Reckoning (18 page)

There is a gasp of shock and possibly approval around the room as the second Offering falls. The triumphant boy from the West takes the sword from the dead boy, and turns to face Rush, who is rubbing the back of his head and trying to get his balance.

The King is clapping and stamping his feet in approval, the Minister Prime is patting the fingers of his right hand into his left palm with little enthusiasm.

The boy from the West seems shaken and I realise that if this isn't the type of thing you revel in, then it is as hard for the winner as anyone else. He is trying to maintain a distance from Rush, but keeps glancing towards the fallen body. I can tell he is almost willing the dead boy to stand, just so it wasn't him that struck the killing blow.

Rush's head seems to have cleared as he advances, sword raised. The swagger has returned to his stance as he steps over the first body. The boy from the West stops and allows Rush to get nearer and then, as our Offering lunges forward, the other boy reels back, his sword swishing through the air towards Rush. There is a gasp but, from the angle I am at, I can see he has overbalanced, missing Rush and stumbling to the floor, the sword still in his hand.

There is no emotion in his face as Rush turns, raises his sword, and plunges it deep into the side of the boy from the West, before kicking him away and collapsing to his knees, drenched with sweat and blood.

The King roars with delight and his applause echoes around the room until, slowly, perhaps reluctantly, everyone else begins to join in. The Minister Prime rises after a while and calls for silence, before indicating for the Kingsmen to take Rush to the medical area and then sending everyone else back to their dormitories.

The shuffling of chairs above us is drowned out by the chortles of the King. I refuse to look at the wreckage behind me as we all file out. Instead, I hover towards the back and wait until the Offerings from the West are near us. I catch Imrin's gaze for a fraction of a second but that is all it takes. His eyes tell me what his lips don't have to – if we're going to go, it has to be before the next feast.

19

I'm not in the mood to sneak out that night, although I can't sleep either. Bryony is back in the dorm and spends a lot of the evening moaning with pain and we are all too afraid to comfort her in case it somehow gets us in trouble.

In the morning, Ignacia arrives to take Pietra and myself to breakfast. Refusing isn't an option but it is hardly something I feel proud about. We are led towards the main hall but carry on past it to an area of the castle I have never been in before. My eyes flick around, trying to remember the details but all I really see are cameras – lots of them. Wherever we are must be somewhere important, but Ignacia is walking too quickly for me to memorise it all.

Soon, she takes us through a large heavy-looking set of wooden doors that leads into a room decked in the same shade of red that the King wears. There are flags and drapes around the walls, plus a large coloured glass window illuminates the room like a kaleidoscope. Ignacia offers us seats and it is only when I hear the King's voice that I realise I am staring at the window.

‘Stunning, isn't it?'

The King is sitting at the head of the table with Jela at his side but he is looking straight at me. I sit quickly, desperate not to have to engage with him but it is too late.

‘I commissioned it especially,' he adds, still watching me. ‘What do you think?'

I stare at the window again, which shows him, sword in hand, standing triumphantly over the leaders of the rebel and nationalist armies. From the few things we have been told about the end of the war, I assume this must be only symbolic, not an actual event, but the fact the King has had this scene created in stained glass shows that perception is more important than reality.

‘It's beautiful,' I say, knowing there was no other response I could give. In many ways, I'm not even lying – the craftsmanship is incredible.

The King smiles and nods. ‘It was done by one of you, an Offering, a few years ago. I forget his name…' He looks around the room but the only people there are Jela, myself, Pietra, Rush, the other three boys and two Kingsmen, one by the door, the other on the King's shoulder. He looks at Jela, somehow expecting her to know the name of someone from before her time, before shaking his head in annoyance.

‘Anyway, it doesn't matter,' the King adds. ‘I had his hands cut off when he had finished. There was no way I was going to risk him creating anything with somebody else's image in it.'

He claps his hand on the table, making everyone jump before telling us to eat.

