Flight of the Wounded Falcon

by Trish Mercer

The only thing that got Pere moving again the next day was hunger. He wandered out of the grassy arena and stumbled into the village. It might have been near midday meal by then, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t go left this time, but right, to not risk seeing Honri again.

  He didn’t get very far before he wondered where he was going. What does someone do when they have no home, no food, and no silver? What would he do in Salem? They didn’t have this problem in Salem. But if they did, where would they go? The rectory.

  And, of course, the only people in the entire village of Edge who knew him were at the rectory. He could never face them.

  Pere continued toward what he thought might be the village center. Maybe there someone would take pity on him and give him a few slips of something. Certainly he looked to be in need. He glanced down at his clothes. Shredded by Amory, filthy from dirt, from sick, and from not bathing in two days. If he wandered into Salem like that, dozens of people would rush to his aid, he was sure. He just needed to get where he could be seen.

  As he ambled along the main road past side roads leading to homes, he briefly remembered that this was where his father, aunt, and grandmother grew up. But it was all dreary and dull, nothing memorable. While he passed a few people here and there, all of them seemed to be too busy to pay any attention to him.

  Eventually, he passed a large amphitheater, fully enclosed, with signs on the outside walls telling villagers what performers were coming. He didn’t bother to look at the announcements.

  But that was where they met.

  That was where they chanted “General.”

  That was where she got them all in trouble—

  It didn’t look like anything he had ever pictured in his mind. It was blander than he’d imagined. Just a building.

  He trudged along a road where wagons and horses with riders went by, but no one looked at him. Surprised and discouraged, he soon found himself on the edge of a large green. Ahead some distance were two middle-aged women, chatting as they walked toward him, trailing several goats behind them. They were likely coming to stake the goats out at the green, and Pere thought they looked like typical grandma types. Certainly they’d have some compassion on him—

  In the village green Pere noticed a tall tower, but it, too, was disappointing. Not as high, and certainly much narrower than in Salem. A banner was going up, solid blue.

  Pausing to look at it, he thought, That’s it? No other colors or shapes to spell out messages? What dull thing would a dull blue banner mean?

  His attention was drawn to rumbling coming down the road, and the two women with goats quickly moved off into the green ahead of the horses. No wonder, because there were about thirty of them, cantering toward him and filling the road. He dove off to the side like the women had, and stared in surprise at the riders.

  There were all in blue, all of them soldiers. The Army of Idumea, right there, rushing past him—

  He glimpsed one man in the middle, an officer judging by the number of shiny and garish medals all over his uniform. In the moment Pere saw him, he noticed his longer hair, blond and wavy with gray streaks—

  And then they were gone, heading around a curve, as all roads in Edge seemed to have.

  “Hm. Seems the general’s back,” he heard one of the grandmothers murmur, uninterested. He spun around to face them, but neither looked at him as they led their goats deliberately past as if he were nothing more than a dead tree.

  Pere twisted again, the sound of the horses already in the distance. That was it. That was Thorne.

  Pere could only stare.

  He’d imagined it would be so much grander somehow. He’d heard about fanfares, and rather expected one should be playing the moment he laid eyes on the man he was intent on taking down.

  He expected something to happen, not just that his nostrils be filled with the scent of fresh horse dung right in front of him.

  But that was it. Simply and dully.

  Edge wasn’t nearly exciting as his grandmother had made it out to be in her history of the world class. Nothing was as it was supposed to be.

  He looked over in hope at the two women, staking their goats, but neither of them glanced in his direction as they talked, then turned, then walked away.

  Pere’s stomach grumbled. But he stood there, for probably another ten minutes, astonished at how normal and regular Edge seemed to be. Nothing special. Nothing—

  No. He came here for a reason, and he was still going to accomplish it. He just needed to eat, to sleep decently, to get the last of the vials out of his head, and rethink everything. It could still . . . it could still . . .

  He sat down on the grass, disheartened. The goat nibbling on his trousers finally got him up and moving, because if he didn’t, he’d have no clothing left whatsoever.

  The markets. The shops. He’d heard about them, and remembered they should be near the village green somewhere.

  It shouldn’t have taken him so many minutes to locate them, seeing as how the many buildings surrounded the green he was standing in. And he realized, as if parts of his mind were finally waking up, that he’d wandered past a few shops to get there, and that there were hundreds of people around, one of whom might actually take notice of him.

