12. RIEKA
12
RIEKA
Condition #1: Every day, 2 hours before 7th hour meal go to training in the Fight Hall until I say otherwise. You must participate without objections.
T he tattered piece of parchment appeared to be ripped from a book, the words scribbled in a delicate black hand.
He’d also left a leather tie. For my hair.
There wasn’t much point in arguing with the condition, since I’d been the one to agree to his terms. I stripped down to what I would call less, tidied up my braid, applied some salve to my chin and neck and stepped into the main thoroughfare of the sleeper only to be halted by the sudden appearance of running children.
One after the other they sped through the carriage, some hand in hand, coming to a stop at the end of the sleeper. More seemed to appear out of the bunks, scuttling down the ladders to join the crowd forming at the exit where they seemed to be waiting for something.
“Rieka!”
I spun around and found Ghena running down the centre of the sleeper towards me. I squatted to greet her, admiring how her ears happily shifted in my presence. “Are you off to the Fight Hall ?”
“How did you know?”
She scowled at my answer. “The Runners go there every morning. Littles get kicked out if we even try to watch. It’s why the big kids take us to school every morning,” she added pointing to a young boy with jet-black hair who was counting the children. There appeared to be at least fifteen, the child in the boy’s arms no older than five.
“You have a school here?” I asked the little she-wolf, noticing the lack of a collar on all their necks.
“Course we do silly,” Ghena replied. “How else are we to learn to read and write?”
Last night at the party Hentirion had learned an uncomfortable truth about the collars. A third of the population of the rail was collarless because they were born on the train. As far as The Core were concerned, they didn’t exist. They were free to come and go from the train whenever they wished. Leave of their own free will. But for some reason most chose to stay. Those that did were called Runners, though he was unable to ascertain what that meant. Just that these collarless passengers were afforded a privilege no one else on the train was.
They were allowed to try to claim one of the collars as their own so they could lay a claim on the rations The Core delivered to the passengers. They could choose to become a prisoner of this place.
To have been born on the train meant one or both of their parents were already aboard. Very few would have survived the death train whilst pregnant. I couldn’t imagine any woman wishing to have a child in this place when she could freely leave. Unless she was collared, and a woman like that would have to be aboard a year at minimum to even attempt giving birth here. A third of the population!
A pit opened in my stomach. “Is this the only class?” I asked Ghena.
“No silly.” She tapped her chest twice with the word, a gesture in her native tongue. “There are the littles in The Group Sleepers , and then there are the littles in the sleepers at the front of the train. Oh, and the big kids have classes later in the day, after their chores.”
I dreaded the words that next came. “How many littles are there on the train, Ghena?”
“I don’t know. Not that many.” She sounded bored, even the rest of her hand gestures looked limp in comparison to the ones I’d seen other passengers use. “Two hundred I think.”
200 children!
I glanced back over at the small crowd of little Blessed, with their tails and ears showing, as they chatted by the passageway where a young woman stood gazing over them, a slim rectangular device in her hand. She had pale blonde hair and what I assumed were the membranous wings of an Echo. What was surprising about her appearance was the fact her wings were white.
In Deos, her breed of Alatus was rarely seen in the capital guard. My father said any Echo who joined the guard as a recruit undertook their training in Carfen’s Pass, their wings better suited for the Erania Range than City Watch. But she was a passenger of the rail and a collarless one at that. It was very likely Kensilla didn’t know about her, though what they would do with her if they did know was as much a mystery to me as this train had been four days ago. She flicked her pale blonde hair over her shoulder when she crouched down to speak to a child who had pulled on her dress and called her teacher.
“Rieka, do you have a tail?” Ghena’s question caught me off guard.
“Why do you ask?”
Her eyes shone yellow in the light, little canine fangs catching on her lower lip because she hadn’t quite worked out how to speak without them being a hindrance, so she had a slight lisp when she spoke in Prean. “You smell different to the other Brutes on the train.” She thought the answer in the same moment she spoke it. Which was unsurprising for a child. They tended to speak exactly what they thought.
I offered her my hands to hold her own, a gesture to see if she trusted me. The little she-wolf gave me one of her hands. The one marked with the black pattern. Her hands were so small in comparison, even with those claws that could rip out a man’s throat, she was still just a child.
“Perhaps that’s because I grew up in a place where I wasn’t allowed to show that side of myself as freely as you do. I haven’t manifested in a long time.”
Her little nose twitched. “No that is not it. Biba doesn’t manisfest anymore either and she doesn’t smell like you.” I smiled at her mispronunciation.
“And what is it that I smell like? No one has ever told me about my scent before?” I squeezed her hand gently to encourage her to answer.
She looked hesitant, the swishes of her tail slowing. “That sweet stuff, the kind you put in desserts.”
Sugar, not entirely surprised.
She paused. “And the other smell is...”
“Ghena!”
The teacher’s voice broke my concentration and the woman gestured for her student to return to the crowd.
Ghena motioned farewell and ran halfway to the group who had started to form a chain, hands held, before doubling back. I hadn’t yet stood from the crouched position, so I was at face level when she whispered in my ear. “The other scent is blood.”
I stood in the alcove of bunks for several minutes after the chain of children departed the sleeper to some unknown carriage down the train, their hands all baring similar marks to Ghena’s. I wasn’t sure which I was more concerned over. The fact I now knew my scent and wasn’t at all surprised by it, or the fact there were two hundred collarless children aboard the train who, in order to stave off starvation, would be permitted to kill another passenger to obtain their collar.
A clock chimed. The source was a large mechanical dial hanging over the exit. It chimed again indicating I was running ten minutes late.