Chapter Twenty-Two #2
There was no longer any power. There was nothing but metal.
He
remembered the click of the button.
Light
spilling out. Tendrils and dust.
Standing
in the doorway, he made a sound that no one heard.
He
limped along the side of the building until he was facing the center of the
cavern. He pressed his back to the wall, sliding clumsily to the floor. It took
him several minutes to feel as if he would not suffocate. Even still, his
breath never returned to normal.
The air
was motionless. It felt as dead as the bones.
After a
blur of time, Zaria emerged from the doorway. She handed him his pack, which
was now heavy and bulging. Gems poked against the canvas like the ridges of a
cactus.
“Too
much?” she asked.
He
slung it over his shoulder and began to walk toward the necropolis.
“Isaac.”
He kept
walking. After a moment, she followed.
He did
not look back again.
The
final straw was a clod of dirt.
They
had been walking for nearly an hour, or long enough for the sunlight to slant
further down the rocky ceiling. The ruins of the necropolis were steadily
advancing from the horizon. His mind was filled with the dried blood on his
limbs, the bulging gems at his back, the sound of his boots scraping over
concrete. For a while, he had managed not to think of anything else.
Suddenly,
his boot landed on a nub of dirt, one of the many thousands that had been
loosed by the rampage of the colossus, and Isaac slipped when he leaned his
weight against it. He fell hard, barely able to brace. His elbows scraped the
floor. His leg screamed in pain.
And he
felt, immediately, that this was it. He had reached his limit. He had suffered
many things today, many humiliations and betrayals and pain, and this was
surely the last. He was going to die on this barren stretch of concrete. A
single fall had killed him as surely as someone slitting his throat.
Zaria
paused, giving him time to stand. When he remained unmoving, nearly facedown on the floor, she spoke in a soft, weary voice.
“Come
on, love. Get up.”
He
rested his cheek on the cement. His breath blew through sand.
“Get
up,” she said. “We’re camping by the wreckage. Still a ways to go.”
“I’m
done.”
“Come
again?”
He did
not answer.
“Isaac.”
Her feet crunched the sand as she stood over him. “Get up.”
“No.
I’m done.” With great effort, he flipped himself onto his back. Far above his
head, the cavern ceiling was tinged with the deep magenta of a coming dusk.
“That’s it. I’m done. I’m just. . . .” He swallowed into a dry throat. “I’m
done.”
“No,
you’re not,” Zaria said. “Get up.”
He
didn’t move. Not even the worst of his training sessions had left him this
tired. He barely felt able to breathe.
“Squire,
I’ll bloody well carry you if I must.”
He did
not answer.
“What’s
your plan, exactly?” She stood above him, tall as a tower. “You gonna leave
yourself here, to die of thirst and sun? Gonna let the jackals gnaw you apart?
That ain’t a good way to die.”
“I
don’t know.”
“You don’t
know what?”
He did
not answer.
“Isaac,
come on. It’s only a little further. It ain’t a big task.”
He
gazed up at the remnants of the rocky ceiling. The sun was waning, and the air
was growing cold.
“Fine,”
she said, slinging off her pack. “We’ll camp here, then.”
“Z.
Please. Just go.”
She
began digging through her pack, unfurling her bedroll in a few waving shakes.
“Just
leave me here,” Isaac said. “You know how to survive. You know the dunes. You
can still—”
“Shut
up. I’ll allow—”
“I’ll
just slow you—”
“I’ll
allow,” she said, “that you’re beaten to shite. I am too, as it happens. We’ll camp here, exposure notwithstanding,
and you’ll get up come the dawn, and I’ll forgive you for speaking such
nonsense.”
He
looked at her. She did not look back.
Zaria
went through the motions of setting up camp. Time passed. Isaac laid on the
concrete, covered in sand and filthy clothes. As he listened to the sound of
Zaria’s labor, he felt as if there was a hole in his chest, and the emptiness
was gnawing through him, and whatever life he had left was draining away, like
blood from an open wound.
“Isaac.
Can I show you something?”
He
didn’t answer. When she nudged his shoulder, she was sitting beneath a tent,
preparing another broth in the bowl of his stone mortar. In addition to the
water and salted meat, she was breaking off clods of hardtack with a few
strikes of her fist, stirring them into the improvised mixture.
“Have
to apologize,” Zaria said. “This whole journey of ours, I’ve been watching you
go at the hardtack like a rat chewing through brick. A flat tooth like you
would crack his pearls that way.” She kept stirring the soup with a finger.
“You gotta let it soak a while. Gets it soggy. Not
good, mind, but better than rock.”
Isaac
watched the meat and hardtack float in the bowl, like it was something far away
and of no concern to him.
“Now,
look. It’s already a bit better, isn’t it?”
