The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,46

I done with the punching. Haijon got me in a lock and pushed me down so I was on my stomach in the grass, one arm folded under me and the other held in both of his hands so I couldn’t move it at all.

“You’re gonna get hurt,” he shouted, like I wasn’t trying to hurt him, or like that wasn’t a thing that mattered much.

“Tell me the truth!” I yelled back, though the force of that yell was only felt by worms in the ground. “When did you see it? When did you touch it? Dandrake choke you, Haijon, what did Catrin teach you? What did she tell you to do?”

There was just silence, for a moment, from up on top of me. Haijon still kept me pinned in the same way, his knee in my back but not hard enough to hurt – only to stop me trying to get up, and getting my arm broke in the bargain.

“Oh,” he said. “That. How’d you even know about that?”

I gun to cry then. I hadn’t wanted to think it, but here was Haijon telling me it was true. It was true, and it was the worst thing that could be.

“If I let you up,” he said, “are you gonna come up swinging?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t have no fight left in me. Haijon got off of me and took a step away. After a while I rolled over onto my back and sit up, rubbing my arm to get the feeling back.

He looked at me in wonder. “What in hell are you crying for?” he asked me. “I didn’t hardly touch you.”

“Tell me,” I said. I was too angry right then to be ashamed that he seen me crying. This was the onliest thing that mattered, and I had got to hear it all.

Haijon wiped some more blood from his nose, which was still streaming. “There isn’t hardly anything to tell. I know it was breaking the rules, but it’s not like it was important. Are you gonna make a big song about such a stupid little—”

“You better just tell me, Haijon,” I said. “Tell me, or tell the Count and Seal.”

He blinked. “The Count and Seal? Are you mazed, Koli?”

“Tell me!”

“All right. The day before I went into the Waiting House, my ma asked me if I wanted to see the tech up close. I knowed I wasn’t supposed to, and I said no at first. I thought it might be bad luck or something. But she said it wasn’t anything. She asked me which one I was gonna try with, and when I said the cutter she went and brung Mardew into the room. She got him to take off the cutter and give it to me so I could try it on.”

I waited, but he didn’t say no more. “And?” I said. “Then what?”

“Then I give it back. What, Koli? You think Mardew let me stroke my dick with it or something? I only just weared it on my hand for a second or two, and then Ma made me give it back.”

That left me facing every way but the right one, as they say. I tried to figure it, but I couldn’t. “There’s got to be something else,” I said. “Something… what did she say to you? What did she do, right after?”

“She didn’t do nothing. I think she went out of the room with Mardew, when he went. Then she come back and told me not to talk about it, which I didn’t have no idea of doing until now. Koli, why does any of this matter? I wasn’t supposed to touch the tech before I was tested, I know that. It’s meant to be the first time, and it wasn’t. For me it was the second time. But why are you saying it like it was something I should be shunned for? Go ahead and tell the damn Count and Seal. They can dock my ration, if it makes you feel better. Only it’s a stupid thing for us to fight over. The stupidest thing I ever heard of.”

I run out of words, of a sudden. I had charged into this because I felt like I needed to know, and what I found wasn’t what I had been looking for. I was ashamed now of what I had been thinking about Haijon, who was my friend and deserved better of me.

But also I seen clear as day what Catrin done, and what she