Felix laughed, his scrawny turkey neck bobbing. “C’mon then, Dunderhead. Let’s get you settled so you have time for an honest evening’s work.”
Tess followed him toward the tents. Some intuition led her to glance back at the hole, just in time to glimpse Pathka’s tail disappearing down it.
Before bed, Tess slipped away from the tents, followed a footpath through the nodding wheat, and sat behind the wall of the neighboring meadow, where she wouldn’t be seen. Night fell late this far south. The salmon sunset persisted stubbornly; the stars had to shout to be heard.
She pulled out Pathka’s thnik, the little moon-bug, and flipped its switch. “How is it down there?” she asked him. “Any sign of her?”
“She’s everywhere,” his voice hissed and popped back. “The smell of her, I mean. She passed this way recently. It’s so overpowering that I’m having trouble determining how to search. If they keep dumping gravel down the hole, it’s going to force me to choose a direction before I know where she went.”
“Don’t tell me Anathuthia has moved on. How far will you have to go to find her?” said Tess in dismay. She’d just signed a contract to stay right here.
“I don’t know,” said Pathka. “I’m half tempted to wait here. The dream was very clear: a wheat field, it said, and here we are. But maybe I’m supposed to follow her?”
Tess scuffed the toe of her boot in the soil, wondering what the odds were that Pathka would take off after Anathuthia and not come back.
Was Pathka still cross with her? They hadn’t had a chance to clear the air before Pathka dived down the hole, and now Tess didn’t know how to ask. Kikiu was a raw wound, it seemed, and she didn’t know how to avoid poking it again.
“Be careful,” was all she managed to say. “I don’t want to lose you to a cave-in.”
“Stop the wagons, then,” said Pathka. “I’m more likely to be buried by a heap of gravel.”
Tess switched off her thnik disconsolately and tucked it down her jerkin. How was she supposed to stop the gravel wagons? She could think of no surer way to get fired.
Later, listening to her tentmates snore, Tess managed to think of several surer ways to get fired. She could throw Felix, Aster, and Mico down the hole.
Tess spent the next day dead on her feet, and it was a minor miracle that she didn’t end up falling into the pit herself. Gravel, though it is made of tiny pieces, is heavy in the aggregate—far, far heavier than hay—and while shoveling may seem a simple matter at first, each scoop weighs more than the last. By the end of the day, her neck and shoulders burned; she could barely turn her head or lift her spoon to eat her soup.
If Aster, Mico, and Felix snored that night, Tess snored louder.
Tess didn’t have to stop the gravel wagons, it turned out, because by the end of the second day, it was clear that their efforts were futile. The cavern floor sloped in two directions, and the gravel was sliding into oblivion on either side. At this rate, they’d have to fill the whole chamber with gravel, and there wasn’t enough gravel in the world.
Boss Gen held an emergency meeting with the geologist, the surveyor, and Big Arnando, the foreman. Because the meeting was held in a tent, everyone in camp could hear what was going on—particularly the shouted parts, which were many. Felix waved Tess over to the shady side of the tent, where he and Mico and Aster had set up a crate and were playing cards.
“Deal Tes’puco in,” said Felix, offering Tess his spot in the deepest shade.
“Can ’Puco even hold the cards? His arms are like noodles,” said Mico, a dark-complexioned fellow. He wore the same chin beard as Felix and Aster, but his ponytail made a curly pouf like a water dog’s tail.
“I’ll hold them with my toes,” offered Tess. “What are we playing?”
“No, we can’t just build a detour!” shouted Boss Gen from behind the tent wall. “Do you know how much paperwork that would involve? How much money, for the new rights-of-way? It would take months, and meanwhile this hole is gaping at us. Cows are falling down it.”
Felix chuckled. “She’s so tenderly concerned for her fellow steers. ’Puco, the game is called Madeleine’s Arse. Queens are high….”
