"What, are you supposed to be Tama now?"
Duyam Sona had blocked their path to their table, and was doing a fairly convincing disdainful sneer. Kieran handed off his tray to Ash, just in case, but didn't bother replying. He just cocked an eyebrow and waited.
"You're a disgrace to your tribe, if you even have one."
"Tama'ankan," Kieran clarified mildly. "Sure I'm a bastard, but I knew my mother well enough. How about you? Let me guess -- Chamka?"
"Tallgrass," said Sona haughtily.
"Figures. Think you're better than the rest of us 'cause you got to keep your ranges, then you come into town begging for handouts the first time the rains fail. Well, in your case, I guess you got a job -- will you fucking quit?" This last because he had to block a halfhearted punch. "Kaiyo bastard."
"You're the one who's crazy. Walking around looking like that. You know what happens when you cross the line around here?"
"Tell me."
"Vivisection."
"Fun."
"Yeah, laugh it off, crowbait. You'll be screaming soon enough. And then your bumboy's anybody's meat."
It actually required a bit of effort not to react to that. He turned to Ash. "Is that what people were saying when they were talking shit to you?"
"Um. Pretty much." Ash was blushing again. He'd have to learn to control that sometime soon.
"You care if they think it's true?"
"Not really."
"Hey, Tama, I'm talking to you!" Sona gave him a shove.
Kieran considered his options. It would be easy enough to wreck Sona's day, but the food was getting cold. "All right. You're talking to me. Why?"
"Because." That seemed to stump him a bit. "I'm just warning you."
"I appreciate it," said Kieran solemnly.
With a snarl, Sona turned on his heel and stalked back to his breakfast.
Ash made an exasperated noise as they sat down to their own ugly food. "What is up with that guy?"
"You're the empath. You tell me."
"I can't. I mean, you did kill his brother, you admit it, so of course --"
"They didn't like each other. It's not like it hurt him personally."
"Yeah, but family is family, right?"
"I wouldn't know."
"Oh. Well, I don't have anybody but my aunt, but if someone murdered her and I let it slide, I'd hate myself forever."
"You like her?"
"Kieran, it doesn't matter. I mean, yes, I do, but even if I didn't -- this is a tangent. What I'm saying is, he should feel like it's his duty to take revenge on you. What I can't f igure out is why he doesn't just do it, like you said the other day. The way he keeps baiting you, it's like he wants something else. I can't figure it out."
Kieran shrugged. "Me neither. Eat your slop."
Ash stirred his oatmeal, watched the congealing mess plop off his spoon a few times. "Maybe I should talk to him."
"You?" But after a moment's thought, Kieran realized it might not be such a bad idea. "Okay. Do it."
So when they were all turned out to pasture, Kieran stayed by the wall and Ash wandered over by Sona alone. Kieran was surprised to see that Ash was the taller of the two, by two or three inches. The pale boy acted so small, Kieran had gotten into the habit of thinking of him as little. The truth was that he was taller than most of the others in the yard. Not the thinnest, either; Kieran himself probably looked about that skinny with his clothes on. It was Ash's whiteness that made him look so fragile, and the little-kid freckles, and the glasses. He was the epitome of the kid the whole neighborhood picked on. Kieran wondered if he'd keep that wimpy look all his life -- then reminded himself that neither of them were likely to live long enough for it to matter.
Ash didn't seem to be having any trouble handling Duyam Sona. They were just talking. Sona looked angry, but then he always did. He was making tight, sharp gestures with his hands. Ash had his head tilted like a kitten. That's it, kid. Be cute and harmless, and no one will have the heart to --
Wrong. Just as that thought went through Kieran's head, Sona snatched the spectacles off Ash's face, threw them down, and stepped on them.
Then he looked straight at Kieran.
"Fine." Kieran pushed himself away from the wall. "It's your funeral."
Sona gave a sickly smile, watching Kieran come at him. With a deliberate, contemptuous gesture, he lashed out and backhanded Ash across the face, knocking the white boy sprawling.
The world abruptly shook itself into a new focus; a cold, tense state where the colors were washed out and the air tasted of metal. Sona ceased to be a person, became an offending object which must be broken down until it vanished. Options for achieving this flashed through Kieran's head with tight clarity. All the mobile obstacles in the yard scattered out of his path.
All but one. One of them got in front of him, mouthing noises at him. He grabbed its head to throw it aside. But the skin of his palm remembered this texture, and it yanked perspective back into him with a painful shock. For the space of one breath he was holding himself together on the verge of going feral, shredding everyone within reach.
Then he smoothed down Ash's hair where he'd disarranged it, and Ash's words began to be a language he could understand.
"-- what he wants, you can see that, I know you can, just walk away Kieran please you don't have to prove anything --"
"Hush," Kieran said, and Ash did. The relief in the sagging of those narrow shoulders, in the dimming of those sky-colored eyes, made Kieran ashamed. He felt sick to his stomach. He wasn't shaking, but a vibration in his nerves told him he might begin any minute now. Sona, beyond Ash's blocking body, was visibly trembling; awkward, as if he'd forgotten his lines. All the faces on the periphery were round-eyed, skittish like horses. Only Ash wasn't afraid. Why wasn't he? Kieran almost hadn't recognized him -- and he shouldn't have assumed that he was immune, whether recognized or not.
"I figured it out," Ash said. "What he wants. He wants to die, Kieran."
Kieran tested his voice. It came out too deep, but smooth and calm. "I gathered that."
"No, I mean it's a plan. He wants you to kill him." His voice dropped to a whisper. "For which the guards will probably shoot you."
"Clever," Kieran said. He raised his voice so Sona could hear. "But you're going to have to wait until I'm suicidal too. Until then, every time you lay a finger on Ash, I will break that finger. My guess is the Watch don't mind what shape your hands are in."
Sona's face contorted. He gave an incoherent bellow and rushed at Kieran, swinging wild, all pretense at skill gone. Kieran stepped out of his path and tripped him.
"Give it up, Sona. You're making us all tired."
"Just wait." Sona got as far as his knees and stayed there, head hanging, fists clenched in his lap. "You wait. You may think you're used to shame, but you don't know anything yet."
"Coward." Kieran picked up the remains of Ash's glasses. They were ruined, both lenses smashed, wire frame twisted. He dropped the useless thing in front of Sona. "Maybe you can slit your wrists with the pieces. Inayaju. You make me sick. Remember to cut up, not across." Then he took Ash's arm and hauled him away.
"That was cruel," Ash said when they were out of earshot. "Kieran, that was outright cruel."
Kieran spat on the ground. "You don't understand. He's not just a coward, he's a blasphemer. A hypocrite. See, if all he wanted was to commit suicide, there are plenty of ways around here. Spoon knife. Pants noose. Hell, you can bang your head against the wall if you get really desperate. But that's not good enough for him. He thinks he's a heriye, a noble knight, he wants to go down in battle. 'Cause we Iavaians have more Hells than you folks do, and suicides go to the basement." He spat again. "Inayaju kamon."
"What's that mean?"
"I don't know how to translate it. Crybaby, sniveler. Somebody who spends all his time bitching about his problems instead of solving them. What about you, aren't you pissed? He broke your glasses."
"I'm just a little nearsighted. It's not as if I'll need to read street signs or anything. I can see well enough not to run into walls."
Kieran noticed a smear of blood on Ash's lip. Without thinking, he reached out and wiped it away with his thumb. He immediately regretted the gesture -- because of how it had probably looked to everyone else, and because Ash's sharp inhalation and dilated eyes were going to stick in his mind and bother him when he was trying to sleep.
He glanced at Sona, to remind himself he was angry. "He's not forgiven."
"I just think, if we let ourselves get worked up, we'll end up like that --" Ash aimed a thumb in Sona's direction -- "sooner than if we keep our heads."
"You might be right." Kieran turned abruptly away from Sona's kneeling form, suddenly worried that anguish might be contagious. "Well, that was embarrassing. Let's pretend it never happened."
"Let's pretend we're fishing in Helermont Bay, while we're at it." Ash returned with a lopsided grin.
--==*==--
"Kieran Trevarde." The cell unlocked with a clank. "Get your ass out here."
"I'm getting to really hate hearing my last name," Kieran grumbled as he obeyed. He glanced back to see Ash looking apprehensive, gnawing his lip. Kieran gave him a bitter smile on the way out.
This time, as he was marched to the tunnel, he examined the features of the place as he passed them. The walls were clad in glazed brick to about eight feet up, but above that was bare stone, rough enough to climb, at least if you were a halfway decent climber. If he could get on top of the door-opening mechanism... then he'd be shot, and if he found some way to avoid that, the skylights had bars on them.
Well, there were two ways to look at that thought. It might be better to consider it one out of three obstacles potentially defeated. Two out of four if he counted the fact that these two guards with their guns were standing way too close to him. He could deal with them any time he wanted.
It was the same tunnel they took him into, the same stairs up, so Kieran was disoriented when they came to a turning that hadn't been there before. The hall should've gone straight to the door of Warren's little white room. Instead, it curved right, bringing them to a short cross-passage with a door at one end.
Again Kieran was made to wait until the door opened. Again it was the same Watchman who let him in, and again Warren was waiting. But this was a different room, longer, with two metal chairs bolted to the floor facing each other. One chair was empty; the other was full of Sona's fat blond friend, bound to his seat with leather straps. He looked mostly out of it, not red-faced now but grayish. The empty chair had straps as well. He really didn't like the look of this.
"Sit," Warren ordered.
"Make me," said Kieran.
Warren glared at him, just long enough that he began to wonder whether the officer had any means to force him into that unpleasant-looking chair.
Then the pain came.
Formless, sourceless, engulfing, thought-killing, it came inside all his defenses and turned him in an instant from rational being to suffering animal. It could not be fought, ignored, or endured. When it ended, he was lying in a puddle of vomit, too weak to even wipe his face.
His escort lifted him into the chair and strapped him in.
"Now," Warren said in that hideously reasonable tone he used. "We wish to study your threnodic Talent. The man before you is weak, close to death. Kill him."
Kieran considered several replies, discarding the ones most likely to cause Warren to torture him again. What he eventually said -- mush-mouthed with the pain's aftereffects -- was, "It doesn't work like that."
"Don't presume to educate me, Mr. Trevarde. You will remain in this room until that man is dead. Should you choose to try to outwait us, you will become very thirsty." He gestured, presumably to his minion, and went out of Kieran's field of vision. A moment later, the door slammed.
Kieran spent some time taking leisurely stock of his situation. Testing his bonds. They were solid, of course. Then he tried talking to Blondie, but the man was out cold. For a while he debated with himself whether to try offing the guy. On the one hand, the man was doomed. If Kieran refused or failed, the Watch would find another use for him. Vivisection, for instance, unless that was a product of Sona's diseased imagination. So it wasn't like there was a moral issue. On the other hand, Kieran didn't feel particularly cooperative after the nasty zapping he'd gotten. And he resented having to make this decision at all. The whole thing was sordid and idiotic and got him nothing either way, except maybe a few minutes of semi-privacy, if he could ignore the fact that Warren was probably watching him by some magical means right now.
So Kieran settled down in the chair as far as the straps would allow, let his head roll back, and took a nap.
Quiet. So quiet up here, bright and warm, on the mesa's top. Small, harsh plants grew in cracks and hollows, and he was the first person ever to see them. The sky was pale, the sun white, the air still. He could see all the way to the mountains along the western horizon, a gray unevenness along the bottom of the sky, pretending to be a cloud bank. All around him the broken land of the desert unrolled.
Someone said his name. He turned around. At the mesa's center stood Ash Trine made perfect; he glowed copper and ivory, his eyes were gas flames, his smile of welcome was brighter than the sun. Kieran's heart constricted with a delicious pain of longing, a righteous fire of resentment at his blood's lusting boil, his teeth ground together. He raised his weapon and pulled the trigger -- the sound slowed and rolling like a distant machine growling -- and the arc of Ash's body flying backwards was beauty in the raw, better than sex.
Ash was trying to speak, blood bubbling from his lips in lieu of words. Kieran bent to kiss him, swallowing the blood from his mouth. In it he tasted the words Ash had been trying to say.
He woke suddenly and without transition. He could still taste the blood; for a moment, he was unsure which was the dream and which was real. Then reason started its destroying engine and began to chop his dream apart. That was outright sick, he told himself. Also largely meaningless. And could you possibly have picked a weirder place to fall asleep?
He still smelled of vomit. The man in the other chair was still out cold. He had no way to judge how long it had been. But he was very thirsty.
Enough, he decided. He'd asserted that he wouldn't obey out of simple fear. Now it was time to do what he had to. At least the poor son of a bitch didn't have to be awake to feel himself being tipped over the edge.
Using his Talent never felt like something he did with his mind. It seemed, instead, as if a new kind of hand grew out of him, pulling from his chest, and reached into the other man as into a pool of water. What this hand actually did was hard for him to explain, even to himself. Perhaps everyone carried with them the seed of their own death, perhaps what this hand touched was the death that was already there, merely bringing it to the surface. Or perhaps he found the shortest path of possibility, and steered his victim's time onto it. In this case, the man was so close to dying, so riddled with infection and bloated with internal bleeding, that Kieran barely had to brush him with the invisible hand; the man gave a long sigh, as if relieved, and it was over.
