Page 16 of Cage of Starlight
CHAPTER EIGHT
R andall finds him at dinner, toting a bowl filled to the brim with corn hash soup.
“I save my tokens for this,” he confides, sliding into the seat beside Tory.
“Keep going back for more and stuff myself ’til I almost puke.
” He opens his hand to show two more of the white-rimmed purple coins. “I will feast tonight.”
Tory smiles, sipping at his soup. A bit salty, but savory and filling. “It’s not bad.”
“It’s glorious. Just like home. I love her for it, but Niela—my girlfriend, remember?
She’s Mrs. Jeffra’s daughter. Healer, just like her mom!
—she can’t cook to save her life. She’s always sayin’ I need to work harder ’cause she doesn’t want to see me back in there.
” Randall’s eyes crinkle. “Don’t think she knows I let ’em clip me so I can visit. ”
“That’s, uh . . . sweet?”
“Her uniform’s so cute. They have those little hats and I just—her hair, and the things the apron does to her waist! You get me.”
He doesn’t. In the House, Tory met people who welcomed sex and all its trappings and trimmings, people who enjoyed only the physical aspects, people who approached it as a transaction, and people who were actively appalled by it and served their clients in different ways.
He talked to them all, learned young that he wasn’t alone in his indifference.
He learned young, too, that his preferences didn’t matter—if he wanted to keep himself happy, healthy, and alive, being what other people needed mattered more than understanding what he wanted.
Randall might understand if Tory told the truth, but Tory would be a fool to cultivate friendships after the mess he made of his time in Hulven, so he just hums agreeably, which seems to be all Randall needs.
“So.” He nudges Tory, conspiratorial. “You’re new here, huh?”
“First day training, second day here. How’d you get taken in?”
Randall shrugs. “I was a late bloomer, didn’t even know I was a Seed until this one day I was working in the smithy and me and this other apprentice almost got nailed by flying knives when a display tipped. I did my thing and saved both of us, swore him to secrecy.”
“He sold you out,” Tory guesses.
“Nah. Gus? Stellar guy. I just felt weird staying there, you know? Secrets make shackles, and all that. Applied for work in Maran. Should’ve known not to go to the capital , but I never said I was clever!
They were doing examinations at the checkpoint before the outer wall, some sort of blood test. Figured it was for a sickness or something, but, well.
When my blood lit on fire, I kinda knew it wasn’t. They sent me here.”
“Sucks, man. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “I was tired of hiding it, and it’s not so bad here. This is where I met Niela. If we get married, we can apply to be placed together whenever the whole war thing’s done.”
Optimistic of him to believe Vantaras will ever let it end, but Tory doesn’t say so. He’s heard conversations like this one enough to know what’s next. “She a keeper, then?”
Randall gets that look again. Soft—so awfully soft.
“She says she was a bit of a—a delinquent, I guess, before she came here. Says she’d never have pegged herself for a Healer, but I think she’s plenty nurturing.
Anyway, we didn’t get along real well at first, but then we saw each other every day in the infirmary, and . . .”
“You are a walking cliche.”
“Tried and true methods, my man. Tried and true.”
The silence goes on a beat too long.
Randall chuckles, awkward. “So, you’re real good for a newbie!”
Tory stabs a kernel of corn with his fork. “Not exactly a newbie. I’ve been doing something that—uses the same theory, I guess?—for years now, so once I made the connection it came pretty easy.”
Randall leans close. The smile stays frozen on his face, eerie as he whispers, “Don’t get too good, okay?
Way I hear it, the talented ones, they’re the first to be deployed.
Make some mistakes. Hang back. I’ve been here six months, and half the folks I came with are gone.
Not like gone, but gone- gone. Being ‘bad’ has worked pretty well for me.
The things I’ve heard about what’s out there .
. . I don’t want to see it. War’s gotta end sometime. Wait it out if you can.”
Tory’s mouth goes dry. “Okay.”
Randall claps him on the back like he just told a joke. “Good man! Coming here is a bit of an upset, yeah? You been to the rec room?”
Tory shakes his head.
“Let’s go! The Kinetic guys go there to spar, but I like the game tables. We can play cards or something, unwind. People gamble meal tokens sometimes. You got any leftovers from your first allotment? Any you don’t want? They trade all sorts of stuff at the tables. I got an extra pillow there once.”
Tory grins. Thanks to the bastards here and their high hopes for him, he certainly has no dearth of tokens.
*
The rec room is wide and packed with people. That’s the first thing that rubs Tory the wrong way.
