Birth of a Killer Read Free Page A

away. Larten had been in the room a few times, and the sound was like the rain falling on the roof of their house during a storm.
    When the silkworms had eaten enough, they spun a cocoon around themselves. It took three or four days. After that they were stored in an even warmer room for eight or nine days, then baked in an oven to kill the worm but preserve the cocoon.
    That was when Larten, Vur, and their team went into action. When the cocoons were delivered, they sorted through them, dividing them into piles on the basis of size, color, and quality. Then they dipped the cocoons into vats of hot water to loosen the threads. Once they’d done that, they passed the cocoons to another team, whose members unwound the threads onto spools, which were finally given to the weavers at the looms.
    Although Larten couldn’t remember what color his hair had been when he first came to the factory, he would never forget the first time he dunked his hands in a vat of near-boiling water. Traz watched, smiling, as the boy worked up the courage to stick in his fingers. The foreman laughed when Larten touched the hot water and jerked away with a yelp. Then he grabbed the boy’s hands by the wrists and jammedthem in. He held them under, chuckling sadistically while Larten cried and his flesh reddened.
    Larten studied his fingers. They were callused, stained, and cut in many places. He didn’t mind the calluses and stains, but the cuts worried him. Silkworms were disgusting, filthy creatures. Larten had seen many of his team lose a finger or a hand when a dirt-encrusted cut became infected. Some had even died of blood poisoning.
    There was nothing worse than the stench of gangrene. Sometimes a child tried to hide an infected wound in the vain hope that it would miraculously cure itself. But the smell always gave it away, and Traz would gleefully cut out the rot with a heated knife or hack off the diseased limb with an ax.
    Larten lived in fear of infection. He hoped he would have the courage, if the day ever came, to cut himself before Traz could, and cleanse the wound with a firing brand. But he knew it would be a difficult thing to do, and he was afraid he’d try to hide it, as so many others had before him.
    “I see some green,” Vur murmured, looking closely at Larten’s left hand. Larten’s heart beat faster, and his head darted forward. Then he caught Vur’s smile.
    “Cur!” he growled, playfully punching his cousin.
    “They’re fine,” Vur laughed. “The sweetest pair of hands in the factory. Now let’s stop wasting time. There are cocoons to boil.”
    Sighing, Larten reached into his bucket. He took out a few cocoons, steadied himself, then drove his hands deep into the heart of the bubbling vat. The pain was fierce to begin with, but after a few seconds his toughened flesh adjusted, and he worked without complaint for the rest of the morning.

Chapter Three
    The hours passed slowly and quietly. Dunking cocoons wasn’t a demanding job, and boredom quickly set in. Larten would have loved to chat with Vur and the others on his team. But Traz prowled the factory relentlessly, and although he was a large man, he could move as lithely as a cat. If the foreman caught you talking, he would whip you until he drew blood. There was a rumor that he’d once cut out a girl’s tongue and kept it in his wallet. So everybody went about their business in silence, only talking if it was work-related.
    The fires beneath the vats were kept burning around the clock–slaves worked throughout thenight–and the room was forever smoke-filled. It wasn’t long before the children were coughing and spitting, rubbing grit from their eyes. Larten could never get the taste of smoke out of his mouth. Even in dreams his tongue was heavy with soot.
    His clothes stank too, as did Vur’s. Some nights, when Larten’s mother was in a foul mood, she would scream at the boys and force them to undress. She’d toss their clothes into the yard, and