Despite the humiliating circumstances, he felt a sense of satisfaction. A clean job, more a mercy killing than a murder, no pain, no complications. Hangman's pride.
"He's dead," said Kieran loudly. "Can I go now?"
After a short wait he heard the door open, heard two sets of footsteps. Smelled one man's sweat and another's dusty breath. Felt hands wrap around his head from behind, and had just time to think oh shit before they both came in at once.
--==*==--
He woke partway when he hit the floor; just enough to guess by smell and sound that it was the floor of his cell. Not enough to move, though he'd been thrown down in a sort of awkward position. The floor was wonderfully cool, but not very clean. He hoped to God they'd leave him alone until he felt better.
He heard a small gasp, and a choking sound. Hands shoved at him, got under his shoulder and neck, lifting him onto someone's knees; arms around him, pressing his face into a bony chest that was shaking with hoarse, uneven breaths.
Kieran swallowed spit until he was no longer too dry to talk. Then he said, very carefully, "Who are you, and why are you hugging my head?"
The hands shifted, cradling the back of his skull so he could look up. The light was dim and yellow, but he could make out a diamond-pale eye, recurved lips, a pointed chin speckled with metallic stubble. Ash. Of course. He was a shade alarmed at the thickness of the fog in his head, now that he'd realized it was there. He'd thought, for a moment, that he was back in Tiyamo.
"Oh," he croaked. "This is that prison."
"I thought they'd killed you," Ash whispered. "I thought you were never coming back."
"No such fucking luck."
Ash took in a long, shuddering breath, let it out smoothly; composing himself. He set Kieran's head gently on the floor. Some noises later, he returned with a dripping rag. "What did they do to make you throw up? Poison you? Did they hit you in the stomach?"
"Nuh-uh. Kinda... pain zaps. Brain torture thing." Caught between wanting to be cleaned up, and hating the cold and wet of the cloth, he endured it until he felt he was no longer outright filthy, then tried to turn his head away. "Wanna sleep now."
"I can't move you. You're too heavy. Can you help?"
"I'll stay here." Kieran let his eyes close.
He meant the floor. But when his head was lifted and then lowered to be pillowed on Ash's lap, he found he didn't mind it much. It was pretty comforting, actually. He felt as if he were made of soft lead, sagging to conform to the surface beneath. He was nearly asleep when his human pillow shifted slightly; shortly thereafter a blanket settled over him. He realized he'd been shivering only when the shivering stopped.
--==*==--
Noises came and went. Sometimes he was moved a bit, and this annoyed him, but on no account was he going to bother waking up. Sleep was too safe and precious; even the dry sleep of empty, looping dreams that was the only kind he could get inside the prison wards.
But there came a time when he could no longer cling to sleep. The world was clamoring for his attention. Aches everywhere: head, throat, joints, muscles, stomach. Coughing sometimes. Light. Opening his gummy eyes, he saw the underside of Ash's chin, and the grayness of daylight. It took some effort to make a noise. When he managed it, Ash looked down and smiled with such proprietary gentleness that Kieran was immediately embarrassed.
"Ag," said Kieran. He tried again. "Hat." He choked on dryness and was taken over by a long, painful coughing session. Ash's hands were on him the whole time, smoothing back his hair, steadying his shoulders until it was over.
"Can you move now?"
As an answer, Kieran sought for and found his limbs, dragged an aching arm across the floor.
"Good. I'm going to sit you up now. Let's try to get you onto your bed."
That didn't sound like fun, but neither did staying on the floor -- the gritty stone that had seemed so comfortable before was now a literal pain in the ass. Not sure if he was up to the effort, Kieran resolved to do his damnedest anyway, because he remembered that when he'd gone through that gauntlet of examinations -- what was it, not even a week ago? -- he'd weighed in at a hundred and ninety pounds, and he was pretty sure Ash had never lifted anything bigger than a dictionary in his life.
Ash surprised him, though. The kid might not have been strong, but he was methodical, and not afraid to use what little strength he had. When Kieran proved unable to do much more than tremble and wobble, Ash uncomplainingly did the whole job himself, though it was awkward. Kieran indicated gratitude by a flopping gesture of his hand that probably didn't convey anything.
Ash brought him a cup of water. Kieran had to concentrate his full attention on simply holding his head up, but it was worth it; though the cup knocked against his teeth with his trembling, it was as good as a clear stream after a week in the desert. Which implied that he was badly dehydrated.
"More," was his first coherent word of the day.
Ash poured water down Kieran's gullet until he sloshed, then made him eat two slices of cold toast, clammy with congealed raspberry jam. "The guard got it for me," Ash explained to Kieran's questioning look. "I think it was his own breakfast. I don't think they hate you as much as they pretend to."
Kieran rolled his head, as much of a gesture of negation as he could manage. He knew that if a guard had shared his breakfast, it wasn't for Kieran's sake, but for Ash's. There was just something about those round blue eyes that made authority figures go protective. His theatrical selflessness might have had something to do with it as well. "Did you sit there all night?"
"Um. Well. Yeah. Don't worry about it. It's not like sleep's in short supply around here."
"The floor would've been fine."
Ash said nothing.
"Well. Anyway. I guess... thank you."
"You should rest."
"I did. I will. You missed breakfast so you could keep being my pillow, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Did you get any food?"
"No."
"Martyr."
"Maybe I just didn't want to go out there alone."
Kieran made an attempt at a laugh. "Nah. I think I'm getting the hang of you. You're like the nice little boy in those improving books. The one who's so kind and good that nothing bad ever happens to him. Was life really like that for you before?"
"Maybe. I guess. God watches over fools and children, and like that."
"Bullshit. Fools and children get jacked all the time."
"Well, I'm not going to get into philosophy with someone who can't talk with his eyes open. You get some rest. I've got work to do."
This provided a reason for Kieran to unstick his eyelids. "Work?"
Ash displayed a thin book with blue card covers. "Our friendly guard came through yesterday while you were in Testing. A whole empty account book and a brand new pencil. But he still won't tell me his name." Ash flipped the book open and offered it. "I've already started. See?"
Kieran squinted at the gibberish on the page; his first reaction was that he was even sicker than he'd thought. A closer look confirmed that the first word was, indeed, 'QNMAUUP,' and it just got worse from there. "What the hell is that? Some kind of code?"
"Cypher. Not that there's anything in here they don't already know, but I like the idea of the headache they'll get trying to read it."
"They teach that at rebel school?"
"I guess you could say that."
"So how am I supposed to read it when you're not around to decode it for me?"
Ash turned pages, the motion of his hands crisp and businesslike. "Here, I wrote the square on the first page. You encrypt the first letter using the line beside the first letter of the key, then move to the line beside the second, and so forth. Just try to avoid touching the letters as you go through it, or the smudged places will give away the key."
"Which is?"
"Something you said, actually. Struck me as appropriate. Loser unity."
"Perfect." Kieran's laugh turned into coughing. "Okay, I feel like hell. Go do your code thing and let me sleep."
"Right. Say -- you didn't go to school, did you?"
"You're joking. I'm Iavaian. They don't let us into school. Why?"
"I was just wondering how you learned to read."
"Taught myself. Had plenty of free time. Assassin's not a full-time job, you know; wouldn't be much of anybody left if it was. Now for fuck's sake let me sleep."
"Sorry."
Kieran thought for a few moments that all this conversation had made him too alert to go back to sleep, despite how rotten he felt. Then his thoughts began to wander, and he emerged from one long, confusing concept to realize it had been a dream. He drifted easily under the surface of dozing, lulled by the scratching of his cellmate's pencil. It was an oddly pleasant sound.
Ash spent the next several days bringing his encrypted record up to date. There was, after all, very little else to do. He was allowed to skip dinner and exercise the first day in order to take care of his cellmate, and though he got a little hungry he preferred hunger to braving the yard alone. Someone would be sure to get nasty if Kieran wasn't around. So his motives weren't as altruistic as Kieran seemed to believe. Not completely, anyway. It was sweet, in a sick way, to have the gorgeous Iavaian depending on him -- not that he deluded himself that Kieran was enjoying the attention.
Kieran recovered from his exhaustion with surprising speed. The next morning he was nearly himself again; a bit wobbly and drawn, but able to hold his head up and greet the world with his usual cynical half-smile. He was able to put on an appearance of strength during meals and yard times, but these efforts left him shaking, and for several more days he spent the rest of his time in bed. He made no reference to Ash's tearful state the night the guards had thrown his unconscious body on the floor, and Ash was thankful for that. However often Ash might daydream about the hypothetical rewards of his loyalty, he knew a daydream from reality, and in reality Kieran seemed to genuinely hate emotional displays of any kind.
When pressed, Kieran had given a dry account of his six-hour adventure in Testing. It conveyed no useable data, but apparently Kieran saw Ash's research as a fidget to pass the time. There was no sense in being offended at this; it was probably the truth.
Nevertheless, as a device against boredom it succeeded, so Ash gave it his whole attention during the week or so it took for Kieran to return to full health. Every day he talked to a few people, and added a few lines to his account. He quizzed inmates and chatted with guards. When they were taken in small batches to bathe and be shaved, the prison barber turned out to be a font of useful knowledge, and once Ash got him talking the man went on endlessly about Talents he'd seen over the years. Ash had divided the book, front and back; recorded numerical data in the front, flipped it over and wrote his own observations in the back -- along with the things he had to get out of his head by dumping them onto paper, encrypted with a different key. He had not quite reached the point where he could encrypt his words without the square of letters on the front page, but he was close, sometimes going several words at once without having to look.
Sometimes he read his results to Kieran, and speculated about what they meant. There were a lot of pyros who'd been there six months or more, but their numbers were slowly decreasing. The new arrivals were largely marginal Talents like Ash's own, the kind that could be missed completely if they manifested after the state-mandated Survey at the age of fourteen. What this implied was, on one level, obvious -- that the Watch had finished looking at fire talents and switched focus -- and on another opaque. Why had they felt the need to build this place at all? What was it they had failed to understand without it?
Kieran was the only ghoul-witch they had. Possibly the only one alive. Apocryphal accounts told that possessors of this Talent rarely survived its first manifestation.
That, according to Kieran, was because the Watch killed them. Apparently his tribe, the Tama, had produced several ghoul-witches and a great number of storm-callers, and that was one reason the tribe was nearly extinct now. In the first years of the Annexation, the Commonwealth had slaughtered Tama on sight, lest their dangerous Talents prove a military problem later. This was just hearsay, though; no records remained of that time except the heavily edited versions the government allowed.
Ash doubted that Kieran's rarity was relevant to the purpose of Churchrock, though, because the other Talents were mostly common ones. That irritating Duyam Sona, for instance, was a kinetic. The only serious clue Ash was able to gather was that more than one inmate had been probed for Talents in the plural, or overheard reference to that concept, though none actually possessed more than one. That was interesting, but didn't seem to justify this elaborate facility.
Nor did it inspire any escape plans. But Ash thought it was sweet of Kieran to pretend that escape was possible.
Which is what he was doing the day after their baths, clinging to the bars like a monkey in a zoo, rattling every moving part he could find. "It's a simple lever thing. Really basic. They push that handle down and this bar up here slides. If I jammed a rock or something in there just before they closed it, I bet this strut here would pop right off."
"Leaving us locked in for perpetuity." Ash sighed. "Kieran, please get down. How am I supposed to soft-soap the guards if you keep making them mad?"
"They don't care. I see people climbing on the bars all the time." Nevertheless he hopped down, bending to peer at the lock mechanism. "If I had anything heavier to pick it with -- maybe a spoon handle? No, too fat. The problem is the weight of the bolt."
"The problem is that they're not idiots. We're not going to be able to get out any way anyone's thought of before, because the designers of this place will have thought of it too."
"So we'll get creative. Chin up, kid. We're not like the rest of these poor fuckwits."
"Sure. We're smarter than the average prisoner, right?"
"Right. Hey, you got room in your book for the guard schedules? I notice there's one guy who goes to sleep on the gun post. He was napping yesterday when we went for out baths."
Ash made a sour face, fingers feeling for the scab on his jaw where the prison barber had cut him. "That lummox of a barber is full of fun facts, but he cut hell out of my face. You don't know how lucky you are that you don't have to shave. Maybe I should grow a beard. I'm going to end up looking like a taxidermy experiment otherwise."
"What's wrong with a few scars? You have a problem with looking like me?" Kieran scratched the white slash that divided one of his eyebrows, then smiled to show it was a joke. "At least we get baths. I was afraid we wouldn't."
Ash remembered yesterday's effort to remain calm despite the sight of Kieran naked, and the thought threw him off his stride, but he tried to keep up the bantering tone. "You think if I change my last name they'll let me in the bath before the water's brown?"
"If that worked, we'd all be named 'Aaaaaa.' I'm surprised we get to bathe at all. Water's expensive around here."
"I guess. Anyway, you were saying. The gun post. Was that Sunday?"
"Yeah. Huh. It just occurred to me it's kind of weird that there's no temple service."
Ash gave him a wry look. "Don't tell me you're religious, Kieran."
