Claes and Farisa walked in the direction of the red rising sun.
“You realize what you’re saying?”
Farisa shut her eyes as a dusty wind swatted her face. “I do.”
She opened a notebook, once Garet’s, to the page where she’d done her calculations, and showed them to Claes.
“The watch’s daily error is about a second, normally distributed. Also, the terrain north of Switch Cave is well surveyed, with the quoted latitudes and longitudes of landmarks accurate within about a hundred yards. Something in Switch Cave moved us about fifty miles west.”
“Did you factor in—”
“Thermal expansion, inside the watch? I did, but even at twelve flags, with worst-case assumptions it wouldn’t account for more than a third of the anomaly. I can’t break inside the thing, but—”
“No need. It's an Alejo Larsen watch, so we can trust the quality of the materials.” Claes shook his head. “We didn’t even notice.”
“We wouldn’t have,” Farisa said.
“This will not be an easy argument to make to the others. Teleportation?”
“It isn’t. Teleportation would be a discontinuous move through space: from A to B, with no use of any point between. If I’m right, what we experienced is called kasa. Space itself has been twisted and blued back to itself.” Farisa tried to demonstrate with her hands. “I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“It does, but I believe you. Could you make one?”
“No. It hasn’t been done for thousands of years. I’m not sure I can even break one, but it’s our best hope of finding the true Mountain Road. I no longer think this place is it.”
“If you’re right, it would explain why we’re here, in—”
“A three-thousand-year-old death trap.”
#
Claes had, to this point, hidden his suffering and fear. Since coming into the Ashes, he’d been eating jelly from the local cactus, the same kind Runar had been straining for water, to avoid depleting their supply of food. Not even Farisa knew that. The stuff tasted vile, and to eat more than a gulp or two made him ill, but he figured this abstinence of his from better food would give the rest of the group a couple more days of survival. Someone, someday, would reach the Antipodes—the Ivory Ashes had unknown extent, so every mile and every hour mattered.
Garet’s death had brought him to ask himself: Were he to fall, too, would this party be able to go on? How would decisions be made? Who would lead? Runar? Talented, but still young and brash. Saito? Too reserved. Farisa? One day, he mused, she could lead. She had, in a sense, grown up in this foreign place—her arms had become muscular from daily work, her skin had hardened under the sun, and she walked around, hair tied up in a ponytail, with a poise he had not seen in her three months ago. She had once been a little girl needing protection; she would likely go on to protect others—if they got through this place alive.
They had made thirty-one southward miles since Switch Cave. Farisa, with no more than a pocket watch, had found evidence of a fifty-mile westward movement. It had always seemed implausible that such a thing as kasa existed—Cait Forest’s eastern marshes, probably not haunted, were probably also not protected by ancient magic; it always seemed more likely that no one had ever found a reason not to use Rooksnest Bridge. Given the absurdity of the concept, could Farisa, even with his unwavering support, convince this group that one existed?
The sun climbed. Despite fatigue, Claes could not sleep. When he closed his eyes, the world turned bright orange. Today did not seem as hot as yesterday, but the wind was fierce. He had set up a tarpaulin to block it, but might need to shift it in an hour, and it worried him to see the animals, who had become so slow they seemed indifferent to their own survival, go slowly into the shade. The huskers and the untas were still drinking, but refused to eat.
He looked up at the barren blue sky. He desperately wanted to believe Farisa’s claim, as improbable as it had seemed, because nothing convinced his eye, as he looked south, that they were coming close to anything but more of the same featureless misery.
What little he knew of the ancient world suggested that the Mountain Road, unlike today’s orc-infested trail for treasure-hunting scoundrels, had once been a trade route with flourishing cities all along the way, and although three thousand years was a long time, he couldn’t imagine that this place had ever been suitable. He had seen seven flags in Loran’s summer—it slowed a city down—and he had seen eight in northern Terosha, but this kind of heat was altogether different, because it put the body into a state of slow dying incompatible with civilization at all. Water tasted so metallic it was difficult (but necessary) to drink more than a few sips per hour. Food was wholly unappetizing. Restful sleep was nearly impossible.
Farisa sat up. “Everyone’s awake, huh?”
People groaned.
“It’s two o’clock. The worst is—”
“Now,” Talyn said.
“Almost over.” Farisa passed around a bag of desiccated apple slices. Claes ate one. It tasted like paper.
Farisa straightened her back as she wrapped her arms around her knees.
He noticed that Farisa was bare-legged down to the feet, which she had placed in the sand, and that this was a sharp tactical decision, given the matter of which she would have to convince the others, on her part. She wasn’t breaking the laws of her culture, since her soles weren’t visible, but it would humanize her—make her seem like she was giving up more vulnerability than she really was—to have the tops of her feet be seen.
She lifted the bag of dried apples. “Anyone else hungry?”
No one responded.
“Since no one’s able to sleep, I’ll continue last night's story.”
