by Adam Burch
I curl into a ball and bleed onto the floor.
The Night Queen sings. Gli angui d’inferno, mi sento in petto, Megera, Alletto, ho intorno a me . . . Paventa il mio furore, se non osi esser crudel. Ciel! L’orendo mio voto ascolto o Ciel! Of hell the vengeance boils within my heart, death and despair are flaming all around me . . . To pieces all the ties of nature torn, Hear Gods of vengeance, hear a mother’s vow! The song plays in my head. The Magic Flute. A tune as old as Ancient Earth. I drag myself hand by bloody hand through the dark tunnels.
I sing words of my own to the music The Maestro taught me. I will not die. I must not die. If I die, Nadia’s death means nothing. My mother’s death means nothing. My child’s death means nothing. My father will win. He cannot win.
When I’m strong enough to stand, I hobble. I wrap myself in the torn rags of my bodysuit. Blood mixes with feces and trickles down my legs. My bowels are perforated. I’m going to die without medical help.
The passage widens. Darkness slowly becomes dim firelight. I enter the shantytown and collapse to the ground. My body wants to give in. The voice of my father does not let me.
Get up, coward.
“Shut up, son of a whore!” I scream. My cries echo through the chamber. A few figures huddled by a distant fire stir. I push myself to my hands and knees and crawl. I feel light-headed. The pain is searing through my body. Soon I am groveling in front of the frozen igloo of the dark healer.
“Faria,” I call out. No answer, no sign that anyone dwells here at all. Yet the flickering light of a fire dances within. The old man would make me beg before helping, wouldn’t he?
I’m not above begging. There is no pride or dignity left. I have nothing to lose but my life, which I will lose anyway if I do nothing. I pull my body through the entrance of his dwelling. I have nothing left.
The dark man gazes into the flames. “I knew you would return,” he says. “You did not heed my warning.”
I collapse, utterly destroyed.
Faria drags me close to the fire.
“What’s your price now, healer?” I ask.
“You have paid enough today. We’ll worry about the difference tomorrow.”
I cry like a babe. “When does it stop?” I ask through salted tears. “When does it stop? The pain? The suffering?”
“It never stops” is his quiet answer. Not unkind, but truthful. I feel something jab into my back, and my vision goes dark. Then I feel nothing.
I wake. I’m lying under some sort of animal hide. I feel a dull ache below, but it’s not the scorching fire of before. I prop myself up on my elbows. It hurts.
The dark, painted man sits where I first found him, meditating by the fire. “Be careful.” His voice is ominous. “The stitches will take some time to dissolve. Limit your activity. Your body needs to heal.”
“I’m not sure Jinam Shank or Vaarkson will care,” I mutter.
“Stay with your gang. Do not wander alone. Stay out of any place where you could be caught on your own.” He points to the igloo exit. Rags and furs sit on the ground there. “Used garments, furs from off-world, as well as nareel and lion-seal hides from the North Sea. They come in the monthly shipments. I collect them from the backs of those I cannot save.”
I dress myself in the layers of a dead man’s clothes. “Thank you.” I duck to leave through the crawl space but pause. “Why did you save me?” I ask.
“All the gangs use my services.”
“That’s no answer,” I say.
“You remember why you helped your friend? Toshi, was it?” he asks.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” I say bitterly.
“Knowing he betrayed you, has your answer changed?”
I should have let him die, I think. “No,” I say instead. “He would have died if I didn’t help. There’s no way I could have known what would happen.”
“You’d do it again?”
“Of course I wouldn’t do it again!” I shout. I wince. The outburst causes pain inside, but I’m sick of the shaman’s enigmatic questioning. “There’s no use dwelling on something that can never be,” I mutter.
The old man stares into the flames.
“You should have let me die.” I stare at the ground.
“I would,” he says. “But you wouldn’t let yourself die.”
A beat passes.
“Will anything happen to Vaarkson or the Haulers?” I ask.
“That depends on you, Edmon Leontes.”
