In the middle of Hasher Street, just past noon, four large boys were beating a small one. The good citizens of the town of Burn River walked by on either side; this was no more remarkable than a cat worrying a bird's corpse. It was the nature of boys; it was the nature of the world.
The leader of the four was big for his twelve years, blond, red-faced with the heat of the Iavaian sun. He huffed and sweated as he kicked.
"You think you're better than us? Do you?"
The boy on the ground made a small sound. He was thin and brown, dressed only in a pair of ragged trousers. His black hair was matted. He curled protectively around his fingers and face, waiting for it to be over.
"Do you?" the leader demanded, and put the boot in again.
"Inai..."
A harder kick. "Speak Eskaran, damn you! You're in the Commonwealth now. This is our country. It's our job to civilize you filthy people. You oughta be grateful. Are you grateful? Are you?"
"Inai... aman ka'ashai..."
"Shit," said another of the boys. "He don't even know what we're saying."
"Then I'll teach 'im." The leader kicked a few more times. When his cronies failed to join in, however, he grew embarassed and stopped. He spit on the native boy's bruised and dirty back. "Stupid cow. It's our country now. You better learn that." He scuffed some dirt at his victim. Then he shoved his hands in his pockets and whirled away. "I'm bored. Let's go back of Maley's and see if we can kype some oranges."
His cronies concurred, with varying levels of relief. They were new to the South, and not yet accustomed to casual cruelty. They would learn soon enough, though. You couldn't be too easy on these natives. Had to pound 'em down when they got too proud. Even the Church said so. They were devil-worshipers and savages, and it was a righteous man's duty to civilize them. He'd been doing that boy a favor, really. His friends would understand that before too long.
Meanwhile, the blond boy showed them that there was plenty of fun to be had here, if you were Eskaran. He showed them that you could do just about anything you wanted. Flip up darkie girls' skirts, and their mothers would just catch up the girls and look around with wide eyes, they wouldn't even yell. Steal from farmers' stalls right in front of them -- what were they going to do? The whole province was a free lunch for a white boy with some time to kill. They strutted and crowed, and the day passed in a fevered spin of power.
The new boys had to go home at suppertime. Their folks were still trying to keep to Northern customs. The blond boy sneered at them for obeying these rules, and then wandered on alone.
He had no fixed idea of what to do -- there was no need. He'd find something. Maybe one of those native girls, those brown girls in white dresses whose mothers had learned better than to object to what a white man wanted from them. Lately he'd been having new ideas about what he could do to those girls, to make their eyes go big, make them whimper like puppies. He strolled through the emptying streets, meandering toward the native quarter. What if he went in one of their houses? What could they do to him? He could take anything, or smash everything. He wandered along the riverfront, roads pounded stone-hard by ore wagons, thick with the smell of the smelteries, empty now after the end of the work day.
Not quite empty. A small, dark form darted into the road in front of him, appearing from a loading alley -- the boy he'd beaten before.
He chuckled. He'd wanted to scare a girl, but this would work too.
"Hey! You! You looking for another beating?"
He expected the kid to jump and run, like he had earlier that day. But the kid didn't run. He grinned. He shifted from one foot to the other as if excited.
"Yes, please," the kid said clearly.
"You slimy little -- you speak Eskaran?" The blond boy lengthened his steps, still thinking the native would break and flee. Any second. But he didn't, and the northerner stopped when he loomed over the smaller child. The native was still grinning. His thin, sharp-chinned face was decorated with old bruises, bruises far deeper than any he'd gotten today. His eyes were huge, and mad, and green, though all natives had black eyes this boy's were green like river mud. There was no fear in them. Apparently more threats were needed. "You uppity little shit. Didn't your mama teach you not to sass your betters?"
"My mama's dead. You got any money?"
"Bet she was a hoor."
"Yes," said the native boy, and his grin widened. "I'm a whore now too. You got any money?"
With an exclamation of disgust, the blond boy stepped back. "You filthy --"
The native's grin, impossibly, widened even further. He was showing every one of his sharp, crooked teeth, all the way to the gums.
"I asked you," he ground through those teeth, "do you have any goddamn money!"
With the last word he lashed out his small fist, and where he struck, a pain blossomed that was enough to freeze the blond boy in panicked stillness, with half a breath in his lungs, afraid even to scream lest it make the pain worse. He looked down in dawning horror to see blood running off the native boy's knuckles in a thin stream. He whimpered.
"No," he whispered as the knife pulled out -- and out -- had all of that been inside him? "You can't. You can't."
"I did," said the native. His fist flashed again, and everything stopped.
Kieran Trevarde looked down at the body in the road, and felt nothing. Not even satisfaction. Not even relief. He hadn't planned anything like this. He hadn't planned anything else either. He knew he ought to be sorry, but couldn't remember what it felt like. It would be only fair to cry for the dead boy, but he couldn't.
Used to be, he cried over stupid things, like a stomachache, or a toy his mama wouldn't buy him. Then his mama's pimp Barton had said Kieran had to earn his keep, and Kieran had cried at the look on Mama's face, and again for fear and pain during the rape, and with shame after, as he'd given Mama the money. He'd been crying the whole time Mama and Barton fought; and after Barton kicked her, while her stomach swelled up and turned shiny and bruised, they'd wept together until she fell into silence, away from him, alone. After Mama had stopped crying, he'd stopped being able to.
He threw his head back, swallowed a breath, choking back a swell of nausea.
Then he bent to empty his victim's pockets.
He had just turned nine years old.
--==*==--
"Relax, son," Kinter chuckled. "I think you and I could help each other. I hear you've done a fair bit of the permanent, considering your age. That true?"
Nearly sixteen now, tall for his age but twig-thin, Kieran Trevarde didn't relax. He didn't know how. He stood straight with his hands at his sides, and looked at the leader of the White Rose gang with eyes like a coyote's. "Yeah," he said.
"So how come you're selling ass, boy? Don't you know you can make better money with me?"
Kieran shrugged. "Here I am."
The gang leader, Kinter, laughed at him. It was a pleased laugh. "Shrike tells me you have some kinda magic."
"He thinks so." Another shug.
"How'd you get it past Survey?"
"Late bloomer, I guess."
"How 'bout you show me this magic."
"Don't know how."
The pleased look went from Kinter's face.
"Not sure it's not just luck," Kieran clarified. "I wish for someone to die, and he does. Takes a while, sometimes."
"How long?"
"Six months, once. Another time it was the next day. I can use a knife, though."
Kinter frowned, then waved a hand dismissively. "We'll see, I guess. You're hired. I'll pay you twenty a week, and you can stay at the Tall House. Don't bother the girls."
The boy stared for a moment more, then gave a curt nod. His leaving was an insectile sort of operation, maneuvering arms and legs too long and thin for grace in a strangely graceful manner. Shrike had told Kinter that the boy had grown at least six inches during his year in Tiyamo, despite scanty prison food and constant abuse; durable. And he was pretty, would be gorgeous if given a chance to fill out.
Watching him go, Shrike echoed Kinter's thought, loud enough for the boy to hear: "If I'm wrong about the magic -- I'd guess a face like that is worth at least ten-five a trick."
Early the next morning, Shrike died of a sudden apoplexy while in the bath. Kinter noticed the strange smile on the new hand's face, and ordered the boy's pay raised. He sent old man Beatty to instruct the boy in various types of combat. He also let fall the word that he'd like the boy introduced to the pleasures of the poppy. It looked like the kid was a real thing. Kinter was the only opium bootlegger in history to have a ghoul-witch on the payroll. He wasn't about to let Kieran get away.
--==*==--
Just when it couldn't hurt any more, the pain got worse. It was amazing, really amazing, and funny in a stupid way. Black things crawled around the edges of the room, everything smelled of shit, the ceiling was getting lower, and still it kept hurting even more. Kieran could see his abdomen rippling with the cramps. Just cramps, he told himself, I am not host to giant parasites... But as soon as he'd thought it, he knew there really were worms in there. Great toothy worms, eating his guts, and only one medicine would drive them out.
"Please! Just a little, just to tide me over, be logical -- God! Why are you doing this to me? Do you hate me so much?"
"I'm doing it 'cause I like you, actually," said a voice with a laugh in it, while a cool cloth stroked Kieran's cheeks. "And for the zillionth time, you told me you wanted to kick. You said not to give you any no matter what you said. I ain't got none, anyway." A face loomed, an ordinary face, tanned sand-colored, haloed by dirty blond curls, with blue eyes that seemed to dance and spin with the humming of Kieran's nerves. The blue-eyed boy gave him a smile full of sad humor, which transformed his ordinary face into something remarkable.
But Kieran was past taking comfort from that. "Why? It hurts --"
"You don't care why right now. Let's talk about sumpin else, okay?"
Kieran subsided, panting. Wondering if he'd chosen right, this first time in years he'd made a choice. He'd defied Kinter because of that smile. Kicking his tar habit was imperative, because until he did he would be Kinter's slave, and if he remained Kinter's slave he would eventually do as Kinter ordered, and kill this boy.
"It's for you," Kieran said hoarsely. "Shan, I'm doing this for you."
The cloth paused on his forehead. "No you ain't. You're doing it for you. But I'm glad if it'll keep you from drawing down on me again. For a minute there I thought it was all up."
"No. I'll never hurt you. I swear, Shan."
"I don't believe you," Shan said lightly, and dropped a kiss on Kieran's sweating forehead, and for a moment doubt vanished. Then the cramps started again.
--==*==--
"Whoo-ee! Will you lookit all that money!" Shan sat on the edge of their bed, chin in hand, staring at the pile of bank notes on the floor. They'd just knocked over the payroll shipment to the Dogtooth Mine. "Who'da thought it? Did you? I sure didn't."
"You didn't?" Kieran, crosslegged beside the pile, looked up from cleaning his gun. "Forty workers times eight weeks times fifteen signets a man. Should be exactly four hundred eighty thrones there. Count it if you want, but the math's not hard."
"For you, maybe." Shan was sullen for a moment, but he never could stay mad. He grinned again the next moment. "I knew teaming up with you was a good idea. You're so damn smart, Kai. I done made more money with you --"
"That's not why you took me on, though," said Kieran wickedly. He tossed the revolver aside and siezed Shan's wrist.
There was a brief tug-of-war to determine whether they'd end up on the bed or the floor. Grinning, Kieran gave in and let himself be pulled up. Smothered Shan's laughter with his mouth, surrendered to the defiant purity of plain desire. For someone who'd spent half his childhood as a whore, he'd been remarkably ignorant about sex when Shan had taken him in. He'd thought all he had to do was show up. He'd certainly never made love, never mulitiplied pleasure by trading it back and forth, until Shan had taught him. Even after months of Shan's tutelage, he was rarely the one to start anything. This time, he thought maybe he was finally starting to trust his lover. He hoped so; Shan deserved that.
Later, when they lay sweaty and content together, Shan asked, "What are you gonna do with your half?"
"Dunno. What're you?"
"Well, the shotgun rider kilt my horse. Gotta get another one. And then... Dunno. Maybe I'll buy you a diamond earring."
Kieran laughed. "Don't buy me presents. I've got my own cut."
"Well, what're you gonna do?"
"Waste it." Then an idea came to him. "I know. Remember how when we were at Dindy's that one time, he had this engraving behind the counter? That new gun, that you could order custom?"
"Yeah. You gonna get one of those?"
"It takes nine bullets, Shan. Ten if you carry one in the chamber. Self-cocking, and it has separate magazines like a Lockeart. I could do some real wrecking with that."
Shan raised himself on one elbow to look down into Kieran's face. "You like wrecking way too much. One of these days, babe, you're gonna wreck the world."
"Not the part you're standing on," Kieran said, but for once Shan didn't smile.
--==*==--
The cops had stopped firing. Into the silence came the sound of wind, and the small clicks of Shan reloading.
"I'm just about spent," Shan muttered. He snapped the cylinder into place and looked ruefully at the handful of bullets he had left. Then he raised his eyes to meet Kieran's. "How you doing for reloads?"
"Two. More than you. They gotta be running low too, though."
Shan risked a glance around the edge of the bit of broken wall they cowered behind. A bullet whined overhead as he pulled quickly back. His look was bleak. "Guess why they shut up."
"Aw, shit."
"Yep. Reinforcements. And... uh..." He lowered his eyes. "I saw a white coat."
"Shit," Kieran repeated, with more feeling. "It figures they'd call in the Watch. I'm a rogue Talent, after all."
"Think you can take him?"
"No."
They looked at each other for a time. Kieran saw his own understanding mirrored in the sky-blue of Shan's stare. This was it. Well, they were highway robbers; they'd never expected to live forever. If it wasn't the cops, it would've been Kinter's gang, out to prove that nobody was allowed to quit. So he'd die before he turned twenty; he'd never figured to live even this long. When Shan siezed him by his shirt front and kissed him hard, he knew what it meant.
"I love you," he said, and realized it was a lie.
"Cover me," Shan replied, and shifted his weight.
It all seemed to have been planned in advance -- Kieran knew exactly what would happen in the fraction of a second before it did, and knew as well that his part in it was also ordained.
