Читать книгу The Sign of One - Eugene Lambert - Страница 9

More blaring trumpets. Morana takes her place on a seat behind the altar. A tall man in a cloak, nose and mouth hidden by a black mask, emerges from the cage-tunnel and stalks centre stage, his boots thumping the wood. I overhear someone behind me telling a buddy that this guy does the Unwrapping. The masked man fumbles under his cloak and a screech of feedback almost takes our heads off.

One fool laughs out loud – he must be drunk.

‘Bring forth the first subjects!’

Subjects. I wondered what he’d call them. We try not to say words like ‘double’, or ‘couple’, or ‘two’ here on Wrath. It’s bad luck. There’s a rhyme we’re taught as kids: One, three or four, that’s the score. More than four is greedy.

Now some more guards emerge from the tunnel.

Held between them, ankles shackled so they can only hobble, are the first idents to be unwrapped. Skinny brothers, stiff with fright, both wearing a sort of sleeveless white smock, which covers them down to their knees. Thick leather belts go round their waists. If they’re any older than ten, I’d be amazed.

Scared little boys, who happen to be spitting images.

‘The family Anderson,’ declares the man in the mask, and now he turns towards the steps at the front of the stage, as if he’s expecting something.

‘What’s he waiting for?’ I ask Mary.

‘The parents.’

Oh yeah. I see a man and a woman climbing the steps now, grubbers like us, from their round shoulders and farm clothes. They bow stiffly, before shuffling to the side of the stage, away from the still-frozen twist. A murmur spreads through the crowd, which sounds like sympathy. On the screen, the mother sobs. And I see now what the belts are for – each boy has his right arm, the unbandaged arm, bound behind his back to a loop in the leather. Nobody’s taking any chances.

One of these idents may be a lot stronger than he looks.

A man with a camera scurries forward to get close to the action as the guards force the boys to kneel facing each other, either side of the altar. The boys hold their bandaged arms out, palm down on the cloth. The big screen switches to a view looking down from above. It zooms in nice and tight so we can see the bloodstained dressings on their puny, hairless forearms, then tracks along to show us their hands.

Only four fingers, of course. Little finger gone.

Bile fills my mouth. Guess I see now why they use a red altar cloth.

‘My money’s on leftie,’ whispers Mary.

‘You what?’

Stunned, I hear whispered wagers and watch as credits change hands around me.

‘Five says it’s the left one. He looks meaner.’

‘I’ll take that. Check out the eyes of the one on the right.’

On the stage, the masked man steps up to the altar. He pulls a curved knife from his robes and brandishes it for our inspection. Steel glints in the bright dayshine. And the crowd roars, nearly deafening me. ‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’

The man turns, his cloak swirling, and bends over the altar. His back is to us, but the screen shows us what he’s doing. I watch, cringing, as he slips the blade under each boy’s bandage and slashes it loose. With a practised flourish, he rips both bandages off at the same time, then leans in and inspects. After he steps aside, the camera lingers, teasing, then zooms in. Both boys have a single bloody slit across their forearm. An ugly, still-open wound. No signs of any healing.

The crowd sighs with obvious disappointment.

Thank the Saviour, I think, biting my lip.

‘First-timers,’ says Mary. ‘They hardly ever manifest that young.’

‘What’s that mean?’ a voice says in my ear.

I’d almost forgotten Cassie who’s still on my shoulders; she’s been so quiet. ‘It means we can’t tell which one is evil yet.’

‘Why can’t we?’

Quick as I can, I tell her how twists are sneaky – exactly the same as us purebloods when they’re little, so impossible to tell apart, but how when they’re older they start to show signs of the monsters they will one day turn into.

‘Like being faster and stronger than us?’ says Cassie.

‘Yup. And they heal quicker too. Impossibly fast. That’s how we tell.’

She shuts up at last, seemingly satisfied.

I catch myself rubbing my forearm as the parents are led away, both sobbing. They aren’t allowed to visit their children in the camps, so this is the one time they get to see them every year. How must this feel? Relief that both their children are spared for another year, or regret they don’t get one son back today? Or just despair at the whole proceedings? Despair – it’s got to be.

