“This here’s Calle de Jefes, the main drag. Most of what you’re after you can get here. Go where you want on your free time, so long as you stay in town. Don’t try a runner. Every peon in every town in a hundred wheels knows all the major marks, and none of them are stupid enough to harbor anyone who’s got one.” She tapped the tattoo on her face. “They’ll spot this beauty right here and turn you in quick as anything. Harborers get hanged.”
“You ever try it?”
Mary snorted. “Please. Runners are for captures. Girls born into it got more sense.”
“You were born a slave?”
“It’s marcada. Calling someone a slave around here is a good way to get punched.”
“Sorry. You were born marcada, then? Your parents were the same?” Selena found this thought particularly horrific. Being taken prisoner as an adult was bad enough. What chance did a newborn have?
Mary seesawed her hand back and forth. “Not exactly. Me, I was a ward to a plantation family. The Montenegros.” She spat the name as if it were something bitter she’d dislodged from between her teeth. “All the joy of bein’ a marcada, but you get to call your keepers ma and pa. Fuckers treated me like dirt. Scrubbing floors, doing laundry, brushing the tangles out of their shitty kids’ hair. Still, I was a citizen, which meant I was outta there at eighteen. Figured I could hack it ‘til then, when I was still a kid. Then I grew tits, and Papa Montenegro started getting handsy.”
Selena shuddered. “You fight him?”
“Nah. I poisoned him. Wife and kiddies too. Put arsenic in the sugar dish. Wards weren’t allowed sugar, you see. Too expensive.” She flashed a lupine smile. “Mr. Todd bought my way outta the gallows and gave me my stripes. There’s another perk of bein’ a plantation ward for you—no marcado or marcada who raised a hand to her master’d ever get out of it alive, I don’t care who was payin’ their way. Still, could’ve been worse.”
“Could’ve been better, too.”
Mary shrugged. “Better’s a mug’s game. You’ll drive yourself nuts with it. Time’s better spent steerin’ clear of worse.”
Calle de Jefes widened into a diamond-shaped plaza. More vendors like the ones they’d passed dotted its fringes, the larger ones cloistered in booths or backed by makeshift trellises hung with garlands of skulls and pelts. At the center of the plaza was a raised platform on which half a dozen men stood naked, their sagging skin mapped with faded tattoos. A series of chains bound each man to his neighbor by the ankles. Their genitals drooped like lilacs in parched soil. They exhibited neither shame nor pride in their nudity, but rather a bovine indifference that Selena found more disturbing.
Apart from the naked men stood a man in black and yellow robes. He orated rapidly in the Juarezian tongue—Mejise, Mary had called it—while motioning to the captives on his right, his lower half obscured by a podium jutting from the stage floor. A crowd of onlookers pressed toward the platform on three sides. Occasionally one of them would bark something at the orator, who would point at the speaker and continue his flood of verbiage unabated. The process continued until the orator struck the podium with a gavel.
A plump man waddled onto the stage. A spiral of gold threaded the outer ridge of his ear from helix to earlobe, and diamond studs formed tiny horns atop each eyebrow. He pushed an index finger into one man’s mouth, pulled down his lower jaw, and peered inside. Satisfied, he led the daisy chain to the back of the stage for further inspection while a fresh lot shuffled into place, this one an assortment of men and women. Selena looked away and was grateful when Mary led her down a side street, and the stage fell out of view.
They came to a long low building near the center of town. Its walls curved upward to a rounded roof, which couple with its rounded porthole windows gave it the appearance of a half-submerged submarine.
Inside, the building was spartanly furnished but lighter than Selena expected, its portholes admitting crisscrossed shafts of light. A single room made up most of the interior, though a door set in the far wall hinted at more private chambers. Beds lined either wall. Selena counted fourteen, all of uniform manufacture, slim iron frames ribbed with wooden slats beneath thin, lumpy mattresses. The standard issue extended no farther, and each station was ornamented with various personal effects. Crates and stacked lumber served as makeshift nightstands, and several beds sported quilts sewn from bits of stray fabric. The room was spare apart for these assembled possessions, with one notable exception: in the far corner, opposite the wash basin, stood an altar garlanded with coins and candles and wreaths of dried flowers, above these offers stood a skeletal figure much like the one Selena had seen in the courtyard earlier.