Pieces
of the hardtack were beginning to turn soggy, creating a dull listless texture.
Zaria
scooted a little closer. “Ponder that, a moment. You take this nasty
stuff—something hard and tough—and you do a little work, make a few changes,
and, suddenly, it’s not so bad. Almost good, even.” When he didn’t respond, she
added: “It’s like one of them metal forks.”
He
blinked. “A what?”
“Metal
forks. Like, say, in a book. I know you’re good with those.”
“I’m
still not following.”
“A
metal fork! You know, like, one of them children’s tales about a dragon eating
children and such, when it’s really about the greed of a lord. It says one
thing, but means another.”
“Oh,”
Isaac said. “Yes. You mean a metaphor.”
“Right.
That’s what I said.”
“No,
it’s not.”
“Yes,
it is.”
“That
is not at all what you said.”
“I’m
not seeing the difference.”
“Oh, yes,”
Isaac said, rising to an elbow, “what is the difference between a figure of
speech and a dining instrument? Surely, it’s a riddle of the ages.”
“Perhaps
you’d explain, then.”
“Explain
the—gods above, have you even seen a metal fork?”
“Oh,
look at the lord,” Zaria drawled. “All fancy silver at the table. I expect you
beat your cock to ink and circles, as well.”
“Well,”
Isaac replied, sitting up, “maybe you should try beating yourself with a
couple tomes, just so the knowledge might get absorbed by sheer osmosis.”
“Now
you’re just making up words.”
“Osmosis
is the spontaneous diffusion of water. It is exactly why that bread gets soggy,
you utterly simple—”
He
paused, halfway to his feet. She was failing to hide her grin.
“Oh,”
he said.
“Had
you going there.”
“Maybe.”
“Quite
well, I’d say.”
He sat
down, crossing his legs. “You’ll excuse me if your illiteracy sometimes leaves
me appalled.”
“You
get my meaning, though?” She stirred the broth, bouncing the meat and bread.
“Making the best of bad situations?”
“Oh,
yes. Your metaphor was quite profound.”
“Glad
to hear. A smith of words, I am.”
She
handed him the bowl. He stared down at the thin offerings. There was a ravenous
hunger inside him, but, at the same time, the feeling was distant and dull, and
the thought of eating any more of their dry, flavorless rations made him feel
sick.
He
missed the meals he would have after the training sessions. There would always
be bread, sometimes hot from the oven, and stews made with barley and onion and
pork, entire plates full of olives and peas, mashed potatoes thick with butter.
“Isaac.”
He took
his gaze off the stew.
“We got
some hard climbing ahead,” Zaria said. “Gonna take us a day or two to get out
this pit. You’ll need to stuff your gullet.”
The
bowl was cold. He knew the meat would be leathery. The bread would still be
hard in the center.
He was
close to sobbing again.
“Hey.”
She leaned in. “Please.”
He
looked at her, looked down at the bowl, and slowly began to drink.
Soon,
the sun was gone, and they could glimpse the stars through the cracks in the
rocky ceiling. At night, the ships inside the ossein canopy took on a sinister
appearance, like wild beasts lurking through the gloom of a forest. The air
grew rapidly cool. Isaac knew from experience how chilly the desert could be,
and he could guess that the depths of the cavern would provide a basin for the falling air, which would only worsen the drop
in temperature.
“Best
we double up,” Zaria said, beckoning from her tent.
Isaac
hadn’t bothered setting his own tent. He hadn’t even
cleaned the blood from his hands. He was too weak, and there was no point.
Instead, he continued to lie on the concrete, feeling the chill creep in
through his tattered robes.
He wished
she had left him behind.
“I’m
not lettin’ you alone, love. Get over here.”
With a
sigh, he shrugged off his pack and crawled into her tent. Her bedroll was only
designed for one person, and, though it was designed for zoanthropes
specifically, she was more than adequately filling the space, which left him
awkwardly contorting his limbs as he attempted to slither into the gap.
“No,”
she said, jostling him around. “Like this. Tiniest in front.”
He
ended up on his side, facing away from her. His head rested on her bicep, her
breasts spilled along his back, her legs weaved between his own, and she rested
her snout on the top of his head, letting the fur on her neck and chest cover
him like a blanket. There was a clattering of gems as she fluffed her pack like
a pillow.
“Good?”
she asked, shifting. “Any complaints?”
“You
smell like a jockstrap bathed in entrails.”
“What,
and you’re all flowers? Some cherub dipped in lavender?” She sniffed the air.
“We’re both suffering, believe me.”
As he
rested his cheek on her arm, he realized that, despite his constant remarks, he
didn’t actually mind her scent any longer. Nothing about it had changed.
Despite her previous bath, it was already returning to the same heady musk he