The air tastes of sweat from the roped-off sparring ring and smoke from the crude card tables. Curses and conversations and laughter meld to create a steady buzz, broken occasionally by a cry or a chorus of cheers. Tory watches the fight in the elevated ring for a while. He nudges Randall.
“You gonna try? Bet you could knock ’em on their faces.”
“What? No way! Who do you think I am? Balloons are hard enough. People choose to move. Too much going on for a CFR.”
Well, Tory isn’t a CFR. Maybe he’ll try stepping into the ring one day.
Watching the fight makes him tense instead of calming him down, so he lets Randall drag him to a rickety wooden card table.
Old, mismatched chairs make a ring around it, and off to the left, several dart games are going on.
One woman guides a dart to the bullseye with her hands behind her back. Tory’s pretty sure that’s cheating.
Randall scoffs. “Sword corps. All the offense guys think they’re so special. Don’t give ’em any attention.”
The creepy stellite lighting adorns the walls in here like everywhere else, but they’ve made it dimmer, somehow, so the light is as dull and smoky as the air. When Tory finally turns back to the table, Randall gives him a drink, has a big guy deal them in, and they start to play.
He has an overabundance of tokens, thanks to Helner, and this isn’t a bad way to spend them.
People talk in non-threatening environments.
He might learn something useful. Anyway, he hasn’t spent his whole life corralling his emotions for nothing.
He has a killer game face. It’s nice to use those skills for his own benefit for once.
It only takes a few hands until he’s loose with relaxation, guarding a generous pile of tokens and more than a few scraps of paper with scribbles on them, representative of whatever these men are gambling in lieu of tokens. Two extra pillows. A sweater that will cover his arms.
He startles as a voice bursts out close to his ear. Gavin.
“Whoa, man! Didn’t know you had a tattoo. Where’d you get it?”
A hand closes around Tory’s upper arm. His cheeks burn, pulse clamoring. He shouldn’t have let go of himself. He jerks his arm free, dropping his cards. “Don’t.”
“Come on, Roomie, I’m just trying to get to know you.” Gavin shrugs, stepping back.
“Maybe I don’t want you to get to know me, Roomie. ”
Grinning, Gavin telegraphs a reach but then catches Tory with his other hand. Strong fingers close around Tory’s arm. “See? That wasn’t so hard—”
Tory throws the first punch without thinking, fist landing on Gavin’s stubbled jaw. Pain explodes over his knuckles.
Gavin curses, stumbling back. He grabs for Tory’s shoulder, wrinkling his shirt and tugging the sleeve up to reveal the blue ring. “I was just trying to say hello. You wanna be like this? Fine. But you should know what you’re getting into.”
“Oh, man. Those are labor camp tats, aren’t they?” one of the guys around the table says.
The unnatural energy from the stellite strips on the walls combines with the zing from the fighters in the ring to sharpen Tory’s senses.
All he can focus on is Gavin’s grip and the awful, unwavering stares.
Ragged breaths saw in and out of his chest. He’s dizzy with it, the edges of everything crisp and bright.
Gavin laughs. “What, mama popped you out in the camps? I hear that means they own you.”
Gavin’s unyielding grip underlines Tory’s ugliest memories—the helplessness, the things he did to himself and for others in those first years after his escape. Tory tries to shake it away. He’s out. He’s free of that now.
Except he’s not. He’s owned again. Penned in, laughed at, again.
Tory aches, an unpleasant reminder of today’s training, and though he likes Menden, he knows the smiles will be gone the moment Tory steps out of line. The bruises over his body have settled and spread, converging into a singular throb, syrupy and electric.
Like when he did healing.
Like when he worked in the mines, when he mucked out stalls from sunup until twilight.
The reminder that maybe it’s always been this bad—maybe the actual, physical prison walls are the only difference—sets him alight.
He breathes in the electric air, grabs Gavin’s hand, and twists. Something cracks.
He jerks away. He didn’t mean to break bones.
Gavin crouches, groaning, fingers loose around his dangling wrist. He swings with his uninjured hand, landing a punch on Tory’s chin that sends streaks of color dancing over his eyes.
Gavin grabs a dart from a nearby game, grinning awfully before he throws it. It accelerates midair.
Tory weaves left, and it whizzes past to crumple against the wall. And that? That’s cheating. It would have gone right through him. “You don’t want to get into this with me.”
“I think you got it the wrong way ’round, Seedbait .”
Tentative fingers settle on his shoulder from behind.