A week passed before the city's gates opened and something spilled out onto the dusty road, sending up clouds that obscured the earth and rose into the sky like smoke. It made me think of my vision of the red dusk, and made me uneasy. Perhaps the smoke in the vision, too, had only been dust. But so many plumes had filled that vision. So many.
Had the city brought another exile to join us? I asked Abursa, but she shook her head. "They send donkey-carts for that, and they don't make as much of a cloud. Get your paints. We may have a customer."
The perfectas reached our troupe at mid-day, driving a wagon pulled by donkeys, their necks straining against the weight. A tarpaulin covered the wagon bed. The drivers wore laborer's wool and no jewelry. But Abursa wheeled to greet them anyway. One perfecta tossed her a fat coin purse and drove the wagon into our camp.
I rose from under the shade tree where Thesil and I had taken shelter for the afternoon rest. Thesil was rubbing at her eyes as though an eyelash had lodged itself under her eyelid and multiplied. I left her to it. If the perfectas had brought us an automa, then I would need to paint it.
I reached the wagon at the same time as Abursa. She nodded to me and turned to say something to the perfecta man. He pulled the tarpaulin off the wagon bed with a flourish.
A wooden donkey lay on its side in the wagon, its legs longer and more graceful than any real beast's, its ears feather-plumes, its eyes balls of swirling glass. Its torso shattered by some massive impact that had smashed wood and cut a hole as long as my arm.
I caught a glimpse of the exposed core, glowing a subdued ugly yellow, before the scent of the oracle ore hit me. I staggered forward, visions creeping in at the edge of my sight, and fell to my knees beside the wagon.
#
I saw feet, one placed before another. Walking feet, shod with boots made of foal skin. Dried blood stained the stones under their soles.
I wanted to look at the patches of blood, but my sight drew back as though I were flying away. Now I could see the woman who wore the boots. Her blue robes. Her intricately braided hair and blade-sharp face. She walked down a narrow stone hall with a ceiling open to the sky. The moon and the lantern in her hand cast the only light. Two young men walked behind her, their hands folded before them. One carried a book and inkwell.
Ahead an ornate door stood in the side of a small building, carved with delicate words and prayers. A holy door. It, too, was bloodstained.
The door opened under the woman's unblemished hand. Holy Efra vanished into its darkness. Her attendants followed. I hung outside, like a moth floating in her wake. A fragrance filled the air. Oracle ore. I forced myself forward and followed Holy Efra in.
She sat on a low wooden couch, her boots folded under her thighs, the lamp on the wood next to her. The attendants stood to either side of her couch. The room had no windows, no skylight, no other doors. The walls were stacked with cedar boxes. They smelled like sap and earth. They smelled like ore. I wanted to stay forever.
Holy Efra leaned out and picked one up. The lid slid away under her fingers. The box was velvet-lined, and empty.
One of the men pulled a great chest from underneath her couch and slid it in front of her. It was metal, big and solid enough to be a casket. It took both men to lift the lid. It tipped off, and when it landed the stack of cedar boxes trembled. Powder, green and glowing and fine as flour, filled the casket to its brim. It lit the ceiling and the chins of the shaking attendants with a green aura. Holy Efra did not shake. She reached out and ran her fingers through it. Her eyes looked into the distance, like she could see through the wall. Like she could see me.
The ore smelled so strongly I felt as though someone had pulled me apart and rebuilt me out of the scent. It was heady, empowering, irresistible. I should have fallen into visions within visions. But I didn't.
Holy Efra scooped up a palmful of powdered ore and cupped it in her hands. Grains escaped through her fingers like the trickle of an hourglass. She lifted the handful to her mouth and spat.
Saliva, that sacred life-water, pooled in the powder, then absorbed. The powder turned dark green as Holy Efra rolled it between her hands. It formed into a stiff cone, its top sharply pointed. She licked it, using her spit to seal it into shape. Her eyes were wide with exultation.
At last, it lay on her palms, the twin of the little glowing cone the Justry had shown me at my revelations. But it was too sharp. At least, until she bit off the top.
Her eyes widened and rolled back in her head until I could see nothing but the veins in her eyes. Her mouth moved. I could not read it, but the boy on her left scribbled in his book. The one on the right took the cone from Holy Efra's hands and–
Hands gripped my shoulders. Not my shoulders here, in the vision, where I was invisible, insubstantial, immortal and unstoppable, but hands on my real shoulders. They pulled me away from the visions, away from the rich smell that filled my lungs, and I screamed and screamed.
#
I was not on the ground when I came back to myself but clamped in a pair of pale arms that felt skinny as bone. My head swam, and dreams still danced at the edge of my vision. All I could see in the real world was a wagon wheel and the pale arms around me. If I took a deep enough breath, maybe I could go back into the vision.
The arms felt less skeletal as they dragged me back from the wagon. The pale skin was turning red. Abursa's cart stood next to us, and her expression was appalled. Who was carrying me?
I looked at the hands that held me. Recognized them. Thesil. But her skin was never this shade of pink. And she looked to have gained weight.
Something was wrong.
Just past the edge of Abursa's cart, Thesil dropped me. I bounced my forehead off the rocky soil and skinned an elbow. It was enough to jar me out of the ore's hold. I looked up in time to see Thesil stumble and fall like a toppled tree. I scrambled to my feet and ran to her side.
