After two aisles they encountered a crowd thick with murmurs.
“Come along,” Bora said, even as Anna crept closer to the outskirts of the gathering.
The peddler within the clearing was a tall, aging Hazani man with loose blue fabric draped over his shoulders. His cheeks were sunken and dark, and curling, wavelike sigils crawled over his skin. He offered a yellow-toothed smile before raising something long and metallic above his head.
Onlookers gasped and whispered, and a few of the more skittish crowd members shrank back, Shem among them.
Anna saw long-cultivated fear in the way Shem recoiled. He huddled beside her and clutched her wrist.
“What’s wrong?”
“Ruj,” Shem whispered. “Much harm.”
Anna focused on the item in question. It initially appeared to be a rod or club, but it had the smooth edges of machined metal and a leather bulb at its rear. She listened in confusion as the peddler began his pitch in flatspeak. “What’s he saying?”
Shem translated the peddler’s raspy words, terming ruj as “wind,” and relying on Bora’s assistance to define the device’s function. They claimed it harnessed magnetism, although Anna had only seen tin peddlers use that energy to attract two bits of metal together, and those were charlatan tricks.
She narrowed her eyes as the man uncorked a vial, poured its contents into the leather bulb, and reconnected the device.
The man pointed to a pig’s carcass, which was strung up against a pockmarked and pitted stone wall with wooden reinforcement. He lowered the ruj to his hip, pulled a pin from the tube’s spine, gripped the pouch with his free hand, and squeezed. There was a violent hush followed by the clap of wood fracturing, cracking, exploding into a thousand tiny shards, raining splinters across sand and rock.
Bits of the pig’s carcass speckled the rock wall and backing wood layers. Tendons hung in loose strands, the fat and blood forming leprous spots across the dirt. The skull and ribcage were bleach-white shards of broken glass, dangling from the rope and peppered with glinting iron.
Wild clapping spread through the audience.
Once, it would’ve terrified Anna. Now it represented safety.
“There it is.” Bora lifted her head and scanned the dispersing crowd. “Come.”
Anna grasped the drawstrings of the salt pouch and tucked it in her palm, scowling. “I’m buying it.”
Even in dusk, the crease in Bora’s brow didn’t go unnoticed. “Do you think this is a child’s plaything?”
Anna’s face flushed hotter with every retort. There was no longer a clearing where she could cry alone, or a mother she could run to. There was only spite. “I deserve something to defend myself with,” she snapped. “In Rzolka, I wouldn’t walk out to the fields without a knife at my hip. And here—”
“Here, you are not in Rzolka. You have many men who would die for you. Do not disrespect them with your childish games.”
But Anna no longer cared for Bora’s thoughts. Bora didn’t understand what burden meant. Surely she had a family, confidants, a place she called home, people who loved her and wished for her safe return. A burden was an easy price for safety, for self-reliance.
Anna pushed her way past a weaver’s booth, keeping the pouch tucked in her grip and out of sight. She approached the peddler head on.
He smelled of citrus, and his dark, yellow-ringed eyes brushed over her rather than acknowledging her. “Desht?” he growled, crinkling his brow.
Anna pointed at the ruj in his hands. Without attempting flatspeak, she turned her hand over, unfurled her fingers, and revealed the pouch.
The peddler’s eyes widened in a slow daze, as though astounded that so much salt existed in the world. He studied her eyes, then the pouch again. Judging from how little he spoke, it seemed he understood their language barrier. His hands were soil-dark as he reached out to feel the leather.
Anna pulled hers away. She pointed once more at the ruj.
The peddler gripped the ruj in both hands and lowered it to Anna for inspection. He turned it over once, twice, allowing Anna to judge the metal’s sheen.
Anna knew nothing of its quality, but pretended to examine it thoroughly. It was a simple tube, a leather pouch with brass threading, and a pouch of iron shavings. Satisfied, she untied her salt pouch’s twine and held the open end over her palm, waiting to tap out the proper amount.
