He looked at my bleeding thigh. “You look a trifle banged up already, Prince Charlie.”
I said nothing.
He surveyed the others. “Isn’t that what you call him? Prince Charlie?”
“No, Lord High,” Ammit said. “He’s just a little whoreson who likes to put on airs.”
Kellin liked that. His human lips smiled a little; beneath it the frozen grin just went on and on. He returned his attention to me. “Tis said the true prince can float, and change his shape. Can you float?”
“No, Lord High,” I said.
“Change your shape?”
“No.”
He raised his limber stick, which was thicker and longer than those held by his troops. “No what?”
“No, Lord High.”
“Better. I’ll give you kiddies a bit of time to ready yourselves,” Kellin said. “Cleanse yourself for your betters, please do, and consider today’s order of battle as you wash. Wet your hair and pull it back, they’ll want to see your faces. I expect you to put on a good show for His Majesty, as you did in the first round. Understood?”
“Yes, Lord High,” we said, just like a good little first-grade class should.
He—it—swept those bottomless eyes over us again, as if he suspected something was up. Maybe he did. Then he left, followed by the others.
“Look at this,” Ocka gloated. “Me against a dead man! I should be able to win that one, all right.”
“Today all of us are going to win or none of us are,” I said. I looked at the shelf where sixteen washing buckets were lined up—yes, they had even put one out for Gully.
“Fucking true,” Eye growled.
“Jaya and Eris, either side of the door. Those two buckets have to be full to the top if they’re not already. The rest of you, take buckets but get down. On your hands and knees.”
“Why do that?” Bendo asked.
I thought of an old grammar school joke then: Adam and Eve on the verge of having sex for the first time. “Stand back, honey,” Adam says, “I don’t know how big this thing gets.”
“Because I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
And because, I thought, you never use a hairdryer when you’re taking a bath. My mother told me that.
Out loud I said, “We’re going to cleanse, all right, but not ourselves. This is going to work.”
It sounded good, but I wasn’t sure. The only thing I was sure of was that when it happened, it was going to happen fast.
8
“I hear footsteps,” Eris whispered. “They’re coming.”
“Wait until they get inside,” I said. “They won’t see you, they’ll be looking straight ahead.”
I hoped.
The two women raised their buckets to their chests. The rest of us were crouched on our hands and knees, each with a full bucket of wash-water close at hand. Ammit and Iota hulked protectively over me on either side. The door opened. It was the same pair of night soldiers who days ago had escorted the first set out for the first round. I’d been hoping for Kellin or Aaron but wasn’t surprised. Those two would be out on the field, ready to manage the festivities.
The night soldiers stopped, looking at the line of us crouched on the floor. One said, “What are you do—”
I shouted, “NOW!”
Jaya and Eris doused them.
As I’ve said, I didn’t know what might happen, but I never imagined what actually did: they exploded. There was a pair of brilliant flashes that whited out my vision for a moment. I heard something—no, several somethings—whoosh over my head, and a burn like a bee sting drilled into my upper arm. I heard a high-pitched scream, a war-cry from either Jaya or Eris. My head was down and I didn’t see which one. It was followed by several yells of startled pain from either side of me.
“Up!” I shouted.
At that point I wasn’t clear on what had happened, but we had to get out of there, that much I totally understood. The detonations of the night soldiers hadn’t been loud, more like the thuds heavy furniture would make when dropped on a rug, but the woman’s war-cry had been plenty loud. Plus there was a rattle of shrapnel. As I got to my feet, I saw there was something sticking out of Iota’s forehead above his left eye. Blood was dribbling down the side of his nose. It was a shard of bone. There was another one in my arm. I plucked it out and dropped it.
Several others had sustained injuries, but no one looked incapacitated except for Freed, and he pretty much was already. Murf, who was supposed to be his opponent in the first set, was supporting him.