by M. E. Parker
“Ye-ah.”
The other people, a woman and two girls, continued speaking. “What are they saying? Why can’t I understand them?” Myron tried to stand and fell back, having forgotten about the tether to Saul’s leg. Saul’s arms and legs splayed out spread-eagle behind him. Saul had taken a gray color and his limbs had gone rigid.
“They speakin’ Gapi.”
“Sounds like sleep talk.”
“May as well be. Part Navajo, I think—a tongue as dead as that corpse you’re dragging behind you. Old Age words from here and there. Some Mexican-speak. And a bunch of jabber you won’t hear anywhere but out here.”
The man pulled out a jagged knife and sawed at the shackle attached to Myron’s ankle.
“Why don’t you speak Gapi?”
“I do my best with it. But I speak like you, too, ’cause—” He reached for Myron’s arm with a tight grip and placed the back of his hand beside Myron’s. His eyes narrowed. “I been where you been.” His hand bore the gear-and-hammer tattoo of Industry. “Name’s Rounder.”
The woman speaking Gapi held up her hand, shaking her head, trying to stop Rounder from freeing Myron from the shackle.
“What’s wrong? What’s she saying?”
“She says…it’s a foul omen.” He nodded to Saul. “You being connected with a dead man like that. She says that if we free you, death will find someone else to attach to.”
Rounder’s face twisted as he hammered the shackle with a hatchet and pried at it with his knife. The woman looked on in dismay that Rounder had not heeded her warning. When he finally broke the chain, he flipped the broken end toward Saul and pounded on the hard ground. “Ground’s too hard. Can’t bury him here.” He helped Myron to his feet.
Myron shook his leg. The cuff, still clamped around his ankle with three rings of a broken chain dangling from it, made a jingling noise when he moved.
“Used to, buzzards cleaned the messes we left behind. Now, guess we’ll leave him for the wind and sand to clean his bones.”
Rounder turned and picked up a satchel. They all plodded toward a contraption loaded with supplies, Rounder, the other woman, and the two girls, who turned every few seconds to look at Myron with a blank gaze. The girls were the same height. They had the same length of cropped black hair. Their faces matched pin for point and their mannerisms were identical. Myron could not tell one from the other. They were the same person, one on the left and one on the right, a mischief straight from the Chasm that left him feeling as though he might have died after all. They were also about the same age Myron was when the orange shirts killed his mother. “Which one is—the doppelgänger?” Myron asked, not wanting to go further until he reconciled the good from the evil.
“Huh?” Rounder turned toward Myron. “Oh, these here are twins,” he said. “Nothin’ to worry over. Came out the same is all.”
The girls’ mother admonished them in Gapi. The twins continued to stare at Myron. “What’d she say?” Myron asked.
“She tells them not to look upon the walking dead.” Rounder smiled.
Hypnotized by the twins, certain that one must be malevolent and one virtuous, Myron found himself gazing back at them the way they stared at him. “What are their names?”
“Gapi names are peculiar. I call these two Rickets, ’cause of how sickly they look.” Rounder continued toward the contraption. “I round folks up that are wandering the Nethers. Most people I come across already met with the same fate as your friend back there. Found these three in the belly of a rusted locomotive, buried half in sand, huddled over a man about to take his last breath.”
The woman and her twins climbed onto a bench in the vehicle that resembled a mule-drawn wagon, but it had no mule, and, with four bulbous wheels, it looked as though it could traverse rugged terrain, unlike any wagon Myron had ever seen. As he approached the contraption, his interest piqued and his salvage instincts reached a boil. On the rear axle, he spotted a series of reduction gears driven by a sprocket that drove spliced-together bicycle chains.
Myron crawled under the front to inspect its inner workings. The front bench had two sets of pedals beneath a steering wheel at the end of a column that used a pinion to guide the wheels in the direction the steering wheel turned. Anchored to a metal plate under the chassis, a mast rose through the vehicle, towering above it with rope riggings.
“Where are we going?” Myron asked.