"That would be funny. But no, it's just that at Tiyamo we had to sit through a sermon every morning, and three hours of it on Sundays. Like they thought it was going to reform us, hearing about all the bloody destruction Dalan visited on the Herenites or whatever. I just think it's weird that there's nothing like that here."
"I didn't really notice. I haven't been to temple since grammar school, myself."
"They let you get away with that up north?"
"Who? The Watch? Not much they can do about it."
"Really? 'Cause in Burn River, if the cops catch you on the street during worship time, they'll for sure make you go to the temple, and probably beat you up a bit first. They see you skipping temple a bunch of times, you're likely to get arrested for moral degeneracy. Or if you're a native they might charge you with demon worship. Which of course there's no way to disprove, so --" He sliced a finger across his neck. "What did you do, stay in all day with the curtains pulled?"
"Kieran, there's three and a half million people in Ladygate, if you count the suburbs. There aren't enough police or Watchmen in the whole Commonwealth to arrest them all. I don't think there are temples enough to hold everyone, if they all decided to go, so it wouldn't make much sense to try to force them. Of course, businesses have to be closed during worship time, you can really catch hell for being open on Sunday morning. At least, if you're too obvious about it. But a lot of places have the door unlocked and the curtains closed, and serve people anyway, kind of unofficially, and the cops mostly let them get away with that." Ash paused, floored by a wave of homesickness. "I wish I'd taken a better look at the city when I got arrested. So I could remember it more clearly. But I couldn't bring myself to believe I wouldn't be coming back."
"When we get out of here you can go anywhere you want. And quit making that face. Every time I try to work on our escape plan, you get this look like you're telling a terminal case he's going to be fine. It doesn't help."
"Sorry." Ash wasted a moment trying to figure out what his face looked like when he did the expression Kieran was complaining about, but gave up. "What do you want me to do?"
"I already said. Take notes on the guard schedules. I'll be lookout."
Ash got out his book and opened it to a blank page. After a few minutes of careful printing, he looked up. "We have to make up names for the guards. They won't tell their real ones. Some kind of regulation. I think it's meant to keep them from getting friendly with us."
"So make up some descriptive nicknames."
He did that for a while. Some time later, another thought occurred to him. "Kieran? What day was it that we had that storm?"
"Huh. I lost track. About a week and a half ago? Day before Sona broke your glasses, I think. You're putting the weather in your book too?"
"I noticed that the gun post opposite was deserted. I need to figure out whether that was the day or the storm."
"Why didn't you tell me then?"
"You were being grouchy."
"Well, next time don't be such a baby. We should talk to someone from the opposite side and see if the post above us was vacant too."
Ash hadn't quite finished writing when the bell rang for dinner. At the sound, his stomach growled. They only got two meals a day, and that just wasn't enough. He thought he might be still growing. Not just taller, but bulking out a bit too. "Hey Kieran," he said as they waited for their tier to be opened. "Do I look any less skinny than I did when I first got here?"
"Probably," Kieran said without looking. "Starchy food. Starchy and greasy. Potatoes and pork. Eugh."
They had to be quiet while being lined up and counted, but Ash picked up the thread when they reached the mess hall. "What's your favorite food?"
"Aw, kid, don't do that to me."
"Come on."
"Rice balls. This lady I used to know, Shou-Shou, she made these rice balls that were so spicy they'd make your eyes melt right out of your head. You take the rice, see, and some peppers and onions and stuff, and whatever meat you've got, and moosh it all together like that, and you fry it --"
"That's not greasy?"
"Not if the oil's hot enough. You use oil, not lard."
"I miss cooking."
"Cooking? You?"
"Well, it's not like I had people to do it for me. Aunt Isobel and I split the chores between us, and cooking was one of my jobs. But I like it. When we're rich and famous I'll make you some of my Yelorrean beef stew. I'm Yelorrean really, you know."
Kieran snagged a lock of Ash's hair. "Naaah."
"Hey, not every redhead is. But my family's from there. They say real Yelorrean beef stew you should be able to stand the spoon in it. Mine, you can plant a flag and lean on it."
"This is a selling point?"
"It's good. It contains no grease. And plenty of pepper. You'd like it. How do you get rice in the desert? Isn't that expensive?"
"They grow it in the highlands, I guess. I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, food comes from the grocer's. Unless you shoot it yourself. Anyway, quit torturing me. You do realize that even if we talk ourselves delusional about good food, what we're really eating is -- what is this, anyway?"
"Casserole, I think. I'm fairly sure this rubbery white business is some kind of noodle. Unless it's tripes."
"Shit. Thanks so much."
"I don't care. I'm starving." Ash shoveled up a mouthful and chewed consideringly. "It's edible. Marginally. You know, for a hard case, you sure are picky about food."
Kieran shrugged. "Never gave a damn about gambling, girls, or liquor, so what else was I going to spend my blood money on? Well, clothes and weapons mostly, but I could afford to eat right. Not a lot of expenses when you're piling up a debt to society the size of mine." Kieran grinned, as if he found the mention of his crimes amusing.
"Oh." A bit embarrassed to have gotten them onto that subject, Ash gave his tray of -- whatever -- his full attention. But even with the sense of having tread on the edge of shaky ground, he felt as calm and happy as when Kieran had let him braid his hair. This was really pleasant, talking for no reason except to make conversation. Not to make plans or test each other's strength, just chatting. Because they were friends, or getting to be.
This, Ash thought, is a little excessive. I'm in the Heaven of Serenity just because he's acting normal around me? A little amiable small talk doesn't make this a best-buddies-forever kind of situation. And it certainly doesn't mean he has the slightest romantic interest in me. Not that I'm sure I'd want him to, under these circumstances, that could be really dodgy. Even an obvious friendship could be dangerous. I really shouldn't be smiling like this.
Despite this reasoning, the feeling persisted, and Ash couldn't bring himself to fight it. It made the food taste better, anyway.
"Hey, Ash." Kieran sounded a bit hesitant, which made Ash's heart beat faster -- until the rest of the sentence turned out to be: "Watch past me and tell me when nobody's looking over here."
"Why?"
"Testing a theory. Here, stack my tray under yours."
"What are you going to do?"
"Probably something idiotic. Is anybody --?"
"Yeah, wait. Okay. Now."
Kieran vanished under the table. After ascertaining that no one seemed to have noticed, Ash bent over his supper to conceal the fact that he was talking. "Kieran, what in the world --?"
"Ignore me," was the reply from the floor.
Ash borrowed one of Kieran's expressions: "Huh."
When the inmates were lined up for yard time, no one pointed out that they were one person short. Ash had thought Kieran's absence would be obvious; he was, after all, possibly the tallest human being Ash had ever seen. Surely someone would notice that there was no big grinning Iavaian sticking up over everybody's heads. But no one commented. The count after the exercise period would show Kieran missing, but for now the line shuffled out as usual.
They're not even paying attention, Ash thought. Is that what he was testing?
And now he was, for the first time, in the yard without Kieran. Without that tall shadow beside him, he felt terribly exposed. He sincerely hoped people had the foresight to realize that this didn't make him fair game. Maybe he shouldn't have declined to identify those who'd said nasty things to him out of Kieran's earshot. A little calculated retribution might have been a good idea after all. Although no one had been really obnoxious since Duyam Sona had broken down. Maybe it had sobered everyone.
Anyway, he had work to do. One of the men who'd been least hostile to Ash's previous questions was enough earlier in the alphabet that Ash thought he might have noticed about the gun post the day of the storm. It took a while to find the fellow; he was sitting down, over in a corner of the fence, obscured behind people's legs. He looked like he was trying to fall asleep and half succeeding. Or maybe, Ash amended when he got closer, the man was trying to wake up and mostly failing.
"Hartnell." Ash squatted next to him. "Hey. Hartnell."
"Um?" Hartnell's eyes opened a slit, then closed again.
"What's the matter with you? Bad morning in Testing?"
"Uh. Yeah."
"Sorry to bug you, then. But I just have a little question."
"S'okay."
"You remember when there was that thunderstorm last week?"
"Uh-huh."
"Did you notice whether there was anyone in the gun post above my tier? Because the one above yours was deserted."
"Oh."
"So did you notice?"
"What?"
"Come on, Hartnell. You're making me nervous. Pay attention."
"Go 'way. I'm fine."
"You don't sound fine. Maybe you should move over into the shade." He tugged Hartnell's arm, but couldn't get him to move.
"Nah. M'okay."
What was wrong with the man? Heatstroke? Food poisoning? Or was this what repeated Surveys would eventually do to everyone? This vague, sleepy stupidity reminded Ash of a girl he'd seen once who'd suffered a botched version of the Excision all female Talents had to undergo. But Ash couldn't think of any reason the Watch would want to Excise a prisoner's Talent; if they were done with him they'd just kill him. The situation was creepy, frankly.
A shadow fell over him. "What're you doing to that poor bastard?"
Ash squinted upward, shading his eyes with his hand, and recognized Sona's bald, bearded friend, Gibner. Oh, this just gets better and better. He aborted a motion to stand, thinking he had a better chance of avoiding a fight if he stayed down here, being harmless. "There's something wrong with him. I think he's sick."
"No shit. They have him out two, three times a week. Must have a real interesting Talent."
"But he's just a Pyro, like half the guys in here. And he was fine yesterday."
Gibner took half a step back. "If he's really sick, you better say goodbye. They don't waste medicine on the likes of us. Where's your sugar daddy?"
"He's not, not that you care. He'll be along shortly. He's not out of the picture, if that's what you're asking, so don't bother picking on me."
The bald man snorted. "He doesn't understand anything, and neither do you. Fighting's just about the only fun we can have around here. But Trevarde's so tough, he throws the whole thing out of balance, the way he knocks people back without even looking. I figure half the guys in this yard would love to stick a knife in him just so things can get back to normal. You can tell him I said that, too."
Ash shook his head. "I know what he'd say." Ash put on a blandly sardonic Kieran-face. "So fight each other. Long as you leave me out of it, I don't give a fuck what you do with your time."
Gibner chuckled in grudging appreciation. "Yeah, that's what he'd say, I bet. But who wants to spit teeth for second place?" The yard noise changed suddenly, and the man pointed at the door with his beard. "Speaking of spitting teeth..."
Ash followed his gaze, and what he saw made him leap to his feet, heart jammed like a rusty machine. Two tan-uniformed prison guards and one white-coated Watchman were hauling Kieran into the yard, half carrying and half dragging him. His face was slicked with blood. They threw him at the ground, and one delivered a parting kick that aborted his first effort to stand.
Not even conscious of who he was shoving, Ash elbowed and thrashed his way through the clustering prisoners. He reached Kieran as the tall Iavaian finally managed to get his feet under him. Trying to be helpful, he grabbed Kieran's arm.
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on his back, tasting blood where his teeth had cut the inside of his cheek.
"Ow," he said mildly.
Kieran swayed over him, unapologetically offering the blood-smeared hand that had bruised Ash's face a moment earlier. "Shit, don't jump me like that. I coulda killed you." He hauled Ash upright, then did a strange little shimmy, as if shaking his bones back into place; rolling his neck and arms, making faces. One of his eyes was in the process of swelling shut, and the lower part of his face was so bloody that it was hard to tell exactly where he was hurt. The hand he hadn't offered looked puffy and awkward. He stood with a slight stoop, listing like a sinking ship.
"My God, Kieran. What did they do to you?"
"They tried to sell me opera tickets. What do you think they did? They beat the living shit out of me. What are you assholes staring at? Do you need your asses kicked too? Because I can provide that."
Ash put a tentative hand to Kieran's shoulder. "Let me help you over to the shady side. You should sit down."
"Quit hovering." Kieran shook him off. "You're making me seasick. Go play somewhere else."
"But -- Kieran, you --"
"Fuck off! Anybody gets within ten feet of me, I'll eat his fucking eyes!" With a vaguely threatening gesture and a vicious scowl, Kieran limped off toward the wall.
"Fine," Ash said to no one. He went to the opposite side of the yard and stood there with his arms crossed, doing his best not to look. Trying especially not to think of how attentive and sympathetic he'd be if Kieran weren't being a macho jerk about it. He understood that it would be foolish of Kieran to show weakness in public, but couldn't he have taken a friendly hand? Or at least not bit Ash's head off for offering?
Gibner made a deliberate detour around the yard just to pass by Ash and say, "Trouble in paradise?"
"I dare you to go make friends with him," Ash returned, and that ended the conversation.
--==*==--
When they were rounded up at the end of yard time, Ash didn't even stand near Kieran, let alone help him walk. Back in the cell, he busied himself with his book. The first couple of times Kieran said his name, he pretended not to hear.
Kieran gave up for a while, washed his face and hands, combed dried blood out of his hair. Then he tried Ash's name again. Getting no response, he threw the comb, bouncing it off Ash's forehead.
"Don't," Ash snapped, sweeping the comb onto the floor.
"Well, quit sulking."
"I'm not sulking. I'm just leaving you alone, like you wanted. So I don't make you sick anymore."
An exasperated sigh. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"Oh, I know. You can't let anybody help you, or somebody might challenge you for the King Shit of the Barnyard title. And then you might have to hit somebody again, which of course you hate to do."
"Oh for -- all right, I'm sorry, already."
"Well, that sounded sincere."
"Don't you want to know what I found out?"
"What, that if you stay behind the guards beat you up? I gathered that from visual evidence."