Thesil lay on her back, her hands clawing at her throat. Her fingers were fat red lumps. Her face had puffed up, and her eyes had swelled to slits. The skin across her whole body was red and stretched, her limbs swollen. Her mouth opened wide, gaping like a fish, but her chest was still. Her lips were turning blue.
I tried to lift her, to search for what had done this – a snake, I thought, or a scorpion – but someone shoved me out of the way. The members of the troupe surrounded us, bending over Thesil and me. An old woman, her face unfamiliar, had taken my place. She prodded Thesil's neck and chest. Then she drew a small bag from her camise and pulled out a thin knife.
"What are you going to do with that?" I demanded.
The woman ignored me. Her knife flashed and drove into Thesil's throat.
I started to jump forward, but the troupe members grabbed me. The old woman drew her knife back, the blade dripping. She dropped it and pulled out something that flashed silver. I stared as she drove a curved tube into the wound her scalpel had made. It stuck out of Thesil's throat by half an inch, gleaming like an ornament in the middle of the blood that ran down her neck.
Then she hit Thesil in the chest. Once. Twice. Again and again, until Thesil's still chest began to rise and fall and bubbles of blood rose and popped around the wound.
The blue lips turned purple, but Thesil's face kept swelling and the old woman rose and stepped back, awkward on her warped leg, snapping words too rapid to read.
"What is wrong with her?" I begged.
The old woman turned to the troupe, several of whom came forward to grab Thesil's limp and swollen limbs. They bore her towards our tent. Clearly the woman had communicated something to everyone else. For a moment, I hated speaking people, who would leave me unknowing and confused while my friend might be dying. Their stupid words and sounds. Their arrogant assumption that I could just follow along, and that if I didn't, it was my problem.
If they learned sign, we could all follow along. But they wouldn't bother.
I rubbed tears from my eyes as I stumbled after the others. As soon as Thesil recovered – if Thesil recovered – I was teaching her sign. And anyone else who would be willing to learn.
I'd almost reached the tent when Abursa intercepted me. I was tempted to jump around her cart and continue on, but she held her hand out for my writing tablet with every confidence I would obey. And her donkey looked ready to kick me if I tried anything else.
She was the troupe-leader. If she kicked us out, especially with Thesil sick, we'd starve. Besides, what did I expect to do to help Thesil? I was no healer.
I undid my writing amulet from around my neck, wrote, "What's wrong with her?" and shoved it into the woman's hands.
Abursa's face was set in solemn, irritated lines as she wrote. "The healer thinks she's extremely sensitive to the poisonous ores that make up the core. She's seen this sort of swelling and fainting before, she says, when someone's sensitive to a poison, but usually it's wasp stings or things like that, not airborne. She's given her a medicine that usually helps."
"Why did she stab her?"
"To open the windpipe, so she could breathe. Her throat had swollen shut. She'd have been dead in another few minutes."
I shuddered. "Why was she even near the core at all?" Thesil had no reason to approach; she couldn't repair the automa. Even if she hadn't known the core was poison, she should've been by the cookfire.
"To save you, idiot."
"What?"
"She was trying to pull you out from under the wagon before the perfectas ran you over. You were lying on the ground and I couldn't reach you, not from my cart. And if I left it, we'd both be stuck on the ground. She just got to you before the rest of the troupe could."
"Why would they run me over?"
Abursa frowned. "Because they threatened to. Go check on your friend."
#
Thesil lay prone in our tent, her face unrecognizable with swelling. The tears that blurred my vision didn't help. At least her chest was still moving. The old healer sat at her side, with Sefi nested beside her. When I asked the healer how Thesil was doing, she squinted at me. Hand signs produced no better result. I sat by Thesil and helped dab at her forehead with a damp rag. Congealed blood coated her throat, but when I tried to wash it away, the healer slapped me and pointed at the door.
I rose slowly, my heartbeat thrumming throughout my body. Maybe I couldn't help Thesil. I'd spent my life learning to mix the perfect color, not medicines. I walked a few feet, then stared back at her. This was my fault. Thesil would never have come near the core if I hadn't been stupid enough to poke my face in a damaged automa and fall over. But I couldn't have known it would be open to the air, or that the perfectas would decide to run me over. What kind of people ran over someone in the middle of a vision, anyway? The thought made my blood boil. I stormed outside.
The perfecta's automa was not by the tent of spare parts, nor by our automa on the wagon. In fact, I didn't see their wagon anywhere. I paced through the camp until I found Abursa.
"Where are they?" I demanded.
Her brows lifted. She looked tired. "Who?"
"The perfectas! They had no reason to threaten my life. If they hadn't, Thesil would still be well. Where are they? I want to tell them exactly what I think of their behavior."
Abursa sighed. "Give me your writing tablet."
I did.
The message she returned to me made my heart sink. "Don't bother looking for them now. They took their automa and left. They won't give us the job. They're convinced we're all diseased, what with the way you toppled over and your friend thrashed around on the ground. They fled back to their city like we'd threatened to light their wagon on fire. I don't doubt they'll tell the rest of the city, too. You cost us a lot of money. And I still have to pay the healer."
I flinched. "I'm sorry. Thank you for helping Thesil. Are you going to send us away after this?"
Abursa scowled. "You've shared our food and drink. I can't get rid of you unless you mess up. Getting sick isn't messing up."
I dropped back into speech. "Why was there a healer here at all?"
The troupe-leader paused before replying, "She was checking on Frisa."
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