Shan sprang to his feet in a movement meant to propel him in a long, diving leap from their small bit of cover toward the right, where he might be able to see past the wagons that sheltered the police. Kieran jumped up too, reaching for a handful of Shan's jacket to pull him back into cover. And then came the wet smack of a bullet hitting flesh, and the side of Shan's head dissolved in brilliant scarlet.
For the rest of his life, Kieran would remember how the blood glittered in the sun. It hypnotized him as he shouted, as he curled around Shan's wretched empty house with its flopping limbs. Shan's blood coming down more slowly than his body, pebbling in the dust; blood and brains and bone. Running down the side of Kieran's face, mingling with his own blood where shards of shattered skull had laid open his brow and cheek.
It was intolerable. He'd thought that the world was harsh because it was indifferent, but in that moment he realized that the world was deliberately cruel. Let it win; let it have him. Kieran didn't care. He didn't want to play this stupid game anymore.
And then there came up inside him someone who did.
Kieran felt himself begin to stand; then he was pushed back from his senses so that everything went pale. Gratefully, he let go of himself as the bullets began to sing in earnest. He was going to die now.
When, some vague eternity later, the fog cleared and dropped him into a body bound with cold-iron chains and tortured by a Healer's efforts to keep it alive, his groan was one of despair. It was followed in the next bubbling breath by a screech of rage.
Someone said, "How 'bout you heal 'im up, and we'll shoot 'im again."
Nearer: "You've done your job. Now it's out of your hands."
Outraged: "That fucking savage took out five of my men! He deserves --"
"We have a use for his kind. That's all you need to know."
Kieran willed them all to die, but his will was caught in some sticky nowhere and lost; his insults and threats were ignored. His screams of pain and outrage likewise. At last, when he'd stopped bleeding from the lungs and they'd loaded him on a wagon, he fell silent.
He began to smile. He knew his teeth were red.
Someone in a sand-colored police uniform clouted him on the ear. "What are you so happy about, you murdering freak?"
Kieran spit blood before answering. "Now that Shan's dead," he said, "I've got no reason to be nice anymore."
They hit him again, but he could see them trying to figure out how he could be any worse than he'd been before, and he went on smiling.
--==*==--
In the bare desert a hundred miles northeast of Trestre rose an immense table mountain of banded golden stone. It stood more than twice as tall as any other land form in the area, nearly circular in shape, too steep to climb. Its distinctive form and size had earned it a place in the mythology of the natives. They believed it had once been the castle of a god. It was riddled with tunnels, but they claimed not to have done the digging, nor did they know who had. They called it Iaka'anta, and would not approach it.
The Eskarans called it Churchrock, and they had made it into a laboratory and a prison.
Staffed and maintained by the elite government mages of the White Watch, the Churchrock facility provided an excellent place to study magical Talents and the people who posessed them. Its natural properties made it easy to set up and maintain a ward to keep the prisoners from using their magic. Though far from water sources, it was situated on a flat plain not far from a major rail line; the ancient tunnels simplified building and provided some inherent shielding.
Most important -- at least to Watch Director Thelyan -- was the fact that it had once belonged to the devil-god Ka'an, and no longer did.
Thelyan did not, of course, inhabit it. He only rarely visited it; twice yearly for routine inspection, and occasionally to satisfy his curiosity about the progress of some experiment, or to view an interesting subject. He had left standing orders that he was to be notified if the facility recieved a threnodist, stormcaller, or oneiromancer who fit certain criteria, but as these were rare Talents and his criteria rather strict, such a case occurred only once in a long time. Even more rarely -- only once before in this incarnation -- he came to visit a subject who'd been held here far longer than any of the researchers knew. Iaka'anta's best qualification for being made into a prison, when he had ordered the Churchrock facility built, was that it had been one already for centuries.
In the bowels of the mountain was a door that looked as if it might lead to a storeroom, uninteresting, distinguishable from all the other doors in the place only by the fact that it could not be opened. Hardly anyone could even see it. Now Thelyan put his hand to the latch and watched with satisfaction as the shape of the locking spell rearranged itself to accomodate him. He opened it and slipped through, letting it lock itself behind him.
Beyond, a stair led up. He had carved this stair into the stone with his own magic, alone, long before his chosen people officially occupied this territory. There was no source of light. Thelyan didn't need one. He could see the stone around him with senses far finer than sight. The only other individual in the world who posessed these senses, at least to such a degree, awaited him at the top of the stair.
Climbing the long spiral high into the mountain, he reached another door, this one of thick copper. This one had greater protections on it. He could not simply slip through, but had to provide a key, an intricate idea-form that completed the waiting spell. Any magic directed against the door itself would simply ground in the copper. Only this particular password would trigger the lock, which was a masterpiece of spellcrafting. Thelyan believed that not even the one beyond the door could have set a spell in grounded metal. He built his structure of thought and fitted it into the pattern, and the door swung open with a screech of metal.
He made a light, a tiny whorl of a sigil which lifted free of his fingers to float above him, hissing faintly and emitting a blue-white glow. This revealed an ovoid room, just large enough to contain the null sphere that held the prisoner, while giving Thelyan room to stand and observe it.
The null sphere was an invention he hadn't shared with anyone. It was the only structure strong enough to contain one of his own kind. A lacy cradle of brittle iron clasped what looked like a giant drop of mercury, twelve feet in diameter. Seals were fixed at each intersection of the iron straps, each made of a different material: jade, wood, granite, ice. As he inspected it for signs of wear or damage, the mirrored sphere rippled from time to time. It was not mercury; it was a thought-thin but absolute divide between inside and outside, which not even light could cross. Once he'd satisfied himself that the device was in good working order, he touched two of the runes, releasing them, so that light and sound could pass through.
Now a shape was visible, hanging motionless in the middle of the sphere. A naked human form, curled fetal and inert. In appearance, it was a boy of fifteen years, chalk-pale, shrouded and tangled in hair the color of cherry wood. The boy's fingernails were ten-inch corkscrews. Thelyan had stopped him from aging, but could not remove him completely from time. Even though he was never fed or given water, he somehow managed to obtain substance from somewhere. Thelyan had never been able to induce him to part with the secret of how it was done. It was in hope of obtaining such secrets that Thelyan kept him embodied and imprisoned, rather than absorbing him. Sometimes, more often as he descended further into madness, the creature could be tricked or bullied into parting with useful information.
"Chaiel." Thelyan's voice disappeared into the tiny space, barely sounding in his own ears. "Chaiel. Wake. Chaiel. I wish to speak with you."
This went on for some time. After many more repetitions of his name, the boy in the sphere at last responded. Sluggishly, he opened his eyes and turned them on Thelyan, iron gray and perfectly insane, as round and unthinking as a lizard's.
"Chaiel. Speak, so I know you can hear me."
"Speak so I know you can hear me," the boy echoed. His voice was dull.
"Answer, so I know you understand me."
After staring at Thelyan for a minute or two, the boy gave a flat imitation of a giggle, without changing the blankness of his face. "No. I don't like you."
"Of course you don't. However, I suspect you're bored. I have a puzzle for you to play with."
That had the usual effect: the boy straightened with a sudden knifing motion, twisting in the air to face Thelyan, suddenly eager. "Give it!"
"My precognitors have recently begun to see a major change affecting me. The lesser Talents put faces on this change, telling me they foresee a war, or bad weather, or a rebellion. Those I rely on, though, tell me they can't understand what it is they're seeing. They say that changes emanate from a blank place, or from a thing so alien they can't describe it. Several have gone catatonic. You may not be able to see the future, Chaiel, but you know all the past. I wonder if you can figure out what they're seeing."
Chaiel began to laugh. Thelyan waited patiently for him to finish. Eventually, the boy said brightly, "That's easy. They see your death and they're afraid to tell you."
"Unlikely. There's no force on earth that could kill me."
"I could."
"Perhaps. If you weren't in the null sphere. But you are in the sphere, Chaiel, and you won't get out."
That might have been a mistake. It sent the boy into a convulsion of babbling and weeping that lasted nearly half an hour. Thrashing like an overturned insect, he strained to reach the sphere's surface. He knew he could not, but tried anyway. Clawing at his face with his helical fingernails, Chaiel drew bleeding scratches down his cheeks and brow as the nails broke off. Once they were no longer part of him, they fell clicking to the floor beneath the sphere, to join a litter of similar scraps there. He watched their fall with an expression of anguished longing.
When Chaiel had calmed somewhat, Thelyan rephrased his question. "What sort of thing would appear to a Precognitor as a blank space radiating change, or as a thing too alien to describe?"
"One of us," Chaiel answered promptly.
"There are no more of us."
"You didn't eat us all. Some of us you lost."
"Who?" Thelyan knew the answer, but there was a chance of some new information.
"Medur."
"Incarnated. Powerless. She was never a threat."
"Ka'an."
"Also lost in incarnation."
"How can you be so sure? We all start incarnated. Maybe he's getting his power back, did you think of that? Maybe he fell into his Burn and sucked it up." Chaiel made a rude slurping noise. "Like a fly on an eyeball. And he's going to come for you and twist you around until you're inside out and you have to look at yourself and see that there's nothing in there!" This was followed by another spate of giggling.
"I would have sensed such an event. In any case, I doubt a personality as fractured as his has survived repeated incarnation."
"Because he's full of smaller gods?" More giggling. "That's unstable? You're a menagerie. You should be in here. You could keep yourself company. You'd never be lonely." An abrupt shift to anguish. "I wish I had another of me! Oh, Thelyan, let me out, I promise I'll be good!"
Thelyan ignored this. "What is it my Precognitors are sensing, Chaiel?"
"Lemon drops. Penwipers. Go to hell."
"If you don't tell me, I'll leave, and I won't talk to you anymore."
"Good." Sulking, Chaiel curled up again, and put his arms over his head.
"As you wish." Thelyan reached for a seal.
"Wait! I can tell you something else important!"
"Yes?"
"Medur is male this time!"
Thelyan shook his head at this useless information. It wasn't important, and Chaiel knew it wasn't important. He was just wasting time. Thelyan touched the seal that controlled the passage of light; he heard the beginning of Chaiel's wail just before he stopped sound as well.
The weakest of his enemies, Medur was no threat to him, and he'd made no effort to seek her out. If she could have been controlled, her abilities in the realms of agriculture and the cementing of community ties might have been useful, but she was irrational. She would lack the strength of personality to emerge as herself; she'd remain encysted within the mortal body's mind, dormant. He'd had his chance to swallow her, centuries ago, but had chosen instead to scatter her power and kill her body rather than poison himself with her sentimental weakness. The only possible threat was Ka'an, and that devil-being could be dangerous only because his Burn had not dissipated as the others had. Even so, the evil one would have to emerge and subdue his mortal vessel's mind, a difficult enough task even for Thelyan, who retained all his power from life to life.
No, the source of change couldn't be another immortal. It must be something else, some complex system or train of events that a mere human mind couldn't grasp. Thelyan would meet the threat and deal with it when it occurred.
He locked the door behind him, thinking that it would probably be decades before he opened it again.
The sound of the train was hypnotic. It dulled his mind and made his limbs feel heavy. It made it easier to pretend he wasn't here, and none of this was happening.
It was, after all, patently ridiculous that he, Ashleigh Trine, minor rebel and utter clueless nobody, could ever be treated like this. Like a dangerous criminal, a rogue Talent, too nasty to hang. It had to be some kind of stupid dream. A very long stupid dream, a prank that had gone about three months too far. Any minute now one of those Watchmen in the white coats would come in and announce that it had all been very funny and now he could go home, and they hoped he'd learned his lesson about gossiping behind the government's back. He was a good sport. He could take a joke.
They'd taken his chains off at a whistle stop somewhere in West Mauraine. He'd been allowed to use the station lavatory, but not to buy a candied apple from the vendor on the platform. Not that he had any money. Or bootlaces, pen, pocketknife, etcetera; he supposed they'd take his clothes when he got to prison. Thinking about this made him increasingly fond of the yellow shirt and brown corduroy bags he'd been arrested in. He'd been wearing them for months now, while awaiting trial, and they'd been a bit ratty to begin with, so there wasn't much left of them. But now they were just about all that remained of the world he belonged in. His clothes, and his glasses -- If they were going take my glasses they would have done it already, wouldn't they?
Ashleigh leaned against the swaying wall of the prison car, peering out the tiny slatted window, picking at the scabs the cold-iron manacles had left on his wrists. There was desert outside. It had been interesting to see how the slushy end-of-winter snow of Eskard had given up on the way west. Not gradually as he'd imagined, but all at once, so that he would have missed it if he'd had anything better to do. For instance, a bloody crayon to write with -- how could you kill yourself with a pen, and ought he to be worried that they'd thought he'd want to?
He was going to be eaten alive in prison. He'd realized that shortly after the shock of not being executed had worn off. He was pale, skinny, freckled, redheaded, and myopic; he was certain to learn new definitions of pain, fear, and degradation. There was nothing he could do to stop it. He could only try to distract himself from worrying.
