Cast Out: Chapter Nineteen

As Grandmother packed our gear and re-saddled the asses, our two new companions approached. My mask lay flat over my face, so I felt safe enough as I turned to them and signed, "How did you sleep?"

Gadara glanced at me, her eyes sharp. "Fine."

Tamorin signed, "The rocks and dirt here are no harder than the ground back at the camp."

"Didn't you have bedding?" I asked, suddenly guilty for my comfortable bed back at the town.

Tamorin shrugged. "It seemed kindest to give it to the dying."

Gadara's brows beetled. "Even though they aren't the ones who could benefit from it."

Her brother rolled his eyes. "There's different kinds of benefit, Gaddi."

"I know."

I wished I could see their expressions, but the masks hid all but their eyes. "Why were you thrown out of the cities?"

Both of them looked at me as though I were mad. Tamorin gestured to their joined heads.

"But that's not a sign of death-palsy."

"I'd be much more worried about our health if it was," Tamorin said.

"We don't fit the city's image," Gadara signed. "It's no more complicated than that."

"But you shouldn't be imperfectas! The whole point of Holy Efra's dictates–"

"We know," Tamorin said.

I finished my sentence in my mind. Her dictates were to isolate those whose defects might carry the disease. Not to get rid of people who were different. It was as wrong as Thesil's exile, and I felt slow-burning outrage building in my core.

Across the camp, Grandmother waved at us, her other hand full of reins. The donkeys were ready.

I nodded to her and signed to the siblings, "Thank you for telling me. I'd like to talk with you more later. If that's all right?"

Gadara signed, "Go ahead. Pick his brain. Everyone wants to. Do you plan to be a healer, too?"

I blinked. "I'm a painter. I couldn't heal a sore tooth."

"Then you had better not get sick," said Gadara.

Tamorin elbowed her under their cloak. "Don't worry. We have nothing against paint."

"I'm glad," I signed, and ran to take the donkeys from Grandmother.

#

The town seemed smaller when we reached it, now that we'd seen the opulence of the Starred City. The thorn fence looked like a scraggly overgrown forest, which someone ought to burn or prune. The gates, when they opened, could hardly hold out an elp.

But the automas were still impressive, standing their eternal guard inside, the butts of their staves sunk into the earth like tree trunks.

We left the twins outside, with one of our saddlebags. Grandmother snatched the cloak and mask from my head the moment the gate swung shut behind us. She signed, "We burn these."

Cloth was dear in exile. We could clothe two people with that. "But–"

"Just in case."

"Is the risk that great?" Thesil signed, the first sentence I'd seen from her since we left the Starred City.

Grandmother's brows lifted. "Do you want to take the chance?"

"No."

She left to cast our cloaks into flames.

#

Grandmother didn't insist we dispose of the rest of our clothing. But upon return to our little house – so little, after the city – I stripped both of us and jammed our garments in a bucket to soak, pouring in so much lye I feared they would dissolve. But I would rather go naked than end up another body on a pyre.

The air was cold without clothes, the floor freezing and dusty against my bare feet. Sand blown in from the desert got between my toes, and I spent a pointless minute trying to winnow it out. It was better than looking at the too-real painting of Efra on her pyre, or the bed where Thesil sat cross-legged and bare.

This wasn't how I wanted to see her nude for the first time. She looked exposed, her emotional masks peeled away with her costume. There was nothing sexual or beautiful about her right now, only bony elbows and chapped edges and pasty skin covered in bumps. She stank of sweat and travel; it had been sweltering under those cloaks.

I sat beside her anyway, when I could no long pretend the sand still thwarted me. Thesil needed me. It was obvious in the way she held her body, shoulders squeezed against her neck, hands clenched on one another like white shackles. Her eyes didn't meet mine, or wander. They stared down at her hands as though she expected them to send her a message.

I put my hands over hers and signed, "Tell me."

