Page 55 of Blightfall

“Yum,” Nedd said. “I love it when my food is coagulated.”

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought we were flirting. But Nedd joked around like this with everyone, so I was pretty sure we weren’t. “Good,” I said. “Once I tried to explain the algae coagulation process during dinner and T-Stall told me if I ever used that word again while he was eating I would be dead to him.”

“Okay,” Nedd said, “but do you think anyone in this pub will interrogate us about rice farming techniques?”

“Good point.” They probably wouldn’t ask us questions at all. Everyone would be too focused on the gladiators.

We found the Angry Badger set back from the road with a large terrace in front, a shingled awning erected over it to protect the tables from rain. The doors on the far side of the terrace stood wide open and welcoming. Serving staff wandered among the tables, which were mostly full. It didn’t look much different from the pub we used to go to when I was in flight school, except for the total lack of DDF-issued jumpsuits.

The pub’s patrons were dressed in the same woven fabrics we’d seen, though there were fewer ponchos and headscarves here. Like at the coliseum, the crowd came from a cross section of society, with some wearing fancier outfits—jackets, lapels, collars, and buttons—and others wearing loose-fitting shirts like the barge workers wore. Most patrons had plates of food in front of them, and the smell of meat and spices was intoxicating. I didn’t spot any gladiators, though I’d only seen two of them in the arena, and those from very far away, so I wasn’t totally sure I would recognize one when I saw them.

Nedd strode confidently through the crowd, flexing his prosthetic inside its glove. We walked through the terrace, into the pub, and up to the bar, where we found a pair of empty stools and waited for the bartender.

“Are there any gladiators here today?” I asked when he arrived to take our order.

“Not yet,” he said. “They might be busy training or spending time with their families, what with the End Times and all.”

“Yeah, what’s that about?” Nedd asked. “Why the big rush to send everyone to Elysium? Did something happen?”

“We’re winning the war!” the bartender said. “Hopefully soon the fighting will be over, and then we’ll get off this forsaken planet.”

Getting off this planet was exactly what we wanted for them, but I doubted Ivy could say the same. “Where would you go, if you could?” I asked.

The bartender shrugged. “Anywhere, I guess. There’s a whole galaxy out there to explore, once the aliens stop trying to kill us.”

They already have, I wanted to tell him, but breaking that news was definitely above my pay grade—and besides, I didn’t have any proof, so he probably wouldn’t believe me.

“You think the gladiators are off preparing?” I asked. “Where would they do that?”

“What do I know?” the bartender said. “I’m not their secretary. What can I get you?”

I looked at Nedd. There was no reason for us to spend our money here if no gladiators were coming, though maybe we could get someone else talking so as not to call it a total loss. We had to wait for Arturo’s team to scout the coliseum either way.

“Do you have anything with no alcohol?” I asked.

“We’ve got colada,” the bartender said.

“We’ll take two of those,” Nedd said.

“Sure,” the bartender said. He pulled out two smoky-colored glasses from under the bar and poured them both full. “Four bits.”

Nedd gave the bartender exact change, which meant he must have paid a lot more attention than I did when we were buying our clothes.

I sipped my drink. It was much sweeter than I was used to, with a tangy flavor I didn’t recognize. Algae certainly never tasted like that. I’d learned in school that most human cultures hadn’t eaten much algae until we became spacefaring, and not because of scarcity—it had been plentiful on Old Earth—but they’d had enough other sources of food that it wasn’t considered a food group. But algae was one of the cheapest and easiest foods to grow on a spaceship.

The humans of Blightfall had certainly been spacefaring at some point, but they didn’t seem to have carried that habit over into their new society. I wondered what our people would have eaten if we’d landed somewhere more hospitable than Detritus.

“Hey,” Nedd said, elbowing me. I pretended not to notice that he’d touched me. My whole body definitely wasn’t jittering just from bumping elbows with him. Definitely not. “I guess they’re not too busy after all.”

I looked up to see a group of gladiators arriving, the crowd simultaneously swarming them and moving aside to let them through. The hum of voices steadily rose, and several patrons let out whoops and cheers. Nedd and I turned around on our barstools, Nedd keeping his prosthetic near me, where it wouldn’t be bumped by anyone.

The gladiators had changed out of their fighting costumes, but their clothing was tighter than the common fashion, fitted and more suited for battle. Kalia Killcot, her long black hair now loose from its braid, entered arm in arm with a tall, burly man. I guessed he was a gladiator too, because they both waved to people in the crowd and bumped fists as they passed. They headed straight toward the bar, and a space cleared at the far end, though people crowded around the open seats.

I leaned over to the person next to me, a woman with a long ponytail cascading from a topknot. “Hey, we’re new here,” I said. “Who is that guy with Kalia?”

“Ephraim Endwalker,” she said. “He’s been in the top bracket for a while. He’ll definitely be in the End Times Tournament, trying to earn the rest of his points.”

“Is that his real name?” Their last names all sounded fake, but I couldn’t say for sure without a bigger sample.