A sort of shack thing flashed by, and he saw a farmhouse farther off, skimming along between the stationary mountains and the speeding scrub. A plume of smoke rose from an intermediately distant valley beyond the farm, growing closer as acres of dry plow-furrows slipped by. Ashleigh could discern a sharp new smell under the reek of the engine and the desert's alien scent. Something chemical. A city; or at least a giant refinery. He'd heard that most of the iron and coal and so forth for the Commonwealth's military machine was produced out here. He scrubbed ar his glasses with a filthy shirttail and peered hard at the plume of pollution as it grew closer. He sincerely hoped this wasn't his destination.
When the train stopped at a roofless platform surrounded by grayish adobe shacks, his heart sank. He told himself they were just taking on fuel and water, but it had only been four hours since the last stop. Then one of his white-uniformed guards came and banged on the compartment's iron door to get his attention, and he knew: he was being sent to wheeze out his last months in slavery at some asbestos mine or something. He wondered whether, if he made a break for it, they'd just shoot him.
"Back on the bench, Trine," the guard said. "Hands on your head."
Ashleigh did as he was told. The man came in with his gun trained, as if his slight, bespectacled prisoner might perform some amazing feat of derring-do and wrest the weapon from him. He was followed by another, who carried the hated manacles.
"Oh, no," Ashleigh groaned. "Do we have to?"
Ignoring him, the man fastened the chains on Ashleigh's wrists. As he stepped away, he said, "You better keep that big mouth of yours shut from now on. We're taking on a couple of real baddies. They won't be nice to you like we are."
"If I'm not a real baddie," Ashleigh muttered, "why am I here?" Naturally he got no reply. The Watchmen just slammed the door, leaving him to scratch his wrists and remind himself that none of this was actually happening.
The engine sat on the tracks, humming to itself, for a long time. His watch was another of those things he didn't have, but it was long enough for the sun to get behind a ridge of furrowed hills a couple miles west of the train. The desert, which had been all rust and mustard before, went suddenly purple. The warmth of the day was instantly gone. Some kind of demented dog started howling somewhere nearby.
A clang of footsteps on the metal connector-thing outside his moveable cell made his heart jump with apprehension. The 'real baddies' coming aboard, no doubt. A Watchman stepped in first, establishing a field of fire throughout the tiny room. Then a big, saggy pig of a clearly nasty man, who glared at Ashleigh with a sort of hateful avarice, obviously hoping he'd get a chance to do some violence as soon as the guards were out of his hair. He had to be threatened before he'd take his seat against the opposite wall.
Ashleigh was watching pig-man as carefully as someone allergic to wasps watches a buzzing blot on the windowpane, so he was turned away from the door, but he heard a third set of footsteps enter. Then an amazing voice spoke -- a young baritone, sandy and smooth at once, with a strong Iavaian drawl, lazy as a wolf gnawing a bone.
"No, I wanna sit over there," the voice said. "I don't wanna sit by Burdock, I been sitting by him for fuckin' weeks, it's real stale."
There was a sound Ashleigh had learned to recognize, the thud of a rifle butt into someone's kidneys. The inevitable grunt followed, and then something that sounded suspiciously like a fragment of a laugh. Ashleigh ripped his gaze from the evil stare of the man across from him, to watch as the possessor of this razor-blades-in-the-candy voice was shoved into the car.
This was the tallest human being Ashleigh had ever seen, and the most beautiful, and the most frightening. His hands were chained at his belt. As a sour-faced Watchman fastened the back of that belt to a ring behind the bench, the tall boy gave Ashleigh a cool half-smile and a small nod. Ashleigh tried to nod back like a normal person, while reaction ran through him from eyes to loins like boiling honey.
The Iavaian could not have been much older than Ashleigh's eighteen years, might even have been younger, but he looked as if he'd been through several wars and was eager for another one. He had the angular features typical of his race, the brown skin and black hair, but his eyes were a dusty, yellowed green, like the sky before a bad storm. Pale scars streaked his face: divided one of his sharply angled brows, nicked the bridge of his nose, drew dashes along one cheekbone. His hair was matted into waist-length ropes. What shredded clothing was left on him was so caked with mud and dust and what looked like dried blood that it was impossible to tell what color it had been. Beneath the dirt, his arms were scrawled with more scars and spiky red-and-black tattoos. His long legs made the low bench awkward for him, and he had to sit sideways to keep his elbows out of pig-man's way. His skinned-knuckled hands were huge. He was lean and menacing as a wild dog, and no matter how he hunched on the bench his presence crowded the jail car until it was hard to breathe in there.
The car gave a lurch, and the engine's vibration changed pitch. The guards had left long ago, but Ashleigh, busy staring, hadn't noticed. Even the movement of the train only registered peripherally. The Iavaian stared back patiently while Ashleigh gawked at his face, his corded forearms, his long throat, his many scars...
"You done yet?"
Ashleigh felt his face go hot, and jerked his gaze away. "Sorry," he muttered.
"Not much else to look at," the Iavaian said forgivingly. "I mean, there's the floor, and Burdock's ugly mug."
"Hey." Pig-man spoke for the first time, in a high, nasal voice that didn't fit his exterior and perhaps explained his attitude. "I about had it with you, boy."
The scarred boy grinned at pig-man, teeth crooked but perfectly white. "You think you're pretty?"
"Shut up. I don't gotta take shit from you no more." He turned his scowl on Ashleigh. "Quit staring, you pansy."
"I wasn't."
"You calling me a liar? You saying I lied?"
"No, of course --"
"Then quit fucking staring."
"I -- dear god, I'm back in grammar school."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Pig-man, Burdock, stood up. Ashleigh tried hard not to cringe back against the wall. He was wondering, despairingly, whether there was any incentive for a man already on his way to prison not to beat him to death right there in the jail car, when Burdock took one step and went sprawling on the floor.
The Iavaian reeled in a mile-long leg and smiled. "Means grow up," he clarified.
Burdock began to get up, turning, clearly about to launch in the Iavaian's direction. He never made it past the first half-syllable of his retort. The Iavaian kicked him under the chin, hard enough to snap his head back and send him over to smack the back of his skull against Ashleigh's bench with a sickening thump.
Ashleigh edged away from the man's still bulk, and back from the Iavaian who'd downed him while still chained to the far wall. A small bubble of blood appeared at the corner of Burdock's mouth and commenced growing and popping with every rattling breath.
"Quit cringing. I ain't gonna hurt you. Just saved your ass, didn't I?"
"Yes... thank you."
"You should probably kill him. I would, if I wasn't locked down." He sounded as if he meant it.
Ashleigh looked to him in horror. "Kill him?"
"If where they're taking us is anything like normal prison, he'll kill you later if you don't get rid of him now."
"I can't do that!"
"Sure you can. Step on his neck. Easy."
"That's not what I mean."
"Oh. Scruples." The Iavaian shrugged. "Probably want to get rid of those pretty quick here."
Ashleigh decided not to ask, after all, what the boy's name was, or why he was chained to the bench. Carefully training his eyes on the small square of window that glowed above the other's head, he made himself very still.
This isn't happening, he told himself. It isn't real. I'm not here.
--==*==--
"Trine. Wake up, boy. What the hell did you do?"
Ashleigh pried his eyes open, wincing in the glare of a Watchman's hissing gas lantern. Sleeping with his head against the compartment's vibrating wall had given him a headache. The wall wasn't vibrating now, though. They'd shut the engine off. They had arrived.
All at once, he came awake and sat up, half panicked and none too coherent.
"Whoa," said a guard in a different uniform, a tan one. "Easy, kid. Man asked you a question." With a jerk of his head he indicated the slumped form of Burdock, still blowing bubbles.
Across the car, the Iavaian chuckled. "That Trine, he's a madman. I'm scared."
"Shut it, freak," the Watchman spat.
Ashleigh opened his mouth to explain, but the Iavaian was looking at him, expectant, scar-bisected eyebrow slightly raised, and he changed his mind. "He had some kind of fit," he said instead. "He was banging around, and then he fell down."
"Huh." This news seemed to surprise no one. "All right. Come on out, kid. Watch the step there."
Feeling a thousand years old, Ashleigh climbed out into the desert night.
It felt like a dream, because it was too real. He was raw, a bunch of naked nerves and infant emotion. The chill breeze with its freight of unfamiliar smells overwhelmed him. The sounds of strange insects hurt him.
They had stopped at a platform of bare concrete, roofed with corrugated steel. It was lit with a painful profusion of lamps. There were no walls. Two white-uniformed sentries watched the distance, too disciplined even to move their eyes. Ashleigh was marched down a set of steps and onto a gravel road, which led toward a small constellation of lamps. Overhead, the stars were huge. There were too many of them. He felt as if he might fall into them. Between the stars and the lamps there was a huge square blackness where something blotted out the sky.
At first he thought it was a building. A few steps later, he realized he'd misjudged the scale by several orders of magnitude. It was a mountain. A flat-topped mountain that could have swallowed his home town of Ladygate with room to spare for a couple of suburbs if you stacked them. Stopped at a gate in a wire fence, half-hearing his guards exchanging formalities with the heavily-armed men inside, he saw his new home and wanted to cry. It was built into the base of the mountain. It had no windows at all.
They were let through the gate. Ashleigh took a last look at the stars, said goodbye to fresh air, and walked into prison.
There was a series of checkpoints with metal gates, and then a bare white room where he was made to sit on a bench. There his escort left him.
"Bye," Ashleigh said forlornly.
One of them turned at the door. "Keep your head down and your mouth shut and you'll be all right," he advised. He didn't sound as if he believed it.
This room couldn't be his cell, because it had doors at either end. He wasn't waiting long before the second door opened, and a man in a tan uniform motioned for him to come through. In the room beyond was a man with a clipboard, and neither instruction man nor clipboard man were armed. There were, however, a couple of slots up near the ceiling. Maybe the guns were behind them. Besides the men, this room had another bench, a couple of big bins, an alcove with a drain in the floor, and a long row of shelves of folded blue-gray clothing.
"Hands," said the first guard. Ashleigh offered them, and his manacles were taken off and tossed in a bin. "Clothes." Shivering naked, he said farewell as his friendly clothes went into another bin. "Put your glasses on the bench. You can get them later. Step into the shower."
Squinting now as well as shivering, he went into the alcove, the floor of which was slimy with what he hoped was soap. Suddenly he was deluged with freezing water. His startled squawk made the guards laugh. Probably the high point of their day, he thought sourly, dumping cold water on people.
"There's a cake of soap behind you. Make sure you work it thoroughly into your scalp and all body hair."
The soap was a poisonous yellow and smelled like tar. He supposed it killed lice. He also guessed that there was no point explaining that he'd never had lice in his life, so he rubbed the nasty stuff into his scalp and armpits and groin, wincing as the skin began to itch.
"Good. Now make sure you rinse off all of it."
Another icy deluge was enough to rinse everything but his hair; the thick curls trapped the soap, and his scalp still itched. Was, in fact, beginning to sting. "May I have a little more water?" he begged. "Please?"
The guards looked at each other and shrugged. Clipboard man pulled a little handle -- which he must have been doing before -- and Ashleigh was allowed to finish rinsing his hair.
While Ashleigh dripped and shivered, instruction man produced a tape measure. "Stand there. Arms and legs apart."
Ashleigh tried a joke, to see what would happen. "A summer ensemble in fawn linen, if you please, and none of those garish brass buttons this time."
This got a wry quirk from clipboard man, who spoke for the first time: "Sure, we've never heard that one before." Then he commenced writing as instruction man called out Ashleigh's measurements. He was far more thorough than Ashleigh thought necessary, considering that the clothing he could see in the shelves was rather formless. It was as if he actually were being fitted for a suit. They even measured his neck and wrists, the length of his hands and the circumference of his head.
"Um. Excuse me," he said when they were finally done. "Why all the measuring?"
"This is a research facility," clipboard answered. "We study you fellows here."
"What, criminals?"
"Talents." Instruction man handed Ashleigh a stack of blue cotton cloth, with his glasses perched on top. "Through there." On cue, another door opened.
A long series of rooms ensued. Ashleigh was weighed, prodded, gagged with a stick, had his kidneys and throat and testicles kneaded, his eyes and ears peered into, was stared at through colored lenses and exposed to magnets. Bizarre though it all was, after a while he found himself losing interest. He was tired. He was hungry and cold. He wanted to put his ugly new clothes on and go to sleep in a nice, safe cell.
At last he got his wish. The series of humiliations came to an end and he was allowed to dress -- drawstring pants and a sort of peasant blouse which, despite the measuring, didn't fit at all well -- and to put his glasses on. He'd had them off so long that resuming them made his head hurt.
A final clipboard man checked the spelling of his name, then called some armed men to take him into a maze of stairs and tunnels carved out of honey-colored stone. At last, past yet another metal gate, they came out into a cavernous space that echoed with snoring and smelled like despair. Yellowish lamps provided just enough illumination for Ashleigh to see a broad central corridor lined with metal gates, and steps leading up to a second tier of gates set back from the first. Each gate on the ground floor revealed a cell with two sleeping occupants; the ones on the upper right level seemed mostly vacant.
"I'm going to hate it here," he mumbled.
"Trine. 2-E. Up the stairs, kid."
Dragging himself up the steps, he was let into a cell that was, blessedly, empty.
"Home sweet home," the guard told him, and the gate clanged shut.
