New Huston: Chapter Three

Blandon looked across the cool room, where he had been chained by the Masters. He watched as they beat Maria, ripping into her with their swords.1

“Do you want to be promoted to master?” a guard asked Blandon. He looked back, his eyes looking for a joke in the guard’s. But the guard was serious. 2

“Is that possible?” he asked, looking at the guard. The guard was cruel yet handsome, his hair cut short, his eyes piercing through Blandon. Blandon was afraid to look, somehow, at so handsome a master. He could look at the ugly ones. But he, he was so handsome. And it seemed as though he had been where Blandon was, though of course it was impossible.3

“She can make it possible. Take your knife, as we have done and stab her. We’ve given you the nicest part.”4

Maria tried to ignore the stabbings but she was crying like a wife. They had stabbed her in the back, as Patriarchs stabbed one another, and in the face, catching the insides of her lips. It hurt. More than that, it stung and made her bleed. She wept like a wife, but she didn’t weep for one of them to take her and make it stop. Rather, she prayed for Jo to save her. She needed her sister. She lay back as Blandon took out his knife. It was longer than the others had been.5

Blandon stared at Maria. She was his friend. He couldn’t stab her, yet he needed to. He knew he needed the life of the master, in a big house, never working, living comfortably and ruling the masses. Yet, if he was a master he knew that not only would he have to do this cruel deed but it wouldn’t be the last. He’d have to leave Anthony. He’d have to find a wife, a perfect wife in the eyes of all the other masters, and treat her as they treated theirs. He’d have to rule over the people, treat them cruelly. Even with the power of a master, he now saw there was no true freedom. Still, he penetrated her stomach with his sword and watched as she bled. He wept as though it had gone into his own stomach. Was she dead? He wanted to be able to tell but he couldn’t. She certainly lay there; limp, as though the pain was too much. 6

The masters looked at Blandon who did not look back. He was afraid of them, as they were of each other. Yet he couldn’t keep the image of the man who had told him to stab her out of his mind. So he gazed at him, trying to make the glance shorter than it was. 7

“You did well. You’re a master now, you’ll come out of here in a few days and we’ll give you a house. She can be your wife.”8

“I didn’t kill her?”9

“No. You brought her out of the ugly womanhood that bound her to disobedience perhaps, but you didn’t kill her, she’s alive.”10

It was at that noise the door broke down. And in it stood Jo. She saw the bleeding Maria. As she stepped in the room, anger also entered.11