Crecheling (13 page)

Zarah stood. “That isn’t your concern, my child.” She gathered her cloak about her.

“What is my concern?”

Magister Zarah disappeared into the darkness, her words drifting over her shoulder and reaching Dyan’s ears on the cold night breeze.

“Your concern is to consider the consequences, and to choose.”

***

Chapter Fourteen

Dyan let the boys sleep through the night, and they both slept hard. The more she thought, the less it seemed to her that she had anything to think about, and when Jak opened his eyes with the first gray light of dawn, she handed him a flask of water.

“I have something to tell you,” she said.

“Thanks.” He took the water and drank.

She told him that Zarah had said Aleen was alive. She had to lie about when she had heard it, of course. She couldn’t admit that she’d let her Magister into camp the night before, and considered the possibility of murdering Jak in his sleep. Instead, she said Zarah had told her the night before the Cull.

He took the news quietly, without showing any visible reaction. Then he kicked Eirig awake and insisted they start immediately.

Dyan couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Magister Zarah’s words to her the night before had meant that if Dyan chose not to return to the System, and instead to flee with Jak to the Wahai, she wouldn’t be followed. Or at least, she wouldn’t be followed
now
.

Still, Jak went out of his way to hide their tracks and thwart pursuit, and she let him. She could have misunderstood Zarah, or Zarah could have lied. Or Cheela or Shad might pursue Dyan on their own, against Zarah’s wishes. Or someone else might pick up their trail—outlaws or indigenes. So they walked on long stretches of rock, or single file on trails when they had to use them, and when the canyon walls dropped and the Snaik again became accessible, they crossed the river daily.

Jak and Eirig took rabbits with snares, and speared fish. Dyan shot a small deer with Shad’s bow—with
her
bow. She knelt beside the animal’s body and laid a hand on its neck to ask its forgiveness before Jak skinned it and cut up its flesh.

It wasn’t the Blooding the System had intended, but it seemed sufficient to her. In her heart, she pronounced herself a Magister.

She and Jak were never alone together, except for brief moments when Eirig slipped away to check a snare or to deal with some bodily need. She cherished those times, and tried to smile at Jak even more than usual when Eirig was gone to show her feelings. He smiled back, but they never touched, kissed, or did anything that Dyan would have expected to do with a Love-Match.

Jak didn’t talk about his sister, other than to mention to Eirig on the first day that he thought she was alive, and somewhere in the Wahai. But the closer they got to the Wahai, the more excited he seemed, the earlier he was awake each morning, and the further he insisted they all walk each day before resting.

They skirted around the broad open southern end of Treasure Valley before finally slipping into it at Nemap, on the shores of the Lull Sea, a week later. Like Ratsnay Station, Nemap was a settlement whose heart was a town enclosed within a stockade wall. Nemap was much larger than Jak’s home settlement, though, and boats from its wharves plied across the Lull to visit Marsick and Cowell, and trading grounds of the Basku and the Shoshan on the Wahai-side shore. The Wahai themselves stretched up tall and brown on the other side of the Lull. The Jawtooths were visible on the opposite side of the valley, their tallest peaks capped with white snow.

Looking down from a high grassy ridge at the swarms of people moving in and out of Nemap, Dyan had a realization. “We’re going to need new names,” she said.

“Ah, if you’re bored of
Eirig
already,” said her one-armed companion, “you’re going to be bored of anything else I can think of even quicker. My old dad had a better imagination than I ever did. I expect it had something to do with how much beer he drank.”

“How much did he drink, then?” Dyan asked, recognizing the prompt.

“My old dad drank so much beer that the day after he died,” Eirig told her, eyes glittering, “they went to cut his hair for the funeral and discovered that the stuff growing out of his scalp was
hops
.”

Dyan laughed, and it was sort of funny. She wished she had an old dad to tell jokes about. “We still need new names,” she persisted. “At least here, so close to Buza System. Maybe out in the mountains it won’t matter so much.”

“How about
Arik
?” Jak suggested. “I’ll be
Jass
, and Dyan can be
Dana
.”

“That’s very fancy, my old friend Jass,” Eirig said, “but of course we can’t take Dana here into town with us.”

Jak bristled. “Why not?”

