by Teresa Rook
“Iskielle was a great diplomat. She traveled everywhere, inside Carnigai and out. Niroek, even Cirrin.”
I nod along, unsure how to handle this sudden enthusiasm. The return to Salis has not sat well with Riksher, but it seems to bring new life to Ennis. He's suddenly full of pride and stories. I watch carefully for the crack of grief, but I don’t sense even an ounce of wistfulness. After less than a day, he's excited to be going home. It must have been difficult for him to set that fire.
I try not to hold it against him, this obsession with the tribe that has hurt my own people so, and to which he doesn't even belong, not truly.
I jolt at the thought. Of course he does. How can I fault a person for being born elsewhere?
“So much of it has been rebuilt in the past two decades.” He’s talking about Salis now. I try to focus on his words. “The spirit of the Chiral people is amazing, what they can do in adversity. That's why it’s not a Dead City, not like Ventrin or Bu’tah. Because everything was remade. Everything to do with the witches was removed.” As were the witches, I’m tempted to say. “Out with the old, in with the new.” He pauses. “Though I wouldn’t blame you for not realizing it. It’s aged fast.”
Probably because all the architects were witches. That’s what happens when you try to recreate something you know nothing about.
“If there’s no tech left there, shouldn’t you be able to grow your own food?”
He shrugs. “It’s no Dead City, but it’s still a part of this world. We do better than most, but there’s tech everywhere. Nothing is safe, not really.”
“Except Niroek,” I say, my voice low.
Ennis raises an eyebrow, apparently not making the connection with the invasion Dyren mentioned. Or perhaps, if I’m being unkind, he just doesn’t care. “Except Niroek.”
I nod, but my lips are pursed. Barnab is full of tech, from the river to the barn to all the machines left to rust in the fields. And every bit of it glows with runes. If Riksher’s theory is correct, how is it that Barnab is the only farm left in Carnigai? Shouldn’t we be faring worse than everywhere else? The more I think about it, the less it makes sense. Riksher can’t be right, or at least it can’t be that simple.
Ennis misreads my sourness and lowers his voice, speaks a little more gently. “What are the Farms like?” he asks.
I consider his question, and it eventually draws a smile to my face. “They're living. That's what strikes me the most, now that I'm out of it. All of this,” I say, gesturing to the beige desert around us, the sparse remains of forest. “You knew it was out here. Barnab is like this around the edges. But you couldn’t have imagined how far it goes. I didn't.”
“So you'd never left the Farms before?”
“Had you ever left Salis?” Even as I ask it, I know the answer. He was a son of the Wolf, and one who stood out. He had to stay at the capital to stay safe. I surprise myself with my defensiveness. “There was always work to be done. And Barnab had everything we needed.”
He nods, then looks shyly over at me. “And now you're about to see the entire world.”
He wants this to make me happy, but do I want to see the world? “I'd rather stay home and help the animals. I'm a vet, you know.” This seems to surprise him. “The cumberwort? Could you have pulled a poultice like that out of your ass?”
“No,” he admits. “But Iskielle probably could have.”
Iskielle was not a vet. She was a diplomat, and quite possibly a tyrant. I resist setting my jaw.
Our conversation peters out as we get nearer to Salis. Ennis wants desperately to enter the city, but he and Riksher know they can’t be seen. We stop on the very edge of town and take cover in the same abandoned building I used on my first night, though it’s a fair bit blacker now. The ash at my feet is still warm.
After the fire and our escape, I expected Salis to be on high alert. I wasn’t sure we’d get anywhere near it, but it’s surprisingly easy to sidle up to. We may have been violently chased out yesterday, but today’s chaos is bigger than us. Smoke still rises from the center of the city, but we see no flames from here. Getting the fire under control must have been difficult, but they managed, likely to the relief of my companions.
I'm the least recognizable, so it's me they send inside. I'm grateful for my dull hair the colour of old bark, and for the smallness that makes me no more remarkable than a child.
