Crown of Oblivion

by Julie Eshbaugh

  “Thank you.” Darius meets her gaze. “It’s a relief not to be asked to leave.”

  “We get racers in here every year. I’m not supposed to help, but what’s a pair of shoes some drunk left behind, right?” Darius smiles at her and she smiles back, the line of stars on her cheekbone pulling up toward her ear. It’s dark in here, but I think she blushes.

  This provokes me a bit, and I can’t help but study Darius’s face like it’s something I need to solve. It’d be dishonest to say he’s not attractive. The truth is he’s quite attractive, but I’m surprised the barwoman can tell through all the dirt and bruises. He’s certainly a mess. I stare at a ridge of dried blood right beneath his bruised right eye, until I notice he sees me staring. He looks like he’s waiting for me to say something.

  I just say, “You should wash your face.”

  “Let me get you that corn vodka,” the bartender says. “If you want to clean up, there are restrooms near the door. I’ll take Astrid with me to find some shoes that will fit her.”

  She leads me through a cluster of tables where people sit watching the band, stopping at a doorway in the rear wall to pull out a key. From here I can see into a small side room where another stage overlooks rows of empty chairs. There’s a furnace in the corner in need of cleaning. Grime coats the walls. At least a dozen Enchanteds are lined up at the door. “There’s a tournament tonight,” says a figure beside me. It’s a white-haired Enchanted man, with his tunic too tight for his rain barrel body. “You’re a racer, right? Well, make sure you stay out of the way. It’ll get quite rowdy in here before long.”

  “Hearts and Hands,” the barwoman adds, filling in the blanks she must see on my face. “It’s a sport.”

  “That much I remember,” I say.

  “Of course you remember,” the man snaps. “Oblivion may cause amnesia, but it leaves you with memories of your culture and your people, right? So of course you remember Hearts and Hands! It’s tradition!”

  “It’s bloody,” the barwoman adds.

  “Ah, but the blood isn’t what it’s all about,” says the rain barrel. “It’s about the fighter who feels the jab before it’s thrown. Who ducks before his opponent’s foot leaves the mat.” He leans close to me. He’s very drunk. “Magic is what it’s about.”

  I take a step back. Has he heard rumors that I fight like I have Cientia? Is that why he’s talking to me about Hearts and Hands? And if he’s heard it, has the Authority heard it, too? I tell myself I’m overreacting, that he’s just making conversation, but I can’t help but look around, making sure Authority guards aren’t in here looking for me.

  Just at that moment, the black-haired boy from the trio of racers wanders by, searching for the clue, I’m sure. Nerves flutter in the pit of my stomach, and not just because I need to find the clue before he does. I can’t stop myself from grabbing his arm when he steps near. He springs back like a startled rabbit. “Are you all right?” I ask, voice low.

  His eyes narrow. “Are you all right?”

  “What?” I can only guess this is sarcasm—throwing my words back in my face like this—and it hits me like a slap. I have to ball my hands into fists at my sides to keep from actually slapping him back. I never should’ve said anything, but he looked so much like a victim. Looks can be deceiving, clearly, and now I’ve made a fool of myself by showing concern. “Those people you are traveling with are violent,” I growl, furious at both him and myself. “You be careful.”

  “You be careful,” he says.

  The urge to slap him returns, but thankfully, the bartender has just unlocked the door and she’s ushering me through. We climb a short set of stairs and step into a small bedroom, and I’m able to shrug off my anger at the smart-mouthed boy. “This is my place,” she says.

  “You live here?”

  “I do.”

  The room is small but lovely. I’m not sure what it is about the brightly lit space, the flouncy curtains, and the neatly made bed, but tears come to my eyes. Could it be the simple fact that a room like this seems like a luxury beyond my imagination, after just one day in the Race of Oblivion? No matter what the cause of my reaction, I tamp it down, swiping at my eyes before I really make a fool of myself.

  “What do I have that would fit you?” She opens a small closet door, revealing a handful of dresses on hangers.

