The crowd pressed in around the yard, circling the table, sending the heat in the air skyrocketing. Someone was beating on one of the tables like a war drum. All I could smell was sweat and more sweat and fear. Of course, that last one was all me.
“I’m sure deep down inside, she’s just like us,” I said, the lame attempt at a pep talk dying on my lips as Calamari cracked first her knuckles, then her tentacles. “I’m sure she puts her pants on one leg at a time.”
“That’s rather presumptuous.” Wren scowled. “Who says that’s how I put my pants on?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“No.” She sniffed, affronted. “Sometimes I like to shimmy into them backward just to see how it feels. Then I turn them around and put them on one leg at a time.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re pretending to be angry to repress your natural inclination to develop interpersonal relations. Just let the faux irritation go and let the friendship happen, Cora. Don’t forget whose ship you’ll be flying away on in an hour.”
It was a cute speech, but I frowned at her anyway. “I still can’t stand you.”
Wren and Elio abandoned me as soon as we reached the table, standing across the circle next to Anders, who shuffled away to hide amid a group covered head to toe in sharp rocky spikes. The thick gray folds of their skin obscured his red scales almost instantly.
Gravel crunched and slid beneath my shoes as I pulled out the chair and sat across from Calamari.
A hush fell over the crowd.
Calamari burst out laughing. “You? When the Earth child said she found me a new competitor, I expected someone a bit … larger.”
“Afraid my bones will be too easy to break? Don’t worry, you won’t get a chance to find out.”
She laughed again. Two of her tentacles darted underneath my chair, sliding around my ankles. With another smirk, she jerked me forward. My chest crashed into the edge of the table. Half the crowd laughed, the other half booed as I struggled to break free of her grip, and somewhere, hidden from view as the crowd surged closer, I heard Elio beep.
Her aggression lit a fire within me, and I scooped half the gems off the table and hid them behind a small partition in front of my seat. There was a board set up between us, with a circle in the middle to make plays. Despite never having played Snaps, I had received a crash course from Wren before she threw me headfirst to my death.
There were fifty gems—twenty for each player, plus ten spares in a bag to pick from if we couldn’t make a play. We took turns matching them either by color (red, blue, green, and white) or by shape (squares, circles, triangles, and diamonds). If we didn’t have a match—or if we had a match and didn’t want the other to know about it—we could pick up. First one to eliminate all their gems except for three won. And the loser would walk away with a few dozen broken bones.
Was the opportunity to board Wren’s spaceship worth the potential torture?
Yes, I thought. If the spaceship even exists, that is, I realized with a surge of terror.
But Wren wouldn’t lie about the ship, would she? She wanted to escape just as badly as I did. Of course there was a ship.
And yet … It was so easy to tell a lie. My family was in the business of lying, and I could confidently say the best lies were the ones you believed to be true. They were the ones that you wanted so desperately, they were your first breath of air in the morning and the last before you went to sleep at night. I already believed Wren was a few gears shy of a whole blaster. Maybe her ship wasn’t real.
Calamari took it upon herself to lay down the first gem—a blue square. The rock’s glow reflected off her tentacles and shimmered against her skin, making it look like she was encrusted with jewels. Most auras looked similar from person to person, but hers showed itself in shades of blue. Right as Calamari made her move, wisps of cobalt rose off her shoulders, clouding the air above our playing table. She thought this was going to be easy. She thought she had already won.
My skin prickled with annoyance. Who cared if she was underestimating me? Who cared if Wren was a little too happy to be sane? Until I knew for certain the ship didn’t exist, there was still a chance. A chance to escape. A chance to save my best friend.
I just had to win.
I set down my first gem. Blue triangle.
She made another play. Green triangle.
Red triangle.
Red diamond.
Red circle.
White circle.
I scanned my gems, hidden behind my partition. I’d need to pick up, which might put her at an advantage. But judging by the way the aura above her had turned darker, more anxious, she didn’t have another play either. I reached for the velvet bag full of spare gems. Across the circle of spectators, I noticed Wren give me a thumbs-up.
Uncurling my fingers, I looked at what I had chosen. White diamond. That seemed significant. I just wished I remembered the rules better to know why.
And then … The white diamond is the highest color and shape combination you can get, Wren had told me on the way to the yard. If you both get down to three gems in the same round, whoever has the best combination is named the winner.
I could have set the white diamond down as my next play, but I had a feeling I would be better off keeping it. Pouting in fake disappointment, I pushed the gem to the side with my others and picked up a second time. Calamari grinned in triumph.
“Not doing very well?” Her tentacles found my ankles again and squeezed. The crowd cheered, and I noticed some rush over to Wren to place more bets.
I shrugged. “It’s still early. I can turn things around.”
Calamari tsked. “You would be surprised just how fast these games move.”
Then she used her tentacle to slam another gem on the table.
She was right. After that, I barely had enough time to breathe as the game moved around me. Colors and shapes blurred together, clashing with the growing cloud of Calamari’s triumphant aura. Inmates cheered. Even some of the Ironside guards stomped their feet as the pile of spare gems began to dwindle. I had twelve remaining behind my partition. And if I was counting correctly, Calamari only had ten.
I made another play. Green diamond. Calamari was forced to pick up. The crowd erupted in anger.
Her aura flickered, grew more confident.
Crap.
We each laid down two more before she was forced to pick up again. I was in the lead, but only for a moment before I picked up twice more. The bag of spares was empty, and she had one up on me.
I saw Wren grimace. Elio nibbled on his fingertips. Anders was noticeably absent.
After four more rounds, she was still winning. Then, something miraculous happened. She studied the table, tentacles coiling, then stretching like springs about to snap, and her aura took a nosedive. Frosty blue tendrils of fury rushed toward my throat, but her face remained completely serene. The biggest lie if I’d ever seen one.
“I can’t make a play,” she said calmly.
My breath hitched. “Do I win?”
“Of course not.” She rolled her eyes. “You get to lay down two.”
But, as I examined my pile of gems, I found that I could only lay down one. A red square.
And that made us even. Six gems to six.
The crowd around us pushed forward once again. Their sweaty bodies were flush against my back, their smelly breathing heavy in my ears. The temperature surged, and above us the Andilly sky seemed to grow even redder, as if it were overheated too.