The people I pass look different from those staring at me two days ago. My nerves slowly abate with each far-sighted gaze that doesn’t register me. They look around with paranoia, often circling around each other, and more than a few brawls break out on the outskirts of town. Some Chirals carry torches and march around in groups. Others peek out from their windows, shaking their heads or peering out anxiously, but nobody wants to interact with anybody else. The city is heavy with the threat of violence. They all seem a little lost, a little scared.
I slip around the edges of the streets, trying to keep to shadow. The ash smears my feet black. I keep my eyes straight ahead and shoot for the house Ennis told me about, the one at the edge of the square with the sunset tapestry in the window.
The woman who answers my knock is weary, but also slightly manic. She holds one arm tight across her chest, the other gripping the partially-opened door hard enough to turn her knuckles white. The look she gives is me too distracted to be a glare, but it's close.
“Ennis sent me,” I say, ignoring the stomach-clenching panic of what if he's wrong, what if she's not his friend. “He needs your help.”
She narrows her eyes at me. I try to look as earnest as possible. Do I want to be pitiful, to entice her protection? Or fierce, to show that I will fight for Ennis, too?
She doesn't open the door any wider, but she does step behind it. I squeeze through the opening into a house far nicer than ours ever was, with white plaster walls instead of mud-patched brick. The woman, around thirty, leads me into the next room, and my mouth fills with an acid distaste. To have a separate room just for your door!
“Would you like a scone?” the woman asks, drawing me out of my observations. I shake my head. “I ate with Ennis and Riksher a few hours ago, but thanks.”
“Don't mind if I do, then.” She returns from what I assume is the kitchen with a plate of four little pastries, each with a different colour of jam on top. “I'm a bit of a stress eater, I'm afraid.”
She pops one into her mouth, the red jam disappearing between eerily white teeth.
“Look,” I say, “Ennis needs a favour.” I'm careful to drop his name into every sentence. “He says you have special access to the silos.”
She purses her lips, then speaks. “My husband is a guard there.”
“That's what Ennis says. He's asking your help smuggling a cart out of the city.”
“You're asking. I don't see Ennis here.”
Careful. She's on our side, but Ennis isn’t sure about her husband, and he doesn’t know which loyalty runs deeper.
“He's here. He sent me because people aren't looking for me. Or won't recognize me as easily, at least.”
Pause. Then: “Oh. Oh. You're that girl.” She leans violently backwards. “The one who killed Iskielle.”
“Ennis said you wouldn’t fall for his brother’s rhetoric.”
She looks a bit abashed, then smiles demurely and raises her palms in a gesture of helplessness. “I know only what the Wolf says to be true.”
I nearly choke. “Dyren's the new Wolf?” My tribe suffered enough under Iskielle. What are we in for now?
“Of course,” she purrs. Did I hear the click of a lock when she closed the door behind me? “Someone had to step up.”
Panic swells at the front of my throat. It makes my tongue heavy. This woman is not our friend.
“So where is Ennis now?” She looks out her wide window, fingers tap-tapping on the table between us. “Is he close?”
“I don't know…” I pretend to trail off and make a point of focusing my eyes just past her sho
ulder. I add a few nervous blinks. My next words come out in a different cadence, chopped and broken, high and desperate. Let her think I’ve come to a big decision, that I’m going out on a limb with the truth. “I thought telling you I was working with Ennis would help. But…I'm actually just here for me. For my tribe, I mean.”
This seems to draw her interest again. Because she's intrigued by my motives? Or because it's so obvious I'm lying?
“Trying to steal food, are you? What will you do with it? Sell it? Exploit us further?”
“What? No. I haven’t exploited anyone. I just need to feed my tribe.”
Tribe,” she mocks. I don't know what she’s implying. I don't like being in this house.
“If you won't help me,” I say, faking bravado, “I'll find someone who will.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” She sounds like a clucking hen. “You've asked me to commit a crime. You're not going anywhere.”