Too tired to even pace out the size of his cell, Ashleigh picked the left-hand bunk, wrapped himself in its scratchy but mercifully clean blanket, and went to sleep.
--==*==--
A clang of metal woke him. He fumbled for his glasses, dizzy with fatigue. Morning already? It was still dark, but maybe it was always dark here.
No, the air was still full of snoring. The guard was talking to someone right outside Ashleigh's cell. "I heard about you, you son of a bitch. You just give me an excuse to shoot you."
The gravel-and-honey voice from the train replied. "Those that ask don't get. All right if I sleep now?"
The cell door opened; a dark form came in; the bars clanged shut. Ashleigh found his specs and rammed them onto his face, bringing the spidery shape of his cellmate into focus. The Iavaian bounced on the edge of his bunk a few times, making it creak, then sprawled out on it. His feet hung off the end. He rolled his head toward Ashleigh to show him a glint of teeth.
"Trine," he said. "How about that. We're alphabet buddies." He flopped out a long arm, and after an awkward hesitation Ashleigh understood and mirrored the gesture. The Iavaian's hand engulfed his. "Trevarde. Kieran Trevarde."
"Ashleigh Trine."
Trevarde continued to hold his hand. "You seem like a smart kid. You smart?"
"I guess so."
"So you recognize I could squash you like a bug, right?"
Ashleigh didn't like where this was going. "I can see that."
"All right. You don't give me any attitude, Ash, we'll get along just fine." Trevarde finally let go. He put his arms behind his head and closed his eyes, apparently at ease.
Burrowing back into his blanket, Ashleigh considered this new development. On the whole, he concluded, it was disastrous. Trevarde was apparently extremely dangerous, from the way the guards behaved. Ashleigh was inclined to agree with them. And Trevarde's undeniable charisma added an extra danger, for he was sure that if the tall Iavaian guessed that Ashleigh was attracted to him, an ass-kicking would be a best-case scenario.
The advice everyone kept giving him was right. Head down, mouth shut. Just keep repeating: This isn't happening. This isn't happening.
The punishing noise of an automated bell woke him in a panic. Flailing free of his blanket, Ashleigh tumbled off his bunk, to the laughter of his cellmate.
"Not a morning person, Red?"
"Oh god," Ashleigh groaned. He climbed back onto the bunk, rubbed his eyes, fumbled for his glasses. The cell was so small that his nearsightedness had little effect. He could see Trevarde's face well enough. It was still nice to have a layer of glass between himself and the world. "No descriptive nicknames, please."
Trevarde gave a rolling shrug. He'd clearly been awake for some time already; his hair was no longer matted, and he was quite a bit cleaner. There were wet handprints on the front of his shirt. "Sure thing, Ash," he said easily. "But they're all going to call you Red. Or Specs. Or the catch of the day. What did a mouse like you do to get the Watch's attention? No, let me guess. You're a firestarter."
"No," Ashleigh said miserably. "Empath."
"Harsh. You're doomed." Trevarde stretched, yawned, scratched himself. "Concealing a Talent? That can't be all you did."
"Insurgent writings. Treason."
"For real?" This seemed to catch Trevarde's attention. "What kinda stuff did you say?"
"Oh, ah..." Ashleigh doubted Trevarde really wanted a political lecture. "I reported abuses of power by the Watch, things like that."
"You ever kill one?"
"Excuse me?"
"Watchman. Ever kill one?"
"Er. No. I've never killed anyone."
"Too bad," was Trevarde's reply.
Ashleigh nearly asked how many people Trevarde had killed, but bit his lip instead. Mouth shut, head down.
A massive clang echoed through the cavern. He went to the door and looked out through the bars. The huge room was illuminated by dirty skylights in its vaulted ceiling. By this gray glow he could see that the entire tier opposite and below had opened its doors by means of a mechanism that connected the row. Prisoners were filing out of their cells, lining up like soldiers.
"Breakfast," Trevarde guessed, right in his ear; then added, at Ashleigh's reaction, "Jumpy, aren't you?"
Ashleigh tried to be still. "Do you blame me?"
"Nah. Not surprised you're scared. But you know... tell you what. You stick with me, I'll take care of you."
He turned to find himself nose to chin with Trevarde, trapped by the taller boy's hands gripping the bars on either side of him. He swallowed hard, and managed to speak without a quaver. "What do you get out of that arrangement?"
"Excuse to beat on all the idiots that'll be lining up for a piece of your tender ass." At Ashleigh's skeptical expression, he let go of the bars and stepped back, smile fading. "No joke. I did a year in Tiyamo, when I was a kid. I know how these places work. When you're the new boy, you have to be hard or they'll walk all over you. But you go around picking fights, they decide you're kaiyo, you're sick, they all gang up on you. So now you're my little pal and I'm going to protect you. Get me all the fights I need."
Unable to think of an objection that wasn't moral in nature and therefore probably incomprehensible to Trevarde, Ashleigh settled for grumbling, "I'm not little. I'm six foot one and three quarters; they measured me rather precisely last night."
"You're no bruiser, Trine." With an echoing crash, the doors on their tier opened, distracting Trevarde from the conversation. "Breakfast," he confirmed.
The line that formed on their tier was shorter than the others. Ashleigh also noticed that the men on this side were cleaner than the rest, fatter, their eyes more defiant and wary. New, like him. Opposite and on the ground floor, the prisoners were thin and worn, and when they moved they shuffled. This did not bode well for the future. A strutting man in a tan-colored uniform strode up and down the line, poking people into place with a wooden baton. As he did, he lectured them.
"Welcome to Churchrock, boys. Welcome to the beginning of the end of your lives. You will never leave here. You are here for good. The sooner you get that through your thick heads, the longer you'll survive.
"Each one of you has committed a hanging offense, and for all anyone knows, we hanged you. You are dead to your families, your friends, and the world. You should be grateful as hell you're still breathing. It ain't because you deserve it, though. You're alive because the White Watch needs test subjects, and that's all you're good for, because you are the scum of the world, a fact you'd better not ever forget.
"Every morning, you will wake when the bell rings. You'll be up and dressed and ready to get in line when the tier opens fifteen minutes later. If you make me come in and get you out of bed, you will wish to God you hadn't. There will be no talking in line. You will wait for permission to go, at which point you'll march in an orderly manner to the mess hall. There you'll be given your breakfast, which you will eat neatly and quietly. Don't bother asking for seconds, because you won't get any. You'll have half an hour to eat. After that, you'll line up again, and that's the high point of your day, because you get to go outside. Excercise period lasts one hour.
"After that it's back in the cells until five, when we do the whole thing again. That's the routine, boys, two meals and two hours outside, and the rest of the time is yours unless the Testing folks want you. We expect you to be grateful as hell. Now move it out."
Encouraged by prodding from the guard's baton, they were marched through a different tunnel and up a different set of stairs. A nauseating smell reached out to reel them into a communal dining hall, where inmates sat in rows eating ugly food from tin trays. Ashleigh lined up with the rest to receive a portion of grayish scrambled eggs, watery ham, and weak coffee, all of which he was apparently supposed to eat with a spoon, since that was the only utensil he was given.
"Over there," Trevarde suggested, indicating an empty table. "Let 'em get used to us before we get near 'em at meals. Like dogs."
"Good idea." Beginning to follow, Ashleigh felt something hit him behind the knees, and suddenly he was sprawling backwards, tray flying out of his hands. He hit the ground first, and then the food followed, a streak of hot coffee scalding his face. "Ow! Dammit!"
Laughter surrounded him. The men at the nearest table were laughing loudest. A moment later, as Ashleigh was picking himself up, the culprit identified himself by feigning anger: "Hey faggot, you got eggs on me! Ain't you gonna apologize?"
Ashleigh knew better than to point out the ruse. It was really just like grammar school all over again. But this was the sort of situation Trevarde was looking for, wasn't it? When the Iavaian reached to help him up, he knew it wasn't consideration for him, so much as calculated rudeness to the others.
Eggs stood up, while his cronies leaned forward in anticipation. "Well?"
Trevarde dusted Ashleigh off a little, then pushed him aside to give eggs and company an odd half-smile. "I got a better idea. How about you apologize for tripping him."
This struck everyone as funny. "To him? Oh, that's a good one." Eggs chortled. "The hair farmer wants me to apologize to Carrots here. That's good."
"No, you apologize to me. The kid's under my protection and nobody touches him."
Ashleigh edged backwards, wondering whether Trevarde was actually as dangerous as he seemed, or whether he was about to have his bluff called. Meanwhile, the prankster and his pals were savoring this new humor. "Your protection, huh? Oh, I'm so scared. We supposed to be scared of you? You supposed to be somebody special?"
"Name's Kieran Trevarde." He spread one of his hands, displaying a row of dots tattooed around it. "Nice to meet you."
The laughter suddenly died. Prankster had a go at scoffing, but he moved back a step while he did it. "You're not him. He woulda died before he let 'em put him in a place like this."
Trevarde pulled down the neck of his shirt, to show a shiny, star-shaped scar on his chest. "They got Healers, fuckwit. My breakfast is getting cold."
Prankster looked from Trevarde to Ashleigh and back again. "Sorry," he grunted.
When they were seated at their lonely table, Ashleigh asked, "What was that? I don't understand."
"Boring. Guess he must be lower on the pecking order than he thinks he is. See, I wanted to give the main hardass an excuse to back down. But I blew the element of surprise on a wimp, and now the actual top rooster is going to have time to talk himself up to facing me." He shoved his tray over. "You eat this. I lost my appetite."
"But -- uh, thanks. But I still don't get it. Are you famous or something?"
"Guess you could say that. Ever heard of the Dyer Brothers gang?"
"No."
"How about the White Rose?"
"No. Sorry."
"It's okay. Don't figure folks up north hear that stuff anyway, not if they're not in the business. You're too clean for this place, you know that? I still don't get why you're here. Churchrock's where they send the worst of the worst. Folks who use their Talents to hurt people."
"You did that?"
Trevarde looked at his tattooed hand. "Yeah. I'm a jinx. You know, a ghoul witch."
"You're what?" Ashleigh edged away.
Trevarde looked annoyed. "Get back here. I won't hurt you. Can't use my Talent in here anyway. It's warded. Or haven't you noticed?"
Ashleigh shook his head. "I didn't even know I had magic until they tested me at my sentencing.."
"Huh." Trevarde was rubbing his thumb across the dots on his palm. "You high up with the rebels, then?"
"Not really. Propaganda. I just had a handful of contacts." He winced at the memory. "The Watch sucked them right out of my head. I'm sure they were all arrested. I'm sure most of them are dead now."
"But you were good at it?"
"I guess."
"I was good at what I did too."
"And that's what you're famous for?"
"Every one of these dots is a dead man, Ash. You want to count 'em?"
"Uh. No."
"You're not eating," Trevarde pointed out, and laughed.
--==*==--
After breakfast, they were taken outdoors. Ashleigh was so glad to see the sky again that he didn't, at first, realize the potential for chaos. They were let out into a big fenced square of dirt, in the baking heat, with nothing to do, and no supervision except the distant guns on the watchtowers, but all he could think about was the gorgeous blue of the sky.
Trevarde was more alert. "This is where the fights happen," he observed. "Somebody gets in my face, you step back."
"Sure."
They walked around a bit, passing knots of two or three or five men standing together, and the occasional pathetic creature huddled alone. A couple of those were talking to themselves. One was pressed to the bars of the fence as if trying to squeeze himself through. He looked almost emaciated enough to succeed. Ashleigh wondered how long it would be before he himself went mad and ended up like that.
Trevarde seemed to be appraising each of their fellow prisoners as a trader appraises another man's horses, with an educated but distant eye. To Ashleigh, they all looked equally terrifying.
He watched Trevarde instead; the way the sun gilded his skin and struck poison-green sparks from his eyes, the way a dusty breath of hot wind lifted strands of his hair and twined them into the glyphs of an alien language. In this bright light, his scars were less apparent. While Ashleigh watched, Trevarde stretched, arms behind his head, arching his back. This caused a gap between his shirt and trousers, showing a smooth brown expanse of finely muscled stomach. Ashleigh looked away, wondering if Trevarde could possibly have done it on purpose to bother him -- dismissed that as wistful paranoia -- realized he had no clue whatsoever, and felt suddenly as if he'd been struck blind. He'd never noticed his empathy, never intentionally used it, but now he felt its absence; anesthetized, colorblind. Everyone's motives were a mystery.
No wonder they were all so scary. When he couldn't sense the humanity of them, they all seemed like automatons. Greasy homunculi. The set of some sadistic play.
And you were wondering, he told himself wryly, how long it would take you to go mad.
A more purposeful kind of movement among the aimless wandering distracted him from his thoughts. It was with something like relief that he nudged his companion's ribs with his knuckles. "Here comes your fight, Trevarde."
"Call me Kieran." He spoke through a yawn, turning to see the approaching men with no sign of apprehension. "Nobody I like uses my last name."
"All right. Kieran." Ashleigh took a step back, out of the path between Trevarde -- Kieran -- and the three men who were stalking toward him. It didn't seem like a good idea to be within arm's reach of anyone right now.
