Two
It’s nearly morning by the time I make it home.
Funny how we cling to the cycle, day and night, morning and afternoon.
We can see the fake sunlight that illuminates Yesod and Hod only as a gleam on the cavern walls; the big work-lights that hang from the bottom tier never dim.
(Except when their sigils fail and they rain down showers of white-hot sparks.) No such thing as darkness down here in the Heap, but we pretend there is all the same.
Gotta sleep sometime, I guess. I want to sleep right now.
I want it so badly my eyelids are drooping and my feet feel like someone tied concrete blocks to them.
But probably if I pass out again I’ll bleed to death, which is a powerful incentive to keep staggering forward.
Eventually I reach our makeshift back door—everything in the Heap is makeshift, make do, lashed together from repurposed bits of something else—and start hammering on it.
My hand leaves a smear on the corrugated metal.
Star is already out of sight, taking cover in the hill of junk that abuts the bakery. Over the years he’s wormed it through with tunnels so he can come and go without being seen. The last thing I need is someone seeing a runic on its own and screaming Twisted.
The door opens after only a million years and Somi sticks his head out. He gives an involuntary jerk backward at the sight of all the blood and swears under his breath.
“Moon above, Taj, are you okay?” He shakes his head before I can answer. “Stupid question. Sorry. Come inside before you wake Spike.”
Too late. There’s a clatter of feet on the stairs, a pair of eyes and a mop of unruly hair at the end of the hall.
“Is that—” Spike cuts off with a squeak when she gets a look at me.
“Go back to bed!” Somi shouts, grabbing me by the arm.
I want to shake him off, but now that I’ve made it back all the strength seems to have drained out of me. It’s all I can do not to hang off him as we limp inside. It’s clear I’m not going to manage the stairs, so we settle for the big metal table in the kitchen.
“What happened?” Spike says, ignoring Somi’s instructions and following us in.
“Got stabbed,” I deadpan.
“By a Twisted?”
I wince as Somi shifts my legs up onto the table. “Nah, it was an elf riding a unicorn.”
Spike rolls her eyes, too old at age twelve to believe in fairy stories. Somi leans forward and picks at the charred edges of my armored trousers around the wound.
“This looks burned,” he mutters.
“Lost a bit of blood,” I say. “Figured I’d be better off not losing any more.”
He sucks in a breath. “That’ll heal ugly.”
“What’s one more scar?”
Somi frowns, clearly disapproving of my flippant tone. He glances at Spike.
“Make yourself useful and grab the sewing kit from my bedroom.” He picks a big knife from a rack, and she gives a gulp and darts away. Somi sighs and starts carefully cutting the trouser leg away from the wound.
“Don’t say it,” I mutter.
Somi doesn’t look up. “I’m not saying anything.”
“I can hear you thinking it.”
“Maybe you should use your psychic powers to keep yourself from getting stabbed.”
“Fucker was hiding in the wall. Even Star missed it.”
Somi lets out a shuddering breath. “Moon and stars, Taj—”
“I’ve got it!” Spike sings out from the doorway. “If Taj dies, can I have his room?”
“He’s not going to die,” Somi growls.
“But yes,” I say.
Somi snatches the battered toolbox from Spike’s hands and glares at her. “Upstairs.”
This time, she decides not to cross him. He flips the box open and roots around.
“Seriously,” I venture, “if—”
“Shut up.” He shoves a steel rod wrapped in leather into my mouth, already stippled with the bite-marks of previous patients. “And hold still.”
Somi is actually a deft hand with a needle, whether he’s sewing up fabric or flesh. But it still hurts like a motherfucker. I don’t pass out again, but I wish I had.
Afterward he wipes my leg clean and tosses the towel in the slop bucket, then sinks back against the counter with a sigh.
“I’m going to have to wash all this down, you realize,” he says. “And I’m supposed to start in less than an hour.”
