Poor World (15 page)

He was at his desk writing. I walked in. No one was there. That meant I'd heard someone leaving, not arriving. He slammed his pen down and gave me a long, narrow-eyed look that rammed my heartbeat up to a fast gallop.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

Here it was, then.

“No,” I said, knowing I couldn't hide my terror. Sure enough, my voice sounded high and thin. “I came in here to get paper — I wanted to make a map. To practice. Then ... I don't remember ... I must have fallen asleep, or something, because I had the worst nightmare I've ever had in my life.” I felt my knees buckle, and I plopped into a chair. “Uh, may I have breakfast? I'm so thirsty. It's so hot — makes me sleep badly.”

I looked away and poured out water. Then I drank it all down.

“Yes,” Kessler said.

When I dared to look up, he looked puzzled. “Have you any questions for me?”

I swallowed. Was I going to get away with it? Live through another day?

The question I wanted to ask was,
What's the quickest way out of here?
Except I knew the answer to that. The execution courtyard was ready and waiting for the next show.

“I guess I need more practice with borders before I can draw maps from memory. Do you want me to go practice?” I bleated.

“Certainly. There's much to be done.”

Breakfast appeared then, thank goodness, giving me something to look at. Kessler got back to work. I ate — fast — and left as soon as I could.

Outside his office I hesitated. He was still busy with his reports, so I slipped back down the hall to my room, got out the pencil and paper, ripped off a tiny piece on which I wrote a hasty note for the girls:
I think we have help. Gotta get more info. CJ

I tucked the note into my waistband, and slipped past Kessler's office, peeking fearfully as I trod silently by. He was busy blabbing into his communicator thingie as he read from a piece of paper.

Outside the air was hot — and muggy. My first breath was like a hammer to my chest. Overhead the sky was the usual scoured blue, but it was extra glary, as though more light reflected off distant clouds. Rain coming — lots of it. Dhana, at least, would be happy, I thought as I toiled down the dusty streets toward the practice courts.

The plain, low wooden buildings, all exactly alike, made that dream-place of the night before seem more unreal than ever, just by contrast. Where was it?
What
was it?

If it was somewhere on Sartorias-deles I wanted to know where so I would never accidentally land there again.

When I reached the practice court, a tiny, moisture-laden breeze briefly fingered my cheeks. It seemed wonderfully cool after the eternal blasting heat. Buoyed by this evidence that the world, and other weather besides dry heat, really did exist, that the compound did not comprise the universe, I started at the obstacle course and ran it twice.

For once I was alone. That brought to mind the nearness of the Plan date, and fear, my old companion, settled nastily in the pit of my stomach. I tried to ignore it, and worked my way down the practice areas, as groups came and went. None of the girls were in the groups that went by.

Fiercely, using all my strength, I threw knives at the people-shaped targets, pretending they were Shnit and Alsaes. Better than thinking. Worrying. So far, my brain hadn't produced anything worthwhile but more terrible
what-ifs.

I'd just chopped Shnit's beard into layers when a tutor arrived with a group. My heart gave me one fire-zap of joy when I saw Faline among them.

“You'll be expected to help in occupation duties,” the tutor explained. He was a yellow-haired guy with big ears and a bobbing Adam's apple. I figured he was about sixteen.

The group listened, most looking strangely blank-faced. Faline did not smile, which was so weird I almost wondered if she was someone else. But her eyes were alive, looking right at me. The others all seemed to be watching something in the air that I couldn't see.

“... and possibly guarding prisoners.” He went on to outline how to throw a knife as a kind of warm-up.

I kept at my target, which was at the far end, while he divided them up and got them started on the adjacent targets. The tutor kept sidling me looks, one of his hands fiddling nervously with a practice knife. I kept my gaze forward, my face as much like a good little kiddie as I could manage, so that the tutor would forget me.

Finally it was Faline's turn. She threw badly, of course. All her knives clattered against the targets and fell on the ground. Her face was almost as crimson as her hair as she tried to keep from laughing.

