Drowning (Kaz Brekker)

i - Awful Company

ASRA BEHANDELAR HATED A LOT OF THINGS. She hated the dark, she hated silence, she hated surprises. She hated being kidnapped. She hated the smug, the overconfident, she hated people more powerful than her. She hated people who pretended to be more powerful than her. She hated loud people, nosy people, touchy people, most people. Asra hated people.

People were odd, Asra came to the decision early on. As a rule, they were strange. Asra, early on, realised she simply despised interacting with other people. That, however, was not to say she hated being around them.

Asra hated boredom. And while people were often insufferable, they were interesting. She quickly realised how much fun it was to watch another person, figure them out, learn their tells and secrets and stories. A passtime, really, rarely useful. She liked to hoard those stories and facts, hold them close like a deck of cards, a childhood toy.

Asra hated herself. Moreso, she hated her mind. It was a dark, twisted place she'd honestly rather keep out of. Things lurked in Asra's mind like snakes, waiting to snap and kill her with their venom. Memories, paranoia, information, ideals. The list went on.

Maybe that's why she loved to throw herself at other people's problems, their minds. She could pick them apart like an interesting invention she wished to understand, learn and take what she needed. Maybe, if she sneaked enough peaks into enough minds, she could rebuild her own mind into something more pleasant.

Asra hated the dark, the silence, the boredom. When faced with nothing externally to entertain herself with, she was forced into the company of her own mind. And Asra really just made awful company, truly. She was so pessimistic, especially for someone with a God complex.

More than anything though, Asra hated her family. But she hadn't quite reached that level of boredom to open that door, so she focused on her second most powerful hate: being kidnapped. It was such a pain in the ass.

She'd woken in darkness. Her hands were bound behind her back with rope, her ankles too. A blindfold was tied over her eyes. She'd panicked when she'd first woken, but that had been her way for years now. Her name was Asra, she could hear no one around her, and she was still. She was fine. She was safe.

This was, obviously, a lie. But Asra could handle a Kerch merchant decked in his rich blacks and armour of money. She'd killed far more dangerous men than Jan Van Eck.

Getting the blindfold off was easy enough. The ropes less so. Asra had spent a good while contorting herself in an attempt to reach her ankles. If she could untie those, she could walk. If she could walk, she could run. If she could run, she could find something to free her wrists. When that happened, she could kill Van Eck and his whole household. She'd paint his house red with blood and carve a message for her mother into his dead chest.

Your move, it would read. Asra would be ready for it by then. She would be running, halfway across the sea by the time her mother decided on what to do.

Only she couldn't untie the ropes around her ankles. After... Asra didn't know how long it'd been. The room was pitch black and without any way of even guessing at time. Asra wasn't counting. But however long she spent, Asra was still bound by the end of it.

It didn't matter. She pushed herself along the floor, eventually finding her way to her feet. She shuffled and hopped about the room, getting a feel for it. She found the door and slumped against the side. She'd played this game before, only before the odds had been far worse.

Kaz, of course, would've been out of the bindings, house and country in the time it took Asra to get up, but she refused to think of him. Like her family, Kaz Brekker had found his way into the part of Asra's mind she kept locked, bloted, buried and fortified. She'd let the Bastard rot before she considered him.