“Why are there no weapons?” Gosta asked, leaning heavily on Siv.
“Be quiet and learn,” Siv said. “You know everything I know.”
Phasma circled around Wranderous, fists up and protecting her head, as Torben came up from the other side.
“I see you, little man,” Wranderous warned. “And I’ll get to you next.”
Before he was done talking, Phasma slammed her helmet into the big man’s chin, catching him by surprise and making his head rock back in turn. Torben caught Wranderous’s long hair and yanked him back so Phasma could punch him in the throat, but Wranderous caught her fist as easily as if she were a child. Pivoting, Wranderous slung Phasma into Torben, and they both went down. Phasma had never fought in the armor before, and although it should’ve helped absorb damage, it also made her less agile. Still, she recovered quickly, rolled off Torben, and stood, so perhaps it served its purpose.
The moment she was on her feet, Phasma went for a brutal flurry of kicks, but Wranderous blocked them all, laughing, then clipped her legs and fell on top of her in the sand. Before Torben could react, Wranderous had popped off Phasma’s helmet and started to choke her.
“Won’t you help them?” Siv muttered to the troopers.
“Not until I give the word,” Brendol muttered in return.
Siv wanted to help, her deep-running Scyre loyalty wounded to see her leader laughed at by the crowd, but she was the only person standing between Wranderous and Gosta, should it come to that. It was clear that the troopers wouldn’t help the girl, not if they still had Brendol to protect. And perhaps Siv would get beaten and choked as well, but at least it would be for the right reason.
Torben was up now and landed a blow to Wranderous’s spine that made the Arratu man abandon Phasma’s beating and leap to his feet with a howl. They circled each other, one big and pale and the other big and dark. The red drained out of Phasma’s face, and she shook her head and stood, dazed and planning her next attack. When Torben went for a clinch, Phasma tripped Wranderous to help get him to the ground. Torben landed on top of him, straddling Wranderous’s chest, and the men began to grapple while Phasma rained down blows from above and kicks from the side.
Watching the fight, it was clear to Siv that Wranderous had different skills than they’d learned in the Scyre. His grappling wasn’t just rolling around, aiming for a better position. He was twisting his arms, looking for certain holds, and eventually he found a way to choke Torben unconscious in the crook of his elbow, his face buried in Torben’s neck so Phasma’s blows couldn’t injure him. The moment Torben went limp, Wranderous stood and grinned at Phasma.
“You’re next,” he said. “If the Arratu wishes?”
He looked up at the Arratu, one foot on Torben’s chest.
The Arratu stood and waddled to the railing, the birds fluttering in his wake. He held three pieces of fabric in his soft hands, one red, one green, and one black. Tapping his fingers on his chin, he considered the scarves, then selected one and tossed it out on the sand to the crowd’s riotous elation. The cloth was red, and whatever that meant, Wranderous laughed.
Phasma later told Siv that what Wranderous whispered in her ear as the crowd went mad was this: He wants to see you beaten but not killed. Take a few hits, and you’ll eat well tonight. But make it look good.
And Phasma also told Siv what she whispered back: No.
What occurred next was something Siv had never seen, never thought she’d see.
Wranderous pounded Phasma into the dirt.
He held her hair and punched her face. He picked her up from the sand and slammed his fist into her chin. With her armor intact, he couldn’t beat her body to a pulp, so he took out his measured anger on her face. Phasma struggled and kicked and punched and clawed, but she couldn’t defeat Wranderous, a man of twice her mass. If she’d had her ax and spear, or even a dagger—then, she would’ve had a chance. But starved, exhausted, unfamiliar with fighting in armor, and utterly without weapons or supporters, Phasma tasted her first defeat.
And the Arratu loved it. He laughed and clapped his hands with each fresh punch. When Phasma finally fell, dripping blood in the sand and unable to get up again, the Arratu jumped up and down in delight like he was less a leader and more an overgrown child, and a stupid, cruel one at that. The birds shrieked as they flew circles around his hat. Siv looked around the arena at the cheering, jeering people, and felt a surge of pure hatred. It must’ve been easy to be petty and mean and cruel when you had an excess of people. In the Scyre, lives were so few and so hard to create that death was no laughing matter. This type of barbarous inhumanity was a new thing, and Siv felt an answering fury burn in her own heart.
