On the throne sat a figure swathed in voluminous red robes and wearing a tall, ornate hat. It was a human man, pink and fat as a baby. His mouth was pursed in displeasure, but when he noticed them approaching, he grinned. The tiny, jewel-bright squeeps lined his shoulders and sat on his hat, flickering and resettling restlessly against the vibrant crimson. Now he sat forward avidly, steepling his fingers.
“What is this?” he asked.
Vrod bowed, giving a flourish with his white hand. “New bounty for your pleasure, my Arratu. Caught yesterday in the eastern trap.”
“What are they?”
“I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun for Your Majesty.”
The Arratu cleared his throat and waved a hand at them. “Explain your exotic origins.”
Brendol stepped forward, and Siv noticed that his manner had changed completely. His movements were bigger, his accent snapping, his voice cultured and deferential and smooth.
“Great Arratu, we are but noble pilgrims passing through your magnificent land.”
The Arratu bounced in his seat. “Yes, but what can you do? The last group of strangers had an alien covered in fur!”
Brendol faltered briefly, then bowed. “I am an educator and strategist for the First Order, great Arratu, and my talent is for administration and shepherding the young toward strategic ends. If you require intelligent men in your employment, I can assume many roles. I could perhaps help parcel out the resources so that fewer people might starve.”
“I don’t like him,” the Arratu said, pouting. He wiggled his fingers at Brendol as if trying to shoo him away and pivoted in his chair, making the tiny birds erupt and flutter around him. “Wait! Why does that one”—he pointed at Phasma—“look different from those ones?” He pointed at Pete and Huff. “Their armor fits, but the tall one is funny. Is it a clown?”
Brendol stepped up again and began, “O great Arratu—”
“No. I asked that one. The tall one. What is it?”
Phasma spoke from inside the helmet, her voice flat and half robotic. Siv wouldn’t have recognized this voice, this accent, just a week ago. “I am Phasma of the Scyre, and I am a warrior. I have taken this armor from a dying soldier, so it was not made to fit me. And if you require skills, my skill is death.”
The Arratu sat up, looking fascinated and excited.
“Death?”
“I will fight anyone or anything in return for my freedom.”
Later, Siv realized that Phasma had spoken only for herself, not for her people.
The Arratu shook his head, his hat waggling. “That won’t do. If you’re pleasant to watch as you fight, I’ll want you to stay. I shall require you to have some theatricality about the death you deliver.”
“So if I do well, I stay, and if I do poorly, I stay?”
“Well, yes, but if you do well, you’ll be fed. And given treats.”
“But Vrod said we could earn our freedom if we pleased you.”
The Arratu glared at Vrod, who took several steps back. “Yes, well, he was lying. Only I can make the rules.”
Phasma nodded, and Siv knew her well enough to understand that she was running a variety of scenarios through her head, trying to select the best angle of attack. The Arratu scanned the rest of their group but did not bounce in place again.
“The rest of you are quite boring. Even your clothes are dull. Can anyone do anything other than fight?”
An uncomfortable silence followed. When the Arratu’s mad eyes landed on her, Siv felt as if an insect’s legs were picking apart her face, hunting for some crevice to cling to.
“I can tell stories,” Siv said.
The Arratu cocked his head. “Oh? About what?”
“Life in the Scyre. Our past battles, and the stories from my mother’s time, which she passed down to me.”
His eyes narrowed. “So these are just…histories of people like you? That doesn’t sound very thrilling.”
“It’s thrilling if you’ve lived it.”
The Arratu snorted in disgust and flapped a beringed hand at them. The birds flapped and resettled as if they, too, were bored.
“Take them away, Vrod. Dress them in something exciting, and bring them back tonight.”
Brendol had remained silent, but now he spoke again, and his voice held none of the respect or showmanship he’d used earlier.
“And what will we do tonight?” he asked.
The Arratu grinned like a child who relished pulling the wings off butterflies.
“The only thing you can do, apparently. The best thing. Fight.”
