Episode 050| Drawing Envy
Lika takes two more death-marked rift mouths down and back without losing a man, and Beyond the Line starts looking at him two ways: with the eyes of those who came up alive beside him, and with envy. Carson — broad-shouldered, the first to climb down that day — blocks his path. Down here strength rules; but Lika has made strength stop being the only answer, and to a man like Carson that cuts deeper than taking his life. Goran sits back and lets it run — he wants Lika cornered, so he can relay the reaction up the line. Lika maps the board and slips past Carson: "Whose hands this board sits in down here was never yours, and never mine."
Kaiyuan Year 1010, January 5 · 00:41 · Saint Tranya, Underground · Beyond the Line
For the next few hours, Goran didn't let Lika sit idle.
He was sent down 2 more mouths. Both ringed in red Beyond the Line, both that had killed men before. Lika read every one of them the same way — finding the one rule no one else had seen: when it goes still, when it moves. Then he took the crew down one length at a time, and back up one length at a time. 2 mouths, and the goods hauled up were heaped on the table in the inner room, without one more man dead.
There's no sky in the undercity, but by the time the clock in Lika's brain-chip reached 00:41, men Beyond the Line had begun to look at him with a new kind of look.
That look came in two kinds.
One kind came from the men who'd gone down a mouth with him these past few hours. They looked at Lika the way you'd look at a thing that could get you back up alive. Beyond the Line, getting you back up alive was worth more than getting you a bigger haul. A few of these men had started drifting near Lika for no reason at all, saying nothing, just watching how he read a mouth.
The other kind of look, Lika knew better. It was envy.
That look, on the third time he climbed up out of a mouth, took the shape of one man, standing in the doorway of the inner room, blocking his way.
Lika recognised him — it was the man from that first dive, The Price of Admission, the broad-shouldered one with a thick layer of calluses on his hands, the first who'd wanted to climb down.
"What's your name?" the man asked.
"No one's asked me that yet," Lika said.
"My name's Carson." The man paid his words no mind. "Before you came down, the deepest mouths Beyond the Line, I was the one who took crews into them. Men died. But the goods, I hauled them up."
"You still haul them," Lika said. "I only count."
Carson took a step forward. He stood half a head taller than Lika, all that weight of strength bearing down like a wall.
"Count." He repeated it, his voice dropping low. "A man you can't even measure for rank, standing here counting, and my men have to listen to him count. You know what that means, Beyond the Line?"
Lika knew.
Beyond the Line, the order was simple, one thing only: strength. Carson was strong, so Carson led crews, so Carson had a place here. That rule had kept him fed, and it had defined him too.
But Lika had come. Lika wasn't strong — he couldn't truss a chicken, and he measured as nothing but blank space. And yet Goran's men had started listening to Lika count the beat, started coming back up alive. Lika hadn't taken Carson's goods, nor taken Carson's place; what he'd taken was deadlier than either — he'd made "strong" stop being the only answer, for the first time.
To a man like Carson, that cut harder than taking his life.
"I won't fight you for it," Lika said. "You take your mouths, I count my beats. Each of us hauls his own."
"It's not the same anymore." Carson stared at him. "They've already started to think — going down with you, they live longer than going down with me."
What he said was the truth. Lika didn't argue back — arguing was no use either, that wasn't a thing words could settle.
Lika looked past Carson's shoulder, with a glance into the inner room.
Goran sat behind the table, head not lifted, as if studying the goods. But Lika knew he was listening. From the moment Carson moved to block him, Goran hadn't said one word, hadn't passed one look.
Another underground king, seeing two useful men of his own locking horns, would have spoken up to crush it long ago — infighting did no one any good. But Goran hadn't. He let Carson block Lika; he let this envy ferment here, slowly.
Lika understood. It wasn't that Goran couldn't be bothered; Goran was watching. He wanted to see what this one he couldn't measure would show, backed into a corner.
And what Goran saw, he would pass along, exactly as it was, to the one higher up.
Lika noted all of it down: Carson was a stone that came at you in the open; the few who drifted near him were a wall loosening in the dark; and Goran, sitting up above watching the show, relaying that show further up the line.
As for the place he himself was bound for, it lay under the feet of every one of them, a thousand-odd meters deeper still — a depth even the boldest mouth Carson dared go down couldn't reach.
Sooner or later he'd have to shake off everyone here, and go down alone.
Carson still blocked the doorway, waiting for Lika's next line.
Lika turned sideways and slipped through the narrow gap between him and the door frame, his shoulder brushing Carson's arm. As he went past, he said one thing, low, for Carson alone to hear.
"You take crews down mouths on strength; I rely on something else. But there's one thing the both of us miscounted—" He stopped half a step behind Carson's back. "Down here, whose hands this board sits in was never yours, and never mine."
Carson turned his head. Lika had already walked into the inner room.
【Ch. 050 End · Saint Tranya, Underground, Beyond the Line】
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