She hated it here.

Not only did Zofie hate Zaros itself, but she hated everything that was connected to it. She hated that it wasn’t Savar. She hated the painful trip across the desert to get to Zaros. She hated the rats that were the primary pest, and could occasionally be found scuttling through the night or sneaking through a storeroom. She hated the food, she hated the people, and most of all, she hated the fact that she would never get to go home.

She hated that her father tried to frame it as a positive. ‘A place that has a promising future. By establishing a place for yourself and our family before Zaros grows in power you will find that our power grows with it.’ She wasn’t stupid. Zofie was eight, and had spied on enough conversations about her to know what was really happening. Ever since she had slapped that other girl her father had been unhappy with her. Her exile to Zaros was simply the latest punishment in a line of indignities that included never getting desserts and having her favorite slave sold away.

What Zofie didn’t understand was why she was being punished. It had been a fairly light slap, all things considered, only meant to get the other girl to shut up as opposed to actually hurting her. Zofie had done far worse to the slave kids when they cheated at games and no one had ever punished her for it. It only made sense. The strong could do what they wanted to those lesser than them. All she had done was demonstrate this to the chatterbox who would just not stop talking. No one had said anything to her at the time, but she could remember things well enough to realize that was the day when things had changed for her.

Not that Zofie’s father told her anything. She figured it was just his own way of making sure she learned her lesson, just as he never told his slaves why he was punishing them. If he told them they’d only stop doing that one thing wrong, but by not telling them anything they’d be more careful not to mess up at all in the future. Zofie wasn’t a stupid slave and had already figured out what she had done wrong, which is why the prolonged punishment hurt so much. She already knew not to slap the other girl if she saw her again, and if she came across any other annoying kids she’d just get one of the servants to make them be quiet. All she had to do now was wait until Father realized that Zofie had learned her lesson and let her go back home, where she had a big bed with silk sheets and a servant would fan her if it got too hot.

Zaros was cool enough that she didn’t need the servant, but his absence still rankled at her. And her bed was made out of cotton, even if it was still large and soft enough to roll around on comfortably. But her life consisted of a thousand small reminders that she was not in Savar, in her comfy home, and so she hated it all.

What Zofie hated most depended on the moment, as it was almost always whatever inconvenience that happened to be immediately affecting her. Right now, that was breakfast.

“I want bacon!” She pouted at the cook. If she was back at home she could have ordered him to give her what she wanted, but this was a different cook from the one back home. He only listened to the majordomo, a long-time retainer of her father who was responsible for running the household here at Zaros until she had enough maturity and education to take over and do so for herself. Once that happened, she promised silently, there would be meat at every meal.

Unfortunately for her plans of future decadence, the majordomo was standing right behind her, and had overheard her complaint. “Unfortunately, we only have the two pigs we brought with us from Savar, and we have better uses for them than to cut them up for your meals. The porridge is quite tasty and filling and will help you stay focused during school.” The majordomo explained patiently, with the tone of a man who could only apply words to the situation.

Zofie thought about it for a moment, before sullenly digging her spoon in. She hated breakfast, but it was better than school. Why did she have to go and learn from the same person as all the other kids here? Her Father had given her a personal tutor back in Savar, but now Jon was busy teaching her little brother instead of coming with her to teach her lessons. Not that she liked sitting and listening to someone try and educate her. It was simply that doing so was ten times worse once other children became involved. Slowly Zofie chewed on her porridge as she thought about her impending fate. She brightened a little once she tasted the spices that had been mixed in, slowing down and enjoying the meal as she tried to delay the inevitable.

All too soon her bowl was empty, and the young girl was being escorted to the schoolhouse that had been established. The majordomo walked alongside her, his gaze moving from one mercenary to the next whenever they came too close, or their gaze lingered longer than was proper. Zofie hardly noticed, wrapped up in her misery as she was.

“I hate school.” Zofie muttered, just loud enough for the majordomo to hear but soft enough that no one else could. Complaining to people who didn’t belong to her was wrong. The majordomo nodded his head in sympathy and gave Zofie a small pat on her shoulder.