The Arratu and his people, she hoped, would one day pay for what they’d done.
At least Phasma wasn’t dead. As the people cheered and shouted for Wranderous, a hidden door slid open in the wall of the arena, and Wranderous picked up the red scarf and walked out, arms up, shouting his own name. The door slid closed the moment he was within, and there was no visible outward mechanism to show how it was accomplished. Far away as it was, even if she’d been willing to leave Gosta behind, Siv couldn’t have escaped that way. But at least now they knew there were doors.
“Go get her,” Brendol said to his men, and the troopers jogged to Phasma and picked her up by her arms, dragging her back to the group and leaving a long, bloody trail in the sand. At the very least, there were no blood beetles.
When no further threat presented itself, Siv shoved Gosta at Brendol and muttered, “Help her,” before running to Torben. She skidded to a stop in the sand on her knees and shook his shoulder, calling his name. When he didn’t answer, she patted his face gently, then slapped it.
“Torben!” she shouted in his ear, desperate to wake him up before something else came at them.
Finally, his eyes flickered open and focused on her.
“I don’t like the way he fights,” he said.
Siv smiled. “Me neither. You should stand. We don’t know what’s coming next.”
He nodded and sat up, and Siv helped him to his feet. Together, with the crowd’s jeers pelting down, they hobbled to where the rest of the group waited. The circle re-formed with Phasma and Brendol at the center this time. Phasma lay on her side, curled up around her broken face. Noticing that the helmet still lay near the splatters of blood, Siv sprinted to it, picked it up, and returned to her people. Phasma would want it, when she woke up. It was hard, once someone had adopted a mask, to give it up, Siv well knew.
“Let’s try one more thing,” the Arratu shouted. “Shall we release the lupulcus!”
He pointed to the arena wall, and another door slid up. Two gray shapes burst out of it, loping easily into the arena as if they were well accustomed to it. It was the hairless gray skinwolves again, grotesquely moist and covered in warts and boils. These two seemed larger, thicker, and meaner than the wild ones. They quickly focused on the fighters and increased their speed, teeth bared as they ran across the gray sand.
If she’d had a weapon, Siv wouldn’t have found the creatures threatening at all. Two against seven were good odds, even for creatures that were harder than most to kill. But without her blaster or blades and considering that Torben was still only half awake, she was not quite sure if she could stop these beasts unarmed. Wary but determined, she stepped in front of Gosta.
Phasma groaned and held out her hands. “My helmet,” she muttered. Gosta kicked it to her, and Phasma shoved it over her head. The moment the helmet was in place, Phasma was on her feet at Siv’s side, the stormtroopers joining them to make a wall of four people.
“You okay?” Siv asked Phasma.
In response, Phasma tensed into a fighting stance and shoved Siv backward. Siv landed in the sand and rolled back to standing in time to watch the first skindog leap at Phasma. The Scyre leader’s white-plated arm went up, the dog’s teeth closing around it. With her free arm, Phasma chopped the back of the dog’s neck, and it
crumpled to the ground, where she put a boot on its neck and stomped. The other dog lunged at the stormtroopers, who did their best to fend it off.
“Stop playing,” Phasma said, striding between them and holding out her arm to the beast. The moment it latched on to the armor, she slammed a gloved fist into its skull, and it, too, went down.
She stood, looked directly at the Arratu, put a foot on the beast’s head, and waited.
Siv knew she should’ve felt pride and satisfaction to see her leader not only live through the beating she’d received but also take down the attacking dogs. But she couldn’t help finding something blasphemous about the wanton killing. Even these ugly creatures could’ve provided water, nutrients, and meat. Instead, they were strewn across the sand, their value ignored, and by a people without enough resources to feed their poorest members.
