by M. E. Parker
Myron nodded. “Yeah, I’m going wherever Rounder’s going.” Having no knowledge of the terrain and no water, sticking with Rounder made the most sense.
Mah-ré pulled her mother toward the contraption to meet Gah-té. “Myron.” She pointed northeast. “We…with…Myron.”
“Listen to that. They’ll be talking like us before long,” Rounder said.
The twins and their mother climbed back onto the landship while Rounder wetted his finger and stuck it above his head. “Wind.”
While Myron pedaled, Rounder unfurled the sail. The smooth pavement passed beneath them at a speed Myron had never experienced, except for the train that had brought him to Jonesbridge, but the train had no windows and no way to track the speed of the earth whizzing by. No matter how far they traveled over patches of potholes and gravel, the Old Age paved road never came to an end.
As they rounded a bend, a depot came into view on the horizon. Rounder lowered the sail and joined Myron on the pedals. After a moment, he held out his hand for Myron to stop. The landship creeped to a halt with the details of the depot still fuzzy in the distance. Rounder extended the telescope, closed one eye, and peered through the lens, mumbling to himself, what sounded like counting.
He collapsed the telescope and pedaled his contraption to within walking distance of the depot, which consisted of a storage barn, two sheds filled with coal, a cistern for water, three mules in a corral, a long barracks, and an adobe structure with a wooden door and windows. Coils of smoke billowed from the chimneys of two steam wagons parked behind the depot, fireboxes hot and ready for travel.
Rounder slipped on a pair of work gloves and instructed the twins and their mother to stay put. “Myron—you come with me.”
Myron walked past the coal sheds lined up by the road. Bile rose up his throat. The coal and the smell of smoke reminded him of Jonesbridge, reminded him of his freedom, something he would have traded if it meant he and Sindra could be together again.
“Wait here.” Rounder walked up to the door. He knocked twice, waited, and knocked again before opening the door.
Myron peeked into the window. Shadows moved up the wall inside the depot. Three sets of footsteps sounded on the floor, and he heard voices, one nothing more than a whisper. The sounds struck him with familiarity, though he couldn’t place them in his mind. Not until the door opened and two orange shirts stepped out did Myron place the sounds: ghost boot heels striking the floor.
Myron turned to run, but the ghost grabbed his arm and twisted it around to see the Industry tattoo. “You should’ve let them execute you in Jonesbridge. Death’s too easy for you now.”
“No—no!” Myron yelled. “I’m not going back.”
Rounder refused to look at him as he counted the shotgun shells in the box he carried. “I’m sorry, Myron. This here ammo is too valuable.”
Myron realized why Rounder had put on the gloves. Before he gave Rounder up for being an Industry fugitive too, Myron eyed the twins and their mother, knowing what the ghosts had done to Sindra, wondering what would happen to them if both he and Rounder wound up being captured. Myron bit his tongue to keep from speaking and vomited the last swig of water he had taken, along with a mouthful of stomach juice that burned his throat.
Chapter Seven
Sindra and Nico sat face to face in the cargo hold of a boat, still joined in the unity binding. The smells of ocean water were new to Sindra, having lived her entire life in the dust, but the stale air in the boat’s hold smelled of sweat and urine, scents she and Nico had brought on board themselves.
She made out three distinct voices on the deck above, one woman and two men, but the wood between the two decks smothered the specifics of their conversation, except for the cursing that came clearly to her ears.
“Any idea where they’re taking us?”
Nico tugged at the binding chains. “No.”
“None?”
“Wherever it is—”
“Why couldn’t you lie? One time.” She wasn’t sure if she believed that the Great Above would have guided Dromon’s hand or not. Nothing they might have done or told them they’d done would have helped them out of the impossible puzzle of a device.
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t.” He fidgeted with the bindings. “I didn’t want them to think…that I’d forced myself on you. It’s wrong. I woulda felt guilty about lying—and about someone thinking I copped you while you were in medicine sleep.”
Sindra allowed his comment to sink in, consider what it meant, and realized that it sounded like something Myron might have said, making her suddenly miss Myron more than ever. He always treated her with respect, not only as a woman, but as a person.
