by D. K. Fields
Odette hesitated at the entrance to her tent. ‘You can sleep in here tonight,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘If you want.’
He nodded. He understood what she was saying and appreciated her saying it. Sleeping alone in a tent after it had been turned out wasn’t too appealing. He took his bedroll and his one coin purse and ducked into her tent. She was lying down on one side of it, the implication clear. He settled with his back to her. It was good to be lying down, his body finally easing in places that had been tense or worked hard that day. But his eyes were wide open.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘I think so. Are you?’
‘I’d had enough of salt water any way.’
He rubbed his cracked knuckles. The smell of burnt salt smoke heavy about him. Odette was right; spring was almost over.
*
In the morning, they ate one final meal at the oyster farm, breaking their fast with porridge they’d paid for in more ways than one. Nobody would meet their eye, not the man ladling out the pot, not the folk they passed on the bench and not even Anna who gulped down her porridge desperate to be away. But there wouldn’t be a ruckus. Not started by either of them.
Mr Samuels was waiting for them when they finished. The portly Lowlander had his pocketwatch in his hands. He had a habit of rubbing the brass cover with a thumb, as if that might wind back the minutes somehow. Or perhaps, Nicholas thought as they approached him, Mr Samuels was hoping those minutes would speed on past without him. Either way, the man rubbed his watch when he was nervous.
‘I heard what happened,’ Mr Samuels said.
‘Strange,’ Odette said, ‘nobody’s talking about it here.’
‘No, no. That’s right. I’m sorry, but maybe it’s time you two were moving on.’
Odette glanced at Nicholas then back at the Lowlander. Would she make Mr Samuels twist and squirm? Nicholas wondered. Would she make the man say it?
‘Chasing us off won’t stop what’s happening here,’ she said. ‘It won’t change your oysters going bad.’
Mr Samuels’s eyes swivelled as if seeking their own kind of escape. ‘Our oysters are—’
‘It’s only going to get worse. More will notice, those that haven’t already.’
‘Just go,’ Samuels hissed, his nerves taking a turn to the nasty. But he needn’t have bothered himself. They knew when they weren’t welcome. They were Wayward, after all.
*
The hardest part of being in the Tear was sleeping at night. First, Nicholas wasn’t really sure it was night when he crawled onto his blanket; it felt as if the sky was a long way away from Erdan-Har. He was used to thin hide, stretched across wooden poles, being the only thing between him and the stars above. Here, there was so much rock above him he didn’t even have the right words to describe it. He stared up at the solid, uneven black rock of the ceiling and imagined miles and miles of the stuff between him and the night air. The stars, the moon, clouds, even the sun had started to lose their push and pull on his days almost as soon as he and Odette had arrived.
They had wandered the Tear proper for three days. Three days without seeing a single living thing. It was a dead land, or so Nicholas felt. No birds to greet the rising or setting of the sun. The only rivers and streams were Wit’s Blood, and nothing could live in that let alone swim in it. The air was clear of the Picknicker’s buzzing and bothersome favourites that followed every animal on the Steppes. To his surprise, Nicholas found himself missing the tales of bites and scratching at various itches. More than once he swatted at the air in front of his face, but found nothing but heat there. They sold their horses before leaving the shores of Break Deep, knowing enough to know the Tear was no place for any beast with hooves. After three days, it didn’t seem a place for any beast. But the Wayward marriage tradition was to visit all the realms, not just the easy or inviting ones, and Odette was still determined to find her stories.
Then, on the fourth day, they finally found Erdan-Har, and the eastern-most Torn.
They’d heard stories of this, the nearest Torn har. He was content to just listen, but Odette always pressed the ’tellers for details. He was glad of it then, as she had as good a sense as anyone of how to get to the eastern-most settlement in the Tear.
