The Harvest (18 page)

“You voted for me.”

“So did a few others. But the numbers just weren’t there.”

“No.” That word spoken with a clenched jaw.

Miranda steps up next to her. Cranes her long neck out, looks down, following Enyastasia’s own gaze. “You’re different than all the others.”

“Different. Yes.” She hesitates. “Broken. I’m broken.”

“Broken does not mean ruined. Are you familiar with the art of
golden joining
?” Enyastasia shakes her head, and Miranda continues: “When a ceramic pot, or vase, or cup is broken, one may mend it with a resin mixed with powdered gold. The broken pot then regains its utility and gains an even greater beauty.”

“I like that.”

“Me, too.” Miranda looks her up and down. “I’d always heard rumors about you. Stirling was tight-lipped, never wanted to say much. Your father—he was the one, wasn’t he? The one who broke you, I mean.”

Enyastasia offers a stiff nod. She’s not used to talking about this. Nobody ever asks, probably because they don’t want to know. Nobody up here in the sky wants to be forced to think about troubling things. They’d rather flit away like swifts on curved wing, ducking and dodging.

She says, “My mother died in childbirth. Leaving me with a father who didn’t want me, a father who was the son of Stirling Ormond, a Grand Architect who had no time for him, and so my father had no time for me. Problem is, he had already burned so many bridges on the flotillas thanks to his behavior that nobody wanted him around. He took his yacht—the
Argus
—and in a fit of drunkenness took me with him. I was three at the time. He wanted to live his life: women, sometimes boys, gin, poppy-smoke. So me, he just locked away. A yacht isn’t big. My bedroom was a box.”

“Did he . . .” The words trail off.

“No, he didn’t. But if I dared to speak up or cry out he beat me until I was quiet. I stayed in that box for so long my legs began to atrophy.”
And that’s why I learned to be strong
. She doesn’t say that, for some reason. Given the votes, it feels suddenly unearned. “Eventually my father killed himself. Drunk, he fell off the yacht. Or so I’m told.”

“You didn’t kill him, then.”

“I wish I had.”

The wind howls, filling the silence between the two.

“Men always want to put us in boxes,” Miranda says finally. “They want to keep us there, out of sight, out of mind. Make our limbs weak so we can’t fight back. They would very much prefer us to be props—a rack, perhaps, to hold up their hats, a shelf to display their trophies. I am pleased to hear that you are not so easily contained.”

Enyastasia raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“What if I told you that Project Raven can still continue?”

She turns her whole body to face Miranda. “Then I’d say I’m listening.”

“Good.” Miranda leans forward, lowers her voice. “The ones in there who voted against you are men. They are empty-headed old cowards who will die sooner than later. I’m old, too, but wise enough to know that I’m not the future. I see that change is upon us. You’re the change I want to see. They’re putting you in a box. It’s time to get out of the box, Miss Ormond.”

Enyastasia is about to say something, but then the older woman takes her hand and peels the fingers back—Miranda presses a small piece of paper into her palm.

“What—?”

“A list of locations. Where those men in there lay their heads at night. Take away their voices, take away their votes, and the raven will fly again.”

PART TWO

PEGASUS CITY

BIG SKY BROKEN

HE’S ALIVE
.

Lane’s mouth is dry as hardtack. His hands are sweat-slick.

Cael is alive
.

Lane wants to be happy. And he is—but that happiness is a small flame in a roaring wind. A wind of great worry. A wind with teeth. Last time they saw each other, Cael killed Billy Cross, Killian’s first mate. Then Cael disappeared out the back of the trawler, breaking through the window in Killian’s chambers—and then he was gone.

Rumors had persisted. That Cael was alive out there. That he was on the Saranyu when it fell. Lane tried not to give too much to those rumors—as if he didn’t already feel guilty enough about the things he’d done to remove the Empyrean yoke from the Heartland’s neck. He tried to tell himself that back then, on the trawler, things would’ve been different if he just could’ve talked it out. If he’d been there to help mediate between Cael and Killian. Gods, that feels like forever ago.