• • •
Sindra watched Myron explore the front of the chapel where remnants of an altar remained.
“Maybe we could marry up. Right here.” Myron blushed. “I can build a preacherman with those boards over there. And here’s his hat.” Myron plucked a curved clay shingle off the ground.
“Why would you want to marry up with a carpie?”
Myron shoved the rotting altar over. It tumbled, splintering into two pieces. “You are not a carpie.”
“Not by choice.” Sindra stared at Myron’s postcard of Bora Bora. “Does anyone ever choose to be a carpie?”
“You’re Industry. Like me. A salvager, and a damn good one.”
“I am.”
“They steal your affections. And you can never let what someone steals from you describe who you are. Only what you give.” Myron sat beside her on the pew. “If I give you me, and you give me you, what someone stole should never matter.”
“You really don’t see me any different? Being ravaged by ghosts and admins whenever they like.”
“Yeah, I do see you different. As a survivor that kicks sand in their faces.”
• • •
If not for Myron that day, Sindra questioned whether she would have spiraled into accepting her role in life as a carpie. The Orkinites had stolen her baby the same way the ghosts had stolen her body, and Myron had been right—she could choose to become a victim of theft, or choose to be a survivor of it.
“Thanks, Nico. You know, for not—you’re a nice kid. But nice people get carved into trophies out here.”
“I have to get out of this thing.” Nico squirmed as tears rolled down his cheeks. “I can’t take it anymore. Trapped like this.” He struggled to pull one of the restraints over his shoulder.
Nico jerked his arm, yanking Sindra’s with it. Sindra yanked back, and after a pop, Nico screamed. “My shoulder!” His arm dangled from his shoulder. “My arm came out of its socket.”
He coughed and moaned. They both wiggled, turning their heads in opposite directions to avoid breathing each other’s air. Nico sobbed as his arm hung loose. Sindra grasped his bicep with one hand and the top of his shoulder with the other. She strained, pushed, and groaned, until finally she gripped his arm with both hands and rammed him into the wall shoulder-first, popping the joint back in place. He gritted his teeth and groaned.
With Nico in such pain, Sindra thought of the drugs the Orkinites had pumped into her arm. It had battered her mind into submission, and then it welcomed her home with a soft bed, warm and inviting, every point on her body alive and dead at the same time, worries and strife no more than a breeze over her chest. The moment she returned from its influences, she longed for it again, and that longing had become an ache.
“What was that stuff they gave me? In that needle.”
“It’s called Mercy.” Nico’s voice trembled.
“What’s in it?”
“Why?”
“Maybe we can make some ourselves.”
Nico wiped the tears from his eyes. “I don’t know. Last year, when I was assigned chemist apprentice, I saw what went in it. That was before the chemist ran me off in favor of Joam.” He shook his head. “Anyway, trust me, you don’t want to make that.”
“Maybe. Tell me what’s in it!”
&nbs
p; “It’s hard to make.”
“I don’t care.” Sindra stomped her foot on the deck.
“All I know is that it has three main ingredients. There’s a fungus called beast’s breath. It grows in the caves by the village. It gives you spiritual visions. The main thing is the juice from a poppy flower, really hard to find. Grows in the Nethers.” He nodded to the east. “Also, there is artemisia. It’s all cooked in solution. I know what’s in it, but I couldn’t make it. If you do it wrong—” he pulled his finger across his throat. “It’s bad stuff. They only give it to people on the edge of death. That’s why it’s called mercy.”
“I wasn’t almost dead.”
Nico squinted, staring up in a thinking posture. “I guess they use it to convert nonbelievers, too.” He and Sindra leaned against the wall. “Sometimes a heretic will denounce the path. Orkin’ll give them Mercy and minister to him to correct his ways. So, I guess almost dead, physical-wise—and almost dead, soul-wise.”
The boat creaked as it changed course, producing a sound that reminded Sindra of a baby’s cry. “How do I get her back?”
“Your baby?”
