A Plague of Angels

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Somebody mebbe I saw once,” she said. “Long time ago.”

  “Somebody broke all his bones,” said CummyNup. “This one didn’ die from no sickness.”

  “Well, an’ he had that comin’,” said Mama, in such a voice as CummyNup had never heard from her in his life.

  It was Mama who approached Wise Rocks Farm to ask Farmwife Suttle if she knew Basio. And it was Farmwife Suttle who opened her arms to the family, gangers or no. If they were Abasio’s friends, they were hers, though she set certain rules for them to minimize the possibility of their transmitting disease. For a time, she said, they would cook their own foods separately, dig and use a separate privy, wash their clothing and linens in a separate place. To all of this they agreed, so glad to be given a roof over their heads, an old but solid shed out past the barn, they would have consented to almost anything.

  Privately, the Farmwife felt the risk of disease was low and getting lower every passing day. Very few who had come as far as Wise Rocks Farm had been carrying the fatal disease, though some had had illnesses of other types. Besides, she needed help, as she told Mama Chingero.

  “I can use extra people,” she said grimly. “I’ll feed as many of the refugees as I can, and the farmers up the Crystal will help me do it, but I can’t have them overrunning the place, trampling the fields, killing the livestock, and threatening our peace. Do you have weapons that will keep them at a distance?”

  CummyNup allowed that he did. Gangers seldom went anywhere without weapons, even when they were pretending not to be gangers. And he had TeClar’s weapons as well.

  “Well, then, you join the men who are guarding the road. I’m surprised you missed them on your way in.”

  Mama explained that they had come under cover of the forest, not on the road, and she asked what she and the children could do to help.

  There was much that needed doing. People from the farms up the valley brought grain and winter vegetables down to Wise Rocks Farm. Each day Farmwife Suttle and the Widow Upton cooked up a huge pot of this stuff, making a kind of porridge, to which they added eggs and vegetables and scraps of meat. While the food was still warm, they put it in the wagon and sent CummyNup and Mama Chingero down to the foot of the valley, where the road was, to distribute it to any hungry person coming by. By bringing the food to the road, they explained to the Chingeros, they forestalled people coming up the valley looking for it, people who might kill livestock and damage the cropland.

  “Whitherby has a tent village outside it,” the Farmwife told Mama Chingero after a few days. “I’m told the people there are mostly healthy enough. Those who were sick didn’t make it this far.”

  Yes, Mama said to herself. That was true. Those who were sick hadn’t quite made it this far.

  “Me, I’m surprise’ the gangers don’ take over,” whispered CummyNup, looking over his shoulder. “I keep waitin’ for them to come. Renegades. Blue Shadows. Cranks.”

  “They gone like your brother gone,” said Mama. “They the ones got sick an’ died.”

  Each day teams of men from the farms went up and down the road, digging graves for the bodies left along the road. Shortly after they arrived, CummyNup borrowed a shovel and went back to bury TeClar.

  Then, in a matter of days, the flow of refugees stopped as though it had never been. The last few brought descriptions of Fantis empty, Echinot empty, both wiped out in the space of a dozen days, though the Edges were still there Hearing this, CummyNup told Mama he wanted to see what had happened. Against her advice and the advice of every other person at Wise Rocks Farm, he packed a sack of food, took a firelighter and a full canteen, and hiked along the empty road, back toward the city.

  He passed the remains of campfires, places where magpies and crows gathered thick upon carrion, these growing more common the farther he went. The Edge was as it had always been. From behind the great steel gates, men watched him go past without a word, certainly without a challenge. Was it only his imagination, or did it seem there were fewer of them than before?

  As he approached the Patrol Post he was confronted by half a dozen armed men gathered around a large open wagon, all of them dressed in leather clothing with green hats and mantles.

  “Whatso!” he called, wanting to be friendly.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” growled the largest of the men.

  “Jus’ thought I’d see if there’s anybody left,” he said, gesturing toward the city.

