I'd expected to see Amaz when we rode our donkeys out the starred gate. But if he was lurking somewhere in the camp, I didn't spot him. I saw only the perfecta dead, piled on the pyre, and the imperfectas trying to go on living at the edge of disaster. Most of them wore cloaks and masks like us. But some, like Amaz, wandered bare-chested and coated with chalk. Mourners. One woman, her bare breasts her only uncoated skin, sat at the center of the camp, rocking back and forth, her mouth open wide enough to swallow the sky.
I avoided her. Grandmother had let me take the lead on the ride out. She seemed thoughtful, occupied by the logistics of coming up with more ore. Thesil, whose hands had been still since we left the garden, was quick to follow me.
The route I took away from the rocking woman and the pyre led me past the large red tent at the edge of camp. People sat outside, huddled together as though for heat, although the sun beat down warmly. Thesil clapped her hands over her ears, leaving the donkey to its own devices. I shot her a worried glance, and she signed, "They're screaming. In there."
"We can go another way," I signed, one-handed. I didn't trust my donkey without the reins.
Thesil's headshake was a violent tremor. "They're screaming everywhere."
Grandmother had stopped. I followed her gaze. An unusually wide figure had walked out of the red tent, its gait lumbering, although it was not so tall.
At first, I didn't realize what I was looking at. Someone in a cloak, obviously, but even if that someone weighed hundreds of pounds, the hood should not have been so broad. I took a closer look, expecting to see a hat under it, and found myself staring at two masked faces. Two heads.
The heads tilted towards each other, the way hearing people sometimes do when they talk together. But even with the masks, I could tell they weren't talking. They were twins, fused together at the temples.
I'd never seen conjoined twins before, but I knew of them. Everyone knew of them, at least from the old legends of Holy Dista and Holy Imet. They had founded the Plenary Cities. The pair of female conjoined twins had been the only primas – heirs – of the regina that ruled the largest of the old city-states. Statues and paintings of the holies showed them with skin of perfect obsidian black, joined at the breast and facing one another like dancers. The people of the time knew them as sacred, signs sent by the Unknowns. When their mother died and they became reginas, they used their new power to unite the city-states into a nation that became the Plenary Cities.
These twins didn't look like holy primas. The lines of their faces, visible through the masks, were too solid for that. And their mid-toned skin and curling brown hair were as unremarkable as mud. I couldn't guess their gender, but the head on the left bore cropped hair.
The owner of that head cast back their cloak, revealing four arms, four legs – two bodies clad in non-matching clothes that looked both gaudy and cheap. The head was their only point of contact. They leaned together like two legs of a tripod – I half expected to see a third behind them.
The body on the left signed, "Hashida? Is that you?" Beads and embroidery covered that one's white calsounds. Yellow decorations, a masculine color. But blue bedecked the other body's clothes, the color of womanhood. I didn't know what to make of it. Of them.
My grandmother slumped in her saddle and slowly climbed down. She signed, one-handed, "Yes. Me."
I reached and took the donkey's reins from her, my eyebrows lifted.
Grandmother signed, "Granddaughter, this is Gadara and Tamorin. Gadara's the girl on the right. Tamorin's on the left. He used to assist my town's healer."
He? I shot another startled glance at them. Surely only same-sex twins could become conjoined, and they bore the same square body-shape. But then the long-haired one – Gadara – glared at me as though I'd insulted their mother, and I clenched my hands shut before I could ask something unforgivable.
"I didn't expect to see you two here," Grandmother signed.
The man – Tamorin– shrugged. "It wasn't a plague-pit until recently."
"I thought you were going to seek your education. You joined one of the spectacles? I would never have believed it."
Gadara's signs were sharp and crisp – nothing like her brother's languid motions. "You're one to judge, Hashida. It pays much better than you ever did, and Madam Vrida wasn't afraid to use her connections to get us the medical texts Tamorin needs."
"Too bad she's dead," Grandmother signed. I gaped at her, astonished by the casual unkindness of that statement.
"It is too bad," Tamorin signed. "I might be better read now, but I don't think my collection of anatomy books will be enough to oust old Yasheta from her place as your healer."
"You assume I'd let you come back with me."
He waved a hand at the chaos and death surrounding us. "Would you leave us here? We used to work for you."
Grandmother's eyes narrowed. She folded her arms and looked them up and down as if they were a donkey she was thinking of buying.
Gadara signed, "There's nothing he can do here to help these people. Not without catching it himself and killing us both. You swore, Hashida, we could come back if we ever changed our minds. Was that another of your lies?"
Grandmother's hands lifted. "You camp outside the town for a few weeks. Until I'm sure you don't have it."
She snatched the reins of the donkey from me and mounted, turning us back towards the road. I stared after her.
What lies?
#
We only had three donkeys, and Gadara and Tamorin could not ride. Our trip back was so slow we didn't reach our last campsite by nightfall.
Grandmother made Gadara and Tamorin camp alone. I had no chance to ask about their history with Grandmother. They sat far from us, building their own fire among the scrub trees.
