“Lark.” His grin fades as he takes in my face. “You’re still not well.”
“Not well looking, perhaps, but well enough.” I take a second to catch my breath.
He glances at my leg. “Well enough,” he repeats. “I’m sorry for what they did.”
The memory takes me aback—that and his concern for me. I glance at his wagon. “Where are you going?”
“I’m a stone layer.” He says it like it’s the most menial and unimportant job in Cagmar. “Taking this down to Deccor housing.”
“That isn’t near Engineering, is it?”
He tilts his head. “Close. Why are you . . . Oh, Azmar.”
I start walking, and Perg follows, kindly slowing his step to keep pace with me. “I’m taking a rest from physical labors and helping him today.”
Perg’s eyes are a very human shade of hazel, but they regard me suspiciously. “You can read?”
“And write, and do arithmetic.” Growing up, I’d never realized what a privilege that was.
“But you’re human.” He winces. “I mean, not that all humans should be . . . Well, they are—”
“It’s all right.”
Perg releases an audible sigh at my dismissal. He shifts the handle of the wagon to his other hand as we walk. “I’m glad you’re all right, anyway.”
I smile at him, and he turns away, avoiding my gaze. We walk in silence a ways, though it isn’t an uncomfortable one. A few trolls throw hard looks my way, but as I reach the corridor leading to the lower levels, I realize more than half of them are for Perg.
It’s one thing to be human, but is it worse to be both? Yet Perg is not the lowest caste, only near so.
Thinking of his past honesty, I say, “Might I ask you . . . a personal question?”
Perg runs a thumb over his pronounced canines. “Who were my parents and why did they have the audacity to create me?”
I trip at his words. “I . . . well, I would not ask it so . . . bluntly.” Heat rises in my cheeks, making my bruises throb.
A sad yet mischievous half smirk, all too human, stretches his face. “My mother was trollis, actually. Most assume it’s the other way around. But it’s no love story, if that’s what you’re hoping for.” The smile fades, flattening his expression. “I don’t know everything. Some drunken revelry, mistakes, and there I was. Half human, without a bloodstone pairing.”
“I’m . . . sorry.” I’m unsure how to respond. “Bloodstone pairing?”
“Trollis trade bloodstones to mate.”
I stare up at him, considering. “Is marriage so easy?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “It’s . . . Oh, you mean the human custom.”
No marriage, then. “Yes.”
He considers. “I suppose it’s similar. Never been to the world above. They’d hate me more than the trollis do.” He runs his hand over the less prominent nubs of his forehead, into his hair. “We get bloodstones once we finish military training, but . . .” He shrugs.
I reach out and touch his wrist, just below the bony protrusions there. He slows noticeably, and the weight of his wagon bumps him forward a step. His looks to my hand, then to my face, then back again.
Seeing his discomfort, I pull away. “They wouldn’t hate you.”
He scoffs. “You’re playing pretend, then, Lark.”
He’s right. “I don’t hate you.”
He doesn’t look at me. The ensuing silence is awkward, and I shuffle, trying not to think of the pulsing in my hip, especially when I have to step closer to Perg to let a Montra pass by.
“You don’t owe me a life debt,” Perg says, so quietly I can barely hear him over the wagon’s wheels.
“I liked you before that,” I admit.
His head snaps toward me. A weak laugh escapes him, and he points down a corridor to our right. “Down that way is Engineering. Don’t get in the way. It won’t go well for you. They might expect you’re a troublemaker, because . . .” He gestures with his chin to my bruises.
I dip my head in thanks. “How long will you be laying stones?” I need to rest after the day’s work, but I desperately want to water this seedling of friendship.
“Too long. Afterward I go to the military grounds. You wouldn’t be welcomed there, even with Unach’s blessing.”
“Military grounds? To train?” He doesn’t look young enough to be under the mandatory training Azmar mentioned.