Chapter 95:
A rough hand on her arm. Shaking her. Shaking her awake. Mayah sat up, bleary-eyed. It took her a moment to remember where she was, to remember how she got there. Stifling a yawn, she reached for her glasses, then remembered – she couldn’t wear them anymore.
“Eat this.” The woman who had woken Mayah up shoved a cup of rice mixed with water at her. “You missed breakfast.”
Wishing the cup were bigger, Mayah swallowed the runny meal. She rubbed her face with the back of her hand, then got up. The woman took the empty cup from her at once, gripping it with both hands as if it were a Rajas rum chalice or something. Then, just as quickly, she tucked the cup into the folds of her servie uniform. Startled, and a little confused, Mayah waited as the woman stepped back, as she looked Mayah up and down. She seemed wary, but she was now just at the edge of Mayah’s vision so Mayah couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face. Then the woman pointed to a bucket in the corner, a rag hanging from its handle. “The foreman assigned you to help me today. Wash where I sweep.”
Mayah knelt by the bucket. She was still hungry and tired, but she didn’t say anything. She mostly felt confused. An Eenta wearing black livery… that didn’t happen, did it? And there was something too in the cadence of the woman’s voice that reminded Mayah of Sukren. She puzzled it out as she scrubbed the rag across the barracks floor. Why would an Eenta serf woman sound like Sukren?
“Do you have it?”
Mayah looked up. Another Eenta all in black, rubber mattresses bundled up in his arms, had entered the barracks. The Eenta woman was looking right at him, clearly expecting an answer. “Yes,” the man replied. “I managed to procure the right dosage. I can administer it to you at any time. We won’t need to go to a clinic.”
“Thank the water-god,” the woman murmured. “For my part, I have the file you requested. And something else, a –”
“Who is she?”
The Eenta man was looking at Mayah now. The woman shrugged. “She came in last night with a couple others.”
“Has she been classified yet?”
“No.”
The man stiffened. He turned away from Mayah, who dropped her head. Suddenly, she understood. These were no castle serfs. The man was a doctor-priest, and the woman a regent. That was why they sounded like Sukren.
***
Rajani sat, head down, her arm still in its sling, at the very back of one of the barbed-in bazaar stalls. Next to her was Sukren. He was blind, he was sick, he was dying, and there was nothing she could do, nothing, nothing, nothing, just like the gods had done nothing, just like they could do nothing, oh Hunt, oh Gather, how could you have allowed this to happen, how could you have let it, how, how, how!
Then she heard the murmurs traveling down. “They’re moving us. They’re telling us we have to move.”
Rajani got to her feet. At least her arm was splinted now – a Cursed physician who’d refused to treat Shib-vyn just before the raid had, for Rajani’s sake, bargained through the barbed bioplastic for a fallen bio-dome branch – but even so, getting up was no easy task. She had to shift to the side, get onto her knees, then grab Sukren’s shoulder to heave herself up. Then she remembered – Sukren couldn’t see her reaching for him – she should’ve asked him, warned him, before she touched him.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. But Sukren didn’t move, didn’t even acknowledge her. “Sukren,” she tried again. “They’re telling us we have to go.”
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A grunt emerged from his lips. He still didn’t move. Overwhelmed, Rajani closed her eyes and tried to think. Maybe he needed help to walk, maybe he needed something to lean on. But there was nothing around them. The stalls that made up the pens were not exactly bustling with bazaar goods. When the Cursed had first been shoved into them, all they’d contained were rotting barrels and broken-down bioplastic stools. Now, four diurnals later, they contained little else still.
“Here,” Rajani heard someone say. She opened her eyes. Kebet’s father, Ishiah, had approached, and was pulling Sukren to his feet. A few others, Becher from the Kerimot Table, Zemirsh from the Alem Table, were assisting him. Nearby Jiat was helping Kebet hobble his way down the length of the pens.
Ishiah, Becher, Zemirsh, Jiat, Kebet, Sukren. Six of them. Together, they made up half the surviving men. While Rajani and the other women counted sixty. That meant ninety-three percent of the Cursed had been annihilated in the Xhota raid.
Rajani closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to think anymore.
Slowly the seventy-odd Cursed citizens made their way to a gap between two bazaar stall posts where the bioplastic barbed strands had been cut. Outside the pens the Xhota soldiers were waiting to shove them into rows of four. Rajani managed to grab Soti’s hand right before they were pushed into a row; her cousin clung to her. “It’s okay,” Rajani murmured. She said it out of habit, not because it was the truth, because it wasn’t. In fact, it was obvious to everyone that it was not okay, that nothing was okay. But what else could Rajani say? Soti was frightened and Rajani was used to reassuring her frightened cousins.
Now only one cousin.
Tears slipped down Rajani’s face before she could stop them. She felt Soti’s fingers tighten around hers. “Rajani-am?” she heard Soti ask. “Is it true, what they say about us? Are we mutineers?”
At that, something inside Rajani, something she’d thought had died, flared up. “No!” she cried out.
“No talking! Hurry up!”
They began moving forward. Rajani couldn’t see much beyond the backs of the citizens in front of her, and since both she and Soti were in the middle of their row of four, neither could she see very well the landscape around them through which the Cursed were now marching. But she could see Soti. She could see Soti’s frightened face, her utter willingness to obey the shouted command to shut up and walk faster. No, no, no, Rajani thought, the first thought she’d had since the raid that wasn’t marked by rage and grief. No, no, she’s too young, they’ll mold her, they’ll convince her to hate herself, she’ll become an adult believing that she’s a mutineer descendant, she’ll swallow their lies, she’ll think less of herself in her own head, and I can’t let that happen, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!
But is it a lie? a voice hissed, fork-tongued, inside her. Haven’t the gods abandoned you? Do they even exist? Maybe the overbelters are right, maybe you all are mutineers, maybe you deserve this fate.
No! Rajani cried out, her hand curling around Soti’s. No, I won’t let her grow up believing that!
So you’ll teach her a lie.
No!
You said it yourself. Either the gods are powerless, unable to stop the overbelters from destroying the Cursed, or they are evil, hating the Cursed and desiring to see their death.
No!
You said it yourself.
Rajani had said it herself. She had. She still said it to herself, said it night after night after night. But now Soti’s face was cast down and her gaze was lost, and she was frightened and Rajani remembered, she remembered how oh so long ago Rajani had crossed a rain-slick rope bridge and stood on a limestone shell platform built into the face of a mountain and she’d told Soti the story of the Jinkari Table, she’d told Soti who they were. And what was it that she’d told herself then?
The pain is a test. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are. Do you still believe you belong to Hunt’s Table, even when you’re not treated like it? Or will you let the pain name you?
A bitter laugh almost rose up out of Rajani. Oh what wouldn’t she give to be back in the Cursed urb, facing down her own people, facing down Chief Bikash! What wouldn’t she give to suffer that kind of pain! Compared to what she was going through now, it was nothing, nothing. How could anyone call what the Cursed were enduring now a test? How could anyone see death as a tool? Death was the all-consuming maw of a mammole, it was the choking carbon-dioxide outside the bio-dome, it was the end, it was the enemy.
Rajani might have left it there, might have bowed her head and returned to her bitterness. But Soti’s hand was still around hers, and Soti’s soul was still looking for answers.