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She watches me a little longer, her eyes discerning in a way that makes me feel vulnerable. “Where are you from, Lark? Which township?”
The question catches me off guard. I had been asked my name and spoken a new one, but no one cared where I hailed from. I’m not sure how familiar the trollis are with human townships. I cannot imagine any harm in being honest, so I answer truthfully. “Lucarpo, originally. But I traveled a lot before coming here.”
Ritha’s expression grows distant and thoughtful. We reach the lift.
“Thank you, Lark.” She pulls the wagon onto the lift quickly, while it’s available. “Stay safe.”
“I will.” If I can befriend Perg, Azmar, and Unach, then I can befriend others. Show them the goodness of humans. Even persuade them to treat my people more fairly.
I turn from the lift and almost immediately meet the eyes of a trollis across the way. He is large, gray, and incredibly broad—enough to make someone like Perg look malnourished. He blends in with the stone behind him, so it takes me a beat to recognize him.
Grodd. Leader of the human task force. The one who dealt out Colson’s beating.
I wonder, had he been at the school that night, whether he’d have bothered to stop mine.
He folds his meaty arms and stares at me, and though at least twenty yards separate us, I feel as though I stand beside him. I consider lowering my gaze and moving away, showing deference even from this distance, and yet I find I cannot. Not because Grodd’s glare fascinates me, but because it disgusts me. I see pride in every inch of his stance and hate coloring every inch of his skin.
And so I stare back, lifting my chin, my heart pounding in my chest. Only when a group of trollis walking up from one of the tunnels comes between us do I retreat where he can’t see. In part so that he doesn’t know where I’m going. In part because I don’t want him to know I looked away first.
I climb the levels faster than usual, and reach Unach’s apartment out of breath. I beam at the narrow window on the far wall and the sunlight sneaking through it. I want to curl up where it meets the floor, but my brief conversation with Ritha is fresh on my mind, and the desire to prove myself is stronger than ever.
I picked up Unach’s and Azmar’s rations again and now organize them in the narrow cupboards. I’m filling up a pitcher of water to take to the fire when the door to that small washroom opens and Azmar steps out. He startles me, for I’d thought myself alone. He and Unach both usually work at this hour.
I nearly tip over the pitcher when I see him. He is entirely unclothed, save for a short towel around his hips. Water drips from his thick hair down his chest. His bare chest.
And though I know he is a trollis, I find myself gaping at him, for his torso is not very different from a human man’s, save that it is remarkably well sculpted. All of him is.
The rush of heat to my face warns me that I am staring. My head whips back to my work so quickly that I pull a muscle in my neck. “S-Sorry. I-I didn’t think you’d be home.”
I don’t dare look at him to determine his expression, but his voice is even. “I had to aid with smelting today, to help with the rebuild. It’s dirty work.”
I swallow, wishing my face would cool. “I thought to make a root stew tonight.” I speak too quickly and force my tongue to slow. “Use up the rest of last week’s rations.” Unach always eats the meat first.
Azmar’s steps move away, to where his clothes lie on a drying rack just inside that little room. I peek up again. Muscles from, I presume, years of military training and ... smelting assistance ... stretch across his wide back. His wet hair hangs heavy against his spine, unbound, and a few drops of water patter to the floor. A hand’s-length scar shifts under his right shoulder blade, straight and silver. I wonder if he’s spent time on the surface, to have such a wound.
But when he turns again, I notice something I didn’t before—another silvery scar, this one just as straight but much longer and thicker. It looks to be opposite the first, like he was run straight through with a sword, similar in size to the one Unach carries.
This time I know I’m caught staring, for when I lift my eyes, Azmar regards me with something I can’t quite put my finger on. Restrained curiosity? Confusion?
I clear my throat. “I’ll ... start cooking.” My voice rasps, quieter than I’d meant it to be.
He nods and strides to his room. “Thank you.”
Azmar and Perg are the only trollis who thank me for anything. In the past few days, Azmar has even begun saying please.
I glance after him, wondering at the scar, for I know from Perg that trollis don’t ever use battle-ready weapons against one another, except in a caste tournament, and I’m fairly certain Azmar has never participated in one. It feels like an invasion of privacy to ask him, and I know Unach won’t tell me. The question alone would irritate her.
I finish filling the pitcher, set it aside, then replace the vegetables in the cold box with the new ones from the market. Azmar doesn’t comeback out until I’ve cut up the last of them, a new sheaf of paper in his hand, pencil tucked behind his ear.
Despite the fact that he is fully clothed, my face heats once more.
The following day heralds the caste tournament.
According to Unach, it happens every quarter, and there are always challenges. The caste tournament is the best way a trollis has to improve his or her standing in the complicated caste system. All a trollis has to do is defeat a higher-ranked person in personal combat, and their castes switch. A Pleb can even challenge a Supra, not that it’s ever done. There’s a reason the Supras sit at the top of the chain. That, and challenged opponents are not required to accept. When they do, it’s usually out of pride or esteem. The turquoise beads I’ve seen on other trollis’ sleeves indicate caste tournaments won, and they can be used to settle arguments among trollis of the same rank.
“Suppose two Montras reach a lift at one time,” Unach explained to me. “One wants to go up, one to go down. But the first has two beads, and the second none. The lesser must defer.”
I am not one for bloodshed, but I want to support Perg, who has trained so hard to improve his standing. He struggles to find trollis willing to fight him, not because he’s terrifying, but because he’s half-human and they consider it disgraceful. His last tournament was two years ago, and he failed to win. A year before that, he’d beaten a Nethens. His mother had been Deccor, but because of his father, Perg had been born a Pleb.