#
She had voiced the intention. I’ll continue last night's story. She couldn't remember which of Rhazyladne's tales she'd been telling hours ago, as they marched under the night sky, because this place had been a different world then. At night, lucid thought was possible, but under the shining sun between ten and three, she had barely the will to nibble salted bread or sip hot water. It felt like the early stages of madhouse fever.
Which of the Tales of the Sixteen Winds had involved a kasa? That would be the one to tell, but her fluent command of Rhazyladne’s stories had left her three flags ago, so she rambled through a rendition of “The Six Golden Tablets” that ended up mixing in events from “The Daughters of Ardelyn.” When she had finished the tale, she had in fact given a circuitous account of her friendship with Raqel, and what a failing it was of hers that she had fallen in love so easily with someone who would never reciprocate.
Talyn sat up. The sun was lower now. “It sounds like you’re trying to tell us something about yourself.”
“There’s nothing you don’t already know,” Farisa replied. “Yes, I like girls.”
“When did you know?” Runar asked.
Farisa rolled her eyes. “That question.”
“I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Sixteen or seventeen. Desire doesn’t really set in for me until I know someone.”
“Same,” Mazie said. “I was a virgin into my early twenties.”
Talyn rolled her eyes. “An everything but?”
“Not even close.”
“You have a past too, Talyn,” Farisa said. “You worked for the Globbos.”
Talyn crossed her arms.
“So did I,” Saito said.
“You did what?” She looked at Claes. “Is this true? Did you know?”
Claes nodded.
“How—?”
“Hear what he has to say.”
Saito’s eyes fell. “Geshna. Nine years. I’ll never see my wife or children again. I can’t work in the world we left, because no one will hire me. I wish I had mentioned it sooner, but I felt a need to keep it secret.”
Farisa sat back, careful to keep the bottoms of her feet in sand. “Why? If you’re not a part of it anymore, why couldn’t you tell us?”
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time.”
“Geshna has long considered itself independent of Moyenne. We are owned by, and thus part of, the Global Company, but we ignore its orders. We call our Ettasi commanders veske-vokhio, ‘soft handed.’ Hampus Bell’s election worked to our favor. The man is too stupid to figure out what the other side of the world is up to.” Saito took a deep breath, and when he exhaled, black smoke seemed to follow. “Those fools never got magic to work. We, however, did.”
Farisa felt her sunburnt brow furrow. “Really?”
“The Ettasi division believes one child in twelve thousand is a trainable mage. The real number is higher. Sure, the third-degree feats, like entering a mind, are quite rare. Basic pyromancy? One in a hundred children can be trained to set a fire from a distance. I worked at Camp Prosperity, in the Vosslands.”
“The Vosslands?” Farisa said. “How’d you—”
“The question is why. The answer is that no one would ever look there. We were training young mages to kill from a distance—ten, fifteen, twenty feet—because, if no one knows who they are, they make perfect assassins.”
“Fucking hell.” Farisa wanted to stand and pace out her rising anger, but the heat had sapped the resolve it would take to do this. “You could have—”
“I could have changed nothing.”
“How’d you survive the Vosslands? If you include the humidity, it’s—”
“As bad as this.” Saito squeezed the first knuckle on each hand with a thumb. “It’s only seven, seven-and-a-half flags, but with oceanic humidity. The answer is that we left every April. We would start work in November, knowing we’d have to find a permanent place for any subject who survived five months, but this was a rare problem. One of the reasons we were working in such a hot place is that we wanted to see if one of the kids—one of the mages—would find a way to make it colder. Starting a fire is easy; ice is not. We had no success with that project.”
Farisa dug her heel into the hot sand. “Why’d you leave the Company?”
“Conscience. My mother was very religious. It must be in the blood. As I grew older, I began to suspect that hell is real. I see the place sometimes, for a tenth of a second when my brain is idle and the past summons itself into the present. I do not want to go there.”
Farisa, careful to keep her feet buried, because the heat of sight hurt more than the sand, crossed her legs and pressed the palms of her hands on bare knees. “What was your personal involvement?”
“I was—I am—a doctor.”
“I know, and that concerns me.”
“As I said, we never found one powerful enough to enter a mind. If he had, we’d have likely killed him, because that could really bust up a chain of command. Most of our work, instead, was in necromancy—repugnant, but much safer. Hampus Bell's side of the Company had no choice but to dismiss men from work after their deaths. That was not the case for ours.
“Some of the men we ‘worked on’ had been friends of mine. That was another reason I left. I could not be sure if they were still there—if there was some piece of them that was still suffering for what we were doing.”
“I see.”
“I decided to leave Geshna, but this Ettasi concept of ‘resignation’ does not exist. Soldat or office man, you do not leave unless you are asked to go, and it is common when matters get to that extent that both you and your family are killed. To spare them, I had to convince the entire world that...” His lower lip trembled.
Farisa leaned forward slightly. “You faked your death?”
“I did.” Saito looked in the direction of the afternoon sun. “It’s one of the few good things I have done. I am ashamed of my past. Disgusted. But I feel better having told you. You have a right to know my motivations.”
“Revenge?”
“Atonement.”
