Good. I think. I’ve survived. You will not.
“Leontes,” Vaarkson catcalls. “They won’t babysit you forever. Night comes. Guards sleep.” He licks his lips.
I turn away and head for the Picker table. I move to sit on the end of the bench. A Picker bars my path. “Seat’s taken, fish,” he says coldly. I move to another open seat. Again: “Move along, fish.”
I’m forced to sit away from the tables, alone and unprotected. Day’s cycle will soon end, and I’ll need to return to my camp. If they won’t let me into their ranks to sleep, if I’m left to wander the village during night hours, I’ll be prey. If I’m not caught this Eventide, I will be eventually. I need to think of something. I need to change the rules of the game, but how?
My father was right—a swift death is a kindness. If I were dead, I’d be with Mother. The Maestro. Gorham. I’d be with Nadia. At the very least, I’d feel the peace of oblivion. Instead, I’m here, without even a rope to hang myself. The sharks are circling.
Drums beat in my brain. I cannot do it. I must. I won’t. Survive. I wish I were dead. No, make them the dead ones.
Then something happens I do not expect. Faria walks through the crowd to the tables, carrying a food tray. I’ve not seen him intermingling with the general population before. I’ve only witnessed him outside the crowd, like when I was on the auction block or when I accidentally killed Grinner.
No one takes notice, almost as if he’s invisible. I know better. What’s his game? I wonder.
He steps up to Vaarkson and the Hauler table. The ever-graceful dark man trips.
No, he didn’t trip on anything. He did that on purpose.
His ration pack spills all over Vaarkson and Snaggletooth, who sits next to the Hauler foreman.
“Damn you!” Vaarkson barks.
“Sorry, sir, I’m sorry!” Faria blubbers, making a mockery of himself.
“Leave, you wrinkled tillyfish, before I make you leave!” Vaarkson growls.
Faria’s position commands enough respect that he’ll get away cleanly so long as he continues the charade of obsequious fool. “I’m terribly sorry, Foreman Vaarkson.” Faria bows and scrapes.
“Yeah.” Snaggletooth grabs Faria’s coat. “Beat it, ya old snail, before we beat it out of you.”
Faria’s fingers shoot out and tap the back of Snaggletooth’s hand, almost swifter than an eye can see, but my eye sees it.
“Ow! Ya freaking maggot!” cries out Snaggletooth. The wiry man pulls his hand back.
“Terribly sorry,” mumbles Faria.
The blind old man picks up his tray and shuffles back toward his igloo, and the men return to their dinners. That was strange, I think. The whole incident . . . something felt off.
I’ve no time to ponder the interaction, though. I need to finish my food before the evening alarm. I down the thick paste in the pack quickly.
Day’s end alarm rings. The guards head to their tram. The prisoners at the tables shuffle back to their camps. I stand to return my tray to the kitchen, skirting wide of the Hauler table. It still hurts to walk, and I feel the Haulers’ eyes on me.
I’m hunted.
The Haulers stand from their table. I don’t know if I’ll be able to outpace them, but there’s no other choice. I take a deep breath and ready myself to run.
A scream echoes through the cavern that curdles the blood. Snaggletooth stands back from the others, shaking violently. Blood oozes, first from his nose, then from his ears, and finally from the corners of his eyes. He coughs. A volcano of red erupts from his mouth down his chin. He collapses to the floor convulsing, then lies still. Everyone watches silently, horrified.
“He’s dead,” a Hauler says in disbelief. Whispers of “witchcraft” run through their ranks.
I quietly slip away toward the Picker camp. I smile. The game has changed.
CHAPTER 18
CRESCENDO
Have I been here six months? Nine? No, a year and a half gone by. I am almost twenty.
I’ve no journal, no paper with which to write. Instead, I talk to myself in my head to help recall, like a historian recording a biography of some past figure. The time Edmon Leontes found a weird chunk in his ration pack. The day Edmon Leontes tripped and fell in the tunnels and landed on the rock that split his chin. Each incident I recount makes the passage of time more bearable.
Then, Edmon Leontes’s hair falls out. I wake one morning to find a tuft inside the fur lining of my hood, the next morning, more. Soon, patches of my scalp are visible to everyone. The sight draws derision from prisoners, including my own gang.
“Hey, Baldy Patch!” they holler as I pass.
I visit Faria. “What’s wrong with me?” I’m desperate to know.
The shaman says the disease is genetic, triggered by stress. It was seen in some people of Ancient Earth, but rarely since. Some races, like the space gypsies, breed it purposefully into their genome, hairlessness being more efficient in the ventilated starships of the vast cold.
I think of Talousla Karr. Did he do this?
“The disease may progress or plateau,” Faria says. “However, it’s no cause for great concern.”
Faria and I have spoken but once or twice since the incident in the Ration Bar. Yet there has been a shift in our relationship. He watches me, as if waiting, and I now know he has special knowledge and secrets. Learning them may help me claim revenge against my father, against Phaestion, against the whole damn Pantheon and their bloody Combat and sickening Pavaka.
How do I get those secrets when I can barely survive? When I’m decaying like this? I don’t know, but I know that I must convince the old man somehow. I should look on the Dayside. Vaarkson eyes me with disgust rather than lust now, which is a welcome blessing.
“The damage,” Faria tells me, “is mainly psychological.”
He says this as if sanity wasn’t the only thing that mattered while being imprisoned. Then again, I’ve come to the conclusion that Faria isn’t from Tao. He can’t be. On Tao, we’ve been taught that physical perfection is a manifestation of our superior culture. Nightsiders give disfigured children to the fire. Our people have weeded out deleterious genes and undesirable traits, like cleft palates or baldness. The ugly and physically challenged are ostracized. The likelihood they will find a mate and pass on their genes is slim.