The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,83

read, back in those days, but I could count well enough on my fingers or if I had something else that would be a marker. I had steeped the green wood oftentimes at the mill, and you couldn’t do that safely if you couldn’t count off the days in some wise.

It was most often porridge they give me to eat after that first day, and it was most often Fer, Rampart Arrow, that brung it in to me. But sometimes it was Mardew, which meant the porridge come with insults and maybe a kick or two. He wasn’t done with hating on me. I thought at first it was just on account of that beating, but then one day he asked me again how to make the DreamSleeve work, and I realised it was that too. He must of liked “Enter Sandman” a whole lot. Either that or he couldn’t stand for there to be anything that someone else had and he didn’t. I was none too keen on being kicked, but I took heart from it anyway, for it meant he had not got Monono to talk to him, or play for him. I would of hated that.

I thought about her all the time. I had never got to thank her for what she done for me, going out so far to find the personal security alarm and bring it back. I had never even said I was sorry for those times when I tried to get her to authorise me – treating her like she was some kind of animal I meant to train up instead of like a real person. For she was one, I seen now, though she lived in a silver box. Finding her and waking her had been the best thing I ever done, not because it made me a Rampart but because it meant I got to meet her and learn about music and Tokyo from her and be her friend, at least for a little time.

I thought about Jemiu too, and how she had worried about me when I was being just about as selfish and bad as I could be, scanting my duties and my share-work so others had got to pick up the slack for me. I wished I could see her again, and Athen and Mull too, though I was not so foolish as to think that was going to happen.

Apart from thinking, there was not much else I could do. I spent a lot of time walking back and forth across the room, for if I sit still on the cold floor for too long I got fearful cramps. Other times, I played the stone game in my head against myself, trying to set up ways to win against a three-stone vantage and a made king. And for some hours I used the point of the knife I et with to carve on the inside of the door, down near the bottom corner where it wouldn’t be seen. The wood was a lighter colour in the heart than it was on the outside face, so it was quite good to work with, despite being hard and dry and fighting back against the blade. I cut Spinner’s face into the wood, as well as I could fashion it, and though I wasn’t happy with the way it come out, yet it passed the time a little.

Ten meals come and went. I had not seen Catrin since that first night, only Fer and Mardew, and I had not seen nobody else at all. There was a strange thought that come to me sometimes, which was that Spinner and Haijon was living right above me, enjoying their month of honey and never dreaming how close I was. For Catrin must of lied to them, surely. She must of lied to everyone. If people knowed I was down here, they would of come. Someone would of come.

Ten meals meant three days, more or less. And since that first one had been a supper, I guess it was late on the third day when Catrin come back. She brung the stool again, and sit herself down on it. She brung the firethrower too, slung loose around her shoulder.

“How you feeling, Koli?” she asks me.

“I’m about as well as can be expected, Rampart Fire,” I says. It come by itself, me naming her like that, for when she wore the firethrower that was who she was. “Though I can’t say I’m happy to be