I’m about to just throw my box of leather on the street, refuse to carry it any farther, when we turn down another alley and venture inside a small tavern, or bar, where everyone hunches over small tureens that smell like hot rat stew, but also like liquor. We lay Reynold on a big oak table, and I’m able to unload the box and my rucksack onto the floor, and blood flows back into my shoulders and hands, so I feel light-headed with relief. Nearby, Yulya and Alyssa help Kendrick into a chair. When I look back at the table where we left Reynold, a man is already cleaning his wounds and has some fancy wound sealant ready. Gerry has already made himself scarce.
Over in the corner of this tavern, or whatever it is, a quartet of musicians pounds out a discordant rhythm on mandolins, drums, and a brass piano, while also playing some board game that involves beautifully carved pewter fish. I think the drummer is winning.
Alyssa, Yulya, and Mouth greet a man who looks familiar, and then I realize: he looks a lot like Omar, our dead leader. Same long curls over a cotton shawl, same whiskers and sideburns. I hear this man say the name “Omar” in the middle of a question, and then Alyssa and Mouth both shake their heads and mutter apologies. The man, whose name turns out to be Ahmad, weeps into one sleeve and brushes off all attempts to console him.
We all just sit for a while, Ahmad staring into the distance and occasionally trembling.
Somebody hands me a bowl of the pungent alcohol-spiked broth, and I force myself to gulp down a few mouthfuls because I can’t remember the last time I ate. It almost doesn’t stay down. My whole body is sore, but I don’t know if I’m supposed to be sleepy right now.
At last Ahmad comes over to Bianca and me. “You came a long way,” he says in perfect Xiosphanti. “Welcome to Argelo.”
“Omar was a really good person,” Bianca tells him. “He saved us from an awful situation back in Xiosphant, and kept us safe on the road when we were too stupid to live.” She smiles at me, and I half smile back. I’m starting to forgive her for the things she said about the Gelet.
“Thanks,” Ahmad says. I notice he’s not eating the stew. “I used to travel with my little brother, and keep an eye on him. Now I wish I hadn’t stopped.”
Bianca nods and takes a swig of the stew. “He kept his sense of humor in conditions that would make most people scream. I didn’t even realize how much he meant to all of us until he was gone.”
They talk about Omar a while longer, while the musicians pack up. I feel so exhausted and numb inside I can’t hold my head up, and I feel drunk on three spoonfuls of stew. But Ahmad’s grief reminds me just how recently Omar died, and how little time we’ve had to mourn.
At last Ahmad says, “Alyssa is hoping you can stay with my wife and me. We don’t have a lot of space, but there’s a small extra room. The goods you managed to bring from Xiosphant will cover your costs for a while.”
“Thank you,” Bianca says. “I always dreamed about coming to Argelo and experiencing real freedom, but now that we’re here … I don’t even know. How do we even live here?”
Ahmad brushes this away. “We’ll worry about that when you’re rested. Come on, I’ll show you our luxury penthouse.”
We shoulder our backpacks again, say goodbye to the Resourceful Couriers, and follow Ahmad’s swaying gait down a series of zigzag alleys coated with vomit. At one point, he says: “I remember the first time I came home to Argelo after traveling with Omar. Took me a while to get used to the noise and the chaos again.” Like he’s trying to relate to our disorientation, but also his grief is still so new that everything reminds him of Omar. We emerge into the sunny side of town, at a plain cement block.
Upstairs, the apartment is just a single long room, with a dining table, a tiny kitchen area and washroom, clean white walls, and tapestries showing beautiful patterns of geometric shapes. Ahmad and his wife sleep in the back, with their son nearby, but Ahmad shows us to a tiny storage space with two bedrolls, for Bianca and me. It’s a little bigger than the sleep nook, at least. Bianca’s already falling onto one of the bedrolls, without bothering to wash or even undress, and I join her, my boots still on.
