of the rebel generals and a shape-shifter; I hope some of this mythology is cleared up soon. But they still need Amara alive for some reason, so she’s just waterboarded to unconciousness. This is already a nice piece of making the bad guys smart without making the heroes stupid.
Oh, and there’s also a bit of Pardon My Klingon with “Crows” as an all-purpose curse word, like “Yotz.” That’s always a great piece of world building.
Comments
