Chapter 25 #2
“In the first few years of this hold,” she told éadha on one of their elevator rides down to the ground floor, “you’d have a few every year who’d try to escape.
Kill a Keeper, steal a boat. Some even got part of the way to the mainland before the Masters caught them.
That’s when the old Head Keepers realized just how precise we needed to be.
Work out a man’s reserves down to the last breath,” she said with grim pride.
“Then make damn sure they haven’t the energy left in them to think or plot, let alone rebel.
That’ll do it. We have it so down now, we barely need guards in here anymore. ”
While most of the Fodder stayed below ground in the holds, a few were sent to the surface in the service elevators that connected the holds to the school at various points.
The Masters mostly didn’t need them close by to channel them.
But it was easier for less experienced Channellers if they were nearby, and for some, like Senan, there was also a sadistic thrill in seeing the effect of their power.
And so some Fodder, drugged to ensure their docility, were sent each night to the parties above ground.
Always the youngest and most presentable ones, or as one Keeper said to éadha one afternoon, “Who wants to channel a woman who looks like your mother? Rather takes the fun out of it.”
“It’s always the same,” remarked Maebh on her rounds one morning as midwinter approached.
“They arrive from First Island hardly using their powers, but by the time the Midwinter Ball comes around, we’re flat out down here as they channel from first thing in the morning to clear the cobwebs until last thing at night to shake off the day.
By the time they leave here, they can’t live without it. ”
And éadha understood this was the whole point of the endless parties and contests—the Masters’ way of ensuring the Channellers got so hooked on power they couldn’t imagine a life without it.
Every day éadha was released in time to report to Senan’s quarters and help him get ready for that evening’s parties.
Going from the dark, oppressive hold to his elegant suite filled with light and air, the sense of dislocation was absolute.
The morning felt like a dream, a recurrent nightmare of slumped bodies and clipboard-carrying Keepers.
It was only when she saw her handwritten tags on the wrists of the Fodder in the alcoves at the end of the night that the day came about full circle.
In éadha’s time underground, Maebh was never so crude as to say éadha might end up there herself.
There was no need; a week in Records was all she needed to see how easily a person might fall foul of the Masters or the Families and end up in a Fodder Hold, watching their life force trickle out of them, day by changeless day.
éadha understood. For those apprentices for whom the seduction of First Island didn’t work, the Masters didn’t hesitate to use fear.
Showing them the choice, after all, was binary.
Above or below, using or being used, living or dying, just as Gry had said that night on First Island.
Thankfully she hardly needed to send any power to Ionáin.
He wasn’t channeling at all now, getting so drunk at the nightly parties his friends had given up trying to persuade him to join their games.
It was just as well because as her time in the hold wore on, éadha’s heart began to fail her.
She’d draw the line from belly to heart, but there it stopped, too full with what she’d seen in the hold to want to release her gift onto Ionáin.
He had to know he’d hardly any power now she was only sending him the bare minimum, but he didn’t seem to care, pleading a cold when the drinking excuse didn’t work or draping his arm about Ailbhe with a meaningful wink at Senan.
It meant, though, that she’d some spare strength inside her.
And so one afternoon, as she draped an embroidered tunic over his shoulder, she asked Senan if she could keep for him when he drew power at the parties.
“I’ve learned so much from my remedial training, and it’d really help my practice, my lord.”
Senan paused in pulling on his tunic and stared at her for a moment, standing there with her head bowed, the very picture of a proper Keeper even as, deep inside, her power churned with loathing.
In the afternoon light his eyes were bloodshot and his face redder than ever, the endless partying taking its toll even on his bullish constitution.
Then he gave a short chuckle, tickled by the idea.
“Why not? In fact you probably should’ve been keeping for me from the start, when you think about how much power I need. Yes. Why not.”
So that evening, as Senan sat in the Fodder alcove, she sat beside him and when she felt his channel reach through her, she bowed her head and relayed it onto the young Fodder men and women beside her.
Senan was a brutal Channeller, adept at judging the power available and taking a vicious pleasure in pulling every last drop.
But in éadha, he had a Keeper who knew each one of those Fodder victims’ faces, ages, and just how far they could be drained and still left with enough strength to lie awake a half hour before sleep, whisper a word or two to the person on the bunk opposite, maybe even remember for a little while who they had once been.
Quietly, invisibly, but with iron determination, she blocked his grasping threads when she judged they’d had enough and instead drew her own strength from belly to heart and out, back into Senan, shielding those morsels of life with her own.