“I’d like to hear about your family,” she said.
“Some other time.”
Silence hung. Farisa wondered if Garet had known Saito’s history as well. Why had this been kept from her? Nothing could have prevented her from learning it, had she known to look.
After a strange and yawning silence came from all of them, Talyn looked at Mazie. “Your turn.”
Mazie said, “What?”
“What did you do before coming here?”
She shrugged. “What I could.”
Talyn shook her head. “All of you have things you aren’t telling us.”
“That’s probably true.”
She pointed at finger at Mazie. “You seem like the kind—”
“I’ll say one thing: I sure as ’ell never worked for G-Comps.”
“It wouldn’t have been an option for you, honey.”
“Ain’t I better not to know?”
“An anarchist.” Talyn flicked her hand; had her fingers been two inches lower, they would have flung sand into Mazie’s face. “What, you want to remake the world into a Vehu dori?”
“If there were one that would have me.” She tugged a wayward lock of hair. “I’m one-eighth myself. I don't know if that's enough. No one’s ever told me the rules.”
“As if you would follow any.”
Mazie took a long, deep breath. “You know, while you were sitting in a Global Company office, I was out trying to fix this world.”
“Oh?”
“I worked with college students—distributing pamphlets, that sort of thing—down around Hagiatto.”
“I’ve been there,” Claes said. “Southern edge of Exmore.”
“We’d hop a trolley and go into one of those soulless proper neighborhoods where Company types live. It was best to get in front of a crowd, but fliers were less likely to draw brown or gray. Unfortunately, most of those university kids never had the seriousness to sustain a real protest, at least not these days. I wish I had lived in the age of Reverie.”
Claes said, “I’m not sure it’s to be envied. We watched ourselves lose.”
“At least there was a real fight back then.” Mazie scratched her knee. “You know, it's funny. The first boy I ever kissed was, I suppose, your typical... eh, I don’t want to say it. We met on College Avenue. He was twenty, I was eighteen. I nearly slept with him, but I’m glad I didn’t. It turned out he was—”
“A mole, right?”
“How’d you know?”
Claes frowned. “At that age, they’re getting close to the need for employment. They’re starting to think about how much easier a life evil can offer them.”
“Precisely,” Mazie said. “He and I were at a tavern—Green Spoon, if you've heard of it—and I had to go to the wash closet. I came back to find a smudge on my glass, like he thought I was too stupid do notice such a thing. I snuck the glass out of there and had a chemist test it, and it turned out to be something only Globbos can get.” She shook her head. “I gave his name to some ex-Reverie people. They told me what they’d do to him, and I don’t know if it happened, but I’m happy to have never seen him again.”
Talyn chuckled. “Aren’t you communists about free love? Everyone belongs to everyone?”
“How little you know,” Mazie said, free of accent.
“What were you, Farisa?” asked Talyn.
“I was Farisa, as I still am.”
“You know what I’m asking.”
“Do I?” Farisa sat up, her spine skyward. “I taught at a college, in Cait Forest.”
“You’re twenty, and you were... a professor?”
“Not at all. A teacher, yes. I started out as an ordinary serving girl, but I had read the chorae in the original, so I knew enough Lyrian to be qualified to teach a few classes. Nothing more than that.”
Talyn smirked. “Did you leave Cait Forest before or after that fire?”
Farisa folded her arms around a knee and leaned forward. “During.”
Kanos, lying down with a cap over his head, sat up as if wanting to say something, but held still.
Farisa said, “I have nothing to hide. I didn’t start it.”
“Where’d you live? In the dorms?”
“A little more than a mile north of campus.”
Talyn tapped a finger on her palm. “Isn’t that... where the fire started?”
“That’s enough questioning,” said Claes.
Talyn seemed uncomfortable, as if fighting herself, as if the heat had put a presence into her mind that might cause her to say things she otherwise wouldn’t. “I’m not among them, but there are some who believe you started that fire.”
The soul of a desert cobra rose in Farisa. “I had no love for the place toward the end, and I’ll admit that, but there’s no way I would have murdered hundreds of people.”
Talyn replied in a monotone. “You might have meant to murder twenty specific people.”
Farisa gritted her teeth. “It would not have been my way to go about it. A person who sets a forest fire cannot know in advance who will and who will not be harmed.”
“You might have. All but one of the victims but one were found in one place, immobilized. Are you sure you played no role in this?”
“I... I...” What did it matter? They were out in ten-flag heat. “I’m not. I’m not sure.”
Eric’s eyes, like Talyn’s a minute earlier, shifted as if sinking into his head. “Of all of us, you would know best. How do you think the fire started? What really caused it?”
“I don’t know.” Her memory had detail—she could still picture the forty-eyed Monster—but little value because she had told that account and even the denizens of an Exmore madhouse had found it absurd. Such creatures as the Monster of Cait Forest did not exist. “I know that the fire happened. I have no clue what started it. None.”
Runar cut in. “Murder has a look to it. Farisa is no murderer.”
