A gentle hand settled on his shoulder. Simon turned to see Emily beside him.
“There’s another way to go about it, you know.”
Simon sniffed. “How?”
“Let me go down there instead.”
“You mean to Juarez?”
Emily nodded. “I’ve got the hang of this thing pretty well. I bet I could do it.”
“But you’ve never even met Selena. How could you recognize her?”
“She’s your sister. Plus, she’s missing an ear. I doubt she’ll be that hard to find.”
Simon scratched his head. A shameful part of him felt relief at Emily’s suggestion. He did his best to push it aside.
“I dunno. Isn’t Juarez supposed to be a big city? You might have a hard time finding her.”
“The same goes for you. At least I speak some Mejise. I can scope out the situation, get a message to her, maybe coordinate something for the two of you.”
Simon shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that, Emily. It’s too dangerous. This is my problem. I need to solve it.”
“Yeah, and fixing the irrigator was my problem. And my dad’s. We did a good job solving that ourselves, didn’t we?” Her eyes settled on the ground at her feet, which she scuffed with the heel of her shoe. “If you hadn’t gotten the pump working again, we’d’ve been sunk. Our stores could never last the winter. The beans are already bouncing back, and we’ll pull in twice as much corn as we would’ve otherwise. You saved us, Simon. Let me try to pay back the favor.”
Simon scratched the back of his head. Emily’s offer was tempting. Accepting it felt a little like cowardice, but it was true that she was far more likely to make the journey unscathed than he was. And not just from her facility with the machine: she knew the region, had sojourned long distances across it before, and could speak the local language. As a traveler, she’d blend in with the crowd far better than Simon could ever hope to. And she’d volunteered to do it, hadn’t she? Simon wasn’t forcing her. He hadn’t even suggested it.
“What will your dad think about this?”
“He doesn’t need to know.”
“Won’t he notice you’re gone?”
Emily shrugged. “I’ve been away from home before. He doesn’t like it, but he knows it’s necessary.”
“How far away is Juarez?”
“I dunno exactly. A few days at least on foot. On this thing?” Emily gave the handle an affectionate tweak. “I guess it depends how far it can go without charging.”
Simon ran the toe of his shoe through the dirt, drawing desultory patterns. “Each battery gets about four hours, I’d say. They take maybe six hours each to charge in full sunlight, but you can do ‘em at the same time.” Assuming they don’t crap out altogether.
The batteries were truly impressive bits of technology, capable of retaining significant charges despite being drained for years. But nothing built could escape entropy’s clutches forever, and any guesses he made toward the substances inside the batteries’ casing—and how that substance might hold up to hard use—were just that: guesses.
“How many batteries can I take with me?”
Simon recalled the struggle he’d had lifting one of them. “I’d say the one running the motor plus one alternate. You’ll need to save some space for food and water.”
Emily nodded.
They hashed out the details as they made their way back to the camp. Emily walked the machine alongside her, its wheels spinning easily in neutral, and stashed it in a culvert once they neared the cave entrance. She worked a cupful of water from the pump and drank, nodded a brief hello to Otis, and filled a second cup for Simon.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey there, sunshine. How’s the work going over there?”
“There’s some stuff he might be able to use, right Simon?”
Simon jumped at the sound of his name. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“It’ll still take some fixing up, though,” added Emily. “There’s a lot of work for us to do.”
“The boy’s welcome long as he likes. Those crops are as much yours as ours, far as I’m concerned.” The lines on his face deepened as he smiled. Simon made himself smile back. His face felt like it was made of clay, its every motion stiff and sticky.
Emily set her cup down near the pump. “We’re going to stay at the vault for a while. It’s too far to come back and forth all the time.”
Otis squeezed her hand. “Take plenty of supplies. If anything gets dodgy, light the smokiest fire you can. I’ll come runnin’.”