Two girls sat across from one another on the foot of their beds, leaning into a conspiracy of giggles. They were Mary’s opposite in terms of build, with slight shoulders and round hips and long shapely legs. Todd’s sigil bracketed their left eyes, though the arcs appeared smoother and lighter than Selena’s. They shot Mary a brief glance of acknowledgment before continuing their conversation, then gazed with more interest when they noticed Selena standing beside her.
Mary spoke to the girls in Mejise—Selena recognized her name among the thicket of foreign syllables, so she assumed she was getting an introduction—before switching back to her native tongue.
“This is Eleanor and Theodora. Remember what I was telling you about beauties and bruisers? Well, my girls here are beauties in a nutshell.”
The girls rolled their eyes but didn’t protest Mary’s statement. Not that there was much to protest; the girls were indeed beautiful, their fine bones and soft skin as out of place in this chapped and ugly city as orchids in an ash pit.
“Please to meet you,” said Theodora, her voice smoky with sibilance. She was the darker of the two, her skin a faded umber, her long hair lightly kinked. Eleanor—fairer-skinned, her narrow arms folded with oscine delicacy—merely nodded.
“I’d expected more of a crowd,” said Mary. “Where is everybody?”
“Mr. Todd having the party for planter families. He wanted his girls to serve the drinks.”
“What, even the Princess?”
Theodora’s smile suggested Princess was more insult than honorific. “You think Todd keep his prize pearl locked in some drawer?”
“I’m surprised she went, is all.” Mary scratched the back of her head. “How’d you two get out of it, anyway?”
“We have a match,” said Theodora.
Selena looked from one girl to the other. She couldn’t imagine what sort of match these two could participate in. Surely, they weren’t fighters—they had the bearing of porcelain figurines, bits of meticulous sculpture that would crumble under brusque handling. They looked a few years older than Selena, yet she thought of them as girls, not women, the latter term too load-bearing for such fragile materials. Selena didn’t think often of her looks, but at that moment she felt acutely aware of her missing right ear, the grease-dulled yellow licks of her unshorn hair, the scuffed shell of grime that callused her arms from finger to elbow. Her self-consciousness prickled. She curled inside it like a hedgehog behind its quills.
“Good timing. We can show Selena here your work.”
Theodora clucked her tongue. “She is more in your line, no?”
“She’ll see me soon enough. Still important to get the whole picture.”
“She will get it today,” said a voice in the doorway. It spoke in soft tones but its timbre was abrasive. It sounded the way metal tasted, harsh and sour.
The speaker stepped into view. He was a small, trim man in a suit of impossible antiquity, its once black fibers faded to a thin incorporeal grey. His head was bald and smooth as a river stone, his jaw a slab of basalt fused to its bottom. He regarded Mary with his left eye only, as his right was little more than a sightless blotch of yellow-white fluid.
“Well hey there, Trejo,” said Mary. “Boss didn’t invite you to his party, I guess. Bit rude, wasn’t it?”
“Perhaps if I were not needed as babysitter, I could attend such functions. Thea, Ellay, your show begins. You should be dressed by now. Cat, you will show the new girl to the bench and get on your own gear. You shall also fight today.”
“Thanks for the notice,” Mary grumbled.
“Speak to Mr. Todd. I can only tell you what I know when I know it. Thea and Ellay perform at third chime. Your match is at fourth. Do not be late.” With this pronouncement he left, the clack of his hard-soled shoes receding. Mary spat on the place where he’d stood.
“Asshole,” she muttered. She shrugged aside her annoyance, as if shifting a burden to a more comfortable position, and turned to Selena. “Well, we should get a move on. Second chime was a while back. Come on. It’s time to show you the Iron Circle.”
11: Fresher Parts
The room was full of cobwebs.
