The God Eaters

by Jesse Hajicek

  "Breakfast," Trevarde guessed, right in his ear; then added, at Ashleigh's reaction, "Jumpy, aren't you?"

  Ashleigh tried to be still. "Do you blame me?"

  "Nah. Not surprised you're scared. But you know... tell you what. You stick with me, I'll take care of you."

  He turned to find himself nose to chin with Trevarde, trapped by the taller boy's hands gripping the bars on either side of him. He swallowed hard, and managed to speak without a quaver.

  "What do you get out of that arrangement?"

  "Excuse to beat on all the idiots that'll be lining up for a piece of your tender ass." At Ashleigh's skeptical expression, he let go of the bars and stepped back, smile fading. "No joke. I did a year in Tiyamo, when I was a kid. I know how these places work. When you're the new boy, you have to be hard or they'll walk all over you. But you go around picking fights, they decide you're kaiyo, you're sick, they all gang up on you. So now you're my little pal and I'm going to protect you. Get me all the fights I need."

  Unable to think of an objection that wasn't moral in nature and therefore probably incomprehensible to Trevarde, Ashleigh settled for grumbling, "I'm not little. I'm six foot one and three quarters; they measured me rather precisely last night."

  "You're no bruiser, Trine." With an echoing crash, the doors on their tier opened, distracting Trevarde from the conversation. "Breakfast," he confirmed.

  The line that formed on their tier was shorter than the others. Ashleigh also noticed that the men on this side were cleaner than the rest, fatter, their eyes more defiant and wary. New, like him.

  Opposite and on the ground floor, the prisoners were thin and worn, and when they moved they shuffled. This did not bode well for the future. A strutting man in a tan-colored uniform strode up and down the line, poking people into place with a wooden baton. As he did, he lectured them.

  "Welcome to Churchrock, boys. Welcome to the beginning of the end of your lives. You will never leave here. You are here for good. The sooner you get that through your thick heads, the longer you'll survive.

  "Each one of you has committed a hanging offense, and for all anyone knows, we hanged you.

  You are dead to your families, your friends, and the world. You should be grateful as hell you're still breathing. It ain't because you deserve it, though. You're alive because the White Watch needs test subjects, and that's all you're good for, because you are the scum of the world, a fact you'd better not ever forget.

  "Every morning, you will wake when the bell rings. You'll be up and dressed and ready to get in line when the tier opens fifteen minutes later. If you make me come in and get you out of bed, you will wish to God you hadn't. There will be no talking in line. You will wait for permission to go, at which point you'll march in an orderly manner to the mess hall. There you'll be given your breakfast, which you will eat neatly and quietly. Don't bother asking for seconds, because you won't get any. You'll have half an hour to eat. After that, you'll line up again, and that's the high point of your day, because you get to go outside. Excercise period lasts one hour.

  "After that it's back in the cells until five, when we do the whole thing again. That's the routine, boys, two meals and two hours outside, and the rest of the time is yours unless the Testing folks want you. We expect you to be grateful as hell. Now move it out."

  Encouraged by prodding from the guard's baton, they were marched through a different tunnel and up a different set of stairs. A nauseating smell reached out to reel them into a communal dining hall, where inmates sat in rows eating ugly food from tin trays. Ashleigh lined up with the rest to receive a portion of grayish scrambled eggs, watery ham, and weak coffee, all of which he was apparently supposed to eat with a spoon, since that was the only utensil he was given.

  "Over there," Trevarde suggested, indicating an empty table. "Let 'em get used to us before we get near 'em at meals. Like dogs."

  "Good idea." Beginning to follow, Ashleigh felt something hit him behind the knees, and suddenly he was sprawling backwards, tray flying out of his hands. He hit the ground first, and then the food followed, a streak of hot coffee scalding his face. "Ow! Dammit!"

  Laughter surrounded him. The men at the nearest table were laughing loudest. A moment later, as Ashleigh was picking himself up, the culprit identified himself by feigning anger: "Hey faggot, you got eggs on me! Ain't you gonna apologize?"

  Ashleigh knew better than to point out the ruse. It was really just like grammar school all over again. But this was the sort of situation Trevarde was looking for, wasn't it? When the Iavaian reached to help him up, he knew it wasn't consideration for him, so much as calculated rudeness to the others.

  Eggs stood up, while his cronies leaned forward in anticipation. "Well?"

  Trevarde dusted Ashleigh off a little, then pushed him aside to give eggs and company an odd half-smile. "I got a better idea. How about you apologize for tripping him."

  This struck everyone as funny. "To him? Oh, that's a good one." Eggs chortled. "The hair farmer wants me to apologize to Carrots here. That's good."

  "No, you apologize to me. The kid's under my protection and nobody touches him."

  Ashleigh edged backwards, wondering whether Trevarde was actually as dangerous as he seemed, or whether he was about to have his bluff called. Meanwhile, the prankster and his pals were savoring this new humor. "Your protection, huh? Oh, I'm so scared. We supposed to be scared of you? You supposed to be somebody special?"

