“What a lark!” he croons. “You were gory terrifying! You just took his weapon! Gory fast! Glad we weren’t paired earlier. Prime stuff! What have you to say for yourselves, you sneaking fools?”
The captured Golds just swear at us.
I stand over them and cock my head. “Is this the first time you’ve lost at something?” No answer. I frown. “Well, that must be embarrassing.”
Cassius’s face shines—for a moment he’s forgotten his brother’s death. I haven’t. I feel darkness. Hollow. Evil when the adrenaline fades. Is this what Eo wanted? For me to play games? Fitchner arrives in the air above us, clapping his hands. His gravBoots glimmer golden. He’s got his ham slice between his teeth.
“Reinforcements come!” he laughs.
Titus and a half dozen of the faster boys and girls run toward us from the highlands. Opposite, a golden shape rises from the distant river fortress and flies toward us. A beautiful woman with short-cropped hair settles next to Fitchner in the air. The Proctor of House Ceres. She carries a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“Mars! A picnic!” she calls, referring to him by his House’s deity.
“So who arranged for this drama, Ceres?” Fitchner asks.
“Oh, Apollo, I suppose. He’s lonely up in his mountain estates. Here, this is zinfandel from his vines. Much better than last year’s varietal.”
“Delicious!” Fitchner proclaims. “But your boys were squatting in the grass. Almost as if they expected the picnic to spontaneously manifest. Suspicious, no?”
“Details!” Proctor Ceres laughs. “Pendantic details!”
“Well, here’s a detail. It seems two of mine are worth five of yours this year, my dear.”
“These pretty boys?” Ceres snickers. “I thought the vain ones went to Apollo and Venus.”
“Oho! Well, yours certainly fight like housewives and farmers. Well placed, they were.”
“Don’t judge them yet, you cad. They are midDraft picks. My highDrafts are elsewhere, earning their first calluses!”
“Learning the ovens? Huzzah,” Fitchner declares ironically. “Bakers do make the best rulers, so I’ve heard.”
She nudges him. “Oh, you devil. No wonder you interviewed for the Rage Knight post. Such a scoundrel!”
They clink their glasses together as we watch from the ground.
“How I love orientation day,” Ceres titters. “Mercury just let a hundred thousand rats loose in Jupiter’s citadel. But Jupiter was ready because Diana tattled and arranged the delivery of a thousand cats. Jupiter’s boys won’t go hungry like last year. Cats will be as fat as Bacchus.”
“Diana is a harlot,” Fitchner declares.
“Be kind!”
“I was. I sent her a great phallic cake filled with live woodpeckers.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You beast!” Ceres caresses his arm and I note the free-loving demeanor these people have. I wonder if other Proctors are lovers as well. “Her fortress will be riddled with holes. Oh, the sound must be horrible. Well played, Mars. They say Mercury is the trickster, but your japes always have a certain … flair!”
“Flair, eh? Well, I’m sure I could rustle up some tricks for you on Olympus …”
“Huzzah,” she coos suggestively.
They toast again, floating above their sweating and bloody students. I can’t help but laugh. These people are mad. Bloodydamn crazy in their empty Golden heads. How are they my rulers?
“Oy! Fitch! If you don’t mind. What are we supposed to do with these farmers?” Cassius calls up. He pokes one of our injured captives on the nose. “What are the rules?”
“Eat them!” Fitchner cries. “And Darrow, put down that gory scythe. You look like a grain reaper.”
I don’t drop it. It is close to the shape of my slingBlade from home. Not as sharp, because it isn’t meant to kill, but the balance is no different.
“You know you could let my children go and give them back the reaping scythe,” Ceres suggests down to us.
“Give me a kiss and you have a deal,” Cassius calls up.
“The Imperator’s boy?” she asks Fitchner. He nods. “Come ask for one when you’re Scarred, little prince.” She looks over her shoulder. “Until then, I would advise that you and the reaper run.”
We hear the hooves before we see the painted horses galloping at us across the plain. They come from the opened gates of House Ceres’s castle. The girls on the horses’ backs carry nets.
“They gave you horses! Horses!” Fitchner complains. “That is so unfair!”
We run and barely make it to the woods. I didn’t like my first encounter with horses. They still scare the piss out of me. All snorting and stomping. Cassius and I gasp for breath. My shoulder aches. Two of Titus’s reinforcements are captured as they find themselves stranded in open ground. Bold Titus knocks a horse over and is laughing as he’s about to lay waste to one of the girls with his boot. Ceres zaps him with a stunfist and makes peace with Fitchner. The stunfist causes Titus to piss himself. Only Sevro is careless enough to laugh. Cassius says something about bad manners, but he snickers quietly. Titus notices.
“Are we allowed to kill them or not?” he growls that night at dinner. We eat the leftovers from Bacchus’s feast. “Or am I going to get stunned every time?”
“Well, the point isn’t to kill them,” Fitchner says. “So no. Let’s not go around massacring your classmates, you mad ape.”
“But we did before!” Titus protests.
“What is wrong with you?” Fitchner asks. “The Passage was where the culling is done. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, you mad, stupid, colossal sack of muscle. What would be the point if we now had the fittest just murder each other till only a few are left? There are new tests to pass now.”
“Ruthlessness.” Antonia crosses her arms. “So now it’s not acceptable? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, it better be acceptable.” Titus grins broadly. He’s been boasting all night about knocking over the horse, as if it’d make everyone forget the piss that stained his pants. Some have. He’s already gathered a pack of hounds. Only Cassius and I seem to have an ounce of his respect, but even we’re smirked at. So is Fitchner.
Fitchner sets down his honeyed ham.
“Let us clarify, children, so this water buffalo doesn’t go around stomping on skulls. Ruthlessness is acceptable, dear Antonia. If someone dies by accident, that is understandable. Accidents happen to the best of us. But you will not murder each other with scorchers. You will not hang people from your ramparts unless they’re already dead. MedBots are on standby in case any medical attention is direly needed. They are fast enough to save lives, most of the time.”
He pops a gumbubble. “Remember, though, the point is not to kill. We don’t care if you’re as ruthless as Vlad Dracula. He still lost. The point is to win. That’s what we want.”
And that simple test of cruelty is already past.
“We want you to show us your brilliance. Like Alexander. Like Caesar, Napoleon, and Merrywater. We want you to manage an army, distribute justice, arrange for provisions of food and armor. Any fool can stick a blade into another’s belly. The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy tribes?”
“Take them out one at a time,” Titus answers knowingly.
“No, ogre.”
“Dumbass,” Sevro snickers to himself. Titus’s pack quietly watches the smallest boy in the Institute. No threats are snarled. No faces twitch. Just a silent promise. It’s hard to remember that they are all geniuses. They look too pretty. Too athletic. Too cruel to be geniuses.
“Anyone besides Ogre have a guess?” Fitchner asks.
No one answers.
“You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.”
Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical.
Fitcher claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is bucking for Primus.” Everyone shifts in agitation at that last bit. Fitchner pulls a long box from under the table. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what you use to make the slaves.” He pulls out our standard. “Protect this. Protect your castle. And conquer all the others.”