by Shade Owens
Smiles spread out in our circle, and for a moment, it seemed like everyone forgot where we were.
“I second that,” Johnson said. “But, with a man.” She pointed a solid finger at the sky to make sure we didn’t misunderstand anything, and everyone laughed. “He’ll be tall, but not too tall, and he’ll have pecs that I’ll want to dig my teeth into.” She bared her teeth and squeezed invisible pecs in front of her face.
“Yo,” Arenas said, “you wanna talk about hot? This guy I was seein’ before all this happened was six foot three, had abs of steel, and dark chocolate eyes you could get lost in.” She sighed, obviously fantasizing about whoever this guy was. “And the perfect shadow, you know?” She brushed the back of her hand against her jawline. “The right amount that makes a guy look rough and badass.”
Johnson, who now looked all excited, slid forward in the sand. “What about—you know?” and her eyes shot downward.
“Well, I didn’t get that far, chica!” Arenas said. “But when he wore his favorite pair of blue jeans, I swear, that thing must’ve—”
“All right, we get it,” Hammer said, wiping the air in front of her face as if Arenas’s fantasy was distorting her own.
Arenas sighed and plopped her chin down into her palms. “God… what I’d do for a good pound—”
“All right, Arenas, clean the pile you have,” I said, not wanting her to get into any descriptive details.
“Who made you boss?” Her bottom lip hung open revealing her teeth.
I slowly raised an eyebrow while hundreds of thoughts rushed through my mind. Not long ago, my first thought would have been, How can I best diffuse this situation? But as Arenas stared at me with that same carelessness she’d been exuding over the last few days, I found myself drawn to a thought I used to avoid having—the thought of violence.
After everything I’d done, was she seriously going to sit there and be a bitch? Trim had given up her life to allow me to lead, and now, some young, two-faced twat had the nerve to start something in front of everyone.
Not only was it demeaning, it was disrespectful.
“Trim did,” Hammer cut in, her eyes darting toward my good hand. “Make her boss,” she clarified.
I hadn’t noticed, but I’d squeezed all the berries in my hand, and the bleeding juice probably looked like I’d torn someone’s throat out.
Arenas pouted and shrugged one shoulder. “Didn’t know her.”
“Everyone knew Trim,” Coin growled before I could get a word in.
“Knew of her,” Arenas said. “But to be honest, no one liked her.”
I didn’t even have the time to react when Coin lunged over the pile of fruit and nuts between all of us and clocked Arenas in the jaw. A stock of plantains flew at my feet, and dozens of unshelled nuts rolled out into the dirt as Coin scrambled to get on top of Arenas.
“Get the fuck off me!” Arenas yelled, her arms flailing around in front of her face.
Coin swung another fist straight for Arenas’s face; she grimaced upon impact, her beet-red skin looking like a ripe tomato under the sun.
“Stop it!” Hammer said, scrambling to grab Coin’s legs.
But all that did was piss Coin off even more and she kicked backward, knocking Hammer in the chest.
“Hey!” someone shouted.
Coin brought a solid fist down again, and Arenas’s entire head shook.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
It was Alice Number Two. She came scurrying over in a panic, her lanky arms frantically waving on either side of her. She grabbed Coin from behind with one hand around her throat and pulled back.
“Fuck off!” Coin shouted.
“Enough!” said Alice Number Two, and it was almost as if Coin only then realized what was going on. Her eyes went round and her anger dissipated as she fell into Alice Number Two’s lap.
“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Alice Number Two said. With her frizzy hair flattened on one side and her freckled cheeks rosy, she looked distraught. She slapped Coin on the back as a way of telling her to get the hell off her.
And Coin did exactly that—she rolled over to one side, shook her hand to relieve the pain in her knuckles, and glared at Arenas.
“Fucking bitch,” Arenas said, rubbing the side of her face.
