Miss Dallatan gave him a few jobs for coin, which was good, since all his food ration cards were going to the Henáca family. Not that coin did him any good in getting petrol for the cycle. No amount of coin changed the fuel ration card, and his was pitiful. The jobs were mostly delivery—a bundle here, a package there, nothing that seemed explicitly illegal from what he could tell—but the tank of the ’goiz 960 was getting light, and he wasn’t going to be able to put anything in it for several more days.
No wonder Nália had gotten into the petrol thieving racket. She needed to keep her own tank full.
When his ration day came up, he drove down to the fuel station at the bottom of the hill, at Circle Hiatea, with its statue of the Sehosian general of the same name prominently displayed in the center. The jifozi line was immense, though the pumps for rhique and llipe sat unused. He waited in line for an hour, until the service attendant came out and said the jifozi line was shut down. No more fuel rationed out to them.
While waiting, after thumbing through a magazine that gushed over Lathéi and her fashion choices, he had chatted up a pair of young jifozi women—real cycle cats like Nália, decked out in tight-riveted raw denim pants and jackets, shaded visors, and painted helmets. When the petrol station worker announced ration was used up for the day, the cats said they knew another one in the 12th that they could try. He rode with them to check it out, only to be stopped by patrol at the other side of the circle. They checked everyone’s cards and declared they had no cause to cross into the 12th unless they had legitimate business there.
Fortunately, one of those patrol officers was a fellow named Andorn, from Wenthi’s cadet cohort. Wenthi gave him a wink as he told them they were getting courier jobs with a shop in the 12th, and they would get their transit cards soon, but they needed to fuel their cycles here to be able to work. Andorn clued in, and told them they could pass, but not before giving Wenthi a clap across the head and telling him not to think he was getting away with any bullshit.
They were able to fuel up—or at least half the tank, since that’s all he was rationed—and get back into the 14th without trouble. The girls mentioned a party out by the trenches in Ako Favel, and that gave Nália a moment of panic. Wenthi went out there with them, hoping it would give him some sort of lead to the cycle gangs and the petrol thieves. These ladies seemed like the type to be involved in that.
Instead it was just a burned-out lot, with cheap carbons, decent corn, and a loud band of guitarists and fiddlers. Wenthi soon found himself whispering to his spirits to send the patrol to bust it up. Those whispers were answered around seven on the fifty, as a dozen patrol cycles came roaring up. He got grabbed by a pair of patrol, who gave him a few smacks and threw him down, kicking him in the dirt a few times. The kicks weren’t too hard—again, Andorn was in the group, and had obviously cued them in to make a show of it. It probably looked good for anyone who noticed, but it still stung. Someone threw a carbon bottle that cracked one of the other patrol across the head, and most of the group ran off after them. Andorn stayed behind for a moment.
“Assignment?” he asked in a low voice.
“Yeah,” Wenthi said.
Andorn gave a fake kick. “That’ll probably help you out. Good luck.” He dashed off.
Wenthi got on his feet and stumbled over to his ’goiz. One of the girls was by her cycle, kicking it up.
“You all right?”
“I’ll make it,” he said as he got on his cycle. “But I’m gonna roar out of here.”
“Same,” she said. “See you on the stone.” She jetted off, ripping through the lot so she could kick a wave of dust up at some of the patrol before flying away.
Wenthi didn’t waste time getting out. Not that it would matter. It was clear this assignment was going to take as long as it would take.
24
Twenty days had passed, and the Garden Season of Komu passed into the Autumn Season of Tian. This usually meant the heat breaking, cool winds whipping through the streets. But this year, it was still damned hot. Wenthi had mimicked the other jifoz on Street Xaomico during the day, often walking about in cottons with his arms out, if not shirtless, and definitely no hat. That part was the strangest for him to get used to. Some of the other fellows occasionally wore a beat-up head duster or wide-brim, but it was hardly common or custom in these parts. Not wearing a hat was how to pass as a jifoz in this part of town.
