Blightborn (5 page)

But Cael doesn’t want to hear that. Even after everything with Pop and the garden and Martha’s Bend, he still doesn’t know if he trusts vagrants—he hears tell of all kinds of stories about what the rail-riders and other wanderers are like. Thieves and madmen, exiled from their towns. Some of them killers, or kiddie-catchers, or even cannibals.

Cael screams for the man to stop, but he doesn’t pay attention. Cael snatches the rifle out of Lane’s grip and points it just as the loop of the pole catches around Rigo’s head and arm, cinching tight.

Like the man’s going fishing or something.

Cael whoops a wordless threat and cocks the rifle’s lever action.

Ch-chak
.

It’s loud enough to get the vagrant’s attention.

He looks up. Rigo thrashes and splashes. The man doesn’t say anything. He just stares. Cael feels those dark eyes like two black seeds tucked into the dirt of the man’s face.

The hobo grunts, looks back down toward the river. He begins hauling Rigo up to the cracked, dust-blown bank of the slurry river.

“I’ll shoot!” Cael yells. Finger curling around the trigger.

The rifle’s not loaded.

But no way for the vagabond to know that.

All the hobo hollers is “So shoot.”

The rifle wavers, the iron sights like horns of Old Scratch framing the man. Cael wonders if he could do it. Shoot a fella the way Pop shot Mayor Barnes. Wasn’t in cold blood. No matter the temperature of the blood, it ended the same way, with a dead man lying there.

Of course, Cael has his own dead man, doesn’t he? Pally Varrin. Empyrean Babysitter for the town of Boxelder. Throat closed and crushed by a single ball bearing from Cael’s slingshot.

It haunts him, suddenly: the image of Pally on the ground, gasping and gurgling. Legs shaking. Feet juddering as everything went to hell outside Cael’s once-safe homestead.

He shudders.

Meanwhile, Rigo flops onto the bank with a splatter—looking like a shuck rat pulled out of an oil barrel.

But, whoa-dang, he’s still holding the bag! The bag that contains their food, their ammo, a host of other minor necessities.

Cael bares his teeth but lowers the gun.

“Rigo!” he yells. “You all right?”

Rigo looks up from his place on the ground. He wipes sludge from his eyes and finally sees that the person who rescued him is neither Cael nor Lane. He screams.

The hobo just frowns and shakes his head.

He looks across the murky river span.

Then he points to the trestle.

“Meet me up there. I’ll bring your friend.”

The man smiles suddenly. Cael can’t help but think it’s meant to be friendly—but damnit if that smile doesn’t look
feral
.

The hobo hauls Rigo to his feet, then begins to climb back up the hill.

“What the hell?” Lane whispers to Cael.

“I don’t know, but we better go make sure Rigo’s all right.”

They climb back up to the trestle, and as they walk, they talk about the possibility that the hobo and Rigo will be gone, vanished into thin air. Or maybe Rigo will be dead, and the bag of food and ammo will be what goes missing. They imagine any number of doom scenarios together: the man with a knife to Rigo’s throat, or a gun, or a whole gang of hobos looking for a taste of food, or violence, or the pleasures given by young boys.

But they get to the trestle and see the vagabond standing at the far end with Rigo sitting next to him. Rigo offers them a lazy, tired wave.

They cross. One after the other. The river oozing far below.

As they approach, the vagrant just stares at them, offering only a curt nod as they get close.

“Mister,” Lane finally says.

“Boys,” the vagrant says, his voice surprisingly soft for such a gruff-looking fella. Even that one word rises and falls with a curious lilt. “Here’s your friend.”

Rigo takes Cael’s hand in a sloppy, greasy grip, and Cael pulls him to his feet.

“Thanks for saving him,” Cael says, hesitant.

“I was fishing for junk. Saw him bobbing along.”

“Fishing for junk?” Lane asks.

“Mm-hmm. Sometimes the folks at the processing factories throw away trash. Floats downriver. I take it.”

“You’re a hobo,” Cael says, a statement as obvious as the man’s crooked nose.

“I am. And who are you, little mice?”