He walks through the center of the city. Folks are up and out today. They’re happy. He can feel the energy. Over there, a couple kids have set up a line of enemy soldiers made out of buckets and boxes—one bucket has been painted like a horse’s head, another like the dead, leering face of one of the mechanical men. The kids take stakes and sticks and use them like they’re pretend sonic weapons and swords, and attack—shrieking and war-whooping, knocking buckets up in the air and whacking them again on the way down.

Couple tents away, a few raider women sit outside a fixy still—plastic jugs and medical tubing and glass bottles. The smell coming off that contraption could burn the hairs right out of your nose. Any fly that gets within fifteen feet of that thing is gonna drop dead of drunk. The women laugh and sharpen machetes, and as Lane passes they give him a respectful nod and two-finger half-salute, half-wave.

As he walks, that’s the reaction he gets. Nods. Waves. Smiles. Chins up. Chests out. Like they’re proud of themselves for following him, which is even better than them being proud of him alone.

And yet he feels like an imposter. Like somewhere in the backs of their heads they might still have little drawers of judgment reserved just for him, and at any moment they might open those drawers and let the bad thoughts out.
You don’t belong here. You’re too young. Too dumb. You’re no captain, no mayor, no nothing. Stowaway. Pretender. Naive little faggot.

Though he wonders:

Is that judgment coming from other people, or from himself?

Shit.

He chews on a birch stick, nods, and waves, and tries to muster a smile. Ahead, in what passes for the city center—Boxelder Circle—he sees the lunch wagon set up. Sign hand-painted above it:
SULLY
’
S KITCHEN
. Someone painted a likeness of Sully the Cook on it—a bit cartoonish-looking, the cheeks too round and red, the eyes big like a puppy’s eyes. Of course, the truck is Sully’s only in name, only in memory. Sully’s dead now. Made into a red mess by the mechanicals of Tuttle’s Church.

All around the wagon, raiders and Heartlanders gather. Lots of laughing and big voices booming from men and women alike. The rhythm of stories going around—the words lost as the voices compete, but Lane knows the rhythm of a tale told. He spies a few bottles of Micky Finn’s gin going around in a circuit, and a few bottles of Jack Kenny whiskey.

In the center of it, there he is.

Cael McAvoy. Captain of the Big Sky Scavengers.

Once, one of Lane’s best friends.

Still is, right?
that voice asks.

Way it asks, it doesn’t sound so sure.

Suddenly, a presence presses up against him, preceded only by a moment’s worth of septic breath. Killian. He reaches for Lane’s arm and holds it tight—the man’s skin is almost pricky-cold, yet somehow damp.

“Your friend has returned from the dead,” Killian says in Lane’s ear.

“It’s a good day,” Lane says.

“Is it? He’s a Blighter and a killer. Don’t forget Billy.”

“Billy was your first mate, not mine.”

“Yes, but
I’m
yours. First mate, best friend, and everything else,” Killian sneers. “Cael McAvoy is a bad seed from whence grows a devilish tree. He’s got the stink of Old Scratch about him. Chaosbringer. Hellhound. Shit-stirrer.”

“Control yourself, you’re drunk,” Lane hisses.

“More than drunk. High as a skiff, I am.” Killian grins.

Lane pushes past him into the crowd. Killian remains behind, though his words chase Lane like a hungry ghost.

Folks see Lane coming through, and they stop and say his name then step aside—cutting a path for him that leads right to Cael.

Everyone goes quiet.

Cael isn’t alone. My gods.
My gods
. It’s Gwennie. And Wanda! He feels a fishhook tug at the corner of his mouth, a grin he can’t help emerging into the light—a grin that quickly stalls when he sees the faraway look in Gwennie’s eyes; the shining green leaf-scale running up Wanda’s neck like a swirl of mold on a fence-board; the pulsing, twitching vine braided around Cael’s arm. Just behind them: Rigo, with the same bombed-out look as Gwennie, with his one leg long gone. And so Lane’s initial surge of
the gang is all here
quickly dies back and he’s left with a hollow feeling. Boxelder feels suddenly very far away both in distance and in time. A thousand miles and a hundred lifetimes between them. But Lane keeps the grin, tries to hold it there, pinned to his face like a sign nailed to a wall—

He hesitates, hangs back a little.