  He stepped onto a corner where two roads crossed and waited for someone to rush to his aid. Several minutes later, no one had purposely looked at him. A few times people noticed him, but regarded him only as if he were a pillar on a porch that needed to be avoided.

  Perplexed that he was so seemingly invisible, he stepped back from the corner and leaned against a building to watch people. Maybe, he considered, he could figure out who might be approachable. But everyone seemed so unusual, and again he had the sensation of waking up, of finally noticing a few things.

  First was the clothing. Some people were dressed in shiny fabrics with multiple layers and extra edges that seemed to serve no purpose. A few of those people did notice him, but only to send him a look of disapproval.

  Pere also discovered that no one was dressed as he was; rips and tears were not the ‘fashion.’ But what was, he wasn’t quite sure. It was difficult to discern any kind of style. People wore colors and textures and designs he had never known existed, with patterns and stitching that might have taken the seamstresses weeks to complete. A few people who passed him wore such thin fabrics cut in such carefully revealing ways that maybe a few days ago Pere would have been shocked and embarrassed by the large sections of flesh they revealed. Now he realized even those people were better dressed than he was.

  He found himself unable to discern who was male or female. Women wore trousers and men wore skirts. Or, at least, he assumed as much. For some, there was nothing in their clothing or hair or way they walked that gave him a clue as to their gender.

  But most unusual were the people’s faces. It was the paint that truly mystified him. He’d heard that some women wore paint, but here everyone did. Many he was sure who were men, and others who were obviously female, accentuated their eyes with strange colors—blue, red, brown and even white and orange. Some reminded him of patchy dogs he knew in Salem, with various blotches of color in random patterns on their faces.

  Then there were the cheeks, with red circles painted as if to somehow make the wearer more beautiful. Or to make them look like targets. Some had even painted their entire faces. People with dark skinned hands had remarkably white faces, and those with sand colored skin on their hands sported dark brown and even black faces. It was as if no one was satisfied with what they had been born with, or they wanted to be shrub, he deduced, when a green-faced person strolled by.

  A few faces truly startled him, leaving him wondering where their lips were. Eventually, Young Pere realized the owners had painted their lips the same color of their faces. Others took an opposite approach, painting not only their lips, but even large swaths around them in a contrasting color. Massive lips in white, black, blue and red were everywhere, so much so that when he saw a pair
of light pink lips on a young woman—maybe it was a woman—those untouched lips looked unnatural.

  That seemed to be the goal: distort everything into something unrecognizable. And that was . . . attractive?

  It was the same with people’s bodies. There were very few he could see that weren’t distorted in some way. At least, he couldn’t imagine what illnesses or disabilities would cause some people’s shoulders that one wouldn’t match the other, or why some women (men?) had such pronounced chests, hips and even rear ends. How they sat on them perplexed Pere. Bulges came from balled up strips of cotton, he discovered, as one undefinable person bustled past him and a wad slipped out of the trousers. Greatly flustered, the person stopped, retrieved the wad and, to Pere’s amazement, dropped the trousers right there in the road way and replaced the cotton in a patch on the knee to make it more knobby. Several other body parts were revealed to be padded, and as people moved past, it didn’t seem to strike any of them as unusual that someone was partially dressed in the road way to adjust his (her?) undergarments.

  Oh, nope. That one was definitely a male.

  Then again, several people seemed to be dressed in little else but skimpy undergarments, more daring but less shredded than Pere observed at the grassy arena. The shimmering cloth must have been the silk his grandmother described. Some wore layers and layers, which must have cost a bagful of coins according to how expensive he’d heard it was. Even more amazing was that several people were accompanied by animals also dressed in the silk. He observed a small dog, a goat on a string, and even a sheep garbed in silk as if its natural wool wasn’t substantial enough. The leashed pig, however, didn’t seem to enjoy wearing a frilly tunic.

  Pere didn’t understand any of it. Nearly every person he saw wore so many colors to mask their real features as if what they were born with wasn’t good enough for the world. They were like paintings little children did of people, with everything too bright or too dark and ill-proportioned. It would have been amusing if it wasn’t so grotesque.

  And grotesque was all he could think when he saw their hair. His hair must have looked tame and dull in comparison to the strange colors and styles he saw. The villagers used pigments and paints, and even mud, it seemed, to force their hair into the oddest of shapes. One person walked by with sticks and bones protruding from their hair. And then there was the squirrel woman, with an actual dead squirrel strapped to the top of her head. Wait, no—the tail was twitching. It was still alive, and Pere was mystified.

