Hooves drum the ground, a thousand tiny shakes that refuse to obey her will.
Once there was a girl who awoke in a prison cell.
It’s dark, but she can see the metal grate of a door not far off. The bed is softer than anything she’s slept on in months, and the air is warm. Or she is warm. She evaluates the fever that burns under her skin and concludes that it is dangerously high. She’s not hungry, either, though her belly is as empty as ever. A bad sign.
This may have something to do with the fact that her leg aches like a low, monotonous scream. Two screams. Her upper thigh burns, but the knee feels as though shards of ice have somehow inserted themselves into the joint. She wants to try and flex it, see if it can move enough to bear her weight, but it hurts so much already that she is afraid to try.
She remains still, listening before opening her eyes, a habit that has saved her life before. Distant sound of voices, echoing along corridors that stink of rust and mildewed mortar. No breath or movement nearby. Sitting up carefully, the girl touches the cloth that covers her. Scratchy, patchy. Warmer than her own blanket, wherever that is. She will steal this one, if she can, when she escapes.
Then she freezes, startled, because there is someone in the room with her. A man.
But the man does not move, does not even breathe; just stands there. And now she can see that what she thought was skin is marble. A statue. A statue?
It’s hard to think through the clamor of fever and pain, even the air sounds loud in her ears, but she decides at last that the city-dwellers have peculiar taste in art.
She hurts. She’s tired. She sleeps.
“You tried to kill us,” says a woman’s voice.
The girl blinks awake again, disoriented for a moment. A lantern burns something smoky in a sconce above her. Her fever has faded. She’s still thirsty, but not as parched as before. A memory comes to her of people in the room, tending her wounds, giving her broth tinged with bitterness; this memory is distant and strange. She must have been half delirious at the time. She’s still hungry—she is always hungry—but that need, too, is not as bad as it was. Even the fire and ice in her leg have subsided.
The girl turns to regard her visitor. The woman sits straddling an old wooden chair, her arms propped on its back. The girl does not have enough experience of other people to guess her age. Older than herself; not elderly. And big, with broad shoulders made broader by layers of clothing and fur, heavy black boots. Her hair, a poufing mane as gray and stiff as ash-killed grass, has been thickened further by plaits and knots which are either decoration or an attempt to keep the mass of it out of her eyes. Her face is broad and angular, her skin sallow-brown like the girl’s own.
(The statue that was in the corner is gone. Once there was a girl who hallucinated while in a fever.)
“You would’ve torn down half our southern wall,” the woman continues. “Probably destroyed one or more storecaches. That kind of thing is enough to kill a city these days. Wounds draw scavengers.”
This is true. It would not have been her intention, of course. She tries to be a successful parasite, not killing off her host; she inflicts only enough damage to get inside undetected. And while the city was busy repairing itself and fighting off the enemies who would have come, the girl could have survived unnoticed within its walls for some time. She has done this elsewhere. She could have prowled its alleys, nibbled at its foundations, searching always for the taste of vinegar. He is here somewhere.
And if she fails to find him in time, if he does to this city what he has done elsewhere . . . well. She would not kill a city herself, but she’ll fatten herself off the carcass before she takes up his trail again. Anything else would be wasteful.
The woman waits a moment, then sighs as if she expected no response. “I’m Ykka. I assume you have no name?”
“Of course I have a name,” the girl snaps.
Ykka waits. Then she snorts. “You look, what, fourteen? Underfed, so let’s say eighteen. You were a small child when the Rivening happened, but you’re not feral now—much—so someone must have raised you for awhile afterward. Who?”
The girl turns away in disinterest. “You going to kill me?”
“What will you do if I say yes?”
The girl sets her jaw. The walls of her cell are panels of steel bolted together, and the floor is joined planks of wood over a dirt floor. But such thin metal. So little wood. She imagines squeezing her tongue between the slats of the floor, licking away the layers of filth underneath—she’s eaten worse—and finally touching the foundation. Concrete. Through that, she can touch the valley floor. The stone will be flavorless and cold, cold enough to make her tongue stick, because there’s nothing to heat it up—no shake or aftershake. And the valley is nowhere near a fault or hotspot, so no blows or bubbles, either. But there are other ways to warm stone. Other warmth and movement she can use.
Using the warmth and movement of the air around her, for example. Or the warmth and movement within a living body. If she takes this from Ykka, it won’t give her much. Not enough for a real shake; she would need more people for that. But she might be able to jolt the floor of her cell, warp that metal door enough to jiggle the lock free. Ykka will be dead, but some things cannot be helped.
The girl reaches for Ykka, her mouth watering in spite of herself—
A clashing flavor interrupts her. Spice like cinnamon. Not so bad. But the bite of the spice grows sharper as she tries to grasp the power, until suddenly it is fire and burning and a crisp green taste that makes her eyes water and her guts churn—
With a gasp, the girl snaps her eyes open. The woman smiles, and the back of the girl’s neck prickles with belated, jarring recognition.
“Answer enough,” Ykka says lightly, though there is cold fury in her eyes. “We’ll have to move you to a better cell if you have the sensitivity to work through steel and wood. Lucky for us you’ve been too weak to try before now.” She pauses. “If you had succeeded just now, would you have only killed me? Or the whole city?”
Still shocked to find herself in the company of her own, the girl answers honestly before she can think not to. “Not the whole city. I don’t kill cities.”
“What is that, some kind of integrity?” Ykka snorts a laugh.
There’s no point in answering the question. “I would’ve just killed as many people as I needed to get loose.”
“And then what?”
The girl shrugs. “Find something to eat. Somewhere warm to hole up.” She does not add, find the vinegar man. It will make no sense to Ykka anyway.
“Food, warmth, and shelter. Such simple wants.” There is mockery in Ykka’s voice, and it annoys the girl. “You could do with fresh clothes. A good wash. Someone to talk to, maybe, so you can start thinking of other people as valuable.”
The girl scowls. “What do you want from me?”
“To see if you’re useful.” At the girl’s frown, Ykka looks her up and down, perhaps sizing her up. The girl does not have the same bottlebrush hair as Ykka, just scraggling brown stuff she chops off with her knife whenever it gets long enough to annoy. She is small and lean and quick, when she is not injured. No telling what Ykka thinks of these traits. No telling why she cares. The girl just hopes she does not appear weak.
“Have you done this to other cities?” Ykka asks.
The question is so patently stupid that there’s no point in answering. After a moment Ykka nods. “Thought so. You seem to know what you’re about.”
“I learned early how it was done.”
“Oh?”