The lead man was also a Iavaian, a bit lighter of skin than Kieran was. He had a similar ranginess, though not nearly as tall, and wore his hair in two braids. He had a patchy mustache, and a cool arrogance in his eyes. His two followers were a red-faced blond of the dockhand variety and a bald, bearded fellow who had a vaguely demented air about him. When he got close, the leader put an extra bit of saunter in his step and raised his chin an extra notch. Ashleigh thought this might mean he was scared, but it was too hard to guess these things now.
"So," said braids, "You're Kieran Trevarde." He made it sound like a test.
All Kieran said was, "So?"
"I heard you killed Ama Sona."
"So?"
"He was good. Better than you. You're nothing without your magic."
"That's what you think, huh?"
"Yeah. It is."
Kieran shrugged. "All right."
Braids turned to Baldie with a grin. "You hear that? He admits it."
"Nah," said Kieran lightly, "I just said it's all right if you think that. I don't actually care what you think."
Braids stepped in closer. "You should care. I'm Duyam Sona. Ama was my brother."
"I know. You didn't like him much, either." This revelation was delivered with the same cool as anything else that came out of Kieran's mouth. "I had a contract on you too, but you got bagged before I got my advance."
Duyam Sona clenched a fist between them. "Is that all my brother's life meant to you? Money?"
"All it meant to him, too. You don't pony tar through Burn River for the retirement benefits."
"Fuck you, you son of a fucking --"
"Uh-huh. Are we going to fight, or what?"
Sona replied with a snarl and his fist. Kieran slid aside and hit back with the heel of his hand to the center of Sona's chest. As their leader flew back, knocked breathless, the other two charged.
Ashleigh, backing farther away, looked around to see if any intervention was forthcoming. Most of the inmates in the yard were watching the fight, but none seemed interested in being involved. That was good, right? But it seemed vaguely horrific, the impassive way they watched.
When he looked back, the fight was over.
Baldie, bleeding from the nose, was helping Sona to his feet. The blond backed away hugging his ribs, with the self-absorbed expression of a man in pain. Ashleigh found he was surprised that they were all still alive. Kieran was rubbing the point of his jaw.
"You clipped me. That's good. You might make a fighter someday." This was apparently directed at Baldie, because that one spat a gob of blood and a garbled obscenity.
Sona wasn't done. "I'll kill you, Trevarde. You better watch your back, because I'll kill you."
"All right." Kieran put his hands behind his head again and walked over to the fence. No one followed but Ashleigh.
Ashleigh said tentatively, "That looked easy."
"Yeah." Kieran sighed. "I was hoping for a good fight. Ama was pretty good."
"So you really did kill that man's brother."
"Yeah. Ama Sona worked for a gang out of Trestre, tried to expand into Burn River. Gang I worked for didn't like that."
"That's these Weavers you mentioned?"
"Dyers. But no, that came later. This was when I was, what, seventeen, I guess. When I was with the White Rose."
Ashleigh was starting to feel sick to his stomach. "So you were a drug runner? That's how you got this reputation?"
"Nah. I was a killer. I worked for the drug runners. Opium's big business down here. We slaughter each other so you white folks can have pretty dreams."
"Hey, it's not --"
"I know, up East you got people shooting each other over the paint thinner that leaks out the bottom of the corn crib. Down here we do it for tar. And you know, I think half these operations are backed by the government. You try to make some kind of moral sense out of it and you'll just tie your head in a knot."
Ashleigh struggled to contain his judgment, but one look at Kieran's bland expression and it jumped out of his throat: "Does that make it okay, in your opinion? That the world is corrupt and you murdered corrupt men, that makes murder all right?"
"I never said it was all right," Kieran said coldly. He stared until Ashleigh dropped his gaze, then turned his back.
--==*==--
After an exchange like that, Ashleigh would've liked to stalk off somewhere by himself for a while, but instead he was back in his cell with Kieran, trying not to make eye contact. Lacking privacy, his next choice would have been to hide in a book, but a brief conversation with a guard informed him that there was no reading material whatsoever to be had. Not even a newspaper.
He killed a few minutes exploring the cell. There was a tin pitcher half full of water, and a washbasin still sludgy with the remains of Kieran's morning ablutions. A steel toilet of the sort found in outhouses -- he supposed a water closet would have been too much to ask for. A slab of polished steel intended to function as a mirror, but no razor. What on earth was the mirror for, if it wasn't to shave by? In a tray attached to the bottom of the mirror was a tin cup and a damaged comb, just one of each, which they'd apparently have to share.
His bed was a narrow frame of steel tubing, bolted down, with a mattress that felt like it was stuffed with raw cotton. There were mysterious stains on its tan-striped fabric. There was a drain under the washstand and an air shaft above the mirror, both too small to admit his head and both covered with metal grills. And that was it. That was his entire world. The only interesting thing in the cell -- hell, the only object with moving parts -- was his cellmate.
It was time, he decided, to make peace.
"Look, Trevarde -- I mean, Kieran --"
"Forget about it."
Taken aback, Ashleigh only managed, "Um?"
Kieran gave him one of those false smiles. "Any sentence that comes out of nowhere and starts with 'Look --' is doomed to end with 'sorry'. I'm not mad. My past isn't a secret, I just get tired of talking about it."
"Oh." Ashleigh looked down at his hands, made them stop picking at the hem of his shirt. "Then -- if you don't mind -- just so I don't keep blundering into it -- could you tell me? Who you are. Why you're here." He waved a vague gesture. "What the world looks like from where you are."
"What, you don't want to drag out the mystery?" Kieran stretched out on his bunk, hands behind his head, showing the skin of his waist again, so that Ashleigh had to look away. "Nah, you're right, better to lay out all the cards. Puts us on more even terms. And I have a feeling you can help me as much as I can help you."
"How?"
"Dunno. Now shut up so I can tell the story."
"Sorry."
"So. Me. My mother was a prostitute. Then she died. So I was turning tricks for a while, actually quite a while, and that's why I was in lockup the first time. Prostitution. Would've been a fine and a work sentence, if I was a girl, but you know, they tacked the extra sodomy charge on. Tiyamo was a giant dogfight, and that's all you need to know about it. That's where I found out about my Talent. Missed the normal fourteenth-birthday Survey on account of not officially existing."
"Didn't they do a Survey when you were arrested?"
"Yeah, but they didn't find anything. I don't know why. Either they fucked it up or mine grew late. I noticed it the end of my first year in Tiyamo. See, I was this scrawny little guy, and everybody knew why I was in there -- anyway, there were some folks I really wished would just curl up and die. And they did. One guy got bit by a snake in the yard. Another guy got sick, and a couple guys stabbed each other... I probably woulda killed off half the inmates and got caught, except this guy Shrike noticed what I was doing and clued me in. Got me a job when I got out. 'Course, I ended up killing Shrike pretty much right away. I didn't like his attitude.
"Kinter -- that's the boss -- he gave me whatever I wanted. Drowned me in girls and liquor and poppy. I don't like girls, and booze bores me, but the tar was all right." Kieran gave a snort of bitter laughter. "Mistake. Once he had me on the leash, well -- you get it."
What does he mean, doesn't like girls? He can't have meant it the way it sounded. Ashleigh must've made some sound, because Kieran turned to give him a disapproving stare. "Don't look so shocked, Ash. Most of the world lives like that, one way or another."
All Ashleigh could think was that he was starting to like being called Ash. He'd declined the nickname as a child because of the dumb jokes people made about it, but it was all right now.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt."
"Sure. Anyway, I had to learn to kill folks up close and personal, because Kinter didn't want to overuse the magic thing. Gets too obvious, certain people get too interested. I learned to shoot, and use a knife -- use it right, I mean -- and they had this old guy who knew kengdan -- you heard of it?"
"Iavian boxing, right? It's illegal."
"It's dirty fighting. Stuff like you saw today. First thing Kinter had me do, when he figured I knew enough, was beat some guy to death over a bad deal that cost him about fifty signets. You believe that? Five thrones. My guess is he didn't care about the money, he was just trying out his new toy.
"So I hated him, of course. But he held the leash.
"That was how it was when he sent me after the Dyer brothers. White boys from Rainet. Cal, Mack, and Shanin. They weren't in the poppy game, they were just holdup men. You know, highway robbers. I was supposed to shoot two and disappear the third, make it look like they jacked each other. Maybe to distract the cops from something, I dunno. The point is, when I found them, watched them, listened to them, I couldn't do it."
He paused, looking Ashleigh over, as if deciding how much to tell. Then he looked away. "Actually, it was Shanin Dyer's face that stopped me. He had this way of smiling, like he knew what you were thinking but he liked you anyway...
"I told Kinter no go. He cut off my supply. Three days without it and I was begging to do the job. Went back to the Dyers' hangout and found I couldn't again, sat there debating with myself until they came out and caught me. That was such a damn relief -- I figured they'd just kill me -- but they didn't. Shan talked the others out of it. He helped me kick.
"Cal got killed a couple months later, Mack settled down with a native girl who'd already had a couple of his babies, but me and Shan kept going. Had some good times, and made a lot of money. Got famous, too. I hear we made the papers all the way out to Helermont when we hit the Red River mail train. We didn't get hardly nothing out of that one, but I guess it looked flashy or something. Wish we'd kept our heads down more, 'cause after that the cops got serious about catching us. Probably the fuckers who killed Shan got a medal."
He sighed. Levered himself off the bed and went to the bars. He stood there for a while, looking up at the dirty skylights. Then he put his back to the cell door, and stared at Ashleigh for a time. Suddenly he reached out and set his hand on Ashleigh's hair. Ashleigh flinched, and Kieran snatched his hand away. He went back to his side of the room as casually as if he'd done nothing strange.
"I'm tired of this story. Shan's dead, and I'm in here." Kieran threw himself on his bunk. "I'm taking a nap." He rolled over to face the wall.
Ashleigh stared disbelievingly at his back for a long while. He'd never encountered such confusing behavior before. One thing he was sure of: Kieran was nowhere near as in control as Ashleigh had at first assumed. His calm had been deceptive. Just because he'd kept a straight face while blurting out the story of his sordid life didn't make it any less blurt-like. And what was that thing with the hand?
Had Kieran meant what it sounded like he'd been implying? That the late Shan Dyer had been more than a partner in crime? Maybe more than a friend? Was he mourning a lover? He didn't act like it. Besides, no one would have admitted so lightly to being an invert; surely such proclivities were subject to floggings and cagings in the south just as they were in the rest of the Commonwealth. Probably Kieran had just wanted to make contact with someone, anyone -- but with his empathy damped, Ashleigh knew he was just making blind guesses. It could have meant anything at all.
Ashleigh bitterly regretted flinching. Kieran was probably tired of people being afraid of him. But he was scary. And he clearly had a few gears loose, though after a life like that he was certainly entitled to be a bit batty.
Ashleigh tried, for a while, to imagine what it must have been like to live that life. He couldn't. He thought he'd probably gawped like a goldfish the whole time he was listening; which hadn't kept Kieran from telling him. Maybe it didn't matter who he'd been talking to, as long as he could spill his story and get rid of it. Maybe he'd even wanted to be stared at. To have someone care enough to be shocked. Or maybe the case was the opposite: that Kieran was so incapable of feeling as to part with the wretched garbage of his past as easily as anyone else might discuss the price of onions.
Ashleigh found he was chewing his nails, and made himself stop. What does it matter? he told himself. It's not as if he cares what you think. Or what anyone thinks, or says about him.
Nevertheless, Ashleigh had to wonder whether the reason Kieran had given for offering his protection, as an excuse to fight, had been a cover for something a little kinder... or for something more cruel.
Kieran studied the texture of the wall, working on his calm. He'd cracked a little bit, there; explained too much. Given in to impulse. That had been a junkie thing to do. All day he'd wanted to know what those rusty curls would feel like to his hand, and so he'd just gone ahead and found out.
There was a chill feeling he could wrap himself in, if he could find it, that would make it too much trouble to talk like that again, not worth the effort to reach out to the poor, doomed, pale thing he shared his cell with. Once, he'd been good at it. After Shan, though -- having friends had been a mistake. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd done after watching a bullet take Shan's head apart, but when he'd come to his senses there'd been five cops and a Watchman dead and he himself had been discovering the joys of a sucking chest wound, which sort of indicated a loss of control.
Blaming himself wasn't going to help. The reasons never mattered. Excuses only made you look like an idiot. He had to close up the gaps.
Was Ash going to pry now? Kieran could feel him staring. Maybe telling him all that stuff had scared him; that would be good. He'd keep his distance. Having a clever little mouse on payroll was one thing; getting attached to him was another, and Kieran had no intention of doing that. Ash was going to be useful. The guards seemed to like him, he was intelligent, he was weak and needy, he was an excellent tool. But only if he stayed a tool. His ignorance of the true nastiness of life could be a liability, otherwise.
It was too bad, really. In other circumstances... No. That was a bad place to let his thoughts go. There were no other circumstances.
If wishes were horses, Kieran thought, I'd be the only one walking.
So he chose a spot on the wall in front of his nose, a vein of darker orange running through the yellow stone, and examined it with all his attention. It was a trick he'd invented as a child. He didn't move his eyes, refused his thoughts, concentrated on that one little orange swirl until all the useless anxiety and useless hope had faded. Until he could look at his cellmate's freckled, innocent, blue-eyed face and not want to smash it in or devour it.