“Mesa Gap.” Rounder pointed toward the west. “These three I can take on in. You’ll have to wait outside the gate until Te Yah reads your intentions.”
“What about their intentions?” Myron asked of the twins.
“They look like they’d cut you from nut to nape if given the chance, don’t they? Don’t matter what their intentions are. I get water and supplies as payment for everyone I bring in. You have that Industry marking. Same as me. They don’t trust it. I can’t get past the gate either.”
“Why?”
“Cause I won’t undergo their fool intention ritual, that’s why.”
Rounder checked the ropes that tied down the water barrel and pouches of supplies, then checked the windsock that hung off the back. He licked a finger and held it into the air, motioning to Myron to sit next to him in the front seat. Rounder shouted something in Gapi and started pedaling.
The contraption eased to a start. He pulled a lever, and the gears ground as he pedaled faster. “Keep the pedals going.” He nudged Myron, nodding toward Myron’s feet, then he stood in his seat. A beam of wood at the base of the mast swung around as Rounder pulled a rope, and a sail rose into a giant triangle over the contraption. The sail filled with wind. The vehicle tipped to one side. Rounder strapped himself to the opposite side and leaned out to counterbalance the force of the wind, the vehicle’s rotund wheels not deterred by any small defects in the otherwise smooth salt flat.
The speed of their travel invigorated Myron. It was as though they flew in an airship, but it was instead the next best thing—a landship. The cracked ground passed underneath them in patterns of yellow and white as the mountains grew closer.
“What is that?” Myron asked when he saw an obstruction in their path. It looked like a gathering of people in front of a machine.
Rounder furled the sail and hopped into the seat next to Myron, motioning him to stop pedaling. He pulled a brake lever and the contraption halted. From a compartment by the steering wheel, Rounder grabbed a telescope and extended it, squeezing one eye shut and peering through the lens with the other. “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”
Chapter Five
The unity binding made sitting, lying down, even scratching an exercise in contortionism and cooperation, but negotiating the swing bridges of Orkin’s Landing turned into a painful and dangerous procedure. Sindra, the more agile of the two, stepped backward, while Nico traveled forward. Each of their arms connected in three places: bicep, forearm, and wrist. They grasped the handrails, coordinating movement—left, right, left—with each step. Nico whispered the rhythm for their movement across the bridge.
Both Sindra and Nico had been administered a half dose of the drug in the needle Sindra had received in previous days. This amount of medicine allowed them enough lucidity to walk, but it had put pillows on her feet and cool water on her hands, and made the flesh of Nico’s face, inches from her own, resemble the scales on a fish and his eyes too far from his nose, a sight that made her laugh.
With each of Sindra’s steps backward, Nico’s step forward became less in sync, until he lost his footing and slipped off the tightrope, hands falling off the hand lines, taking Sindra with him. Sindra landed on the rope they’d been walking on, Nico hanging in parallel beneath her by the fourteen restraints of the unity binding.
Sindra tried to stabilize herself. “Grab the rope.”
“I’m…” His eyes closed.
“Nico! Wake up.” Sindra wiggled until she got a grip on the ropes and arched her back to pull Nico up to the foot rope. “Nico!”
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br /> Nico’s eyes eased open. He grabbed the rope and closed his eyes again.
“Come on.” Sindra flailed around at random, causing Nico’s body to respond like a marionette, rousing him enough to pull himself through the ropes. “We have to figure this out, Nico.”
They continued the journey across the bridge, with Sindra having to wake Nico every few steps. Even at half of a dose, the medicine had a strong effect on his younger, smaller body. Dromon and the hooded man waited for them when they reached the other side. They spoke of scriptures and damnation, metals and locking mechanisms, and how Carlisle, the blacksmith, was not to know anything more than the basic facts.
Carlisle’s house sat adjacent to the stables and the coal depot. She answered the door still dressed in sleep clothes. “What’s the trouble?” She was a middle-aged woman, not quite Nico’s height, with hair braided into tight rows that followed the contour of her head. Her hands, covered in burns and scars, brought to mind, in Sindra’s imagination, the talons of a mythical bird.
