“What’s below?” I whisper.
The words barely leave my mouth. They feel too big for the space between Grum’s bars and my teeth.
Grum’s good eye fixes on me. His forehead stays pressed against the stone wall of his cage. The knock under the floor has gone quiet, but the silence after it is worse. Silence in the Red Pit usually means something is choosing where to bite.
Grum’s lips move, “Mouth.”
I grip the cart handle and whispered, “What mouth?”
His brow tightens as if the words are heavy things he has to lift one at a time, “Said good.”
I don’t understand. “Good?”
Grum’s hand curls against the floor. His nails scrape stone.
“Good Grum,” he says. “Good blood. Good mouth.”
Then his head jerks, and the old fear comes back into his face, “Not good.”
Brak grabs me by the scruff and drags me backward so hard my heels leave the floor.
“That’s enough,” he says.
I almost told him Grum answered me, but Brak’s face has gone flat and pale under the green. He heard us. He just doesn't want the words to become real by having me repeat them.
“You don’t whisper to him,” Brak says. “You don’t ask him questions. You don’t teach him that goblins listen.”
“He already knows.”
Brak leans close. His breath smells of sour beer and old onions.
“Then pretend he doesn’t.”
That’s a rule. Not a written one. The Red Pit has many rules like that. The kind nobody paints on a wall because painting them would mean admitting they exist.
Brak takes the cart from me and shoves it toward the passage.
“You are not Grum’s special little problem,” he says. “You have five cages now. You feed five, water five, check five locks, and when Vorga calls a name, you help lead that thing to the lift.”
“Five?”
“Five is better than six.”
I don’t ask what happened to the sixth.
We pass the next cages quickly. Brak names them like he is counting debts.
“Grum, you know. Skarn bites through bowls, so use the iron trough. Bellock looks slow, but his arm is longer than your whole future. The covered cage stays covered unless I say otherwise.”
Something under a patched canvas shifts wetly. I decide the covered cage and I can remain strangers.
Brak stops at a narrow barred cell near the lift passage. A human woman sits inside with her back against the wall and her wrists chained in front of her. She is thin, dark-haired, and bruised along one cheek. A row of knives lies on a shelf outside the bars, tagged and locked away.
“This one is Hessa,” Brak says. “Debt-fighter. Talks too much. Do not believe anything she says unless it helps you live.”
Hessa smiles without standing.
“New handler,” she says. “You look nearly ripe.”
Brak slaps the bars with his hook. “Quiet.”
I set a water bowl near the slot and pushed it through.
Hessa looks past me, toward Grum’s end of the row, “Old Breaker still refusing the lift?”
I look at Brak.
Brak says nothing.
Hessa drinks, then wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist.
“Two fights ago, the crowd sang wrong,” she says softly. “Not loud. Wrong. Like they all found the same throat.”
The stone under my feet seems to remember warmth.
Brak catches my shoulder. “Do not buy stories from prisoners. They spend lies like coin.”
A horn sounds above us. Then another. The crowd answers with a rising roar.
A runner comes down the lift passage carrying a slate. He is breathing hard.
“Third bout changed,” he says. “Hessa to east lift. Now.”
Hessa closes her eyes for one breath.
From Grum’s cage, a chain clicks.
Grum growls.
Not loud. Not yet, anyway.
The covered cage shifts again.
Brak thrusts a short lead-chain into my hands.
“Do your job,” he says. “Hessa first. Eyes down, hands steady, no talking.”
I look at Hessa. I look toward Grum. His good eye is on the lift passage, and his hands are opening and closing against the stone.
The knock below doesn’t come again.
That almost makes it worse.
What should Nip do?
- Follow Brak’s order and prepare Hessa for the east lift.
- Ask Hessa what she means about the crowd singing wrong.
- Go back toward Grum before the lift chains start moving.