Lira and I stood near the gate and the lone automa that guarded it. Behind us, the stronger members of my town piled splintered boards, broken bits of automa, and old furniture into a barricade that circled the gate, closing it off from the town. Even if Amaz tried to charge into the camp, he would never make it inside. It would be a pain to take the barrier down, and I suspected some of the wood contributed was not trash at all. But I couldn't blame the townsfolk; what worth had your best chair if you were dead?
I was on the wrong side of the barrier, and a tiny part of me was terrified the townsfolk would lock me outside like Amaz. They would trap me in the desert without blankets or food, because I was a stupid, stupid girl who had brought nothing with her. Nothing but the cloak that enveloped me from head to toe. It was the same kind I'd worn to visit the Starred City, and I clutched it around me, checking with a quick hand that my mask sat in the right place. I wouldn't send Lira out to Amaz alone, but I had every intention of coming back.
Lira had refused a mask. Her bare face shone serenely in the sun. She stood as still as a stork as we waited for the barricade to be ready. Was she glad to go to her husband? I didn't know, but I had enough worries for both of us.
I watched the gate until Lira touched my shoulder. She said, when I turned towards her, "The builders say they are ready."
Ready. I took a steady breath. It was time to step out and meet a madman who might carry death. Time to risk the gate slamming shut behind me, never to open again. And time to cement in Thesil's mind that I was, after all, an idiot.
I craned my neck towards the automa that stood over us, waiting for my command. I could still say no. I could make Lira stay, claiming it was for the good of her child. Thesil would approve and forgive me my hostile words.
I told the automa, "Open the gates."
For a few moments, nothing happened. Then huge wooden hands braced themselves against the top of the gate. The automa shook the earth, and the gate swung wide.
I stared through the opening. The gates had dragged their feet and fanned the dirt into ragged arches. I took the lead of Lira's donkey and stepped over the arches and into the wild. Lira followed on the donkey's other side. I hoped she had nothing to say to me, for my eyes were all for Amaz, so-called perfecta. Pilgrim and madman. My attempted murderer.
An unborn baby's father.
He saw us and rose from his exhausted crouch. He transformed in front of me, his torn bare back straightening, his mutilated head lifting high. For a single second, still half-naked and coated in chalk and blood, he looked like the arrogant beautiful troupe-leader who had greeted me on the day I was cast out. Then reality reinstated itself, and he was no more than the ruin of a proud building. I didn't know who the affected posture was for: Lira could not see and I could not care.
He barely glanced at me, although I advanced in front, the donkey and Lira following in my steps. I did not stop until we were only a few yards apart.
The earth vibrated faintly under my feet. They had shut the gates behind us. Good, my heart said. But part of me still screamed in protest.
I dropped the ass's lead. It ambled forward and bumped its nose against Amaz's shoulder. I swear he almost fell.
Lira came to a stop when the donkey did, her hand wrapped around its harness. I stepped to where I could read both their faces.
She said, "Amaz."
His shoulders sank, just a little. "I am here."
She let go of the donkey, though she still leaned her shoulder against it. "Alone, they tell me."
"Yes."
The scene seemed so awkward, so stilted, that I felt horribly out of place. But it was too late to leave now.
Amaz swayed towards her, a hand stroking the face of the animal he had trained to be her eyes. "Why did you run?"
Lira's mouth opened and stopped, as though hung up on its own words. But when she spoke next her lips moved with no particular hurry. "It seemed the ideal thing to do, under the circumstances."
"It was not."
She inclined her head. "My apologies, then."
I blinked at them. My attempts to imagine this reunion – wife and unborn child with the husband they'd fled – had never gone like this. For one, I'd expected emotion. And maybe for Amaz to take the rest of his nose clean off. It seemed like him.
Instead, Amaz stepped away from the donkey and clasped his hands at his back. "You should have told me."
Fine brows lifted over Lira's sunken eyes. "Ah?"
He shifted from toes to heels and back again, the first real sign of anxiety I'd seen since he had pulled on his troupe-leader facade. "I am a perfecta. There was no need to orphan our child. I would have given the troupe over to you, and taken the babe into the cities to raise."
Her nose wrinkled. "How joyful a circumstance you describe. For you."
Amaz stepped closer, his eyes searching her face. "I would have bought him to see you. Every week. Every day, if you must."
"Well, it doesn't matter now. The child is not yet born, and I hear the cities have lost Holy Efra's blessing."
He shuddered a little and enfolded her small hands in his own. She let him. "The Starred City. I dread to know how much farther the imperfectas have carried it."