“We need these pulled apart.” Dromon pushed Nico and Sindra into the lamplight of Carlisle’s house.
“Bring them into the forge.” Carlisle grabbed a leather apron hanging by the door.
Sindra and Nico followed Dromon and Carlisle down a trail and sidestepped under an arch into a round building with a forge in the center. With a torch, Carlisle lit the sconces on the pillars in the blacksmith workshop. From her apron, she pulled out a pair of spectacles and positioned them on her nose. “Let’s have an eyeball at this.”
In the haze of medicine mind, Sindra watched the flames from the torches dance into vile creatures from the depths of the Chasm battling the torch for supremacy. They rose up with outstretched arms, withering, striking at the air with orange-tipped swords and the hearts of stars. The medicine had begun to soothe her instead of scare her.
Carlisle knelt down between Sindra and Nico. She examined the combination lock that connected their necks from one fitted metal collar to the other. “What the Chasm is this, Dromon?” Her eyes widened as she examined another of the fourteen combination locks that held them in parallel.
“It’s a unity binding.”
“A what?” Carlisle grabbed the chain that ran from upper arm to upper arm. She studied the cuff and the locking mechanism.
“A holy test—from Orkin.”
“Where did he get it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please just get us out of this thing.” Sindra pulled on the binding.
“What do you need me for?” Carlisle put her hands on her hips. “Just unlock them and be on your way.”
“The mechanisms will only unlock with guidance from the Great Above. It is a holy test.”
“Do I look like the Great Above to you? How am I supposed to get them out of this contraption?”
“Pick the locks? Cut them out? I don’t know. You’re the metalsmith.”
Carlisle rolled backward in a chair to a cabinet and dug out a set of picks and a magnifying glass attached to an adjustable stand. Positioning the magnifier over the most accessible lock, wrist to wrist, she studied the mechanics, moving the dials back and forth, working a random combination.
“Just cut them out and be done with it.”
“Cut them out?” Carlisle smirked. “My best count, there are fourteen chains. One, two, three, four…” She began to count under her breath, the metal tinkling as her hand passed. “That makes twenty-eight cuffs to cut off of them. And if I heat this metal up enough to strike on the anvil, well—you may as well set these two kids on fire.”
“Orkin thinks the girl’s a witch.”
“And what about poor Nico, here?”
“I wish I was a witch.” Sindra glared at Dromon. “I’d cast the whole village into the sea.”
Dromon slapped Sindra with the back of his hand. “Those chains aren’t very thick. Cut them apart with a blade and worry with the cuffs later.”
“There’s another reason I can’t cut it, Dromon.” She focused the light from the magnifier stand onto the metal.
Carlisle wheeled back over to her workbench and returned with three saw blades. “These are the finest blades I have.” She led Nico and Sindra to an anvil. “Lean down.” She pulled the slack from the neck chain and held it on the anvil. With Sindra’s face on one side of the anvil and Nico’s on the other, Carlisle’s face sandwiched between them with the saw. After a moment, she reached for another blade.
“Where did Orkin get this contraption?” Carlisle groped for her last blade. With the magnifier over the spot she’d cut, she put her glasses back on and studied the chain. “Not a mark on it.” She wheeled her chair until she slammed into Dromon’s shins. “This is Old Age alloy. And these locks are Old Age ciphers.”
“I don’t know where he got it. He said that the Great Above had revealed a new stash of miracles, like when he found the books.” Dromon stepped back from Carlisle with a worried expression. “In the lost city.” He nodded toward the south, where remnants of a great city jutted from the ocean and hills like broken knife blades from a stump. “He said that the Great Above revealed a bevy of similar devices.”
Carlisle’s eyes met Sindra’s and then Nico’s. “So you put these two kids in this thing without knowing how to open it?”
“I am confident that the spirits would guide us if it is a holy union.”
“I don’t think this poor girl is any kind of a witch. And Nico’s just a kid. This has to be one of the most diabolical devices I can imagine. I don’t know how long you can live like that.”
“Please, Miss Carlisle.” Nico’s eyes opened, not enough to see his irises, but enough to tell that he had not entered medicine sleep.
