by Matt Wallace
Dyeawan rows up to her cautiously, watching as she gently stirs the contents of her pot with a wooden spoon. The woman sits on a small, well-crafted chair. Dyeawan notices the feet of that chair are fitted with sprung coils, allowing them to adjust evenly under her weight to the uneven terrain.
“Good morning, young planner,” the woman greets her, as if Dyeawan is expected.
The front tracks of her tender reach the path’s end. From this point on, the incline of the mountain begins in earnest, first over patches of grassland upon which the woman’s dwelling has been erected. Beyond that, sharp, rocky crags overtake the ascent up the volcano with no clear path that Dyeawan can discern.
“Good morning,” Dyeawan finally replies. “I did not know anyone lived on this island outside of the keep.”
“Oh, I lived there for most of my life. I was once like you. A planner.”
“And what are you now, if I may ask?”
“Tired, mostly,” the old woman says with a gentle smile. “My name is Tinker. You are Edger’s little Slider?”
“Dyeawan.”
“Of course. Forgive me. It was once tradition to choose a new name when accepted into the planners.”
“I chose my own.”
“Wisely, if I may say.”
Tinker finishes stirring whatever it is she’s brewing, gently tapping the stem of the wooden spoon against the rim of the pot.
Dyeawan briefly sniffs the air. She smells garlic and onion.
“Would you care for some breakfast?” Tinker asks. “I’ve made soup. You should fortify yourself for what’s to come.”
“I ate fruit and bread before I set out.” Dyeawan now detects some type of game meat as part of the concoction. “Do you hunt out here?”
Tinker chuckles. “No. I keep sheep in a pen nearby. Just a few.” She absently strokes at her shawl as she retrieves a nearby clay bowl.
Dyeawan studies her with curiousity. “Why do you live out here like this, if I may ask?”
Tinker begins ladling soup into the bowl. “As I said, I grew tired.”
“Of what?”
The old woman shrugs, sipping carefully and demurely from the steaming bowl she holds with both hands. Tinker swallows the hot broth and licks her lips, delighted, before blowing the excess heat through them, almost whistling.
“All of it. I was tired of the problems of the day. Every day. The politics and the intrigue and the personalities of the others. And though I cared for him deeply, I grew tired of Edger in particular. His grandiosity and pomposity wearied me.”
“I did not see you at his funeral.”
“I mourned him in my own way, privately.”
Tinker takes up a spoon and begins eating her soup in earnest. There is something about her manner that Dyeawan finds calming and centering, though her fascination overrides those more pleasant sensations.
“But why are you here? Living like this?”
“Like what, Dyeawan? Simply?”
Dyeawan considers that before answering. “I lived out of doors for most of my life. I do not look back on those times as simple.”
“Neither do you look back on them fondly, I imagine. You have had a rough go of it, no doubt. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some soup? I do not boast often, but I am proud of both the recipe and my execution.”
“No, thank you.”
“Please, just a taste. Satisfy an old woman’s vanity.”
Tinker retrieves her wooden spoon and gathers a sampling of the pot’s contents, extending it toward Dyeawan.
Dyeawan eyes the meat and vegetables swimming in the tiny pond of broth. She feels the inside of her mouth salivating all of a sudden.
She gazes over the front of her tender at the uneven ground beyond the path’s end and how it begins to gently curve upward.
“Oh, my apologies, dear. How ignorant of me.”
Tinker sets her bowl upon the ground and rises from the chair, its springs creaking as they decompress.
The old woman closes the short gap between them and offers the spoon to Dyeawan, her other hand instinctively cradling the air below it.
Dyeawan carefully accepts the spoon and raises the steaming end to her lips. The broth is still hot enough to sting them, but the taste is entirely inviting. She sips at the soup, the flavor livening her tongue, and then slides every bit of it down her throat. The heat is harsh at first, but it warms her stomach in a comforting way.
“Very good,” she says. “Thank you.”
