Poor World (7 page)

“Thanks for the warning,” I said, and left.

Even though the outside air had gotten even hotter, I was glad to get away from the bone-aching chill of Dejain's rooms.

I wandered back up the street, watching groups of people at various chores, from unpacking or transporting supplies to running in those neat, orderly lines. Brilliance? I thought skeptically. He just seems crazy to me. But then, so does she. Of course two crazies would think each other great.

Me, I just had to figure how to get myself, the girls, and the itchfeet out of there, preferably with our hides intact.

Diana ran by with one of those squads. They flashed across a street and disappeared behind a barracks building, moving in the direction of the practice areas. I was tempted to follow, and then wondered if that was a good idea.

Why not? I stopped, uncertain what to do next. So far it seemed I was free to do what I wanted, except Kessler hadn't told me where the girls were staying or what jobs they'd been assigned to. All that stuff about being his heir — maybe he expected me to just ignore the girls and devote myself to learning his tasks.

So that I could launch my career by killing Clair.

Again that cold nastiness trickled through my veins.

Would I get the girls in trouble if I went and found them? Everyone seemed so orderly and purposeful. Everyone but me.

Was I being tested again?

I sighed, then started up the street at a brisk, purposeful pace. Kessler did say he expected me to ‘convince' the feet to change their minds. I could use that as an excuse to visit them — if anyone asked.

The prison air was just as stuffy as ever, but at least it was cooler than the outside air; after I'd toiled up the street I really needed some shade.

The guards ignored me after one glance, and no one else spoke to me. I marched in like I had important business there, and felt my way down the steps. “Puddlenose?” I called. “You awake? Tell me when to stop.”

“Right there. Welcome to our palace. Take the most comfortable chair. Got any news?” he added as I picked the lock with my little finger and slipped inside their cell. My eyes began slowly to adjust to the murk.

“I'm supposed to be convincing you to join,” I said, kneeling down on the dirt. “So, will you see the error of your ways?” I spoke in Mearsiean, of course, but I felt uneasy about hinting at the truth more than with a sarcastic tone.

Even so, I saw Rel shake his head slightly, and look away. In disgust?

Annoyed, I turned my back on him and scratched Kessler's name in the dirt, then I pointing down at it. Puddlenose bent over and traced his finger lightly in the grooves I'd made, then he swiped it smooth again, sat back on his heels, and sighed softly.

Christoph, meanwhile, said cheerily, “You'll have to keep working on us, CJ. Meantime, think you could get us some scissors?” He blew at his hair, which hung down in his face.

“I don't remember,” Puddlenose murmured softly, rubbing his eyes. “I was too little.”

So much for Puddlenose recalling some obscure but crucial detail about Kessler's past that would help us.

I had a sudden thought. “Can you even move? I mean, if you did get — if they let you free?”

Puddlenose reacted, but the light was too dim for me to make out his expression. My question startled him, that much I could see, but not why.

“Not a lot,” Puddlenose admitted, after a long hesitation. Then in his usual joking voice, “Mostly I watch the light change.”

“You can tell what time it is?” I asked, amazed.

“See? In the stairway? There is a little reflected light. I'd say it's about noon.”

“Yuk,” I said, horrified. The light was barely perceptible to me now. Christoph said, in Shelanian — his home language — ”Puddlenose sleeps — ”

“Think I'll catch up now,” Puddlenose said, and stretched out carefully.

Christoph went on, “We two are lazy, but Rel does a few million pushups a night. We figure it's enough for all three.”

I gave Rel a sour look. He would, of course.

“Wake me if they remember our grub,” Puddlenose murmured.

I could barely see his outline; he turned his back and curled up.

“Sleeps a lot,” Christoph commented. “I guess it runs in the family.”

I didn't say anything for a short time; I felt like something important had been hinted at, but I was missing it. Then it occurred to me that they hadn't been all that glad to see me, and I'd assumed that a visit would cheer them up.

