No One

Chapter One

"Who are you?" asked the older man. He was visibly older than her by at least a good few years, from what she could see. No visible beard but she could see his short hair, trimmed and clean, he did not suit the prisoner rags they put him in. There was nothing about him that set off alarm bells, he had a slight tan to his skin, a face that had aged slightly and was quite smooth looking. She had expected his eyes to match but they were very different... they were cold as ice, narrow and frightening that told his story. 

He just sat near the back of the prison, looking away from her but his face illuminated by a single dim light of a candle nearly burnt out, had spread a pool of white wax on the stone floor, not touching a single strand of straw. He moved into the light, pushing the candle towards him, illuminating his fearfully mean mouth. "Who are you?" he repeated with a cool, almost icy tone.

"No one, I am no one", she replied, her hand shaking at his coldness and her answer, she was surprised she could give one, but it was true, she was no one, nothing. She once had a name, a family but that was taken from her, lost to her. All she had was a price on the head that someone had found, stealing in the markets, from the large pool the people called 'The Pool of Worries', so named because apparently throwing a single silver coin into it, made worries in the form of people, disappear. She had felt a fool, throwing her last coin in it, a glimmer of hope that it offered, since stamped out. No one came to help her but instead, the hunger grew too much, and she tried to retrieve the coin she had thrown, hoping it would buy even a slice of warm bread.

She sat a good distance from him, shivering from the cold air yet, clinging to the bars in fear for her life. Like an animal, she was caged, contained, she would have done anything for just a mouthful of food or a glimmer of hope, but no one was going to come for her, no one alive. 

She was just seventeen when she had lost everything, not even a prayer to the gods was going to fix that feeling of hopelessness, helplessness that cocooned and strangled her. As a guard stood watch, his back turned, she attempted to reach for his keys. They jangled upon touch, catching his attention, his face filled with aggression as he slapped her hand away and hammered the bars of her tiny cage, allowing the noise to vibrate through, forcing her to cover her ears. The stranger had not reacted, like a statue he just sat there with a haunting, hunting smile painted on his face.

There was no easy escape, she had few doubts about what was to happen to her, death was a certain, hanging by the rope if she were unlucky, beheaded if she were lucky. She did not bother to cry, there was nothing she could do, and tears would not help, her life was up to the crowd, they would have the pleasure of determining her fate. She clung onto the bars, her prison rags doing nothing to keep out the chill, her long brown hair now mattered, did little to keep out the cold, her blue eyes kept watch with a prayer, foolishly still hopeful that the pool was real, that she had not wasted her money and life wishing on something that was a falsehood, an old legend.

Once the child of nobles, she had watched them meet their end, ran and went into hiding while soldiers ransacked their home, stealing any valuables they could get their hands on. They left no one alive, not her mother, her father, her two brothers or even her baby sister, who had barely seen her first winter, born in the summer. They killed them all, she was not sure why, what her father had done so wrong, but she was the last of them, for her own safety, she was No One, a nameless face. She wanted her revenge, she would have taken it too if she was not locked up like a common dog, awaiting a trial her family never got, not even a warning or a threat, just a massacre that created a sea of blood, giving birth to her sea of hatred and anger. 

If they thought she was going to die easily, with her head down in shame as she awaited her sentence and the chance to meet the god that turned his back on her, they were wrong, she was to go with her head held high, even as it swung or rolled. If she was extremely unlucky, she was to be put to work, swinging that pickaxe at the stone, every swing imagining it was the head of the of the many guards who wronged her family, their deaths would come swiftly, as payment for her family's. The people used to say a blood debt was one of the worst to pay, she was going to prove them right, take a life for a life to pay the debt they owed her.