by Sam Meekings
Tiger shrugged. ‘It’s like a waterfall, or a leaf.’
Boy pulled a face. He was not impressed with this answer, but he didn’t seem sure how to respond. I left them to it – I wasn’t in the mood to face Boy’s queries or Silk’s grief – and went to check on the soldier. I hadn’t been in since before the scene in the courtyard the previous day, so I was sure he was getting restless. And even emptying out his brimming chamberpot had to be better than sitting round thinking about death.
The soldier – he still hadn’t told me his name, though to be fair I hadn’t bothered to ask, and he had never displayed even the slightest interest in finding out mine – smiled when I came in. Once I had done a little cleaning I picked up his walking sticks, letting him rest his weight on me as he pulled himself up.
‘I’m sorry,’ he grunted as he shifted forward onto the crutches. ‘About your friend.’
I shrugged. ‘Don’t be. It’s not your problem.’
He nodded. ‘Everything is planned, you know. It is meant to be.’
‘Don’t be stupid. None of it was planned. She wanted to leave here and have a baby, not die.’ I stopped myself, my voice beginning to quiver. ‘I came in here to get away from all that, so let’s just concentrate on getting you walking, shall we?’
He began walking again, slowly scraping a circle around the room, but he couldn’t remain quiet for long. I began to wish for the days when he’d pretended not to be able to understand me.
‘I’m sorry, but you don’t understand. Everything is planned. Everything is already written. Let me give you advice: surrender to it. You cannot change it. Let it give you hope.’
I turned on him. ‘Hope? How can you stand there and talk about hope? There wasn’t any hope for Claws, and now we’ve seen that, I’m not sure the rest of us have got any hope of ever getting out of here. Every day I see hope slipping away from Boy, and one day it’ll be gone and there’ll be no way of him ever getting it back. And what do you hope to do – hop along a mountain range on your one leg with a stupid great box slowing you down? You’ll last a day or two at most, what with the wild dogs and whoever is on your trail. I don’t believe in fate, or plans, or anything like that. All people do is struggle on the best they can until their time is up.’
The soldier leant forward, his hand roughly clutching onto my neck as he pulled me closer and pressed his dry lips to mine. Now that really made my blood boil. I grabbed hold of his hand and shoved it away. For a second he tottered there, as one of the walking sticks crashed to the floor, and then he reached out – but I stepped away, leaving him to flail and collapse backwards onto the pile of straw.
Despite my anger, I began to laugh. He laughed too, lying back and shaking. Then we both stopped laughing. We looked at each other. I don’t know how long it was, maybe a minute or two, or maybe just a couple of seconds, before I raised my finger to my lips and began to unknot the cord that held my robe.
Even now, looking back, I’m not sure why I did it. If he was surprised then he didn’t show it, but I surprised myself. And what was even more surprising was that I actually enjoyed it. I enjoyed the hot summer air simmering my skin. I enjoyed the silence, with all the little noises held back in our throats, a stark change from the practised wails and moans I usually used to hurry men along. And most of all I enjoyed the slowness, the lack of a contract, the lack of any words between us at all.
When it was done I got up, tied up my robe and left, bolting the door behind me. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps all we can do is surrender to our fate, to find hope wherever we can. But I wished I had his certainty, his belief that everything was planned, that there was a reason for everything. Maybe he was just trying to console me. It never crossed my mind that he might actually have that kind of knowledge, that it wasn’t just misplaced faith or cheap words of comfort. And it wasn’t until many summers later, when I thought about that strange, sad, hopeless day again, that I realised that during the whole thing – even when he’d been nuzzling his stubbly chin against my neck, even when his lips were pressed against my ears and he let out the tiniest of sighs that only I could hear – all that time one of his hands had stayed stretched out beside him so that it was just within reach of the wooden box, as if to make sure that it would not disappear.
Claws was given to the desert. The body and the many trinkets were gone by the time we woke up the next morning, and a young man armed with a dagger now guarded our gate.
‘I guess she doesn’t want the rest of us getting any ideas about making a break for it,’ Tiger said at breakfast.
I think Silk would have liked a proper goodbye, but we knew that all the grief in the world wouldn’t have changed a thing. Most of all, I think Claws would have wanted to be forgotten. She wouldn’t have wanted any part of her to be left in this dreadful place. Not her body, not her child, not her hopes, not her memories, not even the shadow she might have left hanging over the rest of us. So we did our best to try to forget. Leave the fancy ceremonies and the pompous speeches to officials and princes, and let the rest of us get on with real life: what’s the point of all those words if the person they’re meant for can’t hear them anymore?
The Empress spent the next few weeks venting her fury by shouting and screaming and shaking her fists at anyone who disturbed her beauty sleep or spilt a little broth on a cushion or even dared to fart when she was nearby, and I’m sure she would have sent the soldier hopping off on his one leg if his silver coins hadn’t convinced her to be a little more charitable. Boy stayed out of her way, his games of skipping and enacting imaginary battles giving way to long walks between the two courtyards, during which he would count as high as he could and then back down again, or else talk to himself in a whisper that no one else could quite make out. I tried to coax him into little competitions or games of make-believe, and though he would sometimes agree, he gave the sullen air of doing so only to placate me. Tiger said he was shrugging off the last protective skin of childhood, but I didn’t want to believe that.