Even those days walking across rolling hills of cold rock, avoiding crevasses and canyons and the more serious climbs, felt very distant to him now, as he tried to sleep in his stone bunk inside the har. He’d asked, then pleaded, for the top bed hewn out of the rock wall. Odette looked embarrassed, but the others in the dormitory just shrugged and let him have his way. Anything to be a little closer to the sky.
It wasn’t just the miles of rock above him that made sleep hard to come by, deep in the bowels of the har. The heat was constant and oppressive. The air throbbed with it. The Torn didn’t seem to notice, barely broke a sweat, but he and Odette were drenched all the time. The worst, he quickly decided, was sweating from the eyelids: no matter how hard he blinked, his eyes stung. Odette hated sweat behind her ears, and she soon understood why the Torn shaved their heads. The sweat was bad, but breathing was worse.
He wore a mask all the time. Even when sleeping it was the only way to come close to breathing comfortably. Cloth masks that covered his mouth and nose, and tied behind his head. Inside the cloth, tucked in like a hand slips into a glove, were potho vine leaves. Potho vine being about the only plant that grows in anything like abundance in the Tear – and even then, only in the higher reaches and away from the Wit’s Blood. Fortunately enough for northerners like them, the leaves helped with the harsh, ash-tainted air. But eventually, the leaves would succumb, turning black and slimy, and the whole mask needed to be washed and new leaves put inside. It was one small routine among many since they’d arrived. Odette didn’t sleep with her mask on. She tried, at first, but kept waking up and thrashing about – not a good idea in a stone bunk. Apparently, the mask felt as if someone was pressing down on her face, on her mouth, trying to smother her. Some in the dormitory were sympathetic, others looked at her as if she was broken in some way. But they were mostly Torn, so everything the northerners did and said was strange to them.
Odette woke most mornings coughing and spluttering, and spat a black mess on the floor. That was until someone put a battered copper pot next to her bunk. A pragmatic people, the Torn, and sometimes that extended to kindnesses.
So, for weeks now, they had lived and worked and tried to sleep in Erdan-Har, in the east of the Tear. Tried to sleep despite the weight of black rock, the heat of Wit’s Blood, and masked against the very air they breathed.
*
Tossing and turning as he sweated into the blanket beneath him, he found himself thinking about Break Deep. Not just the work there, where the waters had shrivelled then cracked his hands from all the salt. But he thought about the reason they were forced from the oyster farm: what they saw when Wit’s Blood met the sea. At the time, he had been too stunned by what was happening, too in awe of what was right in front of him, to even hope to understand it. On nights like this when he struggled to sleep, he would return to that image: the molten stone steaming as it flowed into the water. The unnatural hiss and splutter of it. Wit’s Blood where it was never meant to be. Out of place, like a Wayward trying to sleep in a Torn har.
He needed to sleep before the day’s hard work ahead of him. Lately, he’d hauled blood rock to and from a distillery. At first, they’d tried him in the mines, but the air was so bad and the heat so fierce he didn’t last long there. But he would work, the Torn saw that, so he put his back to whatever needed doing to make the awful drink they called mutters, which was so popular in the har. When it wasn’t blood rock it was moving Seeder grains from store to store, or cleaning out the great vats they used, or fuelling the fires. He didn’t ask many questions, just listened when they told him what to do and where to go. Odette was the one who asked questions. By the end of the season, he was confident she’d be able to make her own mutters, as good
as any in the Tear. Not that Nicholas would drink any of it.
‘You’re grinding your teeth again,’ Odette whispered up to him.
He opened his mouth wide – he couldn’t stop himself; he did it every time she mentioned it, as if that would make a liar out of her. ‘I was just wondering how I let you talk me into this,’ he said.
‘I got you drunk.’
‘That much I remember.’
‘You looked so surprised when I sat next to you,’ she said. ‘As if I was the first girl that had ever done that.’
‘You were. Still are.’
Someone in the dorm snored themselves to a peak, loud enough to silence even Odette, and then a heavy quiet followed. Nicholas was so tired.
‘You haven’t played your pipe since we got here,’ she said.