I'd been still too long, and I couldn't let that pass. "Why do you assume it came from us?"
They both knew I was there, yet the same startlement flashed over their faces. Amaz turned towards me, examining me with bloodshot eyes. He didn't release Lira's hands. "Where else could it have been born?"
I said, "The man who died first, the one we burned, had just come from the city. No one in the troupe had it before him. He brought it back with him."
Amaz nodded. "I no longer blame Abursa. Death-palsy had already reached the Starred City on the back of some other imperfecta. Your victim was a symptom only, sickened in the slums outside the walls."
I hadn't thought about the troupe for too long. Were they all dead? "Do you know what happened to Abursa's troupe?"
He frowned. "I arrived barely a day after them. I was told they had turned their wagon around and left as soon as they saw the dying."
"Why didn't you?"
Amaz looked at me as though I'd suggested lighting the slums on fire. "Someone had to tend them. And as pilgrims, we carried more of Holy Efra's favor than others." He swallowed. "Or so we believed."
Holy Efra again. Sometimes I felt like she was becoming one of the Unknowns. Someone to pray to. Someone to save. Except she hadn't saved anyone, not even the perfectas. I said as much to Amaz.
His nostrils flared, but he didn't accuse me of heresy. Instead he said, "The perfectas are not without blame. They went to the troupes for sport and cheap labor. They forgot the quarantine was always meant to protect them. They stepped too close to fire. They ignored Holy Efra's words."
"If they hadn't, all the imperfectas would have starved." I remembered the troupes I'd first met outside the August City. Abursa's troupe, competing for the few jobs that would bring in dinner. The hungry pilgrims, begging perfectas and Unknowns alike for mercy. The plump members of the spectacles, the perfectas' pets. In that arid, cropless place, almost everything had revolved around what came in and out of the gates. No matter how many goats or geese the troupes raised on desert scrub, it could never be enough to feed them all.
Amaz shook his head. "They were always meant to be merciful. But they forgot to take care as well."
What I had seen outside the gates had not been mercy. But I didn't say it.
No one spoke for a long while. At last, Lira's lips moved. "Are you satisfied, then? Will you leave me with my husband?"
They would die of hunger or thirst or palsy out here. I felt it in my bones. "If that's what you want. That food won't last long."
She smiled at me, a beautiful gentle smile. "Thank you. Holy Efra will guard us and the babe. We do not fear."
Unknowns help me. Perhaps the two of them weren't as different as I thought.
Amaz let go of her hands long enough to bow to me and sign, "Your aid is appreciated. I am glad one of your parents bothered to teach you honor."
My worries about them vanished, chased away by the condescending look he gave me. So much for gratitude. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"Only that it is more than I would expect of one of your lineage."
"My lineage is fine. It lines up and everything."
"I mean no offense. Only that you are nothing like Hashida. A compliment. Your grandmother is no honorable woman."
I bristled. "My grandmother is the only reason your wife and child are still alive."
He shook his head, drops of bloody fluid flicked away by the motion. "I presume Hashida is not here now, or you would not be speaking with me. Ask her, then, when she gets back, what return she thought to make on saving those lives."
"You are very rude for someone who claims to be grateful to me."
"To you, yes. Your grandmother is another matter. Hashida deals in Holy Efra's sacred ore and yet has no respect for it. She sells it in such quantities even the holiest of perfectas are tempted to use it in excess of what Holy Efra intended."
"And what use did Efra intend?" I asked.
"For rites to the Unknowns. To seek understanding of the universe. Not for parties and personal amusement. Your grandmother knows her customers abuse it, yet sells to them anyway. The only thing that motivates her actions is profit."
"That's not true. If it were, she wouldn't have taken me in. I would just be another mouth to feed."
"Or she looked at you, child, and saw someone she could use."
I took a step backwards towards the gate, then another. My anger was a hot rock in my gut. "I'm not going to pay attention to someone who mutilates himself for a dead saint's favor."
"I sacrifice." Amaz's hands were steady. Mine were not. "Ask her if she has ever sacrificed anything in her life that truly meant something."
I turned my back on the mad couple and their words.
The gates swung open as I drew near them, and all my paranoid fancies collapsed in relief. I left Amaz and his wife to their Efra-worship and rushed through that narrow mouth before the townsfolk could change their minds.
#
When I stormed back inside, without Lira, Thesil didn't come to tear down the barricade or help me burn my clothes. When I stumbled back to our cottage, it was empty except for Sefi, nested among my painting supplies, and the lingering scent of Thesil's hair on her pillow.
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