Maybe what happened was our own faults. With Grandmother here, and the automas standing guard, we dared leave the gate open. The herdsmen let the asses and goats out to forage. Other townsfolk collected fat roots and brittle seedpods from the desert plants within sight of the walls.
Thesil seemed restless, so I suggested we join the foraging parties. We ventured out together, but the day was too beautiful to spend the whole thing at work. In late afternoon, we stopped digging bulbs, and Thesil found a scraggly tree to nap under. I brought my paints and a board outside, Sefi dogging my heels. She had joined us outside from the start, snapping up the grasshoppers we scared out of the thin vegetation. Now, as I settled in to paint the mountains, she seemed full, content to preen her feathers and sit on my lap.
I'd wandered far from the other foragers, where everything was still and perfect, but stayed close enough I could still keep an eye on Thesil's snooze. The sun had not yet set, but it threw long shadows from every tree and shrub and tinted the mountains brownish-gold. I mixed raw sienna on my palette as clouds crowded the distant peaks. Some of them bulged like rising bread, threatening to grow to thunderheads. We probably wouldn't get rain, but the mountains might. I imagined the start of a storm, the first raindrops peppering the rock faces, chased by heavier drops that slicked and dulled everything to storm-gray.
If we were lucky, it might sweep into the desert, the wind running ahead of it like a fox pawing up dust and leaves. It'd only rained once since I left my parents, and I'd found it a soaking experience. Desert storms blew in from nowhere, splashed water all over the parched earth, and vanished, but each storm was like a tiny fury. When you were trapped in the downpour, dry land and blue skies taunted you from only a mile or two away. The moist air would smell of wet clay and the sharp green scent of dormant plants waking.
I painted my mountains and hoped the storm came.
Sefi's weight left my leg. I stretched my freed limb and glanced down to see what insect had charmed her away. She was not in front of me, so I turned, paintbrush lax between my fingers.
Sefi hadn't found a bug. Someone was behind me.
The red sun cut straight into my eyes, and the visitor had silhouetted himself against its glare. I saw Sefi clearly only because she was in his shade. She greeted him with an explosion of action. Her wings beat the air once, twice. She stretched her neck flat, her beak gaping, the perfect image of an angry goose. The stranger sidestepped her charge, and the nip of her beak missed.
I stuck the paintbrush behind my ear – let them be useful for once – and grabbed for Sefi, but she shied away, still posturing furiously. I sighed and stood. My eyes adjusted as I rose. As I lifted my gaze to the newcomer, I said aloud, "I'm sorry. She's probably getting broody again. Don't–"
My mouth shut. I took a startled breath, and the air smelled sharp and green. Heavy and odd. But the storm was not yet here.
It was Kanuraz.
His lips curved as I stared at him, trying to process. He shouldn't have been here. He'd said he would go on to the city and send his men back with the wagon. My mind seemed to drag, slow in spots, jumping ahead in others. He was wearing a robe of gold, a necklace of silver. A little cage hung at the hollow of his throat. I hadn't seen the wagon pass, and the road ran past me. I would have. Wouldn't I?
"Hello, Hashida's granddaughter," he signed. "A beautiful twilight, isn't it?"
He wasn't alone. Two of his retainers approached at his sides. I didn't like the way they looked at me. I wouldn't be alone, either, if I called out. But my mouth was full of sand.
Sefi charged one of the retainers, her head straight as a battering ram. The retainer grabbed for her, catching her by a flapping wing. She flailed in his hands.
I tried – failed – to say, "No!" and run to intercede, but the other retainer grabbed me by the elbows and pulled me back. Kanuraz slid up to me, smiling. I took a breath to scream and realized, too late, that the cage on his necklace cradled a sliver of glowing green. The smell filled my panicked lungs.
The cena gazed at me with kind and calculating eyes. He laid a hand on my shoulder and leaned in close. "Tell me," Kanuraz said, lips moving like a whisper. "It started here, didn't it?"
I opened my mouth again, but the ore coiling in my lungs silenced any reply. I fought the visions that crept in at the edges of reality, but all I could do was hang there, stuck between worlds.
Kanuraz smiled. He opened the silver cage on his necklace. One manicured hand drew free the fat needle of oracle ore.
Kanuraz slid it between my lips, and my mind burst.
#
I floated above our camp, watching Kanuraz's face as he spoke with his retainers. Miles and miles away, I found the walls of the August City and bodies laid out to burn. I flew decades into the past, when young Grandmother spurred her mount onwards. Thesil and I stood on a stage before an angry crowd, holding each other up.
Too many visions, overlapping one another. My burning head could not make sense of the kaleidoscope. Sickness buried the euphoria of ore. I could not stop the flow of images, fragments of vision. After a while, I stopped trying.