‘It’s hard in the dorm.’
‘That can’t be it. It can’t be just that.’
She was right, of course, but he hadn’t given it much thought until just then. ‘I don’t like how it sounds in the har – so harsh, somehow, surrounded by all the stone.’
‘Then play outside,’ she said. ‘Lilja says we should leave the har more. She says she’ll take us.’
This was Odette trying. And he appreciated it, he really did. He didn’t want to be the one to ruin this… whatever this was... for her. However hard it was to remember, he’d made his choice back on the Steppes, and now here he was.
‘That’s good of her,’ he said. Lilja was as close to a friend as either of them had made since they left their herds. The first person to look at either of them as more than a hard worker or a curiosity. Though it was obvious she had to fight the urge to stare at their hair, worse still to touch it.
‘What are you working tomorrow?’ she asked.
‘Rocks. Always more rocks.’
He could almost hear her wince. Unlike with the Seeders’ oyster beds, here they’d found different work between them. Odette worked with what passed for animals in the Tear. Despite what she thought, Nicholas was glad of his rocks – they didn’t have pincers or too many legs to count. Apparently, the animals had names, and each one was a character in some way. He’d keep to goats and horses and bison, all the same.
‘What are you working with?’ he said. Seconds passed. ‘Odette?’
He leaned over the edge of his bunk. In the dull light of the low candles he saw she was asleep, her mouth half open and sweat glistening along her hair line.
‘You’re why I’m here,’ he said, quiet enough he could deny it – even to himself.
*
The next day was hard, but no more so than any other when he’d snatched only a few hours of sleep the night before. What helped was to find a rhythm, a way of letting the body manage the work without having to tax the wool sitting between his ears. With blood rocks that wasn’t too hard. Someone else swung the pickaxe, deep below ground, someone else sifted the rubble to separate the usable rock from the almost identical unusable kind and someone else worked the winch to bring the rocks up. More than one Torn had tried to explain to him what made for good blood rock and what made for bad, which was all about tiny gaps in the rock that let water through. No matter how many blood rocks he put into his handcart, which was his part of this whole glorious process, he couldn’t see any with gaps in them; but the Torn were adamant they were there, so into his cart went the rocks.
When it was full, he wheeled the cart carefully back towards Erdan-Har. This part of the job did need his concentration – at best, a spill would mean time wasted and a scolding from whoever was in charge that day. At worst… well, with that kind of accident he wouldn’t be working the rocks or any other kind of job under the Audience then. No, then he could sit back and listen to all the other poor fools down here. As tempting as that might be, he gave his rickety wooden cart his full attention.
Today, he was carting for the Er-jun mine. It was to the north of the har, though not by a long way. He took a break at the top of a smooth rise to rub his hands dry and adjust his mask. From the whiff that came with every breath, his pothos leaves didn’t have much life left in them. He looked north. The high cliffs of the Tear loomed on the horizon, huge and dark and stern. At least, that’s how they looked to him – like the faces of every strict elder he’d ever known. All old things were severe, all old things were cracked, all old things knew better than him. He ducked his head at those ancient cliffs, by way of showing his respect. It was the kind of gesture Odette would scoff at and then describe out loud so she’d remember for one of her stories. But Odette wasn’t there.
She was waiting for him at the har.
He wasn’t trusted to wheel the blood rock through the winding tunnels and halls of the har itself. Not after he got lost. Twice. And there was the time he wheeled right into a family’s kitchen, spilling rocks on their dinner table. At least they had almost finished their meal. At the gates, he handed over the cart to a Torn born at Erdan-Har, who knew the difference between a tunnel and the corridor of someone’s home. Odette was there, just inside the gate, with a lunch for them to share.
