The Maleficent Seven. Derek Landy

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       The afternoons were for training of a different sort. That was when they fought and climbed and ran and swam. That was when their muscles were stretched and torn and built up again, when their bodies were taught how to move independently of their minds. Muscle memory, the tutors called it. Making fighting second nature. Making killing an instinct.

       The girl didn’t like the idea of killing, even while she recognised it would have to be a necessary part of her training. The others claimed they didn’t mind it. Avaunt even insisted she was looking forward to her first kill – then she’d always glance at the girl and everyone else would laugh. Avaunt kept up the act until the morning when she was called away by Quoneel.

       When she returned, her robe was drenched in blood and her face was pale. Her eyes were wide and wet. The girl found her later, sobbing quietly in a dark corner. Avaunt looked up and called her Highborn again, called her worse names until the girl walked away and left her to her tears.

       The girl wasn’t looking forward to her first kill.

       Quoneel took her out of lessons one day, and the girl followed dutifully after him, her belly in knots. They came to a small room where a woman was chained to a wall. She was the first person not dressed in robes that the girl had seen in a long, long time.

       “Who are you?” the woman asked, frightened. Her hair was brown. She was slightly overweight. She looked the same age as the girl’s own mother. “What do you want? If you let me go, I won’t tell the police, I swear.”

       Quoneel handed the girl a dagger. “Kill her,” he said.

       The woman’s eyes widened. The girl looked at the dagger.

       “I can’t,” she said.

       “But this is what you’ve been training for,” said Quoneel. “When you are a hidden blade, you will claim many lives. This will be your first.”

       “But I don’t even know this woman,” said the girl.

       “Your name,” said Quoneel. “Loudly now, so the girl can hear.”

       “Tanith,” said the woman. “Tanith Woodall. I have a son and daughter and they need me. Please. Please let me go back to them.”

       “There,” said Quoneel. “Now you know her. Will taking her life be easier now?”

       The girl shook her head. “She hasn’t done anything to me. She hasn’t hurt me. I can’t just kill her.”

       “You can. It’s quite easy.”

       “But why?”

       “Because, as a hidden blade, you must kill those you are told to kill. And I am telling you to kill this woman.”

       Quoneel clicked his fingers and the chains holding the woman to the wall sprang open. The woman stumbled a little, rubbing her wrists, free but still terrified.

       “Master, please...”

       “I ask you, child, what use is a killer who cannot kill?”

       The girl swallowed. “No use, Master.”

       “No use indeed. Since you joined us, you have been tested every day in every way. Every question we ask is a test. Every task you are given is a test. But none of those tests would end in your death were you to fail them. This is the first real test you’ve been given. Think carefully on how you wish to proceed.”

       “If... if I could just have a little more time,” said the girl.

       “To do what?”

       “To prepare. To get myself ready.”

       “I see. So if we were to delay this test for six months or so, maybe a year, do you think you would be ready then?”

       “Maybe,” said the girl. Then she nodded. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure of it.”

       “Well,” said Quoneel, “it wouldn’t be much of a test then, would it?”

       The woman was sobbing now, quiet little sobs that moved her shoulders.

       “I can’t kill her,” the girl explained.

       “Then I will,” said her master. “And before her heart has stopped beating I will have killed you, also.”

       The girl gripped the knife. “I’d fight you.”

       “You’d lose. This woman will die today whatever you decide. Make the right choice and kill her quickly. If I have to do it, I’ll chop her into little bits and she’ll die screaming.”

       The girl looked at the sobbing woman, and tears came to her own eyes. “Please don’t make me...”

       “I am sorry, child,” said Quoneel. “But this is something you must do.”

       The woman lunged suddenly for the door, knocking Quoneel to the side, and barrelled straight towards the girl, her face twisted in desperation and rage. She ran into the girl and stopped, and the girl stepped away, her hand empty. The woman looked down at the dagger in her belly. She sobbed again, and her legs collapsed from under her. She sat on the ground and shook her head.

       “No,” the woman said quietly. “No, please... not me...”

       She sobbed, and took a short, rattling breath, and when she breathed out, she leaned over until her head rested on the ground. She didn’t move, and she didn’t take another breath.

       The girl looked at her hands. No blood on them. All the woman’s blood was leaking to the floor. She could hear it drip. But none on her hands. Her hands were clean. She didn’t think that was right. They should be stained red. She thought about kneeling down, putting her hands in the growing pool of blood, but the idea, the very idea, was making something rise up in her mind, something dark and ugly and scared, and it made her body shake and the tears flow.

       “You’ve done well,” said Quoneel. “Your lessons for today are at an end. You are dismissed.”

       She ran from the room, tears blurring her vision.

       The next morning Quoneel sat next to her as she ate. The girl wasn’t used to people sitting next to her.

       “Some of the children said they heard you crying last night,” he said, his voice quiet but casual, like he was just asking her to pass the bread.

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