  Eventually he did see a few people who were dressed like him, and without face paint or animals in their hair. One sat on the road corner and held a small, sloppy sign that read, “Need food.” There was a glazed look in his eyes as he stared off into a distance. No one paid him any attention.

  “FIFTY PERCENT OFF!” boomed a voice across the road, and Pere nearly jumped out of his skin. “SALE ONLY TODAY!” shouted a stocky woman, painted head to toe, and gesturing wildly at passers-by. “OUR RUFFS ARE MORE ELEGANT THAN THEIR RUFFS DOWN THE ROAD—”

  “NO, THEY’RE NOT!” shouted another voice, this one male, apparently from down the road. “YOURS ARE MADE WITH INFERIOR SILK WORMS! BUT OURS—OURS ARE THE BEST! AND A NEW STOCK, JUST IN!”

  Pere covered his ears, astonished at the shouting match that was making his head pound. But no one seemed surprised. In fact, it seemed to be a signal. Now another person came out of a building, and began to shout, “OUR BRASSIERES ARE THE MOST UPLIFTING THINGS YOU’LL STRAP YOUR—”

  Pere bolted from the road, not because he didn’t know what brassieres were, but because the man shouting about them stood right next to him and bellowed. But first, he gave Pere a mighty shove out of the way.

  He jogged down between two shops and paused, listening to the calling and shouting that now filled the road, everyone screaming for people to come into their shops.

  Eventually, cautiously, like a kicked dog wary of every boot, Pere emerged again further down the road, where only a young woman held up a sign, wriggling it around in annoying ways, stating that Our buttons are more buttony than anyone else’s!

  She didn’t shove him off her porch. She deliberately didn’t pay him any attention as he lurked behind her, probably because she knew he had no silver and no interest in buttony buttons.

  Pere was fascinated—disappointed, but fascinated—that no one cared about him or his appearance. No one seemed to realize he was in distress.

  He must have stood there for ten minutes before finally a man did approach him, but accompanied by two soldiers with their swords drawn. The soldiers’ faces, without any decoration, looked bland in comparison to everyone else.

  “Get off my building!” the man raged at Pere, his large painted brown lips making his words seem even louder. “Don’t need boys like you scaring away my business. Off now!” he gestured as the soldiers continued to approach.

  Pere’s mouth dropped open but he obediently shuffled off down the road. He glanced back and saw the soldiers still following him, so he began to jog, then run, and looked nervously back again. But the soldiers had stopped at a corner, as if they didn’t have to go any further.

  Pere tried to catch his breath as he considered what to do next. He slunk between two shops toward the alley in the back.

  Leaning against a tavern, he noticed an enormous rubbish pile behind it. He’d heard about these but never expected to see them. There were no piles of trash in Salem. Any leftover food was eaten the next day, or given to animals, or buried in the composting bins. He couldn’t ever remember seeing clothing or jugs or paper tossed away as he saw in the alley. Clothing would become rags, then knotted into rugs. Broken jugs could be given new life as planters for seeds, and used up paper could be used as kindling.

  But here? He passed broken crates that could have been placed in the woodpiles alongside the buildings, and cracked glass that would have seen another life as artwork. There were a great many objects that could have been used, cleaned up, or fixed.

  His belly twisting in hunger gave him another thought that a few days ago would have disgusted him. But everything was different a few days ago.

  He strolled along the alley, carefully picking his way around the heaps that stood behind every building, until he began to smell something not as distasteful. The pile in front of him held all kinds of half-eaten possibilities. He kneeled near the heap and started picking at a mixture of vegetables and meat, trying to figure out what it might have been. Not much different than eating the leftovers off his little brothers and sisters’ plates, he assured himself. We are all family, after all—

  “Hey! Hey! You! What do you think you’re doing?!”

  Pere looked up to see two more soldiers rushing toward him, swords drawn.

  “I . . . I . . . I’m just finding something to eat,” he stammered in alarm.

  One of the soldiers slashed the air with his sword and sneered at Pere. “So you thought you’d steal from the shops?”

  Pere pointed at the rubbish heap. “No one wants this! It’s . . . it’s trash.”

  The other soldier shook his head at his companion. “Did you hear that? No one wants it. It’s trash.” He glared at Pere. “But did you pay for it? Did you toss this out here in the alley?”

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “I’ll answer for him,” the first soldier said. “He didn’t. And because you didn’t, you filthy grassena slag, you don’t get to touch it either.”

