For all my struggle yesterday, I still didn’t manage to retrieve my things, so I brave Unach’s temper in the morning and knock on the door before her shift starts. She wrenches it open violently, her hair damp, clothed but without her leather armor. Before I can explain my presence, she releases the door and walks away, as much of an invitation as I’ll get from her.
Water heats over a dying fire. I cross the apartment to my pallet and kneel down, rubbing my back. After setting my bag aside, I roll up the blanket, then find one of my shirts hanging in the little laundering closet. Blanket under my arm, bag over my shoulder, I stir the fire with a poker, coercing the flames.
When I turn around, Unach and Azmar are staring at me. For lumbering giants, they’re certainly light on their feet.
Unach grumbles. “You’re not ready. Go back to bed.”
Realizing I’m hunched like an old woman, I straighten. “I really am fine.” It warms me that she notices. That she cares.
Bristling, she snaps, “I said go to—”
“I need to be useful, don’t I?” I keep my voice calm, but it’s the truth. “I know about the task force. I’ll manage.”
Unach’s green lips pinch together.
“She can help me in Engineering today.”
Both Unach and I turn toward Azmar.
He offers a half-hearted shrug. “She’s good with math, and we’re struggling with designing the council’s extension. She can sit on a stool.”
Unach guffaws. “And you’ll, what, carry her over your shoulder the whole way down? I’d love to see that.”
Despite my embarrassment, I pinch down a smile. I envy the way Unach and Azmar speak to each other. So candidly. There’s a depth behind every remark, gesture, and glance. A depth that makes me wish I’d tried harder with my own siblings, though my parents kept us separated.
I could have tried harder.
“I-I can walk.” I’m fairly certain I can, if I use the lifts and not the stairs or ladders. “Thank you.” Admittedly, I’ve been curious about Engineering. This may be a silver lining to my predicament.
Azmar gives his sister a look I can’t identify and heads into the small kitchen nook.
Frowning, Unach looks over the mess of the floor. “At least eat something so you’re not a burden.”
I smile, but it fades. “Unach, how do I get water? And cook?”
“You’ll have to get water from the market. And your food has to be precooked.” She must notice my down-turned face, for she groans. “Ugh. If only to prevent me from having to carry it for you while you’re being delicate, you can use the pump up here. And the fire, but only if you cook for us, too.” Then, as an afterthought, “And clean.”
Relief cools me. “Thank you. I don’t mind at all.”
She fishes around in her pocket and slaps a key onto the table.
I dare say the gruff Montra is starting to like me.
I don’t say a word about it.
With Azmar as my escort, I don’t have to defer to most other trolls in the corridors or on the lifts—it seems the higher castes have fewer members, while the lower have many. If not for my slowness, we would have made good time to the market. Azmar doesn’t complain, though. He walks beside me, which signals to the other trolls that I’m with him and don’t need to move aside. I’m grateful for it.
While waiting for a lift, I see my distorted reflection in a metal plate supporting the shaft. Two bruises on my face have merged into one, resembling the body of a spider, which ironically recalls Iter, the fifth planet. The larger one on my cheek, deep purple where it passes over my cheekbone, overshadows the smaller one next to my mouth, which isn’t quite so discolored. In my father’s house, I could use powder to hide the marks, but here I just use my hair. Thus far, I haven’t seen anything in the way of troll cosmetics.
We take the lift down, Azmar working the rope, and cut through the corner of the marketplace. We’re halfway across when I notice Perg pulling a small wagon. Excitement blooms in my chest.
“Azmar.” I grasp his forearm to stop him, then immediately release it, unsure if such an action breaks protocol. When I have his attention, I gesture to Perg. “Could I speak with him a few minutes? Please? He’s the one who found me.”
Azmar’s topaz eyes look toward Perg before lifting to the clock. “I know. Can you find your way?”
I pull the map from my pocket. “Always do.”
His lip makes the slightest quirk, though for how serious he is, I might have imagined it. “Be careful.”
I nod. He hesitates, glances to Perg, then continues down to Engineering.
Crossing the road, I call out, “Perg!”
He stops and looks to either side, and I chuckle at his confusion. I hurry, gritting my teeth each time I step with my left foot. He must catch the movement from his periphery, for he turns abruptly toward me. To my delight, he grins.
“Lark.” His grin fades as he takes in my face. “You’re still not well.”
“Not well looking, perhaps, but well enough.” I take a second to catch my breath.
He glances at my leg. “Well enough,” he repeats. “I’m sorry for what they did.”
The memory takes me aback—that and his concern for me. I glance at his wagon. “Where are you going?”
“I’m a stone layer.” He says it like it’s the most menial and unimportant job in Cagmar. “Taking this down to Deccor housing.”
“That isn’t near Engineering, is it?”
He tilts his head. “Close. Why are you . . . Oh, Azmar.”
I start walking, and Perg follows, kindly slowing his step to keep pace with me. “I’m taking a rest from physical labors and helping him today.”
Perg’s eyes are a very human shade of hazel, but they regard me suspiciously. “You can read?”
“And write, and do arithmetic.” Growing up, I’d never realized what a privilege that was.
“But you’re human.” He winces. “I mean, not that all humans should be . . . Well, they are—”
“It’s all right.”
Perg releases an audible sigh at my dismissal. He shifts the handle of the wagon to his other hand as we walk. “I’m glad you’re all right, anyway.”
I smile at him, and he turns away, avoiding my gaze. We walk in silence a ways, though it isn’t an uncomfortable one. A few trolls throw hard looks my way, but as I reach the corridor leading to the lower levels, I realize more than half of them are for Perg.
It’s one thing to be human, but is it worse to be both? Yet Perg is not the lowest caste, only near so.
Thinking of his past honesty, I say, “Might I ask you . . . a personal question?”
Perg runs a thumb over his pronounced canines. “Who were my parents and why did they have the audacity to create me?”
I trip at his words. “I . . . well, I would not ask it so . . . bluntly.” Heat rises in my cheeks, making my bruises throb.
A sad yet mischievous half smirk, all too human, stretches his face. “My mother was trollis, actually. Most assume it’s the other way around. But it’s no love story, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” The smile fades, flattening his expression. “I don’t know everything. Some drunken revelry, mistakes, and there I was. Half human, without a bloodstone pairing.”
“I’m . . . sorry.” I’m unsure how to respond. “Bloodstone pairing?”
“Trollis trade bloodstones to mate.”
I stare up at him, considering. “Is marriage so easy?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “It’s . . . Oh, you mean the human custom.”