LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      There was no time for discussion at the top of the embankment. Gold-Eye was pulled up and over the edge, without apparent effort, by an extremely large, heavily muscled man. Or perhaps a boy – for his face was round and hairless, totally at odds with his mammoth physique.

      The other two were women – or rather a young woman and a girl. It took a second for Gold-Eye to realise they were female, since all three of his rescuers had close-cropped hair and wore baggy green coveralls cinched at the waist with wide leather belts festooned with pouches and equipment. Long, broad-bladed swords hung in scabbards at their hips and they all wore heavy black boots.

      They looked organised and Gold-Eye felt suddenly alien in his strange collection of mismatched clothing, with his matted hair showing the dirt of many weeks. He hadn’t really been clean since the harsh washing rituals of the Dorms.

      “Come on!” shouted the woman, grabbing him by the shoulder and starting to run. Gold-Eye stiffened, resisting, then lurched forward as the strong man almost picked him up by one arm. It was either run or have his arm ripped off.

      “I run!” blurted Gold-Eye, picking up the pace. Immediately the others released him and he almost fell again before matching their stride.

      “I’m Ella,” said the woman, speaking in short bursts as they ran. “That’s Drum.”

      “And I’m Ninde.”

      The girl was small, maybe only as old as Gold-Eye. Fifteen or thereabouts. Ella was much older, older than anyone Gold-Eye had ever seen, except in pictures. She looked as old as the women on the posters that were slowly peeling off the walls and billboards around the city.

      Drum was harder to place, with a face as young as Gold-Eye’s on a body that was easily twice as massive. And he hadn’t said a word.

      “The lane!” Ella called out, and the four of them suddenly changed direction, plunging down steps into a narrow alley where the fog lay even thicker, soaking up the light.

      Halfway along they stopped so suddenly that Gold-Eye would have crashed into Ninde if Drum hadn’t held him with one enormous hand.

      “Ninde?” asked Ella, her breath making the fog eddy around her face.

      Ninde closed her eyes and her forehead wrinkled. A second later she started chewing slowly on the knuckle of her forefinger, then more quickly, till Gold-Eye thought she was actually going to break the flesh.

      “There are Trackers in Rose Street.” Eyes still closed, she mumbled the words out over her knuckle. “But they have no orders. There is a Winger above the fog, taking messages west. I can’t hear anything else thinking clearly.”

      “Thanks,” said Ella. “We’ll take a quick rest before moving on.”

      She looked at Gold-Eye properly then and her expression changed, the way it always did when anyone saw his eyes. They weren’t normal human eyes at all, blue or brown or green irises against the white. His pupils and irises were gold, bright gold – and he knew this meant that these people would leave him right away. Or worse…

      “Interesting eyes,” Ella said calmly. “Shade will want to see you! Must have been born right at the time of the Change. What’s your name?”

      Gold-Eye frowned. He hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time, or even thought in words. But at least she hadn’t hit him or tried to poke his eyes out with a knife, the way other people had.

      “Come on,” said the one called Ninde. “Out with it.”

      Gold-Eye looked at her, startled. All these questions made it hard for him.

      “Your name,” explained Ella, talking more slowly. “Tell us your name.”

      “Gold-Eye,” he muttered. There had been another name in the Dormitory, but no one had ever used it. He pointed at his eyes. “Gold-Eye. Because gold eyes.”

      “Makes sense,” said Ninde. “I wonder what Ninde means? I’ll have to ask Shade.”

      “Enough chat,” said Ella. “Let’s move. We’ll take the Ten West Tunnel at the back of Nancel Street.”

      “Have we got time?”

      Ninde’s

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