A few days later, as the sun turned the desert dust to gold, the gate guard announced with sweeping hand gestures that someone was banging on the gate.
Great. Well, whoever it was, I wasn't climbing an automa for them this time.
#
Grandmother took point. She strode confidently about the town, directing people to harness two mounts. One was clearly for her; she'd favored the same beast on our ride to the Starred City. She tied a mask over her face and swung into the saddle without assistance. I wasn't surprised when she gestured me to the other donkey.
I took cue from her and found a mask for my face. My ascent to the beast's back involved scrambling and the assistance of the herdsman. At least my mask hid my embarrassment, and I didn't have to see Grandmother's grin.
At her signal, the automas swung the gates wide. Grandmother trotted out, surveying the new arrivals with a haughty satisfaction that sat badly on her face. My mount slunk alongside. I was more worried about clinging on than looking over our visitors. It wasn't until Grandmother drew to a stop that I looked up.
A dozen men armed with feather-staves circled the front wall of the town from edge to edge. Each staff bore a feather of sharpened steel; they were clearly not decorative, and the men didn't look friendly. One of them carried a pole with a banner that snapped in the breeze. In their middle, a huge tarpaulin enveloped a bulging wagon, hiding away its contents. Beyond them all, off to the right, Amaz guarded Lira and her donkey.
So many. They could take the town by force if they wanted, I feared. I glanced behind me at the vulnerable gates, then blinked. They had filled with our automas, wooden hands shifting weapons from side to side like impatient children told to hold still. I found my breath again. We were not defenseless. I looked back over our visitors. None of them wore masks or protective clothing. Did any of them carry death?
Kanuraz sat a deer-like automa, garbed in plain yellow robes, bright against the dark varnish of his mount. Gold and silver and jewels draped his neck. I knew if he smiled his teeth would hold even more priceless things.
His retainers intimidated me, but Grandmother looked him over coolly before she signed a greeting.
Kanuraz blinded us with the expected smile. "Hashida. How glad I am that you remembered our appointed visit. I was a bit worried we'd have to knock your gate down." He smirked, like breaking the gate would be child's play. This time, he didn't bare his gaudy teeth.
"It would be hard to forget," Grandmother said. "You're on my mind so often, after all."
"Of course, of course. Rightly so. Without me, you'd all starve, wouldn't you?" He still smiled, but his eyes were challenging.
"You are not my only buyer, Kanuraz. If you want to keep getting first pick, you might keep that in mind and sit on your ego."
The cena swung down from his saddle and patted his automa on the cheek. "Oh, Hashida. You pick me because of our long acquaintance, surely. And with that in mind, won't you invite us in to refresh ourselves?"
"My folk are terrified enough of catching palsy as is. Letting visitors in would only frighten them further."
His eyes jumped to Amaz, who kept his bulk between the perfectas and Lira. "Is that why you locked this one outside?"
"Him? He's outside because he's an ass."
"And the woman?"
"Makes poor life decisions. Show me what you've brought me."
He shook his head. "Now, Hashida. You know I won't hand out gifts until I see what you offer."
"Then get back in your saddle. Leave the men here."
Kanuraz lifted neatly plucked brows. "Most, of course, to guard the wagon, but do you expect me to travel unprotected?"
Grandmother spurred her donkey north without bothering to answer.
#
The guards stayed with the wagon.
Grandmother led the way. I found myself behind, riding shoulder to shoulder with the cena's flashy automa. He looked to be enjoying the ride, even though it was a stifling day and the air was so still it felt absent. I kept my attention on my donkey as much as I could, but the cena seemed intent to distract me.
He brought his automa near enough that my ass pinned back its ears. He flashed a bejeweled smile at me. "Can you understand me, little girl? Do you have a name?"
That stung. He thought I couldn't read speech, and I had told him my name last time. I said aloud, "Better than you understand me."
He grinned again, and maybe laughed. Then he leaned off his automa, close enough he could almost touch me. "Where is Aconta's daughter? Where is your friend, Hashida's granddaughter?"
"Call me Zisha," I said. Better to remind him than be stuck with 'Hashida's granddaughter' as a title. "She's inside the town, with everybody else."
"Does she not care to meet a family friend? You should've sent for her to ride with us to wherever your grandmother has stashed her treasure. I have so little recent news from the Cene of the August City."
"Thesil can't come with us to get the ore. She can't be around it."
His brow lifted.
"It's a poison to her. She gets terribly sick. When we get back, I'll have to wash myself so none of it clings to me, or I can't go near her." Not that she had wanted to be near me lately.
