Driftwood Page 5

  The jest made Qoress flinch, but Last might be right. He smoothed his expression and gripped Last’s hand. “May all the gods smile on your journey.”

  He stood at the edge of his world and watched until the guide vanished into the tunnels, his own words echoing in his mind. Whether their paradise lay beyond the Crush or not, they could not ignore where they were. At least now his people would face Driftwood with their eyes open, guided by one who, if he did not understand it, was willing to learn.

  If heresy could lead to salvation, then he would find a way.

  recorded by Yilime

  The Defender

  THE CLUSTER OF STARS that provides most of the nighttime light sets over the wall the amphitheater shares with Soggeny while Eshap is talking, leaving the place in near-total darkness. But one of the other Drifters who works with him in the fields of I Grun I digs in the pile and comes up with a set of three sticks joined by a ring; when they twist the sticks to form a tripod, a light flares and rises from where the legs of the tripod meet. It bathes the entire amphitheater in gentle amber warmth.

  Eshap murmurs his thanks, then holds up the mask. “This was the face of their king—the face Qoress took on, for the sake of his people. My great-grandmother was the last to rule as king; I haven’t put it on. There’s no point in doing it when there aren’t any Miqerni to lead anymore. But I have this mask—my great-grandmother and all the Miqerni before her had it—because of Last. Because he showed Qoress a way to adapt. Without that. . . . .” He shook his head. “They fell apart in the end. Lost faith in their kings, the promises of the priests—the usual tale. But it would have happened a lot sooner without his help. I may be a Drifter, not Miqerin, but I’m still grateful to Last for that.”

  Silence has more or less reigned throughout his story, the assembled Drifters and occasional oneblood respecting Eshap enough to give him a proper hearing. It continues to hold as he reverently lays the mask on the nearest slope of the pile.

  Then it is broken by a derisive snort.

  The sound comes from Kuondae. Eshap knows her only distantly: a cynical shadow on the edge of his sphere, more inclined to earn her living with her mind than her hands. An interpreter and sometime spy, for those who can tolerate the sharp edge of her tongue. The dark-skinned woman with the gold in her hair spoke to Kuondae just before Eshap’s story began, but what Kuondae might have said—and how much truth it held—is anyone’s guess.

  Because the bitterness in Kuondae runs to the bone. Two of her parents were Drifters, but the third was Yrecir, and chose her pair of mates from outside her own people, in defiance of the Yrecra insistence on breeding only within their own boundaries. When she found herself regretting that choice, she abandoned her daughter to the Shreds.

  Kuondae lacks the full pelt of a proper Yrecir, but her grey-tinged skin is covered in a fine, soft layer of fuzz. It gives her a feline appearance as she perches on the low wall separating the amphitheater seats from the stage.

  “Right,” she says, in a carrying, contemptuous voice. “Last is such a generous man, a positive wellspring of charity. Never ever accepts payment for his help, even when people press it on him . . . oh, sorry. I’m confusing him with a saint. Or a god.”

  An uncomfortable ripple goes through the amphitheater at that last barb. One quiet figure near the bottom of the stands smiles. He wears a blue-grey robe, and sits with a scrolling lap-desk and pen; he has been here since the second night, making a list of the items added to the pile. And, more recently, recording Eshap’s story.

  Kuondae hops down from the wall and circles the pile of mementos, like a predator eyeing a carcass. “Last charged my first-father a month’s wages to go into Yr-alani and get medicine for me when my fur started to fall out. Generous?” She spits in Eshap’s direction. “Not hardly.”

  Someone behind her says, “He paid most of that to the Yrecir, for the medicine.”

  “So he claimed.” Kuondae’s lip curls. “But he always keeps some for himself, doesn’t he?”

  “He still had to eat!” another person shouts from up in the stands.

  Kuondae flicks her fingers dismissively in that general direction. “Does he? I thought the man can’t die. Every meal he’s ever eaten—couldn’t that have gone into the mouth of a beggar instead? Some sad little orphan of a dead world?” The bitter acid of her tone mocks the notion. Sometimes the Drifter community takes care of the needy, the abandoned . . . but not always. As Kuondae knows all too well.

