by M. E. Parker
“Please.”
Megan stopped short of the door. The chant from the throng gathered in the town square had begun. “May-gun, May-gun, May-gun.” She whipped around and stared at Myron. “Orkin has been a dead man to me since I left that place. Now, he is a thief. And he deserves a thief’s death.” She glanced at her fingernails, returning to the cool character her fans would expect. “Preferably on my stage. But Orkin is powerful. If you can convince Te Yah, another selfish thief, to help with a battle against Orkin, I will get the baby back.”
“And what about Sindra?”
Megan sighed. “You can buy her freedom if, by whatever means necessary, you retrieve what Te Yah stole from me.”
“What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Rounder patted Myron on the back. “It is a fool’s mission. Mesa Gap is a fortress. An unknown. And Te Yah can see right into your soul.”
“What is it, you ask? It is an energy source with enough power to light the night sky. Orkin wants it. Jonesbridge wants it. The League wants it. I had it. Te Yah took it.”
“My guess is that Te Yah didn’t steal that from you. He’s not really that sort.”
“Oh, Rounder, you’re not calling me a thief, are you? Because that will land you on stage tonight with the crowd splattered in your blood.”
“It’s just that I been from the bowels to the armpit and back of the Nethers, turning through Old Age garbage and ruins. Never seen anything working proper. And I never ran across anything that could light the night sky.” Rounder took a breath. “And I ain’t calling you a liar or thief. I wouldn’t do that. I’m not stupid.”
“Te Yah took it from me. I want it back.” She cocked her ear toward the chanting crowd. “I can’t keep them waiting.” She motioned for the drudgers to escort Rounder, Myron, and Nico out of the building. “I have decided to let you go. On the outside chance that you try.”
“What should I say to Te Yah to get him to help?” Myron asked.
“Chasm knows. He won’t talk to me.” Megan erupted in laughter. “Oh, and I’ve had that little back door passageway blocked up, so don’t think about coming back that way, Rounder.”
The drudgers tugged on Myron’s arm and led them out to the town center, lit up for Megan’s show. Rounder shielded his view of the stage with his hand as he walked toward the dark market with Myron and Nico trailing behind him, heads down.
“You know, there are times I think back to that poor scrub on the other end of that chain when I found you out on the flat.” Rounder marched into the darkness of the market with his face buried in his hands. “That Gapi woman was right about you. She lost her girls. I lost everything. Your woman’s up there in the last place she’s gonna be.” He turned around and grabbed Myron by the shoulders. “Chained up with that dead man. She was right. You cheated death. Now it’s coming for vengeance—on all of us. We’ll wish we was dead by the time this is done. I want you to disappear. Go the Chasm away from me. I don’t care where you go. I don’t give a squat what you do, just go away and take your bad muji away from me. Go.” He took Nico’s hand. Nico’s arms and legs bore red bands from the cuffs, where the skin was torn and oozing. “I’m gonna take this kid to Ktala and let her fix these wounds.”
Myron thought of Sindra’s sacrifice for Nico’s innocence and figured that spending too much time with Rounder would also dampen the light in the kid’s eyes. “No. Nico’s coming with me.” Myron stepped between Rounder and Nico.
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry, Rounder.” Myron searched his memory for any bits of wisdom left from his grandfather.
“You’re sorry? I shoulda let you die with your partner out there.”
“Saul was not my partner. He was lower than a rock lizard.”
Rounder cracked his knuckles. “I don’t care who he was. Or if he was an okay guy. What I’m saying is you should’ve died with him. End of tale. Bones sandblasted by the Nethers.”
“But I need help with Te Yah. I don’t even know where Mesa Gap is.”
“Oh, forget that. You can’t get in there. You can’t see Te Yah. You’re done. You’re the walking dead.”
“What’s in Mesa Gap? How do you get in?”
“I told you that I refused to take the intention ritual. Well, that’s not true. I did take it, and Te Yah didn’t find my intentions honorable. Okay? I don’t know what’s in there, or how to get in. Go if you want to. I have to rebuild my life savings thanks to you.”
