Unach whirls back to me. “Grodd? That piss-licking son of a whore! He’ll see his head on the chopping block—”
“It isn’t illegal to harm a human,” Azmar says coolly. The words sting more than they should, deep in the center of my chest, though I know he’s merely stating facts. He didn’t write trollis law.
“Grodd forgets he is Pleb.” Unach names the caste like it’s tar on her tongue. The muscles in her neck bulge between her tight shoulders. She grabs her sword and hooks its sheath onto her belt with more force than necessary, then takes up her club. “Seems he needs a reminder.” She starts for the door.
“Keep it private,” Azmar warns. “Lark doesn’t need more attention.”
Unach hesitates only a second before exiting the apartment and slamming the door behind her.
I roll my lips together. Tie back my hair, since it failed to cover me. “Grodd may be a Pleb, but he was a Montra before. He could hurt her.”
Azmar steps out of the kitchen, mixing his morning brew in a large tin cup. “Grodd knows the laws. If he raises his hands against someone of a higher caste, especially five ranks higher, he’ll risk execution, especially given his current ill favor. If he’s smart, he’ll take the beating and move on. If he’s not, we won’t have to worry about him anymore.”
We. My chest warms at the word. I think of the night before in the waterworks, crying against Azmar’s chest, feeling safe for the first time—
I turn back to the fire before he can see me flush. I envy the trollis, the colors of their skin and blood. It lets them hide so much. Then again, perhaps Azmar isn’t familiar enough with humans to understand the flushing and blanching of our faces.
He isn’t human, I remind myself, crushing embers in the ash.
When the fire peters out, I pick up the iron pot and take it to the back room to soak. When I return, Azmar says, “Do you want to come to the bridge today?”
My heart skips. “Above the city?”
Folding his arms, he leans his weight onto one leg. “A team of engineers is conducting a routine survey today. It will take a while, but you appear to enjoy the sunlight.”
I glance to the small window in the hallway and find myself grinning. “Absolutely. If I won’t be a bother.”
“Not at all.” He sets his empty cup on the table. “Find something for your midday meal and we’ll go.”
Excitement bubbles within me, but I try to stay calm as I scramble to wrap something up for both myself and Azmar. He smiles at my enthusiasm, though his smiles always look like he’s trying to suppress them. For the most part, he succeeds. When I’m ready, he leads me out into the tunnels. It’s nice having a trollis escort, because I don’t have to wait for foot traffic to pass. It’s nice because it’s Azmar, and even if Grodd were to step onto the lift with us, I wouldn’t be afraid.
We go up past farming, Intra housing, and the guard barracks. Azmar points out extra braces, struts, and beams below the original bridge, put in place to hold up the city.
“How old is Cagmar?” I ask as we near the surface.
“Old,” he replies, waiting at a ladder as another engineer climbs up. “But not as old as Eterellis. The deeper into the canyon you go, the younger it is.”
He lets me climb up next. The air warms with every rung, until it grows hot. The crispness of the morning has already been burned away by the relentless sun. I squint as I climb onto the deck, the air above the bridge’s stone rippling with the heat. Shielding my face, I look into the distance, to the near nothingness that surrounds the canyon. A few skeletal trees and bushes break up the expanse. To the west, beyond my sight, rests the fallen city of Eterellis. The townships holding what’s left of my people lie far to the east.
Azmar’s shadow falls across me. I ask, “Where are the other trollis cities?”
“There is one north, in the canyon.” He pulls a grease pencil from his belt. “Many days away.”
“Does it have a bridge?”
He shakes his head. “It stems from a cavity in the canyon wall. I’ve never been there, but it’s about an eighth the size of Cagmar. The others, I’m not sure.”
I gaze up at him. “Not sure?”
He offers a sad tilt of his lips. “Our people were lost before the drought ever scattered yours, Lark. It would be a waste of soldiers to send scouts to find them in this landscape. When it rains again, the council might see it fit to explore.”
I consider this, wondering what it would have been like to live back then, in wealth and luxury, banishing trollis left and right until they were never heard of again. I do not know much of the earth’s other peoples—the merdan and gullop of the sea and the fette and aerolass of the sky—but I do not think they hate each other as much as humans and trollis do. At least, I hope that’s not the case, for when the drought hit, we were unable to help one another through it.
And now both our people are scattered and lost.
Azmar starts down the bridge, toward the east lip of the canyon. I follow behind and accept a sheaf of papers that he hands to me. A few other engineers dot the bridge. One takes notes and sketches something as we pass. I recognize one of the trollis standing near the bridge’s end, his thick gray arms crossed over his chest. He was the first trollis I’d ever met, the one who, I think, threw me over his shoulder upon my arrival and dropped me before the council.
Azmar doesn’t look up as we pass, but he greets, “Homper.”
Homper studies me, equally suspicious and curious. At the last moment, I decide to smile at him, and he looks shocked, as though a wasp has stung him. I note the single bead on his sleeve, like Perg.
I try not to laugh. It’s easy to see how the trollis would be feared, but beneath their size, their bony protrusions, their gray and green skin, they are not so unlike us.
Azmar takes a few measurements, leaving me to my thoughts. After stepping off the bridge, I walk the length of the canyon a ways, then return. Azmar hands me a measuring tape and a sketch and asks me to double-check his numbers. I’m happy to do so, enjoying the sun on my shoulders and in my hair. Other trollis in harnesses slide down the sides of the bridge, inspecting its underside. Azmar closely examines the deck, writes numbers, examines it again. Then he reviews parts that were already reviewed by other engineers. There’s no room for error. He explains some of the math to me, but it gets complicated, and I struggle to keep up. I don’t think he notices.
Soon the sun burns high and hot, and Azmar hands me a rope and swings down beneath one of the girders, shaded from the sun. He helps me down, and I settle next to him. We open our lunches and let our feet hang.
“We’ll have to use cables,” he says halfway through his meal. “The canyon wall is strong, and the existing connection to it was overdesigned, but we have added so much that we really need additional connections. If the council wants continued expansion with the same protections Cagmar has now, we’ll have to use cables.”