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.‘Help me?’ he says.It’s the first time I’ve heard him speak.His voice is soft and clambers over the words awkwardly.Eskaran is not his first language, nor one he’s accustomed to using.I look up.His brow and lip are swollen, and he’s holding himself awkwardly.He’s wearing bruises under his thin shirt.Maybe a cracked rib.Charn gets him in the quad, and on occasion in the cell.Likely it’s because he’s alone, and small, and alien.Nobody is on his side, so there’s no fear of recrimination.He’ll be bullied into a corner, hit rapidly several times, kicked when he goes down.It’s done quick and neat, with no real malice.I don’t think the boy knows why it’s happening.I don’t think even Charn knows why he does it.‘He is afraid from you,’ the boy says.‘He speaks of you as Cadre.I have heard it.Fear is heard when he speaks.’I look him over.There’s something appalling about the sight, battered as he is.He’s handsome, in a feminine kind of way: he looks like an obsidian sculpture.The bruises disfigure him, blasphemies against the clean lines of his face.‘Feyn is the name I have,’ he says, when I don’t reply.I’m silent for a time.Then I hear myself speaking, as if from a distance: ‘I can’t help you, boy.Go away.’ But what I mean is: I won’t help you; stop intruding on my perfect misery.His face is unreadable.Then he nods, as if he understands.I want to tell him that he can’t understand, he’s not old enough to know love as I have, the pain I feel; but there’s no point.He walks away from me, holding himself.I glance over at Charn and Nereith, and their gazes flick away from me.Our exchange has been noted.Next shift in the forge I ask to swap with one of the coke-shovellers.Partly it’s because I’ve become stronger, and the constant push and pull of the screens isn’t gruelling enough.I want the extra punishment.But mostly it’s because I can’t bear looking at that SunChild boy.The prisoner is happy to oblige.My job is pretty cushy compared to his.There are six of us at the furnace, scooping coke into its roaring, smoky maw.One of them is Nereith, the Khaadu man.I ignore them all, putting my back into the work.The heat from the furnace draws sweat and dries it quickly.The faces of the men around me are grimy with black dust.They talk to each other as they shovel fuel from the pile into the hungry flames.They laugh and make crude jokes about their captors, they bitch about other prisoners, they reminisce about what things were like back home.They mock Nereith in a comradely way, calling him a cannibal.He shows his teeth and suggests how he might eat their mothers.I’m getting stuck into the pile and am about to sling another shovelful into the furnace when the Khaadu grabs my arm.‘Not like that.’I stare at him blankly.He points at my shovel.‘Scoop from the middle of the pile, not the bottom.Your shovel is full of dust.’I still don’t understand.‘If you throw that into the furnace it’ll ignite and blow back,’ he says.‘You’ll burn someone.’Slowly, I turn away, shake off the shovel, take another scoop.This time my shovel is full of coke rocks.Nereith grunts in satisfaction and gets back to work.I keep my eye on the Khaadu man.There’s something about him.It’s an instinct born of dealing with the dangerous, from aristocratic killers who murder by signing a contract, to fireclaw dealers with a blade and nothing to lose.He’s stripped to the waist; well-defined muscles; no fat on him.Entirely hairless, like all Khaadu, and his head is skinmarked with long red strips that follow the curve of his skull.Larger red strips run down his back.They’re something to do with his social caste, but I’ve not met enough Khaadu to recognise his status.Their cities are far away from ours, through labyrinthine cave networks, Umbra-haunted fungal forests and sulphurous rock plains where poison gases leak from the ground.They don’t visit Eskara very often.But it’s his teeth that draw the attention: long, sharp, fanged like a predator.Khaadu are a race of consummate carnivores.They prefer to eat their food still wriggling.The exception is when they eat their dead, or the bodies of their enemies.It’s a ceremonial thing.The Overseer makes his tour of the forge at the same time every shift.It’s the only regular event we have.He emerges from his rooms, high in the smoky darkness, and descends to the floor, where he makes his way among us with an air of casual authority.He’s a neat man, tall for a Gurta and straight-backed, his white hair swept back from his temples.It’s impossible to stop his uniform from wilting in the heat but he does his best.The guards call him Overseer Arachi
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