Tess of the Road

by Rachel Hartman

  Tess felt strangely privileged to have glimpsed his pain.

  She leaned across the window seat to kiss him again, and then, who can say how, she was on his lap, which was much solider than Spira’s. This would have alarmed her, but she’d already crossed that river, it seemed, and nothing untoward had happened. This was not the Final Thing.

  Then Will’s hand was inside her bodice, cupping her breast through her linen chemise.

  Tess all but levitated off his lap and landed three feet away. “Will!”

  “Oh, my love,” said Will, clapping a hand to his chest, his blue eyes wide and ingenuous. “I’ve overstepped. Forgive me—I got caught up and forgot what I was about.”

  Tess frantically rehooked her bodice, tears in her eyes; her mother had refused to buy her a gown with “harlot hooks” down the front, so Tess had altered the dress herself, and now look what had happened. She should have worn proper, decent laces.

  Will extended his hand like a peace offering. Tess pointedly didn’t take it.

  “Would you believe, little bird, that this is what I love about you most?” he said, his voice hushed and awed. “You’re so good. Who else, in the midst of kissing, could keep virtue in mind? I hope you know I admire that.”

  Tess looked away, a ticklish feeling rising in her chest. She knew she wasn’t that good, especially after what she’d just done to Spira, and yet—

  “You’re a rare and beautiful thing,” Will was saying. His fair hair haloed his head in the moonlight. “I wish I could build you a cage, little bird, or a beautiful tower, to keep you safe from the corrupt, cynical world. You don’t know how precious it is to be naive and innocent. I only want to protect you, so you can sing and be free like the golden bird you were born to be.”

  It didn’t matter if he was wrong; she was hungry to be told exactly this, that she was not a waste of space or a born troublemaker, not a spank magnet or a little devil girl. That she wasn’t failing all the deepest wishes of her heart.

  Will beckoned. She hesitated, and then returned to his lap.

  “Your virtue heals me, and makes me want to be better,” Will whispered in her ear. His warm breath on her neck made her shiver. “Even a kiss”—he kissed her lingeringly—“could be a sordid thing, but you refine it into something radiant and pure.”

  She fell into his kiss again. And when, soon after, his hand returned to her breast—outside her bodice, this time—she let it lie, reasoning that this, too, was not the Final Thing, and that someone who so valued her might be granted a little more liberty. Maybe this touch, too, was within her power to purify, like a refiner’s fire.

  * * *

  Night had fully fallen over Affle, starless and overcast. Tess shivered, despite the heat.

  “I used to look back on that evening and laugh,” she said in a hollow voice, like the wind through reeds. “I thought of it as a hilarious Dozerius tale, ‘Wherein Our Heroes Trick Spira, Who Had It Coming.’ We were lively and alive—how could that be wrong?—and I thought I’d done something genuinely helpful for Will, who was haunted by some hurt he wouldn’t explain.”

  Like the romantic hero of almost any story. She felt embarrassingly transparent.

  “But the harm we did outweighed everything,” Tess continued. “Spira had to stand before a dragon tribunal for deviant behavior. Those herbs were medicine. He—” No, that was wrong. She still wasn’t treating the scholar like a person, saying he. “Ko had Tathlann’s syndrome. No maternal memories; no male or female parts; weak immune system. We made ko sick.”

  Pathka shifted his head uncomfortably in her lap.

  “It’s one of my biggest regrets. I wish there were some way to make it up to Spira,” Tess added, hoping Pathka didn’t think her a terrible person.

  Pathka raised his head sharply and said, “You won’t like hearing this, but sometimes you can’t fix what you broke. Sometimes you just have to live with it.”

  He was so riled up there were sparks coming out of his nostrils.

  She’d made him angry again.

  Tess backed away, mostly so she wouldn’t catch fire, and said hesitantly, “I didn’t mean to—are we talking about the same thing now?”

  “About responsibility, and making up for past mistakes?” said Pathka, and there was a bite in his voice that Tess had never heard before. “Oh yes. You were subtle, but I’m sure we understand each other.”

