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Chapter 8
Song
“WHAT DO YOU mean?” I stepped outside, into Heart, onto a wide avenue. Conifers and hints of white stone houses filled the left side of the road. Smaller streets wound through the trees, which gave an illusion of privacy, though I got the feeling the plots of land each house stood on were large.
Sam motioned to an odd assortment of buildings on the right, stretching to the far side of the city, visible only because the wall was so big. “This is the industrial quarter. Warehouses, mills, factories.”
“Who does all those jobs?”
“Whoever wants whatever is necessary. Or, for example, if you want bolts of cloth, you can buy them during market day, since there are a few people who like working on those things, and produce more than they can use. It’s their job, and how they earn enough credit to buy food.”
“And those?” I pointed at a maze of huge pipes that ran between buildings. “You could fit a person in them.”
“Used for conducting geothermal energy. This part of Range is on top of an enormous volcano; there’s a lot of power just beneath the ground. We moved to solar energy almost a century ago, because it’s less potentially destructive, but we keep the pipes in place for backup.”
“I see.” I gazed up at windmills that reached higher than the wall. Above everything, the temple pointed at the sky. I couldn’t drop my head back far enough to see the top. Shivering, I turned my attention back to Sam. “Why do you need so much energy? It seems like there’s a lot more coming in than even a million people can use.”
“A lot of the power is used for automated city maintenance systems and mechanical drones that don’t need people to control them. Like snowplows or sewage.” He flashed a grin. “And when you get in trouble a lot, like Stef, you become very familiar with monitoring and cleaning those systems as punishment.”
“What if no one does anything wrong?”
He snorted. “There’s almost always someone. But on the rare occasion there’s not, we have to take turns.”
“Yuck.” I decided to behave. I didn’t want to spend my first—possibly only—lifetime scrubbing unspeakable things.
“I’m surprised no one’s come to greet you,” Sam muttered.
“Gawk. Not greet.” I followed him down the cobblestone avenue, doing my best to avoid dropping my bags while still taking in my surroundings. My first time in Heart since I was born, and the place was dead. “What did you mean before when you said ‘They planned that’?” He couldn’t avoid my question forever.
“What it sounds like. While they were taking their time getting to the guard station, they were deciding what they would offer. They made it sound like they were doing you a favor.”
I hmmed because I hadn’t caught that, but when I considered the conversation again, I agreed. “They don’t seem to respect you very much. Aside from insulting me, what did they mean by ‘projects’?”
He gave a dry chuckle. “Just that I tend to try something new every lifetime. Lots of people learn new things, because it’s simply easier to know how to do everything yourself than it is to realize your plumbing is broken and the only two people in Heart who could fix it are either away from the city or between lives.”
“So you know how to fix your plumbing. That’s not a crime.”
“But if I make it a point to learn something new every life and try—and sometimes fail—to keep up with old projects from previous lives, it makes me appear directionless. They think I’ve taken on too many things and don’t stick with enough of them.”
“Very contradictory.” I struggled to keep up with his long strides, especially now that I was carrying double what I had been. I didn’t blame him for his haste now that we were this close, but the day was considerably warmer than the past few weeks. My head buzzed with strain.
“That’s life.”
Apparently. “What did you tell Corin to make him change his mind about calling Meuric?”
Sam didn’t quite manage to shrug, thanks to the bags on his shoulders.
“About how useless I am? How I need help and would die if left on my own?” It was all probably true. I hadn’t lasted a day after leaving Li’s house.
“No, nothing like that.” His focus was straight ahead.
After fifteen minutes of trotting after Sam in silence, I said, “I don’t like Corin.”
“He isn’t a bad person. He’s just stiff and follows too many rules. Don’t blame him for what happened today.”