“I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing,” I muttered. “It's weird. Now everything feels kind of like a test, but I don't know the rules.”

“It is a test,” Rel said. “You know the stakes.”

Everyone's lives. That was obvious. Annoyed, I said, “So I'm too dumb to figure that out, right?”

“Everything you do is indeed a test,” Rel said again.

I opened my mouth to blast him, and then shut it. When I restated his words in my mind, they came out
everything I did was being watched
.

I already knew that Kessler and his gang were pret-ty good at spying. So ... if I was being watched, did that increase the danger the boys were in? And then I had it — of course it did. I'd joked, when I came in, about switching them to Kessler's side, but I realized with an inner jolt what Alsaes had meant — what Kessler expected. I
was
supposed to get the boys to join up. And at some point, Kessler, or Alsaes, was going to ask me for the boys' answer, and then what?

I heard Alsaes in my mind:
We're going to have one very soon
.

An execution.

How
could I have missed what he meant? Because I thought he was an idiot, of course. But even idiots can carry out threats.

I said, “Can't you guys join? Like us? For the same reason?”

“No,” Rel said.

At once all my rotten feelings about lying came flooding back.

I got up and left before I got so mad I ruined everything by giving him the benefit of my opinion about Noble Sacrifices and Obnoxious Boneheads.

I was now in such an angry mood I really needed to be by myself and calm down. I stalked out of the jail into the full heat and glare of noon, and boom! All my tiredness and headache came clanging back.

I crossed the street, sidling a look at Kessler's window. The desk was empty; he wasn't there. Relieved, I walked inside the building. The air was less hot, though not even remotely cool. Still, there was a faint breeze — there were a couple windows open somewhere.

I kept going down the hall and stood looking in at the cot where I'd spent the night before. Was this to be my room, then? No one had assigned me to one of the barracks. Where did Kessler sleep? I hadn't seen a bedroom in this building, but it didn't make any sense for him to traipse down to one of the barracks, and then back again to his office. It didn't fit right with what little I had seen of his personality, either.

I stepped closer to the cot, feeling all the aches back again. My eyes stung from tiredness, and anger, and underneath it all that terrible awareness of my lie to Kessler, and the sense that I
wasn't
going to be able to weasel out of this one alive. Me, or the others whose lives depended on me. And the disaster would be my fault.

I flopped down on the cot, and on came the questions like a pack of wailing ghosties.

Should I have said “No!” and let them stick us all in the jail? Would we really be better off waiting for a custom-designed execution? Who would be chosen to go first, and who would be forced to watch?

I heard again Rel's quiet but emphatic
No
. Like there was no other alternative. No honorable alternative? So he'd rather be croaked than pretend to cooperate?

But if so, then why was he doing all that exercising?

Gnarg.

I covered my face with my hands, wishing I could block my thoughts like I blocked out the light. After a time my hands slid down, and my wild imaginings turned into dreams, and I slept.

Not good sleep, either. Heavy, uneasy sleep. In fact, take it as truth that I never slept well during this entire mess.

I woke up abruptly with that terrible feeling one gets when one isn't alone. I brushed my damp hair off my face and peered up through blurry eyes to see Kessler standing in the doorway. Checking on me. Why? There was no “Sleep tight!” or even “Oh, excuse me!”

I sat up, slightly dizzy, and rubbed my eyes again. When I nerved myself to open them, the doorway was empty. Definitely checking on me. Why?

Because something was going on, natch.

So I straightened up, reminded myself that (despite what overgrown clods with their fine notions of Honor and Nobility might think) I had a job to do, and it wouldn't get done hiding in that room.

So I stomped through the door — feeling that brief moment of relief when the clean-up spell divested me of grit and grime — and snuck to the office. Kessler was standing at the window reading papers by the slanting afternoon light.

“Sleep? When there's so much to do?” he said by way of greeting.

