by Pete Hautman
The buildings facing the street ranged from ramshackle to dilapidated, a mixture of shops, homes, and structures with no apparent purpose. None were more than a single story high.
As a Pure Girl, Lia had rarely ventured beyond the walls of the palace, but she knew the story of how Romelas had come to be. After the Lah Sept cast the Medicants from ancient Mayo, the Lord sent a multitude of cleansing storms across the prairie, leveling the city. Only the Cydonian Pyramid had weathered the storms. The surviving Lah Sept crawled from the wreckage and built Romelas upon the ashes and rubble of the old.
The priests had declared that no new structure could rise higher than men could reach. The Builders’ Guild employed specially trained acrobats to stand upon one another’s shoulders, thereby extending the allowable building height.
“Where a larger building is planned, taller and more agile men are sent to perform the measuring,” the Lait Pike had once told her. “When the priests’ temple was constructed, it is said that a hand of men balanced upon one another.” The temple was the tallest building in Romelas, save for the pyramid itself.
As a result, the city spread out for miles, a carpet of humble structures reaching to the horizon. She might wander for days, lost in the tangle of streets and alleys.
A gnarled old woman was limping toward her, an enormous wicker basket on her back. Lia stepped aside to give the woman room to pass.
“Thank you, Yar,” said the woman.
“You’re welcome,” said Lia, realizing as she spoke that her words had been in English. The woman glanced back at her with a curious expression. Lia called after her, “Why do you call me Yar?”
The woman stopped and looked Lia up and down. “You are not a Yar?”
“I am,” said Lia. “I wondered how you knew.”
“Look at yourself,” the old woman said. “With your freakish hair and outlandish speech. Who but a Yar would wear such a costume, painted with strange glyphs?”
“Oh,” Lia said, looking down at her Eat Vegan or Die T-shirt and blue jeans. She had forgotten how odd she must look. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said the woman. “We should all be Yars.” She shifted the basket to a more comfortable position and hobbled on down the street.
I am a Yar now, Lia thought. It still felt unreal, as if she were pretending. She thought about the Yars who had tutored her — Yar Song, with her missing eye and scars striping her back; Yar Satima, with her tics and babbling; Yar Junot, with the one hand . . . She had always thought of the Yars as those who paid a great price for their independence and strength.
Do I deserve to be a Yar? she wondered. She had entered the Gate whole and returned the same way.
There was one way to find out. She had to find the Yars.
The sky lightened, and the city came slowly to life. Shopkeepers opened their stalls and bodegas. Small, unruly gangs of children appeared. Carts drawn by donkeys, horses, and llamas clattered along the potholed and rutted roadways. Lia traded her belt to a seller of cotton goods for a dark blue hooded serape. The woman also wanted Lia’s shoes, a pair of Nikes.
“I will pay you twenty copper coins,” the woman said.
Lia drew back. “You number your coins?” she said, shocked. Lia knew that the people of Romelas used copper and silver coins for commerce, but as a Pure Girl, she had never had to trade for goods. It had never occurred to her that such transactions would involve numbers and counting. Did the priests know of this? Of course they did, just as they knew that the Boggsian devices they employed were products of digital science — the imaging tables, their armas, their batons. The anti-digital proscriptions meant little where their own convenience was concerned.
The woman laughed. “How else am I to trade? If my numbers offend you, think of it as a handful of copper.”
“Are you not afraid of Plague?” Lia said.
“Plague? My life is a plague. Sell me your shoes or be off with you.”
“You want me to go barefoot?”
“I will throw in a pair of sandals,” the woman said.
“How much is the . . . the number you said . . . ? How much is it worth?”
“Twenty coppers will buy you a hand of meals and perhaps a bed for the night.”
Lia gave up her shoes for the coins and a pair of poorly made rubber-and-rope sandals. The woman seemed so pleased that Lia suspected she had been cheated. She walked off in her new sandals, which felt as if they might fall apart at any moment.
A corn vendor sold her an ear of roasted corn seasoned with lime juice and hot red pepper in exchange for half of her coins. The serape seller had somewhat overstated their value, Lia thought.
“Haven’t I seen you selling on the zocalo?” she asked the corn vendor.
“Not since the last blood moon,” he told her. “It’s too dangerous now. No one goes there.”
“Why?” Lia asked.
The man shook his head. “Politics,” he said disgustedly. “If you want to know why, ask the priests.”
“I fear the priests.”
“Then you must ask the Yars.”
“Then I will go to the convent,” Lia said. She took a bite of corn. It was tough and undercooked, but it tasted good.
“You will find few Yars in the convent,” said the corn seller. “They have fled.”
“Fled to where?”
The man shrugged and swept his arm to include all of the universe. “Everywhere, or so they say.”
“How do I get to the zocalo from here?” Lia asked.
The man gave her directions, then asked, “How is your corn?”
“Somewhat raw,” Lia said.
“It is early in the day. Fine cooking takes time.” He reached into the fire chamber of his roaster with a blackened stick and stirred the coals.