  “I couldn’t. I can’t—”

  “Please. I want you to wear one. I saw your back. . . .”

  I drop my gaze to the floor. I can’t look at the pretty dresses or the face of the girl who’s kind enough to offer one to me. “They’re your own possessions. I couldn’t—”

  The barwoman sets a hand to my chin and lifts my face. I pull away. I don’t like strangers touching me, even generous ones. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re saying if you don’t look at me. I’m deaf. I can only understand you if I read your lips.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, but what I really mean is, That can’t be true. She’s heard everything I’ve said, all this time. But then I replay all our interactions in my head, and I realize I’ve looked her in the eye every time I spoke until now. “How?”

  “It’s not easy,” she says. “Except for drink orders and other common questions I get, it can be quite difficult to read a stranger’s speech. Fortunately, you don’t speak too fast, which helps.”

  “I’m glad,” I say, “But what I meant was, how did you become deaf?”

  “Oh,” she says, smiling and shaking her head at the misunderstanding. “Battery factory. Indentured there since I was twelve. They used an auditory form of Projectura to control us—a sound that caused all kinds of pain to our ears. Over time, my hearing went away, but so did the power of the Projectura against me. Until one day, I could no longer hear at all. And they could no longer control me. That was the end of my time at that battery factory.” Her eyes flick over my face. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” she says, and I close my mouth. I stop trying to find words. “I was lucky. The manager here, Emmeline, needed some help.”

  “I thought you were the manager,” I say, wincing when I feel the way my mouth exaggerates the shapes of the words.

  “No, I’m just Mary,” she says. “But Emmeline’s been very good to me—she paid off my indenture. We grew up together. My mother was indentured to her mother.” She turns around and pulls a pale gray dress from the closet. “How about you wash up, and then you can try this one?”

  “I don’t have time—”

  “You do if you hurry. Bathroom’s through there.”

  I’m so miserable in this filthy dress, I can’t refuse. The wounds I opened up fighting at the lighthouse have started to throb, and I can’t help but worry about infection. While I do a quick wash of my hair and face in the tiny sink, Mary runs a towel under warm water in the tub. The mirror steams up. She presses the damp towel against the back of my dress until the fabric peels away from my skin without ripping open the wounds.

  Once I’ve pulled on the gray dress, Mary wipes the steam from the mirror with her sleeve so I can see my reflection. A stranger looks back at me. I look more like the girl in the photo now, with skin that glows and hair that’s almost glossy. But when Mary combs my bangs out of my eyes and adds a silver clip to hold them in place, I shake my head.

  “It’s beautiful, but I can’t accept it—”

  “Take it.” Mary stands behind me, looking at both our reflections in the mirror. She reaches over me and straightens the clip with her fingers. “It’s not expensive, but it makes you look like a million mackels. We’ve both suffered, right?” She touches my back lightly through the dress, then points to her own ear. “We’re in the same family. You must take it.”

  After Mary finds me a pair of flat black sandals that are a little big on me but fit better when we adjust the straps, she leads me back downstairs.

  I see Darius before he sees me. He has finished his corn vodka and is watching the band. But then the light pouring through the open door catches his a
ttention and he turns in my direction.

  I try to read his expression, but it hardly changes. A rapid flutter of his eyelids, a hard swallow. If he has an opinion of the change in me, he doesn’t let it show. At least not on his face.

  But when I walk to his side, his emotions wash over me like a sudden hard rain. His gaze moves to the dress, then back to my face, but I might not suspect a thing if I didn’t have Cientia. But I do, and it gives him away. His reaction is cool and moist, clinging to him like dewdrops on a leaf.

  Desire.

  Fifteen

  As I walk up beside Darius, feeling like a clean coin in a filthy pocket, I curse the heat that’s flooding up my neck, and I remind myself he doesn’t have Cientia. He hands me my corn vodka, and I am so happy to have a reason to look away from him.