Eirig laughed. “Look at you both, you’re so excited to be having an adventure together,” he swung his arms to mimic a marching pace, “choosing false identities and looking for Jak’s sister, you’ve forgotten that Dyan here is dressed like an Urbane.”

Dyan looked down at herself. It was true, she had forgotten, but everything about her clothing, from the hat to the coat to the rider’s boots, marked her as being from Buza System. “Blazes,” she cursed.

“You even swear like a Systemoid,” Jak laughed.

“Sorry,” Dyan snorted. “Blazes! There, is that better?”

“It is. But the clothing is still a problem.”

“Going naked would be even more of a problem.”

“Would it?” he asked, and Dyan blushed. Jak’s eyes twinkled, and for the first time in many days she felt attractive.

“Come on then, you nitwits,” Eirig said. “You hang out here naked. I’ll go down and get the girl some decent clothing.”

“I’ll go,” Jak insisted immediately. “I can ask about my sister.”

“You can’t go around asking if anyone knows
Aleen from Ratsnay Station
, either,” Dyan said.

“Don’t be silly, I know better than that. I’ll say I’m looking for my cousin, who might be using any name, and describe her. The reason it has to be me is that the single best tool I have for finding Aleen is my face.”

“What?” Dyan asked.

“She’s a few years older than Jak,” Eirig explained. “But other than that, people always said they could have been twins.”

They sat down off the crest of the ridge and examined the remaining items in their saddlebags. When they had segregated out what they thought they needed from what they thought they could spare, Jak shouldered the bag full of their tradable goods: flares, one of the medikits, a light stick, a field lens, water purification tablets, some concentrated rations, several microfiber blankets. He gave Dyan an excited hug, gripped Eirig’s arm, and then traipsed down the long slope into Nemap.

Dyan and Eirig sat and waited.

While they waited, Dyan whistled tunes. After she cycled through various Crecheling songs she knew, she found herself whistling the Gallows Song.

“Ah, I love that one,” Eirig said.

“Do you know the whole thing?” she asked.

He sang.

“Sally she married a soldier,

A Captain named William Lee.

And I guess in his fashion he loved her,

But Sally always loved me.

Now I sit by this stone and remember

Her blue eyes and tresses of gold,

And how we said when we were younger,

We’d be together when we grew old.

Oh, sweet Sally,

Dear Mrs. Lee,

Your footsteps are gone,

But your memory lives on,

And you’ll always be Sally to me.

The Captain was usually sober.

At night he was usually home.

On bad days he yelled and he beat her

Breaking her pride with her bones.

You know I was never her lover,

But not because I never tried.

She lay every week on my shoulder,

And whispered my name as she cried.

Oh, sweet Sally,

Dear Mrs. Lee,

Your whispers are gone,

But your memory lives on,

And you’ll always be Sally to me.

He found us one day by the river,

Just talking, our feet in the foam.

Pulling his Pistol, he shot her,

And I ran to the forest alone.

Some say they drowned there together.

Some say he hanged from a tree.

I guess it doesn’t much matter,

Since the Captain took Sally from me.

Oh, sweet Sally,

Dear Mrs. Lee,

Your kisses are gone,

But your memory lives on,

And you’ll always be Sally to me.”

It was a simple melody, but pretty, and by the end it had become haunting. Listening to the words, it seemed perfect that the hanged man had hummed this tune as he had gone to his death.

“I don’t understand a lot of that,” Dyan said, “but it moves me. It seems terrible and beautiful at the same time.”

“What don’t you understand?” Eirig asked.

“Just some of the words. What’s a
missez?
You sing that over and over again, in front of a name, like it’s a Calling.
Missez Lee
. And I don’t know what a
pistol
is. Or a
Captain
. I think a
soldier
is a pre-Cataclysmic word for something like a Guardsman or an Outrider, and that makes sense in the song. And of course, the names are strange.”

Eirig shrugged. “Old songs,” he said dismissively. “Who knows? Maybe the words made sense to someone once. Maybe they were always gibberish. Like fa la la.”

“Coo coo ca choo.”

“Rock-a-bye, baby.”

“Eirig,” she asked him, trying to sound neither too frivolous nor too serious, “what about
your
family?”