The arena went silent but for the muted whispers of the people in the stands. Every eye went to the Arratu. He stood, his head cocked, considering—but he did look pleased. He raised his arms into the air, and the little birds swirled around him, chittering happily.
“That was wonderful,” he said. “Take them away and bring me something new to watch. Bring them back tomorrow for more fun.”
A cheer went up, and the words soon coalesced into the demand for “Something new! Something new!”
The door they’d entered through earlier reopened, and Vrod appeared, motioning them along, his warriors waiting with their blasters ready.
“Bring the wolves,” Phasma said.
Siv was too busy helping Gosta and pulling Torben to follow the command, but the two stormtroopers immediately turned to pick up the limp bodies of the gray beasts. Siv noted that Brendol’s face went through some fascinating contortions from indignation to anger to fascination to measured consideration, seeing his men follow Phasma’s orders. Vrod didn’t argue as they stepped through the door carrying the dead skinwolves and followed him down the hall.
“Was the Arratu not pleased?” Brendol asked, stepping ahead to pace their captor.
“That wasn’t entirely terrible,” Vrod said, his robes snapping in his wake. “You could’ve worked a little harder to give it some flair. Next time, it’s likely you’ll be given weapons to see what you can really do.”
“But we won.”
“Yes, well, she won. Sort of.” Vrod fluttered a hand at Phasma. “You mostly watched. It’s not so much about winning, you know. It’s about showing the Arratu something they’ve never seen before. The crowd and the Arratu himself are connoisseurs of experience, you see. The arena has shown us beautiful things and terrible things, and we live for the excitement. Every now and then, something is so startling that the Arratu grants the performer freedom. But you’re nowhere close. If you can’t entertain, you’ll wither away like the rest and die.”
“Why is that? Does this grand city not hold enough charms?”
Vrod snorted. “We can’t leave the walls. Nothing ever changes. There are too many people and not enough food. Entertainment is all that we have. And the strangers we capture are the best sort of entertainment.”
“And does no one challenge the Arratu?”
At that, Vrod stopped walking and stared at Brendol like he’d grown an extra head. “Why would anyone challenge him? He has the best taste.”
They were put in a different room this time, one that might’ve once served as a storage closet. It was barely big enough for them all to sit on the floor and eat the food left there, strange stuff that wasn’t dried meat or sea veg. None of it tasted good, but taste wasn’t currently their problem. There was plenty of water, and it was the best water Siv had ever tasted, with no tang of salt or nutrients or the sea. The two dead wolves lay near the door, untouched, as Vrod stood over the group, watching them eat.
“What do you plan to do with the lupulcus?” he asked, amused.
“Eat them,” Phasma answered.
It was a wonder she could talk, much less eat, considering that when she removed her helmet, her face was purple and black and bleeding. Her lips were smashed, one eye swollen shut. Siv watched her tenderly touch several teeth and grimace at the results. At least the food was soft, mostly gelatinous cubes and soft bits of some kind of sweet fruit.
At that, Vrod laughed heartily. “Eat diseased beasts? Is our food not good enough for you, then? There are those in the outer rings of the city who would kill for such riches.”
“It’s fine enough,” Phasma answered, “but who knows how long you’ll keep feeding us?”
“A comedian, too! You should work on that act. It’ll get you fed as handily, but without the bruising and black eye.”
The food was soon gone; there hadn’t been much of it. The Scyre folk were accustomed to taking only as much as they needed and to considering the needs of those around them. Torben was big, and keeping him big benefited everyone. Gosta was small, but she was still growing and would need proper food to heal her hurt leg. Phasma would also require nutrients to heal. Siv ate very little, knowing that she was well and also that she was not large. What she did eat, she ate for the child inside her.
Still, it bothered her to see Brendol Hux, who had done so little, take as much food as anyone else. In the Scyre, the elderly—that being anyone over forty—naturally took less food. They couldn’t fight, they didn’t need extra weight, and they depended on the strength of younger backs and fists to keep them fed. But Brendol took what he wanted, and even Phasma didn’t speak against it, although Siv saw her eyes narrow as Brendol took the last bite.