"No, dumbass, that the guards eat right after we do, and they get their coffee out of the same kettle. If I could get hold of something nasty and drop it in the coffee urn, I could poison them all."
"Too bad your personality's not water-soluble."
"Now look, you --" Kieran paused, then snorted. "Okay, that was funny. But you can stop now. I mean, would you be all sweetness and light after -- no, I bet you would. 'Oh, I might be bleeding internally, but that's not your fault.' Why am I apologizing to you? Do you know how hard it was to just sit there and let them kick me? But I guess that wouldn't be hard for you."
"No," Ash said sourly, "getting picked on kind of comes naturally for me." Then the rest of Kieran's speech penetrated, and he finally looked Kieran in the face. "You think you have internal bleeding?"
"Nah." He pulled up his shirt to examine a series of ovoid bruises on his torso, each the size of the toe of a guard's boot. "I was worried about it for a few minutes there, but it's not swelling." He tried to grin, but it turned into a wince when his split lip began to ooze. "The look on your face is priceless. You can't decide if you want to go 'oh poor baby' or spit on my shadow."
"Sounds about right," Ash admitted.
"You care too much. That's going to wear you out if you keep doing it. So, did you find out about the gun post being empty?"
"I tried to ask Hartnell, but he was sick or something."
"Yeah?"
"Kind of vague and sleepy. He talked, sort of, but it wasn't really what you could call a conversation. Gibner said the Testing people have had Hartnell out two or three times a week. Which struck me kind of odd, because he's been here longer than we have, and he has a really common Talent, so why do they want to examine him more often than they do us?"
"That is weird." Kieran got thoughtful. "Any other symptoms?"
"Not that I noticed."
"Did he seem upset? Scared?"
"No, that was another strange thing. He wasn't at all alarmed by his illness. He seemed pretty happy, actually. Made me wonder if he managed to get hold of some liquor, but he didn't smell of alcohol."
Kieran frowned at the dried blood under his fingernails. "No. He wouldn't."
"What do you mean?"
"Tell you later."
"No, I want to know."
"I won't tell you until I'm sure."
"But --"
"You think you can change my mind?" Kieran looked Ash straight in the eyes, and for just that moment his face was naked of masks; no wry superiority, no intimidation, not even the half-irritable patience with which he endured injuries. He looked like a boy cornered by a man's world, in that instant. Whatever he was refusing to tell Ash, he was scared to death of it. His voice was mild as he went on, "It might not be something I want to get you into. Leave it alone."
Ash didn't answer, because he couldn't breathe. Only when Kieran looked away was he able to draw breath. He let it out wordlessly. Not a single one of the things he wanted to say would have been welcome.
--==*==--
The next day, guards and inmates alike seemed to watch Kieran especially closely. Not surprising, Ash thought, after the stunt he pulled. A few more like that and the best escape plan in the world would fail because everyone would be watching for him to try it. Kieran didn't seem bothered by it, though. It was, Ash was beginning to understand, just the way Kieran operated, shutting out everything he didn't perceive as relevant. He moved through his constricted world like a forgetful man in the middle of a complex task, ignoring anything that might obscure his mental list.
Ash was glad, at this moment, to be excluded. He had some thinking of his own to do, and being ignored was the closest he was going to get to privacy. Time had given him a little perspective on yesterday's events, and now he wanted to know why he was riding an adolescent pendulum between elation and despair where Kieran was concerned. Was it just boredom and confinement exaggerating his feelings? An attraction and a friendship do not necessarily add up to True Love. I had better stop thinking like a moonstruck schoolgirl, or I might begin to act like one, which would get me killed in short order. But how, when every time I look at him I lose the rest of the world?
To say Kieran had a forceful personality was understatement. Not a pleasant personality, but powerful. He had such strength, but it seemed brittle somehow. More flint than steel. Maybe it was the fragility Ash sensed beneath the armor of Kieran's cold confidence that made him so compelling. To be trusted with even the slightest glimpse of that breakable self was the highest honor. To be sent out of that trust was a slap in the face. Kieran was more real than anyone Ash had ever known.
He watched with careful eyes the way Kieran moved, slow and smooth and deliberate. The way he talked, soft and low in his amused drawl, but with a chill in his eyes that warned against taking that quiet for granted. The way he ignored his hurts, never probing his bruises or tonguing his split lip, favoring a pair of sprained fingers automatically but without tenderness.
No wonder he'd been famous as an assassin and highwayman. It had nothing to do with his Talent. He simply had no opinion about pain. Not only did he not pity the suffering of others, he was not interested in his own.
Sick, Ash thought. Very sick, and beautiful, and horribly strong. I hate the people who made the world in which he had to become this thing.
During their exercise periods, Kieran spoke to several people. Ash, told to stay by the wall, heard none of these conversations. He could only watch expressions pass over everyone's faces but Kieran's. The others were variously belligerent, frightened, suspicious, obsequious. Kieran smiled sometimes, or raised one peaked brow to indicate some skepticism or irony, but these couldn't really be called expressions. They were as constructed as his long, slow stride and casual speech. Ash wondered, in retrospect, whether even the cornered look of yesterday had been calculated.
When, in the evening, Kieran would not tell Ash what he'd been talking to people about, Ash wasn't surprised. Hurt and worried, but not surprised at all.
Blue; infinite floating blue. Soaring, wingless, effortless, white-hot, straight up. A feeling of being known, of being crucial to the world, a piece of landscape or type of sky or subtle color without which nothing functioned. Coming home.
Then there was Ash, far below, stuck on the ground and searching for his anger. "I know where it is," Kieran told him, "but I'm not telling." As Ash studied how to change his mind, the first sweet breath of approaching rain took Kieran by the back of the neck and folded him inside out...
Back to the smell of sick-sweat and the taste of bile. Distant, a door noise, a quiet voice: "Sir, he's regained consciousness."
Testing. He was in Testing. He'd refused some order. The pain had given him such visions... what was it they wanted him to do?
He was strapped into that chair again. In the other chair, the one that faced him, that poor bastard Hartnell hunched with bloodshot eyes. There was a smell of vomit and feces around the man, and he was shaking. Shaking and sick as Kieran himself had once been, which was why, Kieran now remembered, the order to kill Hartnell had caused him to demand payment. A useless smartass remark. But he remembered too well what it felt like in there. Hartnell was in opium withdrawal.
"Are you ready to cooperate?" The Colonel's tone hinted that more torture would not be difficult to arrange.
Kieran caught Hartnell's eyes and held them. Hartnell shook his head convulsively, muscles in his jaw writhing. He wanted to live, despite his discomfort, even if only a few minutes more. Kieran could respect that. To Warren, he said, "Hit me."
Maybe he'd hoped that giving the order would cause the Watchman to withhold his power; people didn't like to do as they were told, especially when they thought they were in charge. Warren, however, had his method.
The pain clawed through Kieran's guts, into his eyes and the roots of his teeth, every nerve in his body sending up distress flares at once. He felt his whole flesh go into instant rebellion, and an instant later he was nowhere to be found; absent and flying.
He'd never told anyone about this, about how he sometimes left his body to its fate and went somewhere else. Even Shan hadn't known, though Kieran had done it several times while kicking his tar habit. It was a sort of cowardice, he supposed, but what purpose did it serve to stay and endure? It had happened off and on since he was small, since spending fourteen hours watching his mother die. He couldn't do it on purpose, but when things got bad enough it just occurred. There were places in his life that were blank, such as the missing time between Shan's death and his own capture. In those times, he was someone else, and had nothing to do with Kieran Trevarde's squalid scrabbling for survival.
High above the mesa, so high it was just one more blotch in a scrawled carpet of reds and yellows and green-grays. Moth-eaten lace of stone and sand. Brighter green in streaks where water ran. All of it belonged to him. His house, where he had always lived, his true body, his source. Due west, his heart beat, smoldering in slow rage like a coal-mine fire. Farther, over the mountains, clouds came skimming. Rain coming. A small, hard rain. Tonight, or early tomorrow morning. He longed for it to wash the dust from his soul.
He didn't have to wait. He could go there, ride it down the mountain and across the world. He could go anywhere -- but the vision was breaking up, and he woke to the ache and stink of his mortal flesh.
He supposed he must look like Hartnell now; twins in sweat and shakes and twisted muscles. Warren was no longer in the room. He must have gotten involved in something else, which meant Kieran must have been out for a while. Hartnell was still conscious, though not so wide awake as before. Kieran took the chance to talk to him.
"Another one of those," he said, "and they'll have to give up on me for today. What are they going to do with you?"
"Dunno." Hartnell swallowed and blinked, too dehydrated now for it to do any good. His voice was a sticky rasp. "How come you're... why?"
"Why not?"
Hartnell managed the ghost of a laugh. It was obvious why not. "You'll have to. Sooner or later."
"Yeah."
"It'll hurt."
"Probably."
"More than this?"
"No."
Hartnell let his head hang. Kieran found himself hoping the poor doomed bastard would give up, because another shot of that pain might cause some kind of permanent damage. But he'd already made the decision to let Hartnell decide, to cut Warren and his minions out of the loop, to prove a point. He wasn't going to go back on that. So there was no point anticipating.
Door sound. Footsteps. Hartnell brought his head up, glaring hatred past Kieran at someone behind him. Then his eyes flicked to Kieran's face. He bared his teeth. "Do it. Do it quick."
Kieran was ready. He slammed into Hartnell's chest like a shotgun blast, found the edge and shoved hard. The snap as life's thread broke recoiled back into Kieran with nearly as much force as he'd put out, like bouncing a ball against a wall, and he swallowed it down. That quickly, Hartnell was gone.
"Did you see that?" The assistant sounded excited. "Did you see him catch that recoil?"
"I did indeed." Warren came around to take Kieran's pulse and peer into his eyes. "When the Director arrives, we shall have to see if Mr. Trevarde can reproduce the result. Preferably, next time, without a tedious show of childish defiance."
"Fuck you," said Kieran generally. When Warren and his assistant began the inevitable Survey, Kieran held in mind until the last moment his awareness of Warren's bad breath and the bags under his eyes. It was a tiny revenge, but it made him feel a little better.
--==*==--
They had to carry him back to his cell again, but at least he was awake for it this time, and knew where he was. When they dumped him on the floor, he was coherent enough to catch himself on his hands and knees rather than sprawling on his face. He grasped at Ash's offered hands, climbed up the white boy's clothing, and launched a headlong stumble from there to his cot.
Ash knelt beside him, hand on his arm. "Do you want to talk about it?"
The warm hand on the spasming muscles of Kieran's forearm felt far better than it should have. Knots all over him started relaxing. He watched Ash's face as he told the truth, curious to see the exact moment of rejection: "They had me kill Hartnell. He was just about all in, but he didn't want to go. They zapped me a couple times. Then Hartnell said do it, so I did. Poor stupid son of a bitch."
Ash went still, eyes blank as blue sky, and stayed like that for most of a minute. He didn't look away, though. When he came to life again, it was to say carefully, "I'm surprised that a mercy killing would seem worse to you than this kind of torture."
It was his stubbornness Ash objected to? Not the fact that he'd killed Hartnell in the end? "I don't want to give in too easy. Gets to be a habit."
"What were you going to do, die in his place? Would it have saved him? Spare yourself the pain. It doesn't do any good."
"Sure it does. Warren got so pissed off, he used adjectives."
Ash set his teeth in his lip, pleading wordlessly. Kieran instantly felt like a complete asshole. Master manipulator, this kid, and I don't think he even knows he's doing it.
"It really bugs you, huh?"
Ash nodded.
"Guess if I go down, you're screwed. Pretty much literally."
"That's not it! I just don't like to see you like this. No one likes to see a friend get hurt. We are friends, right?"
Kieran felt a dose of treacherous warmth run through his exhausted body, and knew he had to squash this line of questioning before it went any further. He forced casual heartiness, knowing what a slap in the face it would be. "Sure, we're friends. I got your back. Now get off my blanket." But he couldn't meet Ash's eyes as he said it, and he was too aware of where in the room his cellmate went when he retreated. He could feel Ash's wounded silence; leaning on the bars, not looking.
He reminded himself that he had more important things to think about. He now had the final confirmation of what had been wrong with Hartnell, and incidentally several other inmates, all of them young, thinnish, beardless -- their physical similarity was a clue to how they got the stuff. Kieran was not surprised to find that business going on here, just as it had in Tiyamo.
Kieran knew that he could insert himself into that group easily enough. Though his height and reputation made him less attractive to the type of guard who liked to relieve his boredom that way, he could use his pretty face -- and a few other tricks he knew -- to entice the suppliers to add him to their string of slaves. But it had been a long time. He'd believed he was done selling ass forever, and it wasn't fun to contemplate doing it again. And then there was the question of the tar itself. Could he touch it, possess it, and not use it? He would have to build up an enormous stash, if it was going to do him any good as a poison. Just thinking about it made his stomach clench with desire. It would make this place bearable, being opiated, it would make it easy, he wouldn't have a worry in his head until his day came to die -- which was, of course, the problem. Was he strong enough not to become what he would pretend to be?
He didn't know. He wasn't sure.
