Chapter 1 #2
There is a black kitten asleep on a flour sack in the corner.
It is one of a litter the kitchen cat produced three weeks ago, and Lethe has been watching it grow with an attention that is perhaps disproportionate.
He named it Soot, because it looks like soot and he is not a creative man.
It's a terrible name and he loves it and the kitten doesn't seem to mind.
"Heard something interesting today," Maren says, casual, scrubbing a pot that doesn't need scrubbing.
Lethe tears off a piece of bread. "Interesting how?"
"They're bringing a new beast down. From the eastern circuit. Killed two handlers and hasn't lost a fight since they caught him."
Lethe chews. Swallows. "What kind of beast?"
"The big kind. Horns. Claws. Nasty disposition, from what the guards are saying." She glances over her shoulder at him. "They're putting him in the deep cages."
The deep cages. The lowest level of the kennels, where the stone sweats and the lantern light barely reaches and the air tastes of damp and old iron.
Reserved for the fighters who are too dangerous, too valuable, or too unpredictable for the regular pens.
Lethe has tended creatures in the deep cages before. It is not his favorite work.
"Does he have a name?" Lethe asks.
"One of the guards said the last owner called him Zazyrus. Something like that." She shrugs. "Not that it matters. They'll call him whatever they want."
Lethe finishes his porridge. He rinses the bowl, because Maren will swat him with a ladle if he doesn't, and tucks the heel of bread into his satchel for later. "Thank you, Maren."
"Don't thank me. Eat more." She catches his arm as he passes and presses a small cloth bundle into his hand. "Extra rations. For the cages. Don't let the guards see."
He nods. Slips the bundle into his satchel alongside the bread.
Maren has been sneaking him extra food since his first week here, six years ago, when he was sixteen and silent and small enough to disappear behind the stock shelves.
She has never once asked what he does with it.
She has never asked about the bruises, either, or the nights Lethe comes to the kitchen before dawn with his eyes red-rimmed and his gait careful.
She feeds him and she doesn't ask and Lethe loves her for the mercy of her incuriosity.
He scratches the sleeping kitten behind its ear on his way out. Soot purrs without waking.
***
Devlin finds him in the corridor outside the upper cages. Devlin is one of the night guards, older than most, with a bad knee and a worse temperament that occasionally, unpredictably, tilts toward decency.
"Lamb." He falls into step beside Lethe, which is unusual. "Demos is in a mood tonight."
Lethe's stride doesn't falter. His face doesn't change. Inside, something cold settles in the pit of his stomach and stays there.
"How bad?" he asks.
"Lost money on the fourth bout. Two of his favorites went down. He's been drinking since." Devlin doesn't look at him. He watches the corridor ahead. "Thought you'd want to know."
"Thank you."
Devlin peels off at the next junction without another word. He is not kind. He is not Lethe's friend. He is a man who works a distasteful job and occasionally dispenses information that might, on a good night, allow Lethe to make himself scarce before the pit lord's attention finds him.
Tonight is not a good night.
Lethe adjusts his route. He takes the long way back to his room, through the supply corridor, past the cistern entrance, keeping to the parts of the kennels where the lanterns are dimmest and the foot traffic is lightest. He makes himself small. He's good at that. Six years of practice.
It doesn't work.
The knock on his door comes an hour after the late bell.
Three sharp raps and then silence, because Demos doesn't wait for an answer and Demos doesn't need to knock at all.
The knock is ceremony. The knock is a reminder that the door doesn't lock and the door doesn't need to lock because everything down here belongs to the pit lord, including Lethe, including whatever Lethe might try to keep for himself.
Lethe sits on the edge of his cot. He stares at the wall.
He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth and he goes somewhere far away inside his own head, the way he taught himself years ago.
A quiet place. A still place. A place where none of this is happening and his body is just a body and the things done to it don't reach the part of him that matters.
He opens the door.
***
Later. He doesn't track how much later.
He stands at the basin in his room and washes his skin until it's raw.
The water is cold and he scrubs until his hands shake and then he scrubs more.
There are marks on his throat. On his wrists.
On places he can't see but can feel, throbbing and hot, and he cleans each one with mechanical precision because this is what he does.
This is the after. The during is a locked room in his head and the after is soap and cold water and the slow, deliberate process of putting himself back together so that he can function tomorrow.
His hands still. He grips the edge of the basin and stands there, dripping, and his jaw works and his eyes burn and he doesn't make a sound.
He doesn't cry. He stopped crying a long time ago.
Not because the tears dried up but because the tears changed nothing and Lethe is, above all else, practical.
Tears don't heal wounds. Tears don't feed the creatures in the cages.
Tears don't keep his hands steady when he's three inches from the jaws of something that could take his arm off at the shoulder.
He dries himself. Puts on a clean shirt that covers the marks on his throat. Lies down.
The ceiling is the same as it was this morning. The bells ring the same. The pits breathe and groan and settle around him the way they always do. Nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes.
He thinks about the new beast arriving tomorrow. Zazyrus. Horns and claws that don't retract. Two dead handlers. An unbroken record in the ring.
He wonders if this new beast will give him a chance before he tears him apart.
And there it is: the thing that keeps Lethe alive.
Not hope, exactly. Not faith. Something stubborner than both.
The part of him that walks into cages every morning knowing any one of them could be his last, and walks in anyway, because the creatures inside are hurting and he can help and the risk is worth the work.
The part of him that stood between Harsk and a downed fighter and said move and meant it.
The part that Demos has been trying to reach for six years and hasn't found yet, because it doesn't live where Demos looks.
Everyone calls him Lamb, because they think they know how his story ends.
Lethe closes his eyes. His hands, finally, are still.
He sleeps.