by D. K. Fields
‘We should ask if she’s all right,’ Nicholas said.
Odette gave a start. ‘What? No.’
‘But she’s—’
‘We’ll lose our place,’ Odette said. ‘We’ll be late for work.’
He frowned. She didn’t normally care about being late. In fact, sometimes he wondered if she saw it as a challenge: how late could she be without being told to leave? He started towards the shrine of silk.
‘Nicholas, stop,’ she hissed.
He knelt by the woman, not too close as to startle her, and asked, ‘Are you all right there?’
She raised her head slowly and blinked many times, as if struggling to see him. But she didn’t smell of spirits; nothing Seeder- or Torn-made that people of the south typically drowned themselves in. If she was drunk, it was on something else.
‘Nicholas!’ Odette said from the line. The rest of those waiting for the ropebox were studiously ignoring him and the woman at the shrine. Evidently her suffering was her own business, and besides, on the cone there was more than enough suffering to go round.
The woman was Rustan, that much was clear from the metal on her arm and the way she clunked and clanked when she breathed. She was older than him, but by how much was hard to say. Her hair was loose to her shoulders and greasy. In her lap, she was holding a scrap of dirty silk. She held it up, as if to show him.
‘I think you’re supposed to tie that on, when you tell your story,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she said. Her voice was deeper than he’d been expecting, and hoarse with use. ‘But I can’t stop.’
‘Stop what?’ Odette asked, finally joining them.
‘Telling her story. Every time, I tell it wrong. So I start again.’
‘Whose story?’ Nicholas said.
‘My sister. She’s gone, and this is all I have.’ She rubbed the silk between her fingers. If she kept doing so, she wouldn’t have even that for much longer, but Nicholas couldn’t say as much. ‘I reached for her, when the shake came. I reached for her, and this was all I got.’
The woman proceeded to tell her sister’s story from the beginning. The very beginning, with her sister’s birth in their home on the spire.
Odette stood, and when he didn’t join her, she all but dragged him away. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. They re-joined the queue for the ropebox, though much further back this time.
‘I was about to ask you the same,’ he said. ‘That woman had a story to share.’
‘And we don’t have the time. You want to hear her story, come back later – doesn’t look like she’ll be going anywhere.’
He glanced back to the shrine. The woman was still telling her story, and still handling the scrap of silk. ‘Not so long ago you would’ve memorised her every word.’
‘Not so long ago? Is that how it really feels to you?’
They shuffled forwards in the queue, until they were beyond the shrine and the Rustan woman.
He didn’t understand what Odette meant, not at first. It was only their third season away from the Steppes. He could still count the weeks – let alone the months – without too much trouble. They’d been places, met people, worked in all kinds of jobs, seen and heard things that couldn’t be forgotten – all experiences they’d never have had at home. Perhaps that was what Odette was talking about; maybe she was different from the woman he’d ridden south with, and he’d just not noticed. As the ropebox carried them up to the next street, he tried to remember what she was like with the Torn – if she’d been as keen as the Musician to find their stories and memorise them. He could recall her being like that in the early days and weeks in the har. But after that, it was harder.
He was still chewing that over when they arrived at his winching station. He wasn’t all that late; another wincher was only a few paces ahead. She held the metal door for him.
‘Nicholas,’ Odette said.
He turned back to her.
‘I’m… Take care of your hands today.’
It was clear, even to him, that she wanted to say more, to tell him something else. But instead, she gave a small smile and left.
*
He was distracted all day. He kept thinking about Odette and the idea she had changed so much without him even noticing. His winching partner had to shout at him more than once to take his weight. Winching wasn’t complicated, but it did require timing as well as brute strength.
The centre of the problem, he decided, was just how little he’d known Odette in the first place. It had all happened so fast – one starlit night sharing a flagon of ale and then they were off to see the Union. He really knew nothing about her. She’d only made one thing clear: she wanted to find her stories out here in the realms. What he’d been looking for wasn’t so clear, at least not to him. Thinking about it now, he realised he just wanted something different. A change. To know there was more to his story than herding his father’s goats. Did Odette see that in him? Is that why she chose him, and not another unmarried Wayward man?
‘Nicholas!’
‘Sorry,’ he said, focusing back on his work. But it didn’t last. His attention wandered all day as he chased these thoughts up and down, as regular as any ropebox. But in all that mess of thoughts and memories, he kept coming back to one new idea, one thing that hadn’t occurred to him until then:
Maybe he hadn’t noticed Odette changing because he was changing too.
When his shift was finally over, he had decided on a course of action. It was a relief, in many ways, to have made a decision; he wasn’t used to looking inwards with such intensity. It was unsettling. And when his winching partner said they were lucky they’d had no accidents that day, he agreed.
Leaving the winching station, he didn’t turn for home. Instead he wandered the streets looking for a barroom. He didn’t have to wander far.
The barroom was full of men and women making their various offerings to the Drunkard. Nicholas had to wait a good while to even reach the bar, and then for the barman’s attention. It took three attempts to make it clear he wanted the whole flagon, and that he’d not be drinking it there and then. If Nicholas hadn’t so evidently been a Wayward, the barman likely would have simply refused. Instead, the barman consulted a small woman with the air of someone in charge about her, and then named an exorbitant price. Nicholas paid it.
