The tone came through the walls an hour later. Low and flat, more of a buzz in the teeth than a sound.
Asli was already standing. "Food," she said.
"How do you know?"
"Because it's the only thing anyone's ever rung a bell for when I was in the room."
That was annoyingly good reasoning. Ezra wished he'd thought of it first. He climbed down.
The guard at the door didn't speak. He just turned and walked, and they followed, and Ezra counted. Seven lefts. Four rights. One spiral staircase that went down even farther, which seemed rude, considering they were already underground. He hadn't known a place could have a basement under its basement.
Built the wrong way up, he thought. Like everything else about this place.
The mess hall was long and low and too bright. Two hundred kids sat in rows in the same gray clothes, eating off the same gray trays, and Ezra stood in the doorway trying to read them and got nothing.
In the Pit he could read anyone from across an alley. Patches on your clothes meant you had a mother. Rags meant you didn't. Good boots meant somebody was dead and you'd been quick. Clothes told you who was dangerous.
Here, everyone looked the same. Which meant anyone could be dangerous.
Great, Ezra thought. Love that.
He got a tray. A woman behind a counter slopped gray stew onto it, with a heel of dark bread and a cup of water. It was hot. It was more food than he'd seen in one place since autumn. In Pit terms, this was a two-meal day already, and it wasn't even over.
He sat at the table nearest the wall, facing the door. Asli sat next to him, also facing the door. Neither of them said why. They didn't need to.
The stew tasted like salt and very little else. It was the best thing he'd ever eaten, which said more about his life than about the stew.
He thought about his shirt for a second. The one they'd cut off him in processing and dropped on the floor like rubbish. It had been hers once, the girl who wasn't his mother. He'd worn it for seven years.
He stopped thinking about it. Thinking about it didn't put it back on him.
Asli tore her bread in half and dropped one half on his tray without looking.
"I'm not hungry," she said.
"You said that on the ship."
"It was true on the ship too."
It hadn't been. Ezra ate the bread anyway. In his head, he added it to the list.
The list was simple. It was called Things Asli Has Done For Me That I Haven't Paid Back, and it currently said: Distracted a man with a gun. Bread. Bread again.
He hated owing people. Owing people was how you ended up doing things you didn't want to. He was going to pay her back. He just had to figure out what someone like Asli wanted, which was hard, because so far she hadn't seemed to want anything except for him to stop asking questions.
He was still watching the door when they came in.
The tall one first. Two or three years older than Ezra, broad through the shoulders, tanned in a way nobody in the Pit ever got to be, with hazel-brown hair that flopped over his forehead like it knew it looked good there. He walked through the mess hall like he owned it and was thinking about selling.
He looked at Ezra's table and came straight over.
No, Ezra thought. Not this table. Any other table. There are forty tables.
The boy sat down across from them. A much smaller kid followed so close behind him that they were practically one person, and folded onto the bench, pressed against the tall boy's arm.
The tall one looked at his stew. "Better than I expected," he said. Then he looked up and smiled.
It was a very good smile. Ezra could tell it was a good smile because he immediately didn't like it. It was the kind of smile people gave you when they wanted you to like them, and the worst part was that it was working on everybody nearby. A girl at the next table had actually turned around.
"Rowan," the boy said.
"Ezra."
"Asli," said Asli, to her tray.
"Asli." Rowan said it like it tasted nice. "Pretty. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but I don't know yet. I'm optimistic, though."
Asli didn't look up. "Charmed."
"Are you? I haven't even started."
"I'm sure you'll try."
"I'm sure I'll succeed."
"You're very confident."
"I have a lot to be confident about."
Asli finally looked at him. It was the look she'd given the soldier on the ship. The look of someone who'd been underestimated by people much bigger than this and had outlasted all of them.
Rowan's smile got wider.
Ezra sat back and watched the most annoying person he had ever met try to flirt with the only person he knew. He decided, right then, that he and Rowan were going to be enemies.
He didn't tell Rowan this. Rowan was bigger. It was a secret, quiet kind of enemies.
Rowan talked while he ate. About everything. How the corridors connected. How many guards he'd counted on the way down. Which server gave bigger portions.
"Watch," he said, and stood up with his empty bowl.
He walked to the counter. He leaned on it. He said something to the server, a heavy, sour-faced woman with arms like hams who had not, Ezra was certain, smiled since before he was born.
She laughed.
It was a short, shocked bark, quickly smothered. She glanced around. Then she filled Rowan's bowl all the way to the top and slipped a second heel of bread onto his tray when she thought nobody was looking.
Rowan came back and set the bread in front of the small kid.
Ezra stared at the bread. Then at the counter. Then at Rowan.
He got seconds, Ezra thought. On the first night. By talking.
I've been stealing food for seven years and I've never once got seconds by talking.
"How?" he said, before he could stop himself.