Thesil unfolded, some of the harsh angles leaving her body. She settled back on the bed, her fingers twiddling in meaningless motions. Then she signed, "He knew my parents."

"I guessed."

Her back shuddered. "He hadn't seen me since I was small. He shouldn't have known me. He shouldn't. I don't look that much like my parents."

I pulled a blanket over both of us. Her skin was like ice. "Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

Her breath puffed hot against my ear. Her hands said, "I don't know."

I turned and held her, one icy skin against the other, and we did nothing until the sun rose the next day.

#

A few weeks, Grandmother had said. Apparently that meant two, exactly, before the old woman would open the gates and speak with the twins camped outside. I followed her, because she was my grandmother, and because I was curious. Grandmother left off the mask and cloak, and so did I. If anyone knew when it was safe to go bare-faced, it was her.

The thorn wall smelled like stinging sap and rotting leaves. Little twigs gave under my slippers as we stepped out the gate; they made the cracked earth feel both softer and sharper at the same time.

Beyond the town, the desert lay flat as a freshly sanded panel, and almost as empty. The narrow rutted road ran to the southeast. A piece of wind-sculpted rock jabbed up like a mountain to our right, but it was no taller than a man. The twins sat with their backs against stone, facing a dying campfire.

One of them was drinking from a water pot, but from this distance I couldn't tell which. I should have memorized which twin was on the left and right on our journey home, but I hadn't thought of it until Grandmother had already shut the gates in their faces.

I peered close as Grandmother led me up to their camp, eager to see whether they had weathered the weeks all right. For this reason, I caught a full glimpse before I even realized I might want to avert my eyes.

They had one of the blankets we'd left with them draped over their shoulders and bare backs. They wore only underthings, white knee-pants, unadorned, and linen breast-bands over each chest – even though Tamorin said he was male.

I shouldn't have looked again; it was rude and invasive and Mother would be ashamed of me. But my eyes were drawn to Tamorin's half-bare body. If his chest looked flatter than his sister's, it was only because he'd wrapped his breast-band wrapped tighter. And from the waist down, the only visible difference between brother and sister was the gash of scar tissue that puckered Gadara's skin from the knee to the tip of her left toe.

It wasn't my business. As I was telling myself that, Grandmother strode up to confront them across the fire. Her hands said, "If you were going to burn your contaminated outfits, you ought to have done all of them."

Tamorin's hands lifted to touch his breast-band, an unconscious-looking motion. "I wasn't quite that eager to get naked with the scorpions."

Gadara glared. Her hands snapped, "You could have left us clothes."

"I left you enough fabric to make some. Don't tell me your brother's stopped carrying needles in that bag of his."

"Medical needles," Tamorin said.

"They draw thread, don't they?" Grandmother peered at them. "You let the city-folk gawk at you like this when you whored yourself to the spectacles?"

"Grandmother!" I protested. But no one was looking at me.

"No," Gadara signed, her fingers snapping like springs.

Tamorin's expression looked forcibly blank. "I think you have a mistaken impression of what a spectacle troupe is like."

"Not that much of one," Grandmother said.

I thought I saw a flicker in Tamorin's eyes before he smiled. "Maybe. But Gaddi and I were a valued commodity. With my medicine–"

"You mean with this." Grandmother crossed her hands one over another so the tips overlapped.

Tamorin ignored her. "With my medicine, we always had enough work to pay our due. All we had to do was stand there, on display, during the main shows." His lips twitched. "Clothed."

Grandmother rolled her eyes. "Go fetch these two clothing, Granddaughter. Alsra should have spares."

It was a reasonable request – who could expect them to converse in their undergarments? – but I had the feeling that wasn't why Grandmother had told me to go.

When I got back, my arms weighed down by linen and wool, Grandmother sat cross-legged on the other side of the twins' fire, leaning towards them like someone had balanced a sack of flax across her shoulders. Her hands darted, telling some story, asking some question.