When someone spoke his name at the door, he was almost ready to handle it. He almost didn't give a damn why, or what was about to happen. Almost was going to have to be good enough; they weren't going to give him time to finish collecting himself.
"Trevarde," the guard's voice repeated. "Get a move on, freak. Unless you want a taste of this." There was a slapping sound.
Something touched his shoulder. "Kieran?"
"Don't touch me," Kieran said. But he didn't jump. He didn't hit. That was going to have to do.
He got up, and discovered that 'this' was a baton the guard was smacking into his palm, making a show of impatience. Kieran could've easily taken it from him and made him eat it, but knew he would've been perforated by a dozen bullets the next moment. Since he supposed he didn't want that, he came along peacefully instead.
"Where are you taking him?" Ash asked.
"Testing," the guard replied. "You'll get your turn. Probably tomorrow." Ash must've looked fearful, because the man added, "He'll be back by supper, so don't rent out his room just yet." He made up for this non-regulation reassurance by prodding Kieran in the small of the back. Kieran responded with the obligatory cold glare, but inside he was smiling. Good mouse, he thought at Ash. They like you. Make them tell you things. Use your innocence to help me, and I'll see you get to keep it as long as possible.
An explanation was a very tiny victory, of course, but Kieran could never have gotten one, no matter how sweetly he asked.
Testing. That didn't sound like fun, but it was apparently non-fatal, and since he couldn't do a single thing about it he saw no reason to have an opinion. Another guard fell in behind him at the end of the tier, and they marched him down the stairs and through the gated door he'd been brought in by last night. It seemed like they might be taking him outside, to another building, but then they took a left turn and he gave up guessing.
It grew colder as he walked, and the light changed. There was a flight of stairs, the stone painted with glossy gray industrial paint. Up, but still in a tunnel carved out of solid rock. They were inside the mountain.
The walk ended at a metal door that felt cold to look at -- what a weird thought. There they waited for a time. "Now, you mind your manners when you meet the Colonel," the guard said, apparently just to fill the silence. "Or I'll take it out of your hide."
After a while, the door seemed a little friendlier, and then it was opened by a man in a White Watch uniform. Two pins on the collar and one loop of scarlet braid on the shoulder. Not a colonel. "This is Trevarde?" said the uniform. "Come in. Sit down."
As Kieran went in, his mind opened up like the view from a high hill. Like a fever ending. Like waking.
"God," he said.
"Sit down," said a man behind a metal desk. "Chaler, you can go."
"Sir," said the uniform, and went.
Kieran went to the empty chair that faced the desk, and fell into it, a little stunned. The sensation of being imprisoned had gone entirely. He knew that he was farther from freedom than at any previous point, locked into a small white-painted hollow in the middle of a mountain with only one well-guarded exit, and yet some oppression had paradoxically lifted. It left him feeling light and strong and wide-awake.
This room was outside the wards that kept the inmates from using their Talents. He'd barely noticed them, coming in, but it seemed the pressure had built up, and letting his mind unfurl brought a sensation of pleasure that was slightly painful. It threatened his composure.
"Aren't you afraid I'll attack you?" he said.
The man who was undoubtedly the Colonel smiled at him, pleasantly, as if they were just chatting in a bar somewhere. "I think you're smarter than that, Mr. Trevarde."
"Well, yeah. But people don't usually bet their lives on it."
"I'm also rather better shielded than those you've attacked in the past. Your Talent would have little effect on me." He waited for a response, and when he didn't get one, turned to taking things from the drawers of his desk.
He was a fleshy man, the Colonel, with gray hair in a tidy queue and half-round spectacles perched on his nose, a bit past middle age, not at all what Kieran expected from a high-level White Watch officer. The Watch mages who'd grabbed Kieran from the local police had been damn near faceless in their pseudo-military perfection. Maybe this was what they'd be when they grew up.
"I'm Colonel Warren. I'll be performing a series of tests with you, some of which may be unpleasant, but they'll be less unpleasant with your cooperation. I'm aware that being a prisoner tends to make one wish to rebel, to cause difficulty for one's captors, but I think you have a strong instinct for self-preservation, Mr. Trevarde. I think you'll find it in your best interest to follow my instructions and cause as little trouble as possible. Do you understand?"
"Sure. What's this for, anyway?"
"For the greater good, Mr. Trevarde. You should be thankful you have this chance to work off a little of your moral debt, though of course it can never be paid in full this side of the Final Judgement. Now, we'll begin with a simple Survey. You've been through this before, so I expect you to remain calm and facilitate my task by opening up as much as possible."
Oh shit, not one of these. Kieran closed his eyes as the Colonel came out from behind the desk. Okay, you can handle this. It's just another trick, you remember how to do this, you just wait it out...
The Colonel's chilly fingers touched his head, and suddenly Kieran knew he couldn't open up to this. Something in him that wasn't subject to will rebelled. And so the mental rape of the Survey was every bit as painful as it had been at his hurried excuse for a trial.
Icy, alien thoughts like blunt metal instruments battered at his defenses, tearing his thoughts apart. The agony was nothing physical, but something worse; a pain like grief, like shame. Then the probing penetrated below the level of thought to a place in the mind that Kieran knew was never meant to be groped like this. The cold manipulation of a stranger's thoughts dissected his selfhood; peeled apart layers, poked and squeezed, cut and bruised.
Fighting was impossible, but he fought anyway. Not consciously, because volition had been the first layer to be shoved aside, but with an automatic response, like vomiting when poisoned. When at last the alien thoughts stopped pushing, this reflex ejected them, doing as much damage on the way out as they had done coming in.
A scream choked off, and Kieran recognized that it had been his own. He was sweating, shivering, hoarse. He tasted bile in the back of his throat, and bitter hatred, and his stomach hurt. He tried to speak, and only groaned.
The Colonel was back behind the desk. "I did warn you not to fight," he said, in the kind of smug pretense at apology that Kieran had used on men who'd tried to kill him.
"Ah, shit," was all Kieran could get out.
"We'll have to repeat the Survey from time to time, you see. I hope next time you'll make it easier on yourself."
Kieran tried to swallow, couldn't, spat instead. "Anyone who could keep from fighting that," he croaked, "is a sick, sick person."
"Well." The Colonel looked at some of the things on his desk; picked up a pen, moved a piece of paper. "I believe we're done for today."
As if he'd been eavesdropping, the lesser uniform who'd let him into the room a million aching years ago opened the door and said his name. It was an effort to get out of the chair, and when he walked he stumbled.
--==*==--
"Kieran! What did they do to you?" Ash caught his arm as the cell door slammed, to steer him to his bed.
"Quit touching me," Kieran grumbled, but didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry. Here --" The redhead rushed to take the blanket from his cot, and when Kieran lay down he spread it over him, looking even whiter than usual. "You're shaking. You look terrible. What did they do?"
"Survey." Kieran swallowed. "Just a Survey."
"Look how you're sweating. God. Do they do that to everyone?" Ash went away, came back a moment later with a tin cup. "Here. They brought more water while you were gone."
Kieran levered himself up on one elbow and drained the cup. He remembered to be polite, reward the favor: "Thanks. I'm all right now. Just let me sleep."
"Sure." Ash went away, but his voice came back after a moment's pause. "I hate that they call it that. It's a lie. As if they're just asking questions. As if it's your own fault that it hurts."
"Let me sleep," Kieran repeated, too scattered to put any force into it.
When he woke, it was dark, the darkness filled with snoring. He had turned over in his sleep; what he saw when his eyes opened was Ash, sitting on the edge of the cot opposite, chin in hands, watching him.
"What the hell are you looking at?" The words came out milder than he'd intended.
Ash sat up straighter. "Huh? Oh. Sorry. Thinking."
"How long have you been doing that?"
"All my life." Ash sounded embarassed by his own weak joke.
"Well, stop it."
"Sorry."
"And stop apologizing."
The lost look that had been Ash's default expression since the first moment Kieran had seen him went away then, finally chased off by irritation. "Well, what do you expect people to say when you bark at them?"
Ash, Kieran realized with a sinking feeling, was damned good-looking when he wasn't doing his kicked puppy impression. Maybe it was just the dark. The freckles weren't so obvious, the haloing curls weren't as red, so it was easier to see the clean lines of his face.
No. I already decided no. Kieran sat up, then put his hands to his head. "Shit. I am so hung over. I hope the Colonel was just trying to scare me when he said they were going to Survey me again later."
"Is that who did it?"
"Yeah."
"Tell me about him."
"How does it matter? You'll find out soon enough."
"Maybe I can be a little more prepared."
Kieran's laughter brought a guard to tell them to shut up. When the guard's footsteps had gone far enough down the walkway, he made an effort to speak quietly. "What makes you think," he muttered, "that any damn thing you can do will prepare you in any way for the reaming you're about to get? What good would it do?"
"I'd be less scared," Ash whispered back. "If I knew what was coming. I don't know. I just don't feel like giving up yet."
Kieran thought about it, and at last agreed. "I guess making trouble staves off boredom."
"I was thinking more along the lines of analyzing them the way they're analyzing us. If we can figure out what they're looking for, maybe we can mess with them."
"Don't see how."
"Not yet."
Kieran sighed. "Fine. Something to do, anyway. Not much to tell, though. Bastard's name is Warren, and he's got a mind-probe like an ape with a sledgehammer."
"Clumsy, eh?"
"As bad as the jackass who did me at my trial. The last one, I mean. I think worse than the first time, but maybe because back then I didn't have a Talent yet."
"You think he found what he was looking for?"
"How the hell should I know?"
"Ssh! I don't know, but when I was Surveyed I could kind of tell. He was mucking around in there, and he hit something that kind of -- flashed -- and then he stopped."
"Huh. Nothing like that."
"I wonder what that means."
"You go ahead and wonder. I'm going back to sleep."
"All right, but Kieran?"
"What?"
A pause. "Never mind."
"No, what?"
Ash's eyes were hard to read in the dark. "I forgot what I was going to say."
Sure you did. You were going to cross a line, I'll bet. Say something personal. Smart mouse, figured out where to quit. Nevertheless, Kieran found some of his bitterness had faded. He was still angry, but he had it contained now. Futile as it was, Ash's idiotic hope had cooled some of the burn inside his head.
--==*==--
The next day, Ash outlined the first stage of his plan.
"We should find out what Talents these other guys have. They don't send everybody here, right? We can figure out what they're studying."
"Sounds about right." Kieran watched oatmeal drip off his spoon. "What's stage two?"
"Uh... I'll figure that out when we get the results from stage one."
Kieran chuckled. "Genius." He bent to gulping down his breakfast, while considering who to approach first. Not that he was real excited about this scheme of Ash's, but it would be interesting to see how people reacted.
No one had bothered them so far today, but it was only breakfast. It would take people a while to work up their courage, after he took down three big guys the day before and didn't break a sweat. Maybe, just maybe, they'd all figured out he was tougher than the lot of them, and there'd be no more fights at all. But Kieran didn't believe in miracles. The structures of power would be more complex than that, and harder to shift. Very few of these men would be able to admit they were outclassed unless the lesson was spelled out in blood.
"That guy," he said at last, pointing with his spoon at one of the half-mad loners no one ever talked to.
"Him?" Ash looked skeptical. "What, are you collecting wimps?"
"Loser unity." Kieran grinned. "No, actually I just figure he won't waste our time with attitude."
"Loser unity. I like that."
--==*==--
"W-what do you w-want?" The man had cornered himself by the fence, and was shaking like an angry kitten. "I d-din' do nothing."
"Must've done something," Kieran said. "You're here, right?"
"Din' hurt you none. Got no fight with you."
"Fine. I just want to know what your Talent is."
"Why? I never done nothing to you!" His voice climbed to a squeak. "I got no fight with you!"
Exasperated, Kieran leaned closer. "Look, just answer the damn --"
The man's eyes rolled up in his head, and he folded into a heap.
Ash cleared his throat nervously. "Um. Maybe you should let me talk to the little ones."
Behind them, a familiar voice said, "You won't be satisfied until you've killed us all, will you?"
Kieran turned with a sigh to confront Duyam Sona, this time with only his broken-nosed monkey to back him up. "What happened to that fat yellow-haired bastard you were dragging around yesterday?"
"You happened, you shit! He never came back from Testing yesterday. Guess they figured it was easier to get rid of him than stick a plaster on those ribs you broke. Now I see you're picking on the crazy ones."
"He's okay. I just spooked him." He looked to see if the fainter was up yet. He wasn't. "Ash, give him a hand, would you?" Then he made a startled noise as something hit him in the stomach, hard enough to hurt.
His body reacted before his mind; the back of his fist sent Sona sprawling. He caught himself beginning the long stride that would lead into a kick to the jaw as Sona started to get up, and was able to turn it into an ordinary step. He planted his feet and waited for Sona to be vertical.
"I'm bored of fighting you. I gave you a free shot and you didn't even break anything."
Sona spat a string of pink saliva. "You killed my brother. You killed my friend. And I'm going to kill you."