Talyn’s face twitched. “Farisa has never killed anyone? We’re all killers. Look at what we’ve had to do to get this far. We’ve dropped bodies on two continents. If Farisa’s mind got a lick out of sorts, she might decide to end any one of us with a single stray thought. You all know this, right? She can do dreadful things with her mind, and what a mind she has.
“Answer this, Farisa. Let’s pretend you aren’t the arsonist. If you met that person, the one who started the blaze a whole world blames on you, would you take the obvious revenge? Wouldn’t you at least think about bringing finality to at least one of the people who have destroyed your name? Be honest. Or: what if you could go back in time, and take his person's life before the deed was done? Would you kill—who would you kill, and is there anyone you would not kill—to have your Cait Forest life back?”
Claes shouted, “Enough!”
Mazie put a hand on Farisa’s shaking arm. “What the hell has gotten into you, Talyn?”
#
Kanos had to be careful.
Back home, he would not have been able to enter a mind; the resistance, even from a child, would have exceeded his ability and put him in lethal danger. Here, with his power growing stronger with every mile south, he could do it. Still, he could not let himself be caught in it. The other travelers were forgiving and trusting to the point of stupidity, but they were not so stupid that he could make his maneuvers obvious.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
He knew the others disliked him. They tolerated Talyn—even though she had been more of a part of the Company than he—to spite him. Her repentance won sympathy; again, these people were unfit for the wild into which they had wandered, a place where forgiveness was an unaffordable luxury. The Ivory Ashes allowed no error. The animals were dying in ten-flag heat, and once a few more of them were gone and this group had lost all hope, Kanos would be able to make his move. At a certain point, there would be no option but to accept rescue by the Hegemon.
Talyn and Eric had shown the limits of their suffering. Comfort in the world back north could be bought, for them, on a fraction of the reward Farisa’s live capture would earn. Runar and Saito had come here out of guilt and shame—pliable emotions under duress. Claes was the one who worried him; that man was as stubborn as a husker, and would likely need to be killed—that hadn’t changed. He was glad that Garet had been taken care of, though—the man’s death would make all of this easier.
Kanos had tried to get inside Claes, but failed; he must have taken some training against it. Perhaps the man had some fear of Farisa—it wouldn't have been unjustified.
He knew time favored him. The animals were dying. Tempers were shortening. This kind of heat wore everything, and everyone, down. He trained his focus to find joy in others' misery. He would need pure sanity, for the time to strike would come soon.
He concealed a smile as he heard a husker give out a rattling breath, then collapse.
#
“She’s gone,” Claes said. “The fall killed her, if she wasn’t already dead.”
“Fuck,” Farisa said. "That leaves us with two huskers, and they aren’t doing well either.”
“We’ve used enough water that two can carry the weight.”
“But then we have them at a full load.”
Farisa wished Garet were alive; he would know what to do.
“We have to get rid of some stuff,” she said. “My books can go, everything but Jakhob’s Gun. I’ll help you, but I have to do something first.” She started to walk away. “The others need to see this.”
The sun was setting. In plain view of the rest of the group, she held out her watch, its body bronzed by the reddish western light. A hill occluded the horizon, so she could have attained a much better reading to the north, but this would suffice to prove her point.
“Runar!”
He called back. “I’m here!”
“I’m going to read you some numbers. Write them down.”
The sun exited with a green flash. She walked back to the others, opened her notebook into which Runar had written the day’s sunset time, and carried out her calculations.
Talyn said, “What are you going on about?”
“Forty-nine miles, plus or minus eighteen,” said Farisa.
“Is what?”
“Our deviation. If there’s a Mountain Road, we’re not on it.”
Talyn insisted, “We’ve been heading south since Switch Cave.”
Kanos added, “Due south is the course.”
Farisa crossed her arms. “Only because no one knows the correct one.”
“And you do? What makes you think—?”
Claes said, “Shut up and let her explain.”
“We know our latitude by Garet’s theodolite, but how do we know our longitude?” She showed the others her watch. “We have to know the time. The difference between expected and actual solar noon tells us if we’ve moved east or west.”
Talyn said, “It can’t be that accurate.”
“It is, as long as you keep tension in the mainspring. I’ve been winding it every day. This watch could run for a decade and it wouldn’t be off by more than a minute or two.”
“Nonsense,” Talyn said. “You can’t afford a watch like that.”
“That's true. It was a gift from a wealthy friend, Merrick Klein. Claes would know the name.”
“It’s a fake,” Kanos said. “I’m doubly sure of it if you got it from a man named—”
“You’re an idiot,” Mazie said.
Farisa said, “Somehow, while inside Switch Cave, we moved fifty miles west. Whatever the Mountain Road was, we’re somewhere else.”
Kanos spat. “Utter nonsense. Fifty miles?”
“It’s called a kasa—a rupture in physical space that allows a place to be, in essence, multiple places.” Farisa put her hands together like pieces of paper, but her fingers couldn’t twist enough to make the shape she wanted. “Imagine you’re a flea living on a piece of paper—or, better yet, a rubber sheet. You exist in two dimensions. Someone who lives in three dimensions—one of us, let’s say—could cut the sheet up or stretch or distort it, or glue two distant places together so they fuse.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
Talyn said, “Are you telling me that we walked through a portal and did not notice?”