  It’s as clear as water, but the smell hits me before the taste, reminding me not to gulp it. The first sip burns my throat, forcing a cough and a wince before I can set it back on the bar. When I look up, both Darius and Mary are grinning at me. “What were you expecting, lemonade?” Darius asks. Mary reaches for the glass, but I pick it up again.

  “I like it,” I say, and Darius actually laughs out loud.

  “You don’t act like you like it,” he says.

  “Well, you don’t act like you like me.”

  “Who says I do?” He raises an eyebrow at me, but I turn away, scanning the room for anything that might suggest a clue, and downing the rest of my drink to make a point.

  The place is filling up, and the line at the door of the back room is getting long. I don’t like the crowd. The more people to see around, the harder it will be to find the clue. “There’s a Hearts and Hands tournament happening soon—”

  “I heard,” I say. The other three racers are still at their table. They couldn’t have found the clue yet, either.

  So maybe it’s in that back room.

  The roadhouse’s front door keeps swinging open and closed, brightening the room with intermittent light. When the back room finally opens for seating, Darius and I move to the doorway, where, standing, we manage a view of both the stage and the main barroom. “Excuse me, miss,” someone says as an elbow digs into my ribs. It’s an Enchanted woman pushing in from behind me, with a voice like the bottom of an ashtray.

  People stand six deep behind the chairs, and closer to the stage Enchanteds jostle and shove for the best view. They are loud—some seem to have arrived drunk—so I pull my feet back to protect my toes and return to studying the menu for any hint of the clue. Mary comes over and asks us if we’d like to place another order. While she has our attention, she nods toward the bar. There, occupying the same two barstools where Darius and I sat, are the big-voiced woman and the tree-trunk boy, along with their escorts, the journalists. Mr. and Mrs. Arrogance, as Darius called them. “Another came in behind them, but separately,” Mary says, a little too loudly.

  Darius nods at a fair-haired woman leaning on a stool in the corner. “Know her?” he asks me.

  I shake my head, but she’s a racer. Filthy from head to toe, with a fresh scar where her embed should be. She’s anxious—her small dark eyes never stop moving.

  The only other thing worth noting is that she is wearing a coat. I notice this because, though it’s far too hot for one right now, a cold night is coming. I hope I don’t come to envy her that coat.

  Darius leans forward and says something right into my ear, but I don’t hear it. It’s buried under the shouts of the crowd that turn both our heads around. The first two fighters are making their way to the stage.

  The first is a bruiser of a man—not tall but as wide as a bull, with a bald head covered in tattoos of silver and gold ink. His eyes sweep the front of the crowd and a hush falls over them at the sight of him. Something like fear—no, not fear . . . respect—washes from the front rows and flows to the back. Murmured whispers replace the shouts.

  When his opponent enters, his appearance prompts a few gasps but even more groans. He is a foot taller than the first contestant and stripped from the waist up; his muscles appear to be straining against his skin, as if it shrunk in the bath and can no longer contain him. Every vein in his arms and chest bulges, and even from my spot against the door I can see a heartbeat pounding in his neck, beneath a curtain of wavy black hair. The first man seems as diminished as a mouse in the presence of a snake.

  A woman climbs onto the stage—a girl really, no older than I am—dressed in a bright green leotard, with bare feet and a face painted silver like the moon. Her lips are bright pink and her eyes are ringed in black. She stands between the two men, holding each at arm’s length. The room falls silent, every eye strains forward, and she counts down: Five . . . four . . . three . . . When she gets to one, she leaps into the air and flips backward, artfully removing herself from danger and drawing scattered applause.

  The big man lunges forward almost immediately, but his opponent is already moving, so quickly he’s dodged him before the big man takes a step. The smaller man’s Cientia anticipated that lunge. I anticipated it, too, and now I feel the big man’s intention again—I see his foot leaving the stage’s wooden planks, feel the swish of his hair as he turns to throw a roundhouse kick. I brace myself as if I were the first man, waiting for the blow to come. My hands fly up to cover my own face. Block, I whisper into my balled fists. But even though I feel it coming, the first man doesn’t, and the kick lands squarely against his jaw.