“Yes.” Sindra swiped Nico on the side of the head. “Who else?”
“You can’t.”
“I will.”
“Impossible.”
Sindra smacked the other side of his head. “Stop talking stupid and think.” Nico did have much in common with Myron, but Myron would have already formulated an idea, even an impossible one.
“Orkin has his own island. No one except the presbyters and the Orkin’s Landing Navy knows where it is.”
“Navy?”
“Yeah. Sort of like a sea army on ships.”
“I know what a navy is.” If she’d had anything but bile in her stomach, she would have vomited at the thought of her baby out there on some island with a crazed preacherman and his navy. Instead, she heaved a dry burn up her throat. “What’s easier: make Mercy, or get my baby back? It has to be one or the other.”
“Can’t do either. Just knowing where to find the poppy flower, which I don’t, ain’t enough. You have to get to it. In the middle of the Nethers.” He lowered his head. “And, unless you have your own navy—or an army, your baby—”
“I get it. We’re headed for the dead yard with the wind at our backs.” It gave Sindra solace to quote Old Nickel when things got rough.
“What are they doing up there?” Nico eyed the ceiling where footsteps, back and forth on the deck above them, echoed through the cargo hold.
A harsh voice yelled from somewhere off the boat. The footsteps grew closer, sounding from the stairs. A shirtless man with a chest full of scars bent down to clear the low passage, taking Nico and Sindra by surprise. He grabbed Nico by the arm. “Up. Let’s go.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Me either.”
Sindra saw the pain in Nico’s face, the effort he put into hiding what might be perceived as a weakness.
“Please don’t let them kill me, Sindra.” Nico grabbed her hand.
“Whatever happens at the top of those stairs, we’re in it together.”
The boat docked at a pier that jutted halfway into a river full of yellow muck. The stink of the water burned Sindra’s throat as she took a breath. A deckhand threw a rope, caught by a woman who wrapped it around a mooring post on the pier, while the other deckhand positioned a gangplank for boarding.
Sindra rubbed her eyes, wondering whether the Mercy had dulled her senses, when a man stepped on board, led by protruding belly that resembled a bag packed full of millet. His face drooped around his mouth under the weight of his jowls. The rations required for such excess flesh tested Sindra’s imagination.
“What is this?” The large man grabbed the unity binding and tugged it as though he could remove it like a shirt, pulling Nico and Sindra together right up to the man’s belly.
“We couldn’t get it off,” the boat captain said. “Even tried the hull cutter.”
“Lorin won’t want the kid.” The large man tested the bindings again, pulling at the canvas fabric. “That’s chain under there.”
“Yeah, chains with combo locks.” The captain took a knife and sawed the canvas to reveal the metal underneath. “Need a gas torch. Maybe steam hammer’d do the job.”
“Just break the kid out of there and bring me the girl.”
“Done told ya. Can’t do it.”
“You can if you chop that little rat into a hundred pieces.”
“What?” Nico moved into Sindra, hugging her. “Please, Sindra. Don’t let them kill me.” Nico fell somewhere between choking and coughing.
Sindra studied the man who had suggested dicing up Nico to separate them. He wore no shirt, but dangling from his ear she spotted an earring with the symbol of Rok, a one-winged bird, the custodian spirit of prisoners. An old man on the rails had once told her that when someone who was once in prison for a crime dies, Rok determines whether they should return to prison in spirit or whether they had turned to a better life and can go to the Great Above.
“You sure you want to do that?” Sindra gulped. “Cut him up like that?”
“Whatever it takes.”
“We two are a married-up pair.” She nudged Nico. “Sanctioned by the Great Above. If you were hoping to maybe find a spot up there someday, might want to think again. Chopping folks to pieces doesn’t sit well with the almighty.” Sindra did her best impersonation of some of the more pious people she’d heard in Orkin’s Landing.