Cael does no such thing.

Cael barks a laugh, the kind of laugh that isn’t forced, that sounds like it kicked its way out of him like a foot through a rotten door. He springs up and collides with Lane and wraps his arms around him. Lane can’t help it—he goes with it, feels a kind of buried love and brotherhood surge through him. The two hug for a while, squeezing each other so hard it feels like one of them is going to pop. And yet, Lane feels it—the Blight. It’s there, too, like a third person trying to get in on the reunited lovefest. He can feel it throbbing along the margins of Cael’s lower back like a dull heartbeat.

Then there really
is
a third person in on the embrace—Rigo, slow to move but surely eager to join, is grunting happily as he joins the hug. And then Gwennie’s there, too—hanging slightly back like she’s unsure of herself, like she doesn’t know if she belongs anymore. But Rigo hooks her and suddenly they’re not so much a bunch of old friends but one entity, one mind, one crew: the Big Sky Scavengers.

“That’s it,” Lane says. “We need to have a proper reunion. All of us Boxelder types. Big Sky crew.” He laughs, pulls away. “C’mon, you three.”

Cael hesitates, then says, “Wanda, too.”

Lane gives him a look, like,
Really?
Wanda’s standing off to the side, looking—well, he can’t quite tell what. A little sheepish, but there’s something else there, too—anger and jealousy, maybe, the two feelings warring for dominance. Or maybe calculating together, he can’t say. She’s changed. It’s not just the Blight. She looks taller not because she’s actually gained height but because she’s
standing
taller.

“She was crew with us for a little while,” Cael says. “And she’s crew now.” He waves her on. Lane notes that her face brightens, though her eyes do not.

Seems they all have stories to tell.

The red wine goes ’round and ’round. An hour in, their lips are purple. They’re all telling stories. It’s silly, but they’re not talking about the last year. They’re talking about back in Boxelder. Rigo tells the story of that time they convinced Wyatt Sanderson to take a shit in Pally Varrin’s hat. Gwennie and Cael talk about when they saved her little brother from that rat-trap processing plant out near the dead town of Bremerton—they both tell the story in tandem, each giving one piece after the other like a team. When they’re done, Lane opens a new bottle of the red stuff and pours everybody a new glass while recalling for them the day that they managed to convince Boyland and his crew of the “priceless scavenge” that was really a busted-up motorvator full of bees—that was back before all the beehives went dead thanks to who-knows-what, chemicals maybe, or some unseen defense mechanism developed by Hiram’s Golden Prolific.

“Boyland beat the snot outta me,” Rigo says, laughing.

Cael nods. “Yeah, he lit me up like a bug zapper. Gods, man, he beat King Hell out of all of us time and again. But that day . . .” He whistles. “That day it was worth it. I woulda taken ten beatings like that just to watch him slinking back to town covered in hundreds of those bee-sting welts.”

“He’s here, you know.” It’s Wanda who speaks up. She doesn’t look to be having as much fun as everyone else.

Lane straightens. “Boyland Barnes Jr. is in Pegasus City?”

Gwennie nods. Cael does, too. Rigo’s the only other one who must not have known. His jaw hangs loose like its hinges are busted.

“Godsdamn,” Lane says. He knows it’s the wine talking, but he licks his lips and says: “I say we all get up from this table, go find his ass, and beat him till he’s blue. We whip his hide like he’s a dirty blanket hanging on the line.”

“I’m in,” Gwennie says. Her voice slides a little, like a foot planting down on greasy mud—bit of a drunken slur creeping in. “He slunk off with my mother and brother and the others. I owe him a beating, I think.”

Wanda speaks up: “I saved his life out there, and I’d rather it not be for nothing. If you don’t mind.” It’s then Lane notices: She hasn’t touched her wine. When he poured her a second glass, he just filled her old one to the brim—wine on top of wine.