That's that. All I'm going to get here is threatened. I stand and she mirrors me, thinking she can hold me here. I feign a break for the exit and she lunges, off-balance. I step hard on the top of her back foot and roll forward before she can fall on top of me. She howls from the floor as I vault over her. The lock on the door slides back easily and I pause. We lock eyes, and I stoop to snag a pair of blue boots from the floor. Then I run.
By the time she's on her feet, I’m halfway down the block.
“He’ll find you,” she shouts after me. “You all will pay.”
#####
“Iyza. Huh.” Ennis tries to hold a neutral expression, but the hurt on his face is like the shadow of a passing cloud. Dark and unmissable, then gone.
“I wanted to make her feel bad,” I say, staring at my newly-shod feet. “Guilt her about how much trust you had in her. But it’s probably best if she thinks I was on my own.”
“She'll have told her husband,” Riksher adds from a short distance away. “We have no chance of getting near the silos now.”
“Hey, I'm sorry, okay? You're acting like I botched this on purpose.”
He shrugs and twists an apple this way and that, examining its wrinkly skin. He takes a bite. When he speaks, it's around the flesh. “It's nothing to me. This was your condition.”
I tell myself not to rise to his baiting, but I'm not that strong. I stomp over and knock the apple out of his hand. It rolls along the ground, collecting sand. Riksher follows it with his eyes instead of looking at me when I speak. “You need my help. You need to stop treating me like everything I say is stupid.”
He reaches for the apple and examines it again, this time with a frown. “You'd think someone so concerned about famine wouldn't waste food.”
“Don't change the subject,” I say, anger already starting to subside into uncertainty. Did he just call me a hypocrite? “You need me, and I'll help you. But we need to make sure my tribe is taken care of first.”
“And what would you have me do, Darga? Dyren has taken over command of Salis. Our one ally, you've managed to alienate.”
“Bull,” I say, but he just talks over me. I seethe. That woman was never going to help us.
“High alert is now going to be even higher, especially at the silos. It's over for now. There is nothing we can do.”
“We. But you? What if you go yourself? You may not be in favour right now, but you're the Wolf's son. What will anyone do to you? Even your brother? You're older. He respects you.”
He snorts. “What, that little show of submission outside the castle? Darga, please. You're not stupid. You didn't fall for that.”
I deflate. He's right. Dyren was just putting on a show.
“It hurts he can be so calculating so soon,” Ennis says. “There's Dyren for you, twisting a tragedy to suit his agenda.”
“Not so different from me, there,” Riksher says. I'm no longer a part of this conversation. It's between brothers. “My mother’s body is barely cold, and I'm setting off on the big adventure I've been planning for a decade.” He says big adventure with a self-aware sneer.
“It's different. Dyren is taking what he's always coveted. You're taking on a difficult and thankless task for the good of your tribe. For all the tribes in Carnigai.”
“I wonder how many of them will see it that way.” A few seconds of silence pass, and then he turns to me, an efficient compartmentalizer. “Well, Darga? Are we ready to set out for Barnab?”
“What for?” I imagine returning empty-handed. “I have nothing to bring them. There's only one way to help my people, and that's by ending this drought.”
Or finding a way to work around it. Either way, the answer doesn’t lie in Barnab. It lies in Niroek, and in the witch trains that will being us there.
He raises an eyebrow. “Am I hearing this correctly? Do you want to help us without first extorting us?”
“I want to help my people.”
A smile. “So do we.”
Allies
eleven
The sky hovers cloudless between blue and gray, and I itch to be away from it, to find cover somewhere. The tracks lead in a solitary line to the horizon, and everything else is flat and empty. The yellows and browns of the desert mess with my perception of distance. I know there are pockets of development: Barnab, Salis, Bu’tah in the north, the sinking city of Rumath on the Nirokean border. But the space between the Dead Cities feels infinite. The sparsity of our world is chilling.
After nearly two days of riding, rubble starts to glint at me through the tall grasses at the edge of the tracks. I squint to be sure, and then I point it out to Riksher. He dismounts to investigate, coming back with a wooden wheel that looks like it was on the receiving end of an axe. Its thin spokes have been warped by weather or time, and there’s a short nub of wood where the axle would have been. It’s old, sun-dried, and beginning to splinter along the edges, but the silver dancing within makes it beautiful.
