Blightcross: A Novel (19 page)

So Vasi could feed the shadows.

“Rovan?” She went into the hall. The empty hall.

She locked the door, double-checked it and jammed an unused chair against it.

There was no crazed Ehzeri-killer loose in the plant. It was Sevari and his attempts to gain some impossible mystical clarity, some divine justification for his actions.

Rovan was his new pet.

Sevari the killer. Who knew what the maniac could do, even to a favourite employee. Everyone knew about the memorial he had created for his family. This was the kind of logic that could drive a man to kill his friends in order to preserve them.

She snatched a bag from the coat hook and stuffed it with food, extra coins, and a few artifacts that would give her power a short boost if needed.

Maybe Rovan would not agree to leave until it was too late, but could he fight his big sister, the huge man with the jewel in his head, and an ex-Valoii stormtrooper?

CHAPTER NINE

There were two different lunch breaks at the factory. The one at noon, where the skilled workers, like Laik and his crew, took thirty minutes that somehow lasted forty-five, and brought their company-supplied lunches onto the factory floor to eat wherever they wanted. The other lunch break was for the ladies and young men who did not produce directly, whose drudgery made sure the factory ran smoothly. This one started two hours later, lasted for fifteen minutes, and was confined under the low ceiling of the auxiliary cafeteria.

It was during one of the noon breaks that Capra swept out a corridor and saw the men on their break. She saw Laik among them, overall straps hanging at his sides and showing his barrel chest. He ate a giant sandwich in two bites, and, ten minutes into the break, began to gesture wildly at the others. Another man stood and raised his fists.

Tey came wheezing by, under the weight of an overburdened dustbin.

“What are they doing?” Capra asked, as the men organized into a circle.

“Beating each other for fun.”

“Why on earth...?”

“'Tis what men do. Really, are your men all eunuchs in Mizkov?”

Capra forgot what she was doing and watched intensely. Of course it was stupid, at least to a Valoii, but something else about it intrigued her.

“We don't fight each other in Mizkov. Not even for fun. Well, there is sparring for instruction, but...”

She watched Laik pound another man senseless, and afterwards they shook hands. Why would they either act like friends when they hated each other, or fight each other if they were friends?

They went quiet when Laik spoke. They moved out of his way, they cheered him on.

These men fought to reinforce notions of status?

“Is that why they do it?” she said out loud.

Tey let out an inquisitive grunt.

“They gain respect—it is a way of distributing surplus status among them.”

“You have some strange terms, Capra. Get back to work, otherwise you'll run afoul of the boss again.”

“What do you mean, again?”

“We all heard about the tiff in the hallway with Laik.”

Capra peered over Tey's shoulder, and once she was sure no-one else was listening, whispered, “What did you hear, exactly?”

“Well, Marta said she saw him beat you, and of course she had her own problem with the man. She's married, you see, but of course that never stopped Laik. Then there was that gutsy woman who actually learned a trade and joined his crew, and of course he pinned her down and speared her with his dangler...”

Tey's words soon sounded like a string of disjointed sounds, and all Capra could think of was how to use this situation to her advantage.

“... and he is on the Board, too, so what can you do?”

Aha. “A board? Which?” Before Tey could answer, she said, mostly to herself, “Never mind. A board is a board, and here it seems everyone who has any power is on some board. Which means he may be able to get me to Sevari...”

“Sevari? Till Sevari? Our Leader?”

Capra nodded and caught the gaze of a supervisor searing the air between them from across the shop floor. She shoved a handcart loaded with machine parts out of her way and pretended to sweep under it. That had been the man's scathing criticism—Don't just sweep around things, you lazy cow. Move them and get all the rubbish underneath.

She did this now with a smile, and the supervisor left.

“Ah, I was just joking around.”

Tey giggled. “Oh, I see. He is a handsome man, isn't he, that Sevari?”

“Maybe, but I think he's a little old for me.”

“Don't let that stop you, dearie. If you can do it... I hear he has not taken a wife... ever. Could you imagine living in that palace with him?”

Had Tey even seen the palace lately? And it hardly seemed like the residence of their great leader. It was a collection of offices. Perhaps he lived behind the gated walls of Damwall? That would make more sense—the politicos of Tamarck also chose to live in exclusive residential developments, rather than in the palaces and mansions owned by their king. Or, for that matter, the houses in which everyone else in the nation lived.

“I have been to the palace, Tey.”

“Ooh?”

“All I saw were offices and signs either pointing me towards or warning me about the Sevari Family Memorial.”

“Ah, the memorial. Poor man.”

Capra stopped sweeping, face screwed into a puzzled grimace.

“Well, just the way he lost his whole family during the war. No wonder he searched the wreckage for their bodies and did what he did. Still visits them once a week, like clockwork.”

Part of her did not want to know what exactly a man like Sevari was capable of doing to a corpse. Actually, most of her did not want to know.

The conversation dissipated under the pressing matters of dustbins and dirty floors. Capra found drudgery oddly meditative—after a while, the action seemed to perform itself, and her mind could drift as it wanted. Her dreamlike trance flitted between inane thoughts of what Laik might look like in a dress, how much money she might have left after finding Helverliss' precious artwork and paying the army to leave her alone, the travesty of using corn starch to thicken a sauce instead of a roux, desserts, pastries, shalep with spices, like they drank in the south...

Then it came: a screeching whistle to which every skilled worker answered by dropping his current work, removing his helmet, and forming a line at the exit. The noise snapped Capra from her meditation, and for an instant, she strained to remember where she was and what she was doing, and she gazed at the factory floor, head slightly askew and eyes wary.

“I know it would be nice to go with them, but we have two more hours left.” Tey emptied a bucket into a trough of black sludge. “Besides, they're just going to drink their dinner and become loud. The smell will not improve either, I'll wager.”

