Rose had to be careful not to prick herself on the torn bits of wire as she sorted through the scraps. As a dive suit, the outfit was ruined. But she found the belly of the suit and the pouch there that no diver would be without. Rose turned the large scrap of material into the light. She ran her fingers across stitches her husband had made. And there across them was a neat snip her scissors had left from cutting the material off the girl. Fumbling to open the pouch, her fingers shaking, hoping against hope, Rose felt the folded piece of paper inside.
She pulled out the letter. Unfolded it, hands trembling, not daring to breathe.
The sight of her husband’s handwriting blurred the words he’d written:
Rose,
I hope this message finds you well. I have forfeited the right to ask anything of you, but I trust the messenger will be cared for. All that awaited her here was misery and death. I don’t have much time left, and so I send her and these words to the gods. I pray I don’t write them in vain.
You alone know all the bad I’ve done. Running from my mistakes was by far the worst. There is a reason no one comes back from this place. They won’t let us. Don’t come for me. Run from these drums, Rose. They grind the earth to nothing here. They take our water from the sky. Mountains are turned into rivers. There is no talking to them, even those of us who have learned their language. We are the salamander living in a hole beneath the sand. They are the boot that unwittingly buries us. To them, it is just a march onward and onward. To us, it is a trampling.
They know you are out there. They know of Springston and Low-Pub. Others before me have told them, have begged to be released, have begged for help, for water, for any of the small miracles we glimpse of their cities and their life. But no help will ever come for us. Our voices will never be heard. They have lesser problems to worry over.
Listen to me, please. This is not a war to win. It’s not one to even fight. Don’t let the young there among you know what we’re up against. You remember how I was. Tell only the old and wise, those with burns and scars, that everything here is to be feared. Tell the Lords. Explain to them that these people are not evil, which we might understand and combat. Explain to them that these people do not care and cannot be made to, which is far worse. There can be no knocking on their doors that they might hear. Nothing we can do or say that will be as loud as the blasts that rob our rain. We are the salamander, they are the boot. You have to make the Lords understand.
Go west if you can. Forget the horror stories of what lies that way. Forget the mountains. Crush their peaks if you must, but go. Take the children and whoever will listen to reason. Those who will not succumb to reason, leave them behind to rot. Leave them here with me where we belong.
Yours,
Farren Robertson Axelrod — The Pickpocket of Low-Pub
Rose ran her fingers across her husband’s name. She could feel the graceful groove the press of his pen had made. A man she thought dead had written this. She sat there for a long time with that letter in her hands, gazing upon the words, while a young girl lay in the bed beside her, murmuring in her dreams.
Rose remembered a time and a life when things had been different. She read the letter again, hearing the voice of her husband reading it to her, remembering his smell, his touch, the itch of his beard against her neck, the way a man could lie with her and she would want it to last, not end as quickly as possible. Love she would give anything for.
There was no telling how long she sat like this, there in that feeble shaft of light dumping through sand-dusted glass. The sand hissed on the panes. It came in waves with the wind. Her daydreaming of the long ago brought with it more than the sound of Farren’s voice. It brought the thunder of drums, which she used to hear from the great wall. Drums like a heartbeat out of rhythm.
The empty water jar on the table shuddered, which snapped Rose back to the present. The drums were real. She could still hear them popping—that unmistakable dull roar of buried bombs being triggered. But too many. She lost count. Rose leaned over the table and banged on the window with her fist, loosening the cake[13] so she could see. There was a noise outside her door, the sound of boots hurrying up the stairs and across the balcony. This was soon muffled by a growing grumble beyond her window, a thunderous din that grew and grew. There was noise everywhere. The door to her room flew open. Rose turned and saw Conner there, Rob standing behind him, both boys winded, eyes wide, looking to the bed and then to the window.
“Mom?”
Rose turned as the sound grew deafening. She peered through the glass toward Springston. The letter trembled in her hands. The jar wobbled as the violence approached.
“No,” she muttered, realizing what was coming, what was happening. The room shook. The Honey Hole quivered. The young girl woke suddenly and began screaming, and Rose yelled at her boys to take a deep breath, to get down. She dove from the window and threw herself across the girl.
And then the sand bashed through the window and buried them all.
43 • The Great Wall
Vic and Palmer spent a night at the oasis. Palmer needed time to regain some strength before another day of sailing, and Vic wasn’t comfortable navigating the dunes at night. They left at first light in a building breeze. She stopped twice to check on her brother and force him to drink. While she sailed, he rode along in the haul rack, a small bimini flapping above him, his head lolling side to side as he drifted off to sleep.
They arrived at Springston a little past noon, the sun just crossing the mast as Vic steered due south by compass. She took in the mainsheet and sailed the sarfer up and along a ridge of dunes toward the north side of town. Freeing the mainsail and furling the jib, she slowed the craft to a halt. The aluminum hull groaned on its rusty rivets as the pressure on the mast lessened, the sand crunching as the craft came to a rest. Vic set her teeth and rummaged through Marco’s gear bag—an unpleasant reminder of his absence. She always figured she’d lose him on a dive or in some retaliatory bombing, some nonsensical violence, an effort to depose one Lord and replace him with some identical other. She tried not to think of how it had happened. Or the click of that misfire aimed at her own skull. She found his binoculars in his bag and placed the strap around her neck. Today. Focus on the now.
“Why’re we stopping?” Palmer asked. He had propped himself up in the sarfer’s haul rack, Vic’s gear bag a pillow behind his head. The bimini Vic had rigged up to keep him in the shade made it difficult for him to see where they were.
“We’re stopping so I can get a look at town. Last time I was here, someone tried to kill me, and everyone is looking for you. We need food, and I’d like to get word to some friends to be on the lookout for Brock and his men. I’m hoping I can do both at the market on the edge of town here. If it looks too risky, we’re gonna push on to Low-Pub.”
Palmer groaned. “I don’t think I can go another dune in this rack, Vic.”
She unplugged her suit from the charger fed by the wind turbine and stood on the deck of the twin-hulled craft. She gave the boom a wary glance, made sure the wind wasn’t going to blow it toward her. “I know,” she said. “I’d rather not ride any farther myself. But I’d also prefer not to get killed, either.”