“I know,” she said and kissed him on the head. Simon saw the look that passed between them, the depth of their familial bond, and felt a nauseous squirt of guilt and jealousy. The latter feeling dissolved into the former, enriching it with its own fresh flavors of misery. How many things can one kid feel guilty about, Simon wondered. There had to be a cap somewhere.
Sure, sneered that familiar voice. It’s called suicide.
Simon raised the cup to his lips. He wasn’t thirsty, but the rim masked the quiver of anguish that passed over his lips.
Everything’ll be fine, he told the voice. Emily knows what she’s doing.
The trouble was, did he?
24: Sand in the Tank
Selena plunged her hands into the wooden bowl and sighed. The water in the basin was lukewarm and cloudy, but it soothed her knuckles all the same. She moaned with pleasure. Mary shook her head.
“I dunno why you do this to yourself. You ask me, you were better off actin’ out Todd’s little pantomime with the rest of us. At least I don’t finish the day lookin’ like I fell down a flight of stairs.”
“It’s complicated,” Selena said, unsure whether this was true. Was it complicated? It was hard to describe, but ineffability wasn’t the same as complexity. Her need to fight was simply there; trying to explain it to someone who didn’t see it was like trying to describe color to a blind man. Analogy could only get you so far.
She’d finished two fights already today and was considering a third, though her hands all but pleaded for a respite until tomorrow at least. It was a punishing schedule, and she knew she couldn’t maintain it forever, but it was paying dividends in the Circle. Crowds cheered her whenever she appeared, chanting her name had become a tradition, and she often found her hand shook and her back slapped whenever she went out on a busy street. Selena appreciated the crowd’s affection, but she didn’t really understand it. Her rise in a few shorts weeks was as precipitous as it was puzzling. Surely, she couldn’t have been the only successful woman fighter in the Iron Circle’s history—and even if she was, why did so many people care?
Once the stinging in her knuckles abated, she emptied the bowl and returned it to the vendor who’d lent it to her. The vendor, a middle-aged woman in a woolen serape, took it with a few words of thanks in Mejise. Mary translated Selena’s polite reply.
“C’mon,” Mary said as they left the vendor. “Let’s go grab a drink.”
The streets slumbered in their mid-afternoon lull, empty save a few pensionados and women in kerchiefs going about their shopping. The vendors had walked their carts to the fields and factories where the men worked, hoping to skim a few pesos from the blancos before they spent them on various vices in town. Lame and scrawny marcados skittered about on errands, their age or infirmary barring them from more fulsome work.
A man with no hands clutched a sack of barley to his chest, his spindly arms struggling to grip the package with their truncated appendages. A green star, its points loose and saggy with age, splashed across the left half of his face. He shot a haughty sniff at the beggars slouched across the boardwalks near the mouth of the plaza, who rattled rusty cans dug from pre-War ruins and showcased the sores on their chests and faces. A few picked at their scabs to start them weeping, the better to spur donations from any blancos inclined to charity. The hollow ting of lone pesos in their cups suggested a poor yield.
Selena fished a coin from her pocket and pinged it in the cup of a man with sunken cheeks and missing fingers. He glanced up vaguely in her direction, his eyes frosted with a milky film through which his pupils were barely visible. His mouth flapped open in a loose smile, revealing the brown and scattered relics of a once full set of teeth.
“Gracias,” he wheezed.
“De nada,” Selena replied, leveraging one of the rare fragments of Mejise Mary had taught her. As she walked away, she noticed some passers-by watching her with peculiar smiles on their faces. Had she misstepped by giving money to the beggar? Was he a con artist, his illness merely a bit of stagecraft and makeup? She scanned the faces of her onlookers for sniggers of derision or sneers of disapproval and found none. There seemed nothing but genuine warmth on their faces. Unnerved, she gave them a tiny wave and departed.
Despite the nearly empty streets, a crowd was forming in a nearby plaza. Thorin’s burly esbirros had gathered around a public shrine to La Santa Meurte and were busily dissembling it. Around them, dozens of Juarezians watched the display with mounting anger. There were folks of every sort, old and young, men and women, blanco and marcado—only their disdain united them, evident in every muttered word. Selena didn’t bother asking Mary to translate; their opinions were as clear as if they’d spoken in her tongue.