As Rounder left and the darkness of the market alley absorbed his silhouette, Myron paced from one closed vendor to the next, determined to scheme a way to make right at least some of this predicament.
Myron turned to Nico. “This man Orkin, what does he want with Sindra’s baby?” They headed the opposite direction of Rounder to find someone who could tell them how to get to Mesa Gap.
“He thinks that a baby born to an unclean mother must be raised under strict spiritual guidance. Else, the baby will fall to the deeds of the mother.”
“Sindra is not unclean.”
Megan had the protection of scores of drudgers. They guarded her quarters and flanked her stage. They stalked the shadows above the market and peered through the broken windows of the Old Age ruins that lorded over Megan’s Point. The only task Myron could imagine more daunting than rescuing Sindra, a theft against Megan, would be rescuing Sindra’s baby from some fanatical preacherman named Orkin. Sindra, now Megan’s possession, had made the twins’ gesture of voluntary servitude all in vain. If Myron dared steal anything from anyone in Megan’s Point, he would free the twins and return them to their mother. That was one thing he could do.
Myron and Nico found a hidden alcove to spend the night in. They awoke at first light to the patter of feet shuffling through the market, of doors and windows opening, and Gapi murmurings between merchants preparing their wares. Myron went from stall to stall seeking anyone he could communicate with, pleased that many vendors spoke both his language and Gapi. The first few he queried about Mah-ré and Gah-té didn’t want to speak of them. The next few wouldn’t. He finally learned that the slaver who had received them as payment for Sindra and Nico had sold them the next day to the refuser, whose job it was to rid the market of waste and garbage at the end of the day.
“That’s an awful vocation, the ‘refuser,’” Nico said.
With the help of a few vendors, Myron located the refuser shed on the edge of the market and watched it from behind the mule stable on the other side of the alley. The refuser had a bald head with one bushy eyebrow and a hairless scar where the other should have been. His cheek bulged with billet thistle that compelled him to spit a milky green blob every few minutes, a mess that qualified as waste, adding to what needed cleaning.
When Mah-ré came out of the shed with a broom, Myron noticed the twins’ mother working alongside them. Myron resolved to get all three of them to Mesa Gap. Nico, too.
He inspected the drudger catwalks that crisscrossed above the market. Two drudgers surveyed the activity going on below. With so many people moving about in the alleys, Myron decided to wait until Megan’s show, when the market darkened and the noise emanated from the town center, when the streets emptied and the refuser crew went to work.
As the evening hours turned to twilight, the refuser slammed open the shed door, cursing. He slapped the twins’ mother when she didn’t respond fast enough to his demands, then shoved the twins out and tethered each of their wrists to a pole with a lamp on the end that he carried while they did the cleaning. Myron did not see the exact location of the refuser’s key, but he would have plenty of time to search the shed with them all out cleaning.
“Nico, you stand watch while I find the keys.” Myron emerged from the mule stable peering in all directions, especially above, on the lookout for drudgers. “Thieving will get us killed, Nico. This is serious.” Myron tried not to imagine the bloody spectacle of his death on Megan’s stage if they got caught.
The door on the refuser sh
ed squeaked when Myron opened it. Entering the darkness, he led with his hands to avoid running into a rake or the points of a pitchfork. A chain tickled his nose. When he pulled it, dim yellow light spread across the room from a bulb hanging from the ceiling. Through the veil of dust, he spotted on the shelves a half-eaten pork strap, some hoof pass in a jar with mold growing on top, and a leather bag full of tools. He spread the pouch open to discover a screwdriver, a set of rusted wrenches, an awl, and a hammer. He cinched it up and looped the bag over his shoulder as he scanned the wall but found no keys. He assumed the refuser had taken the keys with him.
Myron turned out the light and slipped into the market alley where Nico waited behind the mule stable. “Come on, we have one shot at this.”
They searched the market for the refuser crew’s lamplight. When he heard voices, Myron hid, by instinct, something he’d done since the days when his mom crammed him into the potato bin to hide from the orange shirts. The lights from the town center reflected off the stall across the alley. Myron saw a face moving in and out of the shadows. He caught no details until he saw the scar across the man’s eyebrow in the lamplight. He heard the refuser’s raspy voice curse someone. The refuser tugged on a chain as though he pulled a mule that refused to move.