Given everything I have already seen, I didn't think I could be shocked by anything else but the callousness of the King while talking about someone who has created such a startling tribute for him is beyond comprehension.

Opposite Jela is Rush, who the King is now focusing all of his attention on, asking questions about his upbringing and enthusing about his performance the previous evening, even though, as I remember it, he didn't do very much. As he turns to face the King, I can see a deep gash through the still-matted hair on the back of his head.

With each question, he answers with a gentle bow of the head and a respectful ‘Your Majesty' until the King tells him that it isn't necessary.

Again, I concentrate on the meats, devouring the wafer-thin slices of ham, turkey and chicken, along with dollops of chutney and pickle. I try to put out of my mind that three people had to die for me to eat like this. Each mouthful feels as if I am revelling in their blood. I try to focus on Imrin telling me how thin I was looking and as I gently finger the jagged edges of my ribs through my work clothes, I switch off and eat as much as I can without drawing attention to myself.

With the King's attention on Rush, I try to catch Jela's eye but it doesn't take long to realise that she is gone. She is sitting up straight in her chair, delicately cutting her food into small pieces, but her eyes are vacant as they stare impassively at the plate, then the wall and then back again. Up close, her eye looks a lot worse than it did last night. The lid is halfway closed, decorated by a rainbow of colours that almost mask the jagged scratch which zigzags above her eyebrow. When she finishes, she puts her cutlery down neatly on either side of the plate and then sits unmoving as the King scoffs pastries and continues to make sure Rush's plate is full.

I can only wonder if Rush knows how dangerous a game he has fallen into. Being popular might be good while it lasts, but how long before the King wants to see him perform again to ensure his first performance wasn't a fluke? How long before he is traded to some other country as currency? Or sent out onto a far-flung battlefield somewhere? Perhaps that's what he wants but I'm happier keeping my head down.

After we are dismissed, I spend the rest of the day going through the motions in the labs, unhappy I chose to eat the food that had only been given because people died. Lumin has no after-effects from the accident with his eye, although he hasn't spoken to me since. Porter, meanwhile, seems to have forgotten the incident with me under his desk.

That night I sneak out, sitting at the far end of the passage on my own, shivering under the blankets. I sit in the shadow, close my eyes and think of home, only realising I have fallen asleep as I hear a gentle click when the door swings inwards, catching on my legs.

‘Silver?' Imrin whispers.

‘Who else?'

I shuffle along until he is next to me and cover him with the blankets.

‘You're freezing,' he says.

‘I've been waiting for you.'

‘People were awake, I couldn't get out.'

‘Did you get it?'

Imrin reaches into his gown and takes out a thin, square object, handing it to me. It is difficult to describe as it weighs next to nothing, but the borodron feels sleek, like it should be a heavy piece of metal. I hold two of the corners and flex it back and forth in a way that feels as if it shouldn't be possible.

‘It's so … strange,' I say, struggling for a better word. I have never felt anything like it before. ‘Did you have to do much to get it?'

‘Not really, there's a proper black market going on in our dorm. The good thing is that everyone is in debt to everyone else for something. No one is going to end up telling on anyone else, because they'll end up taking themselves down too.'

‘It's the exact opposite in our dorm; nobody even talks about stuff like that since Pietra did her thing. I guess boys are more corruptible than girls.' I give him a gentle nudge but he points out that perhaps that means girls are more likely to turn on each other than boys. From my experience, I can't argue.

We agree not to meet the next night as the day after is when the delivery will happen. We run through our plan one final time and, if anything, it sounds too easy. Imrin says that he managed to get out of the kitchen and back in unnoticed last time. The last time I told Porter I needed to go to the bathroom, he told me to ‘call it a bog' and stop annoying him. Every day he says or does something that makes me wonder how he reached the position he is in.

After we have run through everything over and over until I am bored, I take Imrin's arm and drape it around me, resting my head on his shoulder. He starts to say something but I shush him and we sit in silence until I feel my eyelids drooping and my mind slipping away until I am in Martindale again. The thought of home is always my safety blanket.

