FIC: riccin kayata, learning to clown

[xihe]

RICCIN KAYATA | 4.62 sweeps / 10 years old
ICONIC CONETL | 7.38 sweeps / 16 years old
1,991 words

 

Tonight, you woke up to the acolytes dumping you out of your recuperacoon.

All of the rats were lined up and sorted out. The little two sweeps, fresh from the caverns and still hot with trial-rage, were kept hissing and spitting up front by the substitute lusus, her white tail wrapped to keep ‘em from getting at the rest of you. The three sweeps were next, most of their eyes still shut with slime.

“Follow me,” the creche-martinet said, when it came time for the four sweeps to take their place in the back. And you’d all followed, even though you didn’t have your paint on, and there was slime drying on your pajamas.

“Where she’s taking us?” Taufik whispers to you. His expressions are always flat in the way northerners get, with rigid ears and harsh gray skin and soft gray eyes that never show nothing, even when they ought. But the skin is all squinched tight under his eyes and his lips curled down hard, like he’s scared and he doesn’t wanna show it.

You shrug. (Everyone keeps gettin’ onto you lately for talking too loud. It’s easier just not to talk.) The martinet doesn’t stop by the servants doors, which means it’s church business. She doesn’t stop to let you put on your faces, which means it’s secular,which’s a word that ID says means reasonable and the dictionary marks as faithless.

She doesn’t stop at all, not even when Marien stumbles and nearly sets the line to toppling. So when Taufik takes your hand, fronds wrapping tight around yours, you don’t shrug him away, even though he’s teal and his hand feels like a fish.

Everyone knows creches get culled sometimes. The carnival’s big, bigger than any place you’d ever seen before, but it’s not infinite: sometimes they need space, and a kid gets taken out, and they don’t come back. Sometimes they need rooms, and a whole bunch of kids don’t come back. You’ve never seen it happen, but the older kids say it does, swear it up and down ‘til their voices run raw from the noise.

When the big red doors of the culling pit come into view, Taufik isn’t the only one in the line that starts whining.

But no one breaks. You all follow the martinet in, neat as lambs, and when she jerks her chin towards the wall, you all settle in. What else are you gonna do? Your lususes are all in the crecheroom still, still locked up tight in their dayboxes, and it’s not like the room’s empty. There’s people in the pits already, which’s a relief, and there’s folks up on the stage, which ain’t, not really.

And there’s ID, trotting over to you with a face like he’s eaten something bad.

“Riccin,” he says, heading straight your way, and he bends down, chucks you under the chin with a hand. He must’ve put on his own paint tonight, ‘cause it looks like shit: all streaky lines like he forgot the sealing spray, and gray smudges where it’s gone off entirely. “Tyrian tits, they’re doing this younger and younger, aren’t they? I’m pretty sure I was six when they brought me up. ‘least, Iphie was –”

“Doing what?” Taufik pipes up, and ID squints at him.

“They didn’t tell you? What are those chuckleheads even thinking -”

The acolyte’s over at the stage, where the rest of ID’s troupe - company, he keeps tellin’ you, like there’s any difference but in his fool head - is lounging. They don’t look any happier than he does, all thin lips and ears laid back, but the leader’s the only one speaking.

She’s close enough you ought to be able to hear her, but fear’s got everything garbling: all you’re catching is snatches and snippets, no matter how much you strain your ears. She’s one of those soft-voiced fuckers, you guess, and so’s the martinet. But if you can’t hear, ‘least you can see them. The leader says something, her eyebrows down, rolling the cigarette in her mouth like she’s all affronted. (It’s bigger than the one ID’s chewing on, thicker and brown, but the room’s still hazy with the smoke of it.) The martinet frowns.

Highbloods don’t spark, not like lowbloods do. There’s just a flicker of purple across her eyes, subtle as a fish in the water, and she’s pulling herself up, rolling back her shoulders so that she looms. The leader ain’t smaller than her, not scarcely, but it seems like it. It feels like it, even all the way from back here, and your pumpbiscuit skips a beat.

The martinet hasn’t grown an inch, but somehow, she feels massive.

The moment’s over too soon. The dread dissipates. The awe doesn’t. Even without her voodoos, the martinet’s still looming. Nothing about her’s stiff, which’s how the other kids get, when they’re trying to put the fear in each other: she’s loose, relaxed, but every inch of her’s like a promise of violence.

Maybe the leader’s awed, too. She must be, ‘cause she takes a step back and then turns on her heel, sharp-like, her cheeks green. She snaps something to the rest of her company, lips flapping too fast for you to keep track. Her eyes skim over the troupe, counting heads. Her eyebrows furrow.

“ID!” she snaps, loud enough you can hear it, and then you remember he’s been talkin’.

ID looks like you, from his nose to his lips to the funny way his cheekbones sit, but his ears are flat and fixed as Taufik’s. But unlike Taufik, his skin’s thin and his eyes are easy to read as windows. Right now, they’re bright, just barely lit with pink, and his cheeks are streaking yellow with distress, even as his lips curl into a smile that’s all lie. “And just remember, buttercup,” he says, bright and brittle and urgent all at once: “- this is strictly volunteer, you don’t have to do anything. Okay?”