I return to the Picker camp, but there’s no fanfare at my arrival. I take a seat outside the circle of men around the fire. A few steal furtive glances in my direction, but no one says a word. Perhaps I can forget it ever happened. I pull the furs Faria has given me close and try to steal slumber before the call of the morning alarm.
“You.”
I wake to the scarred visage of Jinam Shank. He’s flanked by Carrick and a few others. I look at him through bloodshot eyes.
“You will never speak of what has occurred!” he hisses. “Your shame and weakness would bring danger to all of us.”
I’m an object of shame and humiliation.
I want to respond that if he’s too weak to protect a member of his own gang, if he would rather cover up what’s happened, then he’s as vulnerable as anyone would think anyway. He doesn’t deserve to be foreman.
It’s not the time. Yet. I keep my mouth shut, but I remember his words.
“Do you understand?” he asks.
I understand this: There will be no justice, unless I seek it myself.
“Do you understand?” he repeats.
I nod and roll over onto my side.
The next day’s alarm sounds. I follow the line of Pickers to the tram. I feel looks of disgust whenever the men pass their eyes over me. I was singled out on the auction block because of my parentage. I was tested and forced to kill. Now I’m an object of scorn. They all know what has happened regardless of Jinam Shank’s warning to never speak of it.
The day is spent in the dim light of my helmet fireglobe. Again, I pick at rocks. I move slowly, not wanting to tear any of the stitches Faria has made internally. My haul at the end of the day is meager, and I draw more glares.
We return to the upper caverns. The crowd surges forward from the train car, and I lose track of my gang. I look for Shank, for Carrick, anyone I recognize, but the sea of people is like a rushing force of nature. I’m caught in the human current pressing through the tunnel. Soon, I realize I’m surrounded on all sides by men of the Hauler Gang. They jab legs out, trying to trip me. Someone grabs my ear. Another slaps my face. They’re herding me away from the entrance to the village and toward one of the dark dead-end tributaries.
It’s happening again! I need to get out. I’m hyperventilating. I’m losing all focus. I catch the eyes of one of Vaarkson’s mooks, a man with a snaggletooth leering at me. Vaarkson cannot be far behind. I feel the looming presence of the big man somewhere in the pack.
Keep your head, fool, my father’s voice whispers. I grit my teeth and shake out the fear. I see a guard with a humbaton ahead.
I have to act. Play the fool now to survive. “Guard!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Help me!”
The guard looks in my direction. I shove toward him against the human river.
“Help me!” I break free from the morass and fall at the man’s feet. I grab his leg like a sniveling child.
“Get off me!” he shouts contemptuously.
I cling like a mussel to a rock in the sea. It works. The Haulers who have been trying to corral me break off and head into the village cavern.
“Get off!” The guard brings the butt end of his humbaton down on my head.
I black out for a second as I hit the ground. When I look up through blurred vision, he holds the stun muzzle of the weapon in my face. I raise my hands in protection. “I’m sorry, m’lord. I’m sorry,” I grovel.
“Get out of here, worm,” he says, then spits.
I scurry toward the vi
llage with a sigh of relief. My head throbs, but I’m alive and safe. I follow the flow to the Ration Bar, grab a tray, and take up my place in line. I’m shoved continuously by those behind me until I reach the counter. The server slaps a ration pack onto my tray. I greedily tear the foil open, but I’m shoved again. I almost spill my only food for the day onto the icy floor.
I move through the mess tables protecting my pack like a mother seal. I pass the Haulers’ table, and they snicker. Toshi eyes me nervously. He’s frightened, alone, even as he’s surrounded by his new gang.
Good. I think. I’ve survived. You will not.
“Leontes,” Vaarkson catcalls. “They won’t babysit you forever. Night comes. Guards sleep.” He licks his lips.
I turn away and head for the Picker table. I move to sit on the end of the bench. A Picker bars my path. “Seat’s taken, fish,” he says coldly. I move to another open seat. Again: “Move along, fish.”
