Grandmother swept into the camp in a swirl of dust, escorted by the stench of sweat and smoke. Her face and arms were bare, free of the cloak and mask she'd left in. Her gaze snapped about the camp, alert and judging. I hung back, certain her judgment would not be in my favor.
The automa heaved the gates closed behind the twins, who followed Grandmother's path slowly, a travel bag slung over each exterior shoulder. They, too, had discarded protective coverings. There was no sign of the wagon.
Grandmother strode through the group that waved for her attention. She stalked up to the cooking fire, pulled off her shirt and threw it, too, onto the fire. Grandmother stood there in her pants and breast-band, frowning at the fire, until the shirt collapsed into white ash. The smoke haloed her head like the ghost of her long-lost hair.
Then she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her arms folded over her chest, but her glare beckoned me over. The reckoning was here. I would have to justify my decisions, even the stupid ones. Especially the stupid ones.
I dragged my heels over to her side and bowed slightly. "Grandmother."
She unfolded her arms enough to answer, "Granddaughter."
"I'm glad you're back. Everyone here missed you." Or at least they'd missed having someone competent in charge.
Grandmother slipped her arm through mine and led me towards an isolated corner of town. To someone else it must have looked affectionate. I, on the other hand, found myself arm locked and dragged by muscles of steel. Let her just be glad to see me, I prayed to the Unknowns. Let talk of serious things wait until later. I had no patience for them.
Once we were away from the rest, Grandmother freed me. "Tell me, Zisha dear, why have you let a fanatic camp on our doorstep? And why is a pregnant woman out there with him?"
The Unknowns were rubbish at answering prayers. "She's his wife."
"And as I recall it, it was her husband she was trying to escape. Now he shows up, carrying the plague, and you send her out to him?"
"He said it had been two weeks since he left the city. If he was infected, he'd have shown it by now."
Grandmother's eyes narrowed. "And you believed him?"
Frustration made me want to snap my hands into fists, but I resisted. "He's still outside the gates."
"Too close. I thought you knew better than to endanger everyone on the word of a man who thinks he's a perfecta. Much less a woman with child. I took her in. I promised her my protection. If she dies now, it'll be on your head."
If Lira died now, I suspected the rest of us would be soon to follow. "I didn't throw her out. I only let her make her own decisions."
Grandmother shook her head. "She wanted to go to him? Does she have a death wish?"
"They've made up since she left. Because of everything that's been happening."
"What with the end of the world, you mean? Did Amaz decide he might as well get laid while everything's falling down around his ears? Shameful."
"You've met him."
Her eyes rolled. "Everyone's met him, if you live beyond a city wall. He makes sure to stop by now and then to check if anyone needs salvation through useless platitudes and the occasional lopped off body part."
"You have met him."
"I just said." Grandmother dismissed me with a shake of her head. "Fine, he isn't infected. He's still not welcome here. You may as well go paint. I'll talk around the town and see what needs to be done." To fix my mess, she didn't say. But I felt the unspoken words.
I swallowed. "Did you at least get what you needed from your trip?"
The frown vanished into a toothed grin. "Ore? Oh, we have plenty now. Kanuraz will get more than he dreamed of. But don't fret. We left the load near one of my personal mine sites. Close enough to walk to, but not so close your girl will have problems."
My girl. The words made my heart sink. "Thesil and I aren't together anymore. I think."
Grandmother lifted her brows. "So you'd prefer I park it closer?"
"No! We just... we had a fight." My skin warmed with embarrassment.
"Young couples do, sooner or later."
"About what to do with Amaz."
Grandmother leaned closer. "And what side did she take?"
"To keep the gate shut. To keep Lira inside."
Her lips pursed. "A sensible girl. A pity you didn't listen to her. I had plans for Lira."
Plans. The sign seemed out of place in our conversation. It made me uneasy.
"Oh, don't look that way," Grandmother signed. "I have plans for everybody. Even Amaz."
"Really?"
"His involve dying in the desert, somewhere where I don't have to look at it, but yes."
"Why do you two hate each other?"
"I don't hate the man. He is simply always in the way."
"He accused you of sacrilege."
"Oh, this ought to be good."
"He says you push oracle ore on the cities."
"That was Efra."
"He said her intended use for ore is ceremonial and religious, not to entertain the bored and rich."
Her lips lifted into a non-smile. "That ore has always been to entertain the bored and rich. What did you think Efra was?"
