“Eat them!” Fitchner cries. “And Darrow, put down that gory scythe. You look like a grain reaper.”
I don’t drop it. It is close to the shape of my slingBlade from home. Not as sharp, because it isn’t meant to kill, but the balance is no different.
“You know you could let my children go and give them back the reaping scythe,” Ceres suggests down to us.
“Give me a kiss and you have a deal,” Cassius calls up.
“The Imperator’s boy?” she asks Fitchner. He nods. “Come ask for one when you’re Scarred, little prince.” She looks over her shoulder. “Until then, I would advise that you and the reaper run.”
We hear the hooves before we see the painted horses galloping at us across the plain. They come from the opened gates of House Ceres’s castle. The girls on the horses’ backs carry nets.
“They gave you horses! Horses!” Fitchner complains. “That is so unfair!”
We run and barely make it to the woods. I didn’t like my first encounter with horses. They still scare the piss out of me. All snorting and stomping. Cassius and I gasp for breath. My shoulder aches. Two of Titus’s reinforcements are captured as they find themselves stranded in open ground. Bold Titus knocks a horse over and is laughing as he’s about to lay waste to one of the girls with his boot. Ceres zaps him with a stunfist and makes peace with Fitchner. The stunfist causes Titus to piss himself. Only Sevro is careless enough to laugh. Cassius says something about bad manners, but he snickers quietly. Titus notices.
“Are we allowed to kill them or not?” he growls that night at dinner. We eat the leftovers from Bacchus’s feast. “Or am I going to get stunned every time?”
“Well, the point isn’t to kill them,” Fitchner says. “So no. Let’s not go around massacring your classmates, you mad ape.”
“But we did before!” Titus protests.
“What is wrong with you?” Fitchner asks. “The Passage was where the culling is done. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, you mad, stupid, colossal sack of muscle. What would be the point if we now had the fittest just murder each other till only a few are left? There are new tests to pass now.”
“Ruthlessness.” Antonia crosses her arms. “So now it’s not acceptable? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Oh, it better be acceptable.” Titus grins broadly. He’s been boasting all night about knocking over the horse, as if it’d make everyone forget the piss that stained his pants. Some have. He’s already gathered a pack of hounds. Only Cassius and I seem to have an ounce of his respect, but even we’re smirked at. So is Fitchner.
Fitchner sets down his honeyed ham.
“Let us clarify, children, so this water buffalo doesn’t go around stomping on skulls. Ruthlessness is acceptable, dear Antonia. If someone dies by accident, that is understandable. Accidents happen to the best of us. But you will not murder each other with scorchers. You will not hang people from your ramparts unless they’re already dead. MedBots are on standby in case any medical attention is direly needed. They are fast enough to save lives, most of the time.”
He pops a gumbubble. “Remember, though, the point is not to kill. We don’t care if you’re as ruthless as Vlad Dracula. He still lost. The point is to win. That’s what we want.”
And that simple test of cruelty is already past.
“We want you to show us your brilliance. Like Alexander. Like Caesar, Napoleon, and Merrywater. We want you to manage an army, distribute justice, arrange for provisions of food and armor. Any fool can stick a blade into another’s belly. The school’s role is to find the leaders of men, not the killers of men. So the point, you silly little children, is not to kill, but to conquer. And how do you conquer in a game where there are eleven enemy tribes?”
“Take them out one at a time,” Titus answers knowingly.
“No, ogre.”
“Dumbass,” Sevro snickers to himself. Titus’s pack quietly watches the smallest boy in the Institute. No threats are snarled. No faces twitch. Just a silent promise. It’s hard to remember that they are all geniuses. They look too pretty. Too athletic. Too cruel to be geniuses.
“Anyone besides Ogre have a guess?” Fitchner asks.
No one answers.
“You make one tribe out of twelve,” I finally say. “By taking slaves.”
Just like the Society. Build on the backs of others. It isn’t cruel. It is practical.
Fitcher claps mockingly. “Prime, Reaper. Prime. Looks like someone is bucking for Primus.” Everyone shifts in agitation at that last bit. Fitchner pulls a long box from under the table. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what you use to make the slaves.” He pulls out our standard. “Protect this. Protect your castle. And conquer all the others.”
22
The Tribes
Fitchner is gone in the morning. In his chair lies the standard. It is a one-foot length of iron tipped with our howling wolf; a serpent coils beneath the wolf’s feet, the star-tipped pyramid of the Society beneath that. A five-foot oak pole connects to the iron end. If the castle is our home, the standard is our honor. With it, we are able to turn enemies into our slaves by pressing it to their forehead. There a wolf sigil will appear until another standard is pressed to the forehead. Slaves must obey our express commands or forever be Shamed.
I sit across from the standard in the morning dark, eating Apollo’s leftovers. A wolf calls out in the mist. Its howl comes through the keep’s high window. Tall Antonia is the first to join me. She glides in like a lonely tower or a beautiful golden spider. I haven’t decided which way her personality runs. We exchange glances but no greetings. She wants Primus.
Cassius and raspy Pollux saunter in next. Pollux grumbles about having to go to bed without having Pinks to tuck him in.
“A positively hideous standard, don’t you think?” Antonia complains. “They could at least have given it a splash of color. I think it should be draped with red for rage and blood.”
“It’s not too heavy.” Cassius hefts the standard by its pole. “Reckoned it’d be gold.” He admires the golden Primus hand within the block of black stone. He wants it too. “And they gave us a map. Swell.”
A new stone map dominates one of the walls. The detail near our castle is remarkable. The rest less so. The fog of war. Cassius claps me on the back and joins in eating. He doesn’t know I heard him weep again in the night. We shared a new bunk in a barracks in the keep’s high tower. Many others still sleep in the main tower. Titus and his friends have taken the low tower even though they don’t have enough bodies to fill it.