  "Name's Kieran Trevarde." He spread one of his hands, displaying a row of dots tattooed around it. "Nice to meet you."

  The laughter suddenly died. Prankster had a go at scoffing, but he moved back a step while he did it. "You're not him. He woulda died before he let 'em put him in a place like this."

  Trevarde pulled down the neck of his shirt, to show a shiny, star-shaped scar on his chest. "They got Healers, fuckwit. My breakfast is getting cold."

  Prankster looked from Trevarde to Ashleigh and back again. "Sorry," he grunted.

  When they were seated at their lonely table, Ashleigh asked, "What was that? I don't understand."

  "Boring. Guess he must be lower on the pecking order than he thinks he is. See, I wanted to give the main hardass an excuse to back down. But I blew the element of surprise on a wimp, and now the actual top rooster is going to have time to talk himself up to facing me." He shoved his tray over. "You eat this. I lost my appetite."

  "But -- uh, thanks. But I still don't get it. Are you famous or something?"

  "Guess you could say that. Ever heard of the Dyer Brothers gang?"

  "No."

  "How about the White Rose?"

  "No. Sorry."

  "It's okay. Don't figure folks up north hear that stuff anyway, not if they're not in the business.

  You're too clean for this place, you know that? I still don't get why you're here. Churchrock's where they send the worst of the worst. Folks who use their Talents to hurt people."

  "You did that?"

  Trevarde looked at his tattooed hand. "Yeah. I'm a jinx. You know, a ghoul witch."

  "You're what?" Ashleigh edged away.

  Trevarde looked annoyed. "Get back here. I won't hurt you. Can't use my Talent in here anyway.

  It's warded. Or haven't you noticed?"

  Ashleigh shook his head. "I didn't even know I had magic until they tested me at my sentencing.."

  "Huh." Trevarde was rubbing his thumb across the dots on his palm. "You high up with the rebels, then?"

  "Not really. Propaganda. I just had a handful of contacts." He winced at the memory. "The Watch sucked them right out of my head. I'm sure they were all arrested. I'm sure most of them are dead now."

  "But you were good at it?"

  "I guess."

  "I was good at what I did too."

  "And that's what you're famous for?"

  "Every one of these dots is a dead man, Ash. You want to count 'em?"

  "Uh. No."

  "You're not eating," Trevarde pointed out,
and laughed.

  --==*==--

  After breakfast, they were taken outdoors. Ashleigh was so glad to see the sky again that he didn't, at first, realize the potential for chaos. They were let out into a big fenced square of dirt, in the baking heat, with nothing to do, and no supervision except the distant guns on the watchtowers, but all he could think about was the gorgeous blue of the sky.

  Trevarde was more alert. "This is where the fights happen," he observed. "Somebody gets in my face, you step back."

  "Sure."

  They walked around a bit, passing knots of two or three or five men standing together, and the occasional pathetic creature huddled alone. A couple of those were talking to themselves. One was pressed to the bars of the fence as if trying to squeeze himself through. He looked almost emaciated enough to succeed. Ashleigh wondered how long it would be before he himself went mad and ended up like that.

  Trevarde seemed to be appraising each of their fellow prisoners as a trader appraises another man's horses, with an educated but distant eye. To Ashleigh, they all looked equally terrifying.

  He watched Trevarde instead; the way the sun gilded his skin and struck poison-green sparks from his eyes, the way a dusty breath of hot wind lifted strands of his hair and twined them into the glyphs of an alien language. In this bright light, his scars were less apparent. While Ashleigh watched, Trevarde stretched, arms behind his head, arching his back. This caused a gap between his shirt and trousers, showing a smooth brown expanse of finely muscled stomach. Ashleigh looked away, wondering if Trevarde could possibly have done it on purpose to bother him --dismissed that as wistful paranoia -- realized he had no clue whatsoever, and felt suddenly as if he'd been struck blind. He'd never noticed his empathy, never intentionally used it, but now he felt its absence; anesthetized, colorblind. Everyone's motives were a mystery.

  No wonder they were all so scary. When he couldn't sense the humanity of them, they all seemed like automatons. Greasy homunculi. The set of some sadistic play.

  And you were wondering, he told himself wryly, how long it would take you to go mad.

  A more purposeful kind of movement among the aimless wandering distracted him from his thoughts. It was with something like relief that he nudged his companion's ribs with his knuckles.

  "Here comes your fight, Trevarde."

  "Call me Kieran." He spoke through a yawn, turning to see the approaching men with no sign of apprehension. "Nobody I like uses my last name."

  "All right. Kieran." Ashleigh took a step back, out of the path between Trevarde -- Kieran -- and the three men who were stalking toward him. It didn't seem like a good idea to be within arm's reach of anyone right now.

  The lead man was also a Iavaian, a bit lighter of skin than Kieran was. He had a similar ranginess, though not nearly as tall, and wore his hair in two braids. He had a patchy mustache, and a cool arrogance in his eyes. His two followers were a red-faced blond of the dockhand variety and a bald, bearded fellow who had a vaguely demented air about him. When he got close, the leader put an extra bit of saunter in his step and raised his chin an extra notch.

