It was Thesil who noticed, some days later. She stopped walking, several feet behind Lira and her donkey. I, who tried to keep pace with Lira lest she need my eyes for something, turned back.
"Thesil?" I said.
Thesil was scanning the roadway around us. She glanced at the sky. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lira stop walking, too.
"What's wrong?" I said.
Thesil frowned at the wagon tracks before locking gazes with me. She signed, "This isn't the road to the Starred City. It can't be. It's going west." She'd stopped speaking since we escaped the pilgrims, relying solely on the hand signals she was getting better and better at. I was reluctant to ask her why.
I blinked. "Are you sure?"
Thesil's lip curled. "Look at the sun."
The sun beat down bright enough to warm my back in spite of the cool day. It was not in the position it ought to be, if we were on the road to the city.
I licked my lips and walked forward to Lira's side. We had trusted she – or rather, the donkey – knew where we were going. I felt stupid. She was blind, and now we were lost in a desert far from the nearest well or camp. We might as well have stayed in Amaz's nets. We'd die as surely out here as in there.
"Lira," I said, angling myself to watch her face. "Thesil is worried we're no longer headed towards the Starred City."
Lira's expression was unreadable. "Is she?"
"We're pulling west, she says."
"Yes," Lira said, calmly.
"Are we lost?"
The corner of her mouth turned up. "Are you?"
Of course I was lost. A year ago, I'd never been outside the August City, and all my maps were gone with my pack. "Please answer my question."
"Very well," she said. "I never said we were going to the Starred City. We are on the way to one of the imperfecta mines."
If I looked at Thesil, she would be making some cute sign of disbelief, or rolling her eyes. But I didn't dare risk missing part of this conversation, so I regretfully kept my eyes fixed on Lira's face, and not on Thesil's inevitably outraged expression.
"Why didn't you tell us?" I said.
A shrug of her shoulders. "I thought you would be less likely to protest if we were already well on the way to our destination."
I took a deep breath, objections building in my throat. I swallowed them. "What was wrong with the Starred City?"
"Amaz is heading there already. He knows your troupe went that way. It is the first place he will look for us, and he was likely to overtake us on the road."
I'd wondered, in the part of my mind not bemoaning my aching legs and the loss of my paints and Sefi, why he hadn't sent out riders to track us down. "When were we last on the road to the Starred City, Lira? How long have we been detouring?"
She smiled. "When I freed you, I said I was leading you to the road. I never said which one."
I gaped at her. I couldn't even think of a response.
She turned her head. Her lips shaped, "What is that sound?"
"What?" I scanned the desert around us. Thesil, behind us, was staring south. I followed her gaze and caught a flicker of movement in the distance.
It came closer and closer, moving slowly and awkwardly through the air, like a child's paper-boat floating in a mud-puddle. It flew low over the desert, a long white neck outstretched, rusty wings wobbling like it was about to fall out of the sky.
Thesil spun towards me, her hands already moving. "It's your stupid goose!"
I stared at the speck for a long moment. Then I ran.
I ran towards her, shouting, waving my hands, calling her name, anything to get her attention. Anything to bring her down to me. If she flew by overhead, just out of my reach...
I couldn't bear it.
She turned, a slow loop above the small trees, and veered towards me. My chest burned, but I kept running until she crashed to a landing in a thorn bush. She freed herself before I could reach her and waddled the last few feet to peck at my pants.
I fell to my knees and hugged her, inhaling the smell of her powdery feathers. Her beak preened my hair. I held her to me and rocked, her large webbed feet pressing against my thighs, and I missed Thesil's approach completely.
She crouched next to me, peering in at Sefi and me. I offered her a weak smile. "I've never seen her fly," I said. The breeze chilled the wet patches on my cheeks.
"It's okay," Thesil signed. "That woman is mad at you. She says we're losing ground."
I wanted to get up and tell Lira she could go on without us if she was in such a hurry. But the rapid beat of Sefi's heart and the pumping of her lungs worried me. I stroked her head. "She's exhausted. She won't be able to keep up with us, unless I hold her."
"Is she hurt?"
"No. But tamed geese aren't bred to fly."
"She came a long way."
I bowed my head to touch Sefi's. "I know."
When I looked up, Thesil signed, "Can I carry her?"
#
With Sefi in Thesil's arms, I felt like the world had been set right again. Certainly, I was still an exile, and we'd watched a man die of an extinct disease. But I had one thing that really mattered back with me.
I kept watching them as we walked along behind Lira and her donkey. Thesil and Sefi looked so right together. It made my heart swell.
Thesil kept her arms wrapped tight around Sefi. The goose seemed too tired to protest. Thesil said, "Can you read my mouth when I talk like this?"
"The lighting is good, so yes. You don't have to always sign if your hands are full."
Thesil shrugged. "It's good practice. Since no one can hear me, anyway."
I winced at her expression. "I can understand you."
"Most people don't learn to read lips."
Sefi reared up and nipped her nose.
Thesil jumped, her mouth opening in a startled o. Sefi tumbled from her arms to the ground, achieving a half-graceful landing. The pleased goose pottered about my ankles, preening her wings and tail. My scolding did nothing to dissuade her.
"It's all right," Thesil signed once she stopped holding her nose. "My ducks did that sometimes."
I remembered, then, our discussion when we first met. "Three ducks."
Thesil went back to talking, as if she didn't know the signs for what she wanted to say. "I raised them from ducklings. They were gold and blue when they grew up, with brown bellies. Fat little things, always begging for scraps."
Lira had paused to wait for us. I started walking again, Sefi trailing at my heels. "Did they live in the house with you?"
"The garden. We had a marble pond filled with orange box-minnows and tiny golden crabs, and the ducks swam out there. Father was always annoyed when they shed feathers all over the grounds."