Tess, initially put off by the name, soon realized the game was a variation on Crespina, which she’d played a thousand times with Lady Farquist. She bid hesitantly at first, feigning surprise at her “beginner’s luck,” but by the fifth hand she was openly trouncing them, and after the eighth, Aster leaped to his feet, kicked over the crate, and drew a knife. “You cheat, Penoio!” he cried, the first words Tess had heard him speak.
“Whoa! Hold on!” cried Mico, wrapping his muscular arms around Aster’s heaving middle. To Tess’s surprise, Felix grabbed her the same way. She hadn’t risen to meet Aster’s challenge—choosing instead to cower—but clearly Felix expected her to.
“You’re not cheating, are you, ’Puco?” said Felix. He was sweaty and rank, and she wished he’d let her go.
Tess said quickly, “No, no. I pretended to be stupider than I am, though.”
“That’s not against the rules,” Felix pronounced, like a judge. “That’s strategy. I pretend to be lazy all the time, so that when I do any work, everyone’s pleasantly surprised.”
“I’m pretty sure you really are that lazy,” said Mico, still clasping Aster around the middle. The red drained from Aster’s face; when he stopped struggling, Mico let him go. Aster wouldn’t look at Tess, but dug the toe of his boot into the dirt.
In all the brouhaha, they’d missed the conclusion of the meeting. Suddenly Big Arnando was there, telling them to get back to work. “Doing what?” Felix demanded, incensed at the injustice of being asked to do his job.
“Licking cats,” said Arnando. Mico burst out laughing. Tess guessed this was some rude Ninysh idiom, but Arnando kept a straight face and unwavering calm. His very mildness suggested they didn’t want to see him riled. Mico stashed the cards, and they got to it.
The crew were herded away from the hole, to the western side, where horses and wagons had beaten a makeshift detour through the wheat. The next wagon had been redirected onto that path, and men were already spreading the gravel with rakes. “I hate this plan!” the surveyor was shouting. “The road was perfectly straight. This is a pimple on the face of my road!”
“Get out your equipment and mark us a perfect semicircle,” said Arnando, cool as morning dew. “Make the best of it, you geometrical tyrant.”
He did it, sputtering all the while. Tess envied the surveyor’s assistant (who was also his daughter); that was a job she could have done, holding the measuring string, dangling the plumb line. Felix grumbled, clearly thinking the same thing.
Tess got a lesson in road building over the next several days; she learned about grading, leveling, layering, banking, tamping, laying stone. She still ached when she lay down to sleep, but the aches were more varied and interesting than when she’d merely been shoveling.
She learned the hierarchy, too. She and her tentmates were the bottom of the heap. Above them were the senior graders. Above them were the stonefitters and then the stonecutters. Above them all was Big Arnando, the foreman, and above him, Boss Gen. The surveyor ranked with Arnando, but he couldn’t reprimand anyone except through the foreman.
The geologist stood apart from everyone. He wasn’t part of the crew, Felix explained, but had been brought in specifically to deal with this hole. “Dunno why he’s still here, honestly,” said Felix, on the third day of detour grading. “We’ve stopped messing with the hole.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. Tess had seen the geologist, called Nicolas, visit the edge after dark when Boss Gen wouldn’t notice him. He lay on his belly like Pathka and gazed into the depths, his face dimly illuminated by a lantern he’d lowered on the end of a string.
He was the first learned man Tess had encountered in her trave
ls, and she found him unduly fascinating. Not that she found him handsome, to be clear: his face was heavily weathered, like a bit of craggy cliff. It was more that his quirks—reading at the mess table, getting impatient and snappish when the other men said stupid things—made her oddly nostalgic.
She liked scholars. They’d been the best thing about her youthful misadventures. Surely it was possible to talk to one without everything going bad?
She needed to prove this to herself. After dinner on the fourth evening, Tess eschewed the card game and went out to the hole. Nicolas was on his stomach; the hole glowed eerily.
“Spot anything?” asked Tess, nearly startling him into dropping the lantern.
“Don’t sneak up like that,” said the geologist, scowling. “Who are you?”
“Tes’puco,” said Tess, seating herself carefully beside him, letting her feet dangle into the yawning chasm. “I like geology.”