I blinked at her. "An oracle?"
"But that's something you learn after you take ore. She had her first whiff at some Cene party. They still have parties today. And if they didn't get their poison here, they'd get it somewhere else." For a moment, the grimace became a smile. Then it, too, faded.
"Are there other mines around, then?"
"Not near the Starred City. You should have sent Amaz off to one of them. I'm sure they'd enjoy his criticism." She shook her head. "Well. You shouldn't have let him stay, but what's done is done. We watch them for a week or two, then we'll bring Lira back in, where she'll be safe."
"What about Amaz?"
"What about him?"
"Grandmother. If we banish him into the wilderness, he'll die."
"Good. One less Efra worshiper to bother the rest of us." Her face was uncompromising. She really did wish he would crawl off to die somewhere.
I stared at her, trying to reconcile the notion of my kindly grandmother with someone who gladly see another person dead. "Grandmother... why do you hate Efra so?"
The bend in her back straightened, shedding years as it vanished. Her eyes bit into me. But her hands were precise. "Because she threw us away."
With that, she left. I stood in the corner, watching the shadows shift across the camp, trying and failing to understand my grandmother, and why she said the things she did.
I watched Grandmother sign with several of the villagers, thinking over our conversation. I didn't know who to believe. Grandmother hated Amaz. Amaz hated her. It should be simple equation. Grandmother was my only imperfecta kin. She had flung wide her gates and given her own house to us – to me. Thesil slept there no longer.
The thought ached. I didn't know where she made her bed, but she had fetched her few belongings one day when I was out mediating arguments between villagers. The bed was empty now, a vast linen meadow too big for me. I slept stretched across it, limbs spread to take as much space as I could. It still felt empty.
I caught a particularly wild sign from Grandmother, chastising someone, and I refocused my thoughts, leaving Thesil to fend for herself in my subconscious. Amaz and Grandmother. Should I believe Grandmother and forget everything the pilgrim had told me about her abuse of sacred ores? He was young, only ten or twelve years older than I was, so he didn't have the wisdom that came with age. He was impulsive and certain he was right. Grandmother, on the other hand, had lived through the original plague and Efra's death. If Grandmother was right, the ore was no more holy than coal. It gave everyone hallucinations and a good time. Only oracles pulled meaning from its pretty lights. People like me. And I was no Holy Efra.
#
The sun was low in the sky, slipping behind the wall between us and the infected world. Outside, Amaz and his wife would soon be huddled together for warmth. Inside, someone on the other side of the town had lit a small lantern, too early. The sky was just trying twilight on for size, and people were still going about their chores.
I picked my way towards the lantern and the couple that sat beside it. The going was treacherous. I'd never realized how much junk people produced until there was no way for us to haul it outside. The latrines still worked, thank the Unknowns, and we'd kept the trash heaps around the edges of the town. Of course, that was where the couple had settled, among the less perishable trash.
They had left off their cloaks. One sat cross-legged in front of a book propped up on the wicker seat of a broken chair. Even the warm hue of the lantern couldn't make the tome look less than worn out and discarded. Tamorin turned its pages, his eyes shadowed by the lantern behind him. His sister lounged beside him, a roll of blankets cushioning her side. Someone walking by might, at a casual glance, see a girl sleeping against her young man's shoulder. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
As I approached the twins, Gadara's eyes lifted towards mine. They narrowed.
I walked closer, where she wouldn't have to strain her eyes to watch me. How hard it must be for them. I couldn't imagine being unable to turn my own head.
Regardless, the twins seemed to have no trouble looking at different things. Tamorin's attention was all on his book as I sat near them. A splinter from a broken broom caught my calsounds, stabbing me in the thigh. I dislodged it gingerly under Gadara's glare.
Her hands moved, the signs small as though she meant not to disturb her brother. "What do you want?"
"Just to talk." I took the hint and shifted myself towards her. She had to be fluent in sign to use it so subtly. How long had she and her brother been with Grandmother?
"Talk, then. We're busy."
I risked a glance at Tamorin. He had to know I was there; hearing people always did, reading the cues nature denied me. He flipped another page. "What is he reading?"
"Some surgery book."
"You don't seem interested."
"I was going to settle in for the night. You're keeping me awake."
I blinked. "You don't sleep at the same time?" I had finished the sign before I realized it might be rude.