“ID, stop playing with the pupas and get your ass over here!”

He bounces to his feet. “But they’re adorable. Coming right over, lovebug! No need to strain your voice on my account,” he calls, smoothing down your hair. The look he gives you is pointed, and he mouths something at you - then the leader calls again, words rasping with the rumble of her rattlereeds, and he bolts back to the stage.

The martinet gives him a look as she comes back to you, and stops in front of the line. “We have a very special class today,” the creche-martinet tells you all, voice high and clear. “The Regional Southern Ballet has agreed to demonstrate some basic culling techniques for you. I was given to understand that your classes have focused on crippling, rather than decapitation?”

All around you, the kids who’re in comballet are all bobbing their heads. You got picked for music, back when you were still wee: even then, the schoolfeeders took one look at you and said you were too big. It’s a shame! You like watching the shows, even when they’re only to first blood. That’s how you met ID, who always gives you tickets and tea, and who’s whispering something fierce now in the back.

“Excellent. This’ll be a good demonstration, then.”

She takes you to the edge of the pit and lines you up right against the railing, where you can peer down. There’s only a couple of people down there tonight, with one guard to watch ‘em. The only thing he’s watching is his phone, but maybe that’s alright: they’re all violet-eyed and slack-jawed, limpid enough there ain’t even chains to keep them in place.

ID’s folks are on the other side of the pit, leaning against the railings, still looking all sorts of fed up. The leader’s in the back, looking the sulkiest of ‘em all, like she just got smacked. And ID is at the front, hopping the railing like it’s not even there.

The pit’s ten, fifteen feet deep, but he lands as easy as he were hopping out of the coon, eyes all pink and hazy. The guard doesn’t look up, but one of the prisoners is taking jerky steps towards the center, all the same, stumbling like he’s fresh from the sopor and his feet ain’t quite working yet.

ID looks like his feet aren’t quite working, either, ‘cause he stumbles a bit when he spots the prisoner moving. There’s a club in his hand, tinier and more delicate than the ones the priests use, and he’s holding it like he doesn’t know what it’s for.

“Watch,” the martinet tells you all, “and learn.”

“Uh. Right. Hi, dears! Guess I’m the one demonstrating tonight. And let me just tell you, you are just the luckiest set of rats. Usually they reserve this kinda thing for the lead dancer, but I guess our beloved leader figured some lovely pupa’s like you deserved a pretty face. No? Oh, come on, Allete, dear, don’t make that expression, you’re gonna hurt my feelings -”

“- right, sorry, back on topic. Okay. Uh. Culling techniques. Right! First step’s en pointe.” ID’s voice’s shaking, which’s silly. You’ve seen him do shows over ‘n over again, and he’s never got nervous like this. Even his movement’s are a little jerky as he mirrors each pose to his words. “Hold it. Half-step forward, lunge, pirouette, and –”

All around you, kids are going hushed. ID pulls out of the spin, club low. You can’t hear it, but you picture it must be whistling: it looks like it ought to be, the way it swings low and then goes high, cutting through the air in the most perfect kinda curve. It hits the troll right under the chin, in the meat of his neck, striking the skin like it was made to be there.

The troll crumples.

“Voila!” ID says, breathless.

When he turns back to face you, the light catches the club. The end is damp.

“And. Uh. That’s one of the first techniques from the Ecchet method,” ID says. There’s sweat on his lip. He laughs like there’s a joke, then stops, rolls his eyes. “Though you already knew that, didn’t you? ‘least, I certainly hope you did! Basic history right there. Now, uh, I can go ahead and show you the second technique –”

“Not quite yet.” The martinet speaks up, and he goes quiet. His face’s going yellow again, but you don’t care why. There’s something jittering in you, like your pumpbiscuit but wrong: like there’s a sack full of moths in your digestion-sack, and if you open your mouth, they’re all going to fly out. The bodies still on the floor. It isn’t a troll anymore, not anymore, and the eyes are all yellow, like the absence of purple’s there to prove it.

The body’s still there, and the club’s damp.

The martinet clears her throat. She’s so much bigger up close, standing in front of all of you. She’s massive, and Taufik’s tense as a wire, and she isn’t even doing anything.

The moths are pushing at your throat, at your teeth, at your lips.

“As Conetl said,” she says, and behind her, ID twitches: “That was the first technique from the Ecchet method. It is one of the deadliest, one of the most efficient, and it is simple enough that it is the first that we teach every dancer. Anyone can perform it.”

“Would anyone care to try?’

The end of the club is damp, and in the harsh lights of the cull-pit, it looks like it’s glowing.

ID is looking right at you, eyes wide. Everything about him is saying you don’t have to do it.

“I want to try, highblood,” you burst out, eager, too loud, and behind her, he winces.