“Eh.” I struggle up on my elbows to look at him. “So what if the day’s rolls are a little Taj-flavored?”
“Can you take this seriously for a second?” There’s real fear in his eyes. “You could have died, Taj.”
“Always a possibility when you get stabbed, I hear.”
He glares at me, and I glare back.
Somi insists that he’s my older brother, although truthfully neither one of us knows our exact birthday.
We didn’t start out as brothers, either, just two starving kids Fara took pity on.
Somi was always bigger than me, though, and got more so as we grew up.
Now in his early twenties he’s tall and broad, but as pillowy-soft as one of his own lumps of dough.
(Whereas I didn’t so much grow as harden into a wiry string of gristle, all tendons and bone.)
“I got the fucker, if you’re interested,” I tell him.
“I’m not.”
“Plenty of sigils,” I lie. “Should sell for a good price.”
“Taj—”
“You know we need the money,” I snap. “Unless you’re going to start turning those kids away from the back door.”
“Taj!” He straightens up, mouth hardening. “They’ve got nowhere else to go. You want them to starve?”
“I don’t want us to starve. Or get our fingers broken by the Clawmarks.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to hunt Twisted. There are other ways of making money.”
“I don’t think I’d make as much selling my ass in a back alley.” I look down at myself. “Not enough meat on it. Or were you thinking I should sign up for a workhouse—”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Somi says, practically shouting. “Why can’t you just be a little—”
“A little what?”
“Careful,” he growls. “For moon’s sake, Taj, I just want you to be safe. You and Spike are all the family I have.”
I snort and look away. He’ll take the money in the end, the fucking hypocrite. I swing my legs off the table, ignoring a stab of pain, and manage to get down without collapsing or taking Somi’s outstretched hand. Score one for spite, I guess.
My room is a mess of tools and spare parts. About the only clear space is my bed in the corner, and I barely manage to pull my armored coat off before I collapse into it. My thigh hurts like—well, like it’s getting stabbed by a Twisted, but over and over with every heartbeat.
I’m so tired. You’d think falling asleep would be easy. But stab stab stab and each time makes me want to tear open the bandages with my fingernails.
It’s never dark in the Heap. But I papered over the windows in my room long ago to keep out prying eyes, so with the door closed there’s a kind of semi-darkness broken by chinks and seams. By this faint light I spot movement on the floor; a grate lifts, slowly, and from the tunnel below I can see the owlish gleam of Star’s primary optics.
[Query: you are not asleep?]
I wish I was, I send back with a grunt. You’re okay?
[Assessment: I still possess in excess of seventy percent of my limbs. For the moment that is sufficient.]
And you’ve got the sigils?
[Confirmation.] His fine manipulator extends, dropping a sack on the cluttered floor. It’s a lot smaller than I’d like.
How many are there?
The pause before he answers tells me all I really need to know.
[Regret: seventeen.]
All red?
[Further regret: yes.]
Seventeen red sigils, probably the most common types like MOVE and RESIST. A decent haul under other circumstances, but not when I’d had to burn two EXPLODES to get hold of them, not to mention two of Star’s legs. It certainly isn’t going to solve the bakery’s financial troubles.
[Consolation: also 3.4 meters of threading wire and several interesting joints.]
I smile. Star hates stripping wire, so if he bothered to take it he must have known how badly this trip was going to set us back. It’s a drop in the bucket, but he’s helping as best he can.
The fight is in three days. Two days, really, since it’s basically tomorrow already. Seventeen might be just enough to fix up new legs, but not for any of the upgrades.
[Hesitation: perhaps you should forfeit.]
That would mean abandoning the entry fee, which I’d scraped together across several hunts. Not to mention giving up any chance to wipe that pitying look off Somi’s face.
We’ll have to do the best with what we have.
[Frustration: I wish I could take part.]
I know.
[Gloom: the idiot will wreck my body.]
I close my eyes and give a mental sigh. Probably.