Tinker smiles, appeased. She withdraws from Dyeawan and returns to her spring-loaded chair and waning cooking fire.
Dyeawan licks her lips once more. The delicious taste of the soup lingers, as does the warmth coating her insides.
She looks up at the peak looming high above them. There is a slightly dizzying fizzle in her head.
“I read in a book that this volcano has lain dormant for hundreds of years.”
“Indeed. It would be a dangerous place to live otherwise.”
Dyeawan lowers her gaze to the old woman. “For you, here, or for the rest of us in the keep?”
“Both.”
Dyeawan considers the peak once more. “If it is dormant, as I read, why is it smoking like that?”
Tinker says nothing at first, nor does her smile betray any particular opinion on the matter. “Why do you think it is smoking, Dyeawan?”
At that moment, the ground trembles beneath the tracks of her tender. It is only a slight tremor, but the force is enough to cause the platform supporting Dyeawan to vibrate, sending chills dancing across the surface of her skin. Though she cannot command her legs, she is aware of the bumps raised there.
Dyeawan grips the edges of her paddles to steady herself. Her blood is rushing faster than it was a moment before.
“I have to go up there, don’t I?”
Tinker nods. “That is the challenge of the body that was chosen.”
“How was it chosen?”
“At random. By me. As an impartial observer.”
Dyeawan chooses to accept that. “I am sure you’ve noticed, but I cannot walk.”
“You seem to function ably otherwise.”
Dyeawan frowns. “What will accomplishing this prove?”
“To me? Not a thing. As I said, I am only an impartial observer.”
Dyeawan’s frown only deepens and darkens. “Where is Nia?”
“On the other side of the mountain. She has been administered a paralytic potion to her lower half. She will be ascending the mountain under exactly the same conditions as you.”
“This is to be a race, then?”
“If it motivates you to think of it as such.”
Dyeawan takes a deep, cleansing breath before asking, “When are we to begin?”
Tinker finishes her bowl of soup. She licks the spoon clean thoroughly before placing it in the bowl and setting them both to the side. She folds her hands over her stomach and regards Dyeawan with what appears to her to be sympathy.
“When the sun finishes its ascent above the horizon, you may begin your ascent. I can offer you no more than that.”
“Then I thank you for the soup,” Dyeawan says pointedly.
Tinker’s smile is renewed. “Any time, dear. I wish you good fortune, if this is what you truly want.”
Dyeawan sees no point in questioning her concerning the meaning of those final words.
Gripping the paddles tightly, she urges her tender forward, beyond the path. The way is harder, and the tracks move more slowly, but she is able to row herself up the grassy slope and past Tinker’s campfire. She continues rowing until her tender reaches the edge of the grassy plain at the base of the volcano.
Beyond it, the jagged rocks begin to rise sharply in earnest.
Dyeawan engages the tender’s brake, staring up the volcano’s length. It seems so much taller from this vantage, reaching all the way to the clouds.
She settles herself and waits on the sun.
OF THE PEOPLE
TEARS STING LEXI’S EYES. THERE is harshness unique to tears brought on by exposing an onion’s innards to the light of day, she finds. Using a sharp paring knife, her hemp-wrapped hands cleanly slice the skin from the thirtieth bulb she’s peeled in the last hour. She cuts what remains into several chunks of equal size atop a thick wooden chopping block resting on an upended barrel. It has been her makeshift station for most of the afternoon, established at the end of an alley in the heart of the Bottoms.
For most who have come, she offers the wild onions whole from several carts filled with them, for the people to do with the bounty as they will. However, there are many who are old and weak, and others whose extremities shake due to afflictions. Lexi offers the cut pieces to them, watching as they eat gratefully with hands cleansed in a barrel of fresh water she has also provided.
Though every action Lexi performs is under duress and watchful eyes, she does find respite and relief in witnessing the brief joy of nourishment on every face.
