Roy's face shifted slightly into an expression of surprise and a hint of... was that respect? He nodded and clicked his tongue again, sizing Emmit up.
"Muddy was a little soft upstairs but he was a good man," Roy said, his voice croaky and heavy. "And you are going to pay."
He turned his back, stooping and sliding one hand down inside his right boot. When he pulled it out, there was a shiny black object laced between his fingers.
"We're going to mark him," Roy said without turning around. Emmit was immediately forced to his knees, Pup and the Rev pressing down on his shoulders while tapping the backs of his legs with their feet. Emmit didn't fight them; he went with ease, but he also refused to let his eyes drop. He stared at the tangled mass of hair spilling like a waterfall from the back of Roy's head, waiting for him to turn and show him what special gift he had removed from his boot.
Mark me. He's going to mark me.
It was then, waiting for his punishment for a crime he hadn't committed, that Emmit thought of the Roman numeral gouges in the faces of the Rev and Muddy. One in the cheek of the Rev, two in Muddy's face. That had to be what marking was; a way to punish your precious human supply without killing them. A scarlet letter to label those who had committed sins. Both of them had crossed Roy at some point and had paid the price he was about to pay.
Jesus Christ, this is going to hurt like hell.
He was sweating. He could feel it running down his face in fat drops and he hated the weakness it implied, but there was no stopping it. His heart began to pitter-patter like nervous feet, his breaths swift and sharp. Roy was going to lacerate his face and there was nothing he could do about it. If he fought him, he would kill him.
The broken spear head...
Emmit could feel that it was still there, pressing tantalizingly into his skin, but that was no good. If he went for it, he would be dead before he could wrestle it out of his clothes. No, it was better to save it for a rainy day, if it ever got any more dire than this. If it could get any more dire than this.
Whispering, barely audible, from a soft and smooth voice above him. He cocked his head toward the Rev, who was squeezing his shoulder with rhythmic reassurance.
"It's sharp. Don't hurt that bad. He does it quick. Just take it. Don't fight him. Just take it."
Emmit nodded, ever so slightly, as Roy turned and extended his hand. In his palm was a small black triangle, about the size of a shot glass. It looked slick and oily, like tar that had hardened into a glossy, rocky glass. It had been sharpened; the edges drawn down into a deadly sharp wedge that looked like a shark's tooth. Emmit's eyes traced every dip and groove that Roy's tools had left as he had honed it. The edges were not smooth like a butcher knife would be; they were cracked and serrated, more like a steak knife. Roy moved his fingers adroitly, spinning the inky blade until he could wield it like a pencil.
"This," Roy said, turning the blade from side to side so that the firelight could waver across its surface, "is obsidian... I think. Obsidian is a volcanic rock, I know that much, and I've never seen any volcanoes around here. But I have seen enough to know that time doesn't flow quite right here, so who knows? Maybe I built this cabin right in the middle of an old crater. Anyway, I found this while I was digging for stones. I thought to myself, 'don't some surgeons use obsidian in their scalpels?' I think they do because it's actually sharper and smoother than surgical steel. It doesn't cause as much... trauma."
Emmit's heart was like a caged animal, slamming against the horizontal bars of his rib cage. His teeth were clenched tight, his panting breaths whispering through the tiny gaps and spaces like miniature steam vents. His glasses were beginning to fog over as they crept down his nose, slowly veiling Roy's obsidian razor. Emmit was glad for that.
He didn't know which was worse— seeing the small black rock that Roy was about to mangle his face with up close or seeing (and hearing) Roy present it to him as calmly and as mundanely as a bored museum tour guide showing a fossil to a crowd of restless grade schoolers. It was nothing to him. Just another day at the office. Just another naughty employee to be reprimanded. Soon enough, it no longer mattered which was worse. Roy's boots were thudding closer. The Rev and Pup were holding him tighter, hard enough to send bolts of arthritis-like pain all the way down to his bones.
Roy grabbed his chin again.
"For Muddy," Roy said, his voice growing hungry and impatient, "for betrayal, for assaulting another member of this camp. I mark you."
It didn't hurt at first. All Emmit could really feel was pressure, something pressing into his face just above his left cheekbone and sliding rapidly down to the quivering corner of his mouth. He had just enough time to crazily think to himself, it really is that sharp. There's no pain at all.
Then he felt the pain. It was like a hot coal had been buried beneath the flesh of his cheek, searing heat radiating out from the fresh cut and wrapping around his head and neck like the claw of a phoenix. Immediately his face felt much too large on one side, like his cheek had become a fat blob of wax oozing down the side of