Well, there was time to think it through. A stash of poison was not an escape plan. There was work yet to do. That was comforting -- to line up his puzzles and chew through them like a sawmill through a tree. Made him feel like he was doing something more productive than lying in bed listening to his eyelids twitch.
Warren had said 'When the Director arrives.' Someone important was coming here. Security would no doubt be tighter during the visit. Would it be more relaxed afterwards?
Another thought: though he was exhausted, he was less drained than the first time he'd been tortured, almost as if he were building up a tolerance. Was that possible? Or was this a fluke, would he end up weak from it, get sick -- what if he had to rely on Ash for their escape? In fact, even if he himself were in prime condition, Ash would still surely have to do some climbing or running.
"Hey Ash." His voice was thin and dry, but his cellmate rushed to him as if he'd shouted.
"What do you need?"
"You're not going to like it."
"So? Just say it."
Poor idiot. Ash sounded ready to jump off a cliff for him. And after getting barked at and dismissed, too. Kieran wondered if he was one of those pathetic people who just got more loyal the more they were abused, and felt guilty. But it was still amusing to see Ash's bewilderment when Kieran said, "I need you to find out how many push-ups you can do."
Ash blinked at him a few times. Obviously not what he'd expected to hear. "What? You mean --" He pantomimed.
"Yeah."
"Now?"
"Yeah, now."
"Why?"
Kieran grinned. "'Cause you can't dance, it's too wet to plow, and it's a little windy to be stacking chickens."
After a moment's shocked silence, Ash gave a startled laugh. "You what?"
"'Cause I said so."
"Oh, hell, fine," Ash said. He got down on the floor and did a few push-ups. "Sixteen," he grunted when his arms wouldn't lift him.
"Could be worse, I guess. Rest for a minute, then do five more."
"I'm never going to be as strong as you."
"And you'll never be as weak as you were before you met me. Bitching won't change my mind. You know how stubborn I am."
"I know," Ash sighed, "but I also know I'm going to disappoint you."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Kieran was scornful. "You care way too much about stuff that doesn't matter."
"So you said before." Ash shook his arms out and got back down for another five.
--==*==--
When the bell rang for dinner, Kieran made himself stand, though his thigh muscles were twitching in the most irritating way. Ash told him he looked bad, gray, and his own smell nauseated him -- acrid fear-sweat dried and itching -- but he'd be damned if he was going to live like a victim. Anyway, he was starving. He ate everything on his tray, even the canned vegetables in a sauce that tasted like snot.
Outside, the sun's warmth revived him further. He was no longer shaking, just tired. The still, hot air tempted him to sprawl in the shade, as so many others were doing, but he had something yet to do, and he'd decided he wanted this part to be public.
"Hey Ash," he said. "Hit me."
"Sorry?"
"I want you to hit me."
"Hit you? You mean -- pow? Are we faking a fight?"
"Like that would be real convincing. No, I just want to see how you hit."
"Er. Where?"
"Stomach. Won't hurt me. Go ahead."
Ash hesitated; opened his mouth and shut it; shrugged. He fixed his eye on Kieran's midsection. Winding up, he thumped his fist into Kieran's ribs. His knuckles stung a bit, bony as they were, but Kieran doubted it would even bruise. Ash shrugged again. "Bad, I know."
"Wrong in many ways," Kieran agreed. He saw out of the corner of his eye that people were looking at them. Good. "For one thing, you looked too hard at where you were going to hit. But it takes a while to get over that, so in a real fight aim for the face, since you're going to be looking there anyway. For now, let's deal with the fact that you hit like a kid."
"Of course I do," Ash said defensively. "I haven't been in a fight since I was about ten years old. And I lost that one."
"Well, you're not a kid now. Put up your hand. Like this."
Ash did. Kieran gave it a little tap, just enough to set Ash shaking his wrist and wincing.
"Did you see that coming?"
"No. You're a lot faster than I'll ever be."
"Well, you could be faster than this at least." Kieran mimicked the wind-up and swing that Ash had performed. "You waste energy swinging around like that. Not to mention you tell everyone what you're up to. Just throw it straight out. Get your shoulder behind it. Straight out." Kieran demonstrated more slowly.
"Wait. Do it again." Ash's eyes traveled back and forth along Kieran's body as Kieran smacked his hand a couple more times. "Okay. Let me try."
Kieran spread his arms, leaving his torso wide open. Ash looked a bit worried, but shrugged and raised his fists, stepping forward. Then Kieran was knocked back a long step, grunting as the breath was knocked out of him. "God damn, boy," he huffed.
"Good?"
"Shoulda had you hit my hand. Yeah, good. You're a fast learner."
"Thanks." Ash glowed.
"Shove up your sleeve. Let me see your arm."
Ash flushed as Kieran probed his way from wrist to shoulder. Kieran was glad he himself was not prone to blushing; the skin of Ash's arm was too smooth, too soft, starred with tiny freckles and downed with fine coppery hairs, the muscles rounded and not large but definitely present. He let go quickly when he was done.
All he said was, "You're not as skinny as I thought. You're never going to be a bruiser, but it won't be hard to put some more muscle on you."
"That means more push-ups, I suppose."
"All sorts of shit like that. For now let's work on your form." He held up a hand -- then, realizing it was the one with the sprained fingers, hastily switched it for the other one. "Don't worry about hitting hard this time. Just make sure you hit where you're aiming, and concentrate on speed."
"Hey kid," a spectator called out. "What do I gotta do to get lessons too?"
"Fly up and get me a chunk of the moon," Kieran told him shortly.
"Now, that ain't fair," someone else said. "If you're gonna start a little school, oughta be open for everybody."
Kieran speared the speaker with a narrowed glare. "Ash Trine stood by me every second since I got here. Who the fuck are you?"
That engendered some muttering, but no more actual protest. Later in the yard hour, he heard someone sneer the words 'true love' in a mocking tone, but didn't feel like interrupting the lesson just to beat respect into some random asshole. Let them think Ash bit pillow for Kieran's protection. It'd make others less likely to try climbing into his shadow.
When they were returned to their cells, Ash was full of questions. Kieran, tired to stand anymore, flopped down on his cot and answered, "You need to be stronger. That's all. The way things are going, it's possible I'll be weak like this when we get our chance. I might need your help."
"Oh." Ash raked his sweaty hair from his forehead, then flexed his fingers, frowning. "Aren't we pushing it a little hard? My hands hurt."
"If you can still move 'em, you're fine. We can't be sure how much time there is. There's going to be climbing at least, and maybe fighting."
"All right." Ash smiled that sickly smile that said he didn't believe in any escape plan, was only doing this to be agreeable.
That was fine. Kieran didn't need him to believe, as long as he did the work. But he'd probably try harder if he had a reason he could understand. "Work yourself sick, Ash. I don't know how much longer I can protect you."
"You're not giving up, are you? I'm sorry, that sounds like I'm just using you to hide behind -- I'll do what you want, I'll learn to fight and everything. Just... Kieran, tell me you're not going to quit trying. Without you, even if I were as strong as you are, I'd still be in trouble."
"Course I'm not fucking quitting," Kieran snapped. "Can the damn melodrama and grab some floor, stringbean."
Ash flashed a relieved grin before getting down and forcing a few more push-ups.
Lights-out came too early, as always. Kieran had been dozing; the creak of Ash's cot springs woke him. He yawned, twisting his back, hearing his spine pop, then looked to find Ash staring at him again. He considered snapping at the kid for gawking, but figured he'd used up his bossy license for the day. He made idle conversation instead. "How's the book coming? Got the guard schedules down yet?"
"Pretty much. Tomorrow, when we can see, I'll show you what I've called them, so you can understand the lists."
"What I really want to know is which of them get their supper after us. I think it's going to have to be supper."
Ash's expression was hard to see, but his tone was skeptical. "You're still thinking about dosing their coffee."
"Like to know if it would be useful, at least."
"With what, Kieran? What are you going to do, pee in it? Get sick and spit in it? If we had access to anything poisonous..." There was a pause. "You've thought of something."
"Don't worry about it."
"Something dangerous."
"I said leave it alone." The conversation had stopped being idle, and he didn't want it anymore.
"Kieran --"
"You just get me that information, and leave the ugly shit to me, okay? You can't handle it." He rolled to face the wall.
"Kieran," Ash said softly.
Kieran ignored him.
"Kieran, please don't. I don't know what you're planning, but I can tell it scares you. I don't want to think about how bad something would have to be before it could scare you."
Exasperated, Kieran threw his blanket off and glared at his cellmate. "Exactly how the fuck does that matter? I'm not staying here. You help or you don't help, but don't you try to tell me what's too hard for me. If I'm still breathing when it's over --"
He was interrupted by a sharp crash that rattled the panes of the skylights, a flash that printed Ash's crumpled face on his retinas. His first thought was: dammit, crying again, you big baby. Then he remembered something that seemed to fling the prison doors wide open.
"I dreamed this."
Ash was illuminated by another lightning flicker, dragging his hand across his face. "What?" His voice was muffled. "Storms?"
"This one. When Warren zapped me -- it'd take too long to explain. The point is I knew it would hit about now, about this hard, and last about a quarter hour."
"Fascinating," Ash said in a dull tone.
"Damn straight it is. This puts a whole new spin on everything."
"Then you don't have to do the thing that scares you?"
Kieran didn't answer. He watched the lightning through the bars. He pretended he couldn't hear Ash sniffling.
The storm was short and sharp, just as he'd predicted. He didn't think it was a coincidence. Somehow, by dreaming in an unwarded room, he'd actually seen the weather rolling across the world.
There had to be a way to use that.
--==*==--
When the bell woke them, he was sore and stiff, but nowhere near as wrung out as he'd been after his last trip to Testing. That was interesting; he'd only been zapped once that time, whereas he'd got three jolts yesterday and here he was perfectly functional. Maybe you build up a tolerance, he thought. The way you do to poppy.
Which he had to think about. One thing he'd learned, living the life he'd lived: you have to know your limits. Determination by itself was useless. If you didn't have the abilities to back it up you were just going to get yourself in trouble. So he had to be dead certain he had the strength to possess a great fat wad of tar and not taste it. Not even handle it with his fingers, let it seep into his skin. Not argue himself into using just a little to ease the ache of abused muscles, settle a rebellious stomach, calm the dry sting of his dreams. He wasn't sure yet.
He would be sure soon. He had already decided that he could handle what he'd have to do to get it; soon he'd know he could handle having it. When he was sure it was necessary, when it fit together with his other plans.
"Show me the guard schedules," he ordered when they were locked in for the day. "Show me who's who."
Ash, drooping a bit from the morning's kengdan lesson, dragged out his book and opened it to a page of the usual gibberish. "If you want, I can write it plain for you. We'd have to rip out the page after --"
"Just tell me. I'll remember."
"All right. Here's what I have so far..."
But he had only gotten through naming the guards, and hadn't yet begun translating the schedule, when they were interrupted by purposeful footsteps on their tier. This happened every day but Sunday, and sometimes more than once, and usually the guards stopped before reaching them or passed them by. Nevertheless, Kieran's stomach tightened, and he saw that Ash's hands shook a little as he hid the book.
Two tan uniforms appeared. And stopped.
"Ashleigh Trine."
Ash froze like a rabbit. Kieran stood aside to let him get up, but he didn't move.
"Ashleigh Trine. Come on, kid."
In a whisper that cracked to a squeak, Ash said, "I can't."
One of the guards gave a long-suffering sigh and jangled his keys. "Trine, don't make me come in there."
Ash stood, but it was to back up, not to obey. He shook his head slowly, big-eyed. "I can't. I can't. Kieran!"
"Trevarde, why don't you come over here and put your hands through the bars." The guard beckoned his partner forward. "You cuff him. I'll get the kid."
Kieran knew he'd save himself trouble by complying, and he really wasn't in the mood for trouble this morning. But Ash had backed himself to the far wall, and was shivering like he'd shake himself to pieces. Kieran just knew Ash would scream when the guard touched him.
He didn't want to hear that sound.
"Be right there," he told the guard. Then he went to where Ash cowered. The redhead let Kieran take his wrists, even stilled his shaking some, but shrank back when Kieran leaned to speak into his ear. "Hold your head up. Sooner you go, sooner you come back."
"I can't." Ash was breathing in little gasps. Kieran was ashamed for him. "I can't. I can't. I --"
Kieran slapped him across the face.
"Hey!" a guard shouted, and keys clanked. "Dammit!"
The slap had driven a look of shock and hurt into Ash's eyes, but at least they were focusing. Kieran wrapped a hand around the back of his thin white neck, feeling cold sweat beading there. Lips to Ash's ear, he whispered, "You're not here. You're not here. You're somewhere else. Don't come back until you can come back to me. Understand?"
He drew back to see Ash nod in numb bewilderment. Then Kieran's arm was twisted up behind his back and he was clouted across the side of the head; he had to use all his attention to keep from fighting. He could get out of this grip so easily, could take both these guards like a dog killing chickens, but it wasn't time yet.
"What were you whispering about?" demanded the one who had Kieran's arm. "Planning something?"
"Just --" Kieran grunted as his arm was twisted so the bones creaked. "Just doing your job for you."
"Yeah, well, next time you do as you're told. Stupid fucking natives." His legs were kicked out from under him.