“Back to the barracks, then,” Vrod said. “With your dead dogs, since that little request amused the Arratu. I do think he’d come watch you figure out how to butcher the bodies without knives if his keepers would let him set foot from the safety of his hallowed tower.”
Phasma jerked her chin at the dogs, and the troopers picked them up. The entire group followed Vrod down the hall, and he walked as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And perhaps he didn’t, considering his guards had their blasters pointed at the dangerous prisoners walking, uncuffed, down the hallway. Siv couldn’t grasp the attitudes here, the blatant disregard for safety and vigilance.
“Did you know this was once nothing but a fabric factory?” Vrod knocked on a glass window, and Siv peeked in to see great machines moving, spitting out yet more of the billowing fabric. “Arratu Station. Made the uniforms for Con Star Mining Corporation. They built it here for the water. A huge spring and, once, a river that ran past. Now we have machines that can make fabric. Endless fabric. Just dump sand into one, and it’ll make fabric all day long. But it can’t make food, and it can’t make the days go by any quicker, so you’d best find a way to entertain the Arratu without breaking all your bones. Because those machines don’t make medicine, either.”
He opened the door, and every eye in the prison barracks looked up. Phasma walked in first, wearing her helmet and showing no outward sign of having been beaten nearly to death. The troopers came in behind her, and she pointed to a bloody stain on the floor.
“Put one of them there.”
The stormtroopers looked at each other, and one of them tossed down his skinwolf without questioning her. The other one continued to hold his bloody prize, the gray skin drooping and smearing his armor with slurry blood.
“Have a good night. Be ready for tomorrow.”
Vrod waved at them with his white hand, and the door slid closed.
“One of these dogs is ours. You can have the other one,” Phasma said to the room’s other occupants.
“Why?” someone asked from the floor. “What do you want?”
“We want no trouble. And the meat will go bad, anyway.”
Phasma turned away from the people slithering toward the carcass on the ground and went to the bed where Elli had lain that morning. The woman was gone, and two people lay in her bunk, their bellies round against their scrawny bones. One look from Phasma and they all but leapt out of the bed and crab-crawled out of her sight. r />
“Torben and Gosta.”
“I can’t fit in there,” Torben complained.
“Try.”
Gosta clambered up top, and Torben filled in the entire bottom bunk, the metal frame creaking under him. As Siv moved to check him for hidden injuries, not that she could do anything about the damage, she noticed something peculiar. Brendol and Phasma were conversing in the corner, their whispers too low for her to catch. But she watched Brendol reach into his jacket and produce something, a shiny tube, which he stabbed into Phasma’s shoulder, right between the plates of her armor. She didn’t budge, didn’t grunt, and certainly didn’t grab his hand and crush the bones with her glove as punishment. Siv didn’t know what was in that tube, but whatever it was, Phasma had agreed to it. And when it was done, the empty tube disappeared back into Brendol’s jacket.
“Get some rest,” Phasma said to her people.
She took off her helmet and lay down on the floor beside Torben’s bed. While Siv still fidgeted around him, checking his eyes and the dark bruises on his throat below the shadow of his beard, Phasma slipped into a deep sleep. Back home, Siv would’ve tended to Phasma’s bruises first, offering her the strongest liniment and some herbs to chew that would help reduce swelling. Here, with no resources and no herbs, there was nothing she could do. Just like with the detraxors, she was helpless without her pack. She checked on Gosta again before Torben caught her around the hips and pulled her into the tiny bed, tucking her in against his warm side and holding her close with his arm.
“This place is so wrong,” she murmured against him.
“Then we’ll leave it behind.”
“I think you’re concussed.”
“Probably.”
She fell asleep against him, and when she woke up, she was starving. She looked at the dead dog on the ground, the one Phasma had saved for their people. Reluctantly, hating herself for it, she began prodding it to find a soft spot.
When she looked at Phasma’s sleeping face, she found it mostly healed. The bruises were yellow, the swelling gone, the split skin drawn together by pink lines of scars. Whatever had been in that tube must’ve been more of Brendol’s amazing medicine.