The man rubbed his jaw where a patch of spindly hairs curled under his chin. His eyes narrowed as he pulled the binding again with a laugh. “I ain’t really gonna chop this kid up, you dim fool. That’d leave a piss of a mess on this man’s boat.” His laughter caused his belly to shake. “And I don’t fall for that custodian spirit hokus pokery, neither. Show me this Great Above and I’d think about choppin’ him up, too.” He shoved Sindra in the back to get them going. “That don’t mean I ain’t gonna kill this kid first chance I get. I prefer a cleaner process. Maybe toss him off that cliff to see how far I can hurl him.” His laughter continued as he prodded Sindra. “But Lorin can do what he wants to him. Ain’t my problem. Load ’em up.”
They led Sindra and Nico across the gangplank to a steam wagon loaded with ore. “What’s going to happen to us?” Nico whispered.
“We have to escape.” She kept her response under her breath, so quiet that Nico did not hear it.
“Sindra?”
Chapter Eight
“A friend? Well, that’s not an easy question.” Myron’s grandfather handed him a wrench to hold while he tapped a gear into place on the generator.
“These kids.” Myron pointed to a page in an Old Age book. “They kept each other’s secrets. But one of them told someone else the secret—and they’re still friends.”
“Keep reading. It’s not all sorted out yet, I’ll bet.” Myron’s grandfather held his hand out for the wrench.
“That’s as far as I can read.” Myron showed his grandfather the charred remains of the last half of the book.
“Well…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Trust. That’s the thing with friends—when you boil it down. But there’s risk in friendship.”
“Do you have any friends?”
“You’re the only person I trust.” He gave Myron a nod. “Having friends outside of family, well…that’s sort of a luxury of a bygone era.”
“What about Mom?”
His grandfather wedged a moment of reflection into the conversation. “Of course.” He lowered his head. “I trusted her completely. But—her decision to fight that day…” He returned to his work, tightening a nut on the casing of what he’d hoped would produce electric power from pedaling on a stationary bicycle in the barn. “Sometimes, a friend does what must be done. It’s not as easy as weighing slugs on a scale.”
His grandfather defined a friend as someone with common interests, somebody other than family to spend time with, a per
son to confide in and lean on in times of trouble, someone to trust with the important details of life. Myron had no friends, except his grandfather, and had no acquaintances his own age, though he’d seen other kids in Richterville.
The Old Age books made friendship sound as though life without a friend was diminished, that a victory in life didn’t mean anything unless there was someone to celebrate it with, and a defeat could only be survived with the solace of a friend. In the book he’d been reading, two friends, a boy and a girl, ten years old, a year older than Myron, came home every day after school, grabbed a pair of shovels from the tool shed, and dug a hole together, aiming to dig all the way to China. As they dug, they talked about what sorts of places they wanted to visit, what kind of vocation to aspire to, and, as the hole grew deeper and wider, and the days longer, their conversations turned toward secrets.
“You can’t tell anyone. Promise?” she said. A shovelful of soil slid down the growing mound outside the hole. Reading this part had intrigued Myron. The boy promised, so they conducted a ritual where they each cut their pinky fingers with a pocketknife and entwined them together, allowing their blood to mix.
Then the girl confessed that her father had done things to her that confused and scared her, and, when she’d told her mother, her mother had beaten her with a sharpening strap. Afraid for her safety, the boy told his mom what the girl had told him, but the two friends just kept digging the hole and the pages ran out just before the boy spilled his secrets.
• • •
Myron had kept a sharp eye out for a friend his entire life, never finding one until he met Sindra. Coyote Man had betrayed him. And Rounder, a kindred spirit, collector of books, Industry comrade, had sold Myron out for a handful of shotgun shells. He’d thought, or wanted to think, that Rounder could have been someone he could dig a hole with.
Trust, his grandfather had claimed, provided the foundation for any friendship, but Myron had never figured out the word, what it meant, without removing the human element. He trusted the strength of shackle that now bound his legs together. He tested it, yanked it, banged on it, as he had the one that had held him to Saul, the remnants of which still hugged his left calf above the new shackle. He trusted that the day followed the night, even in Jonesbridge, where the sun hid behind the smoke, but people proved less predictable, making his memories of Jonesbridge bubble back to the surface as quickly as his freedom had submerged them.