Wenthi had known that was the custom; he had seen it plenty on his patrol cruises. He had seen it as a sign of how the people in Outtown had no manners. The jifozi who worked Intown always were respectful, but here? It wasn’t done. So he didn’t do it.
When running on his cycle—which was less and less often, given the status of his fuel tank—he would just wear Nália’s denim coat with nothing underneath. That was a look that Partinez and quite a few others seemed to like, so he kept it up. It felt odd and uncomfortable, but it was befitting Renzi Llionorco.
He had nothing lined up for the day—Urka Nili had no deliveries, and he still had no line on the petrol thieves. He climbed down to the street, planning on heading to the coinbox outside the carbon shop so he could make a check-in call to Paulei, and then sit out front with Partinez and the Henáca boys, see where that led him today.
The curbway outside his apartment was lined with dry flowers, forming a path down the street, across the zocalo, and into the temple. Anizé Henáca was the only one in the shop, which was odd for this time, and she was wearing a bright blue wrap dress with a woven green shawl. Also, she was hardly minding the shop, instead her focus was on a dingy mirror as she put up her hair in complicated braids with dried flowers entwined in them.
“What’s going on?” Wenthi asked.
“Morning,” she said absently. She turned to give him a brief glance, and he saw half of her face was painted with a white skeleton pattern, like the spirit icons in the temple niches, with accents of red and purple around her eye. “That’s what you’re wearing?”
“For what?” he asked.
“Didn’t you—you met Osceba, right? Narli Osceba, the one with the engine shop at the bottom of the alley?”
He had, briefly. Tendiz Henáca had mentioned that Osceba and his oldest daughter worked on cycles if he ever had a problem. “Yeah, in passing.”
“Well, today’s the Spirit Dance for his youngest daughter, Ziva.”
Memories flooded up, not his own. Images of Nália, when she was fifteen, in a white dress, flowers of every color crowning her braided hair, her face painted and jeweled. Her uncle—really just the father of the family she lived with—walking her on the floral path to the temple, while one of the neighborhood women took her mother’s role of wailing. Her Spirit Dance.
That stirred his own memories. Lathéi at fifteen, in a white dress, while her father led her in with other young men and women from her cohort and their fathers. Led into a ballroom for a presentation, before the heads of the prime families of Ziaparr, so each of them could be blessed. Wenthi had only watched from outside the ballroom, forbidden from entry.
When Wenthi had been fifteen, Alliance troops were the only thing marching through the streets of Ziaparr, maintaining discipline and order. Strict curfews and travel restrictions. No one celebrated in public that year, especially not the shameful rhique son of one of the city’s Prime Families.
“Are you all right?” Anizé asked.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just thinking about . . . it doesn’t matter. I didn’t know about it. I’ll get out of your—”
“What, you aren’t going to come?”
“I don’t know Mister Osceba or his daughter . . .”
“Urka Niliza should have told you, given you . . . right, she wanted us to be your people. Never mind. You’re part of this street, you should come.” She sighed. “Go to Mister Anlezri’s fasai round the street and tell him I said you need to borrow something for t
he Spirit Dance.”
“All right,” Wenthi said, though he had only met Anlezri—an old tailor with bad eyes—a few times at the carbon.
“Then come back here and I’ll paint you to be my escort. Better you than a nephew, after all.”
“All right,” he said. While Nália’s memories gave him some sense of what was happening, what to expect, elements were still a bit fuzzy. Best to go along.
Anlezri’s shop was closed—almost everyone’s was today—but he opened up when Wenthi knocked.
“Llionorco, hmm?” the old man asked. “Am I in some trouble?”
“No,” Wenthi said. “Anizé Henáca sent me to borrow something for the Spirit Dance? I don’t have the right clothes.”
“Oh, yes,” Anlezri said with his eyes brightening. “You’re lucky you caught me. Come in, come in.” He led Wenthi into his dim shop. He rummaged through a few boxes.