  “Pathka!” cried Tess in frustration. “I’m confessing my sins. I can regret how I treated Spira without it being an underhanded criticism of…of you and Kikiu.”

  Pathka was done listening. He turned, tail snaking ominously, and walked off into the descending night. Tess called after him, to no avail, until he was almost out of sight.

  She had no choice but to follow, into the uncertain darkness.

  They camped, eventually, and by morning Pathka seemed to have forgiven her, or at least recovered his equanimity. They followed the road south in silence.

  The roads in Ninys were better than those in Goredd; this was a fact, and an artifact of their different histories. Faced with marauding dragons, Goredd hadn’t prioritized things such as paving stones, roadbed grading, or drainage. Indeed, for generations it had been safer to stay off the roads. Dragons knew to look for you there.

  In this era of Queen Glisselda’s Peace, Heaven let it last, Goreddi roads were finally receiving some attention. Improvements spread from the capital outward, like a seed sprouting shoots, but they had not yet reached the far corners of the realm.

  It would be an exaggeration to say the roads grew immediately straighter and tidier the moment one crossed the border, but that was because the border had moved so often. The roads around Affle were hearteningly decent; a few miles beyond, the paving stones took on a geometric regularity. The roadbed acquired a curve, encouraging water to sluice off the sides instead of accumulating in the middle as a paradise for mosquitoes and stink. Tess, who’d become something of a road connoisseur, appreciated the greater ease of walking.

  The flavor of the thing was hard to get used to, however. Ninysh roads smacked more of civilization than mystery. Tess had to squint to see the potential, to keep believing that anything might be around the next corner. All roads were one, surely, even if their textures differed.

  Was she as varied, a part of herself as rough and rutted as the Goreddi roads, and some other part as efficient as the Ninysh? She often felt, early in the morning, when the world seemed most malleable, that she contained these different potentials, and more. It wasn’t merely that she could be anything, but that she was everything, all at once.

  When Tess came across the road crew, therefore, she approached with curiosity. Here was a different way of engaging with the road, and it seemed as open to her as any other.

  Pathka, without a word, dived into the wheat to hide.

  The workers had a big encampment, a dozen tents and nearly as many wagons. As Tess drew nearer, she saw workmen clustered around a yawning sinkhole in the middle of the roadbed. It had been there long enough that passing travelers had carved wheel ruts through the adjacent wheat field as they gave the hole wide berth.

  Tess walked up beside a ruddy young man who was leaning on his shovel and chewing a blade of grass. A wagon, opposite, dumped gravel into the chasm, raising clouds of dust and making everyone cough and complain. When the dust cleared, the hole looked as empty as ever. The redheaded fellow spit into the abyss.

  “Was the rock eaten by water?” said Tess, edging up and peering into the darkness. She couldn’t say limestone in Ninysh—but this wasn’t limestone anyway. This far south was all Ninysh Shield, as she’d heard it called, an expanse of basalt. It didn’t erode as readily as limestone; a sinkhole was rather surprising.

  The lad—scarcely older than Tess—flicked a glance at her and rubbed his freckled nose. “We dug this ourselves,”
he drawled. “It’s a latrine.”

  Tess ignored the sarcasm. “What causes this?”

  He shrugged, instantly bored with her if she wouldn’t laugh at his jokes. “Our geologist don’t know. It’s a giant cave, like nobody from the Academy ever seen before. He’s got a bee up his bum, cuz Boss Gen won’t let him down there after the cave-in killed Daniele.” The lad pointed across at a man in a leather apron, long hair tied back, on his stomach lowering a rope into the hole. “He’s sending down a wren in a cage. Not much else he can do.”

  Men worked around the geologist, shoveling gravel down the hole. “Felix, you son of a donkey, there’s nothing to do on that side!” one shouted, glaring across at the lad who was talking to Tess. Even the geologist looked up and frowned.

  “I was only telling this lout to talk to Boss Gen if he wants work!” Felix shouted back, thumbing his nose. “Excuse me for trying to find someone to replace poor Daniele.”