  “No more than deserve to be,” the man replied, going back to loading the wagon from a nearby pile of coops and cages, kegs and bags. From inside the coops and cages came a scurry of movement, a flutter of feathers. Several others of the brown and green came around the corner of the building mounted on some of the patrol’s horses and driving the rest of the herd before them.

  “Where you takin’ them?” asked CummyNup.

  “The geldings we’ll let loose on the prairies east of here. The mares go to the horse farms in Low Mesiko,” said one rider. “We’ve already been through the city, letting animals go. Lots of dogs and cats. Lots of chickens. We found some exotic pets too. Critters from far away, and those’re in the wagon.”

  “Nothin’ much lef’ but cockroaches, I ’spose,” said CummyNup.

  “Lots of rats, and maybe a few people,” said the man. “But we don’t concern ourselves with people.”

  “Why’s that?” asked CummyNup.

  “First place, there’s plenty of ’em. Second place, we’re the Animal Masters,” said the other. “Fence cutters, cage destroyers, pen wreckers. If you see any animals we missed, turn them loose. You see any really strange ones, stop on your way out and tell us. We’ll have people here for several days yet.”

  The speaker waved a casual farewell and went off after the horses, leaving CummyNup to go across the bridge and get himself promptly lost in the warehouse district.

  Half the buildings he knew were gone; half the streets he sought were blocked with the wreckage of burned buildings and fallen walls. Here and there in the open streets he came across green-gowned women bearing canvas sacks at their belts and iron-tipped staffs in their hands. They were working their way systematically from crack to crack, from dirt alley to dirt alley, making holes with their staffs and dropping seeds into the holes. CummyNup didn’t need to ask who they were. Farmwife Suttle had told all about them. These were Sisters to Trees. He greeted them politely and went on past.

  He went first to Abasio’s place, where Elrick-Ann had been. If he ever saw Abasio again, he would want to know about Elrick-Ann. He saw no sign of her, but there was a sheet of paper on the bed, held down by a heavy book. Reading wasn’t something CummyNup did well, so he folded the paper into his pocket. Farmwife Suttle would read it for him.

  Leaving Abasio’s place, he went to Purple House, finding it unburned, seemingly untouched except for the corpses here and there. Young Chief lay in his room upstairs, half eaten by rats. He hadn’t died of the plague. Somebody had slit his throat for him. CummyNup went on up to the roof, pushing open the door to the women’s quarters with some difficulty. Someone had blocked it from inside.

  He saw movement and went toward it. A woman dressed in mud-colored robes screamed at him to stay away, then attacked him with a knife, but CummyNup was too quick for her.

  He held her wrists in one big hand as he drew the veils away from her face with the other. “Sybbis!” he gasped, unable to believe it.

  “Who’re you?” she cried. “Who’re you?”

  “CummyNup Chingero,” he said. “I was a Purple. Me’n my brother TeClar.”

  “Where you been?” she screamed. “Why ain’ you dead? Everbody’s dead!”

  He let her go, prudently taking the knife. He gave her water from his canteen and food from his stores, which she gulped like a famished dog. It had been days, she said, that she’d been alone, surviving on what edibles she could find in the house. Everyone else had died. Carmina, Soniff’s woman, had run off with her baby, and Sybbis did
n’t know if she was dead or not.

  “I’ll take you out of here,” said CummyNup.

  “Take me to Bloodruns!” she cried. “Take me home!”

  Even after she had seen the wreckage in the street, she insisted on going home. CummyNup tried to find it for her, without success. It could have been on one of the blocked streets, maybe in an area that was burning briskly.

  “If you’re wise, you’ll take her away from here,” said one of the Sisters to Trees who had been watching them trying to get through a blocked street. “There will be nothing left alive here in another few weeks. Even the rats will starve.” She jabbed her iron-tipped staff into the ground, dropping seeds into the hole. “Here as in the east,” she chanted. “Here as in the west. Where cities die, come Sisters nigh, and seeds will do the rest.”

  “Why you doin’ this?” CummyNup asked.