“Thank you, I don’t want to—”
“No bother, no bother, this is important,” he said. “Are you escorting Anizé?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Lovely woman she is. You thinking of fathering with her?”
“I hadn’t specifically,” Wenthi said.
“I would, were I your age,” he said. He let out a deep sigh. “I wasted too much time, you know. Only fathered one boy. He would have been a few years older—it doesn’t matter. But I never got to walk a daughter to her dance. Think about that, Mister Llionorco. You should have fathered a child or two at your age.”
“Not in this city,” he said, finding a tearful choke coming to his throat. He wasn’t even sure where that rush of emotion came from.
Nália. Thinking about her father. Arrested when she was a girl, she never saw him again.
“Here,” the old man said. He came over with plain white linen slacks and vest. “Very respectful.”
On Anlezri’s prompting, Wenthi stripped off his denim and put on the linens. He was about to ask about shoes, but he was stopped by a flash of Nália’s memory. Her uncle walking on the flowers in bare feet. No shoes.
“Nice,” Anlezri said. “I’ll hold on to these things so you have to come back for them.”
“Fair,” Wenthi said.
“You better hurry,” Anlezri said. “Bells will chime in half a sweep.”
Wenthi went back to the crystal shop, where Anizé had finished her hair—which was an astounding spectacle of braids and flowers and purple ribbons decorated with geode crystals. She was quite stunning.
“Very nice,” she said. “Hands.”
Taking her meaning, he presented his hands to her. She went to work painting skeletal bones on his hands. “You’ve not had many of these, have you.”
“Where I grew up, we . . . we lost a lot of our daughters and nieces to the purges, you know?”
She nodded sagely. “Our side-brothers were conscripted into the army. Didn’t make it. In this patch, we . . . we all have our people but we know we don’t all have people. And I have nephews but . . . no nieces. No daughters ever.”
“Ever?” he asked.
“Did that old knocker ask if you were going to father me any children?”
“He mentioned it.”
She chuckled ruefully and put down her brushes. “You’re welcome to try, but you won’t have any luck.” She raised up her blouse to show her belly, with a jagged scar tearing across it. “Just so you don’t get any expectations.”
“What happened?” he asked as she dropped the blouse. She went back to work painting his hands.
“My own souvenir from when they bombed the city. Shrapnel tore through me. Still have a piece in there, doctors said. Said I was lucky to survive it. Spirits of Apeilla and Ivala were looking over me.” She pointed to the top shelf, above the crystal displays, where a small altar with two old tinplates sat with skeleton icons.
“They were?” Wenthi asked as he took a closer look at the women depicted in the tinplate. Two hard-looking women, definitely baniz, dressed in tie-up wraps he had only seen in history books. The tinplates had probably been taken during the height of the Shattered Dynasties.
“Great-great aunts,” she said. “Watched over my mother and her mother. Both of them had no children, so . . .” She shook her brush at him. “Always honor the childless aunts, my friend. If you have any, put them on your shelf, one way or another, and make sure they are not forgotten.”
Wenthi had had no aunts. Mother had no siblings, full or half or of any kind. She barely had any history that she spoke of at all. Sometimes it seemed like her life began as a young woman when the Second Trans ended and he was born. All she had been, all she ever was, was Angú Tungét, the sole matriarch and representative of the Tungét Root in the Prime Families, the lines from the noble houses of the Sehosian Empire who first colonized Pinogoz.
“Did I touch a spot with that?” she asked.
“Thinking about my mother,” he said. “She . . .”
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I run my mouth too much. My sister always says so.”
The temple bells rang out.
“We should be ready,” she said. “Come on out.”
On the street, people came out of their shops and homes, all dressed in what were likely their nicest clothes. Isilla Henáca and her boys had dresses, stoles, and vests of the same blue and green as Anizé wore. The boys had the same patterns of bones on their hands and arm that had been painted on Wenthi, and Isilla had half her face painted similar to Anizé.