“I am.” She spread her feet and opened her arms. “My favorite stories growing up were the Tales of the Sixteen Winds, and some allude to a time when North and South were one. There are references, in several of the stories, to a kasa uniting the hemispheres—but it’s possible, and in fact would make more sense, that one was set just north of us—to divide them.”
“I don’t know if Farisa’s right,” Runar said. “But she isn’t lying to us.”
“I don’t know if I’m right,” Farisa admitted.
“Well," said Kanos, “if you don’t know—”
“If I am right, there’s no reason to believe we achieve anything by going south. My suggestion is that we return to Switch Cave.”
“You’re going to drag us thirty-five miles back,” Talyn said.
Claes said, “Thirty-one.”
“This what-did-you-call-it—“
“Kasa,” Farisa said.
“—let’s say you’re right about that. Do you know you can break one?”
“I’ve read History of Wytchcraft. The old spells might still work.”
“Show me. Show me this kasa.”
“I can’t.” Farisa looked around. “I don’t know how to make one. That kind of magic hasn’t existed for thousands of years. I might be able to unravel it, though.”
Talyn shook her head and began pacing. “We’ve come a long way—a painful way—and you’re saying you want to retreat, just to try out a spell that might not work.”
“There are no good options here,” Claes said. “It’s too hot and our animals are sick. This weather has been harder on them than I expected. We can make it back in a day or two if we hurry. We can go back to Switch Cave or we can go—maybe—thirty miles deeper and find, quite possibly, nothing. We might set a southern record, but at the cost of our lives.”
Farisa said, “If anyone has a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”
“I have one,” Kanos said. “We continue south as far as our animals and wits will take us. It’s what we came here to do.”
She pointed at Runar. “He and I have gone out to harvest water. It’s grueling work.”
He added, “The cactuses give little. Our animals are still dying, so whatever we've been doing has not been enough.”
“We continue on,” Kanos said.
Farisa said, “What happens when all our animals are dead?”
“We make for the ocean. On the shore, we light a beacon. We’ll be rescued.”
“We’re at sixteen fucking degrees latitude. No one’s going to rescue us.”
Kanos smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
“What are you talking about?”
“In Portal, it was no secret that I spent time in evening houses, was it? Those walls were paper thin. The man next door was a pompous old cunt, and I have no idea how he found time to do what he was paying for, given how much he talked. Still, I learned that there is a steamship right off the western coast.”
Farisa scoffed. “If there is one, it’s Company.”
“Of course it is, but what does the Company care about?” He spat on the ground. “Only one thing, and that’s money. We have that stupid watch of yours. If we pay well, they’ll accept any names we call ourselves. You don’t have to be Farisa, and I don’t have to be Kanos. It’s better than dying out here.”
“We are more unsafe on a Company steamship than out here.”
“Only you, Farisa. The rest of us have every option, and even you, if you just could just keep your mouth shut—”
Talyn seemed out of sorts, as if about to faint, then snapped back into alertness. “I think—if we break up out here, none of us survive. We should put it to a vote.”
Farisa's toes pressed into the box of her boot. “A vote?”
“I agree,” Kanos said. “You’re asking us to retrace thirty miles on the supposition you can break an ancient spell. That’s rich from a girl who spent time in a—”
“I stand with Farisa,” Claes said.
“Kanos,” said Talyn. “Kanos is right.”
“Farisa,” Mazie said. “Farisa always.”
Kanos asked, “Eric?”
“I’m with Mom,” the boy said.
“Three and three,” said Talyn.
Farisa’s eyes met Saito’s, and he looked away. He wore the same mask of baffled exhaustion she had seen on Talyn’s face. “I have to think about it. I’ve been in dangerous places, but I’ve never seen heat like this, and to backtrack...” He paced.
“You say you’re a mage, Farisa.” Kanos produced a silver coin. “Take this from me using your mind.”
Claes said, “Kanos, stop.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Farisa said. “You all have a right to know what I can do.”
She closed her eyes and went into the blue. Although silver was harder to move than baser metals and he had moved nearly out of reach, she could still grasp the coin in the blue, and...
Kanos added, “Without passing through the points in between.”
“No.” Farisa caught the coin. “I don’t know a spell for that.”
Kanos shook his head. “But that’s what you’re proposing happened in Switch Cave. Teleportation. If it existed, someone would have gotten to the Antipodes a long time ago.”
Saito said, “I’m afraid I must go with Kanos.”
Farisa swallowed. She had played Kanos’s stupid game; it had been a mistake. She could not go into the blue for long, as she was on the edge of fainting already. She used what little she had to write three words in Runar’s mind: Trust your Eye.
“Sorry,” Runar said. “The heat had me... almost... thinking thoughts that were not mine. I am with Farisa.”
Kanos stepped back in disgust. Farisa flinched; she had expected violence to break out between the two brothers, but the man only sneered.