"We always diapered Sefi. We didn't have anywhere to keep her but inside."
"She must've missed swimming."
I smiled. "She would join me in the bath."
Thesil's mouth opened, and her eyes crinkled. She was laughing. I'd never seen it before.
She looked beautiful.
I didn't realize I said it aloud. But Thesil's eyes flew open and she stared at me. Her rare smile had vanished.
"Beautiful?" One hand touched the tube protruding from her voice box. "Even with this?"
"Lots of people have decorative piercings, Thesil. Yours is simply useful as well as pretty."
Her smile blossomed again, hesitant and shy in a way I didn't associate with Thesil. "Thanks. I like your eyes. I can see myself in them."
"Vain."
"No, I mean... they shine. You shine." Shine, the word represented by both hands unfurling like a flower. I wanted to catch those pale hands in my own, but we were supposed to be walking. I clasped my hands together to keep from reaching out, but I couldn't keep my eyes off her as we walked on.
She, in turn, was watching Sefi. The goose was such a handsome fat bird, I couldn't believe she'd gotten off the ground. But she had. She'd come for me.
I told myself that was the only reason I was so happy.
#
When we stopped for lunch later, I signed to Thesil, "Soon we will be eating bugs like Sefi,
too."
She smiled around her mouthful of grains, but her expression grew sickly when she swallowed. "Roast them and I'll be glad to try. Better than gruel."
"This isn't gruel. Gruel is cooked." Although unflappable Lira, who sat with Defan down by the road, seemed to find raw grass-seed as good a meal as any.
"At home, we would have fruit fresh from the trees, and meat whenever a farm animal passed away."
"I know," I signed, though I didn't. My family ate eggs and beans and goats' milk. Our fruit came dried. Meat was a rarity – when an animal died, more important families snatched up the remains.
Thesil frowned. She cast a sideways glance at my face.
"What?"
"You know I'm not supposed to be here, don't you?"
"None of us are supposed to be wandering in the desert without a troupe."
"That isn't what I meant. I'm not an imperfecta. Not as the law defines it. I shouldn't be here. Even now. Maybe I can't speak, but that's from an injury, and it happened after my sixteenth birthday."
I stopped eating and stared at her. "But the Justry–"
"Threw me out. But not because of any law." She bit her lip, as though she thought I would demand she leave, unfit to stay by my side. I leaned closer instead.
"Did you really seduce a justa's daughter?" I almost added, "Would you seduce me?"
"No. I didn't. That was just..." Her blush was shockingly visible on her pale skin.
"Bluster?"
She nodded. "My visions were... bad."
"When you took revelations?"
Thesil's throat worked around the silver tube as she swallowed. Her hands trembled. "I almost died, they said. My throat and skin swelled. I couldn't breathe. I fainted."
"Just like when you were near the cracked automa. But that was because of the poison. The magical ores that make it run."
She pulled her knees to her chest. "No. The oracle ore makes me sick. It always has."
I was staggered. Oracle ore was a gift from the Unknowns, sent to guide us – Holy Efra had
shown that. For it to poison someone...
Thesil drooped under my gaze. "They said the Unknowns had rejected me. That I was cursed."
My temper flared. "Well, they're wrong. How could they know, anyway? The whole point is the Unknowns are beyond human understanding. Their signs are up to each of us to interpret."
"The Justry interpreted them. Then they threw me out."
I narrowed my eyes. "They can't do that. Not if you weren't imperfecta." I was ready to march her back to the August City and demand re-judgment. "They don't make the laws–"
"I know. We do."
"We?"
Her mouth formed words. "The Cene." It wasn't a sign I'd taught her. I hadn't thought she'd need to know.
I gasped and signed across my breast, "You were on the Cene?"
She grimaced. "No. I was supposed to inherit Father's seat, but I didn't pass my revelations."
"He's dead?"
A shake of the head. "Retiring."
I sat back, trying to find words. I knew Thesil's family had been rich – who else could have three pet ducks? – but I couldn't believe they were part of the Cene. The lawmakers. The ruling class.
Holy Efra had been one of the Cene.
Thesil signed, "The Justry told my parents I was imperfecta. Who was going to question them?"
"Your parents should've."
She shrugged. "I was the eldest, but they have other children. One of the boys can be heir."
I clenched my hands for a long moment. "Did they not want a daughter? Is that why they didn't defend you?"
Thesil hesitated, her tongue darting out to lick dry lips. "I don't know."
"I'll walk back with you, if you want."
"What?"
"You were unjustly convicted. You could challenge it." Talk of home made my throat ache. If I had any chance of challenging the Justry, I would take it in an instant. I would run back to my parents and my studio and my paintings.
Thesil had never seen one of my proper paintings, just the little pieces I'd done on the automas. I wondered if she would like them.
She stared at me with wide moss-green eyes. The tension that marked her face had faded, and her lips parted slightly. I froze her in my memory, wanting to hold that expression to my heart. Someday I would paint her portrait.
Her next sign was clumsy. "I don't want to."
"Thesil, you could go home!"
"You can't."
"But–"
"Besides, my family wouldn't want me back. I can't be on the Cene now." She shrugged. "I've been trained in oration since I was five. Singing, to strengthen my voice. Speech-building and reciting. When you are of the Cene, you are the voice of the people." Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile.
By the road, Lira's ass rose to its feet, Lira leaning across its shoulders. We were moving on again. Thesil jumped up before I could respond to her.
I followed her more slowly. Her family was powerful, maybe powerful enough to fight the Justry. They should've tried.
Perhaps Holy Efra had rejected Thesil, but I didn't think much of her solution to death-palsy anymore.
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