“Nice!” he told her.
Lark offered him a narrow smile. It was there and gone almost as fast as her flash, but he saw it.
William turned to Gaston. “You?”
“None of the thoas can flash.” The boy shook his head, sending his black mane flying. The damn hair reached nearly to his waist. On the one hand, it was too long. If you grabbed the hair, you could control the kid’s head in a fight. On the other hand, the hair hid his face. He looked human enough in passing, but he’d fail close scrutiny. His jaw was too heavy, his eyes were too deep set under the wide black eyebrows, and his irises luminesced with pale silver when they caught the light.
Still, the kid needed a shock to the system. Proof that he was done with his family. A rite of passage. William pulled a knife from the sheath. “Cut it.”
Gaston’s eyebrows crept up.
“Cut the hair.”
Gaston glanced at him, glanced at the knife, and took the blade, his teeth clenched. He grasped a strand of hair in his hand and sawed at it with the blade. The black strands fell on the ground.
Lark crouched and picked them up. “It’s not good to leave the hair out,” she said quietly. “Someone could curse you with it. I’ll burn it for you.”
“Thanks.” Gaston grabbed another handful of his hair and sliced it off.
Murid opened her mouth.
Here it is. William tensed.
“It’s almost time for lunch.”
He nodded.
“It would be good if we knew what they were cooking in the kitchen,” she said. “If they’re cooking fish, we need to head to the house. Fish doesn’t take much time. If they’re cooking a pig, we have another half an hour.”
“I can go and ask,” Gaston said.
William sampled the wind. “They’re cooking chicken.”
Murid turned her expressionless dark eyes on him. “Are you sure?”
“Chicken and rice,” he said. “With cumin.”
“That’s good to know,” Murid said. “We have time, then.”
William had an odd feeling that something important had just happened, but what he had no idea. Behind him Gaston sliced another handful from his mane and deposited it into Lark’s hands. William loaded the next crossbow and fired. He would figure it out sooner or later.
LAGAR closed his eyes. It did no good—Peva was still there, even in the darkness of his mind.
“Look at your brother,” his mother’s voice whispered like the rustling of snake scales across the floor. “It’s because of you he’s dead. You weren’t smart enough to keep your brother safe.”
Slowly he opened his eyes and saw Peva’s body, blue and nude, on the washing table. A single lamp hung above it, its harsh glow concentrated by the fixture into a cone. The light clutched at the faces of two women, bleaching them into pasty masks. He watched them dip thick cloths into the buckets of scented water and rub the mud from Peva’s limbs. The dirty water ran off Peva’s skin into the groove on the table.
Peva was dead. He would never rise, never speak again. There was a horrible finality in death, an absolute and total ending. There was nothing to be done. No way to help it.
Lagar rolled his head back and took a deep breath. They spent their lives jerking and clawing their way to the top, and for what? To end up like this. On the table.
Tomorrow Cerise would come for him. Tomorrow evening either he or she would be on the table, just like this. This wasn’t what he wanted. In his dreams, when he was alone with nobody to spy on him, this wasn’t what he wished for.
“Why do you bother?” Lagar’s voice caught, and he forced the words out, raspy and strained.
Kaitlin stared at him from the gloom, a squat ugly thing, wrapped in her shawl. His mother. Like an old poisonous toad, he thought.
“Why do you bother?” he repeated. “He’s dead. The soul’s gone. Peva’s gone. Nothing left but this . . . shell. Dump it in the ditch. Give it to the dogs. He isn’t going to care.”
She said nothing, clamping her lips together. Disgust swelled in him. Lagar spun and left the room, slapping the door shut behind him.
CERISE padded out onto the verandah and closed the door behind her, shutting off the busy noises fluttering from the kitchen. Earlier, tired of making plans and choosing weapons, she’d come down there hoping to cook. Being in the kitchen, in the middle of bustle, standing over the fire, smelling spices, tasting food, and catching up on the Mire gossip usually comforted her. Today she cooked in a daze, listening to her aunts and cousins, while her mind cycled through tomorrow, wondering who else would die.
Then, before she knew it, dinner came. The entire family had gathered at the main house, those who lived in the outer buildings, those who lived farther in the swamp, everyone came for the dinner before the fight. Every seat was filled. The kids had to be sent off to a smaller kitchen to eat there, just to make room.
Then she sat at the head of the table, in her father’s place. She listened to the chatter of familiar voices, looked at the familiar faces, watched small fights break out and dissolve into teasing, and knew with absolute certainty that tomorrow some of these chairs would be empty. Guessing and calculating which ones made her colder and colder, until she was shivering, as if a clump of ice had grown in the pit of her stomach. Finally Cerise could take it no more and snuck out.
She just needed some peace and a little quiet. She started along the balcony, heading to the door that led to her favorite hiding spot.
Steps followed her. Maybe it was William . . . She turned.
Aunt Murid chased her.