“We’re split four to four,” Talyn said.
“We are,” said Farisa. “Claes is our leader, so his vote breaks the tie.”
“Leader?” Kanos scoffed. “A split vote means he’s not much of one.”
Farisa kicked sand. “Why would the Company rescue us, Kanos?”
“We have survived in a place very few people reach. It proves that we’re tough—that we’re valuable. Also, we still have silver, gold, and weapons.”
“So what?” Farisa stepped forward. “You can’t bargain with something you can’t defend in the first place. Everything we have, they’ll take; they’ll consider it theirs, the moment they spot us. So, all of that means nothing, and even if they believe whatever fake names we devise—and that’s doubtful—they will enslave us. They have no reason not to do so. None. We will have absolutely no power if we render ourselves unto them. I can’t believe I have to explain this. Maybe you’d like to change your vote, Saito? Eric?”
Talyn said, “How dare you try to turn my boy against me.”
“It seems we’re stuck,” said Kanos. “Shall we divvy up equipment?”
“It’s ours, all of it,” Farisa said. “Claes and Garet, salim va-rizon, started this thing. If you want to leave us, go ahead, but if you think you’re going to take our stuff, you can go fuck yourself.”
Runar started to say something, then looked south.
“What’s wrong?”
Runar’s face turned pale, as if he had seen a churchyard, like a furious sea cucumber ejecting its innards, spew its dead. “Someone is coming toward us.”
Eric took Talyn’s spyglass off her chest. As he fixed his gaze, his teeth chattered. “I think it's the Dark Man of the Desert.”
“Hush, Eric,” Talyn said. “There’s no such thing. The shadows play tricks as it gets dark. It may be hotter than hell, but at least we’re alone out here.”
Farisa, after asking for and receiving Claes’s field glasses, looked south. “No. We’re not.”
#
He could not be sure if it was a mere headache—the malaise had diffused into the muscles of his neck and chest—or the onset of hallucinatory fever as his body finally lost the ability to keep itself cool. Miles upon miles of disconsolate heat had left him in a state where the hues and shades of misery and fatigue all blended together with a certain colorless apathy. The sun had recently set but the night would still be hot and none of this mattered.
He had set a world southern record—of that, he had no doubts, because his measurements had, back when he’d had a full mind about himself and proper equipment, confirmed a latitude between twelve and thirteen, but what purpose had it served? Stupid, deadly vanity. In a day or two, thirst would leave him unable to stand and he would bake to death on the blistering ground. There were no oases out there. He had seen a million false puddles. He had seen those desert lights that meant nothing, because no one was coming to save him from the terrible decision to come this way. His first inclination, thus, was to ignore the moving figures, which were likely boulders given a glimmer of motion by early-evening heat shimmer. He thought little else about them until he heard their voices.
They can’t be real. This place is inhuman, and I am so far from anywhere.
If I don’t find aid soon, I will die.
He looked again and they were still there.
His spyglass was barely usable. One of the lenses was so scratched, it failed even in daylight. The other lens suggested six people or more, probably of Ettasi origin. They were in terrible shape, just like him, with torn-up clothes and miserable expressions on their faces. They still had living animals—no small accomplishment—but those were fading fast.
He checked the cylinder of his gun: nine bullets. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use them. Before taking the Mountain Road, he had never fired a shot, nor thrown a punch, nor run for his life; in the past six months, he had done all those things, and it was his judgment that none of those experiences had improved his life.
Is that one... a child?
That wasn’t good at all, because only religious fanatics, convinced beyond reason of some better world beyond the Ashes—he could tell them he had seen none—took their whole families to places like this.
My luck, that after three hundred miles I have to tell these zealots there is nothing here but the throat of hell.
One of the men lifted his weapon. Andor lifted his own.
#
Farisa’s breath hastened as the stranger approached.
Claes said, “Kanos, if you fire on that man, I will open your skull.”
The man in the distance wore a white face covering and tattered clothing. He yelled, “I mean you no harm.”
“Drop your weapon,” Kanos said.
Runar knocked the gun out of his brother’s hand. “You first.”
The man who approached was one of the largest people Farisa had ever seen—six foot six at a minimum— and his skin was darker than hers, making clear his Teroshi origin. His beard was unkempt and slightly gray, suggesting an age in his late thirties, but he was clearly handsome.
“My name is Andor Strong,” he said.
“Are you the Dark Man of the Desert?” Eric asked.
“Eric!” Mazie said. “You can’t just ask people if they’re the Dark Man of the Desert.”
Andor said, “Dark I am, but I deserve no such title. The desert has defeated me.”
Farisa asked, “How far did you get?”
“I’m not sure where we are, but I made it three hundred and forty miles south of Switch Cave.”
“Bullshit,” said Kanos. “Three hundred? You’re telling me you set a new southern record?”
“I am, because I did. It wasn’t worth it.”
“Let’s get this man some food and water,” Mazie said to Claes.
