He charges. I twist away from his oncoming fist. The movement explodes bolts of pain through my rib cage. I deflect another blow. Grinner’s momentum carries him forward, hurtling at great speed. His back foot trails behind him. I hook my own foot to his to trip him and hasten his fall. He slams to the ground full force. His temple meets a stone jutting up from the cavern floor and cracks his skull like an eggshell. The sound reverberates through the cavern. The crowd goes silent. The fight is over before it even began.
Grinner lies dying, arms and legs twitching. I try not to register the shock and horror I feel. I got lucky, but I can’t show weakness. Not now. If I do nothing, he will die slowly, horrifically. I’m here less than a day, and I have already killed a man. I lift my foot and bring it down decisively. The man’s brains are dashed onto the ice. A quick death is a kindness, my father once said. Maybe he was right.
I feel the anger radiating off the crowd. This wasn’t what they wanted. They wanted me beaten slowly, humiliated. They wanted fun. I just ended the party. This is where I deserve to be, I think. My father has won. I’m a killer.
It was an accident, but it is done.
“Anyone else?” I say.
The crowd peels off one by one. One lingers. The giant foreman, Vaarkson. “You got lucky, little boy,” he says. “But luck won’t save you from me.” He strides away.
I grab one of the Pickers skulking off. “What was his name?” I ask, pointing at the man I’ve just killed.
“That there was Grinner,” says the Picker.
“No, his real name.”
“Don’t know. He had no other name than Grinner.” The man yanks his arm from my grasp. I stare at the corpse, his true identity as lost as his life. Grinner had a mother.
Maybe he had a Nadia, too, who knows?
This universe doesn’t care, and maybe it never did.
The crowd disperses, all except for the mysterious dark man I saw earlier. His milky eyes stare at me. I get the feeling he understands; he understands the self-hatred that passes through me. Then slowly, he, too, moves off.
I sit apart from the fires and tents of my gang. The Pickers do not consider me one of them yet. The killing of Grinner has afforded me a wide berth and respite from any hazing I see the other new fish go through. However, I know I won’t be safe indefinitely.
Jinam Shank has climbed a ladder to his foreman’s nest, a tiny apartment carved in the ice of the cavern wall dozens of meters above the main camp. Heat rises from the ground floor, making his shelter slightly warmer. From the alcove, the foreman can see the cavern and his gang below. The general population huddles in lion-seal skins around the fires.
Each gang seems to have its own village staked out within the larger camp. There’s no plan behind the layout. It’s a haphazard smattering of tents and makeshift structures that have been erected over the last few decades. I’ve been given no furs, so I grab my sides and shiver in my neoprene suit. I chew on a ration stick that was tossed my way during the bonfire lighting. The place is savage, recalling some ancient barbarian past.
It is two hours until lights out, then five more until the work whistle. The pain in my torso abates to a dull ache. I know I’ll survive thanks to the bone grafting from Talousla Karr. Part of me wishes he had never changed me. I would be with my mother and wife and child in the great Mother Ocean by now.
I finish the last bite of the chalk-tasting ration stick, but my stomach still growls. I try to take my mind off the hunger and all that has happened by imagining the fingerings of a flute and the lessons of Gorham from when I was a child. I hear the beat of his drum in the pumping of my heart, and my fingers tap the imaginary notes. I can almost hear the melody of the Eventide feast in my mind. Music could always transport me to another world.
“Edmon?”
I turn at the whisper. Toshi has snuck into the Picker camp. I’m new to the Wendigo, but I get the impression that he definitely shouldn’t be here. His presence is a risk, and I’m already not on the greatest terms with my new “friends.”
“What are you doing here?” I whisper.
“You looked cold.” He drops a pile of rags at my feet. “The man you killed—I’m told you get to claim his possessions.”
His face looks sunken. He should be taking care of his leg, not visiting me to chat fireside.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I respond.
“Don’t be a fool.” Toshi’s breathing is ragged.
“Shank will kill me if he finds out you’re here. Does Vaarkson know?” I ask.
“Edmon—”
Whatever he’s about to say no longer matters. He collapses to the ground, convulsing. “Toshi!” I shout a little too loudly. Several other Pickers look my way.
“By the twisted star, Leontes!” A thick, stocky man steps forward from the pack. “That’s no Picker. Get him out of here now or Shank will skin you!”
“His name’s Toshi, and he’s my friend,” I snarl back. “He was shot by the sniper after we were shoved out of the transport sondi.”
“I don’t care if his mother shot him. He’s a Hauler. Shoulder goes to the cold now, Leontes, query?”
“He’s a human being first and needs help. Query?” I mock his slang. “I’m not asking you to tweeze the bullet from the leg yourself. Just tell me where I can find someone who can.” The men shift uncomfortably. “There must be someone here, a healer?” I ask again.
“What about Faria, Carrick?” says one next to the stocky man.
Carrick, the stocky man, hesitates.
“Carrick,” I try to reason, “if you want to take sides, Pickers, Haulers, fine. But gangs are just a way to keep you from seeing the real enemy: The Warden and the guards. It’s us versus them.”
I only suspect this is the truth. I remember Phaestion’s war games in the arcology of Meridian. It’s the common people, the multitude, pitted against the few with wealth and weapons. This is a conflict they will understand, I hope.
“You’re making a mistake,” Carrick mutters uneasily. “Haulers don’t get into our camp without someone from their side knowing. Why he’s here is a question you might want to ask yourself. You want to save some scraggly grass to remind you of home, be it on your head. Seek Faria the Red.”
“Faria the Red?” I ask.
“Dark as night, reddish hair.” Carrick describes the dark man I saw standing on the outskirts when I was auctioned off.
“Where can I find him?”
Carrick points into the village of shanties. “Other side. Maybe a kilometer. Igloo built into the cavern wall. You won’t miss it.”
I waste no more words. Toshi groans in delirium as I hoist him onto my shoulders. My ribs hurt like the nuclear fires of a star, but I’ll endure. Toshi may not be so lucky. His skin blazes with febrile heat. I feel it through my suit. I selfishly welcome the warmth as I trudge through the narrow, muddy-ice avenues of the camp. Tents and shacks serve as meager dwellings and storefronts for various gangs of the Wendigo—Smelters, Welders, Loaders, Sifters, Haulers, Pickers, Trainmen, Foodies . . . I draw stares from them all as I step one lumbering foot in front of the other. Finally, I arrive at the igloo. No door, only a small portal dug into the ground to crawl in and out of. The flickering of firelight emanates from within.