“I slept badly last night, and so I was tired,” I said. “And I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing.”

“Dejain did not give you a list of tasks?”

“She said I ought to be learning things from you first, because she's too busy with her part of the plans right now.”

“Then you should begin,” he said. “Practice every day at the weapons courts.”

“Um, is there a schedule? Should I join with — ”

“There will be a tutor free when you appear there. Everyone else has a schedule. Do you know your map?”

“Ah, not really. I know my country, of course, and where Chwahirsland is, and a few of its neighbors, because I've been there, but that's all.”

“Learn your map. Practice. If there's time, you will witness some of the exercises so that you can begin to grasp tactical planning.”

So far it didn't sound so bad — though I had no idea what tactical planning meant, at least there was no mention of practice at killing queens. “Dejain said something about strategy,” I said, hoping I sounded like I knew what strategy was.

“That will come when you know something more about command,” he said, moving to the desk. He set one stack of papers down and picked up another. “You have the instincts. You need training.”

“Speaking of training,” I said, hoping that a joke would ease the subject along better, “I'm working on my friends. You know, in the klink. But it might help their spirits if I could, maybe, take them a change of clothes and some scissors.”

“Scissors?” He didn't look even slightly humored.

I had a feeling my little ploy had splatted worse than my one attempt at a joke, but I clodded onwards, “They've been sitting there a long time, you know, and they're getting a little shaggy — ”

Kessler put his papers down, and an eye blink later he was right in front of me. “Those three are no longer your friends,” he said. “You have chosen this work, so your friends are those who share your vision.”

“But I just — ”

He put his hands on my shoulders, and when I tried to twitch away the back of my head klonked against the wall.

Then his hands tightened round my neck, and he said a lot more, but my head was buzzing too loudly and I couldn't hear his words. I clawed at his fingers, but couldn't budge them — and just when the pressure was actually beginning to strangle me, suddenly he let go and moved away.

I flopped bonelessly into a chair. When I could hear and see again, I realized I'd been saved by some distraction; he was over at the desk, rifling through the stacks of papers with one hand, the other clasping that square thing as he talked in a low, clipped voice in a lingo I could not hear past the roaring in my head.

I drew a long, shuddering breath, glad I
could
breathe.

Kessler dropped the square thing back into his pocket and frowned at me. “I apologize, Cherene. I have a bad temper.”

And that unsettled me more than anything else that long, dreadful day. A villain? Apologizing?

I wasn't about to let him know how the apology was more disturbing than the bullying, which, nasty as it feels, you expect from a villain. “Well, next time, how about a warning? I mean, I only got the one life, and flimsy as it is, it's mine.”

He gave me a curious look — an intent study, like he wanted to examine inside my skull — and said, “Does anything faze you?”

“Of course!” I exclaimed, surprised. “I've got the worst moods of — well, anyone I know. But we all do, I guess. Only one I know that can woodface through the worst is ol' Rel.”

“Even pain?” Kessler said, looking interested.

Alarm zapped through me. Was this crazy guy about to stalk over to the jail to test out my theories? “Oh, well, no,” I said hastily. “I don't know anyone who stonefaces through
that
. And it seems kind of weird to crunch someone to see if his face changes,” I added, not very subtly — as if my opinion could possibly have dissuaded him from trying.

But Kessler had already lost the interested look.

“Well,” I said, deciding I'd gotten myself into enough trouble for one day. I got up — resisting the temptation to rub my aching neck. “Maybe I better get a start on the work. Um, when — or where — is dinner, so I don't miss it, or cause any extra fuss?”

“Right here. Whenever you want.”

So much for my subtle hint about not having to eat with him.

Groaning inwardly, I decided I'd better act on my expressed eagerness to get started on training right away.

Dhana glanced up at the window: almost sunset.

She sidled quick looks at the others in the room: five kids, from her age up to Rel's, and maybe ten adults. She ignored the latter.