Grace (8 page)

I lower the window and argue with a tall, bone-thin man over the price of a bottle of mint tea. The bottle is old, ringed with marks of past teas around the bottom, and the man has the same dark-red-earth skin of the People.

He is asking for too much money, for a thief’s amount really, but I nod and start to hand over my coins. He looks at me, then reaches out and tugs my hair, grinning as I start to move away.

Only the People know that a woman should not show her hair in public, much less let a stranger touch it. A girl from Keran Berj’s world would let her hair show and so I make myself smile at him.

He smiles back.

“Two coins, Hill girl,” he says, lowering his price by more than half, and I stare at him, frozen, for this man knows who I am, that I am not from the City or any part of Keran Berj’s world.

“It’s safe,” he says, pointing at the bottle, but I know he means something else. “I drink this tea all the time. Very refreshing for a long trip. Cold.”

I hand over the coins.

“Blessings,” he says, and presses the bottle into my hands. “May the Saints guide you well on your journey.”

“And you on yours,” I say, the proper response, and Jerusha pulls me back inside so fast my head bumps against the window. My vision spots yellow-red, pain, and when I can see again the man is gone, vanished into the crowd, and Jerusha is holding the tea.

“You know him?” Jerusha says, and I shake my head, reaching for the bottle.

“No, but he knew I am—was—”

“Stop,” Jerusha says, and eyes the people getting on, shoving the tea onto the floor, under the empty seat in front of me.

When I reach for it, he puts a hand on my arm, whispers, “Don’t.”

There is so much urgency in his voice that I still. Stop.

There are two people getting on the train, one an older man with a pinched face, an official clearly on a tour of places no one wants to see, most likely as a punishment. The other passenger is a woman who is finely dressed, no desert dust clinging to her clothes at all. Her hair is a little longer and a little lighter than Chris made mine, and I think about the dye once again. About how I am not who the papers I carry say I am. About what will happen when Jerusha speaks of me.

“Get up,” Jerusha says, low-voiced, and then shoves me when I don’t, yanking me up. My eyes burn but I will not cry. I will not.

A soldier comes up from the end of the car and says, “What are you doing?”

I freeze.

I
am frozen, terrified, but Jerusha’s face shifts before my eyes, becomes weary.

“My sister, she snores,” he says with a sigh, pointing at me. “And after two days—well, I must sleep before we reach the border and deal with bringing my other sister back to Keran Berj.”

He nudges me aside and says to the soldier, “I brought her to help out, but she just sleeps and now I can’t, and she simply doesn’t understand that I must rest. I know I will be forced to argue with those—” He gestures off into the distance, toward where the train is slowly moving. “And so I must be ready for them.”

The soldier nods, takes my elbow and pulls me into the aisle. “I have a sister myself, and as for what you’re facing—well, Keran Berj is right that we should not trust others, isn’t he? They just try to take away everything, like those People with their . . . ways.” He spits three times, and it mists over my face, lands on my melting shoes.

“Truth, indeed,” Jerusha says. “My poor sister is trapped, wanting to come home, but is she believed? No.” He lowers his voice. “We even have a letter from Keran Berj himself about her, for her husband is . . . well. You understand, surely.” He pulls a piece of paper with a heavy wax seal out of his pocket.

The soldier’s mouth drops open. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”

“Me either,” Jerusha says. “I’ve been afraid to touch it, for it was in Keran Berj’s hands, and his hands—”

“Touch God,” the soldier says, wonder in his voice. “Well, you must sleep, then.” He turns to me, points toward the back of the train car. “Go to the last seat and sit down.”

I do. I sit and now I’m close enough to the door that if a soldier comes I could slip through, following him, and perhaps make it to the end of the train. I will say I need the washroom. Something. Anything.

But once I am off the train, if I live past the fall onto the tracks—where will I go? Keran Berj teaches many lessons to his followers, but the main one—and one Jerusha helped him teach—is that no one is safe. The man I saw back in the last village wished me luck, but he would not want me in his house, not even for a night. It would be noticed, a stranger coming in. It would mean death for him and everyone who lived with him.