The onions she is distributing have been supplied by Gen Hama, and they aren’t all that she’s brought with her to the Bottoms. She has large covered bowls of still-steaming rice from the nearby cookers, the allocation of which was donated by several different large Gens. She also has wedges of hard cheese from Gen Krush, who handle the Capitol’s goat herding concession. There are several more barrels of fresh water stacked around her chopping station. Each one is fitted with a tin cup dangling from a chain.
Burr and her Ignobles have many friends indeed, it seems. Lexi can’t be certain how many are true allies, and how many more know nothing of Burr’s true identity or the Ignobles’ plot. It’s entirely possible the contributing Gens are simply currying favor or carrying out their end of backroom deals with the Gen Franchise Council member.
Shaheen, the young mother Lexi met curled up around her starving daughter, assists Lexi in distributing the bounty to her fellow Bottoms denizens.
Shaheen looks transformed since that first encounter. Her hair has been washed and brushed. Her skin is scrubbed clean to the point of shine. She has exchanged the tatters she once wore for a new wrap much like the ones Lexi wears. She looks well nourished rather than gaunt and underfed. As noticeable as that, however, is the light that has replaced the pale glaze in her eyes.
Lexi has taken her on as something of an unofficial assistant since returning to her towers in the Gen Circus. Shaheen was so grateful and concerned when Lexi showed up again in the Bottoms after such a long absence that she practically attached herself to Lexi’s hip, offering to help her however she could. Lexi was reluctant at first, not wanting to involve the girl in this quagmire. In the end, though, Lexi decided that she might as well offer as much aid as she’s able while being coerced by the Ignobles. Thus far she has no plan beyond that, but her mind works toward one more or less every second.
Besides, she enjoyed having help that wasn’t assigned to her by Burr.
Char, Shaheen’s little daughter, runs about her mother’s legs, giggling with carefree glee unknown to the child Lexi and Taru saved from starvation.
Lexi watches idly as Char runs over to the alley wall and begins dabbing with a fingertip at the red paint staining the decaying stone of the building somehow managing to still stand there. Someone has taken the time to create a tableau upon it depicting a flock of dead birds (so distinguished by “X’s” drawn in place of their eyes) fallen to the earth. The words “No Sparrows” are scrawled above their upended bodies.
Lexi has taken note of the graffiti on several walls throughout the Capitol. The sight of such vandalism is rare enough, but to see half a dozen marked patches of public stone left untouched is beyond belief. Ordinarily, cleaners would be immediately dispatched by the Spectrum.
One of the first red-stained depictions Lexi saw actually portrayed this “Sparrow General” in a positive light. The rest, however, have derided the unknown military leader. She has seen other tableaus that consisted of giant red birds eating small stick figures that fled in terror from the creature. Another was painted to look like a red wave washing over what was clearly meant to be the Bottoms, and the bird stays atop it.
Shaheen has told Lexi that stories began spreading throughout the Bottoms of a general rising in the east, fighting for the people Crache has forgotten. Those tales, it seems, were quickly met by contrary ones. New stories began to bubble up that figuratively and literally painted the Sparrow General as an enemy of the people who was slaughtering them en masse.
Naturally, Lexi wonders if Burr has anything to do with it. Though it would be easy to tack any discord being sown in the Capitol to the Ignoble’s door, Lexi doesn’t think the Sparrow General is part of Burr’s plan. It runs contrary to the story Burr and her Ignobles want to tell. They don’t want to create a mythic figure of the people. They want the people to see the return of nobility, and their submission to it, as their only hope for a better life.
“Two for each person?” Shaheen asks for the third or fourth time, holding up the onions in her hands.
Lexi nods patiently. “More if they ask. Whatever they need.”
Shaheen is a smart young woman, Lexi has found, but entirely unsure of herself. She constantly seeks the approval of her new matron in all matters, despite Lexi’s assurances. Not that Lexi can blame her in the slightest. Having taken Shaheen and her daughter in from their former circumstance, it stands to reason the girl would be fearful of losing the newfound stability and be eager to please.