“Orkin says this girl is a witch and her presence has already brought the village harm.” Dromon gestured to the man in the hood standing in the shadowy perimeter and pointed a finger toward the west. “Take them down to the docks and get rid of them.”
Chapter Six
A plume of smoke rose from a smoldering wagon. Three men festooned in the regalia of painted bones placed a body atop the burning wagon. They paused, spotting Rounder’s contraption approaching.
“Uh-oh. That there is the Votaries of Starick.” Rounder retracted the telescope. He turned the steering wheel with such force that his cheeks reddened. “We gotta turn this thing around. Fast.”
Myron knew of Starick, the custodian spirit of murderers. The vile, too, must be escorted, if not to the Great Above, then to the depths of the Chasm. Starick had the face of a raven on the slithering body of a snake. When a murderer died, Starick appeared over the body, reanimated it, and killed it again in the way that the murderer had killed his victims.
Myron and Rounder pedaled, but the contraption didn’t accelerate enough to outrun their pursuers. As they grew near, the bones hanging from their tunics rattled with hollow bonks. Myron saw the decorations on their faces and arms, fine designs drawn with the blood of their sacrifices.
“These nutcobs think that sacrificing folks’ll pacify Starick. Keep him from paying them a visit when they die.” Rounder reached under the seat and pulled a lever that released dozens of spiked obstacles behind the landship to slow down anyone, or anything, giving chase. “Ain’t gonna be me,” he said, out of breath from pedaling.
The woman on the back seat yelled phrases in Gapi, holding her twin daughters close to her side, as one of the men hopped onto the wagon bed. The front wheels tipped up and dropped back down. Rounder swerved, steering hard right and back left. The man lost his balance and tumbled off. Another reached for one of the twins’ arms, got a firm grasp, and pulled. Her mother screamed and hauled her daughter back onto the seat, kicking the assailant in the head. On her other side, with both of the mother’s hands occupied in the rescue of one twin, the third of the Votaries of Starick plucked the other twin from her seat.
Myron steadied himself, preparing to leap off the contraption to save the girl, but Rounder shook his head, slappi
ng Myron back to his seat. “Keep pedaling or we’re all dead.” Two of the marauders pursued but ran out of breath as Rounder put everything he had into pedaling.
The woman stood, looking back at the dustup, yelling words from a language Myron didn’t understand, but words he understood all the same—harsh condemnation, panic, paralyzed by the choice of rescuing one of her daughters or staying and protecting the remaining one.
“We can’t just leave her,” Myron yelled.
The remaining twin screamed next to her mother. She arched her back and writhed in the seat as if dying.
“What’s wrong with her?” Myron asked.
“Scared, maybe?” Rounder asked the mom in Gapi if her daughter was injured.
The woman’s voice shrill, her words shot from her mouth like arrows from a bow.
“She says the twins’ bodies…” Rounder snapped his fingers, searching for the right word, “commiserate with one another. When one feels good, the other feels good.” He swallowed hard. “When one’s in pain—well, you get the idea. They’ve never been apart.”
The lone twin’s scream pierced through the jumble of sounds. She shook and rolled in the seat, kicking Myron in the back of the head. She fought to keep her legs together, and Myron imagined what her sister must be going through at that moment. It reminded him of the day the ghosts had violated Sindra, as he watched, trapped in the tunnel under the grate.
In her face, Myron could see Sindra’s face, hear her screams, imagine her as a child. He scanned the stack of supplies for the hatchet Rounder had used to break the shackle chain. When he spotted it, Myron grabbed the hatchet and pulled the brake lever while Rounder still pedaled. “We can’t leave her—not with them.”
“I always lose a few. To one thing or the other. Part of the job,” Rounder shouted.
Myron hopped off the landship. The mom screamed, holding her remaining twin, urging Myron to save her other child. He shielded his eyes from the spray of dust that stirred up when Rounder began pedaling again. The Votaries of Starick, surrounding the girl, stopped their violations and glared at Myron with crazed eyes.