But the peddler tucked the ruj beneath his arm and snatched the entire pouch from Anna, leaving her fingers hovering limply. He peered into the container, smirked, then stuffed the pouch into a fold of his robes. Rotten satisfaction crossed his face.
Before Anna could protest the peddler shoved the ruj and iron pouch into her waiting hands. It was lighter than expected, but she was only dimly aware of the weapon. She was more interested in how the man had simply known the weight of the salt, rather than measuring it or tapping it out. There was little she could say, but she glared at the man.
He wheeled around and shuffled through the market, concealing himself among a sea of dark cloaks and vendor stalls.
“This is the price of being a poor shepherd for your salt,” Bora said, suddenly at her side.
“Ziemnish, korpa!” Anna hissed. The regret sank in at once, and she could feel her cheeks burning, her tongue scrambling to take back the curse. She’d never even said it to the village boys, and—
Her face twisted before she felt the strike. It was a swift, stinging backhand, dissolving over her face in a wash of pins and needles. Her cheek throbbed, even as she pressed her hand numbly to the skin. She struck me. Surprise came over her as tangibly as the ringing in her ears.
There was nothing on the northerner’s face. No anger, no cruelty, no exertion.
Nearby, Shem was staring, his shoulders bunched up and drawn back. His mouth was open in a vague display of unrest. For him, it was no easy thing, Anna reasoned in the daze. He could hardly take sides.
“Bora,” a voice growled, so close it broke through Anna’s shattered hearing. So familiar she placed it in an instant. “What’d you just do to her?”
The tracker’s odor, burlap and sticky-sweet dusk petals, filled the air as he moved into view. His silhouette typically was enough to frighten her, but now he was calming.
An inkling of surprise filled Bora’s eyes. “She has a foul tongue.”
“Did I ask about her tongue?” the tracker asked quietly. He took another step forward, rising above Bora by at least two palms. “If I haven’t lost my sight yet, I’d wager that you just laid hands on her.”
Anna rubbed at her face, no longer stunned by the blow but by the ease of Bora’s violence. If the northerner had desired it, death would’ve come swiftly.
“This child is not made from glass,” Bora said, glaring at Anna. Spoken with more reverence, it might’ve been a compliment. “She is a cracked field. If you want manners to be instilled in her, they must be hammered down like stakes.”
“Manners?” the tracker growled. “She has plenty of manners.”
“In my tongue, perhaps the word has a different meaning. There is a shadow of decorum in Rzolka, but it is not enough to survive here. If it was, you would not have learned our ways.”
“She seems to be doing fine so far.”
Bora folded her arms. “This is Nur Sabah. In Malijad, she will be consumed while breathing.”
The tracker lowered his head, letting the burlap folds slide down and crease. “What did you do, Anna?”
Gathering a deep breath, Anna retold her story with as much detail as she could muster: The man’s yellow smile, his quick hands, her attempt to partition the salt in her palm.
But the tracker only rolled his eyes. “So it wasn’t stolen,” he said wearily, cracking Anna’s defenses. “You offered it to him, girl.”
“No, I didn’t,” Anna insisted with a frown. “He snatche
d it from me.”
“It was her decision,” Bora said, her voice level despite the latent scorn. “I told her to stay, and she disobeyed me to purchase this.”
The tracker squeezed Anna’s shoulder. “Poor girl has lost everything. And she doesn’t deserve a spot of empathy? Apologize to her.”
The wind brushed past with the bitterness of coal smoke, stinging Anna’s eyes. Bora’s silence was a slow, deliberate thing, seemingly eternal. Their eyes remained locked, and the northerner’s amber stare burrowed into her. It held forthcoming violence, murderous words unspoken.
“My apologies,” Bora said at last.
* * * *
The kator’s railway sat upon the crest of the city’s rise and stared out over the sprawling darkness of Hazan, revealing patches of forest among the hills, the black smears of lakes and rivers, the gnarled masonry of lamp-lit watchtowers. It wasn’t as desolate as it had first seemed, but it was far from Rzolka. Much closer to Anna’s vantage point on a setstone waiting platform, stretching from the railway station to the blackness beyond, was a set of parallel metal beams suspended above the valleys and gullies.