“I’m Rigo. Those are my friends, Lane and—”

Cael shushes him with a hiss, but it’s too late.

“—Cael.”

“Pleasure.” There again: that smile. Cael thinks it’s the smile of a fox sliding up on a pair of sleeping hens. But his friends don’t seem too worried. And, he reminds himself, he thought the same thing about all the vagrants under Pop’s command.
Maybe you’re laying down judgment where you ought not to be judging,
he thinks. Because isn’t he a vagrant, too? The hobo continues: “You little mice seem a bit lost. Saw that raft of yours get hit.” He grunts as Cael’s reminded that their ride is now gone—and with it the magna-cruxes. “Raft on the rails. Pretty smart.”

“We’re scavengers,” Cael says. Not a lie, not really.

“What town?”

Cael thinks to say Boxelder, but—that’s too far away for it to make sense. He’s trying to think of what’s near, but he can’t conjure any names, and his mouth is working like the lips of a parched and thirsty man—

“Wheatley,” Lane blurts.

“Wheatley, huh.” The man looks them up and down. “Nice town. People there are good folk. Put an old dirt-paw like me to work without condemnation. That tree of yours in the center of town sure took a licking.”

“It did,” Cael says, lying through his teeth.
What tree?

“Lightning’s a helluva thing,” the hobo says. “My name’s Eben, by the way. You heading back toward Wheatley?”

“We, ah, we are,” Cael says.

“Night’ll be here long before you get back, what with your raft blasted to toothpicks. I got a little place carved out for me and my boy not far down the tracks if you want it. Besides, you’ll be crossing back over the Rovers’ territory on foot.”

“The . . . Rovers?” Rigo asks.

The hobo gives them a look. “I know you got a problem with Rovers in Wheatley. Those dogs are mean and hungry. Travel in big packs, too.”

“The
Rovers
,” Lane says. “We, eh, call them something different.”

“Oh yeah?”

Cael steps over the answer and blurts out, “We’d love to come with you, and thanks for the offer.” He tightens the hinges of his jaw at saying this, but it makes good sense. Especially if
these . . . Rovers are truly dangerous. “Plus, I figure we owe you some for saving our man here.”

“Let’s scurry, little mice,” Eben says. He doesn’t stop to wait for them, just turns tail and starts walking down the track, shoulders slumped forward, loop-pole in his hand.

HATING LIFE ON THE HALCYON BALCONY

IT STEALS THE BREATH
from her chest. Vertigo robs her of balance. Her palms feel instantly sweaty. Her mouth feels immediately dry.

This is not natural,
Gwennie thinks.

The Halycon Balcony is, to her mind, no mere balcony. The entire thing is textured glass, and it extends out toward the sunset and horizon on every side. Beneath her is the Heartland, miles below her feet, the retreating sun smearing the land in liquid fire and pooling shadow. And all around her is the other thing that’s not natural: the
people
.

Gwennie’s used to the Harvest Home Festival—a hundred people on the street of Boxelder, getting more ornery as the night tumbles forward. Folks laughing and singing. Drinking bottles of fixy or bowls of chicha beer. Some folks fight. Newly Obligated fondle and explore each other. By the end of the night, with the Obligations and all, somebody ends up crying. But the
people of Boxelder, well, Gwennie
knows
them. She knows them not just intellectually but emotionally, because she
is
them.

And these people are all strangers to her. Strangers in so many ways.

This single event is already bigger than Harvest Home by a magnitude of ten. People as far as the eye can see. That word she used earlier,
ostentatious
? Saying these people looked “ostentatious” is like calling a piss-blizzard a “little dust storm.” At a quick glimpse she sees men walking around in suits made from ribbons of reflective metal, tuxedos of raven feathers, hats that somehow hover just above their heads. Women wear suits and dresses that to her seem utterly absurd: feathers and flashing lights, translucent panels that swirl with blooms of color, see-through dresses of metallic lace or plastic beads or fabric made to look like a series of delicate hands covering inappropriate spots. Some ladies waltz around in not much more than underclothing—clothing far skimpier than Gwennie’s own bra and bloomers. Heat rises to her cheeks.

