Das Muni takes my arm. “Not yet,” she says. “Not yet.”
We wait. I take a long look at the ceiling and glance back at our escape route up the amphitheater. Casamir may not be the best hostage to take. I’ll need one of the elders, the council. The skinny one, preferably. That will feel most satisfying. I play it out. Six steps to the table. The garrote, the threat, the hustling up the stairs . . . The metal door will be a problem, but if they care enough about this little council . . .
“We agree to your terms,” the skinny woman says.
I startle out of my plan, a little shocked.
Casamir grins. Raises a fist. “Oh, you will not regret this,” she says. “My first mission!”
“Let’s hope it’s not your last,” says the plump woman. “Take her to the butchers to harvest her flesh. You are permitted the standard supplies. Go.”
Leaving the amphitheater is a bit of a haze. I’m still half-stuck in the other reality, the one where I have to fight my way out. Casamir takes me to an efficient, clinical little room with a woman and a large bone scalpel.
“Where do you want me to take it from?” she asks, and I honestly have no idea. I stare at the heft of my body and wonder just how much flesh I have to spare. Who wants to sacrifice the bulk that gives them strength and presence?
“My thigh?” I say, and before I have time to reconsider, she’s sliced fast and deep, two cuts.
I yell, and two more women come in and restrain me while she carves out a fist-sized lump of flesh from my thigh and plops it into a clear container.
She stuffs the wound full of a sweet-smelling compress that’s clearly crawling with worms or parasites, and tells me to hold still as she wraps my wounded thigh. I curse because she’s cut my good leg. Why didn’t she go for the other one?
The compress stifles the pain, though, enough for me to stand and yell at Casamir, “What is that for? What’s the point of that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Casamir says. “You’re keeping your promise, right? So, it’s not important.”
I want to get out of here as quickly as possible now, fearful that the council will change their mind. Casamir wants to linger and chatter with friends about the trial, because really, that’s what it is, but I hound her onward. We collect supplies from a woman in the engineering room. I’m starving, weak with hunger, but I don’t even want to stop to eat.
I limp beside Casamir as we push back out across the big traders’ hall, heading back for the main entrance while people glide above us in their balloon baskets.
“I need to say good-bye to my family,” Casamir says. “Just a moment! I’ll only be a moment!” Casamir bounds for the stairs.
I sigh and wait with Das Muni, trying to stay out of the way of the women passing by us. Their stares are more open now. A few try to ask me something, but it’s in their language, and I just shake my head and frown.
Das Muni leans into me. “We should just go,” she says. “Let’s not wait for Casamir.”
“Stop that,” I say. “That conversation is over. Casamir knows this area better than we do.”
“You have given them flesh,” she says. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“The alternative is killing all of them. Would that have been better?”
“Yes,” Das Muni says. She leans her head against me.
Casamir returns, more somber now.
I nearly ask her how things went with her family but decide I don’t care to know. We aren’t going to travel long together, just to the next level. I’ll need to find more help after that. Best not to get attached.
But Casamir volunteers the information, as Casamir seems to volunteer everything I don’t want to know. “They think me foolish,” she says, “but that’s no surprise. They think I’m reaching too high, but I’m here to be an engineer, not some recycler. Engineers must go on missions.”
“Then let’s do that,” I say, and I take her arm and hustle her to the door because both my legs are throbbing now, and I’m not sure how much longer I can take being in this crowded place that now owns a piece of my flesh.
We exit the compound and step back into the relative dim of the outer corridor. I blink as my eyes adjust. Moths descend, covering my arms and hair. I brush them away.
“Lead the way, engineer,” I say, and that brings a smile from Casamir.
“I will indeed,” she says, and forges ahead.
I’ll need to eat soon, but not yet, not until we put a lot of distance behind us.
“What’s between us and the next level?” I ask as we trudge along. Das Muni trails far behind.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Casamir says. She unrolls something from her bag. It’s a map written on human skin.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” I say.
“Well, I know what the map says.”
I grab her shoulder. We halt. “Are you telling me you’ve never been to another level?”
She holds up the map. “It’s all fine! I have the traders’ maps.” She squints at it. “According to this, there are some pits, a mountain range, some monster herds, and a couple tribes of mutants. It will be fine! A fine adventure!”
“You’re joking,” I say.
She shows her teeth. “Fine!” she says, and continues on her way.
I stare after her, shocked, long enough for Das Muni to catch up with me. As Das Muni passes me, she sighs and says, “I told you so.”
“I LEARNED DECEPTION FROM MY MOTHER, BUT IT WAS THE WORLD THAT TAUGHT ME THE NECESSITY OF DECEPTION FOR SURVIVAL. WHEN THE OTHER WORLDS CAME FOR THE MOKSHI, I WAS PREPARED FOR THE FIGHT.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
20
JAYD
I always suspect a trap, because I have been plotting traps for my own family my entire life. Nashatra seems sincere, but I put her off. I plead ignorance of such terrible schemes and say that I love Rasida. She clearly doesn’t believe me, but if this is some trick she’s playing on me, I’m not going to walk right into it.