*
IN THE WITCH CAMPS I don’t even have to pretend I’m skittish. My memories from our last trek down this alley are still fresh and my eyes bounce from one side of the road to the other, searching for any of the defective Watchers we saw before. By the time we cross the wooden bridge—the last barrier between the mountains and the camps—I’m spooking at just about everything.
I wish I had Brax with me. I always feel safer with him.
Lorcan takes the lead, pulling the palomino by a grimy leather headstall. Two enormous sacks of pelts are strapped over the animal’s barrel-shaped body. Kiran holds steady the right side, I’m on the left. The smell is enough to make me gag. With such little time to tan the hides, they still reek of rot and the brine we used to cure them. Between that and the way I smell, I can barely breathe.
We pass the tower of rusted cars, an ancient sculpture in the gray light, and I swear I feel eyes—seeing or not—on me.
A line of townsfolk from the outlying villages has formed outside the city gates. Most are dressed in patched-up city clothes and are carrying baskets or pushing carts. A few have been denied entry and are standing off to the side while a Watcher rifles through their items. Fear tightens in my belly. We can’t be searched. If they get too close they’ll know something’s off. They’ll see right through me. They’ll know I’m a girl, maybe that I’m a runaway, maybe that I killed one of their own. And then I’ll never even have a chance to find my family.
“Keep your head down,” whispers Kiran.
I do as he says, only chancing a quick glance forward every few steps.
In the mist it’s hard to see clearly, but there are at least two parties before us. The man in front is trying to manage a small herd of goats for the livestock sales. Three people wait behind them, and as we get closer my gut clenches. A middle-aged man leads two girls in clean linen dresses. Stock for the Garden from a nearby town. The girls’ heads are hung in shame, and as I draw closer I can hear one of them crying. It’s the father. He keeps wiping his nose on the back of his hand and trying to hold it in.
“It’ll be all right,” he tells them with a hitch in his voice. “You’ll have everything I couldn’t give you.”
I don’t understand this; if he doesn’t want to give them up he shouldn’t. There are other ways to live.
The farmer in front is stopped at the open gate by two Watchers. After a few short words, he’s ushered off to the side, and half his goats make a break for it. He goes chasing after them, his long staff waving.
We step closer. The man with the two girls makes it through. And then I’m standing in the gatekeeper’s shadow.
“What. Have. You. Got.” The Watcher is practically yelling in Lorcan’s face as he points at the sacks. My spine straightens before I remember myself and slouch again, bolting my eyes to my dirty boots.
Lorcan’s showing the Watcher the pieces I’ve made. Another Watcher shows up. He walks to Kiran’s side of the horse and begins rummaging through the pelts and furs.
He keeps digging, and a drop of sweat makes a slow path between my shoulder blades. If he goes too deep he’ll find the knife at the bottom of Lorcan’s case.
Before he gets to the bottom, the Watcher abandons Lorcan’s case and rounds in front of the animal to where I wait. As he begins the same process on this side, I shuffle back, just like Kiran taught me. I’m never to stand too close to anyone. That way it’s hard to notice I’m nearly a head shorter than most of the men.
He searches for what feels like hours. Finally he gives the go ahead to the other Watcher who types something into a messagebox, and returns to the glass station. He comes back with a red form and shoves it towards Lorcan. Kiran’s told me this is a one-day business pass.
We’re in.
I keep my eyes down as we cross the threshold into Glasscaster, but not just because I’m supposed to. If I look up and see those high stone walls I tried to escape from for all those months, my feet might grow a mind of their own and run out of here.
The stones are hard under these big borrowed boots Lorcan gave me, and the buildings in the business district seem even more crowded than they were the last time I was here. They loom over me like Trackers with nets and make it hard not to hurry.
We join the main street I last travelled by carriage. The Black Lanes are quiet; the Virulent are either sleeping off the previous night, or have already begun their journey downtown, leaving just a few of the plagued leaning up against the trash bins and doors. On the side wall of a brothel I catch a glimpse of a line of posters, like the ones Lorcan brought back, but I don’t let myself linger.
I become suddenly aware of three men passing by. They’re laughing drunkenly about something one of them has said. Without thinking, I lift my chin to watch where they’re going, but Kiran pushes me roughly back to the horse and I nearly fall. The men look over and jeer again.
When I glance up at Kiran, his copper eyes are blazing. But as he shoves me back to my position, he whispers something in my ear.
“The mayor’s looking for you. Remember that. Don’t let them see your face.”
My stomach drops like it’s filled with stones. I can hear Amir’s voice echoing in the back of my head: “Where are you?” My skin is crawling with the memories of Greer chasing me around the bedroom.
More people join us in the following minutes. Mostly townspeople coming to sell their wares at auction, but some Virulent too. Two hungover Skinmongers wobble by on the right. The closest one, in a skintight blue bodysuit, pukes in the gutter beside my feet. Rainwater and muck splash onto my pants. Then she stumbles into me, lifts my arm, and wipes her mouth with my sleeve.