‘Bo-ring!’ sings Cassie.

That does it – heartless little maggot. I yank her off my shoulders.

She complains loudly, like I care. I fend her off as she tries to clamber back up again. In the relative hush, this makes quite a commotion. When I look up, my heart pounds. I hold my breath and freeze. Morana is looking towards our section of the crowd. I can’t be sure, but it seems like she’s staring straight at me.

Cassie kicks me again, but I hardly notice.

The High Slayer looks away and I breathe again.

The guards drag both boys to the front of the stage. They parade them around together now, holding their arms up to the crowd, making sure we all get a solid look at their unhealed wounds before they pull them offstage, back through the tunnel, back to their cage and another year in the ident camps.

Next up, two much older boys are hauled out for their unwrapping.

‘The family Bachmann.’

I crane over the heads of the people in front of me, but this time there’s nothing to see. No slope-shouldered, sad-eyed parents haul themselves on to the stage. Which makes me wonder – do these idents have no parents, or have their parents chosen to stay away? I’ll never know. But, for some reason, it matters.

Me, I’d have thought it impossible to look defiant in leg irons, dragged along by four brute men to be tested for evil. I’m scared half to death just watching them, safe out here in the crowd. But these lads manage it. Where the Andersons were white-faced and petrified, these idents hold their heads high and meet the curious gaze of the crowd. I stare up at the expressions on their identical faces, magnified massively on the big screen. I shouldn’t be impressed, but I can’t help it. I see scorn and contempt, but not a flicker of fear.

‘One good, two e-vil, one good, two e-vil,’ chants the crowd.

The ident on the left, just before he’s forced on to his knees before the altar, pulls away from his guard and sends a big gob of spit into the front row of the crowd. The people there don’t appreciate it. They howl and throw stuff at him.

The guards drag him back to the altar.

Mary’s dad grins at me. ‘A credit says it’s the spitter.’

‘You’re on,’ I say. What else can I do? I can’t look like I feel sorry for twists.

The masked man wields his knife again. When he steps back, we have a winner. Or a loser, I should say. And I’m shiny, up a credit. The kid who spat has five scars and one open wound. His brother – or the twist pretending to be – only has five scars. A big yellow crust comes away, stuck to the bandage. Where the cut would have been is smooth, pink skin. A deep cut healed overnight.

Don’t need to be a healer’s son to know that’s unnatural.

The arena erupts. A thousand little fingers slash the air with the Sign of One. All around me, people jump up and down, emptying their lungs in an orgy of hysterical shouting and screaming. I scream too. I yell nonsense until my throat is raw from yelling. It’s impossible not to – fear needs a way out.

Suddenly, the crowd starts chanting something new.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Now what? This time, only the twist is paraded. On the screen, I see his brother watching, mouth turned down, as a guard removes his leg irons. They push him towards a fire basket, but he struggles so they have to force him.

‘If I was him,’ I say, ‘I’d be jumping for joy that my blood isn’t twisted.’

‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’ says Mary’s mother.

‘He’s not a real brother,’ says Mary.

Her father scowls and hands over my credit. Mary winks at me, obviously delighted, maybe hoping I’ll spend it on something for her later. She’ll be lucky. Up on the stage, one guard holds the innocent youth. Another, leather gloved and aproned, pulls an iron rod from the hot coals. Without any hesitation, he plants the glowing tip on to the boy’s left bicep. I wince, seeing smoke curl and hearing the amplified hiss. The boy staggers, but doesn’t cry out.

‘Scabb-er! ’ chants the crowd now.

Scab. That’s what we call the pureblood ident. The lucky one.

‘Why’d they burn him?’ asks Cassie, as guards haul the boy off the stage.

I let go a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. ‘Now they’re sure he’s pureblood, they brand him with a big P. Like your dad brands fourhorns.’

‘So they can tell who owns him?’

‘Nobody owns him.’ I sigh. ‘It’s so he can prove he’s pureblood. He gets his life back today, but if we didn’t mark him people would see his missing little finger and think maybe he’s an ident on the run. This way, he can just roll his sleeve up, show his brand and you know he’s all right. Now do you get it?’

‘But won’t the mark heal and go away?’