“There they are. Get ready.” Myron pointed Nico to a hiding spot across the alley.
Kneeling down, Myron moved closer, staying low enough to avoid being seen. The refuser backed up, curses flowing from his mouth, and yanked the chain. Mah-ré and Gah-té stumbled out into the alleyway at the end of the chain, unfazed by the abuse of the man with the scar. They held hands and stood before their owner.
“What are you?” the refuser yelled. “Come on. Walk. Now.” He slapped Mah-ré across the face with the back of his hand. Both girls stumbled to the ground and stood up again, joining hands, those not chained to the guide pole.
“Stop that.” The man knifed his hand through theirs to break the hold. Behind them, the twins’ mother kicked him in the bull eggs and jumped on his back. One of the twins stuck her thumb in his eye. The man groaned and threw the twins’ mother off his back. She hit the wall hard behind them. The refuser pulled a long knife from his belt.
Nico hunkered in the alcove, but Myron bolted from his hiding spot. He raced across the alley, jumped a barrel, snagged his foot on the edge, and tumbled to the ground. Myron distracted the refuser long enough for Gah-té and Mah-ré to dodge his blade. Before he could slash again, Myron lifted the barrel he’d tripped on over his head and hurled it at the twins’ owner, who toppled over. The drudgers in the catwalks above the market jogged to the scene of the scuffle.
Myron grabbed the twins and rolled them out of the way as the drudgers fired two shots at random into the dark market. The refuser doubled over, bleeding. The twins’ mother also dropped amid the clank of metal fragments and glass that clattered on the ground and ricocheted off the walls, shattering the refuser’s lamp. Myron stayed on top of the twins. They kept still and silent until the drudgers muttered satisfaction that they’d stopped a theft in the market.
“Go get the refuser to clean things up down there,” one of them said.
As the drudgers’ footsteps shuffled off of the catwalk above Myron, he rushed to the twins’ mother, hoping she’d only sustained minor injuries. He arrived to find her in a pool of blood, not breathing. The twins appeared behind him with Nico, holding hands, staring at her with the same expression they’d worn while eating the doughnut.
The day his own mother had died, at the hands of orange shirts instead of drudgers, he spotted her on the porch covered in a blanket. Before his grandfather could stop him, he’d pulled back the blanket. He’d sobbed and begged her to come back to him as the image of her lifeless face burned into his memory. Myron wished he could speak Gapi. He wanted to understand the girls, know why they stood there without emotion as their mother lay dead in the market, but born joined as they were, even if he’d known Gapi, Myron figured he might never understand them.
He patted the refuser’s coat and belt, his hands brushing wet shards of glass and shrapnel around the man’s waist. When he found a key ring, he tried all the keys in the twins’ shackles until the chains fell away. Nudging Nico away from the scene, he tossed the chains behind a stall and took the twins’ hands. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Thirteen
Sindra awoke on a pile of pillows with the chain stretched as far as it would go, her tether reaching no farther than the squat hole. With only the haze of dim lamplight, she couldn’t tell if it was night or day, how long she’d slept this time, or how much time had passed since she’d last seen Myron.
Watching Ren perform her duties gave Sindra no idea what life as a purchased slave or concubine would entail for her. Sindra envisioned servitude, being treated with harsh words or commanded about, whipped like a mule, but Megan had left her alone. She hadn’t even spoken to her, so she kept to her pattern.
Sindra nestled in her own area on the floor, as far from Megan’s favorite spot as she could get, and concentrated on being invisible. If she was awake when Megan was in the room, Sindra pretended to sleep. When Megan slept, while Ren worked on metals and leather, fashioning horrible new devices in Megan’s dungeon, Sindra passed the day by staring at the ceiling, ensconced in her pillow fortress in comfort she’d never experienced before.
