Queen Of Glass

Chapter 1

Celaena Sardothien swung the pickax up over her head and brought it down upon the hard rock with a grunt, the rock cracking reluctantly. Even after two years in the salt-mines of Endovier, the labor was hard and brutal. Especially when lashings were dealt out without reason or provocation.
As the rock crumbled, the salty cloud that encompassed the salt-crystals filled the air around her, clogging her lungs and stinging her eyes. In the salt-clogged air, the pain of whippings increased tenfold.
Celaena raised the ax once more, gathering strength from her muscled back and shoulders with a deep breath, and the air that she inhaled caught in her lungs. Launched into a violent coughing fit, Celaena's anger swelled as she heard her overseer chuckle, and then take a drawn out swig of water from his canteen. He smacked his wet lips together, and loudly splashed the water around in its container. Slaves were not allowed to drink water down here.
She lowered the ax, covering her mouth (a habit she had kept from the civilized world above) as she continued with the futile attempt to get some clean air into her lungs. Her eyes watered from the salt and the pain, yet she was unable to control the heavings of her chest. Unfortunately, this went on for another few moments before the crack of the whip filled her ears and she felt an acute burning lash across her back.

Celaena Sardothien gritted her teeth against the pain and turned her head to look back at the overseer who had been in charge of watching her for the past four weeks. Due to her rather violent nature, she had a new one at least three times a month. This one had been around for a record amount of time, but that was probably because of the guard who was kept hidden in the shadows behind them, always ready to turn her innards into mush with his loaded crossbow—should she show any sign of aggression. Of course, the guards made her participate in weekly fighting matches against other prisoners, but none of them ever would assume that she, a woman, would actually be a real threat! It had taken over two years for the idiots who had enslaved her to figure out that more than one man was needed to restrain her.
After all, she hadn't been Adarlan's deadliest assassin for nothing.
The overseer was a large and stupid man with a red face, an enormous flat nose, and small, piggish eyes that always seemed to be bloodshot. His potbelly stuck out almost a foot, and his chin was buried in the folds of fat that lay beneath. He had a horrid smile that always became more repulsive when he thoroughly enjoyed something—mainly whipping her—and he was missing three of his main teeth thanks to some "accidental" occasions when rocks had gone flying from her ax and towards his brutish face. He loved beer, money, inflicting pain upon others, and hated all that were better off and more cultured than he was—a rather large group to which she had the misfortune of belonging.
All in all, Celaena really wanted to kill him.
"Who said you could stop workin', yer Highness?"
'Highness' was his pet name for her; and, for some odd reason, he seemed to think it was devilishly clever. There were other reasons for her dislike of the nickname, but she kept them buried deep within her, resigning them a bit more each day to the fate that she had chosen for herself so long ago. He whipped her again, and her upper lip curled in a silent snarl.
Celaena sometimes wondered what it would be like beat the man to death with a dictionary.
"Last time I checked, I was in charge of yer, and I dun recall givin' yer th'permission ta stop yer workin'!" Gods above, the man couldn't even speak correctly! For Celaena, it was like listening to nails on a blackboard. His accent was slurred and boorish, and the missing teeth didn't help with his pronunciation at all.
The overseer slashed the leather across her back to emphasize his point. Her eyes watered with pain, but she bit down on the cry that tried to escape from her lips.
"So, get yer arse back ta work before yer makes me really angry!"
Irritated, she coughed a few more times, and finally found the air ease in her lungs.

Instead of getting back into her hunched working position, Celaena Sardothien straightened up. She took the pickax in her hands as if she were weighing it, and turned to face him slowly.
She raised her eyebrows casually as she looked down at the sharp iron instrument.
"You know," Celaena said in her cool, cultured voice: "I've killed men with less than this." A slow smile spread across her face as she saw, from the corner of her eye, the overseer take an unsure step back.
"You've heard the story about the hairpin incident, haven't you? Imagine: a harmless, innocent hairpin—what harm could it possibly do? Now, picture that hairpin jammed all the way through a man's eye and into his brain. Lovely, isn't it?" Celaena laughed lightly, observing the way his features seemed to flatten like an animal's ears.
"That was one of my more creative kills, actually. Now, I want you to think about what I did with something as harmless as a hairpin and imagine what I can do with this pickax." She looked expectantly at the overseer, who was holding his whip defensively.
"Yer-yer can't do anything t'me!" His hands shook and his red face was nearing a sickly pink. "Yer've been condemned by the King ta work until yer death in these salt-mines! Yer ain't en assassin no more!"
What a pathetic way of reassuring yourself!
Celaena stared at him blankly, and then spoke again.
"Just because I'm forced to do hard labor to pay off my crimes against humanity doesn't mean that I'm not capable of killing. Put a fierce beast in a cage and it's still deadly. In fact, it's even deadlier because it has had time to think—
time to think about the way that it will kill everyone who is responsible for its captivity." She paused for effect, basking in his unexpected terror.
"Especially about the amount of pain and suffering that they should endure before it decides to have mercy upon them and slit their throats or break their necks or rip their hearts out or smash their heads upon the-"
The click of an arrow being knocked into place echoed in Celaena's ears and she stopped mid-sentence. She'd have to be careful. Celaena smiled wickedly as she turned her attention back to the overseer. By now the man was so pale that, with his red eyes, he could have passed for an albino.
She cleared her throat and lowered her pickax. "Anyway, it's the same story if you put shackles on me. I'll still be an assassin, just a much more intelligent and vengeful one."
Celaena turned back to her work; raising the ax above her head and cracking open a new rock formation, salt-clouds filling the air once more.
"Besides," she added sweetly, turning her head to him, "with that guard you keep hidden over there, I can't do anything to you without expecting a belly full of arrows to follow. So don't worry, my darling overseer, you're still quite safe around a caged beast like me."
With that, Celaena Sardothien, Adarlan's greatest assassin, returned to the slavery that she had known for the past two years.
O-o-o-O-o-o-O
It wasn't until the hour before sunset that Celaena Sardothien found herself walking upwards through the steep tunnels of the salt-mines, her overseer pushing her on from behind. The walk was wretched, especially when you had shackles around your ankles and the air was thick with blood and salt. How a piece of lard like her overseer was able to do it was beyond Celaena's comprehension. However, from his physical appearance, it was entirely plausible that he had been spawned in such an environment and was used to its horrible climate.
"Move yer scrawny arse, yer Highness!" he cackled from behind, cracking the whip against her back. She let out a cough as whip sliced across her back yet again. Celaena shuffled forward, the iron of the shackles digging into her raw and sweaty skin.
From the passages ahead, she could hear the other slaves leaving their working posts; the moans of agony amongst the clank of chains was a chorus that Celaena Sardothien had become acquainted with. The occasional solo of the whip added to the music of the brutality that the rulers of Adarlan had created to punish its greatest criminals and poorest citizens.