Soul of Ice

Chapter Ten

The days passed awkward and slow, with few notable events. Astra spent the days avoiding the ragtag revolutionary group, as she had dubbed them, and memorizing the guard shifts. They were regular and constant, changing six times a day with three different groups, each composed of thirty soldiers. So unless the guards had other tasks that she was unaware of, they all only spent eight hours a day on duty.

Eight hours! She had to refrain from tossing up her hands in disbelief lest she drop the laundry basket between her hands. Back in Varaly, she'd been on call from six o'clock in the morning to midnight. Eighteen hours, well over twice the amount the guards here were pampered with. And that was assuming she didn't actually have an assignment.

Although, back then, at least there were maids and servants to wash her clothes for her. Now, in Auxerre, she had to trade off laundry chores with the rest of her roommates, and since she was the newest, she got the wonderful honor of doing the laundry for the week. Astra hefted the woven basket and exited from the concrete and bare hallway to enter into an identical concrete and bare room, where there were barrels and barrels of water the guards had... kindly... hauled down from above for clothes-washing purposes.

Several other wraiths were already in the room, scrubbing and wringing with haste. Of particular note was Aaro in a corner, seemingly attacking and murdering his clothes with a feverish passion, a rough-looking brush in his right hand.

Astra crossed to an empty area across the room from him where she crouched near a barrel of water and glared down at the pile of incriminating gray clothes in the basket between her hands. Another reason to get out of this place quicker. On her own, at least she wouldn't need to wash anyone else's clothes.

In tiny dishes nearby, white bars of soap had been set out for her. Astra grabbed the bar and began scrubbing as she went over the information she'd compiled over the past few days.

One. She had not found the entrance that led above-ground despite her suspicions that there were more than one pathway. Certainly, the guards hauling the water wouldn't be bringing it down through the same way guards were coming and going for their shifts, and there had to be a specialized route for supplies such as food. Two. Only favored wraiths, the ones high on the ranking boards, would ever go above ground. Three. She was dead last place on the rankings. Though to be fair, she hadn't even been trying to get out of that spot.

The three concise points she'd made in her head had been reviewed by her so many times that the exact words were practically ingrained within her mind. The problem was that unless she got extremely lucky, or some dumbass soldier was extremely stupid, to solve issue one, she had to solve issue two. And to solve issue two, she had to solve issue three: getting out of last place.

Freezing water sloshed onto her, soaking her legs, and jolted her back to reality. Astra started and raised her bar of soap like a weapon.

"You're so easily triggered," someone trilled. Standing above her, Riviera held a basket of laundry against her hip, the water that had been in it now on Astra instead. She smirked down. "Care for some company?" Astra sneered as she rinsed her hands of the soap bubbles in a nearby barrel of water. Her pants were entirely soaked wet. The cold nature of the water had tingled the ice within her, almost begging for her to summon an ice pick and stick it through Riviera's lightly tanned throat, but... Near the wall of the laundry chamber, a guard had caught sight of their small scuffle and now watched like a hawk. Seam forbid. If she sent a ice shard flying at the wind wraith now, no doubt it would be even harder to get out of the last place spot on the ranking boards. Not to mention, most of the wraiths in the army had little, if any, magic in their veins, and there was no way she was going to prove herself any different to the guards that had not fought her in the alleyway. Not if she wanted to keep that bit of advantage.