Rowan shrugged. "People want to be noticed. You look at someone like they matter for ten seconds, they'll give you bread." He picked up his spoon. "It's not magic. It's just paying attention."
Ezra didn't believe that for a second. He also decided that tomorrow he was going to try it on the same woman, and get two heels of bread, and then he'd see who was paying attention.
Rowan: 1. Ezra: 0.
He'd catch up.
It took most of the meal for Ezra to notice something underneath all of Rowan's talking.
Rowan wasn't just chattering. He was counting. Guards. Doors. Exits. How often the guards switched. He was doing exactly what Ezra did, except out loud and cheerfully, so nobody noticed he was careful.
That was clever. Ezra was very annoyed that it was clever.
Then he looked at the small kid.
Young. Eleven at most, and small enough to pass for less. The gray uniform hung off him like a borrowed coat. Soft gold hair fell around his face, and through it, Ezra could see the tips of ears that came to points.
An elf.
There had been elves in the Pit, but never close. They kept to themselves. They took up as little space as possible, like they hoped the city would forget they were there.
The kid's face made Ezra look twice, and then feel stupid for looking twice. Big green eyes. A small, serious mouth. He looked like the kind of kid that everyone in the Pit would have wanted to protect, right up until the moment it cost them anything.
He hadn't touched his food. He sat pressed against Rowan, watching the room from under his eyelashes. His ears twitched at sounds Ezra couldn't hear.
Three tables down, a tray crashed to the floor. Half the room jumped.
The kid flinched a full second before it hit.
Ezra stared at him.
"She doesn't eat?" he said.
The kid's ears went pink at the tips. He tried to disappear into Rowan's sleeve.
Rowan sighed, like he'd made this correction a thousand times. "He."
Asli looked at the kid again. "He," she repeated, carefully.
The kid tugged his hair down over his ears.
"Silas," said Rowan, quietly. Just the name.
Silas's shoulders came down an inch. He picked up the bread Rowan had got him and started eating it in small, careful bites, the way you'd eat something you thought might get taken away.
Ezra watched that. The way Rowan knew exactly what Silas needed without being asked. In the Pit, people who looked after each other that closely usually ended up dead together.
He felt a small, ugly twist of something in his chest that he decided was indigestion.
When Silas finished, he looked up properly. His eyes went straight to Asli and stayed there.
He looked at her eyes. The dark blue, with violet underneath, and silver, and something like starlight caught in glass. On the ship, kids had shrunk away from those eyes and whispered Zalari, like it was a disease.
Silas didn't shrink. He looked at them like they were the best thing he'd ever seen.
And Asli's face did something weird. It went softer. Only a little, at the edges.
Ezra didn't trust it. Faces didn't go soft in the Pit unless someone wanted something.
Silas's ears went from pink to red. He stared at his tray. "Your eyes," he said, to the tray. "Are they always like that?"
"Yes," said Asli. She sounded almost gentle.
Ezra had known her for four days and had never once heard her sound gentle. He was a little offended about it, actually.
Silas nodded, deeply serious. Then he looked at Ezra's hair.
"Your hair," he said.
"Yes."
"It's very silver."
"I know."
"I've never seen that color on a person." He said it with no meanness at all, like he was reporting the weather. "It doesn't look like it belongs here."
Ezra thought about the soldier on the ship with his fist knotted in that hair. What's a Pit-rat doing with hair like that?
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
"He does that," said Rowan, fondly. "Notices things. Says them out loud. Has no idea why people get uncomfortable. He once asked a woman at a market if her nose had always been that shape."
"It was a reasonable question," Silas murmured. "It was a very unusual nose."
"It was a normal nose, Silas."
"I've seen a lot of noses. That was not a normal nose."
"She tried to stab you."
"She had very long nails," Silas admitted. "That part surprised me."
Ezra felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He made it stop. He was not going to laugh at a joke at the enemy's table on the first night.
It twitched again anyway. Traitor mouth.
"So," said Rowan, chin on his hand. "What do you actually like? Not what you're good at. What you like."
Ezra looked at him. Nobody had ever asked him that. In the Pit, you didn't like things. You had things or you didn't.
"Don't know," he said.
"Never thought about it?"
"No."
"Fair. I like running," said Rowan. "And food. And not being dead. In that order."
"That's not a hobby," said Asli.
"It's a lifestyle."
"It's a disaster."
"Maybe. But I'll enjoy myself while it falls apart."
"You're insufferable."
"Thank you."
"It wasn't a compliment."
"I'm taking it as one."
"I like bread," Silas offered quietly.
"That's not a hobby either," said Rowan.
"It's a preference," said Silas, with dignity. "Preferences count."
"I like reading," said Asli. "When there's anything to read."
They all looked at Ezra.
He thought about it. Properly.
"Climbing," he said finally. "Roofs. In the Pit, the higher you got, the more of the wall you could see."