  “Why, look at this mess!” exclaimed the Sister. “Filth and wreckage, offal and death! In time, the trees and shrubs and grasses we’re planting will grow up green to cover the scars. The insects will return, and the birds. Then the Animal Masters will bring prairie dogs and ferrets, foxes and hawks and rabbits to nest in the old cellars and make nests on the rooftops.”

  “Why?” cried Sybbis. “I don’ unnerstan’ why.”

  The Sister gave her a long, level look, then shook her head and went back to her planting.

  “I wanna know why!” Sybbis screamed.

  The Sister turned and came back to her, taking her by the shoulder in a large, calloused hand and speaking softly. “When places grow too large for peace or health, with people who are not countrymen but warring tribes, they inevitably die. All such places carry their own destruction within them.”

  “You did it!” Sybbis sobbed. “You a monster that kill everbody so’s you could plan’ trees.”

  “Someone did so we could plant trees,” whispered the Sister. “But if it was a monster, it was one greater than I.” She turned away again, and this time Sybbis did not call after her.

  Though Sybbis continued to threaten a tantrum, CummyNup eventually convinced her it would do no good to go on hunting the Bloodruns, that it made better sense for her to return to the farm with him. They made their way back to a familiar intersection, and from there CummyNup was able to guide them among the wreckage until they came to the bridge.

  At the near end they were stopped by men dressed all in black except for red and white insignia upon their shoulders and above the clear visors covering their faces.

  “What weapons will we find in this place?” one of them asked CummyNup. “What chemicals?”

  CummyNup scratched his head and told them what he could about the weapons that had been in use, while the visored men conferred with one another. Sybbis knew something about chemicals, for the Bloodrun gang had controlled the trade of salt, and of lime for privies, chlorine for the baths, lead and zinc for paints, and arsenic for killing rats, as well as certain other necessities. The Bloodruns had kept stores of all these things in a warehouse near the bridge, one painted in Bloodrun colors.

  They questioned her closely, and when they had finished, she demanded to know who they were.

  The foremost among them took off his helmet and scratched his short, graying hair. “We’re an advance patrol of the Guardians. We’ve been sent to see to the destruction of weapons and the long-term storage of chemicals.”

  “Why?” asked Sybbis yet again.

  “So the water and soil don’t get poisoned,” he replied, giving her a curious look. “Are the Sisters here yet? Have you seen Animal Masters?”

  CummyNup told them they would find members of both groups in and around the city, then he half-led, half-dragged Sybbis across the bridge, glad to be out of the place.

  They took their time returning to Wise Rocks Farm, where Sybbis, between throwing tantrums over this thing and that, wept over her sister and her father, not knowing if they were dead or alive. Mama Chingero, hearing one such brouhaha, said to the Farmwife, “I take care of that Sybbis. You got to talk serious to a girl like that. No more conks here, so she got to make somethin’ of herself, startin’ out by heppin’ you!”

  Though Sybbis complained bitterly, Mama would not let up on her, and eventually she became what the Farm-wife called reasonably useful around the place, though the Widow shook her head over unswept corners and greasy pots. The refugee flow dwindled to nothing, leaving only the people in the tent town and a few marauders who lived by killing livestock and robbing people until they were hunted down by posses of farm folk, irritated beyond endurance. By the time the first snows of winter came, Fantis and Echinot lay empty under the snow, with even the corpse-fed dog packs run away or dead themselves. Word came that the cities north and east of Fantis had also been emptied by the plague.

  The tent town outside Whitherby began to dwindle as the refugees moved on. Some were hired by farmers or truckers Others with particularly citified skills announced their intention of going on south, through Artemisia, to the towns of Low Mesiko, or west, to the stilt towns along the Faulty Sea. A few found work in Whitherby itself, and word came of this pattern repeated over and over again among the villages in manland. Three-quarters of the city population had died, including virtually all the gangers. The other quarter had been widely spread among the villages or across the borders.

  The Edges, so travelers said, appeared untouched. Some travelers had actually gone to the gates and asked the guards. They had been told there was no sickness there. Still, few people were seen through the gates, and no one from outside had been in to make sure.

  When things had been quiet for long enough that everyone had settled down, CummyNup found Originee alone in the barn and asked if she would read the writing he had found in Abasio’s place.