Glancing back at Anizé, Wenthi understood the distinctions of the skeletal designs on each of their faces. They were evoking the great-great aunts in the tinplate, Apeilla and Ivala.
As the crowds gathered on the curb, a young woman in dark denim stalked down the street on the floral path, singing out with a haunted voice. Wenthi knew the tune—Zoyua and the others had often hummed it while working in Mother’s house—but he had never heard it sung with heartrending anguish. The young woman was a figure of mourning—her face painted mostly black instead of white, and the flowers in her hair were decidedly dead.
[She mourns the end of youth. A mother crying that her child is now grown.]
“Is that the mother?” he whispered to Anizé. The woman seemed too young to have a daughter who was grown.
Anizé whispered back, “Older daughter, Ajiñe. Their mother . . . isn’t around. So she’s playing the role.”
[Just like me. How many mothers actually get to wail for their child’s walk in this city?]
Then Ziva Osceba came into view with her father guiding her arm, and she was a vision. Her dress of red and violet was resplendent with flowers, including a long cloak woven of living vines and flowers that trailed behind her. Her face was painted in a full spirit mask, white bone and black eyes, dressed with red and violet stones on her brows and cheeks. What stood out stronger than anything else was her crown.
The crown had been sculpted from steel and chrome—clearly scraps from Osceba’s shop that had been lovingly repurposed and crafted into something beautiful—dressed with flowers to the top of its high peaks, towering almost a meter above her head.
And she walked, holding her head with serious dignity, until they reached the temple doors. The people of the neighborhood all followed behind, walking with the same deliberate pace. Some raised their own voices, joining Ajiñe in her lamentation.
Ajiñe reached the temple first, opening the doors carefully for Ziva as the young girl approached, her pace remaining steady.
“Take your last steps as a child,” Mister Osceba said as they reached the doors. He released her arm as she went up the steps into the temple. As she went in, Ajiñe removed her shoes—she had been the only person on the street wearing any—and placed them at the top of the temple steps. Then she began to clap her hands: a hard, repeating staccato rhythm, which everyone els
e in the zocalo matched. The clapping built up, louder and faster. Wenthi joined in, partly from instinct of Nália’s memories. He had never seen this, not up close, but he knew exactly how it needed to go, what would happen next.
He had seen all this before, of course. He had seen the painted faces, the floral dresses, the clapping and coming dance. He had seen it from his patrol cycle, cruising through the Outtown senjas. Putting out the call to disperse.
Even as he clapped, he felt the urge to join in clashing with the shameful need to break this up. Instinct kept telling him this was blocking the streets, disrupting the neighborhood, creating a nuisance. This display didn’t need to be so . . . public.
Ziva emerged from the temple and stepped into her sister’s shoes. Ajiñe took the crown off her sister’s head and unhooked the floral cape, letting it drop to the ground. She kissed Ziva on the cheek, leaving a black mark behind, and whispered something. Ziva giggled and descended the steps with confidence. She reached the crowd and quickly grabbed the hands of two of the young men—one of them Mando Henáca—and pulled them into the center of the zocalo. Clinging to their skeletal hands, she spun and danced to the clapping rhythm. Now the singing became loud and joyful to match the rhythm.
Wenthi joined it, as he knew the words, even though they were in Old Zapi.
Nália knew the words.
She dances with dead ones.
They will watch her every day.
Her steps are always guided.
The path she walks is guarded.
She will join them too someday.
Then Anizé grabbed his hands and pulled him into the zocalo, and everyone in the neighborhood—everyone—seemed to join in on the dance.
Everyone danced, hands together, laughing and singing, and Ajiñe ran down the steps into the zocalo and swept her sister off her feet and held her in a tight embrace. Everyone cheered.
Then the radios—all the radios on the food carts and vendors in the zocalo—turned on, speaking all with one voice.
“Street Xaomico dances with the spirits of tomorrow, and the dead smile upon the faithful. But cold eyes are coming to see, roaring up to the top of the mountain. Be missing, be missing.”
The Velocity of Revolution Page 13