“Oh you do, do you?” he said, as welcoming as blackberry bramble.
She was going to bump right up against the limits of her Ninysh, talking about rocks. “We’ve got caves in Goredd, worn away by water. I’ve crawled through lots. They’re beautiful, and sometimes they collapse. This, though…” She tossed a rock into the depths; it made sharp, sweet echoes. “I can tell this is different. Water didn’t make this hole. What do you think?”
“Nothing could have made this,” said Nicolas, raising himself on all fours. He began reeling his lantern up. “That’s solid basalto, no sign of erosion. We’re not mining this part of the shield.” His tone softened slightly: “I’m fascinated and baffled in equal measure.”
Tess smiled to herself: he was a quintessential natural philosopher, prickly until he realized she was interested. Nobody else had cared about the basalto, evidently.
“At least we’re not still trying to fill it,” said Tess, looking down the hole.
“Who told you that?” said Nicolas.
“Well…why the detour, then?”
He shook his head. “That’s temporary. They don’t even have the landowner’s permission. They’re trying to make it passable until the boulders get here.” The lantern was up at last. “The gravel slides aside, into the depths of the cavern, so they’re hauling in some very large rocks from the quarry at Dulouse. It should take about a week.”
“That seems like a waste of stone,” said Tess, although in truth she worried about Pathka being sealed in. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a bridge over it?”
“A…bridge?” said Nicolas, confused, as if he’d never heard of such a structure.
“If this were a river, that’s what they’d do,” said Tess. “Not fill it in.”
“Filling a river would have consequences,” said the geologist. “Filling this hole—”
“Would have consequences,” said Tess. “You’d never learn what made it.”
“You have some crackpot theory,” said Nicolas shrewdly, eyeing her sidelong.
She did. He was going to think her mad, but Tess found she didn’t care. She had nothing to prove to this man, and there was a certain pleasure to be had in shocking him. “Ever heard of the World Serpents?”
The geologist laughed. “Oh no, not this. Don’t tell me this mania has reached all the way to Goredd. It’s bad enough that some of the Academy’s best and brightest have gone tearing off after the one in the Antarctic, but—”
“Since when do naturalists take World Serpents seriously?” asked Tess, put out. She and Will hadn’t convinced anyone, but Nicolas was claiming the Ninysh were interested? Never.
Nicolas shrugged. “Only in the last few years. Countess Margarethe of Mardou is on a voyage as we speak, scouring the waters around the Archipelagos.”
Tess emitted a bitter sound, halfway between a laugh and a snort. It figured. The countess had said megafauna, and Tess had fallen down a hole in her own mind. If she’d said World Serpent…would it have made a difference? Was there really any chance that Tess could’ve been sailing the Antarctic right now? She probably would have found a way to stab herself in the foot no matter what. She’d been so resentful that day, biting everyone indiscriminately.
“What’s this Academy you mentioned?” said Tess, pushing away her regrets.
“The Academy of Segosh, older and more reputable than your St. Bert’s,” said Nicolas archly. “We’re ahead of Goredd in most endeavors, but even our finest minds may fall prey to fads and manias. Before this, they were trying to replicate St. Blanche’s mechanical marvels. They made some inroads, and Ninysh clockwork is now superior to any in the Southlands, but in the end, no one could do what St. Blanche does. She’s a Saint; she puts a piece of her soul into everything she creates. Mere humans simply can’t.”
“The quigutl accomplish a great deal without involving, uh, souls,” said Tess, pulling Pathka’s insectoid thnik out of her jerkin.
Nicolas turned it over in his hands. Wires protruded at strange angles. “I’ve never seen such an ungainly one.”
“It was made on the road,” said Tess, taking it back and stashing it again, wary that he might want to dismantle it. “The quigutl didn’t have his usual tools along.”
“That device would interest the Academy very much,” he said. “That we could learn from. If you’re ever in Segosh, consider donating it.”
“And you should consider taking my bridge idea to Gen,” said Tess, standing up. “If the hole is left open, you could come back later with proper gear and explore its depths yourself.”