Kanuraz said, "You were planning on rolling in it?"
"No, I–"
"My younger brother used to do that. Personally, it's more trouble than it's worth."
"I don't have to even touch it for Thesil to get sick. Just a hint of it in the air is enough. She's very sensitive."
Kanuraz looked at me. "Really. I will have to keep that in mind."
Talk of Thesil soured my mood. I spent the rest of the ride at Grandmother's side, staring at the desert scrub that passed under my donkey's nose.
#
Grandmother led us to the same mining site she had first shown me. It was almost as I remembered. The landslide still bit a chunk out of the mountain, but no miners scurried among the scree or sifted through gravel. A wagon mounded with green stood abandoned at the base of the landside, discarded leather harness trailing out in front of it. Other than that, the place was dead.
Grandmother picked up the pace. Most of me jumped to approach, to suck down lungfuls of intoxicating green. A tiny, overwhelmed part of me was already regretting not wearing a thicker mask.
The way forward was rocky and unstable. Grandmother slid from her saddle and beckoned Kanuraz to join her. They walked together towards the wagon, caught up in some conversation I couldn't see. I dismounted as if in a dream. My head felt too light as I stepped towards glorious green. My lungs quivered with anticipation, and my heart pounded in time.
The smell danced around me, glittering and clamorous, but my resistance to the ore was growing. I had nearly reached the wagon before the dreams pulled me under.
#
When my eyes cleared of green, I was drifting on the wind above the Starred City. Below, the buildings were translucent ghosts, barely recognizable. There the halls of the Justry and the spires of the Cene. There the mausoleum, home of ancestors and bones. It was easier to see the people inside than make out the details on houses and monuments. I watched them scuttle about like flour beetles. Up in the sky, I was immortal and omnipresent. I was the clouds and air and the stones of the streets below. It should have felt wrong, being stretched out like dough. But all I felt was euphoria.
I dropped a hundred feet without warning. I laughed and spread my arms like wings, skimming over the tops of the transparent houses. The people inside went about their business, unaware. I ignored them until, passing over one particularly sprawling complex, I spotted a familiar face.
Kanuraz? No, it couldn't be him. This man lacked the cena's poise and insincere smiles, and he was at least five years younger. His clothes were richly embroidered, but stained and torn here and there. He lay on a purple chaise, one leg spilling off the side. The marble floors shone green, as though his house collected ore instead of dust. Green smeared his lips, and his eyes stared at his muralled ceiling, his pupils huge and dark. He was as high as I was. What visions had it given him? Could he see me hanging overhead?
I tried to move on, to glory in my freedom from gravity, but the vision held me there, looking at the dazed young man.
Watching bored me, so I almost missed it when he changed. His eyes bulged first, too swollen for his lids to hide no matter how many times he blinked. His hands rose to rub at them, but they froze at the level of his shoulders, unable to reach higher. His fingers spasmed and spread into claws. His mouth was open – calling for help or gasping for air, I couldn't tell which.
I saw the horrifying moment when he could no longer blink. His jaw snapped shut and the muscles of his face writhed. His back arched, lifting him off the chaise. His legs kicked, once, twice, and then he lay still, his body slowly warping further.
Sickened, I pushed myself back into the sky, but I could still see him, a tiny ant twisting under some unseen lens and the sun. I knew exactly when he died: the house glowed a sickly red and hid his body.
The part of me that gloried in the ore was glad. It wanted to go flying and forget the earth below. The rest of me was horrified. I had never seen someone die of palsy before, but I knew what I had witnessed.
The red sickness sent dull tendrils out through the city. They rolled like blood down streets and alleys, into the houses of the rich and beautiful. Where it touched, buildings solidified red. Someone had died.
At first it was only a few. But each infected house reached out to those nearby, and the city bathed in crimson. The stink of blood and shit and death wafted up to me. My lungs were still full of ore, but it wasn't enough to drown out the smell, and even the drunk part of me that cared nothing for others couldn't bear it. I fled back into my body and left the dying city behind.
#
I came back to myself with the whoosh of air into my lungs. My tongue was dried out like jerky, as though I'd lain openmouthed for hours. I swallowed convulsively until spit flowed again.
The direction of gravity's pull briefly confused me. Bruises stabbed sharp along my side, where I must have hit rock, but the ground didn't touch me. I was half-upright, held at an angle by something firm and unyielding. I opened my eyes and found Kanuraz's face above mine. The cena had lifted me from the ground, as gently as if I were not one of the untouchable.