I scowl down at her. ‘It won’t, mud for brains. You saw him unwrapped. Only twists can heal a scar away. That mark’ll be on him till the day he dies.’

Cassie sucks her thumb doubtfully.

‘What will he do with no family to go to?’ I ask Mary.

‘Who cares?’ She laughs. ‘It’s what happens now that makes it worth dragging ourselves all this way. You get to see what the Peace Fair is all about!’

Even as she says this, a tall frame hisses up from the floor of the stage. I stop wondering when I see the noose hanging down from the cross member. It’s a gallows. The guards drag twist-boy over, both his hands bound behind his back now. He struggles, his bare feet hammering the stage, but they stand him up, slip the rope round his neck and give it a vicious tug to tighten it.

No way – I’m going to witness an execution.

‘Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Desperate to see, Cassie starts climbing up me, but I push her away.

Commandant Morana stands. She holds her fist out, palm down. The crowd shuts up in a heartbeat. After the uproar, the silence is so empty, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff. A lammerjay caws high overhead.

She opens her hand.

Thunnkkk! A trapdoor opens in the stage.

The boy drops like a stone into the dark hole and out of sight. The rope jerks iron-bar taut, then twitches and swings as he kicks his life away. I want to look away, but I can’t. The crowd around me hoots and applauds.

Twists are fighters, I’ll say that. It’s a minute before the rope goes still.

In the Barrenlands nobody dies from old age, so I’ve seen plenty of death. Like that old guy gored by a bull blackbuck, who died screaming, still trying to shove his guts back in. Or my mate Keane, after they pulled his fish-gobbled body out of the lake. I thought I was used to death, but this is just so . . . cold-blooded. Sweat stings my eyes. I can’t stop my legs shaking.

This I did not see coming.

Maybe I should’ve done. Twists are the bane of Wrath. If we take our foot off their necks, they’ll gang up again to slaughter us. I do get that. That’s why the Saviour’s law demands we mark idents and cage them and test them when they’re old enough. All this, when the simplest thing would be to kill both. Proof of the Saviour’s infinite benevolence, Fod likes to preach. A system put in place to protect us, while sparing the innocent. Harsh and cruel perhaps, but merciful.

I knew all this before I handed over my credits.

But knowing is one thing; seeing the grim limits of the Saviour’s mercy another. I swallow hard, grateful at least for not having to watch the twist thrashing at the rope end. Why the hell hadn’t Rona told me about this Purification?

‘What’s with you?’ says Mary, eyeing me. ‘The thing was evil.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

My eyes stray to the back of the stage. The idents are making some kind of fingers-crossed salute to the dead kid through the bars of their cages. Slayer guards are rushing up and down, clubbing at them with their rifles to stop them.

The crowd sees and jeers even louder. All part of the fun.

But the screen shows none of this. It sticks with the bigdeals on stage clapping their delicate hands, then pans to Morana, hiding a yawn with her gloved hand. Over the next hour, twenty more pairs of idents are unwrapped. Seven more twists test positive and make the drop into the trapdoor, three of them girls. The youngest, a girl with a face full of freckles, looks about eleven. Even she gets a cheer from the crowd when she drops. The scabs are branded, but only four are claimed by their families. Mary, enjoying herself hugely, pulls my leg about my long face. Cassie stuffs her face with sweets and pesters me to try one as Maskman summons the Lynch family. The crowd has a big laugh at the unfortunate surname, but I can’t join in. The Lynches are those redhead ident girls I saw yesterday. A woman, an older image of the girls, hauls herself on to the stage, but collapses. Last time I saw these girls they were petrified, but now they look calm and resigned. It’s the loving look they give each other as they’re forced to kneel at the altar that undoes me. I can’t watch any more – just can’t. I’ve had it with the Unwrapping.

I peer round at the Slayers, wondering if they’ll blast me if I make a run for it back to camp. I don’t care what people think. I have to get out of here, away from this madness. And that’s when Cassie’s greed does me a favour.

She pukes her guts up, all down her front.

‘Oh, Cassie, no!’ says her mother.

‘No bother,’ I say, hastily. ‘I’ll take her back and clean her up.’