  Blood flies from his mouth, splattering the front row of spectators. A roar goes up like the growl of a wild animal. The sound repeats, repeats, repeats again, until I recognize the word they are all calling out: more.

  The moves don’t slow. The big man tries a second kick, this time blocked. A jab by the smaller man to the big man’s chin sends him wobbling. A second blow sends teeth clattering against the back wall, followed by a spray of red. A high kick to the side of his head knocks him to the floorboards.

  The big man gets back to his feet, sways as if drunk, and tumbles from the stage into the gap in front of the first row of seats. Everyone is on their feet and I can’t see him as he falls, but a sickening crack announces his head’s collision with the stone floor.

  He stays down. The green-clad harlequin bounces onto the stage to raise the hand of the first man as the crowd erupts in chaos. Some cheer, some call out for a chance to fight the winner, and a handful hurry toward the door, maybe hoping to cash in their bets, or perhaps to avoid the bookmaker altogether.

  As the crowd churns, I watch the young harlequin regain their attention with a bright white towel. I’m angry with myself, because I’m so sucked in by the spectacle, I’m worried I’m missing something crucial to the clue. I vow to drag my attention away, but she runs her towel across the back wall, cleaning away blood and a layer of grime. When she shows it to the crowd again, black with a few flecks of red, they hiss in reply. A woman in the audience climbs onto a chair and shouts, “More blood!” before the chair collapses and she disappears behind the broad backs of the men. The harlequin nods and bows, applauding the audience in return.

  Then she somersaults from the stage, and I stare at the suddenly clean back wall, noticing a carved wooden sign that had been too smeared with soot to be seen before. At one end, something like a train depot is engraved, beside what appear to be tracks. A line connects it to an engraving of a squat little box of a building—the roadhouse. The line continues, running along the length of the sign to an engraving of the lighthouse on the far right.

  Over each building, a star is engraved.

  A star I’ve seen before.

  I’ve seen it on the map to the lighthouse, the one I found when I woke up. The map is tucked inside my bag, which rests on the floor against my ankle.

  But Darius’s map is already open in his hands. And there it is. “The star above the lighthouse,” I whisper. He nods. It’s identical to the stars that mark the buildings on the sign behind the stage.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he folds the ma
p and slides it back into his pocket. “That’s it, right? The lighthouse . . . the roadhouse. Whatever that third building is—that’s our next checkpoint.”

  The band is still going, but like most of the people in here, they’ve gotten louder and slower as the afternoon turned into evening. We find Mary behind the bar. The two racers with Mr. and Mrs. Arrogance aren’t far away, but I don’t need to ask my question out loud. Instead I mouth it to Mary, knowing she can read my lips.

  The sign above the stage in the back room. What’s the building on the opposite end from the lighthouse?

  She leans in so we can hear her over the music. “The outpost. It’s at the start of the cross-desert railroad. The roadhouse is the center point between the lighthouse and the outpost. That’s why everyone stops here when they’re traveling.”

  I can’t help but reach around Mary’s shoulders and pull her into an awkward hug, then immediately regret it. If another racer is watching, they might wonder what I’m grateful for. Maybe they’ll assume it’s the clean clothes and not the clue. In any event, Darius and I can’t leave just yet. We can’t make it obvious the clue is in the back room.

  Darius pulls the wad of money from his pocket and peels off another fifty-mackel note. “Astrid has a canteen in her bag, and it would mean the world to us if you could fill it with water from the tap without anyone noticing.”

  Mary nods, and I hand her the bag.

  “So our deal,” I whisper to Darius once she’s gone, “was to share the bike this far.”

  “You can’t ditch me here,” he says. But the anxiety in his voice makes it clear he knows that I certainly can. “We both found that clue at the same time—”

  “What does that have to do with anything? We both found the clue, and now we’re both free to travel to the outpost—”

  “And the dead battery? How are you going to pay to use the charging pods?”