The esbirros paid no attention to the crowd. A stocky man swept his thick arms along the base, scattering offerings across the cobbles. Votive candles sputtered and died as they struck the ground, their glass holders shattering. A second esbirro worked the skeletal figure from her base with a crowbar. He struggled for a moment before the bolts gave way and the beleaguered saint rocketed into the crowd. An old woman with a pronounced hump dove to rescue the icon, but the esbirros batted her back and dragged it toward the offerings, which had been swept into a pile near the base of the deposed shrine. A thin man with iron studs through his nose and earlobes upended a bottle of translucent oil over the statue, struck a match, and tossed it onto the pile.
Flames wriggled through the statue, rending cracks through its skeletal face and turning its flowing garments to cinders. The crowd’s outraged mutterings swelled a few decibels, but the esbirros stared them down, and they dared not advance. A curtain of smoke swept over the onlookers, drawn by the wind. The smell of scorched hair and burning marrow filled the plaza. The arsonist glared at the crowd over the burnt icon and bellowed in a deep voice:
“Si quieres adorar algo, adora a tu Jefe.”
“What’s he saying?” Selena asked.
Mary, glowering, spat the translation on the cobbles. “If you want to worship something, worship your Jefe.”
A young marcado took off his shirt and used it to drag the statue from the pyre and snuff out the flames. A pensionada cradled the smoldering statue to her chest, murmuring something in a Mejise gone sloppy with tears. The esbirros reached down and tried to wrestle the statue from her grip, but the old woman held fast. They kicked her, spat on her, hurled insults and threats, but still the woman hung on. Shaking his head, one of the esbirros slathered a wooden truncheon with oil and touched it to the smoldering remains of the burnt offerings. Fire danced around its tip. He upended the bottle of oil over the woman and lowered the flame to her soaked back.
The torch flew from his grip. Before she’d even realized what she was doing, Selena had leaped over the woman and kicked the weapon form the esbirro’s hand. It twirled end over end and disappeared into the crowd.
“Why don’t you goons leave her the fuck alone?”
The esbirros regrouped and glared at Selena through narrowed eyes. She doubted they’d understood a word she said, but it was pretty obvious she wasn’t complimenting them on their tactics. The middle esbirro took a step forward, studied the timbre of the crowd, and stepped back. He barked something unflattering at Selena in Mejise and withdrew. The crowd parted begrudgingly for him and his cronies. Apart from a few jeers and a bit of half-hearted shoving, they escaped unscathed.
Selena knelt down and helped the old woman to her feet.
“Are you okay, ma’am?”
The woman grinned, revealing a partial set of thin yellow teeth. She touched Selena’s cheek and cooed.
“Uh, thanks.”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Men fell to their knees and wrung their hands at her. Women wept. Selena stood awkwardly and absorbed it all, astounded and uncomfortable at the scope of their praise.
A lot seemed to happen all at once, but in the chaos, the crowd seemed to reach some sort of consensus and sent forth an old woman in a gingham dress as their representative. She held a votive candle fished from the wreckage, its left half-melted into a permanent slouch. A tiny flame danced atop its blackened wick. She presented the candle to Selena with a small bow.
“Gracias,” Selena mumbled, unsure what else to say. The woman spoke to her in impassioned Mejise and concluded by pressing a coin into her free palm. Selena tried to give it back, but the woman cupped her hand around Selena’s and curled her fingers shut around the offering. She patted Selena’s closed fist twice. The crowd cheered once more and began to drift away. Selena watched them go, the candle flickering in her hand. When their presence had dwindled, she turned to Mary.
“What was all that about?”
Mary rolled her eyes. “They’re grateful, Selena. Can’t you see that?”