Andor continued. “It gets hotter and drier, the farther you go. Those cactuses—I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, if you’ve made this far—thin out. There's hardly any ground water, and the terrain remains low aside from sand dunes, of which I did find, at my southernmost extent, one half a mile in height. It took me several hours to climb, but I did.”
Farisa asked, “What did you see?”
“Nothing. It’s all the same in all directions: flat, white, and hot. After about a hundred miles, you start to see squibbani. They’re much more aggressive than up north. We were chased a few times.”
Kanos looked ready to punch someone. “This guy’s full of shit. How in the hell did you make it three hundred miles?”
“I avoided a common mistake,” Andor said. “Your group brought untas and huskers. Up to Switch Cave, they’re excellent pack animals, but they don’t survive very long out here, no matter what you do. We’re hairless and we sweat, but what do these animals have? They pant. That works up to seven, eight flags, but in this kind of heat?” He shook his head. “They’re on borrowed time every step; they just dry out and die. We knew this in my group, so we didn’t take any animals. Instead, we rode—I don’t know the Ettasi word—does velozipudo mean anything?”
“Velocipede,” Farisa said. “Bicycle.”
“That would be it. Rubber tires, aluminum frames. We had a trailer behind each with two weeks of food and, like you, we got our water from the pipe cactuses. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. There were six of us. We lost three to heat stroke and two to squibbani. Six minus five is one, and that’s me.”
Kanos said, “How do we know he’s not lying?”
“You don’t,” Andor said, as Mazie brought him a canteen. He nodded to give thanks to her. “You’re invited to go look for yourself and check my work. As for me, I am heading north. Judging by the state of your animals, you should consider that too.”
#
An hour or so had passed since their first meeting.
“You need salt,” said the tall pretty girl with wavy hair who had introduced herself as Mazie.
“Thank you,” he said in Ettasi. He was more comfortable using Bas’ri, but he doubted these people had heard a word of it, except possibly for the dark-skinned woman. “I’ll have to eat it slow.”
“I understand. Take your time.”
They were not, it turned out, a family of zealots—they looked quite different from each other and, as travelers, they were far more competent than onetime pilgrims tended to be, though they had made serious errors. It was a physical guarantee, given the state of their animals, that two or three more days in this heat would kill every single one of them, leaving the group to limp (as he had been doing, since losing his velocipede to a titanic yellow squibbani) to Switch Cave in desperation.
Claes, their leader, made sure Andor knew all their names.
Kanos said, “What does this guy bring to us?”
“He’s made it three hundred miles farther than we’re going to get,” Farisa said.
Kanos smirked. “If he’s telling the truth.”
“He doesn’t need to prove himself to us, and he needs our help.” To Andor, she said, “Please ignore Kanos’s—”
“Lack of manners,” Claes said. “We’ve had a dispute regarding where to go from here.”
Andor said, “I can tell you where to find twenty days of absolutely nothing.”
Farisa offered her theory about a shift in their location within Switch Cave. He found it far-fetched, but no more than anything else he had seen below the thirty-fifth parallel. Orcs had been thought extinct until two centuries ago; their population was known now to number in the millions. The world already knew about squibbani, but the small black ones down here, though they rarely came out during the day, had shown the ability to use tools, and could make bridges and siege structures with their own bodies. Andor had studied philosophy in Salinay; he found it insufficient for all he had found down here.
“A kasa seems unlikely, I admit that. It is, however, the best explanation I have. Do your studies bring light on this matter?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I am going north regardless. I’ve had enough of this place for twelve lives and eleven hells.”
“There’s a better way,” Kanos said.
“What?”
“We’re only ten miles from the shore. The Company has an ironclad, stationed there till the end of September. They’ll rescue us.”
“The Geese?” Andor said. “You trust the Geese? I'd rather die out here than be in debt to them.”
“We have something they want,” Kanos said. “It would pay any debt.”
Farisa’s mouth opened and Claes reached for something.
For a moment, Andor thought these men were about to draw guns, but Kanos instead produced a large, clear gemstone.
“I found this in Portal—on a whore’s nightstand, if you can believe that. She must have thought it was nothing, because she didn’t even notice that it was gone the second time I visited her, but it’s a high-grade ydenstone. It’d be fifteen carats, cut, so it’s got to be worth fifty thousand.”
Farisa said, “If a common jeweler made a penny every time someone tried to pass quartz as ydenstone, he could live on nothing else.”
Andor looked aside. To wager on the Global Company’s goodwill was to back a snail in a horse race, but he did not know these people well enough to take sides in their disputes.
“This is real,” Kanos said. “If they don’t treat us well, I’ll toss it in the ocean.” He turned to Andor. “You’re from Salinay. You must know gemstones.”
“I don’t.”
“Why don’t you look at it?”
“I would prefer not to get—”
Kanos threw the stone to Andor and he caught it. Even by twilight, he could tell the stone was fake, but he did not want to provoke this man’s violence.
“It’s too dark for me to tell.”
Kanos’s eyes narrowed. “Just look at it.”
“My opinion of this stone is irrelevant to—”
“Look at it, or we’re going to have a problem.”
