Inside the Red King’s front courtyard, wounded Reds were everywhere—Reds who hours before had been running around, throwing rocks. Now they lay in various injured poses on the concrete, moaning.
The big man began grunting and waving his arms at the stricken Reds. He put his hands together in balls and then dragged them apart from each other again, over and over. It took Ory a moment to realize he was miming bandages.
“Figures,” Ahmadi said, and waved over another soldier to open his backpack. “They want first aid today, since we just beat the shit out of them.” She held out a roll of homemade cloth bandages, and the big man’s gestures grew more frenzied—she was right.
“Book, you huge red bastard,” Malik said, and withdrew the roll in his hand and put out his other empty hand. “Show us the books first.”
There was much hissing and dancing. The Reds around them closed tighter. The big man snarled at the others, and some of them skittered up the steps into the Red King’s library. From where they were standing, Ory could make out only a dim marble floor, the shadowy outline of several still-standing bookshelves, and yet more bodies, moving inside. The red paint on all the windows had made it too dark inside to see farther.
“Book!” Ahmadi was also chanting now. Several Reds burst back out of the half-open front doors, each one of them holding a hardcover. The hairs on Ory’s skin stiffened when he saw them.
“That’s it,” Malik said and waved gently to them, but the Reds took them all to the big man first instead.
“Is Paul’s book there?” Ahmadi yelled.
Malik was struggling to make out the titles as the big Red jostled the books around. “No!” he finally cried.
“Fuck,” Ahmadi sighed. “This is going to take us a decade.”
“Wait,” Ory asked in disbelief. “They choose the books?”
“It’s like goddamn Russian roulette,” another soldier answered.
“What does he have this time?” Ahmadi called.
Malik was trying to get as close to the big Red as he could to read the titles without entering striking distance. The Red, not remembering that books had to be still for the titles to be read, kept jerking the pile around, afraid Malik was going to reach for it. “Hold still!” Malik snapped. The big man hissed angrily, baring his sharp yellowed teeth, but the books were still for a second as he did it. “Encyclopedia of Insects,” Malik called. “Something about diet, a detective novel, Quran study guide, vampire stories!”
“Get the novel and the Quran study guide!” Ahmadi shouted. “Anything but insects!”
“Do it backward this time,” someone else yelled. “Pretend we want the shit ones so they’ll give us the good ones instead!”
“Try it,” Ahmadi agreed. “See if we can trick them!”
“This better work,” Malik replied, and pointed at the Encyclopedia of Insects and the book about vampires. The big man hissed and jerked them away, and then folded those two protectively underneath the massive bulge of his arms. The diet book, detective novel, and Quran study guide remained.
Ahmadi began arguing nonsense at him, gesturing at the books he’d hidden away as if those were the ones they truly wanted. The Reds jumped at them; someone shoved one back; a brief skirmish ensued that startled Ory into a corner of the courtyard.
“Enough!” Malik was yelling at the same time that the big man roared. Ahmadi was working to separate a soldier and a Red without getting hurt. She smacked it in the face when it went to bite her arm and sent it howling, and then thrust her hands up in the air in a gesture of peace.
“Okay, no more!” she said. “No more!” She stared them down.
“Fuck me,” Ory gasped, cowering. “This is fucking insane.” How had they managed to get any books at all like this?
Malik and the big man haggled with each other, Malik acting as though he wanted the two books he really didn’t want and the Red trying desperately to keep them squirreled away against his chest for a more valuable trade. Eventually Malik got the Quran study guide and the diet book.
“Here.” Ahmadi pressed them into Ory’s hands. “Pack them up and keep them safe, and then keep out of the way until we’re done. If a Red tries to touch your backpack, you run straight for the Iowa. Don’t stop, even if you see one of us go down. Got it?”
“These two are that important?” Ory asked, scrambling to put them into the reinforced backpack he’d been loaned.
“Lots of memories in the Quran,” she said gravely.
OVER THE NEXT WEEK, THEY BROUGHT BACK AN AMERICAN history textbook, a murder mystery, and a book on Egyptian gods. Ory sprained an ankle, but not badly. A soldier they all called Smith Tres—because they had three Smiths in the army: Original Smith, Smith Dos, and Smith Tres—was stabbed. Imanuel checked his dressings almost every hour, even at night. He stitched him up using thread carefully pulled out of the sleeve of a coat and then lightly boiled to sterilize it.