A week later, the silver tube protruded from Thesil's neck like the tap on a barrel of wine. It reminded me of the hollow metal earrings some women wore, and of Abursa's lip stud. My parents had never allowed me to get a piercing – too much risk of infection, they had said. But they had never even imagined a piercing as dramatic as this.
A pale hand rose to fiddle with the cannula. I reached out and gently pushed it back down. I said, "The healer wrote that you should leave it in. Your throat's healed around it."
Thesil grimaced, but she let me take her hand. "I want it out."
"It'll open the wound again. And risk an infection. I know the healer's told you this. Why don't you listen to her?"
"I hate her. She ruined my voice."
I blinked. "She saved your life."
"You don't understand. I sound like a toad, a raven. I can't speak above a whisper. When I tried to talk to her, the healer didn't even understand me." Her eyes were wet. "I really can't go back home now."
This was news to me. She seemed to be speaking as she normally did. But I supposed an injury of the throat wouldn't affect the movement of her lips. "Maybe it will get better."
"She said it wouldn't. Even if I take the tube out."
"Then leave it in."
She nodded but said nothing more. I left her to sulk and went to pack our things.
#
Abursa had been right. No one had come from the city to have their automas painted. No one had come from the city at all. Our troupe needed to move on.
Just two tents still stood outside – mine and Thesil's and another on the far side of camp. Everyone was packing the canvases and cooking gear, loading the wagon around the still hulk of our battered automa. With bundles tucked around it, it looked like a street seller surrounded by his goods. But it had no face, only a cracked wooden mask.
I'd hauled our bags almost to the wagon when I noticed Abursa, her donkey cart cast across the front of the other standing tent. She blocked a familiar tall form – Amaz.
I wanted to know what made her wave her hands, and why Amaz stood with his arms crossed disapprovingly. But my arms were full of baggage. I carried our things the rest of the way to the wagon. As I walked back to our tent, Amaz stalked away, his face set in stern lines. I stared after him, then glanced at Abursa.
Abursa's face was so puckered she might swallow her lip piercing. She spoke again, clearly to someone inside, and I read the edge it. "We'll be gone before ... Other cities won't ... Damn him."
A woman stepped out behind her, her arms wrapped around a small bundle. Frisa. I remembered Amaz looking for her. But I blinked when the bundle in her arms stretched, and a tiny hand reached for her chin.
A baby.
I stared, frankly astonished.
The mother stepped away from the tent as some of the other troupe members came forward and wrestled it to pieces.
"You said it had died," I said.
Abursa's head swung towards me.
"What was in the grave?"
The troupe-leader smiled and touched Frisa's shoulder. "A fox cub. A stillborn. Just not this one."
The baby's mouth opened into a gaping cave. Everyone around me winced, even its mother.
Abursa looked at me. Her eyes gleamed. "Here," she said. "You carry him."
#
I sat cradling the baby as the troupe tore apart and packed rest of the camp. Thesil stalked up to me, her hands wrapped around Sefi's leash, her limbs moving like a marionette's. It was the first time I'd seen her walk since her attack.
I frowned. "Do I need to come pack the rest of the tent?"
Thesil flopped down next to me. Her mouth bared too many teeth. "They're taking care of it."
She didn't look happy, but Sefi came over to inspect me. I shifted the infant boy out of the goose's reach and said, "Then what's wrong?"
Thesil cast an offended look towards me. "They offered me a cart." Her mouth drew out the word. "They offered to carry me. I can walk. I'm not a cripple."
The baby waved a hand again, his fist aiming for my hair. I said, "So what if you were?"
Thesil stared at me.
"Abursa can't walk. She runs the place."
Dark brows furrowed. "I just meant... I'm not helpless."
"Neither is Abursa."
Her gaze fell. "Whatever." She wouldn't meet my eyes.
I didn't know what to say to her. She seemed proud to be self-sufficient, and yet she needed help as much as anyone I'd ever known. Pointing it out would make her angry. "Do you want to hold the baby?"
She scooted three feet to the left, as if I'd offered her a venomous snake. "What?"
"The baby. Do you want to hold him?"
"Why would I want that?"
"Why wouldn't you?"
She grimaced. "It's loud and it smells bad."
"He smells like milk."
"I hate dairy."
"I don't think his mother's going to offer you a drink." The words slipped out of my mouth before I thought about them. My face flushed as I imagined what I'd just said – and what Frisa would look like under her dress.
"Gross," Thesil said, her expression matching mine, and I laughed. For a moment, I felt like we were two normal young women sitting in the sun on a warm day.
But we weren't. We were imperfectas.
I frowned and cradled the baby against me. "If he's too loud, you can go elsewhere."
"They're tearing down the tent," Thesil said.
"Is that why you came to sit with me, instead of someone else?"
I almost missed her flinch. Her hand fluttered towards her throat. "You're the only one who doesn't..."
"What?"
Her eyes had gone flat. "You don't look at me with pity. Or glee. Because of my voice."
Because I couldn't hear it. "Who's been glad you lost your voice?"
The little half-shrug she gave made my throat ache. "People. They think I'm one of them now."
I stroked the baby's scalp. "You've always been one of us."
Her mouth tightened. "No. They're right. You said you'd teach me your language."
The change of subject caught me so by surprise I almost couldn't read the words on her lips. Then my heart lightened. I laid the boy on my folded legs. "I did. Here. Let me show you how to sign your name."
