“She… she…” Jaya shuddered again. “She kissed him where his spit ran down. She licked it off his green face.”
Iota came in, escorted by a night soldier. He saw me and gave a nod. So Jackah was gone.
3
When the door closed, I went over to Iota. He didn’t have a mark on him.
“The bitch is there,” he said. “Red Molly. Watching from the track, below the box where the swells sit. Her hair ain’t really red but orange. The color of carrots. Sticks up all around her head in quills. Fifteen feet from toes to top. Wearing a leather skirt. Tits like boulders. Each of em must weigh as much as a five-year-old kiddie. Got a knife in a scabbard on her hip, looks almost as long as the little spears they give us to fight with. I think she watches to see what moves the winners make. For later, you know.”
That made me think of Coach Harkness, and practices on Thursdays before Friday night games. On those afternoons we knocked off twenty minutes early and sat in a team room less fancy than this one but otherwise about the same. Coach would roll in a TV and we’d watch our upcoming opponents—their moves and plays. Especially the quarterback. He’d show us the enemy QB twenty or thirty times on isolated camera—every fake, jink, and stutter-step. I told Uncle Bob about that once, and he laughed and nodded. “Coach is right, Charlie. Cut off your enemy’s head, the body dies.”
“I didn’t like her watching like that,” Eye said. “I was hoping she’d take me for granted, and when we got down to it maybe I could find a way to stick her or brain her. Instead, she’s going to get four chances to watch how I do and I ain’t going to get a chance to see how she does at all.”
I didn’t remark on his unspoken assumption that I’d be gone by then, promised prince or no promised prince. “Cla thinks it’s going to be him.”
Eye laughed as if he hadn’t just killed one of his longtime mates in Maleen. “It’ll be Cla against me when it’s down to two, no doubt—I’ve come to like you, Charlie, but I don’t think you’ll even put a touch on him—but I know his weakness.”
“Which would be what?”
“He did me down that once, poked me so hard in my throat it’s a damn wonder I can still talk, but I learned from it.” Which didn’t answer the question.
Mesel came in next, so Sam was finished. A few minutes later the door opened again and I was surprised to see Doc Freed come in, although not entirely under his own power. Pursey was with him, one of his flipper hands hooked into Freed’s armpit, helping him along. Doc’s right thigh was bleeding heavily through a makeshift bandage and his face was grotesquely battered, but he was alive and Yanno was not.
I was sitting with Double and Eris. “He won’t be able to fight again,” I said. “Not unless the second round’s six months from now and maybe not even then.”
“It won’t be six months,” Eris said. “It won’t even be six days. And he’ll fight or he’ll die.”
It sure wasn’t high school football.
4
Bult and Bendo survived the third set. So did Cammit. He was cut in several places when he came back and said he’d been sure he was done for. Then poor Dommy had one of his coughing fits, bad enough to double him over. Cammit saw his opportunity and ran his short spear into the back of Dommy’s neck.
Doc was lying on the floor, either asleep—unlikely, given his injuries—or passed out. While the rest of us were waiting for the third set to be over, Cla continued staring at me with that endless grin. The only time I could get away from it was when I went to one of the buckets to scoop out a handful of water. But when I turned back, there he was, eye-fucking me.
I know his weakness, Iota had said. He did me down that once but I learned from it.
What had he learned?
I replayed the fight （if you could call it that） in Eye’s cell: the brilliant speed of Cla’s rabbit-punch to Eye’s throat, the rolling bucket, Cla turning to see it, Yanno—now the late Yanno—saying if you killed him, you’ll pay a high price, Eye picking himself up and going to his pallet while Cla bent to pick up the bucket. Maybe thinking to brain Eye with it if he tried again.
If there was something there, I didn’t see it.
When the third set was done, Pursey came in pushing a cart. Aaron accompanied him. There was the smell of roast chicken, which I would have found enticing under other circumstances, but not when it was apt to be my last meal.
“Eat hearty, kiddies!” Aaron cried. “You can’t say we don’t feed you well!”