Grandmother galloped a pure white ass through unbroken desert, a feather-staff in one hand. Behind her, a city rose, and three armed men rode after her.
Kanuraz' lips: "Box her well. Leave no more space than she'll need to breathe. And I don't want her exposed to any ore until I am ready."
Young perfectas I'd once watched from my parent's window, stacked like logs, beautiful faces twisted. Someone shrouded in fabric lowered a torch.
Two of those pursuing Grandmother flagged, tired donkeys refusing to go farther. They would not catch her. One kept after her, drawing near her laboring beast.
Thesil, back proud and straight, stared into my eyes, as though the crowd didn't surround us. She signed, "We tell them the truth."
As dusk fell and clouds rolled in, Kanuraz strode towards a wagon draped in canvas. Behind him, his retainers hauled a limp form between them.
"I don't know what to say," the me standing on the stage signed.
The rider came alongside Grandmother, his mouth moving in some accusation or demand.
She looked at him and smiled. The butt of her feather-staff slammed into his chest and threw him from the back of his mount.
It was too dark to see who Kanuraz was carrying off. Was it me?
Thesil signed, "I do. Be my voice."
Grandmother leaned from her donkey, staff in hand, and brought the feathered end down.
Blood drained into the thirsty soil.
The dead went up in flames.
#
I slammed back into my body. The impact hurt – or so it seemed until I recognized the pain of strained joints and sleeping limbs. I lay side-down, my arms and legs bound. My cheek pressed against damp and splintery wood. Soft cloth tied me, but it was strong; my hands were bloodless, tied too tight.
I forced gritty eyes open but saw nothing in the darkness. Not even the black sky.
Something covered me. I turned my head until my chin brushed stiff fabric. It felt like heavy tarred canvas, the kind you'd use to protect a wagon from the rain, but it didn't rest its weight on me. Deduction: I was hidden at the center of a covered load on a parked wagon.
Evidence? Only a fragment of vision, but it felt right.
Rolling from side to side bumped me against crates on both sides. My toes, too, met wood when I reached them far enough. For a second, I was afraid I was entirely closed in. But I straightened my legs against the box and moved a few feet forward. Cold, humid air touched my face, and a breeze tugged at my hair. I stretched my bound hands out beyond the tarpaulin, and raindrops sprinkled my fingers.
I stared out into a dark and overcast night. Lightning brightened the clouds for an instant. The storm was coming, and my captors must have stopped for the night. Hopefully they were sleeping. But even if they were awake, I wasn't getting closer to freedom by lying around.
My hands were bound, as were my feet. I couldn't walk or crawl. But I wriggled and squirmed, humping along until my torso slid over the edge of the wagon bed. Gravity claimed me, and I wrapped my bound arms around my head as I toppled into the damp dirt. I wrenched my neck, but no worse.
The flashes of light grew stronger and more frequent as I righted myself on the ground. As white lines split the sky, I caught glimpses of my surroundings. Off to my right, near the road, a tent rose from the desert floor. A man stood outside it, but he was staring up at the lightning, not at me. For now, I could ignore him.
To the left stretched the desert. Only thin patches of grass and dense, spreading bushes interrupted the flat earth. Not a tree grew here; it was too dry.
A heavy drop splatted on the back of my head. Too dry. Right.
Enough. I was wasting time. I dragged myself left on my elbows. I had to find cover, now, or my chance for escape would evaporate.
Only one bush was nearby. It rose no more than three feet high, thick with waxy leaves and thicker with thorns. The thicket sprawled four or five feet, bristling in every direction. A fox-tooth bush. Its thorns doubled back into barbs, its berries caused the runs, and its leaves gave you a rash. Grandmother had nicknamed it "Efra's hate." Even we imperfectas didn't try to harvest anything from it. It wasn't a giving plant; it only took.
I dragged myself into the depth of it, sacrificing skin and clothing to its angry branches. Tonight, I would be its guest. I supposed it was only polite of me to bring a gift. I curled up at its prickly heart, still bound, stinking of sap and blood. I stared at the sky through the choking leaves, feeling hives rise on my skin, and prayed to the Unknowns. Let the rain be enough to wash away my tracks. Let them not check on me in the morning. Let them assume I was safe under the canvas, tucked away and docile.
The sky opened, and the desert rains fell.
#
I don't think I slept that night. Perhaps I drifted. It was a long night, with nothing to keep me awake except fear of discovery and my own misery. I lay in mud, thorns embedded in my itching skin, my hands and feet still tingling from their bonds. The rain stopped eventually and the water seeped away into the dirt, but nothing else changed, not until the sun kissed the sky overhead.