“Shouldn’t have talked about Trim,” Coin said. “You ain’t known half the shit that woman did for us, so you keep your goddamn mouth shut about what you don’t know.”
A disturbing silence filled the air around us. In the distance, one of the elephants shook its head and the sound of its ears flapping filled the dirt-floored city. Women stopped moving about in the market tents and shacks, and a gust of wind blew hard, causing a flopping sound as it brushed through the city’s hanging drapes and sheets of cotton.
“You’re both idiots,” said Alice Number Two.
She stood up, her chin pointed more toward the sky than the ground, and gazed down at both Coin and Arenas. It almost looked as though she didn’t want to say what she was about to say but had no choice; it was the job she’d been assigned.
What the hell was going on?
And then, my stomach sank.
The chanting started out like a low grumble—a deep humming that couldn’t be understood—until everyone’s words meshed together and all we could hear throughout the city was, “Fight, fight, fight.”
CHAPTER 2
“Are you seriously going to let this happen?” Hammer hissed.
“Fight!”
“Fight!”
“Fight!”
The voices carried so loudly across the city that everything began to feel surreal. Maybe this wasn’t truly happening, and any moment now, I’d wake up in my hammock, prepared for another day of slavery. I wouldn’t even mind it—I’d take slavery over having to watch two of my friends fight to the death.
But I didn’t wake up, and the chanting continued.
Hammer stared at me as if waiting for me to take charge.
What was I supposed to do? Coin and Arenas had done this to themselves. They knew the rules—any form of altercation led to a death match. The only reason I’d gotten out of mine was that I’d somehow managed to kill the Norther—the Beast—hosting the match.
And after that, Rainer had made it clear that if anything like that ever happened again, we’d all pay for it. If there was one person I knew wasn’t bluffing, it was Rainer. I could handle Zsasz’s anger and violent outbursts, but Rainer, was something else. She looked like the kind of woman who’d sever three heads with the swing of her sword, all without batting an eyelash.
“That’s Coin out there,” Hammer said. She pulled at her fingers and paced back and forth.
“I get that,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’m pissed off about this too, okay? What am I supposed to do? Rules are rules. If they don’t fight, they both die. And if we get in the way, we’ll probably all die.”
I couldn’t think.
Think, Brone, think.
But there wasn’t an answer for this one. There was nothing I could do. I swallowed hard to keep the vomit from coming up.
“You okay, Brone?” I heard.
I turned around to find Quinn standing behind me with a handful of women around her. Her thick, flabby arms were crossed over her chest and her septum ring glistened under the sun. My heart was racing a mile a minute, but on the outside, I must have looked entirely heartless—too calm in a situation where one of my friends, if not both, was about to die.
“What happened?” she asked.
I shrugged. “A stupid fight.”
Quinn let out a long breath and pinched the skin between her eyebrows. “Shit… Brone. I’m so sorry.”
I swallowed hard. I wanted to scream or cry or punch someone. But I wasn’t about to let my emotions get the best of me.
The cheering suddenly exploded around us and bodies moved closer toward the fighting arena—the sand pit located near the Northers’ wooden gate. The smell of sour sweat inva
ded my nose, and I peered through a crack in between two heads in front of me to find Coin and Arenas staring at each other, both looking out of place.
This couldn’t be happening.
How was this happening?
How were two young women—both with their entire lives ahead of them—being forced to fight to the death over some petty argument? This place was a nightmare. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“Oh Lord, what is going on?” I heard.
I knew that voice. I turned around to find Georgia. She looked the same as she did the first day I met her—manicured nails, though they’d grown out quite a bit, and a snooty hop in her walk. That huge grin she’d had on her face for hours, though, had disappeared since I’d broken the news to her about her sentence being a lifelong thing.
“Is that—” she said, standing on her tiptoes to get a better view of the fight. “Oh.” She let out a sigh and rolled her eyes. “A negro and a Mexican. I say do away with both.”
I bit down so hard on my teeth that I heard something chip.
It isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it.
The crowd exploded, and I was pushed to and fro as everyone cheered. I shoved back to get a view of what was going on only to find Arenas had climbed on top of Coin, bashing her fists down.
“Coin!” I shouted, but my voice cracked.
No, no, no.
This wasn’t happening. I couldn’t lose Coin. In a sick way, the only reason I hadn’t lost my mind was because I thought Coin was going to win. I didn’t want Arenas to die, but if I’d had to choose…
Georgia threw her arms in the air and clapped over her head. Her eyes rolled my way, and when she realized who I was, her lips turned upside down like she’d eaten a piece of turd.
“What’re you so sad about?” she sneered, obviously still bitter about what I’d said. “That little Mexican is doing you a favor.”
I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
I shoved everyone out of my way—everyone blocking me from getting to Georgia—and tackled her to the ground. The cheering around Arenas and Coin suddenly broke, almost in confusion, and the crowd began to split apart, not knowing which fight to watch.
I grabbed her by the throat and shook her, her head bouncing back and forth, then shook so hard her head smashed into the ground beneath her. She resembled one of those rubber stress toys—the kinds with popping eyeballs.
But it wasn’t enough.
There was so much anger in me that I wanted to kill her. I didn’t care anymore—I’d add another life to the list. I closed my good fist and smashed it hard against her nose. A loud crack split underneath my knuckles, and blood came pouring out of her nostrils.
She yelled, but I didn’t care.
I hit her again and again and again until I was brought back to my incident with Hammer. The image flashed in my mind so vividly that as I looked down at my victim’s face, all I saw was Hammer. Instead of swinging down again, I held my fist midair. It shook, and my teeth clattered. But then Georgia came back into view, looking like a squished tomato, and although I wanted to hit her again, I realized she’d stopped moving.
I’d blacked out again.
“What is this?” someone growled.
Footsteps scattered away from me and I looked up to see one of the Northers moving toward me and the bloody scene I’d created. She swung her arms at her sides in an exaggerated motion and looked at me like a raging gorilla—wide nostrils over a mouth and chin forming an angry pout.
She had long black hair, though it looked more like hanging wires sticking out of her head, and her skin looked like she’d sat in the sun for far too many hours—leathery and worn.
And then another Norther came rushing toward us from the main gate, her footsteps heavy in the sand. She stomped like she weighed three hundred pounds and when she stopped running, she placed her filthy hands on her waist and smiled down at me. She was much taller than the one who looked like a gorilla and had two black-dotted markings on her face that appeared to be permanent ink. They ran across her cheeks and up toward her temples.
“Two fights?” said the taller of the two. “In one day?”
She looked amused, almost as if this were the most exciting day she’d had in a long time.
“It’s the troublemaker,” snarled the gorilla-looking Beast.
The taller one didn’t seem to care who I was, but rather, that I’d generated some excitement for the day.
“Finish your fight,” yelled the taller one, turning her attention toward Coin and Arenas.
I’d been so focused beating down on Georgia that I’d completely forgotten about Coin and Arenas. I sat up, wiped the back of my hand against my sweaty forehead, feeling a layer of warm blood coat my skin, and stood up.
Arenas wasn’t on top of Coin anymore, and it didn’t look like she was trying to attack her, either. They both stood looking at me, as lost as everyone else.
“Fight!” shouted the tall Beast.
Arenas’s eyes shot in my direction, then at Coin, and she hesitated. Coin closed her fists, opened them, then closed them again. She didn’t know what to do, either. The crowd had stopped chanting, and no one knew in which direction to look.
“You!” the tall Beast shouted at me, realizing that her command wasn’t being obeyed. “Finish what you started.”
I glanced down at Georgia, whose bloody face was already swelling. She lay unconscious with her lips parted and her cheek resting in the sand. Although she was a racist piece of shit, I didn’t have it in me to finish her off.