In the corner of the room, something Sindra could only reach by pulling her chain taut through the air, a table with four legs, each a different ornate spindle, held a pitcher of water, a stein of scog, and an assortment of food from the market, a spread that Ren, among her metalsmithing duties, was required to stock daily.
Since her chain clanked on the pole whenever she walked, Sindra approached the table with caution, only when her thirst drove her or the alluring smells of the snacks compelled her. She surveyed the lumps of blankets and pillows in the room to identify Megan, who slept shrouded in comfort.
Seeing no movement on the fabric sea, she gathered her chain and tiptoed toward the table, letting out slack with each step to keep the noise to a minimum. She poured a cup of water from a pitcher. Keeping her eyes peeled for movement, she gulped the water and panicked as a lump of rugs and pillows shifted in the center of the room. Megan’s head rose up from the pile. Her face bore the marks of smeared powders, her hair a tangled mess. She stumbled to her feet, grabbed the scog, and downed the rest of the pitcher.
“I see you found the goodies.” Megan pulled her hair back into a tail.
Sindra froze, staring into the bottom of her empty water cup. Her mental gears churned as she tried to interpret the tone in Megan’s voice, wondering if she should prepare her body for a strike, the way she did before a discipline rod in Jonesbridge. But Megan wielded her control a different way than the ghosts in Jonesbridge did.
“Let’s have a look at you.” Megan eyed Sindra front to back, top to bottom, and gave her a swat on the backside. “You are quite a lovely. Tonight. After the show, it’s time we have a session in the rumpus room.”
Sindra had scrapped with the railwalkers and fought the ghosts. She had battled with women and men, taking her struggle near to her last breath more than once, but never had her flesh grown cold just by standing near someone. Megan struck Sindra with fear of a spiritual kind, as though too much time spent with her would rot Sindra’s soul to its withered core. But Megan had revealed a weakness that Sindra could exploit. She would try anything to avoid the rumpus room. “I take it you’ve tried your toys on a witch before?”
Megan turned her back to Sindra. “Not knowingly, but it sounds delicious.” She narrowed her eyes at Sindra. “Nice try, but I’m not afraid of anything, my pet.”
Unlike Sindra, Ren had no chain to restrict her movement. When Megan strode off into an adjacent room Ren wandered over to Sindra, clutching a leather strap. “I don’t know how long she’ll keep you around. But let’s get this straight now. I am Megan’s girl. Not you.” Ren tapped the leather strap on her arm
. “You’re…I don’t know…a disposable plaything.”
“You can have her.”
Ren lifted Sindra’s chain and followed it all the way up to Sindra’s waist. “I am the smart one around here. The pretty one. Not you.”
“Tell yourself whatever you want.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Smart, sure.” Sindra shrugged.
“I’m just as desirable as you are.” Ren glared at Sindra.
Megan came back into the room. She sauntered by her primping table and grabbed a handheld mirror. “Ren. Look at you.” Megan held the mirror inches away from Ren’s face. “Now.” She turned the mirror so that both Ren and Sindra could see Sindra’s reflection. “Look at her.”
Sindra, like most Jonesbridge slogs, had avoided the mirror in her domicile. Covered in tarnished blotches and cracks, it had revealed her reflection piecemeal, a mouth here, an eye there. Megan’s mirror spared no detail. It amplified them.
“While you, my dear Ren, are devilishly clever,” Megan nodded to Sindra, “she makes my water boil.” Megan stroked Sindra’s cheek with her fingernail.
“I’m smarter than you think I am.” Sindra jerked away. “I taught myself how to read.”
“Enough. I won’t have my pets fighting.” Megan snapped her fingers. Ren trotted to her side with the palette of face paints, combs, and brushes for the hair and for the face powders. “What did we use to get that blue last night?”
Ren knelt beside Megan and began to paint her toenails.
As Sindra pulled her chain, she heard a noise on the other side of the wall. She held her tether still and cocked her ear. It sounded like whispering. While Megan occupied herself with her own reflection, Sindra ambled toward the sound.
“Sindra,” a voice whispered.
She moved as close as she could until the chain stopped her short.
“Sindra.”
“Rounder?”