Then he went looking for Odette.
*
The higher he was on the cone, the fewer people he saw. He took ropeboxes when he could, but they stopped well before the top. The highest streets were narrow as a goat trail and had few houses or buildings of any kind. They felt more like the corridors deep within the Torn hars than the bustling Rusting Mountains. But the top of the cone was full of the viewing ledges that Odette had talked about. He found shrine after shrine, but they were all empty. He was beginning to understand why she sought out such places. They had a quiet, a privacy, that he’d forgotten was even possible over the last few weeks.
As he wound round and round the cone, every so often he saw the sun sinking towards the horizon. He lingered at those ledges a little longer, and when they had shrines for the Inker, he muttered about the changing colours or the way the light caught the wispy clouds.
But when he found Odette, she wasn’t watching the sunset. Instead, she was sitting on a stone bench on a ledge that faced north. There was a small carving of the Devotee in the opposite corner, a blindfold covering her eyes, and about her feet was a scattering of dried flowers and fruit pips.
‘I shouldn’t have told you,’ Odette said when she saw him.
He stopped, mid-stride. ‘I’ll go if you want.’
‘No. You’re here now. And you brought ale.’
‘I did.’ He put the flagon on the bench then gazed out from the highest place he’d ever been. But wait, was that right? The clifftops far in the distance, where the Tear stopped and the Lowlands began, wasn’t that just the level ground he’d walked on his whole life? Weren’t even the lowest hills on the Ste
ppes higher than this mountain? Knowing that must be the case didn’t stop him feeling giddy as he looked down at the clouds swirling between the mountains, obscuring the rivers of Wit’s Blood and cold rock below.
‘Hard to believe, isn’t it?’ Odette said. ‘Hard to really understand.’
‘As a boy, I never believed the stories. I just couldn’t imagine a place like this.’
‘It’s changing.’
‘What?’
‘Can you imagine that?’ she said. ‘Easier to remember, maybe. The Tear isn’t supposed to reach Break Deep. And it’s supposed to end a mile short of the cliffs you see out there. A mile more of the Tear, a mile less of the Lowlands. You see, the Rustans remember. Especially those from the spire.’
‘The ground-shakes.’
‘They call them earthquakes, and I guess they should know.’
‘A mile more of the Tear. But that means…’
She waited for him to say it.
‘And a mile less of the Lowlands, that means it’s growing. And fast.’
‘It means a lot more than that. It means more of what we saw at that Torn mine.’
That he didn’t want to remember. He turned to her. ‘You’re missing the sunset.’
‘Have you noticed they’re always the same in the mountains? Beautiful, but every day the same.’
He sat down, the flagon between them. ‘I did wonder why nobody else was here,’ he said. He rubbed idly at the callouses that covered his hands. ‘It’s not what you wanted, is it?’
‘The sunset is the Inker’s business, I don’t—’
‘I didn’t mean the sunset.’
‘Oh.’ She took a swig from the flagon and then offered it to him.
The ale was flat, weak, and a delight. After the burning spirit of the Torn and the fruity stuff the Lowlanders drank, he hadn’t realised how much he missed ale.
‘I didn’t know what I wanted,’ she said, ‘not really.’
‘What do you want now?’ he said.
‘I want to go back to not knowing. I want to go back to when anything and everything seemed possible. All I had to do was go out and find them.’
‘Your stories.’
‘He had no feet, Nicholas.’
‘I know.’
‘I still hear the screams. And the moans. And the sound of falling rock.’
‘Odette, you should—’
‘The rows of the dead. I thought it couldn’t be any worse than that. But what we saw at the har…’
‘Odette, look at me.’ He took her hand in his. She had smudges of charcoal on her fingers – just like when they’d first met, and she was working the cooking fires at the wedding. ‘I saw two Wayward helping a child find his father. I saw two Wayward hearing the last story of a woman, to pass on to her family. I saw two Wayward carry water to so many thirsty mouths. That’s what I saw at the har.’
‘Do you know what makes it worse?’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘Every time I think back to that day the memories are all jumbled up. I remember when we… when you kissed me. And then I remember everything else.’
‘I’ve thought about that too. Keeper’s kiss, Lilja said.’
‘She said it twice.’
‘But only one time meant something,’ he said. ‘Only with you. Can I kiss you again?’
‘You didn’t ask the first time,’ she said flatly.
‘No. I’m sorry for that.’
‘And what then? Would it be more than just a sunset in the Rusting Mountains?’ she said. She was looking at him intently, their faces inching closer. ‘Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t know. But it could be.’
‘It could be,’ she said.
He leaned forwards, closed his eyes and hoped he was doing the right thing. Everything stopped. He held his breath, his heartbeat seemed to cease and his mind was empty. In that moment, he didn’t feel like he was there, not on the mountain, not anywhere.
Until he felt her lips on his. Gentle, then more insistent. She had her hands in his hair, and she pulled him closer. Then she was pulling at his shirt.