But then, as I thought of Rainer, I realized that if I didn’t do this, Rainer wouldn’t be forgiving this time around.
How hard would it be? To take an innocent life? Was it worth it? Was my life worth more than hers?
I shook my head and squinted.
What the hell had I become?
Why was I even considering killing this woman? For what? To save my skin? I wasn’t a murderer. At least not a cold-blooded murderer. I’d taken a life to protect myself before, but this… this was different. This woman was lying unconscious and unaware of what was going on. She hadn’t asked for this—I was the one who attacked her.
Then, a third Beast stepped in, obviously curious about why the entire city had gathered near the gate. She was unusually frail-looking for a Beast, with scrawny, gray-skinned arms and bags under her eyes that made her look like she was on her way to the other side, or like she’d been bitten by a zombie. Below her chin hung a half-skull mask, which meant she’d recently been out beyond the city limits.
“What’s going on?” she croaked.
“Someone wants to die,” said that gorilla-Beast. She tore a bone-carved blade from her right boot and took a step toward me, but what happened next was something I couldn’t have anticipated.
Something hard smashed me in my ribs, though not hard enough to send me to my knees. I turned toward my attacker to find Quinn standing tall with her arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her bright red lips.
What the hell was she doing?
Then, one of her followers—a middle-aged woman with loose, leathery skin and rounded shoulders—swung a tight-knuckled fist straight at Quinn’s face.
My eyes went huge, but Quinn didn’t swing back. Instead, she winked at me, then turned around and punched another woman in the face. It took a few more punches among random women for me to understand what was going on.
They were starting fights—all of them. The sound of bone on bone and skin against skin spread through the city as the Beasts stood there perplexed, looking like a group of tourists without a map.
CHAPTER 3
“Get back to your posts!” Zsasz roared, her deep voice rumbling across the city.
Women scattered away from the fighting ring, where Coin and Arenas stood with smiles on their faces.
We’d done it—I couldn’t believe it. Outsmarted the Beasts and rendered them powerless. I drew in a deep breath, my chest heaving
, my shoulders drawn back.
We truly were stronger as a group.
I glanced back at Quinn, who winked at me, her right cheek pink and inflamed. She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, none of the women seemed to mind that they’d been hit one way or another. In the end, it was for a greater cause.
“Now!” Zsasz shouted, and a young woman beside her—a Peasant—moved past Zsasz with a cocky smirk on her face and a smile that said, We’re untouchable. A long ponytail hung from the top of her head all the way down to her lower back, and it swayed from left to right as she walked.
But she didn’t make it very far. In one quick motion, Zsasz reached out a scarred hand for the woman’s ponytail and tugged it hard. The woman’s arms flew in the air as she tripped backward, landing flat against Zsasz’s chest.
And then, it was almost as if the magic around us had been vanquished by a powerful force. Smiles turned to grimaces and anxiety filled the space around us.
We weren’t untouchable—we were far from untouchable.
Zsasz wrapped her mangled forearm around the woman’s jugular, stretched her hideous zebra-striped lips into a smile, and pressed her cheek against the woman’s face. This woman, someone I’d never noticed in the crowds before, struggled to breathe underneath Zsasz’s clutch. That cocky smile of hers had disappeared instantly and she squirmed attempting to free herself.
But Zsasz didn’t let go.
Both of their faces reddened—the woman, because she couldn’t breathe, and Zsasz, because she was either enraged or struggling to keep hold of the woman. Squiggly blue veins appeared on Zsasz’s temples, making her look even more psychotic with that wide grin of hers.
“You think you’re all so smart,” she spewed, and the woman flinched as Zsasz’s jaw moved up and down against the Peasant’s face. “You think banding together is going to protect you?” She laughed this time, and instead of tightening her grip on the woman, she let her go but held onto her ponytail, using it as a leash.
The woman reached for her hair, but Zsasz tugged on it, her wild eyes darting between all of us.