  The second soldier gestured with his sword. “Go down to the dump at the river, like everyone else too lazy to work. You can pick at whatever’s left down there. This load will be there in two days. Remember what you liked, and you can find it then.” He took another step forward and aimed the sword at Pere.

  Pere slowly stood up, staring at the metal inches from his chest. Swords were much longer than he imagined. And sharper. The first soldier pointed his at Pere as well, giving him yet another specimen to examine closely.

  Pere swallowed. “Th
e river?” he asked weakly.

  The first soldier sneered at the second. “He’s so fogged he doesn’t even remember where the river is!” He turned back to Pere and waved with his weapon. “Yep—that way. You can smell it. Smells a lot like you, you slagger.”

  The second soldier laughed and lunged threateningly at Pere.

  Pere spun and took off running down the alley, hearing the cold laughter following him. His legs felt weak and he didn’t know how much further he could run as he darted across a roadway.

  “Let him go,” he heard one of the soldiers call. “He’s out of our district now anyway.”

  Pere glanced behind him as he stumbled to the other side of the road to see the soldiers had ended their pursuit. He jogged into another alley, fell on to the ground in a sweat, and leaned against a building to rest in its shade. He had time only to take a few deep breaths before he heard another voice.

  “Ah, Creet. Not another one. I swear the heat brings them out like flies!”

  Pere looked up into the severe face of a middle-aged woman. Her features were made even more hideous by enormous arched eyebrows that were painted in purple on her flabby face. She was holding a broom and threatened to sweep him away.

  “You don’t belong here! Scat! Off with you. We have a contract with the soldiers to make sure none of you end up over here. I’m filing a complaint!”

  Pere got to his feet, and the woman didn’t even blink at his size. He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m going ma’am, I promise. I just . . .” He thought of asking for her a piece of bread, but when he saw her firm her grip on the broom handle, he took a few steps back. “I’m going.”

  He took a turn, and another, and found himself at the end of the market place again. Worried about soldiers he saw approaching, he ducked into a shed, which wasn’t a shed.

  “Don’t worry,” said the woman, sitting on a stool at a narrow desk. “I won’t throw you out. You can stay, look around a little. All of you boys like to. I need someone to keep me in business.” She giggled sadly and nodded at the wall.

  Pere looked around and noticed shelves from floor to ceiling, packed with books. On the shelves were written numbers. Likely how many slips of silver needed to secure each one, he decided.

  He nodded his thanks to the woman, just a pace away from him. She nodded back, her thick brown hair streaked with gray, bouncing along with her head. It was a strangely youthful hair style for a woman around sixty, long and curled, but with ends that looked like a rat had nibbled on them. But then again, nothing was considered strange here.

  The shop was small. Compared to the others in the market, it was pitiful. Books, it seemed, by the lack of other customers, weren’t in demand.

  “I know what you’re looking for,” she said to Pere. “All of you come looking for the same thing. You’re familiar, so I’m sure you’ve been here before. Just go ahead.” She turned back to her book.

  Pere shook his head. “But I’ve never been here before.”

  The woman looked up at him. “But I’m sure I know you . . . Ah, you’ve been recently tagged. That explains it. Your type thinks you were born yesterday.” She hopped off her stool, set down her book, and took him by the arm. “Over here, Son-boy. Take your time.” In two strides she was at the other side of the shop and pulled down a large book. The enormous amount of metal around her wrists clanged and tinkled as she moved. “The woodcuts explain it all. Just be gentle with it.” She handed it to him, patted his arm, and smiled. “I know I’ve seen you before. Can’t quite place it, but . . .” She shrugged and went back to her stool.

  Pere opened his mouth to speak, realized he didn’t know what to say, then turned to the book. He opened it, wondering why this woman thought he—

  His eyes nearly popped out of his head. He stared at the image on the page, blinking in shock. No . . . why would someone have woodcuts of—

  He quickly flipped the page, sure that what he saw was a mistake, and found another image.

  At first, it didn’t make any sense. He stared at it for a few moments, turned the book, then suddenly—

  He nearly dropped the book in astonishment. This wasn’t a mistake. This was deliberate. Someone had put pictures of . . .

  He knew he should just put the book back on the shelf, but the pages flipped again, as if opened to the same pages over and over. This time he saw—

  This time he did drop the book.