Capra handed her broom to Tey. “Just a second or two, all right?”

“What?”

She spotted Laik among the workers and bounded after them. In her path was one of the vats of glowing orange inferno, and a blast of heat baked her face. Damn, these short breaths. Something was different, because she would never become winded so easily. Would she even pass the army's physical standards test now? She had the disturbing feeling, as she huffed along after Laik, that were she to try the ten-minute run, she would fall on her face, or at the very least, double her time.

“Laik,” she said, trotting alongside the man. His face was black and shiny.

“Get back to work.”

She wanted to grab him by his overall straps, but held back. “You are on the board, is that right?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes and prattled on in monotone, “If you really must raise some issue, go to the clerk at your barrack and request form 23-C.” He met her eyes. “But I would advise against it. Someone like you should think twice about crying to the authorities.”

She pulled him out of the lineup, and was surprised when he offered no punches or public humiliation. “I can make it worth your while. We both know I am not going to stay here for long.”

“I know. But I have debts, and I want your wages. I also want to fuck you silly, and will probably call in that debt before you leave.”

She growled.

“There, there. That's what I like.”

“You pig.”

Laik put his hand on her waist. “I have personal connections to Sevari. I can have you in his torture dungeon in the time it takes you to scrub the privy after I shit in it.”

“Personal connections, eh?”

“You think I am going to let one of his mindless Freedom Corps jackasses take you in, and conveniently forget that I was the one to capture you? Never.”

Another worker chuckled on the way past them and knocked Laik with his shoulder.

“Now get out of here. You leave before I'm done with you, and you're as good as dead.”

He shoved her into a pillar, and she gasped from the impact. “See you tomorrow at lunch, Laik.”

But he was too far away to hear. Just as well—it would have more impact if she took him by surprise.

“But why Blightcross, is what I wonder.” Tey crossed in front of Capra, hands on her wide hips.

Capra simply shrugged and dipped her mop into the pail of brown water.

“Well, really, why are you hiding here?”

By now, Capra imagined that Tey had constructed a composite of her, based on morsels of conversation, rumours, and observations. The woman's questions had become more specific, and like this one, referred more to the things Capra had not said that both implicitly acknowledged.

Capra pushed her bucket across the tiles, leaving dark streaks, and paused to stifle her gagging before going to work on the next lavatory stall.

“You could be a dancer in the Orvis Dunes, or a courtesan. How did you end up here, a pretty thing like you?”

She cringed, and not from the mess in front of her, but at the things she had told Tey. Maybe it had been a mistake to talk about random things like her most embarrassing moment at the academy as a teenager—a complete bastardization of one of the most famous ballets from the continent, and the ensuing five years of humiliation it caused.

After hearing that, Tey's suspicion faded, and she began to act strangely... as if they were friends.

Friend. Now a foreign concept, since Dannac wasn't exactly the kind of man with whom one could gossip and joke around, and the only friend who had meant anything to her was back in Mizkov. It felt strange to garner such interest from Tey.

“I could never be a dancer. I screwed the performance up, remember? I fell three times, and gave the boy who was supposed to catch me a broken nose. Not good.”

She had left out the part about practising for six hours each day for the next three years and performing it again flawlessly. It was probably best not to appear arrogant among simpler people.

Tey snapped her fingers. “Aha—it's treasure, isn't it?”

“Pardon?”

“The people who used to live on this island... there is gold buried somewhere in the factory. It has to be true, because if anyone catches you digging for no reason, they haul you in and you never want to touch a spade again.”

There was something sickening about the way the limp wet mop sloshed and sucked at the floor, and there also was the dilemma about whether the smell was worse than the possibility of tasting it, should she try to avoid the odour by breathing through her mouth. She wrinkled her nose and took shallow morsels of air.

“I want you to know, I won't say anything. I probably said that before, but heaven knows turning you in won't make my life any better.”

She stopped. “Well, thanks. You are... a good friend.”

The only trouble was, did she deserve one? Not even a note to Jasaf, not even a goodbye, just wait for the damned explosions to distract everyone and run westward.

And Capra had not looked back.

She wondered what Jasaf was up to, if she were still in their unit. Her mandatory service would be almost finished. Damn—she should have asked Alim about her when she had the chance. Maybe rekindling the old days would have been powerful enough for him to abandon his chase and let her be.

Out on the factory floor, the sounds of hundreds of men's feet tromping around in unison boomed through the walls.

This was it. Lunch time.

“Tey, I'll be back in a bit. Can you cover for me? Say I cut myself and was at the nurse's station.”

“You don't get to use the nurse's station. None of us do...”

“Tell them it was really bad. They have to understand.”

“They will not—”

Capra dropped the mop and darted to the shop floor, where the men had gathered in a circle, the same as yesterday. She skirted around their sweaty, broad backs, waiting for the fights to begin. One of the ladies had said something about matches during the evenings, but since it was difficult to leave the women's barracks without attracting attention, she thought the afternoon fights were the best opportunity.

Perfect—Laik was full of sandwich and wild urges again, and entered the circle. A smaller man came from the opposite side of the clump. The smaller man started the fight with a blow to Laik's kidney. Laik reeled, and returned with a lunge. He brought the other into a headlock, and seconds later, the man dropped to the ground like Capra's soggy mop.

The men grumbled amongst themselves:

“Boring.”

“Gut him, Laik!”

“I seen better fights between cats.”

She waded through the crowd, ignoring their crude comments. She emerged inside the circle—the inadequate woman at the very heart of the men's exclusive enclosure. She steeled her gaze and didn't wait for an invitation to shove Laik into one of his underlings.

“You stupid whore. Get out of here, this is for men only.”

“I am in the circle, Laik.” She punched him. The men laughed.