Riksher hands it to me as though I need to touch it to confirm what my eyes are telling me. I humour him, pretending to inspect it. “Yup,” I say. “This is tech.” I hand it back to him. “And there’s more of it, scattered up ahead.”
He looks at Ennis, who looks around and shrugs. “Don’t look at me,” Ennis says. “If Darga says it’s tech, it’s tech.”
Riksher frowns, and I guess what he’s thinking.
“I told you,” I say. “It’s not just towering machines. I promise you, this wheel is crawling with runes.”
I dismount and look for more, pointing out bits here and there. We continue along the tracks, and our horses plod along behind us, heavy with supplies. “What are you going to do with it all?” I ask after Riksher returns with an unwieldy metal pole that swims with silver.
He drops it in a pile by my feet. “We burn it.”
I blink. “Burn it? Really? That’s your big plan?”
He shakes the tension out of his hands, flexes his fingers. “What would you do?”
I hadn’t thought about it, and I shouldn’t have let this show. I come up with a bullshit alternative. I have to be on their side. “Bury it?”
Riksher frowns. “The idea is to get it away from the earth. We bury it, doesn’t that just seem like a more direct method of contamination?”
“I guess.” I’m not fond of burning, though. I don’t know what I expected them to do. Just mark it all on a map, and declare those areas off-limits? Dump it all in Niroek? There is no good option.
I’ll play along with the little stuff.
“Alright,” I say, trying to cloak my uneasiness in nonchalance. There are no trains here. I have some time to figure out a plan. “So we burn it all.”
Riksher starts a fire. The wood catches almost immediately and burns slow, but the metal only glows pink. We leave the fire unattended and continue forward, me pointing out more and more instances of tech and the men dragging each one back to the fire.
“What are these all doing here?” Ennis murmurs as I help him with the ornate wooden claw from a table leg or the edge of a chest.
Nothing here is complete, it’s just shards, unidentifiable debris that would be no good even to a witch anymore. And it just keeps multiplying, getting denser and denser the further we go.
And then, on the horizon, I see a whole ribbon of silver. I shield my eyes in case it’s just the glaring sun, but no, it’s definitely runes. I pause, wondering if I should leave it. If I’ll be leading them to something we can’t afford to destroy.
But there’s also the chance they’re right. That burning this is our best option. I take a deep breath and hope this isn’t a train. “Up there,” I call, pointing. Riksher readjusts his grip on a chunk of debris and follows my finger. “That’s where it’s coming from. There must be a Dead City here.”
“Can’t be. Akisir isn’t for another two days.”
I shrug. “Well, there’s something up there, and I’d bet you anything it’s where all this tech is coming from.”
“It must just be a tribe settlement.”
“So? Your mission is to destroy the runes, remember? Does it matter if we find them in a Dead City or a little settlement? Runes are runes. This is what we’re out here for.”
Riksher still hesitates. I raise an eyebrow and look to Ennis for explanation. He holds his palms out apologetically. “It’s off the tracks.”
“It’s off the…” I look down and follow the tracks to the horizon. Sure enough, they veer far to the right of the silver ribbon. “And that means?”
“We don’t go off the tracks,” Riksher says with confidence.
“Why not?”
“The desert isn’t safe.”
I blink at him. I understood at night, but in the light of day… “It’s flat. We can see for miles. We can’t get lost.”
“That’s not the point,” he says. He points to the tracks at his feet. “Chirals travel these tracks constantly. This is how we get around, this is how we keep watch on the other tribes. This is where it’s safe. We go out there,” he says, “and we don’t know what we’re getting into. Bandits, who knows. It isn’t safe.”
I hold back a gurgling laugh. So this is how the witch woman made it to Barnab, past the ever-vigilant Chirals on contract to protect us. She just used routes the Chirals were afraid to monitor.