Eugene Lambert - The Sign of One

‘ One good, two e-vil, one good, two e-vil ,’ chants the crowd.

The ident on the left, just before he’s forced on to his knees before the altar, pulls away from his guard and sends a big gob of spit into the front row of the crowd. The people there don’t appreciate it. They howl and throw stuff at him.

The guards drag him back to the altar.

Mary’s dad grins at me. ‘A credit says it’s the spitter.’

‘You’re on,’ I say. What else can I do? I can’t look like I feel sorry for twists.

The masked man wields his knife again. When he steps back, we have a winner. Or a loser, I should say. And I’m shiny, up a credit. The kid who spat has five scars and one open wound. His brother – or the twist pretending to be – only has five scars. A big yellow crust comes away, stuck to the bandage. Where the cut would have been is smooth, pink skin. A deep cut healed overnight.

Don’t need to be a healer’s son to know that’s unnatural.

The arena erupts. A thousand little fingers slash the air with the Sign of One. All around me, people jump up and down, emptying their lungs in an orgy of hysterical shouting and screaming. I scream too. I yell nonsense until my throat is raw from yelling. It’s impossible not to – fear needs a way out.

Suddenly, the crowd starts chanting something new.

‘ Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Now what? This time, only the twist is paraded. On the screen, I see his brother watching, mouth turned down, as a guard removes his leg irons. They push him towards a fire basket, but he struggles so they have to force him.

‘If I was him ,’ I say, ‘I’d be jumping for joy that my blood isn’t twisted.’

‘You don’t have a brother, do you?’ says Mary’s mother.

‘He’s not a real brother,’ says Mary.

Her father scowls and hands over my credit. Mary winks at me, obviously delighted, maybe hoping I’ll spend it on something for her later. She’ll be lucky. Up on the stage, one guard holds the innocent youth. Another, leather gloved and aproned, pulls an iron rod from the hot coals. Without any hesitation, he plants the glowing tip on to the boy’s left bicep. I wince, seeing smoke curl and hearing the amplified hiss. The boy staggers, but doesn’t cry out.

‘ Scabb-er! ’ chants the crowd now.

Scab. That’s what we call the pureblood ident. The lucky one.

‘Why’d they burn him?’ asks Cassie, as guards haul the boy off the stage.

I let go a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. ‘Now they’re sure he’s pureblood, they brand him with a big P. Like your dad brands fourhorns.’

‘So they can tell who owns him?’

‘Nobody owns him.’ I sigh. ‘It’s so he can prove he’s pureblood. He gets his life back today, but if we didn’t mark him people would see his missing little finger and think maybe he’s an ident on the run. This way, he can just roll his sleeve up, show his brand and you know he’s all right. Now do you get it?’

‘But won’t the mark heal and go away?’

I scowl down at her. ‘It won’t, mud for brains. You saw him unwrapped. Only twists can heal a scar away. That mark’ll be on him till the day he dies.’

Cassie sucks her thumb doubtfully.

‘What will he do with no family to go to?’ I ask Mary.

‘Who cares?’ She laughs. ‘It’s what happens now that makes it worth dragging ourselves all this way. You get to see what the Peace Fair is all about!’

Even as she says this, a tall frame hisses up from the floor of the stage. I stop wondering when I see the noose hanging down from the cross member. It’s a gallows. The guards drag twist-boy over, both his hands bound behind his back now. He struggles, his bare feet hammering the stage, but they stand him up, slip the rope round his neck and give it a vicious tug to tighten it.

No way – I’m going to witness an execution.

‘ Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! Pu-ri-fy! ’

Desperate to see, Cassie starts climbing up me, but I push her away.

Commandant Morana stands. She holds her fist out, palm down. The crowd shuts up in a heartbeat. After the uproar, the silence is so empty, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff. A lammerjay caws high overhead.

She opens her hand.

Thunnkkk! A trapdoor opens in the stage.

The boy drops like a stone into the dark hole and out of sight. The rope jerks iron-bar taut, then twitches and swings as he kicks his life away. I want to look away, but I can’t. The crowd around me hoots and applauds.

Twists are fighters, I’ll say that. It’s a minute before the rope goes still.

In the Barrenlands nobody dies from old age, so I’ve seen plenty of death. Like that old guy gored by a bull blackbuck, who died screaming, still trying to shove his guts back in. Or my mate Keane, after they pulled his fish-gobbled body out of the lake. I thought I was used to death, but this is just so . . . cold-blooded. Sweat stings my eyes. I can’t stop my legs shaking.

This I did not see coming.

Maybe I should’ve done. Twists are the bane of Wrath. If we take our foot off their necks, they’ll gang up again to slaughter us. I do get that. That’s why the Saviour’s law demands we mark idents and cage them and test them when they’re old enough. All this, when the simplest thing would be to kill both. Proof of the Saviour’s infinite benevolence, Fod likes to preach. A system put in place to protect us, while sparing the innocent. Harsh and cruel perhaps, but merciful.

I knew all this before I handed over my credits.

But knowing is one thing; seeing the grim limits of the Saviour’s mercy another. I swallow hard, grateful at least for not having to watch the twist thrashing at the rope end. Why the hell hadn’t Rona told me about this Purification?

‘What’s with you?’ says Mary, eyeing me. ‘The thing was evil.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Sure.’

My eyes stray to the back of the stage. The idents are making some kind of fingers-crossed salute to the dead kid through the bars of their cages. Slayer guards are rushing up and down, clubbing at them with their rifles to stop them.

The crowd sees and jeers even louder. All part of the fun.

But the screen shows none of this. It sticks with the bigdeals on stage clapping their delicate hands, then pans to Morana, hiding a yawn with her gloved hand. Over the next hour, twenty more pairs of idents are unwrapped. Seven more twists test positive and make the drop into the trapdoor, three of them girls. The youngest, a girl with a face full of freckles, looks about eleven. Even she gets a cheer from the crowd when she drops. The scabs are branded, but only four are claimed by their families. Mary, enjoying herself hugely, pulls my leg about my long face. Cassie stuffs her face with sweets and pesters me to try one as Maskman summons the Lynch family. The crowd has a big laugh at the unfortunate surname, but I can’t join in. The Lynches are those redhead ident girls I saw yesterday. A woman, an older image of the girls, hauls herself on to the stage, but collapses. Last time I saw these girls they were petrified, but now they look calm and resigned. It’s the loving look they give each other as they’re forced to kneel at the altar that undoes me. I can’t watch any more – just can’t. I’ve had it with the Unwrapping.

I peer round at the Slayers, wondering if they’ll blast me if I make a run for it back to camp. I don’t care what people think. I have to get out of here, away from this madness. And that’s when Cassie’s greed does me a favour.

She pukes her guts up, all down her front.

‘Oh, Cassie, no!’ says her mother.

‘No bother,’ I say, hastily. ‘I’ll take her back and clean her up.’