I stared up at the pinkish gray of dawn. I couldn't stay in a bush forever, for obvious reasons.
Outside, I might find an edged rock, a sharp bit of wood. Something that could cut me free. But I was blind here. For all I knew, my captors had already packed up and rolled on. Or they were just waking. Or they had surrounded my bush and were arguing over who should have to drag me out. That last thought alarmed me so much I lay still long past noon.
The sun was high overhead when I dragged myself out of the brambles. It hurt no less going out than coming in. At least I wouldn't get a rash this time. The one I had couldn't get any worse.
The wagon was long gone. Nothing but ruts remained, and the horizon was clear. I melted in relief, dropping my chin to rest on my bound arms. The sun beat hot against my back, pushing back the chill that had settled in my bones during that wet night. The sky was cloudless today, blue as my best pigments. I didn't see any convenient sharp boulders to scrape my bonds on, but for this one moment, it didn't matter. I basked, getting warm. A few feet away, on a little hillock, a small lizard did the same thing.
I would've stayed like that for years, but in the corner of my eye, I caught motion. I turned my head.
Six donkeys trotted up the road to town. From this distance, I couldn't see their faces, but Kanuraz had ridden an automa, not flesh-and-blood animals. And he hadn't had six men with him.
I rolled over and heaved myself into a sitting position, my bound legs straight out before me. Whoever it was, I wouldn't meet them on my belly, like a worm.
I was glad I had, because in the lead, scowling magnificently, rode Grandmother.
#
The first signs she made to me, after cutting my arms and legs free, was, "You couldn't have found a better bush?"
My hands were too numb to sign back, but she seemed to understand. She heaved me onto her donkey's back and led it on foot. Two of her five companions rode ahead. The rest paced at our sides, a tiny honor guard. I recognized all their faces, but for the life of me could not remember a name.
#
Tamorin and Gadara were waiting for us just inside the town. As Grandmother slid me down from the ass, they hauled Tamorin's medicine bag towards us. Tamorin's expression was firm and determined. Gadara looked as though she wanted to punch someone and wasn't too particular about whom.
Grandmother stripped off my ruined clothes almost before someone took charge of the donkey. The twins helped her, when they reached us. I let them. I'd be glad to never wear this outfit – this reminder of a terrible night – again. Gadara had brought me a bucket and rag, so as each article of clothing came off, I scrubbed mud off right there in the center of town. What did nudity matter when my skin was all rashes and wounds?
Tamorin waited until I'd finished bathing. Then he slathered me with sharp-smelling paste. I sat on a provided blanket and let him. Where the salve touched, the itching died.
Grandmother crouched across from me as the healer worked me over. She signed, "I thought we'd lost you, when we didn't catch them before the storm hit. The asses wouldn't carry us in the middle of that."
I signed with swollen fingers, "How did you know to go looking?" Had Thesil woken from her nap to find me gone? Why hadn't she ridden out with them?
Grandmother's face grew grimmer. "We knew something bad had happened when we found the body."
Dread swelled in my belly, and my mind flashed towards Thesil, who hadn't greeted me at the gates. "Who died?"
Grandmother glanced behind me, toward one of her waiting subjects. A nod of her head, and he walked closer, a bag dangling from one hand. He laid the bag next to me and retreated.
I stared at it, and shivered when Tamorin smeared a particularly cold handful of paste down my back. It didn't look big enough to hold a body part. Thesil must be alive. Still, my hands shook as I reached to turn it out.
Sefi landed in my lap, motionless and cold, and my heart froze.
Her long neck hung at an angle far from its normal curve. One wing lay rumpled against her side, empty patches of skin marking stripped feathers. The other spread wide, as though ready to take flight.
Sefi would never fly again.
My fingers clenched on her body, and down feathers wept from her cold skin. Air slammed back into my lungs as I inhaled, the first time since I'd seen her. I tried to exhale, but my breathing jumped and shook. I felt as though I was drowning on desert air. My lips tasted of salty tears, but it didn't matter. All I could do was hold Sefi and try to keep breathing.
Someone threw a blanket over my shoulders as Grandmother's wrinkled hands covered mine. She signed, "Let her go, Zisha. We can't afford to waste anything. Not now."
I stared at her until the meaning of her words sunk in. Then I let them take Sefi, too sick to look at her another second. I enveloped myself in the blanket and wiped my face dry on it. The town couldn't afford to waste anything, but I would not have dinner that night.
The twins tried to speak with me, but I ignored their signs. My heart hurt too much.
But Grandmother wouldn't let me sit and grieve. She sat across from me and signed, "Tell me how you escaped. What you saw before that."
I sniffled and shivered. "What does it matter?"
"Oh, you stupid girl," Grandmother signed. "Did you think he stole only you?"
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