#
The desert was not a hot desert. If it had been, I don't think any of the imperfectas would have survived. I'd heard stories from my parents of deserts to the far south, where the sun baked the living to death in minutes. Only scorpions and venomous snakes lived there at all, and took turns eating one another.
But here, the air was dry but cool. I shivered in the early morning chill and pressed my face against Sefi's feathers. The goose was cranky about being carried, but she had gotten tired of walking, and I could never leave her behind. Her feathers smelled like powdered chalk and oranges. It was a familiar scent, one I'd known for years, and for a moment I missed my family so badly it hurt.
The troupe spread out around me, goats and foxes and people following the wagon like they'd done it a hundred times before. Thesil trudged along beside me, her arms wrapped around her stomach like a belt. Her head hung lower and lower as the morning wore on.
"Are you all right?" I asked her.
She looked at me, dull-eyed. "The sand makes my feet hurt."
I looked down, then back at the cratered tracks the troupe had left in the ground. "It's really more loose dirt than sand."
She glared at me. "It's a desert. A desert should have sand."
"This one doesn't." I signed it, instead of speaking, but I knew by her eye roll that she'd understood.
"Fine," she signed back, the symbol clumsy. "Ground. Ground hurt. Happy?"
"Always," I signed.
She studied me like I was a painting she'd never seen before. Her hands moved. "Mean it?"
"Of course."
Thesil bit her lip and shook her head. Hands weren't enough for her. She went back to speaking. "How can you always be happy when the world's screwed you? How come you never want to crawl under a rock and hide?"
My brows lifted. Sefi squirmed in my grip, and I let her down to walk again. "Because giving up would mean the Justry was right."
Thesil stopped walking.
I turned towards her as she fell behind. "You'll never find a way home under a rock."
It was a few long moments before she started walking again. The soft earth, the crust beaten apart by our footsteps, slid under her feet, and she said, "Damn sand."
"Dirt," I signed.
The walk morphed into a signing lesson. Most things did, these days.
#
The road split a week into our journey. It wasn't a real road, just wagon ruts and hoof prints sunk deep into the dirt. But it had been one sprawling path since we left the camp outside the August City and now it was two.
I glanced between the two routes as the troupe came to a halt. The sun had baked the north hard, like no one had traveled it in a long time. Feet and wheels had beaten the road south apart since the last rain.
Abursa sent her cart ahead of the others and peered north and south as though she could see the cities at the ends of the roads. The troupe-members unloaded the wagon, pulling down tents and gear, and at the same time, two others unhooked the donkeys and led them away. I frowned. I went to find Abursa.
She was watching the unpacking with grim satisfaction. She glanced at me as I walked up alongside her cart. "A problem, painter?"
I said, "We're staying here?"
"For a while." She grinned at my dismayed look. "Don't worry. There's a well near the fork in the road. We won't die of thirst."
Some of the tension in my throat eased. "But why aren't we continuing? Is someone ill?" I thought through the troupe-members I knew. "The baby?"
"No. We're waiting."
"For what?"
She nodded to the two men who had mounted the unharnessed donkeys and now trotted them back and forth along the edge of the group. "For them. They're our scouts. They'll ride ahead and find out which of the cities has a good market for automa repair."
At the fork in the road, the donkeys stopped pacing. One man steered his south. The other veered north. I watched them trot away. Soon they would be nothing but two trails of dust in the distance.
Abursa wrote, "One of them will have more automas in need of repairs than the other. Things go bad, and accidents happen. The scouts will find out where."
"You sound like you expect them to be allowed in the gates."
"No, but they have family connections. Rich ones. They'll get the information. Go set up your tent."
#
Abursa swore both men would be back in four days. But it didn't make waiting any easier.
Days passed in leisure. I did nothing but teach Thesil. I wanted to paint, but Abursa had advised me to save Sefi's eggs for later. I had a small pile of them in a basket on the wagon.
I couldn't paint the automa I had. But at least I could draw the scene I wanted to paint. I started for the wagon with my charcoals.
The automa sat on the far edge of the otherwise empty wagon, its back to me, slumped like a dejected child. Two of the troupe-members stood in front of it – I could see their heads on the other side of the wagon. One was dark-haired, the other fair.
The two men glanced at me as I approached, then went back to looking at the automa. The fingers of the automa's left hand curved. The right stayed rigid, like a statue, even when the darker man thumped the wooden elbow right above it.
The light-haired man rolled his eyes and grabbed the machine by the wrist. He yanked, and the whole hand sprang free. It left an opening like the mouth of a vase.
I caught a whiff of the machine's core, just a hint, but enough to make me lightheaded and joyful. Enough to give the world a strange, dancing hue. If I leaned closer, would I be lost in visions again?
The dark-skinned man took the detached hand and flexed its fingers, running a thin knife into its joints. Fixing it, I supposed. But the light-haired man had noticed my stare. He held my eyes and grinned. He pressed his face against the gaping hole in its wrist. His mouth opened. His chest rose. A breath in. I watched him, paralyzed.
Jealous.
His pupils dilated, going wide as moons. His jaw hung loose, almost drooling. I watched him with fixed eyes as he breathed again. Then he sat back, and he winked at me. Like we shared a secret.
If I leaned forward and did the same, who would ever know? Who would ever care?
I clutched my charcoals to my chest and fled.
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