Kieran heard the swish as the guard raised his baton, and had a moment to wonder whether Ash was feeling guilty for causing trouble, or too scared to care. Then came the sickeningly familiar sensation of a blow to the head, knocking his vision skewed and making his ears ring. When he felt steady enough to get off the floor, he was alone in the cell.
He wasted half an hour or so being angry. At the guard who'd hit him, naturally. At the institution of Churchrock for creating the situation, and at the whole Theocratic Commonwealth for allowing it. But mostly at Ash for turning chicken like that. It reminded Kieran of situations he preferred not to think about.
Eventually, as it always did, the anger faded. Anger was a waste of energy. It never changed anything.
Making sure there were no guards in the area, he got out Ash's book. Ash had showed him how the code worked, sort of. He'd only half listened, so figuring out how to turn gibberish into words ate up a fair chunk of time. Kieran supposed he wouldn't bother with something this tedious if he'd had anything better to do. He translated the guard schedule into his head, trying to memorize it. Digesting the knowlege that a certain guard who'd been seen with Hartnell was on their tier tomorrow morning.
When he was confident he could remember the schedule, he started flipping pages at random, translating a word here and there to guess the subject of the page. 'Talents.' 'Arrivals.' 'Speculations.' 'Syyakwt.'
Kieran retried that last one several times, thinking he'd messed up, but he kept getting the same garbage. The page was densely packed with prose; not a list or a series of notes. It was encrypted with a different key.
Anger resurged in Kieran's gut, hotter than before. Ash was keeping secrets from him. How dare he? That sneaky little fuck! After everything Kieran had done for him! Well, it wouldn't stay secret long. Kieran would shake it out of him --
He flashed on a picture of himself grabbing, looming, threatening, and Ash cringing, that fear in his eyes not for guards or tests but for Kieran alone. Kieran's stomach instantly knotted. Slapping Ash's face to snap him out of a panic was one thing. Venting anger on him, though, raising a fist to him, leaving bruises on that pale soft skin -- Never. Never.
So he'd figure the code out himself. Ash would use some word as a key, some word that meant something to him personally. Maybe something Kieran would never guess, the name of his childhood dog or something, but he'd used 'loser unity' for the rest of it, so maybe it would be something equally topical. Something... he frowned as he groped after the concept... something that felt secret. He wouldn't use something that would enforce the feeling of being imprisoned, so it wouldn't be a simple I-spy clue like 'bars' or 'guards'. Something that reminded him of freedom.
Going faster and faster as he got used to using the letter square, Kieran tried the words that came to his mind when he thought of freedom, reasoning that the same thoughts would occur to Ash. 'Sky' and 'home' didn't work. 'Freedom' and 'out' and 'death' and 'life' didn't work.
'Storm' worked. Then stopped working. Kieran chewed his lip for a moment, thinking back along the days and nights to where 'storm' came to mind, then bent to the page again.
The key was 'storm green'.
I'm going crazy, the text read. I have to write this down to get it out of my head. Or try at least. He's driving me insane. Sometimes I think I'll scream if he comes near me; sometimes I think I'll explode if I don't touch him. He scares me senseless, and I want him more than I want to keep breathing. He doesn't like me at all, though. I think he hates me for being weak. He could never respect me, let alone love me. I never imagined anyone could be so beautiful or so broken. Last night I sat up watching him sleep until dawn...
...How could hands that have killed be so gentle? Maybe I was wrong about his opinion of me. Could he be so kind to someone he holds in contempt?...
...It's ridiculous of me to develop a crush and nurse it in my little diary, it's absolutely ridiculous. This is a prison, for god's sake. I'm absurdly lucky that I'm still alive, and the fact that I haven't been beaten or raped is beyond belief. I have no right to borrow pain...
...Those eyes. Those incredible eyes. I fall into them, they tear me apart. And oh his razor smile, his earthquake voice, his starless night, his terrible strength of soul, perfect proof against the arrogance of my pity...
...How does anyone survive this? I would walk a hundred miles to make him look at me, I'd bleed out for a smile, every time he touches me I have to think of snow. If the Watch take the time to decrypt this, they'll all die of disgust I'm sure. Yes, you bastards, I'm a disgusting deviant, get your hands out of your pants. Heh. Let me describe, imaginary reader, what I would do if he'd let me...
Footsteps in the hall. Kieran snapped the book shut and jammed it into its hiding place behind the mattress.
The guards let Ash into the cell and left. Ash stood where they'd put him, staring at nothing. He wasn't crying this time. His eyes were circles of blue paper, pasted on slightly wrong.
Kieran just sat there on the edge of the bed for a while, looking at him. Thinking: You rat. You rat bastard. How dare you fall in lust with my face when you don't have clue one what's going on behind it! But as Ash kept staring, unmoving, Kieran's anger slipped away. It was spooky, the way he looked. Shut off, like an engine in the repair yard. The way he breathed long, shallow breaths, as if sleeping, gaze fixed on something past the back wall, deep inside the mountain.
Standing, Kieran walked into Ash's line of sight. Ash's eyes tracked him, but blankly. Had Warren and his students broken something in the boy's head? Turned him into a permanent idiot?
"Ash. Hey." His voice was unacceptably hoarse. He swallowed and tried again. "Ashleigh. You in there? Come on, kid, you're scaring me."
Ash blinked several times, slowly. Slowly, awareness came into his stare. Slowly, by stages, the porcelain mask of his face crumpled, melting to helpless anguish.
He let out a choking gasp, grabbed two handfuls of Kieran's shirt and buried his face in it, bruising Kieran's collarbone with his forehead. Then he just clung there. Not crying. Just hiding.
"Hey." Kieran took Ash's shoulders and pushed gently, but without effect. It would apparently take some force to pry Ash off his shirt, and applying it didn't seem like a real good idea at the moment. "You're fucking scaring me, Ash. Say something."
Ash's voice was a dry whisper. "You said you'd keep me sane. Now would be a good time."
"Okay. Okay." Kieran wrapped his arms around Ash's tense shoulders; awkward at first as if reading instructions from a book, until fury at helplessness -- Ash's and his own -- made his grip tighten convulsively. He was thinking it might be a little late for the sanity thing. He bent his face to Ash's neck, getting a mouthful of hair when he spoke. "I've got you. I have you now."
"Tighter," Ash gasped. "Squeeze me so small I disappear."
Kieran obediently crushed Ash even more closely. Ash's clutching hands pulled his shirt all askew. It was hard to breathe. Ash was strung so tight he was vibrating, drenched with cold sweat. It wasn't right that he should feel so very good in Kieran's arms. It was sick to enjoy this. It was wrong to let Ash's frantic heartbeat shake him this way.
It was also impossible to change. This pale, needing creature huddled against his chest was a thing like a new addiction, the first dose that awakened a craving, and Kieran had always been weak on that front.
They leaned into each other for what felt like hours, long enough for Kieran's back to cramp and his legs to start trembling. He had to swallow several times before he could speak. "Let's sit down," he offered.
Ash didn't let go or raise his head, even though it made moving less than graceful. On the bunk, he curled against Kieran's side, fists still knotted in Kieran's shirt. Kieran wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, smoothed his dirty hair. He couldn't forget what Ash had written about the gentleness of his hands, and it made him self-conscious, far more careful than he might otherwise have been about enfolding Ash's shivering body in his arms. He rested his cheek against the top of Ash's head; caught himself about to plant a kiss on Ash's brow, which would have been a bad idea even if Ash weren't playing at being in love with him. He whispered soothing nothings -- whispered nursery rhymes in Iavaian, since he couldn't think of anything coherent to say. Gradually, the tension in Ash's body began to abate, until all at once he slid down to rest his head on Kieran's thigh, and Kieran wondered if he'd fainted.
He hadn't. "I didn't cry," he said dully.
"I noticed."
"I'm not okay, though."
"Well, no. We're not going to be, while we're here."
This made Ash open his eyes, but he didn't look up. Kieran watched him frown and chew his lip in profile.
"The trick to staying sane," Kieran went on, "is to accept the pain. Not the thing that caused it, but the pain itself. You just say, fine, this fucked me up. What do I have left to work with? Don't run from it, Ashes. That never helps."
After a long time thinking, during which expressions flickered across his face like shadows, Ash rolled his head to look up at Kieran. "Ashes?"
"Oh. Sorry."
"No. I like it." He went back to staring across the cell. "It's descriptive."
"Thought you didn't like descriptive nicknames."
"I like this one. That's what I have left, you see. I'm a burned-out house."
"What did they do to you?"
"I don't know. I wasn't there." Ash lifted his hand and flexed it before his eyes. "Even when they were in my head I wasn't paying attention. I was spread out all over. More in their heads than mine. And when I came back home, I found my house burned to the ground. And all my stuff is gone."
"I know the feeling. But you've got the things you need. You know who you are, and who I am, and what we have to do."
"What we have to do..."
"We have to leave. And I know how."
This made Ash sit up and fix his faded blue stare on Kieran's eyes. What he was looking for, Kieran didn't know, but not finding it seemed to make him tired. He put his forehead down on Kieran's shoulder. "You won't tell me what you're going to do."
"No."
"Why?"
Kieran smiled bitterly. "You might talk me out of it."
"Then maybe I should."
"No. Trust me, I can handle it. I'm good at getting over things. I haven't thought about Shan for weeks..." He sucked in a breath, horrified at himself. At the things that rolled steaming and shrieking through his head at the sound of that name, at his own ability to have set them aside.
He'd forgotten the scar that cut his eyebrow. The sound and smell and hot wet slap and sting of a large-caliber bullet demolishing his lover's head not twenty inches from his face. He had a scar from a piece of his lover's skull, and here he was cuddling with another blue-eyed white boy as if Shan could be replaced --
But the shudder that went through him was a solitary twitch, not the beginning of a shaking fit. That's not how it is, he said to himself. Shan was my friend, and I miss him, but he never needed me like this. I offered Ash my help, and now I have to follow through.
"Let it slide," he said at last. "All you have to do for the next couple hours is breathe. I'll stay here if you want, but, uh, your head's kind of on a bony place."
Ash hauled himself away. He lay down, pillowing his head on his arms. "I'll be okay. It's enough to know you're near."
"Guaranteed," Kieran said with a nod to the bars, getting the ghost of a smile for it. Released from the role of comforter -- and its attendant sneaking temptations -- he got up and started stretching out. "I'll try not to make too much noise."
"I don't care. Make noise. So if I fall asleep I'll still dream you're here."
So Kieran made a point of slapping his feet against the floor as he did some forms, feeling a bit of an idiot, but at the same time oddly glad. That puzzled him. It wasn't a good time to be glad. But there was an unfamiliar joy in being trusted so much, untrustworthy as he was. Either Ash was a singularly trusting soul, or his crush was based on something real. Kieran chose to believe the former. The latter would mean it was already too late to keep from wrecking what was left of Ash's life.
I don't like the way my head feels.
I don't like it.
Ash was peripherally aware that his thoughts were simple as a child's; a vague nauseous ache of the mind. He didn't have the strength for it to matter.
I don't like what happened to my head, to me, going outside myself. In other people's heads. It was all so loud. Some of me is missing.
His own panic had embarrassed and unnerved him, when the guards had come for him. He'd been well aware that it was pointless, that he'd save himself humiliation by going willingly, even as he'd been utterly unable to do so. Then Kieran had saved and damned him with one breath.
'You are not here.' The same mantra he'd repeated through his first few days. Coming from Kieran's lips it had become the truth. He'd felt Kieran's breath on the skin of his ear, and been drawn into that sensation, even while it lost its meaning. Sounds echoed and distorted, the act of walking had absorbed him, and when he'd passed through the intangible membrane of the ward he'd flown apart.
If Kieran's voice had not recalled him, he didn't think he would ever have come back. He would have become one of those peripheral prisoners who were moved around like stiff-jointed dolls, waiting to die. But... he had come back, gathered into himself by Kieran's enfolding arms and sawtoothed voice. He knew that memory would make his heart ache later, but the feeling was lost in the general soreness now. Sensation was muffled. Where he lay with his head on his arms, blanket tucked around him, he wasn't sure if he was cold or warm, bleeding or whole. He looked past the small mountain of his knuckles to where Kieran flowed through a series of mock-fights, underwater-slow.
That grace soothed his eyes. Kieran's heartbeat still echoed in his head. Just yesterday he'd been pleasantly miserable debating with himself whether he was in love or merely infatuated. Now it was obvious that none of those words had any real meaning. He knew one simple thing, and of that he was certain beyond the need to think about it: I'll die without him.
He meant it without metaphor; literal death waited beyond Kieran's protective shadow. Whether his mind or his body broke first, it was clear he lacked the strength to survive the damage without Kieran's help. It should have frightened him, but instead it seemed to help a little, knowing what it was he needed.
I know how things are for you, Kieran. I know how you can swallow emptiness and hold it inside. What I still don't understand is how you draw strength from that void. Are you unhappy like I am? Or are joy and sorrow two more of the things you don't perceive?
The dinner bell filtered through many layers of detachment and reached him after it had stopped ringing. It took a moment to remember that he had to do something in response to the noise.