  She pivots to face Eshap as if to turn her back on that memory. “I heard your story, but I took something different from it. Last is a liar. He helped Qoress trick your people, and he did it so well, they decided to cling to that trick like it was a holy writ from the Amber God or whatever rock you said they were worshipping.”

  Eshap’s hands ball into fists. She snatches up a glass bottle and holds it like a knife, grinning. Her teeth are smaller than her mother’s, but still sharp. “I bet he’s watching this whole thing from nearby, laughing his ass off. When nobody’s looking, he’ll come take a few choice things from this heap and keep them for himself.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  If Kuondae resembles a small, furred predator, Ioi might to be trying to mimic a bird. The sides of their head are shaved, and white feathers are braided into the strip of hair that remains, stark against the warm rose-gold of their skin. They hold no gift, but come to join the other two on the stage floor anyway, like a performer making their entrance.

  Kuondae’s sharp-toothed smile only deepens. “Which part? The lying? The profit? Or . . . the part where he’s still alive?”

  Another murmur runs through the amphitheater, but Ioi ignores it. “If he were as selfish as you say, then he wouldn’t spend someone’s entire lifetime helping them.”

  In Driftwood, a claim like that comes with a fair bit of wiggle room. One of the new worlds on the Edge is inhabited by people that are born and die in less time than it takes most races to gestate, incubate, or otherwise get their offspring ready for life. But such quibbles are the stuff of smart-ass arguments in bars, and Kuondae doesn’t take the bait.

  She merely waves her hand and returns to her perch on the wall. “So you have a pretty little story of your own. Tell it if you want . . . it will make no difference.”

  Into the Wind

  THE TENEMENTS presented a blank face to the border: an unbroken expanse of wall, windowless, gapless, resolutely blind to the place that used to be Oneua. Only at the edges of the tenements could one pass through, entering the quiet and sunlit strip of weeds that separated the buildings from the world their inhabitants had once called home.

  Eyo stood in the weeds, an arm’s length from the border. The howling sands formed a wall in front of her, close enough to touch. They clouded the light of Oneua’s suns, until she could barely make out the nearest structure, the smooth lines of its walls eroded and broken by the incessant rasp of the sands. And yet where she stood, with her feet on the soil of Gevsilon, the air was quiet and still and damp. The line between the two was as sharp as if it had been sliced with a razor.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it, kid.”

  The voice was a stranger’s, speaking the local trade pidgin. Eyo knew he was addressing her, but kept her gaze fixed on the boundary before her, and the maelstrom of sand beyond. She didn’t care what some stranger thought.

  People came here sometimes. Not the Oneui— not usually—but their neighbors in Gevsilon, or other residents of Driftwood looking for that rare thing, a quiet place to sit and be alone. The winds looked like their shrieking should drown out even thought, but their sound didn’t cross the border, any more than the sand did. As long as you didn’t look at the sandstorm, this place was peaceful.

  But apparently the stranger didn’t want to be quiet and alone. In her peripheral vision she saw movement, someone coming to stand at her side, not too close. Someone as tall as an Oneui adult, and that was unusual in Driftwood.

  “You wouldn’t b
e the first of your people to try,” he said. “You’re one of the Oneui, right? You must have heard the stories.”

  Oh, she had. It started as a dry, stinging wind, after their world parched to dust. Then it built into a sandstorm, one that raged for days without pause, just as their prophecies had foretold. Eyo’s grandparents and the others of their town had refused to believe it was the end of the world; in their desperation, they gathered up their water and food and tied themselves together to prevent anyone from getting lost, and they went in search of a place safe from the sand.

  They stumbled into Gevsilon. And that was how they found out their world had ended.

  But not entirely. This remnant of it survived. And Gevsilon, their inward neighbor, had gone through an apocalypse of its own: a plague that rendered all their people sterile. There weren’t many of the Nigevi left anymore, which meant there was enough room for the Oneui to resettle. Just a stone’s throw from the remnants of their own world, and everything they’d left behind.