They covered everything, thick strands binding chair to desk and desk to wall, drooping from the weight of dirt and dead flies. Curtains of pale silk choked the wan light dribbling through the windows, wringing out every quanta of warmth and color until only a dirty grey residue remained.
Simon leaped from his chair with disgust, shuddering as the silken threads gave way with a wet tearing sound. He stumbled, braced himself on the desk. His fingers sank into half an inch of pale, stringy moss. He recoiled, arms held stiffly out to avoid accidentally brushing his tainted fingers against a yet unsullied bit of skin.
Where am I? But even as the question surfaced, he knew. This was The Mayor’s office, far larger than he remembered it, distant walls vanishing into a fog of grey-white webbing. He strained his eyes against the mist, and it accommodatingly parted, revealing a shadow play embroidered with gashes of garish color—reds mostly, and the glitter of silver and gold. The door opened and Selena charged into the room. She wore the trim grey dress and leather shoes of the Seraphim, New Canaan’s ruling caste. On her breast sat the empire’s emblem, a white cross within a garland of green thorns. Simon opened his mouth to call her name, but all that escaped was a click.
A second figure formed behind Selena, oozing from the shadows and coalescing into a beastly shape with quicksilver eyes. It loomed over her with fingers outstretched. They were long and slender and cruel, and from their tips dripped death.
Simon yanked open a desk drawer, revealing a silver revolver atop a velvet pad. He grabbed the gun, raised it. It seemed to exist in a different atmosphere, one with the viscosity of rancid syrup. He steadied the gun with both hands and fired.
The expected roar of the shot never came. Instead, there was a shrill creak, the protest of rusty metal. He pulled the trigger a second time, a third, each time praying the cylinder would settle on a loaded chamber and each time sounding the squeal of dying hinges.
Simon awoke with a jolt. A glaze of sweat covered him from chest to ankle. He kicked off his blanket and fumbled for his glasses. His finger met glass, and he slipped them on. Vague blotches resolved to a crystalline image. He never felt wholly awake until he had his glasses on, as if the fault in his vision lay not in his cornea but his consciousness, the swimmy blurs he saw a residue of dreams.
He left the alcove and entered the main part of the cave. Emily stood at the hand pump, working the lever with broad, forceful strokes. Damp air gasped from the spigot, flecked with dewy bits of moisture scarcely large enough to survive the brief downward trip into the bucket without evaporating. Eventually, she gave up the effort and inspected the bucket’s contents. It was less than half full. She noticed Simon and nodded a distracted greeting.
“Need any help?” he asked.
“Not much we can do. Pump’s spent ‘til the aquifer fills back up.”
Simon chewed his upper lip. Her frustration, though not directed at him, made him uncomfortable. “Well, at least you got something to drink for now.”
“It’s not for me,” she said and walked off. Simon wasn’t sure if he was supposed to follow. After a moment’s pause, he did.
They emerged from the cave into the murky grey-brown light of an overcast midmorning sky. The earth formed a path where frequent footsteps had trodden it flat, and they followed it to a gap in the canyon’s right wall, where the caprices of a long-dead river had carved a basin in the alkaline earth. The slow accumulation of minerals had lent the basin’s soil a loamy, porous quality absent in the rest of the arroyo. From this earth rose a collection of crops—mostly corn and beans and some sort of gourd, though there were other plants Simon couldn’t identify.
Emily poured the bucket over the front-most row. Water trickled through a guard affixed to the lip of the bucket, which funneled the flow through a narrow spigot. She worked in increments, meting out hydration dribble by dribble. When the spigot ran dry, she upended the bucket over the unquenched soil, tapping its bottom to dislodge any stubborn droplets from its riveted seam. She swung the bucket idly by its handle and studied the ground. The dark patches of wet earth were already drying.
“How many trips have you made out here today?”
“This was my fourth.”
Simon whistled. “How will you ever get enough out of one bucket to water all this?”
