NINE CUTS DEEP
There was no warning. One minute he was curled up in his bed, face nestled against a plump pillow, and the next he was being dragged out of the house in his sleeping clothes.
“What is happening? What are you doing? Who are you?!” he shouted, trying to struggle but his arms were held too tight.
He was thrown on the ground and knelt up to see that his attackers were wearing the uniforms of the Imperial Guard. Their commander stood before him, strong legs braced and expression firmly unfriendly.
The commander unrolled a scroll and held it face out so he could see the words in vermilion ink. “Jan Douther, by order of the Emperor you are to be exiled for life to the island of Reuine.”
“Why?” Jan asked, horrified.
He could hear his house being ransacked behind him. Anything of wealth was thrown onto a prepared wagon. As an exile, a proclaimed criminal, he would only be allowed a single set of rough spun clothes and everything else would be claimed by the courts.
“Donthor Auerleon, once Duke of Kourton, has been sentenced to be executed for the crime of treason. The great Emperor has proclaimed that his family be dealt with nine cuts deep.”
Jan wanted to wail in horror but no sound could escape.
Nine cuts deep!
Whatever Donthor had done hadn’t just seen himself and his immediate family dead, but had doomed his family down to nine generations.
As a second cousin, Jan would be made to suffer along with their grandparents and great-grandparents and uncles and aunts and all of their families. Whatever Donthor had done had killed his own wife and children and sentenced everyone else in the family to permanent exile.
They would not be allowed to own property. Those that didn’t already have a spouse wouldn’t be allowed to marry. Any children they had would automatically be labeled as criminals. They would have to do whatever labor the government ordered. And they would not be allowed to leave their place of exile.
Jan had never been fond of Cousin Donthor, but now he discovered that he hated him.
That smug scumbag that would come to holiday events in expensive clothes layered with jewelry. Who would boast of his riches and his properties and his beautiful concubines and the best schools that his children attended. Who would flaunt his ducal title while looking down on the rest of them.
Donthor had ruined their entire family. And for what?
As Jan was stripped naked in the street and was forced into the rough spun clothes, he hated and hated.
He didn’t cry out when the Imperial Guards transferred him to the care of the prisoner transporters and he was beaten. He hadn’t done anything to fight them, but they wanted him weak. Pliable. Aware that he was no longer a person and could barely be considered human.
His status was lower than the lowest of slaves. Those whose masters could kill them for a list of offenses but who still had to follow set laws of treatment.
As a criminal his life was worthless. He could be beaten, robbed, abused, and kept captive, and if he dared to go to the Law Bureau for justice, he would first be given thirty strikes with a board before he would be allowed to speak.
The law was not on his side, and he knew it. And so he refused to cry, simply accepting that everything that had once been was no longer. Including the luxury of weakness.
Later, when he was reunited with his elderly family members and a few cousins on the ferry boat to Reuine Island–the rest of the family having been separated to other points of exile–he held them close and promised that he would take care of them. They were all that he had left in his life.
Donthor’s foolishness had taken everything else from him. Even the hope of a happy future.
=END=
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