"So do it, for fuck's sake. Don't make a speech first, just grind a spoon handle nice and sharp and stick it in my back. Explain why afterwards, if you have to talk about it. Though you oughtta recognize nobody gives a shit about your reasons. Nobody cares whether you kill me or I kill you."
"Kaiyo," Sona accused. "You don't care any more for your own life than for any of the poor bastards you murdered."
"Should I?"
Sona stared for a long moment. Then he gestured to his monkey and turned away; that stiff-shouldered walk that meant they were trying not run.
"Kieran, was that a good idea, telling him that?" Ash was doing his puppy face again. "He just might take your advice."
"So?"
"I see."
"You try and get some sense out of the fainting flower. I'll take my scary self somewhere else. If anyone fucks with you, scream like a girl."
"Oh, yes, very good," Ash said dryly.
No one started anything with Ash. Kieran pretended to bask by the wall, while with half-closed eyes he followed the coppery gleam of Ash's head around the yard. The white boy got barked at a few times, but no one got physical. When they were back in the cell, he reported his results.
"I talked to four pyrokinetics and an entropist. I mean, firestarters and a breaker. Also a bunch of guys who wouldn't tell me anything." A flush rose in his cheeks. "Anything useful," he ammended.
"Did they talk shit to you?"
"Yeah. But that's not important."
"No, it is. You're under my protection, I can't let people trash you."
"Aren't we getting a little sidetracked here?"
"Yeah, just point 'em out tomorrow and I'll take care of it."
"I really wish you wouldn't."
"Don't you listen? That don't matter. Now, you were saying."
Ash thinned his lips, annoyed, then deliberately relaxed his face. When he spoke, his voice was emotionless. "I was saying. There were a hundred and four men in the yard. So it's possible the percentage of pyros was about on the mark. Rebel intel said the Watch had six percent fire Talents, and I think we can expect the proportion to be roughly the same among men who evaded Survey. Which would be our friends here. With me so far?"
"Sure."
"But considering that eighty percent of the ones I spoke to were pyros --"
"And the other one a breaker, which is also a destructive Talent. But you don't end up in Churchrock just for skipping a Survey. We all got grabbed off the gallows. So I'd say we learned jack shit today."
Ash looked a bit taken aback, as if he hadn't expected Kieran to actually grasp what he was talking about. He rallied, though, and went on, "What about kinesis? It's the most common Talent. Maybe I just missed them all, I know the data pool is too small for any kind of conclusion, but kinetics are very common and there were none. Kinetics do crimes too, right?"
"I wish we had something to write on. Or with." Kieran flopped down on his cot, pondering.
"I'll pester the guards."
Kieran raised an eyebrow. "Think that'll work?"
"No harm in trying."
"Not for you, I guess. Anyway, unless you can keep all this shit in your head, it's gone, because I have a brain like a sieve."
"I can remember what we have so far. If the sample reflects the general case at all, we know they've been studying fire Talents, and our inclusion indicates a new direction. I'd like to know what Talent that blond man had, the one who disappeared." After a while he added, "That Burdock fellow, the one from the train -- I haven't seen him."
"Maybe I killed him after all. I sure as hell concussed him."
Ash looked disturbed. "Why did you, anyway? You hadn't decided to make a pet of me yet. What did you care if he attacked me?"
Kieran opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated. Ash probably knew what reactions he inspired, how everyone who didn't want to abuse him needed to protect him, but Kieran didn't feel like admitting out loud how reflexive it had been. "I knew him in Burn River," he prevaricated. It was technically true. "The man was a stain."
"Old grudge?"
"Just never liked him. He was muscle for my old boss. Pyro. He was the favorite toy before I came along. Didn't see a lot of him, but when I did he always acted all yessir-nosir, 'cause he was scared of me, and then he'd talk shit behind my back. Guess when he called you a pansy it reminded me."
"Oh." Ash studied the floor, while his ears slowly turned pink. That was interesting. "So you don't think he really believed..."
"Nah. He would've called you a cocksucker, if he thought you really were. That's what he liked to say about me, when he was sure I was out of earshot." Kieran chuckled. "Closet case if I ever saw one."
Blushing in earnest now, Ash said, "Is there any other kind? I mean, it's illegal."
"Well, there's me." Kieran shrugged, pretending not to watch Ash's reaction. "I'm a fucking murderer, what do I care if people know who I sleep with? You got a problem with it?"
Ash's eyes flashed panic, and he babbled. "No! Of course not. You are what you are, right? I mean, thank you for being honest. Not that you care what I think."
Kieran laughed. "Didn't mean to spook you."
"I'm not spooked. It's just you don't often hear someone just come out with it like that. Roughly never, in fact. I wouldn't presume to judge -- if I thought there was a judgement to be made, which of course -- what I mean is --"
"Okay."
"Quit laughing at me!"
"Can't. You're too fucking funny." But Kieran was laughing at himself as well, and at circumstance; after he'd decided not to develop an interest in Ash, it looked like Ash already had an interest in him. But the northerner didn't want to admit it, which was only reasonable, so he figured he could get away with ignoring it a while longer. Maybe it would go away.
Footsteps approached their cell. "Ashleigh Trine."
Ash sighed. "My turn."
"Good luck," Kieran said wryly. He knew that there was no such thing.
--==*==--
Roughly an hour later, he heard a sound like a child crying. As it came closer, he went to the bars; the bawling noise was Ash, walking ahead of the guard with a stiff-legged gait like a broken machine, arms dangling, mouth wide open and emitting periodic gasps and hiccups.
Ash looked like a congenital idiot. The guard looked ashamed.
"Step back from the door." The guard had to repeat himself before Kieran moved. Kieran backed away, staring horrified at the red-eyed, wet-faced thing in front of him.
Ash was let into the cell, and went to the back corner, where he put his face to the wall, hugging himself. After locking the door, the guard stayed for a moment before stomping away. Kieran hesitated quite a bit longer.
There was a dark streak of sweat down the back of Ash's shirt. His rust-colored hair was almost straight now, strands plastered to his thin white neck. His narrow shoulders were shaking irregularly, his fingernails white where he clutched his elbows. Spectacularly pathetic. Seeing Ash like this this made Kieran want to tear down the world and stomp on the wreckage.
The impulse rushed through him to rip the weeping boy apart, to make him stop, to make him cease to be as if he'd never been. He made himself take a deep breath, waited for the urge to pass. Then the second impulse came: to clutch this fragile creature tightly in his arms and never let anyone come near him again. He conquered that as well. Only when he'd let go of both rage and pity did he reason a course of action. He needed Ash to be sane, and to depend on him, to use his harmlessness on the guards and weaker inmates. He had to be helped. But Kieran must not betray the weakness in himself.
Taking the blanket from Ash's bed, he approached with the care one used on an unfamiliar dog. "Hey," he said softly.
Ash sniffed. "Don't look at me." His voice was small.
"Sure. Okay." Kieran draped the blanket around Ash's shoulders. "Come out of there. You should lie down."
"Don't want to." But he let himself be steered, clutching his blanket. On the bed, he curled up in a ball. There he continued to bawl intermittently.
Not enough. Kieran searched his memory for ways to calm a distraught person. There weren't many. It had been a long time since he'd cared whether anyone was upset, and longer since anyone had given him that consideration. After several minutes of watching Ash shudder with sobs, he remembered something -- far too intimate, it would be taken wrong, but he had to make the crying stop.
He went and got the gap-toothed wooden comb they had to share. He sat on the edge of Ash's cot. Steeling himself for the disturbing touch of another person's damp skin, he slid his hand under Ash's sweaty hair and began dragging the comb through it.
At first this just made Ash cry harder. Eventually, though, his sobs subsided to hiccups, then to even breathing. It took forever. By the time he finally cried himself to sleep, his hair was dry enough to curl again, and Kieran's hands were tired.
And Kieran had spent way too long looking down on planes and curves of milk-white skin spotted with tiny freckles, the infant delicacy of Ash's red-bitten mouth, the slender smoothness of his curled hand, and now had to fight with himself to put the comb away and go back to his own side of the cell.
No, he told himself. No. Absolutely not. Never again. They will kill him sooner or later. You will not allow this to scratch you.
Ashleigh didn't trust himself to speak for a long time after that. Kieran made no attempt to break his silence, for which he was grateful. The tall Iavaian hovered protectively near him whenever they were taken out of the cell, a powerful shadow to shield him from the stares and laughter of those who'd seen him crying. Ashleigh thought that if he had that dark, quiet presence beside him all the time, he could bear these violations and not go mad, but it was a near thing. By lights-out on the third day, he was ready to talk.
"I want to thank you," he whispered. Curled on his side in the dark, he could still feel Kieran's protective presence. Strange, that he could sense it despite being without his Talent. It crossed his mind to wonder if he would find Kieran so comforting if he could feel the ghoul-witch's morbid power; he'd never been near one before. But then, he'd never been near a murderer before, and that didn't seem to matter either. "You've been very kind to me."
There was a rustle and a creak. The mattress shifted; warmth of Kieran's hip beside his thigh; hair draped over his hand, telling him the tall boy had bent his head nearer. "Feeling better now?"
"Yes." Without turning over his hand, he spread his fingers, and felt strands of heavy black hair slide between them, fascinated by the tenuous sense of connection it brought. "I didn't... I didn't expect... I'm very grateful."
"You want to tell me what happened?"
"No. But I'm going to anyway. I think I have to."
"I'm listening."
"I learned why I'm here. Me personally, as opposed to all of us."
"Yeah?"
"I met that Warren person you mentioned. He wasn't alone. He had some students with him. Other Watchmen. Surveyors. Recent Collegium grads, I think, because you know they take the braid off when they wash their uniforms, and these guys had one loop brighter than the other."
"You don't miss much," Kieran praised him, and he felt warmer for it.
"I want to figure these things out," he explained. "If I know more than they think I do... There were three of them. Warren probably did his explaining before I came in, so I wouldn't hear it, but he had to instruct them a little bit. He told me not to fight, and went into my head. Which of course I didn't like. But he just went in and touched something and came out.
"Then he told one of the students to go in, 'Paying special attention to the inflamed state of the linkage.' And that one went in and blundered around a bit. When he came out he said he couldn't find any Talents."
"Wait. He said Talents, plural?"
"Right. I know, that's weird now that I think about it. I haven't heard of people having more than one."
"Me neither. But go on. Couldn't find it."
"Warren told him that 'a marginal Talent is sometimes eclipsed by flaring in a periodic stress environment,' whatever that means. And he should try again. Um. I kind of lost track after a while, but I think they each made two or three attempts. I don't remember exactly what I heard after that, but I gathered the impression that the reason I'm of interest is that my Talent is so small. Hard to detect. They were practicing." He hesitated, because if he went on and Kieran was indifferent... but he remembered the gentleness of Kieran's fingers, gathering up his hair, smoothing it back from his face. Caring wasn't guaranteed, but it was possible. He took a deep breath and continued. "One of them was enjoying how much it hurt me. That room's not warded. I had my empathy -- more sensitive than before, sort of rubbed raw -- and one of the students, he really liked that the Surveys distressed me. The more upset I got, the more excited it made him. I mean... sexually. Excited. And. And he. He was being. Hurting me on purpose." Ashleigh held very still, waiting to learn whether his pain mattered to anyone but himself.
A large hand landed on his hair, the sympathy he'd hoped for but hadn't expected. Gratitude and relief made his heart clench, and suddenly he was fighting tears. Kieran's rich voice was soft and near: "You're okay now. It's over now."
"They'll do it again," Ashleigh choked out. "Again and again, until I crack. And then they'll kill me. Or, worse, they won't."
"No. We'll think of something, Ash. I --" The hand tensed, there was a swallowing noise, then a long breath. "I'm angry too," Kieran murmured at last. Ashleigh got the impression he'd almost said something else. "Look, I know you're scared of me. But you have to trust me. That's why you have to trust me. Because I'm mean enough to take what these sadistic fucks deal out and keep going. So you have to lean on me, and learn from me, and you have to keep going too."
Ashleigh rolled his head to search for Kieran's eyes, but couldn't read what he found there. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying I'm going to keep you sane. Don't be afraid of me anymore, I'm not going to beat you up if you step wrong or something. When trouble's flying from everywhere, I'll be the direction it's not coming from. I'm saying you do what I tell you, and maybe... maybe we can get out of here."
Though he knew it was a lie, it helped to hear it. "Thanks," he said. "For trying."
Kieran snorted. "At least try to take me seriously, okay? Sure, we have about a housefly's chance in a hurricane, but I for one am going to give it everything I've got. You should decide whether or not you're with me."
"Of course I'm with you," Ashleigh said instantly. "A fly's chance is still a chance, you're right. What do you need me to do?"
"Whatever it takes. For now, sleep. Get your head straight so you can function tomorrow. And no more crying. They pity you now, but do it too much and they'll peg you as a nutcase." His hand stroked Ashleigh's hair once more, and then his presence receded. A creak from across the room; a rustle of blankets. Eventually, his slow breathing: sleeping as if his conscience were clear.
Ashleigh lacked that ability. He lay awake, thinking so hard his head hurt.