‘You look terrible,’ she said. She was sitting on a stone ledge, her hair tied up and a bright purple stain across her smock. As much as he felt the urge to ask just what made that kind of colour, he knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
Slumping beside her, he gratefully accepted the pastry parcel she gave him. The Torn loved their pastry – at least, what they called pastry. It was much drier and crumbled as soon as you looked at it. With no herds to produce milk and butter, they’d had to be quite creative. Nicholas was fairly sure insects were involved – another question he knew better than to ask.
‘Thanks,’ he said, finishing the parcel. The insides had been mostly Seeder turnips, which was a relief.
‘You can thank me twice: you don’t have to work this afternoon.’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to see more of the Tear,’ Odette said. ‘Lilja said she’ll show us – she’s on her way.’
‘But how?’ he said.
‘How? Oh. It wasn’t hard. I just told your foreman to take a good look at you and that wheelbarrow.’ She wiped her hands on her smock, expertly missing the slashes of purple. ‘He soon agreed it would be best for everyone if you took a break.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, feeling a kind of relief spread through him. Just the thought of an afternoon away from the mine was enough to loosen tight muscles and ease aching bones.
Odette seemed surprised at his sincerity. She cleared her throat, grimaced at what that produced, and turned her head to spit. ‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘That can’t be doing you good.’
‘No.’
‘You should wear your mask when you sleep.’
‘Yes.’
They lapsed into a companionable silence, happy to watch the comings and goings of Erdan-Har as they waited for Lilja. Sitting just inside the gate, at perhaps the widest and tallest part of the cavernous entrance, the har was as busy that morning as he’d ever seen it. Traders from the western hars had arrived only a few days before, and they’d brought more than just goods. Erdan-Har was bustling with old friends and family bearing stories of relatives, events big and small, and new opportunities. And in the Torn fashion, everything began and ended with the raising of a glass. The distillery had been working all hours to meet the demand. It was just as well mutters didn’t need to be aged like some Perlish and Seeder spirits.
‘What are the big ones called again?’ he asked, as a huge beetle carrying rolled rugs lumbered past.
‘Trumpet beetles. They make an awful—’
It was hard to say which came first, the ground-shake or the noise from the beetle.
The beetle was louder than any whicker or call from a herd, and not nearly so soft. It cut across everything – a sound to make your teeth ache, no matter how you tried covering your ears. As well as making its call, the beetle retracted its legs and hunkered down, right there in the middle of the thoroughfare.
The shake was a small one, and over almost as soon as it started. But evidently the beetle wasn’t taking any chances. It had to be coaxed back to its feet with promise of a… of a…
‘Is that a dead rat?’ Nicholas asked.
Odette sat forwards. ‘Could be. Not a trumpet beetle’s favourite, but easy to come by.’
‘Another ground-shake,’ he said. ‘More stories for the Trumpeter today. She’s as jittery as the Wit lately.’
‘My father used to say every story is one more success for the Trumpeter, and one in the eye for the Mute. He liked his stories, my father.’ She turned to look at him. ‘When did you last go to a Seat?’ she said. ‘Or stop at a shrine, even?’
The beetle was finally up and moving again, and its owner dusted herself off as if the shake had covered her in something. Together, they made their way out of the gate. Everyone else had similarly recovered themselves and was going about their business once more.
‘Nicholas?’ she said.
‘Do they have Seats here?’ he asked, only half in jest.
‘You need to tell the Audience your stories. It’s important.’
‘So everyone tells me.’
‘I mean it!’
‘You’re starting to sound like my mother.’
‘No, that’s just what sense sounds like,’ she said. ‘Now, promise me.’
‘Promise you what?’ He was struggling to keep his voice down. There was a lot of noise in the entrance cavern, but it was strange what it picked up and sent echoing around the black rock.
‘That you’ll visit a Seat tonight.’
She wasn’t going to let this go. She could be as stubborn as the bison she grew up with. Well, he grew up with goats and they weren’t too keen on being told what to do either. But they did make way for bison when they had to. That was what sense sounded like.
There was a shrine near the dormitory, though he couldn’t remember what Audience member it was for.