Sparks leapt from the shadows ahead, and a railed metal cylinder came speeding down the length of setstone, bellowing and deafening as it slowed to a halt. A length of railing swung open along the vessel’s side, allowing the waiting passengers to board.
Shem gave an excited gasp, breaking the group’s pall of silence. “Come, come!”
And because of the boy’s smile, Anna was foolish enough to go.
Chapter 10
In her dreams, she wandered through the husks of her old life, passing soot-stained hearths and oak butcher’s blocks stained pink from all the carcasses.
Julek’s carcass, not pink but—
Anna woke in the darkness, trembling.
I’m here, she told herself, patting her arms and legs with tingling palms. I’m fine. She pulled the metal shutters up from the windows to ground herself, watching bone-white gorges and the innards of mountains screaming past, blurring together with heat shimmers on the horizon. Light revealed the pod’s curving metallic ceiling, the pair of cramped bunks sharing a central aisle, the rear latrines.
Beads of sweat prickled her neck, reminding her of the dampness that would invariably ruin her leg’s bandages.
Even when yesterday’s heat had grown torturous, Shem had told his stories of Nahora and the terraced gardens and the birth of the world, how the man-skins were the apex of life, how his people’s first tongue lacked the words for man and woman because there were only Huuri, even if Anna knew them as men. She loved his tales of such a faraway place, faintly smiling while he spoke, but his words never ceased, even when he wheezed and a film of dried blood covered his teeth.
“Shem,” she’d whispered, sprawled out on her bunk, “you don’t have to tell stories.”
But the Huuri had only smiled with cracked lips, his eyes white and vibrant. “You like them,” he said. “So I tell them.”
There were a thousand stories to tell about Rzolka, but heat wasn’t all that dissuaded her. Her memories were the rocks in Malchym’s harbor, so sharp and far below her. All it took was a stray gust of wind. . . .
Metal whined in the darkness. The disc-shaped door at the front of the pod screeched and peeled back, flooding the compartment with light and wailing winds.
Anna recoiled, shielding her eyes with her hands to glimpse the sunlit figure ahead.
Bora’s cloak dazzled and writhed in the breeze. Her stance was assured, relaxed. In a voice as sharp as the winds cutting across the hull, she spoke, “Come.”
Shem rolled over, shrugging his shoulders out of cotton sheets, but Anna reached across the aisle and stilled him with a hand on his neck.
Anna squinted against the light. “I’ll be back, Shem.” She clambered out of bed, drawing her hunting blade and holding it at her side as she did so. There was no telling what the northerner wanted, nor what she was capable of doing, but refusal was never an option. And Anna would never repeat the mistake of equating compliance with helplessness.
“Come.” Bora stepped outside the pod’s door and waited, a pillar among the gusting. The edge of her lip crinkled. “And put your knife away, child. You will stumble and plunge it into yourself.”
Child. How she hated the word.
Anger rose in her, but she was quick to suppress it. Not now. There was no sense in acting foolishly when Shem was nearby, when he could be harmed by any violence Anna brought upon them.
Anna lowered the blade and followed Bora outside.
Immediately she raised her free hand to her eyes, unable to see anything beyond the tears and light that blurred her vision. Bora’s dark shape passed in front of her, wordless, before proceeding into a lane of shadows.
The sun was a high and blinding orb overhead, canted to one side of the kator. Bora’s path along the pods’ exteriors, bathed in cool darkness and guarded by metal railings, stretched along the entire length of the kator.
With her knife at her side Anna trailed the northerner in the shade.
The platforms linking the pods were forged from cheap metal, their swirled tempering marks covering the panels like etchings of sea waves. The railed walkways pivoted at key angles and joints, bound by rusting gears beneath the vessel. Mountains and cracked earth blurred past, wracking Anna with nausea. Scorched winds bellowed over the crest of the pods in bursts, laced with the odors of white coals.