  Ashleigh thought this might mean he was scared, but it was too hard to guess these things now.

  "So," said braids, "You're Kieran Trevarde." He made it sound like a test.

  All Kieran said was, "So?"

  "I heard you killed Ama Sona."

  "So?"

  "He was good. Better than you. You're nothing without your magic."

  "That's what you think, huh?"

  "Yeah. It is."

  Kieran shrugged. "All right."

  Braids turned to Baldie with a grin. "You hear that? He admits it."

  "Nah," said Kieran lightly, "I just said it's all right if you think that. I don't actually care what you think."

  Braids stepped in closer. "You should care. I'm Duyam Sona. Ama was my brother."

  "I know. You didn't like him much, either." This revelation was delivered with the same cool as anything else that came out of Kieran's mouth. "I had a contract on you too, but you got bagged before I got my advance."

  Duyam Sona clenched a fist between them. "Is that all my brother's life meant to you? Money?"

  "All it meant to him, too. You don't pony tar through Burn River for the retirement benefits."

  "Fuck you, you son of a fucking --"

  "Uh-huh. Are we going to fight, or what?"

  Sona replied with a snarl and his fist. Kieran slid aside and hit back with the heel of his hand to the center of Sona's chest. As their leader flew back, knocked breathless, the other two charged.

  Ashleigh, backing farther away, looked around to see if any intervention was forthcoming. Most of the inmates in the yard were watching the fight, but none seemed interested in being involved.

  That was good, right? But it seemed vaguely horrific, the impassive way they watched.

  When he looked back, the fight was over.

  Baldie, bleeding from the nose, was helping Sona to his feet. The blond backed away hugging his ribs, with the self-absorbed expression of a man in pain. Ashleigh found he was surprised that they were all still alive. Kieran was rubbing the point of his jaw.

  "You clipped me. That's good. You might make a fighter someday." This was apparently directed at Baldie, because that one spat a gob of blood and a garbled obscenity.

  Sona wasn't done. "I'll kill you, Trevarde. You better watch your back, because I'll kill you."

  "All right." Kieran put his hands behind his head again and walked over to the fence. No one followed but Ashleigh.

  Ashleigh said tentatively, "That looked easy."

  "Yeah." Kieran sighed. "I was hoping for a good fight. Ama was pretty good."

  "So you really did kill that man's brother."

  "Yeah. Ama Sona worked for a gang out of Trestre, tried to expand into Burn River. Gang I worked for didn't like that."

  "That's these Weavers you mentioned?"

  "Dyers. But no, that came later. This was when I was, what, seventeen, I guess. When I was with the White Rose."

  Ashleigh was starting to feel sick to his stomach. "So you were a drug runner? That's how you got this reputation?"

  "Nah. I was a killer. I worked for the drug runners. Opium's big business down here. We slaughter each other so you white folks can have pretty dreams."

  "Hey, it's not --"

  "I know, up East you got people shooting each other over the paint thinner that leaks out the bottom of the corn crib. Down here we do it for tar. And you know, I think half these operations are backed by the government. You try to make some kind of moral sense out of it and you'll just tie your head in a knot."

  Ashleigh struggled to contain his judgment, but one look at Kieran's bland expression and it jumped out of his throat: "Does that make it okay, in your opinion? That the world is corrupt and you murdered corrupt men, that makes murder all right?"

  "I never said it was all right," Kieran said coldly. He stared until Ashleigh dropped his gaze, then turned his back.

  --==*==--

  After an exchange like that, Ashleigh would've liked to stalk off somewhere by himself for a while, but instead he was back in his cell with Kieran, trying not to make eye contact. Lacking privacy, his next choice would have been to hide in a book, but a brief conversation with a guard informed him that there was no reading material whatsoever to be had. Not even a newspaper.

  He killed a few minutes exploring the cell. There was a tin pitcher half full of water, and a washbasin still sludgy with the remains of Kieran's morning ablutions. A steel toilet of the sort found in outhouses -- he supposed a water closet would have been too much to ask for. A slab of polished steel intended to function as a mirror, but no razor. What on earth was the mirror for, if it wasn't to shave by? In a tray attached to the bottom of the mirror was a tin cup and a damaged comb, just one of each, which they'd apparently have to share.

  His bed was a narrow frame of steel tubing, bolted down, with a mattress that felt like it was st
uffed with raw cotton. There were mysterious stains on its tan-striped fabric. There was a drain under the washstand and an air shaft above the mirror, both too small to admit his head and both covered with metal grills. And that was it. That was his entire world. The only interesting thing in the cell -- hell, the only object with moving parts -- was his cellmate.

  It was time, he decided, to make peace.

  "Look, Trevarde -- I mean, Kieran --"

  "Forget about it."

  Taken aback, Ashleigh only managed, "Um?"