"And what did you think about," said Rowan, "when you looked at the wall?"
Ezra almost lied. He was good at lying. But Rowan had asked it like he actually wanted to know, which was so strange that Ezra answered before he could decide not to.
"What was on the other side."
For a second Rowan didn't smile. He just nodded, like that made sense.
Then he grinned again. "I bet I can climb higher than you."
Ezra looked at him. At his long arms and his broad shoulders and his stupid, easy smile.
"No," Ezra said. "You can't."
"Bet."
"You're on."
Asli put her face in her hand. "Boys," she said, to nobody.
The tone came again. Dinner was over.
They walked back up through the corridors, the four of them together now without anyone deciding it. The guard pressed his hand to the panel on their door, and it slid open with a soft, perfect sound.
Someone was inside.
She was sitting on the lower bunk at the far end, the one with the shoes placed exactly parallel to the footlocker, her back against the wall. She looked up when they came in. One quick look that weighed all four of them and set them aside in under a second. Then she looked back at the wall, like the wall was more interesting.
She was tall and lean, fourteen maybe, with pale skin and dark hair cut blunt at the jaw, sharp at the ends, like someone had done it with a knife and hadn't cared. Dark eyes, almond-shaped, set wide over high cheekbones. A straight, serious mouth.
Her face wasn't unfriendly. It was closed. Like a house with the shutters down, where someone was definitely home and was not going to answer the door.
She reminded Ezra of the cats that lived around the market stalls in the Pit. Always watching. Never where you expected. They'd take your fingers off if you reached for them.
She sees everything and shows nothing, he thought. He knew, because he did it too. And he was a little bit annoyed that she was clearly better at it.
"You're in our room," said Asli.
"Yes," said the girl.
Silas leaned close to Rowan's shoulder. "She has a good face," he whispered.
Rowan looked down at him.
"Objectively," Silas said.
"Excellent work, Silas. Very scientific." Rowan turned to the girl with his best smile. Ezra could tell it was his best smile, because he was clearly expecting it to work. "I'm Rowan. That's Silas, Ezra, Asli. And you are?"
She looked at him for a long time.
"Not," she said.
Rowan's smile held. His eyebrows went up. "Not what?"
"Not anything." She turned back to the wall. "Not your friend. Not someone you need to know. Just someone in the room."
Silence.
Ezra felt something warm and mean bloom in his chest. It was the best thing that had happened all day.
Rowan: 1, he thought. Cat-girl: 1. Rowan's smile: 0.
"Fair enough," said Rowan, and flopped onto a bunk like it was a throne. "I like her."
"She just told you she doesn't want to know you," said Asli.
"Yes, but she did it so well."
The girl didn't react. But Ezra saw something at the very corner of her mouth. Gone almost before it was there.
He decided to call her the cat-girl. In his head. Until she gave him a reason not to.
Five bunks filled. Rowan took the one above Silas, between Silas and the door, and didn't seem to think about it. Asli took the lower bunk across from Ezra's.
The sixth bunk was the one with the folded uniform.
Ezra looked at it properly now. The uniform was gray like theirs, but old. Frayed at the cuffs. Shiny at the knees. It had been folded into a perfect square and set in the exact middle of the mattress. The blanket underneath was pulled so tight the corners looked sharp enough to cut.
Nobody had moved it. Not the guards. Not the cat-girl.
Somebody had left it there. Somebody who hadn't come back for it.
The lights dimmed but didn't go out. Ezra lay on his back and listened to the room settle. He rolled onto his side, toward the wall. The sixth bunk was bolted to the same steel post as his, and his hand brushed the place where its wooden rail met the post.
His fingers caught on something.
Scratches. Small and deep. Short lines in neat groups. Somebody had been counting days.
He counted them. Fifty-one.
Then they stopped.
Underneath the last group, the wood had been cut much harder, deep enough to splinter. Not lines. Shapes. Letters, probably. He couldn't read. Nobody had ever taught him, and he'd never cared, because you couldn't eat letters.
He cared now.
He leaned over the edge of his bunk. "Asli," he whispered. "You can read."
A pause. "Yes."
"There's something written here. On the empty bunk."
Another pause. Then the creak of her mattress and the pad of bare feet. She crossed the dark room and climbed up beside him without bumping into a single thing, as if the dark were daylight to her. He noticed that. He put it on a different list, the one called Things That Don't Make Sense.
She leaned close to the frame and went very still.
"What does it say?" Ezra whispered.
When she answered, her voice was very steady. That was how he knew she was scared.
"It says, don't let them take you to the bottom."
Ezra lay on his back and stared at the bunk above him.
They'd come down a staircase so long his legs had stopped feeling it. They'd ridden through a tunnel with no end. They'd walked down a spiral stair to a basement under a basement.
He'd thought they were already at the bottom.
Apparently not, he thought. Brilliant. Another thing to be scared of. I'm going to need a bigger list.