Bora came to a halt halfway down the walkway, closer than ever before but warped by shimmering air into something grotesque and hopelessly distant. “Do you know what is done to children who bear their edges in the streets of Malijad?”
Anna gripped the blade harder.
“They are disarmed by cartelmen,” Bora said, paying no mind to Anna’s gesture, “and then they are beaten until they cannot walk, and their mouths are full of shattered teeth. If the child cries out, their blade is returned . . . in their spine, or the throat.”
Anna took another step forward. “Did you bring me here to hurt me?” She angled her wrist to point the blade’s tip upward. It was the way she’d learned to gut sows, driving up and through the belly.
Bora moved to the edge of the railing, staring off into the patchwork of bluffs and flats. Her breaths were even, ignorant to Anna’s complete bemusement. “You’re too quick to use your feeling mind.”
Anna refused to lower the blade. “You’re speaking nonsense.”
“You would spill my blood without cause.” She studied Anna’s face, likely sensing the girl’s fear that she’d been lured into the open. “Why do I scare you, child?”
“You don’t,” she lied. “But you’re a killer, and none of your words matter.”
“We are no longer in your lands,” Bora said. Her words had been proven day by day: Violence was Hazan’s only way, and cruelty its only law. “Words are sounds, child, and lying is a pastime in Malijad. You should fear the lightning that strikes you, not the thunder that deafens you.”
“I don’t fear either.” Suddenly her blade felt woefully inadequate.
“This is your choice,” Bora said. “But you should consider this: Words are free and cheap. Energy is a rare thing, and those who spend it properly are deserving of trust. Men with sweet tongues are the root of suffering, because they weave traps so cruel that they’re beyond the thinking mind’s comprehension.”
Thinking mind. Whether it was a mistranslation into river-tongue or another oddity of Hazani, the phrase nested in Anna’s mind. Anna exhaled, let her shoulders fall, and slid the blade into her belt.
The question wormed its way out of her.
“What’s a thinking mind?” Anna turned her head and stared at Bora over her shoulder. “And don’t tell me riddles. Tell me what it means.”
Bora’s gaze drifted across the sands. “Some have spent eon
s seeking an answer to that question, child. Yet you expect to know here and now?”
“Forget it, then.”
“I did not say that learning was a wasted effort.” Bora’s eyes met Anna’s, glinting in the sunlight with their amber sheen. “If you think that I live to torment you, you are wrong. You were brought here for a reason. So you could see your feeling mind.”
“I can think too,” she shot back, closing in on the northerner.
“And when you must, can you put aside feelings?”
Somewhere in Anna’s memories, a young boy shivered in ankle-deep muck. His swollen red eyes called out to her, full of the same terror they’d once held during thunderstorms. Hands crawled up and over her, ready to take her maidenhood because it had been promised in honest dealings. “Always.”
Bora turned her body toward Anna, letting the white cloak twirl over the railing’s edge. She walked closer, her eyes lingering on Anna’s wrist, inspecting the silver necklace.
“What now?” Anna asked.
Bora’s hands shot out from the folds of her cloak, grabbed Anna’s wrist, and tore the silver links free. Despite the violence of the seizure, Anna hardly felt her touch.
“Give it back!” Anna strained to scream but failed to break a harsh whisper. She lunged forward, her hands packed into fists. The northerner stepped back, but Anna was on her within seconds, throwing empty punches and swiping at folds of white fabric.
Bora took measured steps back in response to each of Anna’s strikes. “Do you see?” She wove to the left, the right, into light and shade, her face and assured footing never affected. Her left hand remained high and bent, dangling the silver links. “Use your thinking mind, child. Think about what this is.”
“It’s mine,” Anna said, half-crying the last word. Nothing could teach the northerner how it felt to have everything stripped away. “I’ll kill you, Bora.”
But Bora stayed one pace ahead of her. “Perhaps now you see why I worry about you. You’re a hound, as I said you were. You bite at those who touch your scraps.”
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