  “I said, be gentle!” The woman giggled sadly. “You boys . . .”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Pere stammered as he picked up the large book, making sure it remained shut. “I just didn’t . . . I didn’t realize . . . This wasn’t exactly . . .”

  “Ah, I understand,” the woman nodded. “Put it back next to the others. I see the problem. You actually like this person.”

  Pere looked at her, perplexed.

  “You need to know how to win over the heart that’s attached to those other interesting parts.” She waggled her eyebrows and giggled again.

  Pere had never heard a woman her age giggle so much. It sounded rehearsed, unnatural. He shoved the book with the shocking diagrams back on to the shelf.

  The woman had left her stool again and was at the adjacent wall, her finger running along different titles. “I think I have just what you’re looking for.”

  Pere made his way over to her, where all the titles filling the shelves had similar words: betrayal, poison, passion, night, pride, buxom.

  He was sensing a theme.

  The woman bounced her thick hair behind her as she handed him another book. “Sorry, Son-boy—this one’s got a lot of words, but it’s a short book. And a favorite. All about how to win the heart. How good are you at flexing your muscles?”

  Pere looked up from the book in his hands. “Good at what?”

  But she was staring at his bare arms. “I know I’ve seen you before. There’s something so familiar about you. Got any silver to pay for that?”

  Pere shrugged apologetically.

  “It’s all right.” The woman sighed. “Just skim it here, put it back on the shelf when you’re done, come back tomorrow for more advice if it doesn’t work. And don’t drop it.”

  Pere nodded obediently and opened the book. His shoulders sagged in relief that it was only words.

  The woman went back to her stool while Pere read a sentence, then another, then . . .

  It was the woodcut book all over again, but with descriptions. As if the shocking images weren’t burned into his mind already, now there were words to go along with them.

  He snapped the book shut and turned to the woman.

  She was engrossed in her own story, chewing on her lower lip as if it were someone else’s.

  Pere cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mrs. . . .?”

  “Sareen. Just Miss Sareen. That’s what all you grassena folks call me. Find what you needed?”

  Pere nodded lamely. “Does it all . . . work?” He held up the book of . . . instruction, he guessed it could be called.

  She giggled again. “Of course! Not for everyone, though,” her voice trailed off with a douse of regret. “If I had access to some of these books when I was your age, a certain young man in blue might have been mine, instead of dying in the forest. I just didn’t know how to sway him. You know what I mean? Check chapter seven—that’s what I mean.” The sad giggle was back.

  “I will,” Pere said as politely as he could. “Uh, thank you, ma’am. For . . .” he paused, unsure what to thank her for, then realized she was the first person who hadn’t chased him away. “For everything.”

  “Of course,” Miss Sareen smiled. “Always here to help.” She turned back to her book and resumed chewing on her lower lip as Pere ducked out the door.

  ---

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Sareen mumbled to herself. “How sweet. No one says ma’am like that anymore.”

  A minute later, Sareen’s head snapped up and she gasped. Dropping her book, she raced outside.
r />   He was gone.

  Trembling, Sareen stumbled back into her shop, listening to her memory play over again and again the words, “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She sat down, shaking her head. No, there was no way . . . absolutely no way . . .

  But that voice. She used to tend the young children of that voice. Used to clean the kitchen and make dinner when little boys were invading the house for After School Care in the house of that voice.

  That voice . . .

  Had once belonged to Perrin Shin.

  ---

  Pere jogged south past a large block wall that proclaimed Edge of Idumea Estates and Country Cottages. The gray wall continued for several blocks, as if daring Pere to think of going any other direction than away. Finally, the wall ended and he found himself walking toward smaller homes and larger fields in the distance.

  Farms. Orchards. Food.

  Pere glanced around nervously as he continued down the road trying to act like he belonged there. Fewer people were in the area, and the ones he saw in the fields wore recognizable work clothing, but still more ruffled, purposely cut, and lopsided than anything he’d ever seen before.

  To his left, he noticed a large, lush garden behind a small farmhouse. He walked as nonchalantly as he could, casing the area, as if he were playing Bad Men-Good Men with his cousins again, to see which way he could most easily slip into the tall corn that was nearly ripe, then crawl to lower shrubs and vegetables where he was sure he could find something ready to harvest and eat. He turned down a perpendicular alley and made his way to the garden.

  Looking around, he spied no one, then squatted out of view. He fell forward on all fours ready to start crawling toward the garden when found himself face to face with the ugliest, wettest, and most misshapen dog the cosmos had ever produced.