I’m forced to sit away from the tables, alone and unprotected. Day’s cycle will soon end, and I’ll need to return to my camp. If they won’t let me into their ranks to sleep, if I’m left to wander the village during night hours, I’ll be prey. If I’m not caught this Eventide, I will be eventually. I need to think of something. I need to change the rules of the game, but how?
My father was right—a swift death is a kindness. If I were dead, I’d be with Mother. The Maestro. Gorham. I’d be with Nadia. At the very least, I’d feel the peace of oblivion. Instead, I’m here, without even a rope to hang myself. The sharks are circling.
Drums beat in my brain. I cannot do it. I must. I won’t. Survive. I wish I were dead. No, make them the dead ones.
Then something happens I do not expect. Faria walks through the crowd to the tables, carrying a food tray. I’ve not seen him intermingling with the general population before. I’ve only witnessed him outside the crowd, like when I was on the auction block or when I accidentally killed Grinner.
No one takes notice, almost as if he’s invisible. I know better. What’s his game? I wonder.
He steps up to Vaarkson and the Hauler table. The ever-graceful dark man trips.
No, he didn’t trip on anything. He did that on purpose.
His ration pack spills all over Vaarkson and Snaggletooth, who sits next to the Hauler foreman.
“Damn you!” Vaarkson barks.
“Sorry, sir, I’m sorry!” Faria blubbers, making a mockery of himself.
“Leave, you wrinkled tillyfish, before I make you leave!” Vaarkson growls.
Faria’s position commands enough respect that he’ll get away cleanly so long as he continues the charade of obsequious fool. “I’m terribly sorry, Foreman Vaarkson.” Faria bows and scrapes.
“Yeah.” Snaggletooth grabs Faria’s coat. “Beat it, ya old snail, before we beat it out of you.”
Faria’s fingers shoot out and tap the back of Snaggletooth’s hand, almost swifter than an eye can see, but my eye sees it.
“Ow! Ya freaking maggot!” cries out Snaggletooth. The wiry man pulls his hand back.
“Terribly sorry,” mumbles Faria.
The blind old man picks up his tray and shuffles back toward his igloo, and the men return to their dinners. That was strange, I think. The whole incident . . . something felt off.
I’ve no time to ponder the interaction, though. I need to finish my food before the evening alarm. I down the thick paste in the pack quickly.
Day’s end alarm rings. The guards head to their tram. The prisoners at the tables shuffle back to their camps. I stand to return my tray to the kitchen, skirting wide of the Hauler table. It still hurts to walk, and I feel the Haulers’ eyes on me.
I’m hunted.
The Haulers stand from their table. I don’t know if I’ll be able to outpace them, but there’s no other choice. I take a deep breath and ready myself to run.
A scream echoes through the cavern that curdles the blood. Snaggletooth stands back from the others, shaking violently. Blood oozes, first from his nose, then from his ears, and finally from the corners of his eyes. He coughs. A volcano of red erupts from his mouth down his chin. He collapses to the floor convulsing, then lies still. Everyone watches silently, horrified.
“He’s dead,” a Hauler says in disbelief. Whispers of “witchcraft” run through their ranks.
I quietly slip away toward the Picker camp. I smile. The game has changed.
CHAPTER 18
CRESCENDO
Have I been here six months? Nine? No, a year and a half gone by. I am almost twenty.
I’ve no journal, no paper with which to write. Instead, I talk to myself in my head to help recall, like a historian recording a biography of some past figure. The time Edmon Leontes found a weird chunk in his ration pack. The day Edmon Leontes tripped and fell in the tunnels and landed on the rock that split his chin. Each incident I recount makes the passage of time more bearable.
Then, Edmon Leontes’s hair falls out. I wake one morning to find a tuft inside the fur lining of my hood, the next morning, more. Soon, patches of my scalp are visible to everyone. The sight draws derision from prisoners, including my own gang.
“Hey, Baldy Patch!” they holler as I pass.
I visit Faria. “What’s wrong with me?” I’m desperate to know.