I timed my throws to coincide so we walked up together to retrieve our hardware. As I walked, I palmed my note.

When we reached the targets she gave me a look, her bright green eyes crinkled in mirth, but questioning, too. I saw the corner of a tightly folded paper in her fingers, and again my heart panged with joy. We bent, picked up each other's knives, our hands met in trading them back — and two folded papers traded places along with the knives.

Without speaking we both retreated to our places and went on with the sweaty business of knife-throwing. Faline's tutor had been watching her, a slight frown on his skinny face. When she walked away from me, still without speaking, his brows went back to where they belonged. He motioned his group over and started some new instructions.

I threw a couple more sets, peeking at them from the sides of my eyes. Faline looked bored. The rest were unnervingly attentive. The tutor seemed tense, wiping absently at his high forehead as he talked in a low, quick voice, always about the Plan.

Tension, that was what I sensed — and it wasn't just mine. The weather? Or the imminent Plan?

The Plan. I groaned inwardly. Stupid as it was, that Imaran man's idea was the only one going. Two things needed: Magic, and weapons, so he could accomplish breaking out our potential allies in the jail. But the only person who had the “freedom” to get the magic and weapons was me.

Faline's group was taken on to the next court, which was the staves. I threw a last set of knives, and then left the practice area, hearing the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the practice staves behind me. I walked purposefully until I found a square of shade in the lee of a supply building. No one was around, so I unfolded Faline's note, which was already damp and limp from both our hands. Again, Gwen's handwriting inside.

Attak Weds. We all got jobs and bad ones they are, holey terrers. What plan? Gwen, Faline, Sherry

I suspected a typical Faline ‘pun' in holey terrers — as in making holes in people. It didn't make me smile. Instead a wash of homesickness and the strangling noose of responsibility made my eyes burn, and my neck — which still ached from Alsaes's attentions — hurt. If I didn't act, somehow, the girls would either be forced to do something hateful, or to be killed themselves.

I had to talk to someone.

I slid the note into my waistband and returned to the practice area. It seemed that everyone was going to funnel through there at some time during the day. I found Faline's group still at the staves. The tutor walked around and around them, yelling exhortations, as one group tried to get by another group, the first unarmed, the second armed. I could see from some of the hot, shiny faces that many didn't like having to hit their fellows, but they were afraid not to: their winces of effort, and tight mouths when they connected made it obvious to me, if not to the tutor.

“Go! Go! You're a prisoner escaping!” the tutor yelled hoarsely at Faline. “Run for your life!”

She darted between two people, one of whom swung a staff in a threatening arc over her head. The other jabbed her staff between Faline's legs, and poor Faline fell down hard, her braids flying.

I couldn't stand to watch. And I wouldn't get near her anyway.

When the tutor called them together again, I oozed away. Still watching, of course. In this place, I was always on the watch. So I saw the tutor glance at me, then quickly away again — but not before the tension in his face eased somewhat. He was glad I was leaving. What did he think, that I was spying for Kessler?

I sighed, walking away.

Another group marched past, this one fully armed, raising dust that hung suspended in the thick, humid air. Dirt corroded my throat. I coughed, then sneezed, following at a distance.

That group disappeared into one of the buildings. I had no legitimate business there, and so I hovered near the doorway in the shade, trying to invent one.

But then Dhana approached, hair and skirts swinging in her characteristic graceful glide. Dhana can't do anything that's not graceful — she even dances when she exits her room.

Her face was wan and pinched-looking, her eyes half-angry and half-pained.

I scuffled away from the door to the corner of the building — and Dhana came right up to me. “CJ,” she said brusquely, without greeting. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to someone,” I muttered.

She looked around quickly, and then motioned for me to follow. “You're just in time. We're doing a seek-and-find until the lunch bell. If we're fast, no one will see me with you.”