Seeing all these people makes Gwennie even dizzier. In fact she suddenly wishes the whole balcony would crack like an old barn board and drop her through. Anything to get away.

Balastair spins her around and looks her in the eye. He raises his voice so he can be heard above the dull roar of the crowd. “We will now begin the social circuit. You and I will walk the party, and we will stop and see those you need to see, and the circuit will culminate in a visit with the Grand Architect of the flotilla, Stirling Ormond. Do you understand?”

“I want to go home,” she says.

He’s about to say something else—not a rebuke, it seems, by
the soft, even sympathetic, look on his face (that says to Gwennie he doesn’t want to be here, either)—but he doesn’t get the chance to speak.

Hands grab Gwennie’s shoulders and whirl her around.

“Let me look at you!”

There, a beautiful woman—elegant, almost as if sculpted out of stone, skin like milk, hair like spun gold, and a dress of such grave immodesty that Gwennie feels her eyes bug out of her head. The dress is entirely see-through—a plastic dress whose only obfuscating feature appears to be that water is running down over every inch of it. And yet it doesn’t spill and pool beneath her. It reveals everything: the roundness of the breasts, the dark shadows of her nipples, and the triangle between her legs, all of it blurred
just slightly
by the cascading water. Gwennie knows she’s gawking.

“The dress!” the woman says. “Yes, yes, do you believe it? I went off-flotilla for this one. You know the designer? Arnaud Spark? You know he has a yacht, right? He never moors at a dock! Such independence.”

“Ahhhh” is all Gwennie can say.

Suddenly Harrington darts in—and the woman gives him a dire stare. Gwennie sees Balastair almost shrink in deference. Not physically, but . . . something about him crumples inward.

“Gwendolyn, this is the praetor’s wife, Annalise Garriott.”

The praetor. The administrator of the entire flotilla. Ashland—wasn’t that the name she’s heard time and again? The woman confirms this quickly: “Ashland is with the Grand Architect. We’ll go to them.” She loops her arm in Gwennie’s. “Dearest Balastair, I’ll take it from here. I’ll return her to you at
the end of the night.” Way she says
dearest
sounds as if she means anything but. Gwennie wonders if that’s how the Empyrean people are: always saying things they don’t really mean.

Balastair smiles, nods. “Of course, Annalise.”

And then the woman whisks Gwennie into the throng.

Balastair feels for the girl. He really does.

To him she emblemizes the Heartland. She
is
a hard worker. She’s tough. Plain in the best way. (
Pretty, too,
says a small but persistent voice inside him.) Uncompromising. (
And did I mention pretty?
)

Which is why it’s so frustrating that he can do nothing for her.

He tells himself, as a salve,
It’s better up here for her. This party. The drinks. The food. Better than rolling around in the dirt. Killing rats and growing corn you can’t even eat
.

But then—

There. Across the room.

Eldon Planck.

Those rugged good looks. The salt-and-pepper stubble. That aggressive jawline. Almost robotic in his handsomeness—improbable, artificial, smooth skin, bright eyes.

Eldon sees him. Of course he does.

He gives a slight lift of his chin.

Eldon, that cocky prick. Always was. Always will be.

Balastair fake-smiles back.

He needs a drink, he decides, before he deals with Eldon Planck. It will be a bitter quaff of medicine since Planck designed
all the auto-mates including the Bartender-Bots, but medicine it shall be.

Gwennie feels like a drop of soap in a puddle of oil—she and Annalise Garriott together seem to
repel
the crowd. The people do not seem to retreat out of disgust or concern but rather out of respect and perhaps even fear, almost the way a crowd parts when one walks past carrying something delicate. Yet their interest in Gwennie is keenly felt: they hover and gawk, mouths forming curious Os and eyes looking her up and down and up again.

Annalise appears to give them permission—subtly, unspoken, something with her eyes or her mannerisms, Gwennie’s not sure, but as they move through the crowd, they occasionally stop, and, one by one, partygoers dart in, given the privilege (how absurd is that?) to talk to her.