For a moment, I feel wide-eyed with fear, bordering on delirium, because I still don’t know whether the shutters are up or down at home. Plus, too much light is coming into this space. Now that I’m back inside walls and surrounded by people again, some part of my brain expects some order to my sleeping and my waking.
I’m pulling my body into a snake shape, turned away from Bianca, when she murmurs: “I heard what you said in the storm, on the boat.” Now I’m wide awake, and I have a sprinter’s heart.
“I need you to know that I’ll never let anyone take you away from me again. I would burn everything to fine ash, both cities, the world, to keep you with me. You belong here, you’re fucking mine. Whatever comes next, we’re going to demolish it together.”
I catch my breath, and then I lose it again. I lie next to her with my heart speeding, until exhaustion drags me under. The whole time I’m asleep, I’m hearing her words in my head, and when I wake I’m not sure that I didn’t just dream them.
mouth
The light in Argelo didn’t look like the light in Xiosphant, or anywhere else. Xiosphant had those two perfect mountains to block and reflect the sunshine, creating a pale glow across the whole town that tapered as you approached the night. Out on the road, the light was naked, and you learned not to turn your head too far in either direction, but there was a different quality to the shadow—full of texture and energy—thanks to those storms that came right up to you and sometimes tore you apart. In Argelo, though, everything felt more muted because most of the city was recessed into the ground, and so you sometimes felt as though the dark was coming up out of the Pit and spreading over everything. There was a poet once who said something like, Xiosphant is the city of dawn, but Argelo is the dusk city.
Mouth and Alyssa spent most of their share of the Couriers’ haul, plus some savings, on a tiny apartment overlooking the bright end of the Knife, Argelo’s biggest nightclub district. With a balcony, so they could watch all of the party kids throwing up on each other. They filled the apartment with artisanal rattan furniture, and decorated with dried flowers and hilariously ugly paintings of children riding around on cats, using the cats’ neck spikes to steer. (In real life, if a child tried that, their parents would have one less mouth to feed.)
Mouth couldn’t lean too far over the balcony or she’d have an instant recall of hanging over sharp ice, pleading for her life. She was starting to remember how painstakingly she had built a cairn inside herself, a stable structure that kept her upright and fighting, protected her from any emotional assaults, spared her from being afraid of dying. But these things always crumble when you need them most.
Alyssa spoke up from the big rattan chair. “So. You remember that conversation we had in Xiosphant? About retiring from smuggling? Time we made it official.”
Alyssa got up and poured out some of this fancy wine, made from blackberries that grew on bushes out in the bright hills past the steppes, which only fruited once in a while, when the hot wind came off the day just right. She handed Mouth a glass, and she looked into its scrim. The smell was better than the taste: like air from a cloistered orchard, where nothing bad could happen.
“Even if I wasn’t broken after that last trip,” Alyssa said, “there’s the fact that the Couriers are basically you and me. Kendrick doesn’t want to travel ever again, if he even recovers. Yulya said one round trip was enough for her. We don’t even know if Reynold will ever wake up. We’d need to recruit a whole new crew, and neither of us is an Omar. And my guess? Nobody travels anymore. It’s just gotten too dangerous.”
Mouth felt like the wine had gone down the wrong pipe. But she put on a smile. “So. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do.” Alyssa laughed. “I’m not going to waste my remaining money on partying and gambling and buying fancy bottles of booze—even though this wine tastes lovely—the way that Argelo always wants you to do. This town is designed to separate losers from their money, and all the prices keep going up. So I’m going to live cheaply after this. Maybe invest in something. Start a business, you know, open a shop.”
“You’re going to be a shopkeeper.” Mouth couldn’t help laughing. “You? Standing in the middle of a salesroom, trying to get people to buy shirts? I can imagine you robbing a store, but not owning one.”
“Wow, thanks.” Alyssa cast her eyes at the ceiling for a moment. “Really appreciate the vote of confidence. So glad you think I’m doomed to failure.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just … You might as well shave your head and become one of those bald music teachers.”