The shaman says the disease is genetic, triggered by stress. It was seen in some people of Ancient Earth, but rarely since. Some races, like the space gypsies, breed it purposefully into their genome, hairlessness being more efficient in the ventilated starships of the vast cold.
I think of Talousla Karr. Did he do this?
“The disease may progress or plateau,” Faria says. “However, it’s no cause for great concern.”
Faria and I have spoken but once or twice since the incident in the Ration Bar. Yet there has been a shift in our relationship. He watches me, as if waiting, and I now know he has special knowledge and secrets. Learning them may help me claim revenge against my father, against Phaestion, against the whole damn Pantheon and their bloody Combat and sickening Pavaka.
How do I get those secrets when I can barely survive? When I’m decaying like this? I don’t know, but I know that I must convince the old man somehow. I should look on the Dayside. Vaarkson eyes me with disgust rather than lust now, which is a welcome blessing.
“The damage,” Faria tells me, “is mainly psychological.”
He says this as if sanity wasn’t the only thing that mattered while being imprisoned. Then again, I’ve come to the conclusion that Faria isn’t from Tao. He can’t be. On Tao, we’ve been taught that physical perfection is a manifestation of our superior culture. Nightsiders give disfigured children to the fire. Our people have weeded out deleterious genes and undesirable traits, like cleft palates or baldness. The ugly and physically challenged are ostracized. The likelihood they will find a mate and pass on their genes is slim.
Unless you’re the daughter of the emperor, I think ironically. Now I’m one of the uglies. Handsome Prince Leontes, banished to a prison in the cold wastes, slowly becoming a monster. I carry this sense of self-loathing with me to the mines every morning. If I’d been the man I should’ve been, none of this would’ve happened. My mother would be alive. I’d have been able to save Nadia. It will take a monster to escape this place and claim revenge against those who did this to me.
My muscles become wiry, my face gaunt and haggard. My beard mostly remains, scraggly and coarse. I don’t lose my eyebrows. Thank the twisted star for that. I know I shouldn’t care about such vanities—they’re wasted here in the Wendigo—but I take solace that what little shallowness I have left means I’m somehow still human.
We get news of the yearly Combat. Inmates aren’t allowed to watch on aquagraphic, but guards talk, and word spreads. Hanschen of House Julii is declared victor. The news washes over me like a cold wave. He’s the first of The Companions to compete. And he’s won.
This year, the rotunda was transformed into a fully automated chamber that every h
our filled with another meter of water. Combatants were forced to kill as they climbed an obstacle structure, or else they drowned. Hanschen’s agility gave him advantage in climbing.
I overhear a conversation between Sookah and another guard as he details the drama—
The House Julii clansman had initially allied with one of the stronger combatants, a boy from House Temujin. Of course, the Julii scion betrayed his ally when they were the last two fighters left. He stabbed the boy in the back just before the massive chamber filled with water. Not the most honorable win, but a win nonetheless, and a place among the College of Electors as prize.
I’d put siren steel on one companion competing each year until they all sit in the government. When Phaestion takes his place among them, he’ll have a strong block within the ranks to be voted to the High Synod.
I could have been part of it all, I realize.
One man stands in the way—Edric Leontes. He will resist. He has moved to consolidate his own allies. With old Chilleus Julii unable to attend council, there may be room to counter Phaestion’s ascension to the Synod. That is if Edgaard can win a Combat and join him.
Edgaard is younger than the other Companions. If and when he is able to compete in the games, I don’t know where his loyalties will lie. Phaestion has sought to make an ally of him as he did me. Will he stand with The Companions, or will he follow my father’s will?
Friendships become plans. People become pawns. I want no part of the game. I’d rather smash the board. Phaestion, however, is in action and so is my father. I must do the same.
A shout comes. “Leontes!”
Survival first. I cut off my daydreaming.
“Baldy Patch!” Carrick yells from somewhere above.
“Hark!” I scream back.
“I’m working ’round a big vein here. There’s a nice fissure I want to exploit. Move your ass, or it gets rained on with chossy.”