I stared into his dark eyes and murmured aloud, "It was your brother. It started with him, all of it. He died first."
His expression froze, then thawed into blankness. As he helped set me upright, he said, face lowered towards me, "How do you know that?"
I was still dizzy and exulting, too dizzy to think through what I said. "I saw it in my visions."
He held me close as though we were good friends, and said before my eyes, "He never left the city. He met no imperfectas. The disease came in through all our walls and to him. How?"
"I don't know. The vision wasn't about that." Grandmother was approaching in the corner of my eye. I shook my head. "I'm sorry."
The cena stood me back on my feet, his arm still around my back. I was so unsteady I appreciated it.
In front of me, the ore mounded high on the wagon bed. Still half outside of reality, I frowned at it. In my visions, freshly mined ore was either rock-like or formless and shifting as a sand dune. This ore looked mashed with a shovel, parts compressed and others free and sliding. I blinked at it. Perhaps for a long trip, compressing the ore would keep on the wagon. But why not bag it?
Grandmother's arm replaced Kanuraz's. I leaned against her and smelled the chalky scent of her skin for an instant before she shoved me upright and left me to stand alone.
The cena stalked around the wagon, only a foot from the load. Grandmother followed him. He could've drawn his fingers through the gleaming green. Where I would be a drugged puddle on the ground, he seemed entirely unaffected by its proximity.
He turned his back on the wagon and signed, "Beautiful as always, Hashida."
"Aren't you going to taste it?" Grandmother asked, something intent about her gaze.
"Based on the reaction of your granddaughter, it is indeed the true stuff." His mouth curled into an odd smile. "You didn't tell me a child of your loins birthed an oracle, Hashida."
For a second, Grandmother looked disappointed. I winced. I shouldn't have given myself away. "None the cities would recognize."
"Because she is deaf? An irony, is it not?"
"I doubt it."
Kanuraz smiled. "You know, they used to say, long before Holy Efra, that those who lost one sense would grow a hundred times stronger in the rest."
Grandmother signed, "Stupid people said that, yes."
"You are charming as always, Hashida." He clapped his hands, turning towards his automa. It pranced up to him, lowering its head within his reach. He lifted one of the collars from the harness hooked to the wagon and slid it down the automa's neck. It settled just above the automa's wooden shoulders.
It had taken four asses to pull the heavily-laden wagon before. But when the automa stepped forward on its twig-like legs, wheels rolled.
#
Back at the town, the cena's men still faced off with our automas. No one had bothered to shut the gates.
Grandmother and I rode to the covered wagon. Kanuraz parked the wagon of ore well beyond the circle of his men and walked to join us.
Grandmother dismounted and handed her ass off to one of the townsfolk. Her hands said, briskly, "Show me what you brought."
The perfectas stripped the tarpaulin from the wagon like fingers peeling the scab off a blister. It revealed a mess of bags, some marked with ink-blank stamps; baskets piled with food; and scraps of metal and wood. Grandmother surveyed it quickly. It must have made sense to her, for she turned on Kanuraz with a piercing glare.
"This is half of standard," she signed.
The cena shrugged, his expression martyred. "Times are hard all over, Hashida. I put together everything I could for you. I even asked my cousin–"
"You expect me to give you a wagon-full of ore for shit?" The insulted expression on Kanuraz's face was too loud. Too fake. "The imperfectas outside
the city would lick my feet for this."
"Then tell them to do a better job. Your boots are filthy."
"Hashida–"
"Stuff your sweet words. You want my goods, you pay for them."
The two of them stared at each other. I thought he was trying to measure how far he could push Grandmother. Finally, he signed, "Please. The people of our cities suffer so. They beg for a moment of peace. Would you deny them? I have nothing else to offer in exchange."
Grandmother's expression curdled. "Don't you lie to me, Kanuraz. I know you brought a second wagon."
"You wound me, Hashida. Why would I bring you less than all I had to offer?"
"You parked it a day or two away, I bet, with some of your men to guard it."
He gestured behind him. "Does that not look like a full complement?"
Grandmother folded her arms over her chest and glared.
It felt like ages before the cena's hurt look shifted into a grin. I didn't like him. He smiled too much. "All right, you have me. Someday I'll manage to out-haggle you."
"I doubt it," said Grandmother.
"Let me take the ore. Once we reach the second wagon, I'll send some of my men back with it. You'll have everything you wanted." His smile widened to show teeth. "Do we have a deal?"
They did.
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