Leaving the cell made his skin crawl. The sight of tan uniforms worried him. He dealt with it by copying Kieran, doing what Kieran did, and by this means managed to line up with the others and march to the mess hall, and did not panic and bolt. He got his tray, allowed food to be put on it, went to a table and sat down where he could see Kieran's face. Nothing else was quite real. Kieran scooped up a chunk of overcooked potato on his spoon, so Ash did too. But when he considered putting food inside himself, in his mouth, chewing, feeling it slide down, he thought he might vomit.
"Eat," Kieran ordered.
He almost said 'I can't' again. But the sound of those words in his head was more disgusting than the thought of food in his mouth. He ate. It tasted like wet paper.
Outside, it seemed offensive that the sun was shining. I'm in the desert, he reminded himself. That's what the sun does here. It shines with a hard high-pitched whine and burns away everything soft on the ground. I am a soft thing being burned. Kieran is not.
"Square stance," Kieran said.
Ash frowned, trying to make these words make sense.
"First one I showed you. Feet apart and parallel."
They were going to practice fighting? Ash didn't think there was much point. "The thing I need to fight is in my head," he murmured.
"So show it you're a badass. Square stance." Kieran waited a moment, then barked, "Today, Trine."
Because it was easier to obey Kieran than argue with him, Ash did as he was told.
Kieran put up his hands, palms out. "Start where we left off yesterday. Right straight, right cross, left straight, left cross. We're working on accuracy again."
Weakly, he knuckled Kieran's left palm, then missed the right one entirely. Took a moment to remember how to use his own left hand. Pathetic. I'm pathetic. He kept missing the straights with his left, missing the crosses with both hands, until a short segment of a small-child whine escaped him and he broke stance. "I can't do it today. I'm so stupid today."
Kieran's hand darted out and smacked Ash's forehead. He put his hands up again. "Start over."
Ash made one weak swing, forgetting his form entirely, then turned away. "It's useless."
A hand on his shoulder spun him around, a slap stung his face. "That's useless," Kieran growled. Another slap; Ash reeled back, tears threatening. "That's useless." Showing teeth, Kieran darted slaps at Ash's cheeks and forehead, shoves at his chest and arms. "You going to let me win? You going to let me do this to you?"
"Ow! Kieran!" Ash flailed instinctively at the next hand that came near him. The blows were coming too fast, he couldn't block them all, Kieran had turned against him, his shelter had become his enemy and it was all over -- fear sparked in his chest and everything went bright. He slapped away what seemed like a hundred hands at once, and in his panic followed this flurry with a blow of his own.
Everything went still. His fist was wrapped in Kieran's, and the tall Iavaian was smiling.
"Feel better now?" Kieran asked gently, and Ash realized that despite the alarming speed of the blows, Kieran hadn't hurt him. He couldn't even feel where Kieran's hands had landed.
"Define better." But in his own grumbling, Ash heard that his hopelessness was gone, at least for now. "You're a mean bastard, Kieran. You didn't have to hit me."
"Okay." Kieran released his fist. "Square stance."
Gritting his teeth, Ash lined up his feet, bent his knees, and smacked a fist into Kieran's palm. Right, right, left, left. His form was sloppy, but he didn't care. He was supposed to be working on accuracy, not force, but he was throwing his shoulder behind each punch, and it felt good.
Kieran's palms were reddened by the time they were done, and Ash's knuckles swollen, and his despair had vanished. And, somehow, he hadn't missed once.
--==*==--
"What are you doing?"
Kieran turned from the washbasin, water running off his elbows, the muscles of his back shifting deliciously. "Conducting the Gevarne Philharmonic. What's it look like? I'm washing my shirt."
"Why?"
"It smells. How many sit-ups was that?"
"Thirty."
"You did thirty-five yesterday."
"I'm just resting." Ash settled his chin on his knuckles and watched the movement of Kieran's shoulders. It came to him that he was more resilient than he'd thought. Just yesterday he'd been half mad with fear and hopelessness, but already his libido was back. He wasn't yet sure he forgave Kieran for hitting him, however little physical damage he'd done, but if the point had been to awaken Ash's urge to survive the ploy had succeeded. His mind still felt bruised, though. He hadn't slept particularly well, had woken before the bell today; it still hadn't rung. The sky was just starting to go gray. He'd been a little surprised to find Kieran up before him, but no explanation had been offered and he didn't feel like asking for one. He waited until the ache in his gut subsided and did ten more sit-ups before looking at his cellmate again.
"You going to wear it wet? Or go to breakfast without?"
"Without." Kieran wrung out the wad of blue cotton, then turned with a grin to snap it at Ash, spattering him. "You look better today. How're you feeling?"
"Peaceful."
"Peaceful! And you think I'm a nut job." He made a shrug into shaking out his shirt. "Whatever works for you, I guess."
"And you? How are you?"
"Same old. Bored. Whiffy. Wish they'd let us in the bath more than once a week. Clean water would be nice, while I'm wishing."
"When we get out, let's go somewhere there's a lake, and swim until we get all pruney. And burn our clothes."
"I thought you didn't believe I can get us out of here."
"I trust you."
That put something into Kieran's eyes that was halfway between anger and worry, and only lasted half a second. "Good," was all he said.
The bell rang. Kieran spread his wet shirt over the rim of the washbasin, then tugged at the string of his trousers, with a jerk of his chin toward the door. Ash obediently looked away. Having to share a toilet was no longer embarrassing; there was a certain etiquette to it, that was all. When Kieran muttered something in Iavaian, Ash pretended not to hear. That was how you made your own privacy, in a place like this. Still, he wondered what it had been -- Kieran had never talked to himself before.
All the doors opened. Ash stood, yawning. He was too sleep-deprived to be hungry, but it wasn't as if there was a choice. "It better not be sausage today," he began to say, but lost his train of thought as Kieran walked out past him.
The difference was subtle, but shockingly effective. Pants hanging an inch too low, stride fractionally shorter, leading with the hips just a little, tilt of the chin somehow saucy instead of arrogant today -- What the hell is he up to? He looks like a slut.
Ash wasn't the only one staring. Several inmates, more likely woman-starved than fey, were gawking at the spice-colored spans of Kieran's skin. And one of the guards had his eyes fastened on the jut of Kieran's hipbones with an anticipatory, gloating look Ash didn't like at all. Ash tried desperately to marshall his thoughts, to understand this change, but he'd been walloped by the same hormonal sledgehammer. It made him feel simpleminded -- as well as too hot all over, so he was undoubtedly turning bright red.
As they took their places in line, someone snickered. "Looks like somebody got some last night."
"Shut it." The guard who'd been staring sauntered down the line until he reached Kieran. He raked his gaze up and down Kieran's body. "Where's your shirt, Trevarde?"
"Washed it, sir." Kieran's voice was different too. The razor blades buried just a little deeper in the candy. It had a purr in it. Ash was beginning to be frightened.
"Getting domestic, are we? Thinking of starting a business? Taking in these lads' washing?"
"They don't have anything to pay me with." Kieran's smile was a challenge; the guard's was a threat.
"Back in your cell, boy. No breakfast for you today."
Kieran gave a liquid shrug. Though Ash tried desperately to catch his eyes, he only stared at the guard. The line moved out without him.
Sick to his stomach, Ash picked at his breakfast. Halfway through the period, someone sidled up to his table as if to drop some smartass remark, but when Ash looked at him he went away without saying anything.
In the yard, he punched the air three hundred and thirty-two times, and didn't think about anything but counting. He didn't dare. He didn't even try to tell himself that Kieran would explain, that it would be all right, because he knew it wasn't all right and there was nothing he could do about it.
On the way back to the cell, he kept counting; steps, prisoners, skylights, anything. He felt light with fear, unreal and floating, moving by habit. He half expected the cell to be empty, but Kieran was there. Ash walked into the cell like a clockwork toy and sat down on the edge of his bunk, opposite where Kieran sprawled, and didn't let himself feel relieved that the tall boy was at least still alive. There were worse things than dead, in this place, and Kieran looked like he might have discovered one of them.
Kieran was lying on his back with his eyes open. His color was bad, and he blinked too often, but there was no mark on him. Except for the blinking, he looked like a corpse. One arm trailed over the edge of the cot, the hand dangling limply. After a long time, Ash leaned out to touch that hand, to find out if it was clammy or fevered; it must be one of the two, the way Kieran looked.
"No touching," Kieran murmured. His lips barely moved.
"What happened?"
"Ask me later."
Moving carefully, so as not to startle, Ash knelt on the floor beside Kieran's bed. As he did, he noticed something under it. The tin cup they had to share, with a pellet of something brown and wet stuck to the bottom.
"Put that back," Kieran said sharply, though he didn't move. "Don't touch it. Don't move it, don't look at it, don't talk about it. They find out I have that, we're fucked."
"What is it?"
"Poison."
Ash slid the cup as far back under as he could reach. He stood, and looked down at Kieran for a long time before Kieran looked back. "What did you do, Kieran?" He was proud that his voice came out quiet and even.
Kieran sighed, his eyes wandering away again. "Remember how I said I used to have a habit? It never really goes away, you know."
"That's opium?"
"Quiet! He wanted me to eat it while he watched. I had to put it under my tongue. I'm going to have to put it under my tongue every time."
"Every time what? Kieran --"
"It's costing me, to let it sit under the bed. You understand? Don't make it harder."
"I see." Ash backed up until the edge of his bunk hit him behind the knees, and folded. "How many more times is this going to happen, Kieran? How much do you have to hoard before you can use it in your plan? How can you stand --"
"Not that." Kieran blinked at the ceiling. "That one you don't get to ask. Your other question -- at least three more like that. More would be better. He gave me a fat dose. Guess he figured if I was lying about how big a tar habit I had, lying so I could share it out or something, a big wad like that would kill me."
Ash hadn't thought his heart could shrink any further, but at this it squeezed down to pebble-size. "How much did you swallow?"
"Don't panic. I didn't even fall asleep. Used to eat suicide doses like candy. That's not the problem. The problem is I can't think about anything but the cup under the bed."
"Oh." Ash swallowed. "I could, I could --"
"No you couldn't. There's no place to hide it and I could take it away from you any time I wanted. Leave it."
"I could... distract you, I was going to say."
"What?" Kieran gaped at him, with a rasp of incredulous laughter. "You have the worst timing I have ever fucking witnessed. I just sucked cock at gunpoint, you dumbass. I'm not exactly in a cuddly mood."
"You --? But. That's not -- I didn't -- oh, god." Mortified, Ash buried his face in his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"I told you you didn't want to know."
"Oh god, Kieran, isn't there any other --"
"Fucking drop it, Ash. I used to do it for a living, it's no big deal."
He sounded calm, even jocular. But when Ash dared to look up, Kieran was staring at the ceiling again, blinking slowly and too often.
He'd been ready for two weeks.
The cup beneath the bed was half full now. He had a full-fledged low-grade habit again, from holding doses under his tongue, but so far he hadn't given in to the urge to swallow. Poor Ash was a wreck; the kid had been to Testing twice more, and on top of that he didn't seem to be able to handle what Kieran was doing. But he hadn't lost it again -- yet. He didn't talk much these days, but he still wrote in his book, which Kieran guessed was a sign of life. Kieran didn't bother reading it. The white boy's poetic agonies would seem like a sick joke, compared to reality; unless he'd given up feeling things that strongly, which was sensible, but sad; Kieran really didn't want to know.
Every day that passed now, readiness deteriorated. Any minute, something could happen that would wreck their chances. Ash might crack. Kieran might talk himself into dipping into the tar stash. Either of them could get sick, or go to Testing and not come back. Or the little cabal of guards who supplied the opium could get tired of Kieran, as they'd tired of Hartnell; there was no way he could fake withdrawal well enough to fool someone who'd seen it firsthand. However much he groaned and griped, he couldn't pantomime vomiting and loose bowels and sweats. They'd know he'd been hoarding, and then the game would be up.
The main consideration, though, was simply that he was tired of this place. Tired to death of it. The food and company, of course, the smells and grit and ill-fitting clothes, the physical confinement. More than that, the humiliations, threats and whoring. More even than that, the Colonel and his insectile persistence, his torturings and pryings, the constant fear that one of those Surveys would uncover the escape plan. But most of all, Kieran was tired of the wards that squashed his Talent. It was like never quite being able to stand up straight. He sometimes even looked forward to Testing, just so he could uncurl his cramped mind for a few hours. The Colonel's tedious tortures were almost worth the visions they brought.
It was on those visions that his plan depended.
The visions, the drug, and Ash's cooperation. The kid had put on muscle as spring wore toward summer, while the smoothness of youth melted out from under his skin. He was worn down fine, and the change was startling; though the sun had bleached orange and gold into his rusty hair, making it redder, and doubled his freckle density, he'd started to look dangerous. An odd beauty had emerged as well. More than the sharper lines of his face, the difference was due to the confidence that fighting lessons had put into his movements, and the haunted heat of his blue eyes, which seemed to see nothing but pain. The other inmates got out of Ash's way whether Kieran was near him or not.
As his body strengthened, though, it seemed his mind eroded. If the opportunity to use the plan took too long to arrive, Kieran feared that Ash would be useless. Would just sit and stare, the way he was doing now.
"Hey Ashes," Kieran tried, to see if this was one of the days when Ash was responding to stimuli. It wasn't. The redhead didn't even look up; he just kept picking at his cuticles. The beds of his nails were flayed to bleeding.
