When he and Rob got even with the great wall, they tightened their kers and adjusted their goggles and angled off into the wind and toward the roar of distant thunder. Conner took the lead and broke the wind for Rob. Off to the side, he watched the edge of Springston approach. The city sat near to the boundary of No Man’s Land—just a few hours’ hike—like some kind of dare. But the city also looked afraid. It seemed to sulk in the sand, a towering wall erected to hold back the wind and dunes and fear.
A handful of the tallest sandscrapers tilted sickeningly to the west, ready to topple. One of these towers had been abandoned a few years ago, such were the creaks and quakes felt by its inhabitants. It leaned with a promise of collapsing—and yet a refusal to do so. It had been so long since the place had cleared out that the once-great anticipation had relaxed into boredom. Talk had grown among those now eager to move back in. Conner knew that some squatters already had; pale lights danced up in those forbidden towers at night and could be seen from Shantytown. And the deeds to those apartments had begun to change hands as speculators bet on topple or stability, their moods as fickle as the alley winds.
Conner marched with his head to the side, goggles out of the peppering sand, and imagined the sound those rickety scrapers would make when they tumbled. The homes in their shadows would be crushed, the people living there buried, the shops and stalls flattened. The poorer people to the west must live in daily terror of what dangerous things their wealthy neighbors built. Those in the shadows didn’t speculate with their money but with their lives.
The great wall itself would topple one day. Conner could see this as they passed the boundary of Springston and the wall was viewed edge-on like he saw it twice a year. An entire desert pushed against the wall’s back. It had built up slowly and inexorably over the decades, wind howling and sand piling up, spindrift blowing over ancient ramparts to haze the sky with occasional gusts or to dim the afternoon sun with furious blasts. When it went, the sand would loose a hellish fury. He was quite glad he wouldn’t live to see that.
“What all did you pack in here?” Rob asked, his voice muffled by his ker and his voice’s upwind march.
Conner waited for his brother to catch up. “The usual,” he lied. He saw that Rob was practically bent over from the weight of the pack. Conner had planned on carrying it himself so no one would grow suspicious. Which would’ve left Palmer to carry the tent and Rob the lantern and his own bedroll. Fucking Palmer, Conner thought to himself. And for the first time, he considered what his brother’s absence would mean for their father’s tent. Rob would get back to town easily enough, the wind at his back, but the tent would probably be left to flap to tatters, with no one to help him break it down or haul it home.
“Can we stop for water?” Rob asked.
“Sure.” Conner lowered his large bag to the sand, and Rob nearly fell over backward as he shucked the other pack. Conner could hear the extra canteens of water sloshing in there. Enough for eight nights of marching out and back, as far as he told himself he would go.
“Twelve years,” Rob said. He sat on the gear bag and pulled his ker down, used it to wipe his neck. The cloth had sandworn holes in it and was tattered along the edge. Conner felt like a shitty brother.
“Yeah, twelve years.” Conner pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and wiped the gunk10 from the corners of his eyes. “I can’t believe it’s been that long.”
“It has. It means I’ll be twelve this year.”
“Yeah.” And Conner wondered if he’d waited this long for any other reason than to know his brother would be okay without him. And he would. At twelve, Rob could officially apprentice in a dive shop. He could get room and board for what he now did anyway on the side. Graham would take him in. And Conner knew Gloralai would watch after him like he was her own little brother—
“Why’d we bring so much jerky?” Rob asked.
Conner turned from the horizon and saw his brother rummaging in the rucksack. “Close that up,” he said. “You’re letting sag11 in.”
“But I’m hungry.”
Conner reached into his pocket. “I’ve got food for the hike here. Now seal that flap.”
His brother did as he was told, didn’t seem to have seen all else in the bag. Rob sat with his back to the wind and chewed on a heel of bread. In the far distance, carried on the breeze, the drums and thunder of No Man’s Land could be heard, sounding nearer than last year and nearer still than the year before that. Soon, Conner thought, those drums would be beating in Springston. Soon they would be beating in all their chests, driving them mad.
The sun beat down as the clouds of sand abated. It was one or the other during the day. At night, it was the cold and the howling beasts. The various torments of life worked in shifts so that one was always on duty. Thus was human misery extracted day and night like water and oil are pulled from the earth. Thus was the toll inflicted, the price one paid for being unwittingly born.