Nicolas raised his lamp and stared into the black pit. Tess left him to his considerations.
* * *
“You’re a clever bastard, I’m told,” said Boss Gen the next day. She’d called Tess into her office, to the unexpected envy of Felix and Mico; the sun was particularly strong that afternoon. “Vessi the surveyor loves your bridge idea. Now the road can run tediously straight, like his imagination. Count Pesavolta will send another crew with an engineer and masons, which suits me fine. Once we finish the detour, we can get back to doing our job, which is filling potholes, not the earth itself.”
“Do I get some kind of cleverness bonus?” asked Tess, cocky from the unexpected praise.
“You do not,” said Gen, “and this isn’t really why I called you in. I wanted to ask”—she lowered her voice—“one woman to another, whether you’re adequately prepared for your monthlies. I don’t know how you’ve been taking care of yourself out on the road—”
“Moss,” said Tess.
“—and I don’t want to know,” said Gen, glowering at the interruption. “But now that you’re among men, pretending to be one, laundry becomes an issue.”
“Moss works surprisingly well in a lunessa, and you can burn it in the fire,” said Tess.
“There is a dearth of moss here in the wheat country,” said Gen, clearly regretting this conversation. “I have proper wool lunessas in that trunk. Use them as needed, and wash them in privacy, here in my tent. That’s all I wanted to say. You’re welcome.”
“Won’t there be gossip? They’re going to think young ’Puco is your lover.”
“How are you not dead of stupidity?” cried Gen, apparently irritated that Tess had thought of something she hadn’t. “The moss has taken root and grown into your brain. Get out!”
Still, the offer had been kind, and Tess intended to take her up on it. She trotted back out into the hot sun, lamenting the fact that she couldn’t take her shirt off like everyone else.
* * *
The detour was finished within two more days; they were to pack up the tents first thing in the morning and move on. Tess, clever as she was, had inadvertently hastened the crew away from the hole, and away from Pathka. Upon that final evening, she sneaked out to the meadow wall and called Pathka on her thnik again.
“I’ll stay here with you,” she said. “I’ll break
my contract and slip down the hole and—”
“It’s no good staying here,” Pathka’s voice came back tinnily. “I don’t think she’s coming back. I’ll follow her scent underground while you travel with the road crew.”
“We’re on this journey together,” Tess cried.
“On parallel roads, for now. Stay topside. I’ll check back every few days, and when I find her, I’ll come get you, Teth.” He paused, then added, “I watched you working today. You looked happy. It will be better for you to stay with creatures of your own kind, in the sunshine.”
That sounded too much like goodbye. “Don’t do anything that could kill you,” said Tess, her voice thickening. “Otherwise I will find you in quigutl Heaven, if there is one, and I will bite you like you’ve never been bitten before.”
A clapping sound was Pathka’s laughter, and then the thnik buzzed, disconnected. Tess picked herself up, threw a rock at the moon, and stumbled back to camp.
* * *
She fell into routine, the daily rhythm of tamping, rolling, grinding, filling, chipping. Tess had never worked so hard in her life, but her blisters turned into calluses, her aches into smaller aches. Twinges, really. The heat grew almost unbearable as summer careened drunkenly toward fall; she wet her hat and drank water. Honestly, keeping her shirt on beat being sunburned. Her tentmates, even dark brown Mico, were crisped around the edges like roast beef. Their muscles rippled under the sun. She tried not to stare at them too obviously.
This labor was as much like digging into herself as digging into the roadbed. Every fiber of her body seemed connected to something else, an emotion, a memory, a snatch of song. This persistent ache was Will, and that one her mother; her sisters hid in unexpected twinges. Motion broke up chunks of anger and sorrow, and sweat washed them away. She felt empty and full at once, an odd condition. Labor silenced the gadfly voice better than wine. Wine muted it, but it also dulled her defenses and made that buzzing monster feel enormous; hard work made it shockingly clear that the fly was only fly-sized, and might be crushed.
Tess of the Road Page 28