Whenever Boy skulked off in one of his moods, I went up to the soldier’s hut in an effort to forget everything outside its solid locked door. He wasn’t like the others – he never asked for a thing – but more importantly, when I was with him, I wasn’t like I was with all the others. If Silk or Tiger guessed that I was doing a little more than necessary to aid his recovery, they were good enough not to tell the Empress, though their eyebrows might have twitched a little when they saw my hastily knotted robe or tousled hair. Each time it was the same. He would practise walking around the room for a while at first, both of us pretending that this was all that was going to happen. Then finally one of us would lean a little closer, or let a hand slip as if by accident, and then before I knew it I would be lying beside him, my face flushed as I babbled about getting back to the main courtyard and all the tasks I still had to finish before the next party arrived. Perhaps I pretended I was bringing him comfort and hope; perhaps he thought he was doing the same for me.
‘So you really think everything is planned out for us?’ I asked one morning as I pulled my robe back around my shoulders. ‘Even this?’
His lips seemed to briefly consider a smile. ‘Even this.’ Then his hands reached out and patted the wooden box, as though it was in agreement with him.
I wondered how much silver he had left, how much time he would be able to buy before the Empress turfed him out and he disappeared through the cracks in memory. But in the same way that I had given up pestering him about the box or his plans, I decided not to ask. I think a part of me imagined he would stay here forever and somehow rescue me from the Empress. I should have learnt by then to have been realistic, but I think after Claws plunged that kitchen knife into her guts we had all been turning inwards, nursing our little fantasies to keep them from being crushed completely.
On my way back down that day I saw Boy standing near the gate. He was staring into the distant valley, his lips spilling out mumbles. His hair was matted and tangled, thoug
h I could have sworn I only washed it for him a couple of days before, and his hands were restless at his side. I stopped and stood beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he replied, determined to turn the questioning around.
‘I’ve been helping the soldier. He’s still learning to walk.’
‘Is he still here? He’s boring. All he does is lie around. Old lazy bones. If I was a soldier I would be up by now and killing people with my sword.’
‘Really?’ I laughed. ‘And who would you kill, my little soldier?’
‘Everyone. All the bad people.’
‘I think it would be much nicer to be a trader, exploring new towns and buying and selling all kinds of beautiful things, or to be a prince relaxing in a huge palace,’ I said.
He shrugged, his eyes still focused on the clouds skimming the distant plains.
I wasn’t sure what else to say. Maybe Tiger was right. Living here was changing him, breaking all the bits of him he couldn’t protect.
‘I’m scared,’ he finally whispered, without moving or looking around.
I settled myself down on the dusty trail and patted the dry clump of earth beside me. ‘Do you want to tell me why?’
He shrugged again, but then sat down.
‘I can remember playing in a field while my mother ploughed up the soil. And I can remember a bit before then, when my father dropped me and I cried because I hurt my leg and my mother shouted at him and he shouted right back. But that’s it. I can’t remember any further back than that. Every day I get older, so these new memories are going to start crowding out more of the old ones. I’m scared. What if one day I can’t remember my home at all?’
I risked putting my arm around him. ‘Don’t be scared. I can still remember when I was a little girl, and that was back before you were even born. I can remember the desert sunsets that would last for hours, turning the sand pink beneath our feet. I remember my father’s silly stories and all his stupid scams, I remember the woman in the village who taught me how to count. I remember lots and lots. If you keep some things safe, then they can’t go anywhere.’ I said all of this as earnestly as I could, even though my own memories of the time before I arrived here grew more hazy every day.
‘Like the wooden box the soldier has?’
‘That’s right. Keep your memories of home locked up safe in a box like that, but keep it in your heart instead of lugging it around behind you, and then you’ll never forget them.’
He said nothing. We sat like that for a while, looking into the valley. Somewhere between the plains I picked out a trawl of flashy colours, the expensive red flutter of a banner being teased by the wind, the brown of a traipse of mules bearing packs, the glint of silver that can only come from swords or daggers. It wasn’t difficult to guess that a party might be coming this way and, if so, that they would surely be here by nightfall. But I didn’t point it out to Boy. Why scare away the child I had only just coaxed back out into the sunlight? And anyway, with all those bright colours in their retinue, the distant party looked just a bit too fancy to settle for our grubby little den. Or so I thought.
The Empress’s bell rang only a few hours after lunch. The sound of that little bell had to be among the most irritating noises I had ever heard. Worse than the snorting or burping of rowdy men, worse than the guests’ grunts or snores, worse even than the call of the bonebirds when they find a body to pick at somewhere in the desert. We were helping the cook shell beans when we heard it ringing, and I knew straight away that it was going to be another strange evening.
‘Do you think it’s more officials? That would be exciting,’ Silk said as we prepared ourselves.
‘No, it would be annoying. They’re worse than peasants, because they think they’re better and they have no shame,’ Tiger replied.
