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The feather moved on to a shorn Gray One behind him. Fierce growls broke out among the Gray Ones.
"No idea what he did," Stock said.
The convict fell back. He gave one violent shrug. The fist of the Reaper behind him exploded out of his chest in a shower of blood. Valentine noted, rather coldly, that the Reaper had discreetly locked its teeth at the Grog's shoulder and appeared to have its tongue wedged beneath one of the thick rhino-hide plates of cartilaginous armor.
The auditorium roared approval.
It was a revolting ceremony. Valentine decided it wasn't so much a sacrifice, or an execution, as a final appeal. Valentine noticed the crowd went silent for some of the victims. Someone from the audience would shriek out a plea for mercy, and if that met with approval there was a great stamping of feet. The Baron never failed to heed the collective verdict, either way.
Valentine, tired and nervous and sick to his stomach, tried to keep his meagre dinner down. Hot-blooded killing was one thing, but execution as grand theater ...
He'd seen his share of executions. There were several combat-zone offenses that could get one shot, or a civilian hanged, in Southern Command military jurisprudence. He himself had been under a death sentence, thanks to escaping trial and the rendering of an in absentia conviction. Arguably, he'd performed them himself, as some half-awake sentry at one end of an unlit bridge was just as helpless against his knife as a chained convict. You didn't execute men like this, in front of the next one in line with a holiday crowd roaring.
The feather moved over Beach Boy.
"He was in your hole, I think," Stock said, looking at Valentine. "He's in for shirking. They found him sleeping under a truck on his shift. When you're forced labor, that's it."
Beach Boy was a silly little toady, certainly, but how many in the audience knew him by anything deeper than sight? Perhaps enough had seen him in the fields to know he played the fool, always with the softest jobs and gentlest duties, to better preserve his supple, scented skin for Fat Daddy.
"Give him another chance!" Valentine shouted.
The growls and angry murmurs grew louder.
"Chance! Chance! Chance!" some others began to shout. The chant picked up voices, and the feather moved on. Beach Boy looked skyward.
He could guess the thoughts of every man in the audience: if it was me up there, how would I take it? Tears? Pleas for mercy? Reasoned argument? A final mouthful of spit?
"Just like you, Valentine, trying to save a worthless little dicksicle like that," Sergeant Stock said out of the side of his mouth.
The rest of the ceremony was mostly a blur. He was enlisted to carry the glass box with Snake Arms's reptiles back to her trailer.
So, Graf Stockard knew his name. He must have seen a picture through Molly, or looked him up sometime or other at headquarters. Perhaps he'd even met him at some point or other before either of them knew Molly Carlson, and Stockard remembered and Valentine didn't. Much of his life before becoming a Wolf had a vague, dreamy feel to it these days.
Stockard had whispered a few words about speaking to him in private. He'd used the word escape, at least Valentine thought so. The din of the Warmoon Festival as the sacrifices were offered to a successful summer of battle made the word difficult to pick out.
"Warmoon Festival's going to last for five days. I think they'll cut you off before then. My fertile period this month's almost over."
"Have they tried to breed you before?" Valentine said, slowly, as though thinking over every word.
"I'll let you in on a secret, my lash-worn prince. About half the guys here are bent as jackknives. It's kind of a haven for the rugged, outdoorsy ones."
"I don't understand."
"They don't like girls. They don't like them so much, fucking's about out of the question."
Valentine pretended to puzzle it over for a bit. "Ahhh," he finally said. "Men's men."
"Exactly."
She murmured something into her pillow about being like Dorothy, all the men she met were missing either heart, courage, or brain.
Valentine heard Snake Arms's door open and came into alarmed wakefulness. He sat up so quickly, he half-rolled her off the bed, where she was sleeping atop the sheet.
A flashlight shone in his face.
"Yeah, it's Scar all right," a man said.
The dazzling light made ghostly circles on his optic nerves and gave him an instant migraine.
