“Want to race?” I asked.
“What? So that bitch Petra and the rest of em can bet on who wins?” He jerked a thumb at the well-dressed whole people relaxing with their refreshing drinks. They had been joined by a couple of new ones. It was almost a cocktail party, by God. The group was flanked by a pair of night soldiers. “Ain’t we got enough to worry about without that?”
“I guess so.”
“Where the fuck are you really from, Charlie? You’re no Ully.”
I was spared answering by the sight of Hamey quitting the track. He plodded toward the various clumps of practice gear with his head lowered and his thin chest heaving. Between the wicker basket of fighting sticks （I didn’t know what else they could be） and the tackling dummies with their scowling plate faces, there were some benches and a table covered with pottery cups—small, like demitasses. Hamey took one, drained it, put it back on the table, then sat with his forearms on his thighs and his head down. The table was guarded—or perhaps “minded”—by a night soldier who looked at Hamey but made no move to hit him.
“Don’t try that,” Eye puffed, “or they’ll whip you until you bleed.”
“How does he get away with it?”
“Because they know he can’t do this shit, that’s why. He’s Mr. Useless, ain’t he? But he’s whole, and without him we’re back down to thirty.”
“I don’t see how… I mean, once the Fair One starts, assuming it ever does… how they can expect him to… you know. Fight.”
“They don’t,” Eye said, and I detected a strange note in his voice. It could have been sympathy. Or maybe I mean fellow-feeling. It wasn’t that he liked Hamey; it was that he liked the situation we were in less.
“Don’t you ever lose your breath, kiddie? One more time around and I’ll be sitting on the bench with Useless and they can whack me with their sticks all they want.”
I thought of telling him I’d played a lot of sports, but then he might ask me what kind, and I didn’t even know what sport had been played on this big green tiddlywink. “I kept in shape. At least until I came here. And you can call me Charlie instead of kiddie, okay? Kiddie’s what they call us.”
“Charlie it is.” Eye jerked his thumb at Hamey, a picture of dejection as he sat on the bench. “That poor sucker’s just a warm body. Cannon fodder.”
Only he didn’t say sucker and he didn’t say cannon fodder. That was just how my mind translated whatever idiom he had used. “They like seeing one match decided fast.”
Like number one against number sixteen in the NCAA Big Dance, I thought.
We were coming around to the VIP box again, and this time it was my turn to jerk my thumb at the well-dressed whole people who were watching us. When they weren’t talking to each other, that was, because you could tell whatever they were chatting about was more important to them than the ragged slobs puffing and running below. We were just an excuse for getting together, like the guys that used to watch football practice back home. Behind us, the others were strung out and a couple of guys—Double and a guy named Yanno—had joined Hamey on the benches.
“How many of them are there?”
“What?” Iota was now puffing, too. I still had my wind. “Elden’s subjects?” He gave subjects a little emphasis, as if putting it in quotation marks. “Don’t know. Twenty. Maybe thirty. Maybe a few more. The bitch queens it over em because she’s Flight Killer’s favorite.”
“Petra?”
“Yah, her.”
“And that’s it?”
Before he could reply, my old frienemy Aaron strode out of a walkway under the VIP box, waving his limber stick like a conductor about to start an orchestra on its first number. “In!” he called. “Everybody in!”
Iota jogged toward the equipment in the center of the field and I joined him. Most of the prisoners were puffing and blowing. Jaya and Eris were bending over, hands on knees, getting their breath back. Then they joined the others at the table with the little cups on it. I tossed one back. It was mostly water, but there was something sour in it that had a kick. I still had my breath, but after drinking that little cup I felt like I had more of it.
Counting Aaron, there were now five night soldiers on the field, standing in a semicircle in front of us. Two more were bodyguarding the VIPs. The ones watching from the parapets were easy to count because of their bright blue auras: twelve. That meant nineteen in all, which I thought was just about the number that had chased me and Radar as we ran for the outer gate. Twenty when I added in Kellin, who either wasn’t here or was watching from one of the parapets. Was that all of them? If so, the prisoners actually outnumbered the guards. I didn’t want to ask Eye, because Aaron appeared to be watching me.