Gadara didn't look offended, at least. Just annoyed. "We can if we want. But he's always staying up to read when I'd rather be sleeping. Then the hours always catch up with him just when I'm ready to get up."
"That sounds very disruptive for both of you."
"Not as disruptive as being interrogated by nosy children. Come to the point."
Heat rushed to my face. "I'm sorry. I was hoping one of you might be willing to tell me about my grandmother."
Brown hands smoothed book pages, tucked a bit of grass in the spine and shut the battered cover. "Your grandmother, huh?" Tamorin signed. I looked up and found his gray eyes peering into mine. There was a curious tilt to his mouth.
I faltered briefly, disconcerted by swapping participants. "Yes. The two of you knew her before you joined the spectacles, didn't you?"
"We were part of her troupe, if that's what you mean. But you've already guessed that."
"How did you meet her?"
"Her troupe had a good healer, and I was looking for one to apprentice under. Back then Hashida wasn't so picky about who she took on."
Back then, there hadn't been a plague on. "What did you do, working for this healer?"
"Everything. For one, Hashida often took my mentor, Yasheta, out on field trips. Yasheta was too frail to travel alone, so Hashida would sometimes drag us along."
"As though we were nothing more than servants," Gadara said.
Tamorin shrugged, nearly ramming his sister. "I always liked Hashida because she never treated us as incapable."
"She's exploitative. All she cares about is her plans."
I furrowed my brow. "Plans to do what?"
Gadara signed, "I don't know. She always had one or two at a time, and woe betide you if you got in the way. The mercenary bitch would throw you out."
Tamorin said, "We're all mercenary, Gaddi. We have to get food some way."
Gadara folded her arms across her chest, and her lips said, "Not like her."
"Where did she go, on these trips?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.
"Out looking for ore. Finding fresh veins, usually."
"But why did she need a healer along? Grandmother isn't sick, is she?"
Gadara's lip curled. "Any disease strong enough to affect your grandmother would've killed the rest of us by now. She's indestructible."
Tamorin's signs were leisurely. "Nothing so worrying. Oracle ore lies in veins through the mountains. But some veins aren't pure; other ores run alongside and mingle with them. Those others are often poisonous. Yasheta was good at sniffing them out."
"The poison ores, are they the ones used to power automas?"
"Well, not really. Those ores are found far from here. But we did sell the contaminated oracle ore to those who build automa cores. People like it added, to get Holy Efra's blessing, and since the magical ores are widely known to be poisonous, no one sane tries to eat the core." He leaned closer to me, dragging Gadara along with him. His hands were terribly earnest. "It's a health issue."
Gadara said, "By Holy Efra's name, don't ask him about health issues. We'll be here all night."
An elbow caught Gadara in the side. Tamorin signed, "Our trips with your grandmother were generally just to be Yasheta's hands. Initially she intended to train us to tell pure veins apart. Unfortunately, we never were any good at it."
"Why didn't she go along on this latest trip?" I asked.
I regretted it immediately, for grief sprouted on Tamorin's face. "She's dead. An accident in the mountains, a few years ago."
"I'm so sorry." I guessed that explained why I'd never met her, even after I asked Grandmother for a healer to mix up more of Thesil's medicine.
Tamorin's signs were a touch sloppy, the angle of his wrist listless. "Hashida didn't even tell me when I mentioned Yasheta at the Starred City. I wonder if that's why she let us come back with her at all."
Gadara snapped, "Of course it was. Who else does she have?"
"I'm sorry for your loss, but... if you never learned to tell the quality of ore by smell, why did she take you along this time? Why didn't she let you set up as a healer inside the town?"
Gadara signed, "Because it wasn't that sort of trip. We weren't looking for veins. She wanted someone to help with the heavy lifting, and to make us prove ourselves. Now piss off."
I was about to ask what exactly they had done on the last trip, but Tamorin signed, "You had best go to bed, or leave Gadara to hers."
While we'd been speaking, the sun had stolen away. Torches flickered around the town, and someone had stirred up the cookfire, which now blazed gold.
I stood and brushed off dust. "Good night. Will you tell me of Grandmother later?"
"If you want," he said. "She's a complicated woman."
"I know."
He smiled. "Ask me tomorrow."
#
The cottage was empty and cold when I got back to it. I let Sefi inside – if she dirtied the floor, I didn't care. I didn't want be alone tonight.
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