“I won’t. Look.” She walked Simon around the front row and into the field. The ground grew drier as it went, tufts of greyish loam crumbling to tan clumps of dust and clay. The stalks of corn rising from them looked wan and brittle, wilting leaves hiding vestigial ears of inedible grain. Bushes hung limply from defeated shoots, their leaves dust-dry and crumbling. The few bean pods that had managed to grow were black and withered. The desolation was nearly absolute. Of the crops Simon could see, all but ten percent or so were doomed if they didn’t get a decent watering soon. Even those plants that had received their share bore the parched, concave-cheeked countenance of famine victims.
“I don’t get it. How’d they grow in the first place?”
Emily motioned to a squat steel box at the far end of the field. One of its panels lay in the dirt nearby. A pair of legs jutted from the exposed chassis. Their knees bent, and Otis emerged from the box. Dirt and grease marked his upper body like hastily applied war paint. He wiped his forehead and tossed a wrench at the ground. The earth absorbed the blow with barely a sound.
“God damn this piece of shit,” he growled. He noticed Simon and tamped down his frustration, his lips pursed with poorly concealed embarrassment. He picked up the wrench and wiped it off with a cloth.
“What is that?” Simon asked. He peered into the metal aperture, performed a quick survey of the parts it contained. The circuitry was fairly simple, a few strips of silicon capsuled in plastic casing. Wires linked the disparate components in a tangled loop around a column of copper eight inches in diameter. The central pipe rose from the earth directly, while the rest of the box sat on a foundation of gravel and chipped stone. “An irrigation pump?”
Otis arched an eyebrow. “Good guess. She gave out a few weeks ago. No way to get the crops enough water without her.”
Simon hunkered down on the balls of his feet to afford a better view. “Did you build this?”
Otis gave a bitter laugh. “I can’t even fix the damn thing.”
Simon leaned into the chassis, hoping to spot an easy fix—a loose screw or torn wire. He traced the connections from the motor to the bank of photovoltaic cells on the pump’s flat roof. The connections seemed solid. He ran his thumb along the solar panel’s translucent membrane, checking for accumulated dust that might inhibit light absorption. His thumb came back clean.
Gripping the exposed chassis for leverage, he wriggled inside. It was tough to inspect the smaller components without an electric light. He slid the faceplate from the largest circuit board, wincing as the brittle plastic nearly snapped from the pressure. Age had ossified its once-supple molecular bonds, rendering them fragile as glass. He ran his finger along the circuit’s copper tracings, expecting to peel back a curtain of dust. Instead, his fingers came back damp and tacky. A moist
film collected under his fingernail. He held the substance under his nose. It smelled sour and metallic. A few more actions confirmed his suspicions.
He emerged from the pump. Emily and Otis stood over him, their faces pinched and grim. Simon ran his tongue along the front of his teeth and gave his diagnosis.
“The gasket at the top of the inflow pipe’s got a leak in it. It was pretty small, but water got into the circuit board and corroded everything.”
“So does that mean it’s toast?” Emily said. She squeezed Otis’ hand. He squeezed back silently.
“The circuit board is, yeah. Maybe not the rest of it.” Simon rubbed his chin. “Can you tell me exactly how the pump worked? Not in a technical way or anything, but just how you turned it on, how long it ran for, that sort of stuff.”
“I never had to do anything to it,” said Otis. “It was runnin’ when we moved in here. The folks farmed this valley before us musta done it. Woulda been during the Last War, is my guess. They were long gone when we showed up. The field was still here, though. Overgrown and full of yucca and creosote, but healthy as anything. We hoed out the weeds and sowed the good crops and tended it ever since.”
“Did it run the same time every day?”
“No, it could come on any time. It seemed to know when the soil was getting dry.”
Simon nodded. “That part could be tough to repair. But if the compressor works and the power works, then all you really need is some rewiring. It wouldn’t be automatic anymore, but you could switch it on manually when the soil gets dry and switch it off once it’s moist again.”
“And you can do that?” Emily asked. She looked at him with something like awe. Simon chewed his lips and drew a few quick patterns in the dirt with the toe of one shoe.
“I think so. But the stuff in there’s pretty rusted up. I’d need some fresher parts, and those can be hard to get.”
Emily and Otis exchanged a glance. Almost imperceptibly, Otis nodded.
Iron Circle Page 6
