Permanently dyed orange

“Bend over,” he grunted, and grabbed the back of Larten’s neck.
Thrusting the boy down, he reached into the bucket of orange dye with his
brush, swished it from side to side, then ran the coarse bristles over the top
of Larten’s scalp. The dye stung, and a few drops trickled into Larten’s
eyes, even though he kept them squeezed shut.

Traz painted Larten’s head a second time, then a third, before releasing
him. As Larten staggered away, coughing and wiping his eyes, Traz forced
Vur down over the bucket. He was even rougher with Vur and daubed his
scalp five times. Vur was crying when the foreman finally let him go, but he
said nothing, only stumbled along after his cousin.

Traz daubed the head of every child in the factory. Each had a specific
color, depending on their job. The lucky few who worked on the looms
were blue. Cleaners were yellow. Cocooners were orange. He liked being
able to tell with a single look where a child was meant to be. That way, if he
saw an orange-haired boy lurking by a loom, he knew straightaway that the
child was shirking.

Larten and Vur had been assigned to the cocooning team when they
started at the factory at the age of eight. Their heads had been orange ever
since. In fact, Larten couldn’t remember what color his hair had been before
that.

Larten’s father had been a muscular child and had worked on a team
carting heavy loads around. His head had been dyed white, and although
he’d left the factory before Larten was born, his locks had kept their
unnatural color, so Larten had resigned himself to a life of orange hair.
Nobody knew what sort of poisons Traz included in his dyes, but they
seeped into a person’s pores and remained there for life. Larten wouldn’t be
surprised if the dye had even turned his brain a dark orange color.

***

The Saga of Larten Crepsley: Birth of a Killer, Chapter 2