“Very well.”
As Andor raised the gem to the horizon to examine its play of the evening light, a cool presence washed over the left side of his face. His body felt free of the aches and burns that had plagued him for miles. This stone was not what Kanos had claimed, but there was something pleasing about it, because his mood improved the more he looked at it.
“Kanos, your idea is brilliant. You said fifty thousand? This ydenstone’s worth at least half a million. Let’s get ourselves to the Hegemon at—”
Andor’s legs gave out and he fell face-first into the sand.
#
Farisa was furious at herself. She had considered the possibility that Kanos, in severe conditions such as these, would try to enter a mind, but she figured he would have little success at taking control—that was an even harder thing to do—given their mutual exhaustion from the eight-flag heat, so she had not considered it possible. But when she went into the blue, she noticed that Andor was surrounded by a sour red mist, swatting at him from several directions. Not a second later, the man fell to the ground.
Claes said, “What the hell just—?”
Saito rolled the man over on his side. “He’s breathing.”
“He wasn’t in good health when he got here,” Talyn said.
Farisa noticed that Kanos’s eyes had opened a little bit, showing a faint blue glow.
“Stop it, Kanos. He’s too sick and it’s too hot. You'll kill him.”
Kanos didn’t respond. Andor’s convulsions grew violent. Saito opened his medicine pouch. Farisa leapt behind Kanos and kicked the side of his knee, causing him to lose balance. She jumped on top of him and landed several punches before Runar and Claes pulled her off.
Kanos sat up. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Farisa and Claes looked at each other in mutual understanding.
“The vote we just held,” Claes said. “It might have been invalid.”
“It was,” Saito said as he looked around. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Farisa, I’m on your side. I’d rather go your way and die than go his way and live.”
“We have five. It seems we’ll go north to Switch Cave, and hope Farisa’s right.”
#
Andor drifted in and out of awareness. The tall palms and marble minarets of Salinay surrounded him on a pleasant February afternoon. The coffee had been freshly roasted; it was this local brew that had convinced so many visiting Ettasi and Wyovian scholars never to leave. Three professors from the physics department had come down for a game of ehrgeiz; they needed a fourth. He was so glad to be here; he had returned alive, against all odds, from...
A blast of hellish heat put him back in reality. He woke in a seated position with a log placed at his back. The ground, although it was night, was hot to the touch.
Claes said, “You don’t have a place with us.”
Saito put a hand on Andor’s arm. “Not you. Him.”
“Kanos?” Andor said. “What did he do?”
“There’ll be time to talk about that,” Mazie said. “Please rest. I’ll bring you some more water.”
Andor stretched his legs. “No such thing as rest out here. We should get—”
Kanos’s eyes darted. “I’ll die if you send me off with nothing.”
Claes said, “We’ll give you one-eighth—no, one-ninth—of the money and—”
“No,” Saito said. “That’s not how we’re doing this.”
Claes looked at Saito.
“He’s Company.”
“Ex-Company,” said Kanos. “Like you.”
“That's not what I mean. I wish I had put it together sooner.”
Claes said, “Put what together?”
“They call this guy the Wet Man. He’s a freelance bounty hunter.”
Andor, out of sorts but having heard the words “bounty hunter,” reached for his gun.
Kanos laughed. “Does my reputation in the old world matter? I have no sin unique to me. I have made crass jokes and you have laughed. Like Talyn and Saito, I have collected Company coin. I have talents similar to Farisa’s and, like her, I have used them for personal benefit. Do you know what she did to get herself fired from Cait Forest? She entered a woman’s mind to, in effect, rape her—”
Farisa said, “That is not true.”
“We have Mazie, a common criminal. Stealing has been her way of life since childhood. Claes. Do you want to know what I know about Claes? I know you do.”
“Tell them everything you know,” Claes said.
Farisa said, “You endangered a man’s life, Kanos.”
Kanos spat. “You did a similar thing, you arsonist cunt.”
Farisa said, “Go to hell.”
“That’s not a denial.”
“I did not set the fire.”
“What credibility does your memory have, seeing as you were once in a madhouse?”
Mazie stepped toward Kanos, right in his face. “Go fuck yourself. Who else’ll do it for free?”
“You fucking—”
“I know, I know. I’m a bitch, I’m a cunt. I’d hate women as much as you do, if I had your face.”
Kanos swung at Mazie. Runar grabbed him around the waist, pulling him back so he could not reach her, but a seam of skin on Mazie’s face, from her temple to the corner of her mouth, became a line of blood.
Two mages in one group, Andor realized. No wonder they’re a mess.
Claes drew his gun and pointed it at Kanos’s head.
“Come with me, Eric.” Mazie tugged the boy’s hand. “We’re going to go check on the huskers.”
Claes gritted his teeth. His gun hand turned white. “Does anyone give a goddamn whether this man lives or dies?”
Mazie said, “No.”
Saito said, “No.”
Talyn looked at the ground.
Runar said, “No.”
“Farisa?”
The night wind blew.
“Farisa?”
“No.”