The weavers are singing down the looms. It’s a song about the end of work and life, the thump of the looms coming into a common rhythm, softening as one by one, each weaver finishes a row and drops away. Annis is in there somewhere. There’s only one left by the end of the song, the last loom slowing to a stop.
“Thanks,” Beckett says, the word hardly spoken. But the smile is a gift. He hasn’t let go of my hand. I don’t let go, either. And then we start down the street that way. Together. I feel warm. Connected. Two ends of a rope braided together. And it hurts inside my chest.
Our escorts pick up our path, scouting and clearing our trail, and then I take a quick turn onto Potter’s Street, to avoid a supervisor, then a detour down an alley, to avoid the supervisor due there. Only the little girl is still shadowing us now. We hurry between the houses of the diggers and fuelmakers until we hit the tumult of the Bartering Square.
Beckett isn’t nearly as noticeable here. Everyone is craning their necks, straining to catch glimpses of the displayed wares—all scraps and discards from the requests of the Underneath—looking for a last-minute trade before the resting. The activities in the Bartering Square are not exactly sanctioned, but as long as the requests of the city are filled, as long as what goes out on the tables is inferior, or unusable, then the supervisors turn a blind eye. Stealing is different, and the reminder is in the very center of the square, the one place clear of people, where a single wooden post stands before the small tower of the water clock that straddles the fountain. The pillar is scarred and stained, ugly, a set of shackles hanging from its top.
Beckett’s hand is still warm in mine as I navigate him through the calling and shouting of the crowd, most of it good-natured, some of it not. He leans close to my ear and says, “What are they using for money?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“For currency?” he asks, as if that might clarify.
I pull him a little faster, to make him stop talking, past the last table, laid with rows of necklaces made of misshapen beads. We leave the square for the quieter Dyer’s Lane, and make a quick turn onto Gates to avoid the route of the patrol.
We’ve come to the nearest arm of the mountain now, rising up on our left. And there is the black-arched entryway of my city, a yawning hole blazing light like a star in a sloping black sky. Two heavy gates, solid, the metal engraved with a sun and three moons, stand open on either side, and Outsiders are filing out between them, the launderers and kitchen workers and family help, passing beneath the gaze of a supervisor. The supervisor is Himmat, counting and matching faces, making certain that all who went in are coming out again, before the gates are shut and locked at the resting bell. I wonder if it was Thorne who told him to lie to Annis about Nita coming out through the gates. Or Craddock.
I keep Beckett on the far side of the street, well out of the lamplight, until we come to a row of rough shacks, the nearest with its rafters showing through holes in the thatch. We step to one side with our connected hands, into the dark between two houses.
“Can you see if there’s anyone inside that hut over there?”
He glances at it, slips a hand inside his shirt, and slides on the glasses. Then they’re off and put away again. He shakes his head. “No one.”
I walk us past the row of shacks and through an alley, coming up from behind the hut to sidle through a broken board in the back. It’s inky dark inside, with only the barest hint of the streetlamps coming in through the roof holes.
“What is this place?” Beckett whispers.
“An old supply hut. Careful. There’s an open shaft in the middle of the floor.”
I feel Beckett moving, and realize he’s put on the glasses. “So the Outside sends goods down the shaft to the city?”
“This one leads to a set of upper-level kitchens that aren’t being used anymore,” I reply. There aren’t as many Knowing Underneath as there once were.
“Are you sure? There are boxes in here. Marked ‘apple’ and ‘silvercurrant.’ ”
We go together to the stack of boxes. He’s right. I’ve never seen anything being stored in here. It makes me worried.
Beckett must be looking through the dark at the stone-paved platform around the shaft now, because he whispers, “Should we have brought the gear?”
“No. The shaft is at a slope. It’s supposed to be locked on the other end, but it only looks like it is.” Thanks to Nita. “We’ll have to wait, though. Curfew Outside is earlier than resting for the Knowing.” And we do not want to go down before the Knowing are in their chambers.
We settle with our backs to the boxes, out of sight of the door, just in case. The bells are ringing, and Beckett still hasn’t let go of my hand. I don’t think he intends to. He has it between both of his now. I feel the ache in my chest. A pleasant kind of pain.
“Are you watching?” I ask him. I feel him nod, his shoulder against mine. And then I say, “There’s something I haven’t told you.”
He waits. And I wait. Because what I’m going to say is ridiculous. I take a breath.
“I remember you.”
He doesn’t say anything. But I feel him listening.
“Because I dreamed you. When I was a baby.”
He still doesn’t say anything.
“I Knew you as soon as I saw you in the Cursed City. It doesn’t make any sense.” I pause. “But I do remember you.”
“Sam,” he whispers slowly, “what do babies dream about?”
I don’t Know what to say.
“Come on,” he coaxes, “what do babies dream about, when they’re not dreaming about me?”
Now I’m smiling. “Things they understand. Hunger, faces, warmth, cold. The dreams are fuzzy at first, but they get clearer and clearer before they stop.”
“What do you mean? When do dreams stop?”
“When you’re three, when your memories come. You only dream what you Know after that. Only what has really been. Not … imaginings.”
Beckett is silent, and his thumb is stroking mine, light and slow. I’m not sure he even knows he’s doing it. My ache is becoming need.
He asks, “How old was I, when you saw me?”
“Almost as you are now. How old are you?” I can’t believe I haven’t asked before.
“Eighteen.”
“What season is your birth?”
He hesitates. “Late in the year, the last season.”
I’m older than him. “Where were you born?”
“Austin, Texas.”
“How far away is … Austin, Texas?”
I think I can hear him smile. “Thirty-nine trillion kilometers.”
The thumb runs light along mine. How could he be here, across all that space?
“Sam, you couldn’t have seen me when you were a baby, not like I am now.”
“I Know.” Except that I did. Everything but the eyes. And then he stiffens.
I tense. Wait. And he says, “Someone’s coming.”
“Can we make the shaft?”
He doesn’t answer, we are just moving, and I follow him this time, because I think he can see. He goes straight to the stone platform and the edge of the hole. Then I hear what the glasses must have already shown him. Voices, very soft, coming around the back of the hut, like we did. Beckett is already halfway inside the shaft.