—
Vrod led them to another room in the compound and made them undress completely, bathe in sharply scented waters, and put on new clothes he handed out from an endless rack of colorful garments. The style of dressing was entirely different from the Scyre, and Siv couldn’t get used to the loose shirt that billowed around her as she walked and the wide pants that swished with every step. Her years of fighting on rocky, uneven terrain told her immediately that such clothes would only trip her up, catching on obstacles when she most needed agility. She missed her tightly fitted leathers and thick boots, a second skin that could withstand all but the sharpest blade.
Even Phasma was given new garments to wear under her stormtrooper armor. As she was prodded into the shower, she kept glancing back at her armor as if suspicious it would be stolen. The Arratu must’ve indicated that he preferred the costume, though, as it waited, unchanged, on the bench when they returned. The leathers she’d worn underneath, however, were gone.
As they waited for Phasma and the troopers to finish attaching their armor, Torben sidled up to Siv, bumping her shoulder gently. He’d been helping Gosta through the bathing process, as the Scyre folk were more shy about wasting water than about nudity, but the girl was doing fine on her own, arranging her long, curly hair into a thick braid. Turning to face Siv, Torben caressed her stomach with a wide, warm hand.
“I noticed in the showers,” he said. “How do you feel?”
Siv smiled. She had been wondering when he would recognize the change in her shape. For a murderous beast of a man, he was tender in many ways, and she had been certain he’d catch on quicker than the others.
“Good so far.”
“You should eat more.”
“I’d like that, too.”
He paused, hands on his hips, looking away shyly. “Mine?”
Siv chuckled. “I think you know the answer to that. Yours or Keldo’s. Not much privacy in the Scyre.”
Torben smiled and nodded. She knew he considered those good odds.
“Brendol’s ship will have things to help you,” he said. “His medicine.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Siv looked down. She’d lost two children that she knew of, after she’d begun to show but before they were fully formed. Fewer and fewer children were kindled in the Scyre and even fewer than that were born. Ylva had nearly died birthing Frey, who had been a small and frail little thing. Frey was going on six now and still their band’s only child under twelve. This baby would’ve been a great boon to the Scyre, but only if she’d been able to bring it to term and survive the bloody fight to bear and deliver it. Selfishly, perhaps, she’d decided that she’d rather have a live child in space than give the Scyre another scant handful of salve and another dry package tucked into the hidden chambers of the Nautilus.
“I hope so,” she said.
Gosta appeared, smiling, still squeezing water from her braid. The girl had noticed nothing of Siv’s altered form, but then again, as far as Siv knew, Gosta was only fourteen and hadn’t yet chosen any partners to couple with—or established that she was interested in doing so. Since the girl’s mother had been dead many years, perhaps no one had taught her the ways of life, although there was no way to avoid witnessing the act that kindled it. Siv flushed with shame, thinking that she’d been so worried about her own possible child that she’d perhaps neglected this younger girl, already alone in the wor
ld. That was another boon to finding Brendol’s ship and joining his clan among the stars: not only fewer lost babies, but fewer lost mothers, as well.
Brendol appeared, and the tender moment was over. Although Siv desperately wanted access to the safety and resources of his ship and his people, she didn’t like the man himself. She liked him even less when Phasma wasn’t in the immediate area, as he could be a bully, especially when it came to the needs of his warriors as compared with those of the Scyre. Perhaps it would be different once the Scyre band formally joined his First Order, whatever it was. Perhaps they, too, would become his people. Siv would gladly pledge her loyalty to Brendol for the promise of medicine like that her ancestors had enjoyed. Magic injections that could cure disease and pain, knowledgeable droids that could easily guide a mother through her birth with the insurance of a positive outcome. His recovery from the fever at Terpsichore Station had fully convinced Siv that she’d made the right choice. Being around sour, crafty Brendol would be worth it when she held her first child.
But until then, she looked to Phasma whenever Brendol was near. The warrior was having trouble adjusting her armor over the excess fabric of her billowing costume. Siv walked over.
“Horrible, isn’t it?”