Kamen Lim surveys the proceedings amiably, the flat of his right palm resting against the pommel of the Capitol-issued dagger sheathed in its Aegin’s bandolier slung across his torso. He’s not tethered to Lexi, officially. Kamen Lim has somehow been abruptly reassigned to patrol the Bottoms, and the route of his patrol just happens to coincide with whatever Lexi’s current location in the Bottoms happens to be.
“You know what’s good?” Kamen Lim offers jovially. “Chop up a bunch of that wild onion and mix it in with the rice. Add a little garlic if you can get it. Delicious.”
“Perhaps we can open a restaurant,” Lexi says brightly, her sarcasm only evident to anyone with ears. It doesn’t seem to bother the Aegin in the slightest, if he even picks up on it. He lets out a chuckle, in fact.
“I’d like that. I enjoy cooking. My wife is a fantastic baker, but cooking is usually my domain. We make a fine team! Supper and dessert, that’s what we call ourselves.”
He laughs softly at that last bit, fondly, and it’s clear the endearment genuinely warms him.
Lexi would find it all terribly charming were he not an agent for the secret conspiracy plotting to overthrow Crache and forcing her to do its bidding by threatening the life of her beloved retainer.
Lexi looks down from her chopping board to find what she thinks at first is a small child wrapped in a hooded cloak. Their caretaker is a young, lanky boy barely into his teens who leads the child up to her by the hand.
When he gently pulls back that hood, Lexi is surprised to gaze down at an elderly woman no more than three feet tall. It is as if a child has aged without actually growing. Her face is cherubic, her cheeks drooping and wrinkled. The flesh around them mostly swallows her eyes. Her white hair has either been trimmed close to her scalp, or has ceased to grow.
Lexi places a piece of onion in the woman’s small, grubby palm.
As the old woman munches on it, Lexi hands two more whole wild onions to the boy, who stuffs them inside his shirt with an awkward, somewhat embarrassed smile.
“Thank you, Te-Gen,” the woman says in an impossibly high voice.
“It is my pleasure. And please, my name is Lexi.”
“You are kind to share so much of your Gen’s allotment with us.”
“This bounty is far beyond my Gen’s allotment. Many others contributed to it who wish to see the people of the Bottoms better fed. Who wish to…”
Lexi hesitates. She hadn’t wanted to think about this part of her task. She wanted to focus solely on bringing
food to these people, and on being among them.
“Who wish…” she carries on, “to see a return to a time when all the people of a land were cared for, and not just those who successfully petition to oversee things for the state as the leaders of Gens do.”
“What time do you speak of, Te-Gen?” the tiny elder asks.
“It’s Lexi.”
“Lexi,” the old woman repeats, with reverence.
Lexi glances back at Kamen Lim, holding his eyes briefly. Lim smiles as if even he is hanging on her words. He gives her the slightest of nods, urging her to proceed.
She turns back to the old woman and what must be her grandson. Lexi steps from around her onion-chopping station, kneeling down on the alley floor to meet the old woman’s aged eyes.
“Life… life was not always as you know it. There was a time before councils composed of men and women whose names you will never know allotted the bounty of the lands upon which you live and work and die, and who decided which chosen few among you would control all of a city’s resources and live in its best quarters. There was a time when the people had guardians. These guardians were bound to their lands and people by blood. Sacred blood that flowed through their veins, passed down from guardian to guardian, anointing them as protectors of their lands and people.”
“Who were these people?” the old woman asks, enthralled.
Dozens have now gathered around. They are all listening intently to Lexi. She stares over the top of the elder’s cropped white hair, seeing their faces, dirty and sallow and desperate, but alight with the brief hope and small nourishment Lexi has brought to them.
She cannot recall ever hating herself so much.
“They were called nobles,” she says, reaching up and taking the woman’s impossibly small hands in hers. “Descendants of that sacred blood. Some of your ancestors might even have counted among them.”