He lifted his arms, but when the cloth was clear, he suddenly felt conscious of his body, of his bruises. Some were old and faded, as old as their days with the Torn. But there were fresh bruises too. He tried to cover the worst of them, but she stopped him. She touched his bruises. Then she stood and unlaced the back of her dress. Standing naked in front of him, she had her own bruises.
‘I don’t know… I’ve never…’ he said.
‘It’s all right.’
She eased him back onto the stone bench. Stradling him, the curves of her body catching the last of the light, she brought them together. She led, he followed, and he’d never felt anything like it.
He woke cold against the stone. The ledge was dark, though there were the pinpricks of stars in the night sky. He heard, as much as saw, Odette dressing.
‘You’re going?’ he said.
‘We’ve made a mistake,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t have—I didn’t come here for this.’
No one went to a shrine for that – except maybe the Neighbour’s – but that wasn’t what she meant.
‘Odette, it was just—’
‘Just what?’
‘What felt right,’ he said, with no other words to make himself clear.
‘I didn’t leave the Steppes looking for a husband.’
He stood, but she took a step away. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you left with a husband.’
‘That’s the one story I brought with me. I came to the Union to find others.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m sorry, Nicholas, I really am. Please, try to remember that in the days to come.’
When she was gone, he took out his pipe and played every sombre tune he knew. Then he played them all again as the sun slowly rose over the Tear.
*
Winter in Bordair was no winter at all. At least, not as far as Nicholas was concerned. Winter was a thing of frost crunching underfoot, of seeing your own breath and the clouds made by others, and snow in high places. But the slopes surrounding Bordair were the same bare black rock as the rest of the Tear. It was starting to feel as if the whole Union was made up of that rock. Grass, rivers, forests – these were just stories to him now.
Nicholas stared out at the rain from the low shelter of the boardwalk bar. Rain he knew from the Steppes, but not like this. At home, the rains quickly came and went, the Painter and the Bore in a constant tussle. But in Bordair, the Bore couldn’t even raise a sigh, so the rain remained like an unwelcome guest, and sheets of it fell heavy and straight down. In that way, it was predictable and easy to take shelter from, which made Nicholas’s predicament all the more galling.
He had nowhere to sleep at night.
He raised his now empty glass to the woman working the bar.
‘Pennies first,’ she said, not even trying to hide her suspicion. He slapped them down on the wet wood and waited for his ale. At least the Caskers served it.
All his hard work since leaving the Steppes meant he had pennies for food and drink, but Bordair was full. Bordair was full. Every boarding house and dormitory had closed its doors, with painted signs in the windows that told a two-word story: no beds. The whorehouses were still open, but men and women spilled out of their doors and onto the street like a river that’d burst its banks. He’d tried once or twice to fight that tide, but he couldn’t stand the easy caresses of the whores, the knowing looks or the leering painted faces. He had walked the streets and the boardwalks looking for sanctuary, but only found those similarly lost and alone.
If rooms were impossible to find in Bordair, looking for work was worse. No one would take a Wayward on a barge when the whole city overflowed with Casker deckhands. Many barges wintered in Bordair, waiting for the spring and the Lowlander crops that needed taking up the rivers. Those few still trading had their pick of crews. Any job that took a strong back and willing hands had Caskers lining up
for it.
So, Nicholas spent his days playing his herder’s pipe with a hat at his feet and his nights moving from the shelter of one balcony to another. His cloak kept him as dry as he could hope, and the winter nights in Bordair were not so cold. When he played his pipe of an afternoon, he could expect a couple of pennies from the milling crowds as they passed by. Though he may not have been desperate for the coin, he was desperate for the company and the way to pass the time. More often than not it was drunken bargemen with shouted requests for songs he didn’t know. He’d learnt to assuage their anger by shouting back, ‘Happy or sad?’ Their need was a simple one, really, and for all their bluster, they were generous once appeased. He’d seen more than one grown man cry as he played.
He always watched the crowds for any sign of Odette.
Taking a swig of his ale, he wiped his mouth and whistled a soft tune – he’d been doing that more and more lately, a result of playing so much. Out across the water, a barge was coming in to dock. It sat low and heavy in the stillness, as if hunkering against the rain. With an idle curiosity, he watched its slow approach and then the mute comings and goings as it was unloaded.
When he and Odette parted, they had stood high on the slopes overlooking Bordair. They’d agreed to meet on the first day of spring, right at the waterside, and they would find passage upriver all the way to Perlanse. That was when the great Casker city had held some kind of hope for both of them; many hopes in fact, though he couldn’t help wondering if his were so different. They hadn’t spoken of the night on the Devotee’s ledge, but that it wouldn’t happen again was clear. That he could accept. So much harder was how she avoided his touch, how she drew away when he was near, how cold she had become. They spoke only when necessary. He wanted to say more, to ask her what he needed to do to go back to the way they were, and he started to ask more than once, but the words stuck in his throat and he all but gagged on the taste of doubt. Even if he could find the right questions, he wasn’t sure he wanted the answers. Seeing her walk away down the steep Bordair street brought a kind of lifting, a freeing he felt in his chest. But the relief was fleeting. The weight was soon replaced by a longing to see her again.
