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I turn away from the writhing old man to two giant women with crossed arms—short curly hair, splotchy red cheeks, and a towering height nearly matching Dessin’s.
“God bless,” Niles gasps, flinching away from her.
The first is a thick oak tree of a woman. Broad and beefy. I stare with my mouth parted, looking up and up and up.
“The name’s Helga Bee,” she says proudly. “This here is Gerta.” She points to the shorter woman next to her. But not by much.
“You don’t speak Old Alkadonian like the others?” Ruth asks.
“No, we do. But we knew the Demechnef Experiments don’t.” Her wide, buggy eyes dissect us individually, like a child holding a magnifying glass over a cluster of insects.
I hesitate for a moment. “How many prisoners speak our language?”
Helga Bee scratches her shoulder, causing the milky white skin to turn cherry red. “About seventy-five percent of them.”
Dessin raises his eyebrows. “We haven’t heard anything other than Old Alkadonian.”
She shrugs innocently. “That’s because anyone from our sister country is shunned and isolated here, Beetle Brain.”
Beetle Brain. I nearly laugh.
Warrose beats me to it.
“I like her.” He chuckles, looking back to Dessin to observe his reaction to the new nickname. Dessin clenches his jaw, grimacing at Helga Bee like he wants to do something—anything—to put her in her place.
Warrose laughs harder.
I look around at the prisoners spread out through the arena, watching us closely, scowling at our interaction with Helga Bee and Gerta.
“Why are you talking to us if the status quo is to ignore us?” Marilynn asks.
“We’ve never followed the lackluster trends here,” she explains, sitting on the edge of the stage. “Gerta and I are from the East-Vexallo Mountains, the only territory exempt from the Vexamen Law. We’re born rebels!”
That must be like the Bear Traps. A place outside of the social norms. A section of land that is exempt from the extreme way of life.
“How’d you end up here?” Ruth asks.
Helga Bee tsks. “Bad form. Never ask another prisoner what they did to get them thrown into the circus!”
It isn’t until I glance at Gerta that I notice why Niles has been so quiet. She’s been grinning at him silently, twirling her frizzy brown hair around her finger with blushing cheeks and swaying hips.
Niles tries not to look at her.
“You sure are a pretty man,” Gerta says, voice a little deeper than I would have expected.
Niles doesn’t look up. “Thank you, I know.”
I roll my eyes.
“You said something about a Fun House Night?” Dessin asks with a clipped tone.
Helga Bee straightens. “Yep. Dates chosen at random, we have Fun House Night in this big ole’ room.” She circles her hands in a sweeping motion. “Vexamen Breed’s finest come to watch whatever the Circus Orchestrators have planned to entertain them.”
“Entertain…how?” Dessin asks cautiously.
Helga Bee smirks at him, waggling her strawberry-blonde eyebrows as if to ask, do you really want to know?
“Oh, you know, the usual. The Guzzle Ride, Ecstasy Dance, Swing Pit, Hunting Rally…”
