“Not in itself, no. But hundreds of walkers are headed there. They think if they can start with a city already built, they might be able to skip ahead to how to run it and feed it. There’d be nobody already there to displace or presume on or embarrass themselves in front of. It’s a walker’s dream.”
“Because the plague they might catch from burying the dead, or from not burying the dead, killed everyone who lived there.” Crocus shook her head. In a year, she might be desperate enough to think that made sense.
“It’s not the stupidest thing walkers have ever attempted.”
Crocus considered. “Better plague than war.”
“I’ve only tried the one,” said Paper, “so honestly, I’m not sure. Here, let me trade walking sticks with you.” They stood.
“But you might need it!”
“For one more day? A blunt stick will do for the bandits around here. And it seems ungrateful to walk into the luckbringer’s city with a weapon that’s drawn blood.”
“Paper?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“And you. We’d have been colder and hungrier without you. And slower, without the hope of a night inside the luck to draw us on.”
Crocus took a breath. “Could you do one thing for me? Could you find my mother and tell her I made it this far? It’s not much comfort, but it’s all I can send her today.”
“Of course.” So Paper repeated the name and address with her three times to memorize them. “Three is enough for me to remember,” she said, when Crocus asked her to do it again. “Where paper’s costly, we memorize a lot. You’d do well to practice.”
“Ma will have my old room empty, if you arrive too late in the evening for the refuge assignment office. I wish... I wish the world outside the luck were fit for Gentle to grow up in.”
Paper looked hard at Crocus, right into her. “I think you’d have been one of the seven,” she said. “After the earthquake.”
“I don’t think I’d have joined the bandits, but I don’t think I’m a hero.”
“You can decide to be one of the seven,” said Paper, “if that’s what you want. It took them years to become what they became. They watched and listened. That’s what got them started. You can decide to do that. You do it some already.”
“The city’s luck...” said Crocus. “I’ll never want it for myself, but right now I want it for you. I can’t help it. Who am I to ask this, and of you? But please, remember the luckbringer.” Her voice caught on angry tears. “Someday, someday, I will make the world outside the walls so beautiful, and so bright, and so... irresistible that everyone from the blessed city will put aside whatever they tell themselves so they can stay, and they’ll all walk out at once to see the amazing world I made.”
“I want that for you, too. I want that. You keep walking. We’ll listen for news from all the wind’s twelve quarters.”
They stood together in a long parting embrace, the baby warm between them. It was a different blessing.
© Copyright 2020 Sarah Avery
Sarah Avery - [BCS319 S01] Page 3