Phasma looked up, her eyes full of ill humor. “They want us to die and look like magnificent fools doing it.”
Brightly striped fabric poofed out between the dusty armor segments, but Siv knew better than to try to help Phasma in any way. With Gosta, she wouldn’t hesitate to reach out, tucking here and there and clucking, but Phasma didn’t rely on touch like the rest of them. Even Keldo took his comfort, as Siv well knew. Even though he was very private and had rarely spoken of his troubles or feelings, still he had his tender moments, when he pressed his forehead to hers in the quiet darkness of the Nautilus or whispered secrets that she promised to keep. But not Phasma. She held herself aloof, always, and would be more likely to dart between one of her people and an arrow than to slap someone on the shoulder in a friendly fashion after a victory.
“They want us to die?” Siv said, flashing a grin. “Let’s disappoint them, then.”
At that, Phasma smiled, and a feral thing it was. Siv hoped never to be on the wrong end of it.
“Yes, let’s.”
Vrod appeared in the doorway. “The fine fabric of Arratu blesses your audience.” He flicked the colorful tunic spanning Torben’s chest, and Torben growled. “But a word to the wise: If you wish to fill your empty stomachs, entertain the crowd. Get them on your side. Especially the Arratu. Cheers will earn your meat and water.”
Gosta shifted closer to Siv, who sensed her dread. The girl was a nimble fighter, swift and silent, an excellent scout and undetectable under cover of night or when crawling among the rocks. But whatever had happened to her leg during the fall would take time to heal. Her fighting would not be, as Vrod had requested, entertaining. Siv resolved to remain close to her and defend her, if need be, from anything that might sense her weakness and target her. She wrapped an arm around Gosta to help her walk. They still had no idea what they would be required to fight—soldiers, the other prisoners, the hideous dogs, or something even more dangerous. And they hadn’t been given weapons, or even asked which weapons they favored.
“Put on your brightest smiles for the Arratu!”
With that, Vrod held out his arm to the door, urging them into the hall. As they walked toward the vast room containing the arena, herded by blasters and skinwolves, they could sense a certain change in the air. Before, all had been still and quiet but for the smooth hum of the air recirculation machines. Now they heard a growing noise, something like the rumble of thunder combined with the gabbling of seabirds and the harsh slap of the angry ocean.
“What is it?” Gosta asked.
“Arratu,” Vrod cheerfully replied.
“The person?”
“The city. Arratu is the city. Arratu is the leader. Arratu is the heart of this place.”
“What does that mean?”
Instead of answering, Vrod whistled an unsettling tune and skipped a little. When he threw open the double doors, the sound and heat hit Siv like a wall of stone. She’d never seen so many bodies packed so tightly together, and the Scyre folk halted in the open doorway, frozen in place. Brendol and his troopers kept walking; they must’ve been accustomed to large groups of people. But Siv’s heart pounded at the energy in the air, the assault on her senses. Thousands of people packed the benches around the arena, hip-to-hip, a riot of color, sound, and movement as they whistled, yelled, stamped, clapped, and waved colorful flags. A heavy scent rolled over her like the sea, the usual musk of bodies plus heady perfumes and strange spices that reminded her of the greenery clinging to their walls. Even the heat—so many hearts beating, so much blood! It made her woozy.
“What’s wrong?” Vrod said, urging them forward with his spread arms. “The Arratu welcomes you!”
“It’s an awful lot of Arratu,” Torben noted.
Phasma looked around in a full circle, her helmet scanning the room.
“So be it.”
She strode firmly ahead, past Brendol and his men and into the arena. There were no weapons visible, no obstacles, no hiding places. Merely the floor of the arena, covered in gray sand. Head up, Phasma walked until she faced the Arratu again.
“Well?” she shouted.
The Arratu stood, his arms up and lined with preening, glittering birds, and the people went mostly silent, although their whispers still tickled Siv’s ears, as if they just didn’t have the sort of self-control even small children showed in the Scyre.
“My people, we have fighters tonight. Whom shall we have them fight?”