  Of course some of them tried to go back. The first few returned coughing and blind, defeated by the ever-worsening storm. The next few stumbled out bloody, their clothing shredded and their flesh torn raw.

  The last few didn’t return at all.

  “Why do you lot keep trying?” the stranger asked. “You know by now that it won’t end well. Is this just how your people have taken to committing suicide?” Some worlds did that, Eyo knew. Their people couldn’t handle the realization that it was over, that Driftwood was their present and their future, until the last scraps of their world shrank and faded away. They killed themselves singly or en masse, making a ritual of it, a show of obedience to or protest against the implacable forces that sent them here.

  Not her.

  She meant to go on ignoring the stranger. It wasn’t any of his business why she was here, staring at the lethal swirls of the sandstorm. But when she turned to go, she saw him properly: a tall man, slender and strong, his hair and eyes and fingernails pure black, but his skin tinged lightly with blue.

  In Driftwood, people came in all sizes and colors and number of limbs and presence or lack of horns and tails. Eyo didn’t claim to know them all. But she’d heard of only one person fitting this man’s description.

  “You’re Last,” she said. Sudden excitement made her tense.

  His eyes tightened in apprehension, and he retreated a careful step. “I am.”

  “You can help me,” Eyo said.

  He retreated again, glancing over his shoulder, toward the faceless wall of the Oneui tenements, and the nearest opening past them. “I don’t think so, kid. Sorry. I—”

  She stepped forward, matching him. She didn’t have her full growth yet, but she was quick and good at running; she would chase him if he fled. “You’re a guide, aren’t you? Someone who knows things, knows where to find things.”

  He stopped. “I—yes. I am.”

  One of the best in Driftwood, or so people said. He knew the patchwork of realities that made up this area, because he’d been around for longer than any of them. The stories claimed he was called Last because he was the last of his own world—a world that had been gone longer than anyone could remember.

  Clarity dawned. “Oh. You thought I was going to ask you to go into the sandstorm?”

  He gave the howling storm a sideways glance. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  Because the stories also said he couldn’t die. Eyo scowled. “Someone asked you? Who? Tell me their name. I don’t care what the storm is like; the idea of sending an outsider in there, asking them to bring back the—”

  She cut herself off, but not before Last’s eyebrows rose. “Bring back? You lost something in the storm?” “It isn’t lost,” Eyo snapped. “We know exactly where it is.”

  Now she saw clarity dawn for him. “That’s why your people keep going in,” he said thoughtfully, gaze drifting sideways again. “Look, whatever it is—it may not even be there anymore. This is Driftwood; things crumble and fade away, even without apocalyptic sandstorms to scour them into dust.”

  Conviction stiffened Eyo’s crest, her scalp feathers rising in a proud line. “Not this. Everything else will fall apart and die, but not—” She swallowed and shook her head. “When we are gone, this will remain.”

  His shrug said he didn’t agree, but he also didn’t care enough to argue anymore. “So if you don’t want to send me into that, what do you want me for?”

  Eyo smoothed her crest with one hand, as flat to her skull as she could make it. If he knew her people, he would recognize that as a gesture of humility and supplication. “I want you to help me find a way to survive the sand.”

  “I told you it wouldn’t work!”

  In his fury, Last kicked the wall, which earned him a swift glare from Uaru. Eyo’s grandaime had helped build this tenement with their own hands after the Oneui fled the sands. If Last broke something, they would take it out of his hide.

  He gestured in apology, and Uaru went back to bandaging Eyo’s fingers, their touches as gentle as possible. Eyo bit her lips until she was sure she could speak without hissing in pain. “You said it probably wouldn’t work. I had to make sure.”

  “By sticking your hand across the border and letting it get torn apart? Use some common sense, In-Eyo! Get yourself a hunk of meat, wrap that up in the slidecloth, and see how it fares before you risk your own flesh!”