  “Daniele wasn’t a lazy git, at least,” said a muscular gray-haired man, rounding the side of the wagon. The others pretended to have been working hard rather than leering at Felix.

  Felix grudgingly straightened, muttering, “I was working, Arnando, till I got interrupted.” He glared sidelong at Tess—that rude interruptrix—and began picking his way around the perimeter. Big Arnando, clearly the foreman, crossed his arms and watched Felix like a hawk.

  Tess stared down the hole. This cave might be even larger than Big Spooky.

  “Boss is in the main tent,” called Arnando; his deep voice carried effortlessly across.

  He’d believed Felix that she was looking for work. To Tess’s surprise, she found herself tempted. This was honest work, paid in money, not lunch. There was something to be said for that. She couldn’t live hand to mouth forever.

  Wheat stretched to the horizon. It was just the kind of place Pathka had said Anathuthia would be in. The little quigutl had ducked out of sight the minute they saw the crew working, but he’d be nearby. Tess scanned for the telltale wiggle in the grass, but the plants stayed eerily still.

  Then she spotted him. He’d crept to the edge of the chasm, in broad daylight, in front of all these men. Pathka clung to the lip of the hole, immobile as a stone, doing nothing to draw the eye; only Tess’s scouring gaze had enabled her to spot him. She rounded the hole toward him.

  He lay flat, sniffing the subterranean wind, one eye on the men. The other reeled back toward Tess. His tail twitched side to side with barely contained excitement, and she knew: this was the place. No wonder the cave had baffled even the geologist. A World Serpent had made it.

  She would ask for a job. They needed an excuse to stay right here.

  The canvas tents were cleaner than one might have expected. She found the biggest tent easily enough, but the door flap hung closed. What was correct tent etiquette? Knock? Holler? Walk in? She glanced around for someone to ask, but another gravel wagon was backing up to the hole and all eyes were focused on that.

  Tess took a deep breath and flung the flap aside. Across the dim interior, she saw a woman. Apparently this was the wrong tent, and she’d rudely intruded on someone.

  “Oops, sorry,” she mumbled, and let the flap drop.

  The woman called, “Well? Are you coming in or not?”

  Tess peeked around the flap and saw that the woman was sitting behind a folding camp desk, a ledger book in front of her.

  “Whatever you’re up to,” said the woman crossly, “it smacks of nonsense, and I truly do not have time for nonsense today. Especially not the nonsense of beardless boys. If you’re coming in, come in.”

  “I’m looking for Boss Gen,” said Tess, in a voice very like a beardless boy’s.

  “Are you indeed?” said the woman, pausing to push up her spectacles. She was squarely built, with a snub nose and a blond braid wrapped around her head. “Will you be amused or alarmed to know that Boss Gen is looking at you?”

  “You’re…you’re the boss?” said Tess, coming all the way into the tent.

  “Oh, bravo,” said Gen, underlining something emphatically, “you may almost be smart enough to work here, although I warn you, I will boss you until you bleed.”

  “I want a job,” said Tess, before it had quite sunk in that Gen might have already implied that she was hired. “That is…did you just offer me one?”

  Gen raised one terrible eyebrow, and Tess felt something wither inside her. “I did, but you’re rather dim on the uptake. Unfortunately, that means you’ll fit in very well. We need to replace Daniele—rest he merry in the arms of Heaven.” Boss Gen grimaced at some memory. “If you’re to work here, understand that there is to be no exploring of that tunnel during off-hours. We’re trying to fill it, not get ourselves crushed like cockroaches.”

  Talk got technical then, as Gen explained what grueling physical labor Tess was to perform in exchange for money. Even after all the farmwork, Tess wasn’t sure she had sufficient muscles for these tasks. Gen anticipated this objection, saying, “You’re kind of weedy, but don’t worry if you’re not strong yet. You will be soon enough, my boy.”

  There was something sarcastic in that final word. Tess stared hard at Gen, trying to decide whether she could tell what Tess was hiding. Gen stared back with a burning glare that suggested she could see through Tess’s clothing, in fact.

