‘What’s her name?’ Cassie asks me.
‘How should I know?’
‘Commandant Morana,’ whispers Mary, Cassie’s sister. ‘High Slayer for the Barrenlands.’
‘Nasty piece of work,’ adds Mary’s mother, quiet-like, out of the side of her mouth. ‘Eats babies for breakfast.’
I shudder, and try to imagine what babies might taste like. Disgusting, if Cassie is anything to go by.
The Saviour fades away and the big screen zooms in on the woman’s face. She is beautiful, but there’s a harshness stamped into her features no creams or powders can hide. Her eyes stare back at us, so cold and bleak I shiver, even though I’m hot. And when she starts talking, her voice is impossibly loud. Her words crash around the arena, like thunder echoes around our hills. I’m gobsmacked, until I see the microphone clipped to her collar and the speakers up on poles.
‘Good afternoon, citizens of the Barrenlands,’ she booms. ‘Welcome to Deep Six on this, the last day of this year’s Peace Fair. It is . . . gratifying to see how many of you have chosen to make the difficult journey here.’
I can’t help sniffing. Chosen? Okay, so I chose, but it’s the law.
‘I would like to begin,’ she continues, ‘by asking you all to show your appreciation for our hosts, the loyal and industrious mining community of Deep Six, who once again have made this year’s Fair such a success.’
The bigdeals haul themselves up from their chairs and the crowd starts clapping. Hardly deafening though – nobody will be going home with blisters on their hands. And this lack of enthusiasm isn’t lost on Morana. Magnified on the screen above her, she stiffens and her scowling face lifts to look behind us. Uh-oh. Turns out that she isn’t the only Slayer in Deep Six today. When I look, I see loads more have spread out behind us around the rear wall of the arena. Some are only carrying non-lethal shockers, but most are armed with pulse rifles.
The clapping gets louder – some creeps even cheer.
Deep Six’s Elder, a red-faced woman with a whiny voice, makes a speech. She thanks the High Slayer, then bangs on for boring ages about new productivity records for the iron-ore mines. It’s worse than studying maths, so I’m glad when she eventually sits down and Morana returns to the centre of the stage.
The crowd, which had started muttering again, quiets.
‘We are gathered here today,’ Morana announces, ‘to celebrate thirty years of the Saviour’s peace. A peace which has allowed us to rebuild our shattered world and raise new generations of pureblood singleton children. A peace which sees us looking forward from our dark past towards an ever brighter future.’
She pauses. The speakers blast out the first verse of ‘All Hail the Saviour’.
We chant it back, like good little citizens.
What follows is a history lesson from her that makes me sigh. I mean, as if I haven’t had this drummed into my head a thousand times already by our preacher, Fod, back in Freshwater. Anyway, Morana reminds us how the outbreak of ident births was first considered a blessing as we struggled to survive in those early days after being dumped here and needed all the strong hands we could get, to clear the fields and labour in them. Then the realisation that only one twin was pureblood human, the other a less-than-human twist. And yet still we tolerated them. Only for our generosity to be rewarded by the Twist War, when the twists showed their true monster faces by rising up against us purebloods and almost wiping us out, being faster and stronger and entirely without pity. How we purebloods survived only because one man among us would not be beaten: the glorious leader we are now pleased to call our Saviour, who saved us from our doom.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before.
The whole time she’s talking, the screen shows grainy footage from the war. Seen that before too. Women and children torn limb from limb by half-naked soldiers, who look human, but aren’t. Slayers leading regular troops in devastating counterattacks. It looks staged to me. Why was somebody filming it instead of blasting away with a pulse rifle? But like I said before, what do I know?
Cassie buries her face in my hair. ‘It’s horrible.’
The crowd starts getting twitchy and excited now. Most people will have been to Fairs before. They will know what’s coming after the speeches.
‘Yet today is not only a celebration,’ Morana says, at last. ‘Today serves another, far more important purpose. We are gathered here . . . for the Unwrapping.’
‘Un-wrapping! ’ roars the crowd.
The screen cuts to Morana’s half-smile, half-sneer.
‘For we must never relax our guard against the bane of Wrath.’
‘The bane of Wrath! ’
She glares at us and I, like everyone else, stick my believer face on.
‘There are some who claim not to believe in the curse.’ Her voice becomes menacing now, a stern mother explaining something for the very last time to a witless child. ‘To those doubters I say – BEHOLD THE BANE OF WRATH!’
There’s a disturbance at the rear of the stage, where a gap in the stacked cages forms a tunnel. Using long chains attached to a collar around its neck, four muscular guards drag out the twist we saw yesterday. They fasten the chains to anchors in the stage floor then step back, panting and sweating.
And the crowd goes mental.
‘The bane of Wrath! The bane of Wrath! ’
The stark-naked twist raves and claws at its collar. It is a monster, I do see that now. Even so, I can hardly watch – it’s too cruel. But the effect it has on the crowd is as shocking. It’s like I blink and suddenly I’m drowning in a sea of contorted red faces, eyes bulging, mouths gaping as they bay for the twist’s blood.
Even Mary, always so precious, screams her head off.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ asks Cassie.
‘It’s possessed,’ I explain, wincing. ‘Taken over by demons.’
Morana strolls towards it. The creature screams and hurls itself to meet her, skeletal arms outstretched, fingers like talons – only for the chains to snap taut, jerking its head back. The High Slayer doesn’t flinch, but stands just out of reach at a red line painted on the floor. She shakes her head as if disgusted and holds up one black-gloved hand. A guard steps forward with a disruptor tube. There’s a blue-white flash and the twist freezes, mid-snarl. On the screen I see it’s still twitching, its mad eyes full of hate, but that’s all it can do now.
‘Hard to believe,’ booms Morana, ‘that this evil, this monster, could once have passed for human. Yet I assure you it did. This is why these foul caricatures of humanity are such an insidious enemy. Why we must always remain vigilant and work so tirelessly to preserve the blessed purity of our human bloodline.’
‘Un-wrapp-ing! ’ howls the crowd, growing impatient.
‘What’s insidyus mean?’ asks Cassie.
‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘Something bad. Shut up, will you?’
Morana raises her voice, so loud it hurts. ‘Let the Unwrapping begin!’
More blaring trumpets. Morana takes her place on a seat behind the altar. A tall man in a cloak, nose and mouth hidden by a black mask, emerges