  “Uh . . .” was all he got out before the animal began to snarl.

  He leaped to his feet and jumped backward as the brown thing started to bark. He lunged at Pere but was restrained by the rope around his neck. Pere looked quickly around but saw no one running to yell at him.

  “Nice dog,” he said, trying to sound believable. “I don’t want your bones or anything, I just want to slip into . . .” That’s when he noticed the dog was tethered to another rope that ran the perimeter of the garden. Another barking caught his attention, and a second hideous dog with drooling jowls came running around the corner, tethered to the same perimeter rope. It joined its friend in barking furiously.

  Pere took another few steps back and jogged to the end of the garden. The rope did indeed go all the way around the garden, and the dogs followed to keep up their barking. In this distance, Pere heard a third dog, probably on the other side of the garden.

  “If I just jump,” he said to himself, “over the rope . . .” He peered into the garden and saw a few more dogs tied to stakes, standing, panting, and eagerly waiting for him to try. Their sole purpose, it seemed, was to keep intruders away from the garden. He was too weak for that battle.

  Pere sighed heavily and went back to the side road. There was another farmhouse further along with an orchard. He walked in the shade of tall trees that lined the road, hoping the shadows would hide him.

  As he neared the orchard he groaned in frustration. Over each tree, and there were probably four or five dozen, were elaborately woven nets. The trees themselves were pruned in such a way that the nets could fully cover them, yet still allow in sunlight to reach the fruit. No birds, squirrels, and certainly no slaggy grassena boys, whatever that meant, could get to any of the fruit. Anything that fell off the trees was caught by the nets that fully encased the trees.

  Nothing even for the worms to nibble.

  Pere sat down in the shade of a tree in and looked longingly to the orchard. Several berry bushes grew alongside, but were also fully covered. He looked around for birds or any other animals to see how they accessed the food, but he saw nothing. The area was unusually free of animals, and even silent, except for repulsive barking dogs. He heard another one in the orchard.

  Only later did he ponder the conceit of hording all the crops. In Salem it was an accepted fact that the land produced because the Creator willed it to. He wanted to feed not only His people but His animals as well. A certain amount of fruit and berries and gardens being nibbled upon by birds, insects, deer, and rabbits was not only accepted but expected. No critter was ever shooed away. It was an honor to feed the Creator’s creatures.

  There always remained plenty for people, with surplus to be put into storage, and extra purposely left out for the animals to forage in the Snowing Season. At the Eztates, several stalks of corn remained unharvested all winter, and many bushes, along with two nut trees, had been planted solely for animals to scavenge from. And they never, ever took all the fruit out of the orchard, because then what would the raccoons and badgers and bears eat?

  But here? The people kept it all, probably so they could throw it away later into the rubbish piles. The animals got nothing. Nor did starving throwaway boys.

  Pere held his head in his hands and would have felt like weeping if he felt anything at all. The heat of the sun sapped whatever strength he had left, and he laid down alongside the road in the thick grasses, wondering what to do next. After a few minutes of realizing no one would come to his rescue, he reluctantly got up and wandered to where he thought the river was.

  He still wasn’t sure how he reached it, but after half an hour of trudging past more guarded gardens and inaccessible orchards, he found where he was supposed to go.

  He smelled it first. Behind a little hill and sheltered by dozens of tall trees that seemed purposely planted to hide the area was an enormous section of land covered in stinking trash. He was at the southern edge of town, and the heaps extended for probably a quarter mile down the river. All kinds of birds flew above the heaps, picking at them and squawking loudly.

  He had expected to feel some sense of hope as he reached the dump, but the sight and smell were worse than anything he’d yet experienced. There was no place to get anything to eat, even though he saw about twenty people walking around and climbing on the heaps.

  Pere leaned against one of the trees in despair, then slid down it until his behind landed in something squishy he chose to ignore. He watched the people in tatters climbing over the heaps, many of them short and skinny. It took him a moment to realize they were children. They tossed down items to equally tattered adults. Clothing. A shoe. Perhaps a blanket.

  If no one cared about children, who would care about him? Why should anyone care about him? He was useless, worthless, and as disposable as everything else.

  The sound of an approaching wagon made him look up. It was another load of rubbish coming to be dumped.

  The people at the piles scattered to the tree barrier to watch what was coming in. The wagon hit a dip in the ground near Pere and a few items fell off the wagon. Something rolled to Pere and stopped at his feet. An apple, with one bite taken out of it.