The Arratu spoke into a machine that amplified his voice, filling the giant room with his booming words. A murmur of discussion went up in the stands, slowly cohering into a strange word repeated again and again like the call of a raptor. As the chant built and the voices went from whispers to cries, Siv realized that whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“Wranderous. Wranderous. Wranderous!”
“What’s a Wranderous?” Torben asked.
Siv turned around to ask Vrod, but he was closing the doors with a madman’s grin as he backed into the hall. The metal slammed shut, and the bolt drove home. A quick scan showed Siv that there was no way out. The walls rose far higher than even Phasma’s head and were made of smooth metal, nothing like the craggy rocks they’d grown up climbing and clinging to like barnacles.
With the doors closed, the Scyre folk stayed close together, quickly moving into a clot, backs touching as each person faced outward toward some unknown threat. The troopers recognized the strategic advantage of this grouping in the larger circle of the arena and joined in. Brendol slipped between his men to stand in the center. It was just as well. If there was fighting to be done, someone like Brendol should stay out of the way and let the real warriors handle it.
Phasma still stood alone near the Arratu, who was goading the crowd into ever-louder cries for Wranderous. As if of one mind, the circle of Scyre and First Order fighters moved together to the center of the arena and waited. Siv’s heart pounded in time with the crowd’s chants, and her hand drifted, unthinking, to her belly. She felt safe enough with weapons in her hands, confident that she was trained to fight and would die a good death if her time had come, but this situation was unnatural and unsettling in a way that life in the Scyre was not. There was an artificial flavor to the spectacle that she found distasteful.
“Just come kill us!” she shouted back at the crowd.
No one heard her. The faces she saw were lit by a mad fervor, spittle flying from lips and fists pounding the air. Her gaze landed on an old man with a mustache dyed blue, then on a plump woman dripping in necklaces, next on a cluster of small, starving children throwing rocks that fell far short as they screamed. Their faces made her feel like a cornered animal—but then, weren’t the people in the stands the ones behaving like animals?
/> When it seemed the raised voices could get no louder, the bodies on the benches parted like waves around a shark’s fin to reveal a huge man, even bigger than Torben, casually swaggering down to the arena. He was dressed in the usual colorful pants of the Arratu’s people but wore no shirt, and his pale chest was a riot of scars and tattoos under his thick blond beard. He carried no weapons, but his hands were wrapped in stained white fabric. As he walked down the stairs through the stands, he slapped hands and punched the air and shouted his own name with the crowd. When he reached the railing at the edge of the arena wall, he leapt over it easily and landed on the soft sand in a dramatic crouch.
But Phasma was already running for him, and as he rose and bowed to the crowd with an exaggerated flourish, she landed a flying kick that should’ve shattered his leg. The crowd roared in disapproval, but Wranderous didn’t fall down with a snapped bone. He turned, slowly, and gave Phasma a look that would’ve made a lesser fighter quake. Gosta, in fact, did quake; standing so close beside her, Siv could feel the tension in her body, the jerky shake in the girl’s arms.
“So that’s Wranderous,” Torben murmured. “He looks like fun.” Cracking his knuckles, he strode away from the circle and toward Phasma and the fight.
The troopers and Brendol stayed put, so Siv and Gosta closed the circle, waiting for more fighters to appear. Phasma, however, wasn’t waiting. She continued her attack on Wranderous, barreling into a combination of punches and kicks that any Scyre warrior would recognize, as she’d taught it to each of them. It involved a sequence of shots to bewilder and shut down the victim, rendering a fair fight less fair. A jab to the throat, a cross to the face, a hook to the ear, a cross to the solar plexus. But instead of doubling over to catch his breath, Wranderous punched Phasma’s helmet, and her head rocked back in an unsettling way. She shook the hit off and watched him, hunting for a new angle; the helmet must’ve been built to absorb some damage and protect the skull, or Phasma would’ve been on the ground already.
“Why are there no weapons?” Gosta asked, leaning heavily on Siv.
Phasma (Star Wars) Page 19