Across the tier, someone's name was called in an official tone. Time for Testing. Ash didn't tense or flinch the way he used to, didn't react even when the guards stopped outside their cell.
"Kieran Trevarde."
They'd stopped bothering to say goodbye or good luck when one of them was taken out. It was pointless. Kieran thought he detected some relief in Ash's expression. He couldn't spare the energy to be annoyed; after all, Ash was more damaged by these sessions than Kieran was. He was right to be glad it wasn't his turn. Anyway, it took all Kieran's attention simply to go quietly and not wear himself out with useless worry about what might be waiting for him. The last few times, he'd been in the room with two chairs, doing the Watch's housecleaning for them. Every time, he'd refused to use his killing Talent until Warren had dragged his every nerve through the fire enough times to make his joints ache and his head throb for hours afterward. Warren seemed to think it was plain stubbornness, but the truth was that Kieran needed the dreams he had when he was knocked out of himself by agony.
That being the case, he was both relieved and displeased when he wasn't taken to the usual room this time. Instead, the guards brought him to the first white room, the one with the desk.
This time, the desk was clear of papers, and Warren was not the one behind it. The Colonel stood to one side as Kieran was brought in and made to sit. In the place of power behind the desk sat the most creepily perfect man Kieran had ever seen, looking at him with a clinical interest that somehow turned his guts to water as nothing and no one had done since he was a small child. Kieran had the impression that it had been a mistake to meet the man's eyes, because now he was caught. There was something eerily familiar about those eyes, paler than Ash's, something that reminded him of past defeats and errors, humiliations, made him feel acutely how dirty and bedraggled he was.
The man behind the desk could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty-five. He was pale, everything about him pale as mist; his hair was blond as cream, his eyes so light a gray they seemed made of silver foil. Those eyes speared Kieran like a pin through a specimen insect, and Kieran could not look away.
Colonel Warren spoke to this man in a reverent tone. "Shall I put him through his paces, sir?"
"That won't be necessary, Colonel." The man's voice was as cool as his eyes, without accent or emotion. "You may go."
This seemed to startle Warren just a bit, but he collected himself with a sharp salute and a crisp "Yes, sir."
After Warren had gone, the stranger simply sat and looked at Kieran for a time. Kieran had no choice but to stare back. Belatedly, he realized that this was probably the Director that Warren had mentioned. Though his uniform was the same cut as other Watchmen's, the braid at his shoulders was white instead of red. Where others' collars sported small squares of red enamel to show their seniority, this man had a series of what looked like diamonds. Other than the insignia of his rank, he had not a single ornament, no indication of anything personal around him.
Kieran was scared of him.
It didn't make much sense. The guy was a little weird-looking, and obviously pretty high in the Watch, but he hadn't done anything yet but stare. Still, Kieran was irrationally certain that this man, out of all the Watch, was the one who knew how to really hurt him.
"Do you dream?"
The sudden question startled Kieran into a confused reply. "What? Dream? I guess so. Sometimes."
"True dreams."
Visions. The man was talking about his visions. The game was up. "I don't think so," Kieran lied.
"Do you have any special connection to the weather?"
"Connection?" Kieran frowned puzzlement, avoided thinking of how his visions took him into the clouds to see whether any rain was coming. "Sorry, but what are you getting at?"
"Do you have any memories of past lives?"
"No -- I mean, that's heresy, right? Not that I guess that would matter here --" He caught himself and shut his mouth firmly. You're losing it. He's just another Watchman, you big baby. But he was sure that his answers had been wrong.
The Director rose. "Come with me."
The command was delivered in an ordinary tone, but it lashed puppet strings to Kieran's limbs and hauled him helplessly along. A passenger in his own body, Kieran fought a swell of panic.
Outside the room, Warren saluted some more. "Sir. Do you want a subject brought to the Testing room?"
"Yes." The Director glanced at Kieran. "Someone he cares about, if that's possible. A personal acquaintance."
The impending panic burst wide open in Kieran's chest; part of him watched while the rest shook to his pounding heart, sweated, made clumsy steps in the wake of the Director's will. The part that watched was able to remark that he'd known Ash would not last long in this place, that he should not have grown as attached as he had, that it was his own stupid fault if this broke him. The rest was an injured animal on a leash, thrashing in helplessness.
I won't do it. But he couldn't say it out loud. The compulsion to obedience was too strong. I won't.
He was taken to the room. Put in the chair. Strapped down. Hunched there shuddering and rageful, twisting at the bonds of the Director's command. There he waited for what felt like days, while the man in the white-on-white uniform flipped idly through a stack of papers he'd brought with him. His vision blurred, his nose ran, his throat closed, but he couldn't even weep, the leash on his mind held him so tightly.
The door opened; footsteps entered. Kieran strained to see, escape, attack, anything, while the prisoner he was to kill was brought into his field of vision.
Duyam Sona.
It was all he could do not to laugh out loud, not betray his relief. Not Ash. It wasn't Ash. Ash was safe from his murderous power. Nothing else mattered.
The Director looked between the two Iavaians with mild interest. "Did you select this one for his resemblance to the subject? I require an emotional bond, Colonel."
"I'm afraid Trevarde doesn't seem to bond much with anyone, sir. But he won't wish to kill another native."
"You misunderstand me, Colonel. This is not intended as a form of psychological torture. But if this is the best you can provide, then I suppose the distant blood tie will have to suffice. Ready him."
Kieran couldn't believe what he was hearing. The Colonel must have known that he and Ash were inseparable. Anyone with eyes knew that. Warren had lied to the Director. Why? Not just so he could continue to train students on Ash's faint Talent. Could it be that he actually felt some pity for his charges? It didn't matter right now. All Kieran needed to know was that the man before him could die without breaking anything Kieran needed to keep, and that was enough.
The Director came over to Kieran's chair and wrapped a long, cool hand around the back of his neck, a strangely gentle gesture. "Kieran Trevarde, kill this man."
Compulsion was like cold water running down his throat; his intention could do nothing to halt it, and it slithered inside him unchecked by his resistance. He jammed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, but already the hand of his heart was uncoiling. He had to fight, had to refuse, because he needed the visions, needed the pain to send him out, but it was all happening too fast.
Then it came to him. 'Kieran Trevarde, kill this man.' Kieran's not my real name -- and by the way, which man did you mean?
By his mind's sight, he found bright knots of life inside the room, felt them like breath on his skin. Sona's aching flame of fear, the glassed-in shape of Warren, and the icy serpent of the Director's will coiled around all their throats, familiar as his own nightmares. He would not touch that last, was afraid to touch it. But Warren -- he'd never realized how fragile those shields were all this time. A sharp shock easily shattered them. He heard a gasp as he dug his thoughts' fingers into the tough join between soul and flesh and pried with all his strength. Pain came, but it wasn't enough. Kieran dug deeper.
"Colonel, control your subject. Colonel!" A sharp sigh of exasperation; then a pain that made Warren's psychic tortures look like a head cold came pouring along Kieran's nerves.
Kieran lost his grip, his focus, his breakfast, and the contents of his bladder. The
intensity of it, the shock, kept him present and aware long enough to hear his own scream fail into
a rack of sobbing whimpers, heart straining, diaphragm convulsing, shredded thoughts crying I don't
want it after all, why did I want this? Then the window deep inside opened and let him out.
Wind cleansed him, sweetly cold at this altitude. The desert was lush under him, blooming with pale flame colors, wallowing in the season of storms. Those storms' trails were apparent in scars cut into the earth, the red ropes and fans of erosion. The air tasted fresh, wet, full of ozone.
Where was that smell coming from? The sky was blue and empty.
He rose higher, until Churchrock was lost among the shadows of the ground. For the first time in one of these visions he was aware of his body, saw his own brown legs curled beneath him. Held out his arms before him and saw the skin blank of tattoos, scarless, and wound with a weight of gold that could buy the world, but which was not heavy. His strength was enormous. He inhaled, and rose into the wind, laughing as his hair beat his back with a thousand gold-weighted braids. A king, an emperor of the air, all below belonged to him. He rose until the earth's curvature was visible, until the sky's blue darkened around him.
Now the only features he could make out were swaths of color, wrinkles and smooth places. To the west, the mountains blended into one snow-riddled scar that curled around the world out of sight, and beyond them there was only cloud.
It streamed through the passes and built high enough to smear against the sky, white above, purple inside, and roiling like a boiling kettle. Its shadow was solid black. It was the mother of all storms, coming to show the desert that spring was not a gentle season. This was it; this was what he needed.
Come! he commanded it. Come here to Iaka'anta with your hailstones, your sweet winds, your tornado claws to dig this abomination out of the ground and fling its dust into the sky. Come free me. Free me so well that I can never be locked in again.
And he felt the storm answer.
He came back to a body as weak as water, riddled with a thousand aches, reeking, and he didn't care. A voice was blabbering at him, but that was somehow soothing; after a moment he realized that this was because it was speaking Iavaian.
"All crazy," it was saying. "All of you. Why didn't you just do it? No wonder you're going extinct. I would have done it. But no, you have to do your Tama thing and spit in their eyes and make them kill you. Dumb bastard."
"I'm not dead," Kieran muttered. He pried his eyes open to meet Sona's bewildered glare. Was it his imagination, or did the man look grudgingly relieved at that?
"You will be soon enough, you keep pushing them like that. Why didn't you just do it?"
Kieran managed a wan smile. "I like to make them mad. It's a Tama thing."
"Well, they're mad. Now do the thing. Let me out."
Before Kieran could reply, the door opened and Warren and the Director came into his line of sight. Warren said, "Are you ready to cooperate now?"
"Wait," said the Director. He peered into Kieran's eyes, touched his throat and forehead. "I want him at full strength. It isn't often that I have leisure to observe one of these under controlled circumstances. We'll attempt this again tomorrow." He turned to Warren. "That will give you time to improve your personal wards."
The Colonel flushed from pink to purple. "Yes, sir." He gestured a brace of tan-uniformed guards into sight. "Put them back. Clean that one up first."
As Kieran was jelly-legging out the door between his guards, a white uniform jogged past and into the chair room. Kieran heard the rustle of paper, and: "Director Thelyan, sir, urgent message for you from the Central Office."
Thelyan? Thelyan... The name snagged in Kieran's mind, like a foreign word he'd once known the meaning of. He stumbled deliberately, lurching hard against one of the guards and letting his legs splay out from under him.
"How inconvenient. Why can't these rebels ever cause trouble on a weekend, eh, Colonel? I must leave immediately; we'll have to continue this another time. I won't be in Rainet more than a week, I expect -- I assume you can keep my subject alive for a week?"
The guards got Kieran upright again at that point, and Warren's reply to the Director's dry tone was lost in the clatter of their boots. But he'd heard enough. Director Thelyan was leaving, the storm was coming, and the only way it could be better would be if his muscles didn't feel so much like they were made of damp string.
--==*==--
Ash was sitting just as Kieran had left him, staring at the floor. Kieran laughed; relief, anticipation maybe. Ash looked up, dull-eyed, as Kieran stumbled to his bunk. The guards had thrown him in the bath with his clothes on, and he was still dripping. Wobbly, but not nearly as weak as he should have been.
"What's funny?" Ash demanded. He didn't seem much interested in the answer.
"Come over here."
A pause. Then Ash pried himself upright, dropped himself at Kieran's side. When Kieran's arm went around his shoulders, he twitched, then froze. Kieran put his mouth to Ash's ear and whispered.
"We're leaving tonight."
He drew back to watch expressions blossom across Ash's features. Surprise, then hope, then suspicion. Kieran remembered how it had been to think Ash would be the one he'd be made to kill, and tightened his hand on the pale boy's shoulder.
"You're playing with me," Ash accused.
"Get your book."
Ash blinked. His eyes began to regain their light. "My god. You're serious. You're actually going to stake our lives on this rickety plan you've been hinting at."
"Yes, I told you. And it's going to work. Get out your book, I need to see the guard schedules."
Ash obeyed, but his nostrils flared as he turned the pages. The smolder of dull pain in his eyes was waking to rebel fire, and it was beautiful to see. "You're going to get us killed. You're going to get me killed, and I'm going to die not even knowing how it was supposed to work, if it worked, which it won't, because you didn't tell me."
"I thought you said you trusted me."
"I did say that." Looking up into Kieran's face, Ash visibly snapped awake, finished the process of leaving his private fear. His pupils dilated, blood rushed to his sunburned cheeks and chapped lips, and he sat up fractionally straighter. "Yes, all right; of all the things I could do today, trusting you is one of my better options. I'm with you."
"Besides," Kieran went on, "so what if we die? It's not like we're going to lead long, productive lives in here. What have you got to lose?"
At this, a ghost of humor crept into Ash's expression. "Well, I'd rather not die a virgin."
Kieran snorted. "Figures. You act like one. Now quit sidetracking me and tell me who's overnight on our tier tonight."
"Uh... Blondie and Squarehead."
"Where are they for afternoon? Are they on at all?"
"I've never seen Squarehead pull an afternoon shift. I think he's strictly nights. Blondie could be anywhere."
"Shit. All right, if Blondie's out, who subs for him?"
Ash hesitated. "Look, yo