The convent of the Yars was located directly across the zocalo from the temple of the priests. Lia approached the building from the side, staying out of sight of the temple, and concealed herself behind a hedge of oleander. As the sun rose, the shadows between the buildings shrank. The plaza remained empty. She saw no signs of life. The convent, occupied by the Yars since the earliest days of Romelas, appeared to be abandoned.
Across the zocalo, a pair of deacons bearing armas emerged from the priests’ temple. They surveyed the plaza, then walked slowly around its perimeter, peering suspiciously into the doorways and windows of the surrounding buildings. Lia pressed back into the bushes and waited for them to pass. After circling the plaza, the deacons returned to the temple. Lia left the shelter of the bushes and approached the side wall of the convent. She climbed the low wall and looked over the top into the courtyard gardens. The once carefully tended flowers were trampled and brown. A heavy limestone bench had been thrown through a large, many-paned window. Shards of broken glass hung from the window frame and were scattered across the flagstone walk. She dropped silently onto a bed of crushed pansies, crossed the garden to a partially open door, and pushed through, wincing at the creak from its hinges.
Silence. If any Yars remained, they were deep within the building. Lia crept down a hallway, stopping every few steps to listen. She heard only the chirping of sparrows that had flown in through the broken windows, the sound of her own breathing, and the rubber soles of her sandals scuffing the limestone tiles.
The hallway led to an open atrium with a fountain at its center. The fountain was not working; the water in the pool was stagnant and green with algae. A sudden movement caught her eye — she saw the tail of a rat disappear behind a row of dead potted plants.
Continuing through the deserted building, she came at last to Yar Song’s dojo. Except for a patina of dust on the mats and a few leaves that had blown in from outside, the dojo was unchanged, possibly because it contained nothing breakable. She walked out the back door of the dojo into the garden where she had had her last conversation with Yar Song. The artificial stream was dry. Lia sat on the small bridge over the dead stream and considered her options. The corn vendor had
told her that the Yars had fled to the country. She had never been outside Romelas. The farmland surrounding Mayo had been vast, expanses of crops interrupted by tiny patches of woodland, whereas Hopewell had been a checkerboard of smaller fields, with houses and barns dotting the landscape. She had no idea what might await her here, nor how she would find the Yars.
The sound of male voices broke into her thoughts. Lia jumped to her feet and ran back to the dojo. She stood in the doorway and listened.
“You saw a cat or something,” said one voice.
“I’m telling you, it was a Yar. This place is riddled with bolt holes.”
The voices were coming closer. Silently, Lia crossed the room to the opposite doorway and peeked out. The long hallway was empty. She moved quickly down the hall toward the back of the convent. Her new sandals were difficult to run in — the rubber sole of the right one was already separating. She settled for a fast walk, trying to be as quiet as possible. The back entrance of the convent was standing open, a rectangle of daylight at the end of the dim hallway. Lia stopped in the doorway and looked out onto a small tiled patio fronting a street. She heard a rustle behind her and spun around. A deacon stood in the hallway a few paces away.
“Come here, girl,” he said.
Lia ran out onto the patio but made it only a few steps before the floppy toe of her right sandal caught on an uneven tile and sent her sprawling. The deacon was on her in an instant, grabbing her ankle and dragging her roughly back toward the convent. Lia kicked at his hand. The deacon roared and grabbed both her ankles, and swung her against one of the stone urns flanking the doorway. The impact sent a shock of pain through her entire body, and for a moment, she couldn’t think or move. She felt hands grab under her armpits and drag her into the dimly lit hallway. The deacon threw her roughly onto the cold tile floor.
“Are you a Pure Girl or a Yar?” he asked.
Lia, feigning unconsciousness, did not reply.
The deacon spit on the floor next to her head. “Yar, I would say, with that outfit. Master Gheen will want to talk to you.” He kicked his toe under her side and rolled her onto her back. Lia kept her eyes slitted. There was only one of him, but he had a baton. As he leaned over her, she kicked out, hitting his wrist with the floppy toe of her right sandal. The baton left his hand and spun though the air. Lia sprang to her feet and drove the heel of her palm into his nose. The deacon let out a grunt of pain and stumbled back. Lia snatched up the baton.
Blood running from his nose, the deacon came at her again. He stopped, seeing the baton in her hand. Lia backed slowly toward the doorway.
“I just want to leave,” she said. “Let me go, and I won’t hurt you.”
“You have already hurt me, Yar.”
“I am going now,” Lia said. As she backed out into the sunlight, she saw the expression on the deacon’s face change from frustration to triumph. She spun around to see another deacon on the patio, leveling an arma at her.
Lia hurled the baton at his head, expecting to be incinerated at any moment. The baton missed him, but she heard a sound like a stone striking wood. The deacon’s head jerked to the side, and he collapsed. She whirled to face the deacon whose nose she had bloodied. He was looking around frantically, seeking whatever had brought down his companion. His eyes widened an instant before something struck him dead center in the forehead. The deacon’s eyes rolled up, and he pitched forward onto his face. The thing that had hit him — a stone the size of a cherry — rattled across the patio tiles.
“You move like a sick turtle, Yar.” A woman stepped out from the shadow of the oleander hedge. She was holding a slingshot in her hand. There was something wrong with her right eye. Lia gasped in recognition.