It would mean death for me.

So I do not move. I sit instead and force myself to think, remind myself that I know Jerusha wants to leave. What he said about the Minister of Defense does match what I saw in the paper in the train station, the dead body with all the medals, the poem Keran Berj wrote in the Minster’s memory.

So Jerusha must know that if he tries to sacrifice me, I will name him.

It is not much safety, but I stay in the seat the soldier told me to because, at least for now, I hold Jerusha’s fate in my hands as much as he holds mine in his.

I watch him, though.

I watch him settle into his seat. I watch him turn to the woman who has new, clean clothes on. I watch him smile at her like I didn’t know he could, with warm charm, and see the woman smile back. I wonder if Mary smiled at him.

I wonder when she knew she was going to die.

I wonder when she realized she would not be taking Jerusha with her.

K
eran Berj had Mary hanged from the largest statue in the City, wrapped a rope around her neck and then made her swing from the statue’s head, her face turned so all she could see was Keran Berj’s face, his eyes made giant and gleaming gold. It was in the paper for days, brought in by the Rorys when we all came down from the high Hills after that bitter winter.

Mary’s things were burned, as was proper, but no one sang for her. No prayers were offered to make sure the Saints had caught her soul. She had failed and could not be praised. She would never even be mentioned again.

Ann and Lily and I looked through the papers again and again. We wanted to see how she had failed, because Mary was the surest of us all. She had studied so much, and she had been able to walk and talk like she was Keran Berj’s flesh and blood better than any of us.

There was nothing about what she did in the papers, though, nothing other than the usual reports of how savage the Angels were, how they and the People killed those who begged for mercy and then danced in their blood, pictures shaping us into twisted, howling monsters.

“Keran Berj is the monster,” Ann said, crumpling the paper in one hand. “She must have done something right to get him saying such fierce lies about us all, don’t you think?”

“He always lies,” Lily said, pointing at the years of papers we’d had to go through, to learn. “Still, she at least got close enough to Jerusha to make Keran Berj angry. That’s something. I would have finished the job, though.”

She took the paper from Ann and pointed at the picture, her finger resting on Jerusha’s face.

“I would have blotted him out,” she told us, and we looked at the photo again.

It was blurry, as if Jerusha was turning away from the camera, but we all knew it was him. He was who Mary was sent for. He would have been there to watch her die.

“I’ll do better,” Ann said. “I’ll break the shackles that bind this land to Keran Berj, I’ll—”

She kept talking, but I looked at the picture. At Mary’s face, swinging close enough to Keran Berj’s gilded one that their lips could have touched.

I thought that if there was a way for Keran Berj to make the statue swallow Mary, he would. He would swallow all of us.

I thought about saying a prayer for her, but I didn’t. She hadn’t done anything worth praying for. She’d just died, and my heart only remembered that she’d never wanted to see us as alike. That she’d insisted we weren’t. She wanted to show that she was purer of heart and belief than anyone else. She wanted death.

She’d gotten it.

I
watch Jerusha now and think of her.

Mary would have killed herself rather than talk to him like I did.

If she was where I am—if she was here, facing what I’m facing—she would try to kill Jerusha again instead of watching him.

But I don’t move. I sit. I watch.

She was right. We are not alike at all.

Jerusha gives the girl my tea. I swallow, wishing I had taken it with me, that the coolness she’s swallowing was running down my own throat. I run my hands through my hair—still damp, always damp—and then look at my fingers.

It could be the setting sun, but I think there is yet another bit of yellow stained across my skin.

I should have died when I was supposed to. It would not have hurt like this waiting. I would not feel like I do now.

I would not know what it is like to hope.

I would have no idea what that word really means.