“Yeah, but all I did was tell those thugs to knock it off. It was them as much as me who stopped it.”
“It’s not just because you stepped in, though. It’s what you’ve been doing this whole time. It’s who you are. Folks are saying La Santa sent you. That you’re her envoy.”
Selena blinked. “Sent me? Why?”
“She’s patron saint of fighters and marcados. You’re a fighter and a marcada. Her envoys are always said to be women. You’re a woman.” She made a rolling gesture with one hand. “It doesn’t take much to start rumors in this town. Everyone’s desperate to believe in something.”
Mary toyed with her bracelets, tweaking the baubles and straitening the loops of twine that bound them. “I’m gonna head back to the barracks. I don’t feel much like being out here anymore. You coming?”
Selena thought of her cot. It was tempting, but her blood was still up from the afternoon’s fight, and it itched for movement. She shook her head. “No thanks. I’m gonna stay out for a while.”
“Okay, I’ll see you.”
Mary headed off toward the barracks, leaving Selena alone with her thoughts. “The Envoy of La Santa,” Mary had said. That was quite a gig. It explained some of the reactions she’d been getting around town. Combatants got a fair bit of respect in Juarez, particularly the Brothers of the Iron Circle, who’d worked their way out of servitude through the sheer force of their popularity in the ring, but the awe she’d encountered from townsfolk was of a different sort altogether. Then again, Selena supposed that if she met someone who she thought represented the incarnation of death on Earth, she’d hand her a little respect, too. She pictured the icon brooding in the corner of the women’s barracks, her grin unknowable beneath the midnight sinkholes of her eyes. What did it say about her, to be considered the emissary for such a deity?
Someone tapped her on the arm. Selena half expected another candle, but the girl standing before her bore no gift she could see. She was a short, scrappy thing, her narrow shoulders hidden beneath a pea green jacket several sizes too large. A pair of aviation goggles sat just above her eyebrows. Selena’s twin reflections stared back at her from their scratched and brownish lenses.
“You’re Selena, right?” the girl asked.
“Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Emily. Your brother sent me. Can we talk?”
The years Selena spent in the fighting pits of Jericho had taught Selena to never telegraph her reactions. As such, she stared dispassionately down at this strange elfin messenger, even as the words she’d spoken pinged madly through her head, each ric
ochet knocking free a new question. Simon sent her? Is he okay? Is she lying? How would she know I have a brother if Simon hadn’t told her? Could he have done it under duress? She scratched a nonexistent itch on her thigh and shifted her weight.
“Talk about what?”
The girl shot her a look that Selena recognized well. It was a glare practiced exclusively by precocious children dealing with elders who said something irredeemably stupid. Selena had used it many times in the past and would use it many more in the future—even if a new generation of practitioners was already coming up behind her.
“About him rescuing you.”
More ricochets, more questions. Selena gathered them up in silence. “We’d better find a place inside. Come on.”
She led the girl under an awning and into a dim tavern. Vats of oil hissed behind the counter, unfurling the savory smell of frying masa. She laid a few coins on the table and flashed two fingers. The server scooped up the coins and stashed them in a box behind the counter.
Selena jingled the remaining money in her pocket, which comprised the remnants of the weekly stipend Trejo supplied to Mr. Todd’s marcados. She wondered if more would be forthcoming, or if the scant pesos to her name were the last she’d receive in light of her rebellion. Perhaps Mary was right about Todd, in a way—she doubted most masters gave their marcados spending money. At least being La Santa’s emissary pays a little, she mused, tilting her candle to one side. The pool of wax around its wick crested its lip, sending trickles of liquid down its length, where they cooled into narrow ridges.
The server fished the pads of masa from the oil and flopped them onto molds of corrugated metal, where they hardened into U shapes. She grabbed two that had already cooled and spooned in a hash of carnitas cooked with various spices. Her hands worked effortlessly, balancing the tortillas with the grace of long practice. She handed the pair to Selena, who nodded her thanks.
Iron Circle Page 15