“Welcome back,” said Yar Song.
YAR SONG PICKED UP THE BATON, TOSSED IT TO LIA, and took the arma for herself.
“This way,” she said. Hidden behind the oleander hedge was a slot in the convent wall. Yar Song turned sideways and disappeared into the opening. Lia followed, expelling the air in her lungs to make herself fit. If the slot in the wall had been narrower by the width of a finger, she could not have squeezed through. The narrow passage widened after a few steps, and she could breathe again.
“Being small has its advantages,” Song said. She switched on a hand lamp — some sort of Boggsian technology. “The priests will take this convent apart brick by brick. We had best keep moving.”
They descended a short flight of steps to another passageway. Yar Song was moving almost at a run. Lia struggled to keep up. Her hours of wandering the streets were catching up with her; her legs were wobbly, and it had been far too long since she had slept. The floppy sandals didn’t help — several times she stumbled and almost fell. The passageway dead-ended at a blank wall. Yar Song pushed her fingers into a crevice and tugged. A block of stone swung out, revealing an opening. They squeezed through. Yar Song closed the entrance behind them.
“We are safe, for the moment,” she said, and continued down the sloped tunnel.
Lia followed her for a few paces, then stopped. “Wait.”
Song turned. Lia did not want to admit how exhausted she was. She felt as if she couldn’t move another step.
“Tell me what has happened here.”
“I will tell you everything, but we should keep moving.”
“You said we were safe here.”
“Look around you,” Song said, gesturing at the crudely hacked tunnel walls. “Your choices are few. Forward, or back.”
Lia crossed her arms, feeling a stubbornness rise within her. “Neither,” she said. “I want to know what is going on. The zocalo is deserted. The priests fired at me. Why did those deacons attack me? What happened at the palace? Why is the convent empty? Why are the people of Romelas using numbers again? Where are the Pure Girls? Where are the other Yars? Why won’t you answer my questions?”
Yar Song regarded her with a pained smile. “That is all?”
“It’s a start,” Lia said.
“I see. If you can walk a bit farther, I might answer your questions in a more comfortable setting.”
“I want you to answer them now,” Lia said. She knew she was being childish, but she didn’t care. She was hungry and sore, and tired of being shot at, chased, and told what to do.
“Very well, then. Sit.” Song sank to the floor, her spine perfectly erect, her legs crossing automatically into the lotus position. In the dim light cast by her hand torch, it looked as if she were sinking into the stone. Lia imitated her tutor as best she could, as if they were back in the dojo. The floor of the tunnel was wet; the seat of her jeans was instantly soaked. Too late, she realized that Yar Song was keeping her own rear end elevated a few inches above the floor.
Song set the torch on the floor between them. “How would you like your questions answered? In the order you asked them? Chronologically? In order of importance?” The yellow light, illuminating her face from below, gave her features a demonic cast. The blue eye tattooed on her eyelid looked real.
“As you see fit,” Lia said. Having a wet butt was chastening.
“We are at war,” said Yar Song.
“At war? With who? Not the Boggsians!” Lia had only the vaguest notion of what lay beyond Romelas. She knew there were Boggsians to the east, strange Old Christian sects to the west and south, and a technocracy in the far north, but she knew little of those people or their ways.
“Not the Boggsians, nor any of the others who live beyond our borders. We are at war with ourselves. The Yars and the priests have been in conflict since the earliest days of the Lah Sept, but until now it was a war of words and ideas. For generations the people of Romelas have been ruled by a theocracy. The priests rule in the name of the Father, while our people live in poverty, want, and fear. Girls who are born different are sacrificed and thrown into the Gates. Boys who are different are culled at birth. The priests use their religion of spectacle and fear to keep the people ignorant and powerless. We Yars work to moderate their e
xcesses. This is why we train Pure Girls.”
“I thought it was to make more Yars,” Lia said.
“That too. Recently — on your blood moon, in fact — the balance of power shifted. I was on the zocalo that night, watching and praying for you, when a pair of strangers appeared upon the frustum. While the priests were occupied with them, you climbed off the altar and entered a Gate. I was proud of you. But tell me, why did you choose Dal?”
“I entered Dal?”
“A death Gate, yes.”
Lia thought back to those confusing moments on the frustum. She had entered the nearest Gate without knowing which it was, and she had fallen. She had survived only because she had not been stabbed and because the old woman, Awn, had found her broken body and sent her to a Medicant hospital.
“I was confused by the poppy tea.”
“That is understandable. In any case, the following morning, a maggot appeared on the frustum.”
“I thought maggots were only in stories.”
“Maggots are real. The Boggsians call them Gnomon Timesweeps, though I do not know what a ‘Gnomon’ might be. The priests were able to destroy the maggot with an arma, but not until it had devoured four of the Gates. Only Bitte remains.”
Lia noted Song’s casual use of the number four. One fewer than a hand.
“You use numbers,” she said.
“I find them useful,” said Song.
“What of Plague?”
“Better Plague than the tyranny of the priests. Perhaps the technocracy of the Medicants was not so bad.”