Tamorin glanced towards me as I came up behind Grandmother. He smiled, the motion lighting his eyes. I half expected a nod – but he was attached to his sister at the head, and Gadara only scowled. I set my bounty down beside them.

"I need a cart driver to come with me," Grandmother said. "Someone who's been to the mountain range before."

"I guessed. You assume we're willing to go back," signed Tamorin.

His sister's brows had pulled tight, but she grabbed the clothes and drew them across her lap like a shield. Two linen calsounds, and woolen blouses that tied on and didn't need to be pulled over the head.

Grandmother's nose twitched. "You want me to let you cower here, safe from the plague, you can make yourself useful."

Gadara said, "Safe? You want to send us back out."

"You come with me, you're proving yourself. Don't tell me you're frightened now. You didn't catch it in the slums outside the Starred City."

Tamorin's hands stretched, as if they'd cramped, before he signed, "Which isn't a guarantee we can't. If you didn't know."

"We're disposable, then," Gadara said.

Grandmother's face wrinkled. "So dramatic. We're not heading to the cities. Anyone sick enough to trouble us would be damn lucky to crawl as far as those hills. I'm going. Do you think I consider myself disposable? Don't answer that."

I'd stood motionless, polite as a granddaughter could be, but I couldn't stop myself from interrupting. "You're going away, Grandmother?"

Grandmother looked up at me. "For a week or two."

"Should I come?"

Her smile was a flash of teeth. "Oh, no. You're staying behind. If you're going to run this place, you best learn to do it now."

"Unknowns help us all," Gadara said, and that was that.

#

Two days later, Grandmother and the twins drove away on a wagon so deep and long it took four donkeys to pull it. The three of them looked like little toadstools sprouted from its bark-brown back. They drove east, away from the roads and rutted ground. Their wheels trampled bushes and cut new tracks that would vanish the next day as the wind blew over them.

I watched them go until their dust trail blurred into the horizon. It was my job to watch. I was in charge.

Right. In charge.

#

The inside of our cottage was cool and calming, free of distracting people and animals. My pigments sat in a comforting pile beside me. My chair was a little too comfortable, temptation to drowse. It should be the perfect place to get a little work done.

Should.

Thesil signed, "You can't just sit inside and paint."

I tried to turn my attention back to my board and the yellow pigment that smeared my fingers, but Thesil had pressed so close to the easel I wouldn't have to lean over to start painting her. Her hands were in my face, unavoidable. Unignorable.

I still tried. I wasn't done with Sefi's portrait.

"That's not how a town is run," she signed.

"Go away," I said aloud.

She didn't. "You're hiding in here with a goose, and that's not the Zisha I know. What are you scared of?"

I jabbed my brush at the board too hard, leaving a wounded yellow flower where the bristles had mashed the surface. "I'm not scared. I'm tired of people telling me that Grandmother would already know this, or Grandmother wouldn't have done that–"

"You're the leader. Putting up with whining is part of it."

"I don't want to run a town."

"Tough. No one else can do it."

"There's you."

A blink. "Me?"

"You're the one who was supposed to join the Cene. You're the one who took crowd control lessons."

"Oratory. And that was before someone jammed a knife through my neck."

I rolled my eyes. "Signs are still words. You know how to use them."

"How do you sign to a crowd?" she complained.

"Stand farther back. Or higher up." I rose from my painting, bowed with mock solemnity and signed, "I deputize you, Thesil, as my hands and eyes. Go forth and organize everything so it doesn't collapse before Grandmother gets back."

"Just what I always wanted – a drug mine. A poisonous drug mine."

I frowned. "They're not mining now..."

"That's the only reason I'm staying here. And not dead."

"But if you're uncomfortable with it–"

"Oh, shut up. I'm not doing this alone." She nudged me towards the door. "I'll go outside and shove people around if you'll come and nod along."

"Okay," I said, and felt much better.

