New Room

He waited until the iron gate on the portal the priest walked through closed before stepping onto the sand. The guards seemed confused on what they should do with the matriarch still standing on the ring. The trainer stopped in the same place he had last time. "Are you with us?"

I hadn't expected the question. I had expected another come, since until the blood was actually counted he was still just dirt to the house. The matriarch seemed puzzled by the question as well but she kept her mouth closed this time. "I am still able to move." not the right response if he meant it as a brother, but I couldn't be a brother yet.

The trainer snorted and nodded, "Come along then." Three words to the order this time, he must be starting to like me.

The matriarch was still standing on the ring around the arena. I knelt as soon as I stepped on to it. The matriarch looked over at the trainer in surprise, not that I could really see her face. It would take a couple of days before my standing was totaled, until then I was a debt on the house, a drain on resources and good will of our lord towards the house. Clearly some things had changed in the 16 years father had been away. Since even with the small surplus I was expecting from this last fight it should not have been enough to warrant the matriarch's personal attention. Either that or the matriarch was very low and very new and she didn't even have enough daughters to make one of them be incharge of the men.

"Very old ways, who was your father, wilder?"

"Father never said." I had been afraid of this, Father had made it clear that while he had been a good fighter, claiming him would do me no favors, so he wasn't even going to risk me knowing. Mother and Father would both call each other Mother and Father so there was no way I could have learned it.

I felt her temper rise again but it didn't matter, I couldn't tell her something I didn't know. She had to know that he wasn't my real father anyway since anyone of my coloring would have stood out, especially if they were as good in the ring as I was proving to be. "Clearly understandable. Since you are so formal I will be as well, I don't care what the total the priest come back with today, you fought well for the house of Estro, and you claimed victory, so I will honor your actions by clearing your debt to the house and accepting you into the house as one of my sons. Anything you earned today over your debt to the lord will be yours. I have already ordered one of my daughters to prepare new rooms for you. Do you have any objections?"

"No, mother." Not that I really could muster the support for an objection, but at least that means she is willing to allow me my oddities, for now. Since that is the formal requirement for accepting a new son into a house.

"Good, then your brothers will show you where your new room is." She turned and was gone before I stood up. I was tired, but I was still alive and there was work to do.

I followed the trainer through the iron gate that I had passed through earlier. We got to the first landing before the man turned and faced the two guards. "Be gone, you two, you don't think our formal brother here is actually going to hurt anyone here do you?"

"He is wild."

"If he is wild then so are you two and I wouldn't be able to trust you at my back anyway." The two guards looked at each other then shrugged and walked away. "Sorry about those two, they mean well."

We walked down to the second landing and as we walked through the hall I could tell that there were quite a few men down here. It was also the first time that I didn't like my new awareness as not all the men were alone. Not that I need that to know that fact in a couple of cases as they weren't exactly quiet and the walls didn't muffle much. That knowledge actually made me more uncomfortable then the lack of clothes or the arena. The door the trainer stopped at was almost at the end of this hall. I was glad that the rooms on either side seemed empty. I opened the door and found what I had already felt. There were two ledges in this room which was just a few feet bigger then the ones below. There was a wooden chair in front of one ledge and was clearly meant for eating. The ledge for sleeping was a bit bigger and wasn't carved back into the wall. The activites my new brothers had been up to made it clear why that was. The door also blocked less of the light coming from the hallway.

On the sleeping ledge was also a blanket, it looked itchy but it would be better then nothing. There was also a better meal than any he had eaten so far on the table. The hole that seemed to go nowhere but must go somewhere was in the same spot it had been in the other cell.

I stepped into the room before turning to face the trainer. I bowed the same pose he had used with the matriarch. "Thank you, brother." It was the only way I could think to kick him out so I could collapse for a while.

��Don't thank me yet, I am going to use you for my children and ground you out to the point that you have no sacrifice to give the lord." His face was hard and I could believe that for him the words were true.

"Then I will have to make the work worth it by giving our lord sons of lesser families."

I sensed the man nod again but I didn't straighten until the door had closed. I was tired but my body needed real food before it let me sleep. The blanket was itchy but not as bad as I had worried, or maybe I was just too tired to care.