She led the way behind a storage shed, and then between two buildings in a zigzag path that got me lost for a minute or two, until we emerged into the sun broiled expanse of Kessler's parade'n'execution ground.

“I hate this place,” Dhana said — just as I was thinking the same thing. “And so does everyone else. No one would think to look for us here. What's up?” Her face, her eyes looked bleached. Even her scattering of light freckles were somehow pale.

“Will there really be trouble if we're seen talking together?”

“A lot
you
know, CJ,” Dhana said in exasperation.

“Why?”

She looked down at her dusty toes, almost as brown as the bleached dirt. “Everyone knows you by sight, CJ. The tutors all think you're around to spy on them, to make sure they're efficient.”

“Why? What have I done?”

“What did you want to ask?” she said, glancing down one of the streets. “I can't be gone long. Is there a plan to get out of here?”

“I need to know why they think I'm a spy.”

“Alsaes, of course,” Dhana said. “Says you're being prepared for command. You're supposed to get your lessons on that come the Plan day, but for now you watch all the tutors for weakness and for rule breaking. He hates you, CJ, and he's making sure that everyone else does, too, though his words are all praise for how you're doing your job.”

I shuddered. “He must be planning for me to be star of his next execution.”

“Exactly,” Dhana said. “Seshe figured it all out. We actually managed to talk a little last night — only because the schedule is all flooey against their rotten, stinky blasted plan. But meanwhile,” she pointed a thin finger at me, “that clod Alsaes is set on getting you clodded.”

“A sickie!” I gave a weak laugh.

A brief smile lit her changeable face, and then she grimaced. “Please be careful. Now, what did you want to talk about?”

Of all the girls besides Clair, Dhana was the one to tell about that horrible place with the diamond. She didn't know any magic — not in her human form — but in her other form she
was
magic. Quickly, without lingering on disgusting details (as I would have done had we been at home) I told her.

She listened without comment, her expression going from wonder to horrified disbelief to a sour kind of wonderment again. At the end, she said, “And you actually got the diamond here?”

“Hidden in the corner of my mattress,” I said, nodding.

“What does it do?”

“I dunno.”

“Wonder what that place was! It can't be in the world, not with no sun, and no time, and weird distances. All I can say is, it sounds like pure evil.”

“I know. Gotta ask Clair when I see her — ”

“Was that intended to be funny?” she asked forebodingly. “Would that be before or after you bump her off?”

I gaped at Dhana, then all my bad feelings ripped through me. “Do you really think I'd kill Clair?” I asked in a fierce whisper. “I'd rather stick that knife in me, and if Alsaes told you any different, he can go nauseate his little lies — ”

“I don't believe him,” Dhana cut in with an impatient movement. “But when you do see her next, you'd better have a plan, especially if Kessler's gonna be right there watching how well you handle your blade.”

“I know,” I whined, agonized at the thought. “It's just the idea — and I can't think — ”

“Sounds like you need a good night's sleep.”

“And if you think I can get a good night's sleep around this dump, you need a bop on the klonk. Or maybe I do. I gotta think of something or I'll go as crazy as Kessler.”

“Crazy is right. Imagine wanting to take over the world. That's worse than Shnit.”

“The most horrible thing is, Shnit doesn't believe for a second he's doing anyone but himself any good — but Kessler really does think he'll make things better!”

“As if the world would be grateful,” she said, her lips curling. “Still — poor world!”

“It will be, if he succeeds.”

“Well, if he does, you won't be around to see it,” Dhana said comfortingly. “We'll all be arrow-pincushions on those things — unless Alsaes invents some yukkier way to drag it out.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the wooden posts, there before Kessler's platform.

“Oh, that's only if we flub,” I said dolefully. “If we don't, we'll be the new rulers — have everything we want. I don't trust Alsaes for a single breath, but I believe Kessler tells the truth as he sees it, and he really likes his army. He really trusts them!”

As I spoke other ideas crowded into my head — too many to sort. Some I knew were important, but I couldn't figure out which, and Dhana was talking.