There’s always a carriage to the side, waiting to swallow the freshly beaded conscripts and trundle them off to Drelgad for training. Always a churn of weeping parents buckling beneath the knowledge that they may never see their gifted children again.
Always a pour of other younglings—freshly labeled nulls leaving the tent with a bleeding ear, nursing the clipped flesh.
I release a sigh.
The sound of boots thumping down the hallway has Wrook bunching up a frayed brown blanket and dashing it over the hole. He scurries toward the front of his cell, and I frown, noticing every other inmate except the Truthtune doing the same thing.
The reason becomes clear when rolling cart wheels squeal through the silence, the smell of gruel wafting to me. The same shit they serve up in the muck halls in the mines.
The ache in my chest pangs so abruptly my breath snags, the familiar smell pinching at that raw, fleshy cleft in my heart …
When Essi first came to me, plain gruel was one of the only things her sensitive belly could handle—being so used to the bland food she was able to steal in the Undercity.
A black-haired guard with sharp eyes and a tailored beard stops before my cell, crouches, and shoves a board beneath the barred door. I frown, lifting my head off the ground enough to see the piece of parchment stretched across it, pinned down at the corners.
He tosses a sharpened piece of coal through the bars, and I don’t dare move fast enough to pluck it from the air before it has a chance to hit me in the face.
Asshole.
“If you want me to draw you a doodle, you’ll be happy to know your face is the perfect muse,” I say, flashing him a toothy grin that makes my eye socket ache.
“Sign for food,” he grunts out. “Thumb print, too. Should you make it out of here alive, you’ll have to pay for every meal consumed.”
I snort-laugh.
Drawing a steadying breath, I edge up, teeth gritted, hissing through the searing pain—the flayed flesh on my back shifting at a hundred different angles. An ooze of warm wetness seeps from my wounds as I ease forward, my gaze dragging over the small metal plaque nailed to the floor before my cell, stating its number.
Maneuvering my shackled hands so I can grab the piece of coal, I scratch the tapered tip upon the parchment:
I rub some coal onto my thumb, then press it against the parchment before sliding the board back under the door.
The guard cuts me a condemning stare.
“What?” I feign. “Have I got something on my face?”
He extends his hand. “Coal, Prisoner Seventy-Three. Now.”
“Fine,” I gripe, tossing it through the bars. “I’ll rot from boredom before my trial even begins, and it’ll be all your fault.”
He grunts, picks up the coal, and stalks back the way he came just as the slop cart reaches my cell. A much less decorated servant to The Crown ladles a scoop of slimy gray goo into a wooden bowl he slides beneath the door. It skitters to a stop beside me, and the male slams a metal mug of water between the bars before pushing his cart farther down the hall, passing a bowl and mug to Wrook next.
I frown at the goo, back at the server. “How am I supposed to eat it?”
He looks at me over his shoulder and growls, “Stuff your face in it for all I care.”
So many assholes, so few fingers to count them all.
My gaze roves to the cell on my left where a male is using his hands to scoop the slop into his mouth. His skeletal frame is all bladed bones, fine hair covering his pale skin, bits of him draped with a shred of gray cloth.
His sallow stare drifts to me, gruel dripping from the bristles of his wiry beard as he heaps another mound in his mouth.
A shiver climbs my spine.
I look at Wrook, who’s stuffing the end of his long face into the bowl, chowing it straight from the source. “Here,” I say, using my foot to nudge my serve beneath the bars separating us, pushing it into his cell.
His beady gaze swivels to me, widening. “You s-s-sure?”
“Certain,” I say, gaze flicking to his hidden hole in the back corner. “You need the energy more than I do.”
Love a good hope charge, futile as it is.
Arm extending, the clawed tips of Wrook’s paw curl around the lip of my bowl, dragging it close. “Th-thanks,” he says, clumps of muck littering his furred face.
“No problem.”
I edge back into the corner in slow, agonized shuffles, then lower myself to the ground, closing my eyes. Listening to the sloppy sounds, I pick at the skin down the side of my nails.
My mind festers, thoughts churning at a ferocious speed, remembering another cell.