Imrin jolts me awake and says I should return to bed. We run through the schedule one final time before I yawn a goodnight and head back to the dorm.

*   *   *

The next day and a bit drags more than any period of time I have ever known. In my head, I keep trying to talk myself out of our plan, thinking of all the things that could go wrong: Porter stopping me from leaving, Imrin being caught on his way out, alarms sounding if the door opens, Kingsmen that might be waiting at the bottom of the steps, as well as any number of other things.

When I wake up on the morning of the delivery I have to steady myself because my hands are shaking. I have used the sponges in our bathroom to clean Wray's blood from my mother's dress, and now I wrap the fabric around my waist. It is easily hidden by the bagginess of the work clothes I have. Aside from Imrin, it is the one thing I have no intention of leaving behind.

When I arrive in the main lab, Porter is already there, tinkering away on his thinkpad. He grunts something without looking, which I assume is a ‘good morning'.

‘Am I in here today?' I ask, even though his answer is always the same.

‘Yes, but you're my Lumin today, he's at the medical bay.'

‘What's wrong with him?'

‘No idea but he's holding our work up, so it better be something good.'

I wonder why he's there – he has never missed a day of work before and the only experience I've known of people visiting the medical bay has been when they've been harmed. Could something have happened to him?

Either way, I'm not sure if it is going to make it more difficult for me to slip away myself, so I sit at my bench and reply in the same casual fashion. ‘I've got to see Ignacia later.'

The question fires straight back: ‘Why?'

‘I'm not sure. It's at her request.'

I am prising open a damaged thinkpad, waiting to see if Porter is going to object, but instead he mumbles something about it ‘always being him' as we carry on working.

It almost seems as if time is going backwards. I wonder if Imrin's day is going as he expects. I know his schedule as well as he does, so as I check the time again, I know those working in the kitchen will now be bundling last week's food together and getting rid of anything that can't be used.

I think of the old battered metal clock that sits above the sink in my house in Martindale. It is a dim cream colour, round with hands that point to numerals around the edges, rather than the numbers we are all so used to. It is the only one of its type I have ever seen as everyone relies on their thinkwatches to know what they should be doing. Mum taught me how to use it, saying that although I didn't need to know, it was her way of showing me what life used to be like. I think she kept it from before the war. When she was showing me how it worked, I didn't understand but now it is nice to remember.

I close my eyes and think of the noise it made before the battery ran out.

Tick-tock.

As I stare at the digital numbers on my thinkwatch, I can almost hear the ticking from one second to the next until, finally, it is the moment for me to go. I know timing is everything, so I tell Porter I have to go a full minute early, just in case he argues. As it is, he mumbles something that ends in the word ‘off', and then I am out of the door.

It is almost as if crossing into the corridor starts my heart beating faster – suddenly it is thudding in my chest as I hurry along the route I would now know even if my eyes were shut. Around each bend I expect to see a Kingsman who will stop me and ask where I'm going, but, as with my practice runs, there is nobody. I move past the few cameras on my route without looking at them until I reach the final bend. I peer around the corner and observe as two Kingsmen struggle past, carrying a crate of food each, exactly as Imrin said they would. As soon as they are out of sight, I dash for the door, knowing we have just ten minutes. I check my thinkwatch again and then set off along the corridor in the direction I know Imrin should be coming from.

I reach into my pocket and nervously finger the square of borodron, flexing it back and forth, whispering Imrin's name under my breath and checking my thinkwatch again.

Nine minutes.

I walk back to the door and look both ways along the corridor. I cannot even pace because of the proximity of the cameras.

Eight minutes.

‘Come on, Imrin,' I whisper, before taking the borodron out of my pocket and pressing it against the scanner as planned. I expect there to be a problem but instead the door hisses upwards, allowing a draft of air to fizz through the space and chill my arms. All I can see ahead are the spiralling steps.