“I’ll show you,” he said when she asked where the tent was. “The sooner you’re settled, the sooner you can be out here, taking Daniele’s place. Until then you’re deadweight, and we don’t need any more of that. That’s my job. What did you say your name was?”
Tess hesitated. Her childhood nickname seemed like less and less of a good idea, but she’d already given it to Gen. “Tes’puco,” she said, affecting a devil-may-care attitude.
Felix’s brows shot up. “Either you’re some kind of simpleton, to let people call you that, or you have bollos the size of dragon eggs.”
“It’s the latter, I assure you,” said Tess, somewhat stiffly. “More…more of those bits you mentioned than you can shake a stick at.”
Felix laughed, his scrawny turkey neck bobbing. “C’mon then, Dunderhead. Let’s get you settled so you have time for an honest evening’s work.”
Tess followed him toward the tents. Some intuition led her to glance back at the hole, just in time to glimpse Pathka’s tail disappearing down it.
Before bed, Tess slipped away from the tents, followed a footpath through the nodding wheat, and sat behind the wall of the neighboring meadow, where she wouldn’t be seen. Night fell late this far south. The salmon sunset persisted stubbornly; the stars had to shout to be heard.
She pulled out Pathka’s thnik, the little moon-bug, and flipped its switch. “How is it down there?” she asked him. “Any sign of her?”
“She’s everywhere,” his voice hissed and popped back. “The smell of her, I mean. She passed this way recently. It’s so overpowering that I’m having trouble determining how to search. If they keep dumping gravel down the hole, it’s going to force me to choose a direction before I know where she went.”
“Don’t tell me Anathuthia has moved on. How far will you have to go to find her?” said Tess in dismay. She’d just signed a contract to stay right here.
“I don’t know,” said Pathka. “I’m half tempted to wait here. The dream was very clear: a wheat field, it said, and here we are. But maybe I’m supposed to follow her?”
Tess scuffed the toe of her boot in the soil, wondering what the odds were that Pathka would take off after Anathuthia and not come back.
Was Pathka still cross with her? They hadn’t had a chance to clear the air before Pathka dived down the hole, and now Tess didn’t know how to ask. Kikiu was a raw wound, it seemed, and she didn’t know how to avoid poking it again.
“Be careful,” was all she managed to say. “I don’t want to lose you to a cave-in.”
“Stop the wagons, then,” said Pathka. “I’m more likely to be buried by a heap of gravel.”
Tess switched off her thnik disconsolately and tucked it down her jerkin. How was she supposed to stop the gravel wagons? She could think of no surer way to get fired.
Later, listening to her tentmates snore, Tess managed to think of several surer ways to get fired. She could throw Felix, Aster, and Mico down the hole.
Tess spent the next day dead on her feet, and it was a minor miracle that she didn’t end up falling into the pit herself. Gravel, though it is made of tiny pieces, is heavy in the aggregate—far, far heavier than hay—and while shoveling may seem a simple matter at first, each scoop weighs more than the last. By the end of the day, her neck and shoulders burned; she could barely turn her head or lift her spoon to eat her soup.
If Aster, Mico, and Felix snored that night, Tess snored louder.
Tess didn’t have to stop the gravel wagons, it turned out, because by the end of the second day, it was clear that their efforts were futile. The cavern floor sloped in two directions, and the gravel was sliding into oblivion on either side. At this rate, they’d have to fill the whole chamber with gravel, and there wasn’t enough gravel in the world.
Boss Gen held an emergency meeting with the geologist, the surveyor, and Big Arnando, the foreman. Because the meeting was held in a tent, everyone in camp could hear what was going on—particularly the shouted parts, which were many. Felix waved Tess over to the shady side of the tent, where he and Mico and Aster had set up a crate and were playing cards.
“Deal Tes’puco in,” said Felix, offering Tess his spot in the deepest shade.
“Can ’Puco even hold the cards? His arms are like noodles,” said Mico, a dark-complexioned fellow. He wore the same chin beard as Felix and Aster, but his ponytail made a curly pouf like a water dog’s tail.
“I’ll hold them with my toes,” offered Tess. “What are we playing?”
“No, we can’t just build a detour!” shouted Boss Gen from behind the tent wall. “Do you know how much paperwork that would involve? How much money, for the new rights-of-way? It would take months, and meanwhile this hole is gaping at us. Cows are falling down it.”
Felix chuckled. “She’s so tenderly concerned for her fellow steers. ’Puco, the game is called Madeleine’s Arse. Queens are high….”
Tess, initially put off by the name, soon realized the game was a variation on Crespina, which she’d played a thousand times with Lady Farquist. She bid hesitantly at first, feigning surprise at her “beginner’s luck,” but by the fifth hand she was openly trouncing them, and after the eighth, Aster leaped to his feet, kicked over the crate, and drew a knife. “You cheat, Penoio!” he cried, the first words Tess had heard him speak.
“Whoa! Hold on!” cried Mico, wrapping his muscular arms around Aster’s heaving middle. To Tess’s surprise, Felix grabbed her the same way. She hadn’t risen to meet Aster’s challenge—choosing instead to cower—but clearly Felix expected her to.
“You’re not cheating, are you, ’Puco?” said Felix. He was sweaty and rank, and she wished he’d let her go.
Tess said quickly, “No, no. I pretended to be stupider than I am, though.”
“That’s not against the rules,” Felix pronounced, like a judge. “That’s strategy. I pretend to be lazy all the time, so that when I do any work, everyone’s pleasantly surprised.”
“I’m pretty sure you really are that lazy,” said Mico, still clasping Aster around the middle. The red drained from Aster’s face; when he stopped struggling, Mico let him go. Aster wouldn’t look at Tess, but dug the toe of his boot into the dirt.
In all the brouhaha, they’d missed the conclusion of the meeting. Suddenly Big Arnando was there, telling them to get back to work. “Doing what?” Felix demanded, incensed at the injustice of being asked to do his job.
“Licking cats,” said Arnando. Mico burst out laughing. Tess guessed this was some rude Ninysh idiom, but Arnando kept a straight face and unwavering calm. His very mildness suggested they didn’t want to see him riled. Mico stashed the cards, and they got to it.
The crew were herded away from the hole, to the western side, where horses and wagons had beaten a makeshift detour through the wheat. The next wagon had been redirected onto that path, and men were already spreading the gravel with rakes. “I hate this plan!” the surveyor was shouting. “The road was perfectly straight. This is a pimple on the face of my road!”
“Get out your equipment and mark us a perfect semicircle,” said Arnando, cool as morning dew. “Make the best of it, you geometrical tyrant.”
He did it, sputtering all the while. Tess envied the surveyor’s assistant (who was also his daughter); that was a job she could have done, holding the measuring string, dangling the plumb line. Felix grumbled, clearly thinking the same thing.
Tess got a lesson in road building over the next several days; she learned about grading, leveling, layering, banking, tamping, laying stone. She still ached when she lay down to sleep, but the aches were more varied and interesting than when she’d merely been shoveling.