I jerk away and lower my eyes. She casts me a look of disgust.
“Yick,” says her friend. “You got Driver on you.”
My jaw hurts because my teeth are grinding together so hard.
We edge into the residential district, and the flashes of my last trip here are coming faster. My last carriage ride to auction. The salmon dress and the satin gloves glued to my hands. My soft, filed-down feet within those impossible heels. Elegance. I am hardly elegant now.
More people, and with them, Watchers. I pass one on the right and when our gaze connects my stomach leaps into my throat. But he’s not staring at me, he’s staring through me. Like I don’t exist at all.
“Sell goats, not girls!” comes a shout to my right. I remember the activists from my last auction and feel a jolt of hope that the Red Right endures despite the odds. The Watcher’s head whips around and he’s lost in the crowd.
They might not endure for long.
Merchants and their families push by us. Pips hold back their wards from coming too close and say things like, “No no, that’s dirty,” and, “Don’t touch.” Once I am bumped so hard I crash to my knees. The man never looks back.
At last Lorcan turns down a street lined by small shops. One is filled with wires and small machines. Another is all white and has a picture of a man leading a horse, with an X over it. I think this must mean Drivers aren’t welcome there. A small medical clinic, and finally, a pharmacy.
It’s a green-glass building with a glowing white plus sign in the front window. Not many people are on this offshoot, and those we pass are going the opposite way, towards the market.
We have arrived, and if Lorcan is right, my family has been no more than blocks away my whole time at the Garden. The very thought is enough to make me furious.
Lorcan does not pause to give me any look, warning or otherwise, and without another word, Kiran and I push inside.
“Quick,” I hear Kiran breathe.
I want to ransack the place. To turn over every shelf until I find my family, and then to run for the mountains. But I don’t. I stay timid. I tell myself to be still.
Two people are inside. A woman and a young boy, looking down a row of glass bottles filled with different colored liquids and pills. Kiran shuffles beside them, careful not to get too close, and grabs a container of sloshing green syrup. It looks like the medicine Kyna gave him. With a small frown I wonder if he still needs it; I haven’t seen him use any since then.
He walks to the front and stands in line. I am surprised again. Kiran didn’t tell me he had planned on buying anything. Does he even have credits? This was not part of the plan.
“May I help … oh, yes ma’am.”
I turn to see that the woman and her child have cut in front of Kiran. Anger flashes over my worry, and if this were any other place I would shove her aside and tell her to wait her turn. I don’t know how Kiran stands being treated this way. The walk from the gate to the pharmacy has been enough disrespect to last me a lifetime.
I look past the pair to the Virulent woman behind the open window at the checkout counter. She has long dark hair, pinned back in the city fashion, and large brown eyes. A full chest is crowded into a tight white uniform. The tell-tale sign of her class is slashed across her right cheek.
Salma.
My knees weaken. My blood turns to water. She’s been marked. I want to kill the Watcher that did that to her.
She couldn’t have turned herself in. Lorcan’s wrong. She wouldn’t have done this to herself. She’s too vain.
But she’s still so beautiful, and I don’t care why she’s here or how she came here anymore, because I’ve found her. I’ve finally found her. I could weep from the joy of it.
The woman checks out and leaves the shop. The bell ringing overhead snaps me from my trance, and I run to the counter.
“Salma,” I croak.
Her eyes shoot up, first to Kiran, then to me. Even through the dirt and the costume and the months between us, she recognizes me instantly. Her mouth falls open. A shudder runs through her body, and then she does the unthinkable.
She slams the divider window closed.
“Salma!” I shout.
“Aya,” I hear Kiran hiss. But he realizes that he can’t stop me now. Just as I’m jumping atop the counter, shoving the glass barrier aside, he’s racing back to the front and bolting the door.
The glass comes away with a screech, and I stuff my body through to the desktop on the opposite side. There’s a credit machine here, and tall shelving units of more glass bottles. I barely register the crash of something metallic in the front room.
Salma’s running to the back corner, making a sharp turn around the last shelf. She’s afraid of Kiran; that’s the only explanation. I need to stop her before she runs out the back of the building and calls for help.
My too-large Driver boots slip rounding the corner, and I grab the edge of the shelf, knocking a dozen bottles to the tile floor. They shatter, sending shards of emerald and blood-red syrup across my pants. My eyes water as the fresh burst of antiseptic hits the air.
“Salma!”
I reach her just in time to stop her from pushing through the exit door, and shove her hard against the interior wall. I kick the door shut.
“It’s okay,” I say in a rush. “It’s me, you know it’s me!”
“Let me go!” The tears are already streaming from her miserable eyes. One hand goes to cover her scar, and the move twists something inside of me. I drop her and she slides down the wall like her muscles have given out.