Earlier, he'd tried to understand what made Kieran how he was. Now he thought he was beginning to see it. The first Survey he'd suffered had been painful and humiliating, but he'd been sure it would be the only one. When the rawness in his mind had faded, he'd just been glad it was behind him. This time, though, to have it done a dozen times in an hour, by amateurs, and to feel their emotions at the same time -- clinical indifference from three and perverted joy from one -- he'd been gang-raped, whatever they chose to call it. No wonder he was a mess.
He wondered if shame like this was something Kieran had lived with all his life. Why hadn't it wrecked him? Ashleigh was afraid that one more white uniform would drive him screaming, head-banging, eye-clawing mad. Might have done this time, if not for Kieran's kindness. Whatever inspired that kindness, be it pity or calculation or -- he wasn't sure whether to hope for or fear this -- desire, it was the only thing in his world that didn't hurt.
So he would take Kieran's advice. Learn from him. Become someone who could do what was expected of him. The person Kieran wanted him to be. Someone who could swallow horror and keep walking. Who didn't care if people didn't like the truth. Who didn't need to be protected like a child.
"Ash," he whispered, trying it out. "Ash Trine. Good to meet you, I'm Ash Trine."
"What's that?" Kieran mumbled sleepily.
"Nothing. Just changing my name."
--==*==--
"Um, 'scuse me?"
The guard paused outside their cell, throwing a suspicious glance past him to Kieran -- who was, by agreement, nonthreateningly washing his face at their tin mirror. "Need more water?"
"No, thanks, we're fine for water. But I wanted to ask you if there's any way I could get some paper."
The guard gave him a wry half-smile. "Sure, but it won't do you any good without a pen, and I can't give you one of those."
"How about a pencil?"
"Nothing sharp. Sorry." He began to turn away.
"Um." Ashleigh would have given up, but he was being Ash now, and Ash didn't mind if the guard got annoyed. "A crayon? Stick of charcoal? Please? I'll owe you bigtime."
That made the guard get a funny look. "Owe me what, Trine?"
"Whatever. I'll shine your shoes. Come on, I'm going bugs in here with nothing to do."
"Look." The man was getting exasperated. "If I give you a pen, and they find out, I'll lose my job."
"They won't find out. I can hide it." He did his very best needy-kid look. Today, unlike previous instances, it was a mask. "Please?"
The guard's face closed up. "I'll see what I can do." He went away.
"Worth a try," said Kieran when the guard was out of hearing.
"He'll get it. Tomorrow, probably."
"He didn't sound real cooperative."
"That's how I know. Did you hear how he called the prison authorities 'they'? And if he didn't think it was possible, he wouldn't have bothered arguing with me. When he got all stiff, when he left, he was feeling guilty. We can start our census tomorrow. Bet you anything."
Kieran looked impressed and skeptical at once. "You sound like you still got your Talent."
"I guess I learned how to read people, sensing what was behind their faces. I still feel blind, though."
They were confined to quarters today. There had been neither breakfast nor excercise. An earlier attempt at charm had determined that the guard didn't know why either. From time to time the sounds of conversation rose to shouting, always followed by the click of a guard's boots and a barked order to break it up. Everyone was restless.
"Hey," Ash began, not sure what he was about to say but knowing he wanted to talk.
Kieran was cleaning his fingernails with the handle of a mess hall spoon. He just grunted in reply.
"Can I mess with your hair?"
"Mess with it how?" Kieran examined the spoon.
"I don't know. Comb it or something."
"If you're returning the favor from the other day, save it for when I need calming down."
"What, like there's a limited quantity of hair-combing in the world? I'm just bored. My hands want to be doing something."
"Guess I don't care."
Ash fetched the comb. When he turned around, Kieran was taking his shirt off. Ash goggled. "Um."
"Just a second." Turning the shirt inside out, Kieran lifted one of the shoulder seams to his teeth and snapped a thread.
"What are you doing?"
"Alterations." He bit at the seam of the other shoulder. "What are you looking at? Never seen tattoos before?"
"Um. Not that kind. They're nice." And so is the skin they're on, he added in his mind. "What do they mean?"
Kieran looked surprised, as if no one had ever asked that before. Ash couldn't imagine why; the tattoos were mystifying. There were bands of dots and slashes and symbols all over his arms, a sawtoothed spiral curling down his left forearm, and a large black glyph that covered the upper left part of his chest, as well as the band of dots around his hand that he'd explained before.
Kieran tapped his chest. "This is a wind knot. It's a really old symbol, you find it carved on ruins and painted in caves and stuff. It's kind of a clan thing. This," he indicated two bands of symbols around his right bicep, "is a poem. These here --" the dots and slashes -- "are memorials. And, um, this zigzaggy thing is just decoration, and I did it myself, so it's not deep enough and it's fading. Why, you want one?"
"No. Thanks."
"It would stand out nice on that white skin of yours."
"I'm sure it would, but --"
"I'm just playing with you. Here, do your fidgety hair thing." He turned sideways on the edge of the cot, making room for Ash to sit behind him.
Ash gathered up the thick, black length of Kieran's hair, preparatory to starting the comb through it. It was nothing like his own chaotic mop; it felt smooth and cool and heavy in his hands, and it was all he could do not to bury his face in it. He wished he could find out if tattooed skin felt any different. If it tasted any different. With what Kieran had said the other day, there was even a small chance that such a thing would be welcomed -- Right, because a twiggy freckle-faced twit like you is just what he needs to take his mind off his dead outlaw boyfriend. Stick to combing. But since Kieran's back was turned, he could gorge himself on the sight of it. He could imagine what it would feel like to run his fingers down the furrow where muscle met spine.
He could sit with his knees up and pull his shirt down in case Kieran turned around, or things might get embarassing.
"When you're done playing," Kieran said, "Make two braids. You know how to braid, right?"
"I guess so."
"You guess? You never braided yours?"
"I mostly had it short. That's -- well, up north anyway, that's how everybody under thirty's wearing it. What you're seeing now is three months waiting for my trial and not being allowed scissors. I managed to talk someone into shaving me before I went on the dock, or else I'd look like a complete bum."
"Oh. Fashion." Kieran sounded disgusted. His shoulders tensed, and there was a ripping sound. "Speaking of which, think they'll shoot me for wrecking my regulation shirt?"
Still reeling from the sight of lithe muscles rolling under cinnamon skin, Ash made an incoherent noise.
"My bet is they'll just give me a new one. You going to make those braids any time soon?"
"Uh. Yeah. Sorry."
Bending to his task -- and to conceal his discomfort in case anyone looked at him -- he ran the comb through in long strokes. Gradually, he realized he was happy. How strange, that in the middle of one of the worst situations he could possibly have ended up in, he could be content. But he was. To hell with the Watch and their Surveys, to hell with the bored nastiness of the other prisoners, the bad accomodations and worse food, despair and doom, to hell with it all. He was glad just to be near Kieran, to be touching him even if only a little, to be trusted by him even if only marginally.
Kieran liked him. He'd said so. 'No one I like uses my last name.' And 'Lean on me, I'm going to keep you sane.' Kieran was his friend.
"Kieran?"
"Yeah?"
No, that would be ridiculous. Even if Kieran were desperate enough to go for someone as boring and funny-looking as Ash, there was no privacy whatsoever. "Never mind."
"No, tell me."
"I forgot."
"You have to quit doing that."
"Sorry."
Kieran made another ripping sound, and then another.
"Kieran?"
"If you say never mind --"
"What the hell are you doing to your shirt?"
"Show you in a second. Make the braids here, behind my ears, but leave the back loose. They should be about this thick." He held up his thumb to illustrate.
It took some doing, but eventually Ash managed to make a braid of the correct size behind Kieran's right ear, and he discovered what all the shirt-ripping was about: Kieran had removed the sleeves and torn them into strips, which he began wrapping around the braid.
"Fashion?" Ash said wryly.
"Tradition," Kieran returned. "These should be red leather, but you make do."
"What is it, a tribal thing?"
Kieran turned to give him a poisonous green glare. "Yes."
Ash leaned back from that stare, realizing what his words had sounded like. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid thing to say, and after all the anti-assimilationist pamphlets I've written too. It's just, you seem so --"
"White?" Kieran's tone was venomous.
"Cosmopolitan, I was going to say. Come on, I'll swallow my foot plenty without you shoving it in for me."
After a moment, Kieran's shoulders relaxed, and he chuckled. "All right. Cosmopolitan."
"I mean, everything you've told me about yourself was a city thing. Burn River or Trestre; unless I'm wrong, the two biggest cities in the South. And the government claims it's abolished all tribal customs. I think that's morally reprehensible, but I also thought it had succeeded."
"Well, it hasn't. We remember. Not that it does anyone any good. Nobody can afford to care who you're related to. We're all too poor. Maybe if you try for a job and the line boss is the same clan as you, he can put in a good word, but the guy doing the hiring is going to be white, and he probably hates taking advice from natives. Only reason to give a damn what blood you're from is pride and stubbornness."
He finished wrapping the second braid and turned around, and suddenly he was a different person entirely. Still dangerous, but somehow nobler. Not a criminal but a warrior. "In Iavaiah, lineage passes through the mother. Mine may have been a whore, but she was born Tama'ankan. Green Sky. Sun-Eater. And she might have called me Kieran Trevarde, but it isn't my name."
Ash swallowed hard, not sure what any of this meant. "What is it? Your name?"
Kieran hesitated, shook his head. "Outside. I'll tell you outside. When we get out of this place. Not before."
"Oh."
Then Kieran put his newly sleeveless shirt back on, and grinned, and was just himself with a new hairstyle. "You look stupidly impressed. Like I'm about to paint my face yellow and slaughter all the guards."
"I'm wondering what you're up to. You don't do anything just for the hell of it."
"What you said about the tribes being abolished -- that means if I walked down Water Street with my hair like this, I'd be wearing five new stripes on my back by sunset. Ten for a repeat, and they shave your head. So it kind of strikes me funny that short hair is the fashion where you come from. Down south, it means you were a dumbass and got flogged twice."
"And you want to find out if they'll do that here."
"Yeah."
"And you're going to keep me sane?"
"Well, I kind of get the impression that the normal rules don't apply here. Could be useful to know just what kind of shit they let you get away with. See, I figure --" He paused. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"Ssh." Kieran held his hand up for silence.
Ash listened, but heard only the same noises he'd been hearing before. People talking, coughing, moving around. The click of guards' footsteps and the creak of someone's bed.
Then, beneath that, gently at first but rising, there came a thin whistling from above, which was joined by a rattling sound.
"Yeah," said Kieran, quietly but with deep satisfaction.
"What is it?"
"The sound of spring, my friend."
"What is?"
"Thunderstorm."
Ash went to the bars and looked up. The light looked no different. The skylights were too far and filthy for him to tell whether rain was falling. But the thought of rain made him sad. "It isn't fair," he muttered.
"Damn straight," Kieran replied automatically. "What's not fair?"
"That's why we're confined to quarters today? A little rain?"
"Never seen a storm down here, have you? There's no such thing as a little rain. Not this time of year. It comes down in bathtubs. Wind takes the roof off your house, then hail beats the crap out of you, then a tornado rips your arms off. Oh, and then there's the flash floods."
"I see." Ash peered harder at the skylights. "Is that wind I'm hearing? Hey, what if it takes the roof off this place?"
Kieran made a snorting noise, but came up behind him and examined the skylights. "Have to be some storm. We're underground. Only about the top yard of these walls is actually built, the rest looks dug out. And if we didn't get killed by falling glass and shit, we'd still be behind these bars with guards everywhere. See that slit window over there? That's a gun post." He paused. "But I bet I could climb that wall."
"That one? To the roof?"
"See that metal box on the end? I think that's the thingy that opens all the cells on the tier, in the morning."
"Hey, if we did that, then in the chaos --"
Kieran sighed, his breath stirring the hair on the back of Ash's neck, raising shivers. "I can think of worse ways to die."
All at once, the light went strange. Ash cleaned his glasses on his cuff and looked again. "That thing you said about a green sky..."
"Means hail. Tornadoes sometimes. A bad storm for sure."
"That's what color your eyes are. Storm green."
Kieran moved from behind him to beside him, and stared down solemn-faced. Stared long enough that Ash began to feel a fizzing in his blood, paralyzed and wanting. He couldn't breathe. He was afraid even to blink, lest Kieran realize what this looked like, and stop. If they hadn't been standing right at the front of the cell for everyone to see... Ashleigh twitched with surprise when his fingertips brushed the warmth of Kieran's arm, because he hadn't meant to move.
Kieran's lips thinned and he turned away. "Whatever. Wake me if the sky falls." He flung himself across his cot, face to the wall.
Shame rushed in where anticipation had been. What the hell did I think I was going to do, just now? I gave myself away for nothing. Ash leaned his forehead on the bars. Above, wind shook the skylights in their frames. It grew darker and darker. The rattling sound stopped and started again, grew loud, then faded to a steady clatter. Gradually the darkness abated. Some time later, sunlight came back in a rush, bright through the newly washed glass.
That was when Ash noticed that the gun post above the second tier opposite was deserted. There were two guards on the floor, as usual, but no one up above. Surely Kieran could take two guards, if they were close together, and didn't get a lucky shot.
Then the two of them could climb the wall up to the barred skylights, and hang there looking like idiots.