We had just begun to light the lamps by the time the well-dressed men reached the gate. From the small number of people who eventually trickled through, I guessed that most of the servants and guards were camped out in various places on the hill, probably just far away enough to make sure they didn’t hear their bosses having too much fun while they sat up sober and alert, guarding the bags and the sleepy mules.
Five men in lavish robes made their way to the table, followed by a single musician with an ornate hushtar. They all sported long drooping whiskers that they must have thought were fashionable, so it took me a few minutes before I realised that I had seen the man who seated himself at the head of the table before.
‘I have had the pleasure of dining at this little cavern before, when I was on a mission with my illustrious uncle. I thought I would treat you all, my friends, to a little local custom. The food is, I am afraid, on the wrong side of mediocre, and the wine is somewhat sour, but both will do when you have an empty stomach. It is these feisty creatures, however, that make the trip worthwhile.’
He gestured towards us, and I saw Tiger struggle to stop her smile from slipping.
It was the same man who had come before with the older official, the young man who had upset his uncle with his loose tongue and had caused Tiger’s sick spell. He was obviously in charge now. If he had so much contempt for us, I wondered, why had he come back? Surely the prospect of humiliating us wasn’t enough to divert a whole caravan up a hill in the middle of nowhere?
‘I see it is still the policy of this establishment to collect as many unusual specimens as possible. They even seem to have gone to the trouble to maiming one,’ the leader continued, gesturing at Silk as she laid a plate of dried dates and figs on the table. Silk’s cheeks turned the same shade as the skin of the rosy apples I set down beside the other dishes and I could see that she was trying hard to bite her tongue.
During the meal, only the thin, bearded man kept quiet. He barely touched the clay cup in front of him, merely toying with his food while the others took their fill. I understood how he might have felt, stuck in a place he didn’t want to be, under the charge of someone he did not respect. He alone nodded graciously when we cleared the empty plates and set down the bowls of eggs, spicy stew and blood-cured beans.
‘I’d give my right eye to make sure I got picked by that quiet one and not any of the others tonight,’ Silk whispered as we rushed to the cook’s courtyard to collect the soup.
‘Those bastards are all the same,’ Tiger said. ‘They’ll spit in your face and call you anything they can think of, but they’ll still get down on their knees and beg you to keep their dirty requests a secret at the end of the evening.’
When we got back Boy was standing beside the table, holding one of the jugs of liquor. The men were well into their second toast. ‘… and when those damn generals hanging round the palace like a bad smell see what we’ve achieved, it’ll wipe the smiles off their smug faces, for sure. Let’s drink to everyone who thinks we’re going to fail, and to the looks we’re going to see on their faces when we return to receive the thanks of the emperor!’
The fat man finished speaking and they all smacked the cups together before swigging and calling Boy forward for a refill. I could see him grimace as one of the men roughly fondled his thigh while he topped up the cup.
‘My uncle too will eat his words, for we will succeed where he once gave up,’ the leader said. ‘But let’s not waste our breath discussing those old wind-bags back in the capital. The book will be ours, and everything that goes with it. Now, let’s have some entertainment. These girls may be past their best, but I’ll warrant they can still dance.’
The three of us smiled graciously and moved to the empty space between the table and the musician. We raised our hands and began to sway, spinning slowly in dizzy circles as our hips called up a rhythm. I had learnt to move like this by copying the others back when I first arrived; Claws had shown me how to keep my eyes trained on the guests as I moved, but to look straight through them, to find the place where the music and my heart met and to move to it. We were not
dancing for anyone – whatever the sneering men thought – but ourselves. Their laughter soon faded out, and they chewed their food and watched, all eyes upon us as we spun faster, flying far from this place and everything in it.
‘Not bad. For a dump at the end of the world, I mean,’ the tall man said when the song finished, and the rest of them nodded grudgingly.
They pulled us down to sit with them, and we had to fight hard to maintain our smiles and girlish laughs as they mauled at us and tried to unfasten our robes, all the while keeping up their snide jokes. At last the leader held up his cup and the others fell silent.
‘As your host tonight, I reserve the right to make the final toast, though I am sorry to rob Bei of the opportunity to amuse us with his poor attempts at witticisms. As you are all aware, we have faced some hard times and privations on this mission, and I am grateful to each of you for staying the course. Yet do not think that because we are close now it will get any easier. In fact, once we find it, everything may well become even more difficult. So drink, enjoy yourselves tonight, but do not forget we still have to prove our cunning and our strength.’
After knocking back the dregs from their cups, the leader told them to hurry up and choose which of us they would take as his gift for the evening. Though they all deferred to him and claimed the first pick was an honour none of them would dare steal from their superior, the leader brushed aside their arguments and insisted. And so it was that the fat man struggled to his feet and thrust out his hand towards Tall.
‘Fat and thin, eh? Together they’re going to be like yin and yang!’ one of them joked.
‘When you are as lazy as me, gentlemen, you need a lithe one who can bend and twist any which way you want him!’ the fat man retorted to the sound of much laughter.
‘Your turn next,’ the leader said to the tall man. ‘I might recommend the dark one there; she’s got a fire burning between her thighs and she won’t stop till you’re screaming for mercy.’