  Tess fidgeted with a button on her jerkin. Keeping up her pretense while surrounded by men would be a challenge. It might be useful if somebody else knew the truth, somebody she could go to in an emergency. If the boss was a woman, surely Tess could trust her with this.

  “There’s something you should know about me,” Tess began.

  “You’re a girl in disguise?” said Gen, obviously struggling not to roll her eyes. She pulled out a penknife and sharpened her quill.

  Tess self-consciously touched her hair, which was still quite short. “You could tell.”

  “No, but there are only so many guesses when someone furtively tells me there’s something I should know,” said Gen, peering shrewdly over the top of her glasses. “I, of all people, couldn’t care less what you are. I tamped roadbed for five years and fitted stone for ten, and there is nothing you can’t do on this crew once you’ve built up some strength, except piss standing up—and even that is possible with practice, I’m told, though who wants wet shoes in the meantime?”

  Her casual vulgarity shocked Tess into silence. Boss Gen dug through a trunk and found Tess a broad sun hat and a leather apron. “You’ve got good boots already, and the jerkin will do. You’re going to sweat, make no mistake, and they’ll tease you for keeping your shirt on—oh, don’t look so alarmed. They’ll assume you’re embarrassed by your hairless, caved-in, little-boy chest. Unless you tell them the truth, but I don’t recommend that.”

  “Of course,” said Tess with a knowing, one-woman-to-another nod.

  “You mistake me. You’d be perfectly safe with my men,” said Gen shrewdly. “If they touched a hair on your head, I’d make them castameri with this left hand.” Tess didn’t know the term, but Gen made a clawed, cupping gesture, leaving no doubt as to what she would grasp and pluck like fruit. Tess flinched, and she didn’t even own the requisite anatomy.

  “Now ask me what I’ll be doing with my other hand,” Boss Gen stage-whispered.

  “Uh, what will you be doing, uh, with your—” began Tess, not sure she wanted to know.

  “I’ll be writing a sonnet!” cried Gen, slapping her desk. “But do keep pretending to be a boy. They’ll only give you trifling tasks otherwise, and I need hard work out of you.” Gen began drawing up a contract. “What name do you go by, Sir Roadworker?”

  “Tes’puco,” said Tess without flinching.

  “Stupid-head?” said Boss Gen, writing it down. “What are you, eight?”

  “Are you asking because you need to put my age in the contract?�
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  Gen laughed delightedly. “Not so stupid, perhaps. But you’ve a ways to go before you’ll impress me, boy. Sign this and get gone. Take Daniele’s old bunk, with Mico, Aster, and Felix.”

  Tess read the whole contract, which caused Gen to emit annoyed and impressed grunts by turns. The term was one month, a reasonable trial period for both sides (Tess had no idea how long it might take to find Anathuthia). The weekly salary seemed enormous, until she noted deductions for food and board and apron rental. Still, she’d be glad to have money. Winter was months away yet, but it would be good to have something saved up toward some kind of shelter. Once Anathuthia was found, she was probably on her own, and Tess had no idea how far it was to Segosh, or if she’d want to walk there through the snow.

  When Tess emerged from the boss’s tent, Pathka still lay at the lip of the hole, on the far edge. Tess couldn’t just saunter over and talk to him. She had to find her tent, and if they were labeled in any way, she couldn’t tell. She looked for Felix. His rust-colored hair didn’t stand out here, but his tendency to lean on his shovel and stare into the distance certainly did.

  “I’ll show you,” he said when she asked where the tent was. “The sooner you’re settled, the sooner you can be out here, taking Daniele’s place. Until then you’re deadweight, and we don’t need any more of that. That’s my job. What did you say your name was?”

  Tess hesitated. Her childhood nickname seemed like less and less of a good idea, but she’d already given it to Gen. “Tes’puco,” she said, affecting a devil-may-care attitude.

  Felix’s brows shot up. “Either you’re some kind of simpleton, to let people call you that, or you have bollos the size of dragon eggs.”

  “It’s the latter, I assure you,” said Tess, somewhat stiffly. “More…more of those bits you mentioned than you can shake a stick at.”