  He stared at it for a moment, wondering why someone would throw something away after just one bite. Maybe it wasn’t ripe. Maybe it was rotten.

  Pere picked it up, started to wipe the dirt off of it, but instead quickly took a bite. It was perfect.

  He wolfed down the apple, even swallowing the seeds and stem, and glanced around to see if anything else had fallen. He looked up just as the wagon was dumping its contents, and the other people stood around like hungry dogs, walking around, pointing, sniffing.

  A soldier with a drawn sword stood by the wagon on guard as the three workers quickly shoved everything off with long sticks. After they finished, they climbed back on the wagon, the soldier took a few steps back, sheathed his sword, then hopped into the bed.

  That seemed to be the signal. The grungy masses rushed to the new pile, grabbing whatever they could as the wagon pulled away. A small child got pushed roughly to the side but jumped right back in, snatching bits expertly.

  Pere had c
onsidered walking over there to see what he could salvage, but the ferocity of the beggars surprised him. He looked down around his feet again as the wagon jostled by, dropping a few items the workers hadn’t fully shoveled out. Another item rolled over to him. A cob of corn, still with the husks on it, but chewed on the top by an animal, probably a raccoon.

  Pere shucked the corn and evaluated the kernels. They were on the small side, but he took an experimental bite. It was perfect.

  In less than a minute the corn was gone, the cob tempting him to see if it was edible as well. It wasn’t, he discovered. Pere sat down again against the tree, still feeling hungry, but not so ravenous.

  An idea came to him as he felt the apple and corn strengthening him. If he ran through the alleys, he could snatch things as he passed, and run out of the jurisdiction of the soldiers in the area. It was obvious none of them wanted to go further than they had to.

  He stood up and, without a look back to the beggars, started on his way back to Province 8.

  By the way, Young Pere, you’re welcome. Go to the western side. There’s a bakery with a clumsy assistant who drops everything.

  Soon Pere was back in the province. This time he had a feeling he should head to the west, to avoid the soldiers he had already encountered. He followed his nose to a bakery and slipped between it and another shop. Watching from the shadows and drooling, he noticed a young woman step out of the bakery and toss on to the pile a cake which, judging from its smashed nature, had recently fallen to the ground.

  Pere waited until he heard the door shut, glanced down both sides of the alley to make sure it was clear, then slipped out, grabbed the cake, and darted back into the shadows. He held his breath and waited to hear anything as the still-warm cake began to crumble in his hands. Realizing no one had spotted him, he took a sample, then devoured the cake.

  He analyzed the pile again, spotted a few biscuits, seized them, stuffed them into his pockets, and ran down the alley just as two soldiers came around the corner. They stopped pursuing him a few roads later, leaving Pere to stand on another corner, tired but feeling fuller.

  For lack of something better to do, he began wandering into the stores. Nothing like these existed in Salem. All they had there was the main storehouse. If you needed trousers, you went to the aisle with trousers, chose a color and size, then took them home.

  But what he saw in Province 8 was far more unusual. Trousers of every color, texture, and shape. And pins on them with numbers. He watched as a man took a pair of trousers up to a desk and give a handful of slips of silver to the person behind. Pere looked with despair at the clothing. He had no silver and no way to replace his torn clothing.

  “Are you planning to buy anything?” asked a woman sharply next to him.

  Pere jumped a little, especially at the purple surrounding her eyes. “Uh, well, I’d like to, but—”

  “Let me guess, no silver?” the woman snapped at him. “Then get out!”

  Pere left that shop and wandered to another, this time only looking into the windows. Another shop of clothing. Why they needed two shops with clothing was beyond his comprehension. The more he looked around the less he understood. There were shops for only tunics, or only silk tunics, then only collars for the silk tunics. And then ruffles for silk tunics.

  Then there were the shops for hats, each more ridiculous than the next, with feathers and clumps of cotton and shapes that did nothing to shield the wearer from sun or rain. There were shops for men, for children, for women, and more for women. He tried to picture his mother or aunts wandering in such places. They’d probably find it a waste of time.

  But he had plenty of time to waste now, and one shop caught his attention, practically pulling him inside. Weapons: knives, bows and arrows, hatchets and best of all, swords, of all shapes and sizes.

  Once he had suggested to Salemites that they extend the length of their knives to swords, but they said that was one of the reasons why they left: they didn’t want to live where the sole purpose of an item was to take a life.