“Well, there’s my old dad,” he said. “The first thing you should know about him is that stuff on top of his head, it isn’t hair.”

“Eirig!” Dyan punched him in the arm, and he faked a punch back at her—with his missing arm. When he missed and stumbled, she caught him and held him upright. “Be serious.”

“Jak’s my family,” he said.

She furrowed her brow at him.

“Serious.” He had a solemn face. “My old dad wasn’t a drunk, he was a good man. But my mother died when I was young, and folks say my dad took it hard. He was a fighter and a scout, like an Outrider, I guess, only without all the fancy gear. I only have a few memories of him, and in my memories he’s always just come home from some trip up the Snaik or into the Jawtooths, and he’s filthy. And then one time he just didn’t come home. He was out alone, so no one really knows what happened. Could have been a wildcat or a bear, or a Basku. Maybe he got on the wrong side of someone from the System, or maybe he just fell, broke his leg and died of starvation.”

“How old were you then?”

Eirig shrugged. “Five, maybe.”

Dyan looked at his stump. “Based on what I know of his son, I don’t think something as little as a broken leg could have killed him.”

Eirig grinned. “So, Jak’s family raised me. His mom Rosyn, she was a fine old lady, but she had her hands full making a living with her own husband dead, so really, the only mom I knew was Jak’s sister, Aleen. She’s the only parent I remember well. She kept me dressed, and fed, and in school with the Magisters.”

“And Jak kept you out of trouble.”

“Ha!” Eirig thumped the ground with his fist. “That shows how little you know Jak.
He
was the one always getting into trouble. Whenever I went along, I ended up getting all the blame for whatever we did.”

“So did you stop going along?”

“Nope. I just got used to being blamed.”

“I don’t know any parents,” Dyan said.

“Yeah, I heard that,” Eirig said. “I guess I have a hard time imagining what that means.”

Dyan looked down at the slate gray Lull Sea with its toothpick boats, and the toothpick stockade wall around bustling Nemap. “It means that I remember the Nursery, but only a very tiny bit. It’s hard to be certain the memories are even mine, really, and not memories I invented based on later visits to other Nurseries.”

“I don’t know what a Nursery is.”

“Imagine rooms full of cradles. Magisters caring for little babies, other rooms to play in, toys, singing.”

“Mothers?”

“No mothers. Like I said, I never knew my parents. I remember Magisters, and sometimes other visitors. I remember being observed through glass windows by adults. Not by anyone’s mother.”

“Until when?” Eirig asked. “I mean, I assume you didn’t just leave the Nursery to come down to Ratsnay Station for the Selection.”

Dyan laughed. “No. A child in the System is moved every two years. Two years in one Nursery, then two years in another, and then the child moves into a dormitory and the Creche. And every two years after that, a new dormitory and a new Creche.”

“That’s a lot of changing.”

“Sometimes you have the same Magister more than once, or the same Crechemates. I think they want us to know a lot of people.”

“Yeah, but nobody really well. I think they want you not to have a family.”

He was right, Dyan thought, but she didn’t say anything.

“What’s a Creche?” he asked.

“Five kids together in school,” she said. “Training. Experiments. Games. Contests. Everything you can do to get ready to be an Urbane. An adult.”

“A Systemoid.”

“A Systemoid,” she agreed.

A speck in the stream of people and animals moving in and out of the Nemap gates individuated itself in the moment of turning off the road and moving up the long grassy slope in their direction. The speck became a blob as they watched it come closer, then a roan horse and rider, and finally Jak. Mounted.

He threw a bale of cloth on the ground when he arrived. “New clothes for everyone!” he said. “New saddlebags, too, that don’t look like System issue. Some dried meat and fruit, a map.” He dismounted. “This mare isn’t the big Outrider beast you’re accustomed to, but she should carry one of us at a time, and our gear. We can take turns.”

“Your trading has been productive, Jass,” Dyan told him.

“Thank you, Dana.” He bowed.

“And your face, my good friend Ass?” Eirig asked. “I mean,
Jass
. Has your face accomplished everything it set out to do?”

“In fact,” Jak said, “it has.”

Dyan shivered at the news. “Really?”

Jak nodded. “A trader asked me almost immediately if I was any kin of that farmer, goodwife Alyra, over in Marsick.”