“The sooner you master the lessons the teacher has for you, the sooner you can spend your time on other matters.” He reassured her, before steering her inside the schoolhouse and escorting her to her assigned chair. The teacher was already busy working with some of the younger students and Zofie felt a small stab of jealousy that she would have to wait until he was finished to get started on her lesson for the day. It wasn’t right that the other students got as much of the teacher’s time as they did, especially when she needed it more. With nothing better to do, Zofie began to write out the words she had been taught last time, just to show the teacher that she was ready to move on to something new.

“Well done!” The teacher said once he was finished with his other students and had made his way over. “Make sure you don’t push too hard on your initial strokes, however. It doesn’t matter when you are just practicing on a clay tablet, but when using ink it tends to lead to blots or stains that will force you to start over. For now, work on the words in the middle of the front wall, and pay attention to how much force you use for each letter. I’ll go over the words and their meanings in just a bit.”

Zofie sighed as the teacher moved on to the next student and began to repetitively copy the words he had written up front, letting her mind wander as her hands worked through the familiar mechanical task. While half the words were new to her, the other half she was able to sound out and recognize. With multiple kids in multiple age groups the teacher only spent so much time on any one subject, and tried to condense his lessons by combining them whenever possible. Four of the words up on the board today were Luxor, Ashwan, Sabbuk, and Savar, all cities that Zofie had heard about before. She guessed that today the teacher would also include a basic geography lesson for the kids too stupid to realize they had lived somewhere else before moving here. Well and Farmland might be talking about the concepts themselves, but Zofie thought it was more likely that they were particularly dull examples of nearby villages formed by people who didn’t matter.

She liked it when the teacher focused on history. As a retired adventurer who had turned to education once his funds had run out, their teacher had all sorts of interesting stories about how things used to be. He’d fought in most of the skirmishes between cities at one point or another, and was able to bring them to life in a way that Zofie’s tutor had never managed to do. Zofie’s only complaint about his storytelling ability was that the teacher kept censoring himself, switching what word he was going to use halfway through once he remembered who his audience was. The girl was curious as to what words were so bad that they shouldn’t be mentioned in front of kids, or at least kids with parents that were giving the teacher money. Some of them she could guess at from the first letter, but others she had never heard of before.

Zofie was distracted from her mental rant by a flicker of movement overhead. Her young eyes easily spotted the culprit, a small rat that had climbed up onto a roof beam and was using it to move from one side of the building to the other. Out of everything she hated about Zaros, she hated the rats the least, mostly because they never did anything to her. Sure, she heard stories about them eating all the food in sight and spoiling backs of grain that then had to be burned instead of eaten, but none of that was her problem. There were enough people present in her estate to scare away most rats, and the servants put out enough traps to take care of the rest. There were still problems, of course. Zofie knew that the cook had had to remake a meal more than once, and the majordomo had beaten a few of the cleaning slaves when rat poop had been found in his room, but that was their problem, not hers, and a quiet part of her enjoyed the irritations that everyone else experienced, enjoying the miserable company it provided.

It was hard to believe, but the rats had apparently been a much larger issue for Zaros before Zofie had arrived. Back then they had apparently grown three times as large as regular rats, and bigger ones were seen every day. They could breathe underwater and could somehow turn invisible and sneak through holes no larger than a finger. It had taken a new ritual put together by Lord Zar and a mysterious ritualist to stop the rats from becoming any worse and making them normal pests once again.

Zofie liked that story. She couldn’t do any magic herself, but one of the slaves back in Savar had a bit of magic that he used to make their house there smell good. Zofie had made sure her room smelled like something different every single day, and wondered what else the ritual magic could do. The only other thing she had managed to learn about it was that it had cost a slave to make it work, but that sounded like a fair trade to Zofie. A slave for a whole Oasis was a great deal, and if the young girl knew how she would trade all three of the slaves she had just to go back to Savar. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like that was actually possible, so the girl just sighed, focusing on the teacher just long enough to confirm that he wasn’t covering anything new before drifting back into her thoughts.

Lessons would only last for a few more hours, and then Zofie would be free to explor Zaros and interact with her peers. There was only so much of either activity that she could tolerate, but there wasn't much else to do except shop at the rare merchant who ventured out to Zaros to sell their goods at a marked up price. She knew how much a stick of honey should sell for, and those thieves had tried to make her pay twice as much as she needed to! It had made for a nice snack though. Mostly the girl just wished for something interesting to happen, like another group of slaves or a caravan from a city she hadn't heard of before. Anything to make her life less boring.

She really hated Zaros.