  She hadn’t thought of that. Her hand throbbed under Uaru’s ministrations, as if in reproach. By the Oneui’s best guess at keeping their old calendar, Eyo was an adult now; she’d gone through her rite of passage two triple cycles of Gevsilon’s moons ago, with Uaru and Eyo’s other hanaime kin drumming and singing the traditional songs. But Last still called her In-Eyo, as if she were a child, and it was hard to tell him to stop when she’d just done something that proved him right.

  “I’ll be more careful next time,” she said.

  Last scowled. “If you had any sense of self-preservation, there wouldn’t be a next time. In-Eyo—Sa-Uaru—won’t one of you tell me what’s in there? What are you so desperate to retrieve?”

  Uaru pressed their lips together and shook their head. They’d been furious when they found out the person who asked Last to go into the storm was another hanaime, Aune. But even Aune hadn’t told Last what they were looking for—not after he refused to go.

  Eyo’s hand was fully bandaged. She cradled it gently after Uaru released her and began putting away their supplies. “It’s something important, Sa-Last. Something we need. Our people never would have left it there if they’d realized . . .”

  Her throat closed, ending the sentence. If they’d realized they could never go back.

  She’d grown up on stories of all the things her grandparents had left behind, everything from shell cameos of ancestors she’d never met to her grandfather’s favorite chair. The things they brought with them had the aura of holy relics—even the mundane ones, like the battered tin cup out of which Eyo’s grandaime drank their salt tea every morning. But one absence loomed larger than all the rest, not because people spoke of it so often, but because they didn’t.

  Last turned away and braced his palms against the wall, head down. Eyo’s hand throbbed again as he watched him. Finally, breathing out a long sigh, he said, “I’ll keep looking. Slidecloth obviously isn’t enough to protect you. And you would have been walking blind anyway, with that over your eyes. You need something better.”

  “Thank you,” Eyo said.

  He straightened up, his air of determination returning. “Thank me by being less reckless with the next possibility.”

  But the next possibility, when it came, couldn’t be tested with a piece of meat.

  Last handed over the package with something less than confidence. “You know, normally when a Sut-kef-chid is trying to sell you something, they praise its qualities to the skies. When she heard what I wanted this for, though, she got a lot less enthusiastic.”

  Eyo unwrapped the cloth, r
evealing a small ceramic flute. “This should calm the winds?”

  “It does calm winds. And it works outside of Sutke; I tested it. But whether it’s strong enough to overcome the sandstorm . . . the only way to find that out is to test it.”

  Which meant playing the flute. While standing in the storm.

  Last’s hand twitched. He clearly regretted giving her the flute. Eyo said, “I’m not as foolish as I used to be. Can you get me more slidecloth?”

  It wouldn’t protect her against the winds for long; she’d proved that three lunar years ago. But it could buy her some time. “I’ll see what I can do,” Last said.

  Wrapped in slidecloth, with a rope harness tied around her body and the flute in her hand, Eyo faced the sandstorm again. Someone had built a bridge over what remained of the Eckuoz Sea at the beginning of the last solar year, widdershins of Oneua and Gevsilon; it turned the weed-filled gap between the windowless backs of the Oneui tenements and the sandstorm into a thoroughfare for people in that part of Driftwood. Garbed and harnessed as she was, Eyo garnered a lot of odd stares from passersby. Last held the other end of the rope, ready to pull.

  “Give me a hundred heartbeats,” she said.

  Last snorted. “What am I, a fishmonger with a day-old catch? No bargaining. I’ll give you thirty, and I’ll pull you out sooner if I see the slidecloth start to shred. You’re already going to get your face flayed.” Unhappiness weighed down his words.

  There was no arguing with him. Short of taking the rope harness off entirely, she couldn’t prevent him from yanking her back. Eyo’s younger self might have done it in a fit of bravado, but she was smart enough now to accept the precaution. “All right.”

  She pulled the slidecloth mask down over her face, leaving only her mouth clear. Somehow, not being able to see the storm made it far more frightening. Her pulse pounded, counting off the beats faster than usual. Eyo’s breath shallowed, and when she brought the flute to her lips, it took her three tries to produce a sound, even though she’d practiced for this day.