  “It was written by a Sister to Trees,” Farmwife told him. “Dictated by someone called Elrick-Ann. Elrick-Ann did not die of the plague. She has gone with the Sisters to an encampment in the western mountains, to be a cook for them. She wants Abasio to know she’s all right.”

  CummyNup heaved a sigh and asked if Mama, Billibee, and Crunch could stay at Wise Rocks while he went south searching for Abasio.

  “He my frien’,” said CummyNup. “Maybe he need me An’ I oughta tell him what Elrick-Ann say.”

  “I’d be glad to have your mama stay,” Originee answered. “She’s been more than helpful. As for the children, Seelie would be most unhappy to see them go. I think they’d benefit from some schooling, too, don’t you?”

  CummyNup could only agree. Very few of the things learned in the cities had stood him in good stead in the countryside. Even his appearance had been against him. Now that the farm people knew no reinforcements could arrive from the cities, and now that his hair was partly grown out, CummyNup was more acceptable. He thought he wouldn’t have much trouble working his way south, the way Originee said Abasio had gone.

  Sybbis wanted to know all about Abasio, and CummyNup had no reason not to tell her. Sybbis narrowed her eyes, thought long thoughts, and asked certain odd questions, such as had Abasio frequented the songhouses and had Abasio used drugs much, and did he by any chance have a knife scar on his shoulder. She found more meaning in the answers than CummyNup did, for she demanded to go along. They argued over this for some days until Sybbis took advantage of a private moment in the haymow to convince CummyNup she would be a good traveling companion. CummyNup had had girls before, but never one like Sybbis!

  Originee, who heaved a sigh of relief at the idea of Sybbis’s imminent departure, told CummyNup about Abasio’s wagon and horse, that he was escorting an Orphan, that he had become a dyer, and that there were gangers after him and walkers after the Orphan.

  “Maybe the gangers are dead, so if Abasio thinks it’s safe, tell him to come home,” said Originee. “Tell him I’m looking out for his grandpa, but he’d be better home.”

  Behind Wide Mountain House in Artemisia, Abasio drove the wagon down the alleyway and parked it in the shimmering
grove above the stream, as he had been directed to do.

  “I’m not getting much out of this bargain so far!” Coyote complained with a yawn. “Tell me what happened.”

  Abasio merely grunted as he went to unhitch Big Blue, leaving it to Olly to mollify Coyote.

  Olly repeated as much of their conversation as she remembered, concluding, “And they sent us here, where we’re to wait until a librarian named Arakny shows up.”

  “Is that all?” Coyote sounded disappointed. “Are you sure that’s all?”

  Abasio had led Big Blue down to the stream and now returned with him to the wagon, the horse’s muzzle dripping with moisture.

  “I’m thirsty too,” Coyote whined. “And you’re not telling me everything!”

  Olly filled the kettle from the barrel, splashed water into a bucket for him, and knelt beside him as he drank.

  “We’re not keeping anything from you, Coyote. They just didn’t tell us much. I get the impression they’re being sneaky here in Artemisia.”

  “Sneaky?” Coyote pricked his ears.

  “I think they’re letting books be destroyed, but they seem to have some way of keeping the information alive. They’re going to let us talk to a librarian. And they’ll let us go with them to the Place of Power.”

  She stood up, brushed her hands together, and said fretfully, “You know what I wish we had? I wish we had a map.”

  “A map?” asked Abasio.

  “A map!” she said. “A chart. Oracle told me about them. Diagrams that show what lies along the way. Rivers and mountains and so forth.” She sought a straight stick, broke it to gain a sharp point, smoothed a patch of dirt, then drew a map of their journey to Artemisia, marking rivers and mountains along the route. Coyote watched, turning his head from side to side, nodding intelligently as she explained.

  Abasio wondered why he had never thought of maps before. The gangers customarily drew diagrams before a battle, showing where each group was to assemble, which streets or alleys they would attack, but he had never thought of having a diagram that extended outside the city. “That could be useful,” he mused.