It is so hot. The setting sun cuts the train into slices of bright light and brings even more heat, heat that makes my head spin. Makes me want to close my eyes. But I do not want to fall asleep. I will not fall asleep. I want to be awake when the Guards come.

I know I cannot trust anyone but myself, and if they come for me—and I am so afraid they will—I have to take Jerusha with me. Not for the People. Not for the Saints. Not for Mary. For me.

I watch the sun burn the sky until my vision blurs.

T
he train stops. I know because I almost fall out of my seat, woken from the cobwebs of a dream about the stage and blood-dead flowers as the train shrieks, shuddering to a halt.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I did.

I did and now it is dark out, stars brilliant against the night sky. The window is cold when I touch my fingers to it, so cold it burns my skin.

The only light I see is the faint, flickering glow of small lamps that some soldiers are carrying. I used to lie on the ground and watch for that very glow. Everyone who lives in the Hills, even Angels, must take their turn at watch.

You must always know when the enemy is coming.

The soldiers are holding a bottle—the bottle of tea I bought earlier—and their lamps spark off it, shedding little rays of light into the dark of the train.

Behind the soldiers are Guards.

Guards standing and watching, waiting, and back behind them I see the glimmer of polished tick-tock shoes, the man from the train station returned. Come all the way out here into the dark of the desert.

There is nothing else to see. We are near nothing. We are nowhere, the perfect place to drag someone off to meet death.

The only reason to be here is death.

I’ve heard the Guards shoot you in the back of the head if they feel like being kind.

Please let them be kind.

Please.

The soldiers turn back toward the train. The Guards stay behind, waiting, disappearing into the dark. They do not carry lamps.

For what they do, there is no need.

The soldiers come into the train car. They fill it up, their faces grim.

“Who does this belong to?” the soldier who moved me says, yelling so loudly that his voice echoes off the stripped metal of the train.

Silence. Nothing but frozen, scared silence.

And then Jerusha stands up.

“I know who it belongs to,” he says, and his voice is clear. His face is calm. Cold.

He can live through anything. He will survive.

He, of all people, might be the one who can destroy Keran Berj.

No wonder he was kept so close.

“Who? ” the soldier says, scowling. “You?”

Jerusha sighs, as if he is talking to someone very stupid.

“If it was me, why would I say a word? ” he says. “I spoke to you after the last time the train stopped, remember? I asked if my sister could move.”

“I remember,” the soldier says. “Go on.”

“Well, you were by our seats. You saw there was nothing in my hands. Nothing in my seat.” He points to the woman sitting next to him. “She got on at the stop, though. She sat down here, and she had a bott—”

He’s cut off as the woman starts screaming, shaking her head and saying, “No, no, it was there, it was on the train already, he pulled it out and said—”

The soldier hits her. The woman howls and then falls silent, stunned.

“She did board then, didn’t she? ” he says to himself, and then looks at the other soldiers, who nod. He turns back to Jerusha. “Did you see her talking to anyone before she boarded?”

“Just a man, an earth-dark man who . . . ” Jerusha trails off, then says, “Wait. Is she—does she—is she one of them? Those—those People?” He spits the word as if it is too awful to fit in his mouth, too awful to be said, and stares at the woman in horror.

The soldier pulls the woman up, stares into her crying face. “The Guards contacted us earlier. Told us to look for a woman traveling alone with short, dyed hair. Is that you, do you think? ” He yanks her head forward, pulling her hair, and she screams.

He holds up a clump of it. It is white like the brightest sunlight on top and a darker, deeper yellow near the root. Not light brown-red, though.

Not like mine.

“Dyed hair,” the soldier says, and the woman cries, “For Keran Berj, for his glory, for how he says women should be,” but the soldier shakes her, hard, and says, “We know everything. You asked a soldier to throw the bottle away a little while ago. Off the train, you said, because the trash was full. You think we don’t know what you are? You think you didn’t give yourself away the moment you showed papers saying you’re checking on soil conditions between here and the border? You think that would fool anyone other than some desert rejects?”