I saw the three green spires rising into the clouds dead ahead. There were stone turrets on my right and left. There were night soldiers in their burning blue shrouds on some of the parapets running between the turrets, looking down at us. I had only been able to see the top curve of the stadium on my walk to the sundial because it was sunken at the rear of the palace grounds.
Somewhere—probably at the base of those three green-and-glass spires—there was a throne room and royal apartments. Like the shops along the wide Gallien Road, those were places for the high mucky-mucks. I had an idea that this was the place that had been important to the common folk, and I could almost see them streaming up those brightly colored pinwheel paths on game days, coming in from Seafront and Deesk, maybe even from Ullum and the Green Isles, carrying baskets of food and singing their team songs or chanting their team names—
A limber stick came down on my arm, harder this time. I turned and saw a grinning skull inside a scowling semi-transparent envelope of face. “Quit gawking around like the veriest idiot! Time to run, kiddie! Time to pick up your feet!”
Iota led our pack onto the circular track bordering the circular, crazy-green field. The others followed him in twos and threes. Hamey was last. No surprise there. Overhanging what I assumed was the front of the field was a kind of suite that looked like a big open-air living room; all it needed to complete the picture was a fancy-ass chandelier. Padded chairs, like the ones down front at Guaranteed Rate Field, flanked what was obviously the seat of honor. It wasn’t as big as Hana’s throne, where she guarded the back entrance to the palace （when she wasn’t eating or sleeping, that was）， but the seat was extra wide and the arms slanted outward, as if whoever got the privilege of sitting there was a steroid-enhanced widebody from the ass on up. This seat was empty, but there were half a dozen people in the padded chairs on either side, watching as we ran past them. They were whole people dressed in good clothes—which is to say, not the rags most of us were wearing. One was a woman, her face pale with what I assumed was makeup of some kind. She was wearing a long dress with a ruffled collar. Her fingers and hair-clips flashed with gems. Everyone in this suite was drinking what could have been beer or ale from tall glasses. One of the men saw me looking and raised his glass to me, as if toasting. They all wore expressions I’d call a mixture of boredom lightly spiced with mild interest. I hated them at once, as only a prisoner who’s been whipped with limber sticks can hate a bunch of well-dressed idlers who are just sitting on their fannies and passing the time.
This place wasn’t built for the likes of those assholes, I thought. I don’t know how I can know that, but I do.
A limber stick came down, this time across the seat of my increasingly filthy pants. It stung like fire. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to stare at your betters?”
I was coming to hate those insectile, buzzing voices, too. It was like listening to not just one Darth Vader but a whole platoon of them. I picked up the pace and passed Stooks. He flipped me an Empisarian bird as I went by. I flipped it right back.
I wove my way through my Deep Maleen colleagues, taking a friendly bump from Tom and a harder, less friendly one from a slightly bowlegged hulk named Ammit. “Watch where you’re going, Ully,” he said. “Ain’t no god to protect you here. You has left all that behind.”
I left him behind, and happy to do it. Life was lousy enough without bad-tempered cellblock mates to make it worse.
In the center of the field was stuff I recognized from various athletic practices going all the way back to Peewee football and hockey. There was a double line of what looked like wooden railroad ties. There were big cloth bags filled with round bulges that could only be balls. There was a line of poles wrapped in burlap. On top of each was a crudely painted scowling face. Empisarian tackling dummies, no doubt. There were ropes with rings on the ends hanging from a T-bar and a wide board on high sawhorses with a square of hay on one side. Also a wicker basket filled with what looked like axe-handles. I didn’t care for the look of those. Coach Harkness had put us through drills some might consider sadistic, but whacking each other with sticks? No.
I got to the front of the crowd as we reached the part of the running track directly across the field from the VIP box. Here I pulled even with Iota, who was running with his head back, his chest puffed out, and his hands pumping at his sides. All he needed was a couple of hand weights to look like any middle-aged gettin’-in-shape guy from my neighborhood. Oh, and maybe a tracksuit.