  Pere couldn’t understand that. The glossy steel and the intricate detail on the hilts made his mouth water in desire. He stared at one display cabinet for at least half an hour, ignoring the shopkeeper’s dirty looks as he gingerly fingered the knife blades, longing for the knife he lost in his pack.

  He finally forced himself out when the shopkeeper began to follow him around. But there was still more to see. Shops for food, leather goods, household goods, furniture, pots and pans, cloth, and one that sold only things that smelled nice. Pere was exhausted just looking at it all. He couldn’t imagine what he would do with most of it if he could acquire it.

  He sat under the shade of a tree near some stables around dinner time to nibble on his biscuits, and he watched the people scurry by. It wasn’t that they didn’t acknowledge him, they didn’t greet anyone. No one seemed to know or recognize anyone, maybe because each person’s body was misshapen, and different face paints would drastically alter the look of someone they knew.

  Then again, nearly everyone looked off in a distance, not really seeing who they passed. And he noticed something else: there were very few children.

  Occasionally he saw a mother carrying a baby wearing elaborate clothing that he was sure it would outgrow in just a season, but he expected that by dinner time, when school and chores were over, there’d be a rush of children running through the roads and in and out of shops completing errands for their parents, or delivering messages like they did in Salem. But there weren’t any flocks of children hanging on parents’ clothing, or waving to other friends, or being patted on the head by adults.

  During the afternoon he had seen a child here and there with a parent, and those children behaved in bizarre ways. They’d stand listlessly watching the horses and carriages go by without once trying to chase them, or they’d look at the clothing with their mothers—something Pere could never imagine caring about—or they’d kick at the dirt as if nothing else was interesting.

  One child in particular intrigued Pere. He held a small wooden toy that required him to shift pieces back and forth into different shapes. Pere had sidled over to watch him as he stood outside while his mother entered a store selling something called lace. Pere tried to see the point of the toy. The boy would create one shape and whisper, “Yes!” then create another shape and moan quietly. It was mystifying.

  When the door to the shop opened, Pere quickly retreated between two buildings as the boy’s mother marched out and down the road, but her son didn’t notice. He continued to manipulate the wooden shapes until his mother returned a few minutes later, grabbed him by the ruff of his sleeve, and without a word dragged him along. The boy never once looked up.

  As dinner time passed, Pere began to believe there simply weren’t any children to see. Maybe a few days ago he would have been mortified by that thought. But now he could see the benefits. Without so many children to care for, these people could spend more on elaborate clothing for themselves and tack for their horses. He’d seen several horses decked out in gold and silver implements that didn’t add anything but weight to the animals.

  Fewer children also meant fewer bodies competing with the beggars. For some reason that thought made the hole in his chest, the one he’d been trying to ignore all day, feel bigger.

  He got up and he slipped down another alley in hopes of finding something else to eat, his strange day replaying in his head. Several hours of exploring the shops did give him something new to look at, but none of it was . . . satisfying. Different and diverting, yes, but empty.

  But did he feel happy? Many people he saw seemed happy. He even heard laughter a few times. But Pere couldn’t imagine anything that could make him laugh right now. He felt hopelessly empty and unfamiliar in his own skin.

  By the time it was dusk he drifted back to the grassy arena, the only place that felt like home so far.

  ---

  Peto woke up that night and looked up at
the dark ceiling of his bedroom. It was a dream, he tried to reassure himself, but in so many ways it wasn’t.

  He was back in Idumea as a young teenager, touring the city with his grandmother, parents, and sister. They had ridden in the carriage out of the garrison and past the trash heaps. Peto saw a man in torn clothing, digging through the heaps looking for something to eat. Peto had been shocked by that. No one back then in Edge had ever scoured the rubbish looking for food.

  The experience had stayed with Peto, and had helped him see the benefits of a Salem-like life when he first came from the world. It was one of the reasons becoming a rector appealed so much to him, why he accepted the calling when Guide Gleace issued it: he always wanted to make sure no one ever went without.

  He rolled over and looked at his wife. She was asleep, but he’d heard her weeping earlier. He touched her pillow and it was damp. She hadn’t stopped weeping for days.

  The dream played hazily in his mind again. Idumea. The trash heaps. He and his family riding by in a large and fancy carriage.

  The man rooting through the trash looking for food had looked over at him.

  It was Young Pere.

  Peto sighed. At least he was still alive. For now.

  Chapter 24--“We give you a bed, a uniform, and a purpose.”