#

The feeling lasted almost a week, until one early morning when the dust rising off the desert turned the distant mountains and hills into ghosts. One of the town's errand-runners, a young man with too-delicate arms and a heart-melting smile, came to me by the breakfast fire, where Sefi nibbled at my ankles and stole the crumbs of my bread.

"Something is outside," he signed with his child-sized hands.

It hadn't been long enough for Grandmother to be back. I set my bowl down. "How do you know?" We'd kept the doors closed tight since she left, on her orders. The rain barrels were still full, so I hadn't felt the need to open them and risk our quarantine to reach the well.

"Someone... or something ... is pounding on the gate."

The gate was built of huge slabs of wood, solid as an automa. It could've used a smaller door or a peephole, somewhere you could peer out without exposing the whole dratted town. But perhaps that would have been harder to build.

I frowned. "Are you sure it isn't Grandmother?"

He shook his head. "She knows how to open the gate from the outside."

That would be a useful trick. "Is everyone from the town accounted for?"

"Every head. It's not one of us. We called over the wall, but they haven't identified themselves. What should we do?"

Perhaps they were deaf like me, or mute like Thesil. Perhaps they were fleeing the plague, seeking sanctuary. They could be anyone, now that the cities were falling apart. Even children.

Could I leave a child outside the walls, where everything was plague and desert? It probably wasn't a child, I told myself, but my conscience still nagged me.

Thesil was still in bed, so I sent the messenger to wake her while I paced among the automas that guarded the gate. She showed up ten minutes later in yesterday's clothes, hair unbrushed and her eyes half glued shut with sleep. Once the situation was explained, she said, "You woke me just to reassure you about whatever decision you're about to make, didn't you."

"I thought, since you have training–"

"They didn't train me to see through walls."

I sighed and glanced back at the young man. "Don't we have a lookout tower?"

He gestured skyward, towards the head of the tallest automa. "Up there."

The automa loomed still as the wall beside it, its feather-staff clenched in a wooden fist. The wooden plates that wrapped its limbs and effeminate torso looked like they'd provide decent hand and foot holds, but it was twelve feet tall, at least, and my parents had never even let me climb a tree.

I bit my lip and turned to Thesil, my hands signing tentatively, "I don't suppose you want to–"

She lifted her chin. "The cenas don't climb."

I looked at the young man. He held up his underdeveloped hands.

Thesil signed, "Behold! The rewards of being in charge."

#

Thesil laced her hands into a step for me to start. A jump from that step, and my fingertips caught the heavy ridge that marked the automa's knee. I wrapped my legs around its huge calf and hung there for a moment. The head of the automa reared above me, brushing the sun and sky.

I climbed slowly, but my arms and shoulders still burned with effort. My legs held up better; I'd done a lot of walking since the Justry had thrown me out. Still, by the time I scaled the automa's trunk-like arm, I had aching thighs, a torn slipper, and splinters between my toes. My biceps had begun to tremble. I clung to the crook of the automa's elbow as though I would fall to my death if I let go. My head was a yard below the top of the thicket wall.

I said, "I can't climb any higher."

If anyone replied, I couldn't see it. They were all behind me. And so far down.

"I'm never getting to the top. I'll fall. I will."

I was staring straight into the automa's breast, eyes tracing the cherry grain of the wood. But someone below must have done something, because the automa dropped its staff, clasped me to its bosom, and jumped the wall like a deer vaulting a thicket.

For a moment, I thought I'd be thrown. Then my head smacked into its upper arm, pain blooming across my forehead. At our apex, I saw Thesil's open mouth and the boy's gleaming smile. Then we crossed the thorns, a black jagged break in the world, and I could see them no longer.

The automa's feet threw up plumes of dust where they punched into the desert soil. Grit clogged my throat and stung my eyes. But even blinking against tears I recognized the figure that lay bloody-handed against the gate beside me.

It was Amaz.