A hesitant smile passed over the boy's face, revealing as clearly as though his face were made of mountainstream water, rather than flesh and blood, how unsure he was that he might be taking liberties.
"Through here," Kit smiled. "I, er, rather made a mess of that suit scooping up dead lemmings."
The boy brightened. "I heard about that, sir. Were there really millions and millions of 'em?"
Kit laughed. "No, but sometimes it seemed like it. There were probably at least two or three thousand, though."
The boy had gone round-eyed with wonder. "That many? That's a big number, isn't it, sir?"
Kit reminded himself to be sure this youngster was included in orientation and education sessions he held at the Neo Edo for downtimer employees and their families. Many had profited enough from the lessons to leave the Neo Edo and drudgery work behind forever, finding or even making better jobs for themselves. Kit prided himself that none of his downtimer employees, current or former-had walked through a gate and shadowed him- or herself, vanishing forever the moment they crossed to the other side.
The boy took the ruined suit and promised he'd take it to the best drycleaner in the station-there were only two-then bowed and ran for the elevator.
Kit chuckled, then sighed and decided he might as well tackle the four stacks of triple-damned government paperwork every shop owner on TT-86 was required to file weekly. Sometimes, he pondered as he sat down and began on the first tedious document, Kit wondered if Bull Morgan was seen so rarely because he had locked himself into his office to cope with his mountains of paperwork.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The pain in Skeeter's head registered first. The next sensation to impinge on his awareness was his nakedness. Except for a cloth at his loins, he'd been stripped clean as a Mongolian sky. He blinked and stirred. That's when he discovered the chains. Skeeter moaned softly, head throbbing savagely, then blinked and focused once again on his wrists. Iron manacles and a short length of chain bound them together. A circlet of iron around his throat caught his adam's apple when he swallowed nausea and fear. Further exploration revealed chains and manacles around his ankles, hobbling him and locking him to an iron ring in a stone wall.
He was alone in a dim, tiny stone cell, iron bars forming a sort of door-cum-fourth wall. Beyond, he could hear distant voices: shouts, cries of pain, screams of terror, pleas for mercy. He managed to sit up. The unmistakable snarl of caged cats-big cats, somewhere nearby brought a shiver to his naked back. He'd seen snow leopards and Mongolian tigers during Yesukai's famous hunt drives. He didn't care to go one-on-one with anything feline that even remotely approached that size. The claws and teeth would be far too sharp and his death would be far too slow ...
Despite the iron ring around his throat, Skeeter gagged and voided the contents of his belly onto the cold stone floor.
Footsteps approached. his cell with a clatter of hobnailed boots. Skeeter looked up, still feeling sick and dull of mind, and gradually focused on two men grinning in at him. One of them he'd never seen in his life. The other was Lupus Mortiferus. The fear and nausea in his belly turned to sour ice.
"Hello, odds maker," Lupus smiled. "Feeling comfortable?"
Skeeter didn't bother to answer.
"This," Lupus gestured to the other man, a thickset individual with arms big around as Skeeter's thighs, "is your lanista." My trainer? "Thieves are condemned men, you know, but you will have a chance." Lupus' eyes twinkled as though this were hilariously funny. "If you survive, you will remain the property of the Emperor and fight for his glory" At least, that's what Skeeter thought he'd said. His Latin wasn't very good. "You and I," Lupus laughed, "will meet again, thief."
That's what I'm afraid of, he groaned silently.
Lupus strode off, a wicked chuckle echoing off stone walls.
The other man smiled coldly and unlocked the door.
Skeeter wanted to fight, to break free and run
But not only was he chained and hobbled, the lanista who unlocked his chains from the wall dragged him around as though he were a mere babe to be dandled in one hand. Skeeter held back a groan of pain and allowed the man to drag him through a confusing maze of corridors. Then, past a set of heavy, iron-bound doors, bright sunlight blinded him. He blinked, overwhelmed by harsh light, the odd clack of what sounded like two-by-fours smashing together, and the screams of wounded men. He balked instinctively and received a terrible buffet to the side of his aching head.
Reeling, Skeeter found himself dragged forward into the middle of a practice session on a sandy floor.
High iron fences and armed soldiers surrounded the area. Gladiators in armor, wielding wooden swords, practiced what looked like set-piece moves, as carefully choreographed as a ballet, while "trainers" called out moves to them. Other men were engaged in calisthenics, jumping low hurdles, wrestling, practicing hand springs and tucked rolls, hacking at straw men or thick wooden posts. Still others sighted along javelins and hurled their weapons at..."
Skeeter stumbled as a mortal scream tore the air.
A slave tied to a post at the far edge of the practice ground sagged, a javelin embedded in his bowels. A nearby soldier grunted, stalked over, and yanked the weapon out again, then slit the suffering man's throat with a neat slice from a dagger. Skeeter had seen such casual cruelty before, many times, in Yesukai's camp, but that had been a long time ago. He'd grown more civilized than he'd thought during the intervening years.
Skeeter's lanista dragged him past and thrust him into the group doing calisthenics. He was unchained and forcibly prodded into movement with the tip of a long spear. Sweating, head spinning uselessly, Skeeter did what he was forced to do, vaulting low hurdles awkwardly and going through the motions of the calisthenics. Then he was handed a dull-edged wooden sword and a shield and found himself facing his trainer. He swallowed again, dizzy and terrified.
"Shield up!" the man shouted-and lunged with a short wooden sword.
Skeeter's reaction time, dulled by pain and shock, was slow. The wooden sword caught him in the gut, doubling him over with a retching pain. His trainer waited until he'd caught his breath, then dragged him up again and shouted, "Shield up!"
This time, Skeeter managed to drag his arm up to catch the blow across the wooden shield. The smack and force of the blow drove him to his knees.
"Thrust!"
Over the next two miserable, wretched weeks, his trainer beat the drills into him, until he could at least follow the instructions. He learned the various methods of fighting, tried to use the various types of weapons different classes of gladiators used. His lanista spent a great deal of time grumbling, while Lupus Mortiferus stalked the training-arena like a god and laughed at him, besting every opponent sent against him with lazy ease.
Disheartened, bruised, Skeeter slept in chains, too exhausted to move once allowed to collapse on his hard bed. He ate the gruel he was given as fast as he could shovel it in. It tasted faintly of beer; barley gone a little too far toward fermentation, perhaps? Occasionally Lupus Mortiferus would visit his cell, grinning and taunting him from beyond the iron bars of his cage. Skeeter returned his gaze steadily and coldly, while his insides quaked with deeper terror than he had ever known, deeper even than his terror at falling through the unstable gate into Yesukai the Valiant's life.
Each night as he drifted into bruised sleep, Skeeter dredged up from memory everything Yesukai had ever taught him, every trick and dirty move he'd ever learned on the plains of Mongolia. Then it occurred to him that perhaps he was reviewing the wrong memories. And he thought of his time on the broken, filthy streets of depraved New York, where a boy, even a grown man, could find himself fatally trapped before he knew anything had gone wrong. Certain areas of New York were said to be as deadly as the ancient Roman gladiatorial combats. Looked like he was about to find out.