Still, my heartbeat picked up when I doffed my robe and mask to eat. My bare face seemed like a vulnerable opening. How could we be sure they didn't carry the disease?
How could we leave them behind?
Thesil was subdued, twisting her mask between her hands like a children's winding toy. But when she let go, it didn't spring into the air with a flutter of fins. It only fell limp to the ground. I sat next to her and held her hand. Dinner was tasteless, but my stomach stopped hurting.
I approached Grandmother after I finished eating. She sat cross-legged on her bedroll, her bald head gleaming in the firelight. A grizzled brow lifted towards me, but her hands were still.
I signed, "You're giving Kanuraz a wagon of ore."
"True enough," she said, leaning forward over her knees. "Don't ask me where I'm getting it from. A woman has to have some secrets."
I licked my lips. "After his wagon's full, will you have enough left for me? If I asked for it?"
Her eyes narrowed, and she sat up straight. "For you? Decided you're tired of that girlfriend already?"
I flushed. "No! It's just-- Holy Efra was an oracle."
"Yes," Grandmother signed.
"And the Unknowns showed her how to stop death-palsy."
"By kicking us out? So her followers claim. I think it petered out on its own, myself."
I couldn't image the disease just going away. Not without killing everyone in the Plenary Cities. I signed, "If there's even a chance it's true, don't you think I should try?"
"Try what? To fly to the moon? Be straightforward, girl."
My face heated. "I'm an oracle. I know I'm not Holy Efra, but shouldn't I at least try to use my visions to save everyone?"
Grandmother froze, her eyes narrowed. "No. You shouldn't."
I sat across from her, as if proximity could reach her well-shielded heart. "Did you see the people outside that city? It was-- I've never seen--"
She said, "Death? You saw it once, unless you lied to me."
My eyes stung with unshed tears. "The whole camp, the whole city, is dying. And every other city is like that. Even the August City. Even at home, where Mother and Father are. And you want me to sit and try nothing?"
"I want you to think very carefully, Granddaughter. Because the Unknowns are not going to drop a cure in your lap after a few sniffs of ore. If they ever gave you one, they would make you work for it."
"I can work—"
Her eyes gleamed up at me. "Suffer for it would be more accurate. You'll use for every vision, and soon a whiff won't be enough. You'll be licking it from your hands, swallowing it down whole. Soon you'll become as much an addict as any perfecta."
"But how is that suffering?" Ore was pleasure beyond description, yet she made it sound like a punishment.
"Suffering?" She smiled. "You're a sweet girl, Zisha. Kind to the less fortunate and the rude. Loving to your family — even me. You care about the good of the people, which is why we're having this conversation in the first place. You're not the sort to stand by while injustice happens."
"Thanks?" I said, bewildered.
"I like you, Granddaughter, because of all those things. But if you become an oracle ore addict, you won't be my granddaughter anymore."
I started back. "What?"
"The ore will change you. Slowly at first. It will make you rude to any who stop you from having it. It will take your need for love and companionship and replace it with a need for visions. It will dull your ability to care about anything but your next dose. You'll stop loving your parents. That girlfriend of yours. Me. And you won't give a damn whether the neighbors all die of plague or not."
I hugged my knees to my chest. Signed, "How do you know?"
A smile like the edge of a knife. "My dear, what do you think happened to Efra?"
I stared at her.
"Coming from a corrupt Cene or not, she didn't start out thinking of people as bits and pieces to be thrown away. But how she loved her ore." Grandmother's smile twisted. "So, you ought to be careful."
My stomach rolled, nausea building. "I'm not her. I won't become her."
"Good. Her campaign – her crusade – ended when she died. But we still haven't recovered from it. The last thing we need in the middle of a plague is a replacement."
I wavered. "But if I only take a little, maybe the Unknowns will show me the cure to the plague. I won't have to be an addict."
Grandmother shook her head. "If you start, you won't be able to stop. I know damn well what oracle ore does. Selling it is how I make my living. Now go to bed, Granddaughter. Decide if you're going to be a fool in the morning."
#
My dreams were nonsense. It was unfair. Shouldn't an oracle get more from them? But they were only scraps of life that I forgot as soon as I awoke. I lay there for a while, thinking over Grandmother's words. The more I thought, the more stupid I felt. Who was I, to think that I was Holy Efra's equal? I was an imperfecta, and I was sixteen, and I was no doctor. I didn't know anything about making medicine, and no one would listen to me if I did. And the ore sounded terrible. I already thought of it constantly. How much worse would it become if I took it deliberately? I didn't want to become the person Grandmother had described. I couldn't bear it.
I rolled over and pulled a blanket over my head. But on the other hand, I was an oracle. The Unknowns must have given me this gift for a reason. They were supposed to guide and protect us, and death-palsy was destroying everything. They had no good reason not to show me the solution. Not one. I sat up, ready to tell Grandmother I was going to save the cities, ore be damned. But a thought stopped me.
Why hadn't they shown it to me already?
When I got up, ten minutes later, my heart felt trampled. But I had made up my mind. For now, I would not follow in Holy Efra's footsteps. And every death from now on might as well be my fault.
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