When he got back to the thrall house, the others were still loud and singing. Old songs, because none of them were so great at making new ones.

They were happy, though, coughing up little bits of old songs. Most of them were on their bunks. Nan’s clawed fingers drooping out of bed to trail on the concrete. Like always, the dim wyr-glow flickered - Red idly kicked the lamp cage, making it swing behind the bunks. She was talking shit to Kour about the roster being wrong, or there was too many shifts or something. A dead rat dangled limp from her hand. The smell of hot blood mixed with the sweat of too many bodies.

Dally stopped near her, crossed his arms. Under the stupid uniform he was crawling with sweat all over, like bugs running down his back. And starting to get sober, which was not good. Everything felt really, really clear. The light flashed again, showing Red looking up at him. She was confused, half-smiling.

“Give me that,” he said.

Red blinked. Her fist tightened around the small body, a slow trickle of blood creeping between her fingers.

“Yeah,” Dally said, “give it to me.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

A pause, while they stared at each other. Finally Red snarled. “The fuck is your problem, Harper?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Everyone’s hungry.” She was rising, now, spines prickling from the back of her neck. “We all are, saf, catch your own-”

Dally snatched her wrist, felt skin ripple under his hand. When he glanced back up, the eyelid in her forehead snapped open.

Fixed on Dally, Red’s third eye was impossibly wide; a flaming circle with a black vortex of a pupil in the center. Tongues of eerie light curled around the ring of the iris, before plunging into the dark.

While Dally stared Red had got a grip on his arm, and now she casually put a shoulder in his gut. Both of them bounced off her bunk, and hit the floor in a screeching tangle.

Fighting females was shit, he remembered too late. They had too much to prove; not actually smaller, but without spines they were twice as slippery and vicious. Red twisted out of his hands, and then she was all over him like an octopus. She screamed in his ear, right before clamping her teeth down on it. Dally howled, struggled to claw her jaws open.

Both of them knew what kind of fight it was, though, so when Red fell on top of him there was no claw in his gut to follow up. She just curled her armored knuckles, and drove them into the side of his head. Stars burst behind Dally’s eyes. He flailed, snarling, and maybe he punched her, too. It was getting hard to tell.

“You spoiled fuck,” she hissed, “extra food not enough?”

From on his back, Dally twisted until he could bite her arm.

A shadow rose up over them, blocking the wyrlight. Hannock. He was grimacing, waving over some of the other thralls. “You - damnit - get her off him.”

Clawed hands clamped on both of them, forcing them up, until they were both writhing but at least on their feet. Red strained at the two holding her, snapping. The third eye still burned in the center of her forehead, with its crimson eyelid peeled all the way back. Hannock looked her over, critical, and the baton he was holding to tap her in the chest.

“You again. How many times—?”

“I started it,” Dally blurted. “Boss.”

“But I finished it.” Red thrashed at the hands holding her, snarling.

“Over there,” Hannock told her, “and shut the hell up.” When she had been dragged away he turned back to Dally, mouth set in a hard line. “You?”

“Yes. Yeah, it’s not her fault. I tried to steal her rat.”

Hannock made a noise of disgust. He had crossed his arms, and Dally was still too scared to look him in the eye. Hannock crept closer, studying, until Dally had to lean back to avoid touching him.

“I don’t know how things work in that Anvil shithole you came from,” he said, “but I don’t allow fighting in my barracks. You’ll be quiet from now on, or I don’t care about the Governor or your smokes I will make you sorry. You hear?”

He was serious, surprisingly. Dally coughed, swallowed a mouthful of blood. “Sure, boss. Not a problem.”

“Alright. Go. Off to your bunk.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Dally hesitated, swaying. “Can I… um. Mistress asked to see me.”

“Now? Looking like that?” Hannock squinted, but Dally wasn’t getting any prettier. Finally he let out an explosive sigh. “Come back right away if she doesn’t want you.”

—-

“You lied to me.” Dally was in Gita’s chambers again, watching her unlace her corset.

She barely looked up, but a faint smile twitched on her lips before disappearing. “Hm?”

“You told me,” Dally said, “that I’d be sold on out of here. Only you knew the Requisition Act was coming up, so no one would actually want me. Only your crazy husband is buying thralls.”

“Oh, that.” The corset came away in a single stiff piece, like an insect shell. Gita flung it onto a heap of cushions, before fluffing the thin gown underneath. “If you’re looking for an apology, you won’t get one- Where are my…?” She found her cigarette case under a cast-off glove, snapping it open as she sprawled on one of her lounges. “This arrangement was your idea, remember? If you’ll recall, you were very insistent.”

“My idea—”

“You’re annoying tonight,” she said, suddenly. “Do I have to call the ward?”

Dally rocked in place, and bit the inside of his cheek, waiting until he couldn’t feel spines under his skin any more. Gita waited too, blowing out a slow stream of smoke.

“The deal’s off,” he said.

Her laugh was as bright as a knife blade. “Oh?”

“We had a understanding.”

“I don’t think so. And you still need my protection.”

“Your worthless protection,” he said, and slammed a hand down on her nightstand. It rattled hard enough that jewellery clinked. A lipstick tube rolled off to clatter on the tile.

That finally did it. Gita’s amusement turned icy, and dead-eyed.

“Oh,” she said, “poor Dally.”

It was a look he hadn’t seen before, and for the first time that night he sharply remembered she was human, and a mage. The way they’d been talking recently, he had got confused about how things stood.

"My husband might have read too many war novels,” she said, “but I know what you really are. Do you know how they sent my son back to me? Half his cheek was ripped open, and his arm was torn clean off.” If she was a man, she would have spat. Instead she took another deliberate pull on the cigarette. “He was beautiful, my boy, and in the end I had to beg the Corps to even see him.”

Magic had a smell, like burning oil and hair. Dally’s nostrils twitched as Gita stalked closer. He backed a step, then another, until the back of his legs bumped a table. Gita ran a hand up the front of his uniform, and carefully tugged his collar straight. His skin prickled with sweat under her fingers.

"You're not my pet,” she went on, quiet, “and I won't shed a single tear when Tannis throws you on the scrap heap. Until then you work for me. Do you understand?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Tell him you’ve been spying since you got here?”

Dally was silent.

“It’s too late for that,” she said, “isn’t it?” Eventually she reached up, and carefully ruffled his hair. “You don’t need to think, alright? You just need to go back to work. And if I feel like you’re not working hard enough, well, I’ll just have to choose one of your friends from the barracks, and give them the discipline you obviously need.”

That got a twitch out of him, and he finally glanced away. Lyle wouldn’t care about her ‘punishing’ the other thralls, no more than if she kicked a dog. She’d proved that already.

“Well?” she asked.

"I'll see you tomorrow, mistress."

"Yes."

Halfway back, Dally’s body stopped working, and carried him up against a wall. He just slowly crashed into it, pressed his forehead against the cold stone. Behind him a homunculus slowed in its scrubbing, turned its blank face to watch him. Hollow eye sockets cast shadows across its cheeks.

“Yeah,” Dally mumbled.

He stood there for a while, until the homunculus had scrubbed a careful circle around him. There was one month to go, he kept thinking, stupidly. One month to what? This was where he lived, now.