“Agreed … but something isn’t right here,” I say quietly.
Cassius laughs at the open plain. “Nonsense. We’d see trouble if it was coming. And I don’t think any one of them is going to be faster than us two. We can strut up to their gates and take a shit if we so like.”
“I do have something brewing.” I touch my stomach.
Yet still, something is wrong. And not just in my belly.
It’s six kilometers of open ground between the river fortress and us. The river gurgles in the distance to the right. Forest to the far left. Plains in front. Mountains beyond the river. Wind rustles the long grass and a sparrow coasts in with the breeze. It swoops low to the ground before flinching up and away. I laugh loudly and lean against the table.
“They are in the grass,” I whisper. “A trap.”
“We can steal sacks from them and carry more of this back,” he says loudly. “Run?”
“Pixie.”
He grins, though neither of us is sure if we’re allowed to start the fighting during orientation day. Whatever.
On three, we kick apart the disposable table’s legs till we each have a meter of duroplastic as a weapon. I scream like a madman and sprint toward the spot where the sparrow fled. Cassius at my side. Five House Ceres Golds rise from the grass. They’re startled by our mad rush. Cassius catches the first in the face with a proper fencer’s lunge. I’m less graceful. My shoulder is stiff and sore. I scream and break my weapon across one of their knees. He goes down howling. Duck someone’s swing. Cassius deflects it. We dance as two. There’s three of them left. One squares up with me. He doesn’t have a knife or a bat. No, he has something I’m far more interested in. A question mark of a sword. A slingBlade for reaping grain. He faces me with his back hand on his hip and the crooked blade out like a razor. If it were a razor, I’d be dead. But it’s not. I make him miss, block one of Cassius’s attackers’ blows. Lurch forward at my attacker. I’m much quicker than he and my grip is like durosteel to his. So I take his slingBlade and his knife before I punch him down.
When he sees how I twirl the slingBlade in my hand, the last uninjured boy knows it’s time to surrender. Cassius jumps high in the .376grav and executes an unnecessary twirling sideways kick to the boy’s face. Reminds me of the dancers and leapers of Lykos
Kravat. The Silent Dance. Eerily similar to the boast dancing of young Reds.
Nothing is silent about the boys’ curses. I feel no pity for these students. They all murdered someone the night before, just like me. There are no innocents in this game. The only thing that worries me is seeing how Cassius dispatched his victims. He is grace and finesse. I am rage and momentum. He could kill me in a second, if he knew my secret.
“What a lark!” he croons. “You were gory terrifying! You just took his weapon! Gory fast! Glad we weren’t paired earlier. Prime stuff! What have you to say for yourselves, you sneaking fools?”
The captured Golds just swear at us.
I stand over them and c**k my head. “Is this the first time you’ve lost at something?” No answer. I frown. “Well, that must be embarrassing.”
Cassius’s face shines—for a moment he’s forgotten his brother’s death. I haven’t. I feel darkness. Hollow. Evil when the adrenaline fades. Is this what Eo wanted? For me to play games? Fitchner arrives in the air above us, clapping his hands. His gravBoots glimmer golden. He’s got his ham slice between his teeth.
“Reinforcements come!” he laughs.
Titus and a half dozen of the faster boys and girls run toward us from the highlands. Opposite, a golden shape rises from the distant river fortress and flies toward us. A beautiful woman with short-cropped hair settles next to Fitchner in the air. The Proctor of House Ceres. She carries a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“Mars! A picnic!” she calls, referring to him by his House’s deity.
“So who arranged for this drama, Ceres?” Fitchner asks.
“Oh, Apollo, I suppose. He’s lonely up in his mountain estates. Here, this is zinfandel from his vines. Much better than last year’s varietal.”
“Delicious!” Fitchner proclaims. “But your boys were squatting in the grass. Almost as if they expected the picnic to spontaneously manifest. Suspicious, no?”
“Details!” Proctor Ceres laughs. “Pendantic details!”
“Well, here’s a detail. It seems two of mine are worth five of yours this year, my dear.”
“These pretty boys?” Ceres snickers. “I thought the vain ones went to Apollo and Venus.”
“Oho! Well, yours certainly fight like housewives and farmers. Well placed, they were.”
“Don’t judge them yet, you cad. They are midDraft picks. My highDrafts are elsewhere, earning their first calluses!”
“Learning the ovens? Huzzah,” Fitchner declares ironically. “Bakers do make the best rulers, so I’ve heard.”
She nudges him. “Oh, you devil. No wonder you interviewed for the Rage Knight post. Such a scoundrel!”
They clink their glasses together as we watch from the ground.
“How I love orientation day,” Ceres titters. “Mercury just let a hundred thousand rats loose in Jupiter’s citadel. But Jupiter was ready because Diana tattled and arranged the delivery of a thousand cats. Jupiter’s boys won’t go hungry like last year. Cats will be as fat as Bacchus.”
“Diana is a harlot,” Fitchner declares.
“Be kind!”
“I was. I sent her a great phallic cake filled with live woodpeckers.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You beast!” Ceres caresses his arm and I note the free-loving demeanor these people have. I wonder if other Proctors are lovers as well. “Her fortress will be riddled with holes. Oh, the sound must be horrible. Well played, Mars. They say Mercury is the trickster, but your japes always have a certain … flair!”
“Flair, eh? Well, I’m sure I could rustle up some tricks for you on Olympus …”
“Huzzah,” she coos suggestively.
They toast again, floating above their sweating and bloody students. I can’t help but laugh. These people are mad. Bloodydamn crazy in their empty Golden heads. How are they my rulers?
“Oy! Fitch! If you don’t mind. What are we supposed to do with these farmers?” Cassius calls up. He pokes one of our injured captives on the nose. “What are the rules?”