Sunshield Page 3

  I glance at him, Colm’s tidbit about the Sunshield Bandit rushing back to me. “Why’s that?”

  “Because right now the Ferinno is one big boiling pot of trouble—if we’re going to lay a real road through it, it’d be nice to know which bandits claim which territory,” Rou says. “That section along the South Burr is going to be a crucial stage to keep passable. There’s no other water for fifty miles.”

  I relax a little. He’s obviously not thinking about his oldest daughter’s abduction a decade and a half ago, or the possibility that she may be in some outlaw’s camp in the middle of the desert.

  So, of course, my thoughts slide to Moira Alastaire—which is strange, because I don’t remember anything about her. I’ve seen a portrait of her exactly once, when I crept along at Mama’s side in Queen Mona’s chambers while visiting Lumen Lake. The picture was tucked inside the rolltop of the queen’s writing desk, and I spotted the two identical brown freckled faces and cascading curls gazing out from their childhood portrait. I haven’t thought of that picture in years. As we enter the glow from the hall up ahead, I glance surreptitiously at Eloise.

  I guess Moira would look the same now, if she’s still alive. I frown at the somber thought, but I can’t see how she’s not dead.

  That said, neither Eloise nor Rou have any cause to connect the attack on Colm’s stage to the Sunshield Bandit or long-lost Moira. I try to follow Rou’s previous comment back into safer territory.

  “We should get good insight to bandit activity near the border if we can get conversation moving in court,” I suggest.

  “On that note.” Rou turns to Eloise. “Have you had any better luck with Prince Iano? I meant to check with you yesterday, but I’ve been wrapped up with Queen Isme.”

  “Well—some,” she says. “He’s still being . . . difficult to interact with.”

  I can hear the reluctance in her voice—Eloise isn’t one to speak badly of others. I admire her for that, but I can’t deny that she’s dramatically downplaying the ill temper of the Moquoian prince. My work has mostly been at Rou’s side, since Eloise’s grasp on the language is better than his, and from what I’ve witnessed of their stilted interactions, I don’t envy her in the slightest.

  “He just . . .” She pauses, then begins again, pursing her lips and pondering her words. “He seems . . . well, sad, to be honest. He keeps to his rooms so much, he talks to almost no one in court, and he certainly never smiles. And I know it’s not a language barrier—he’s more fluent in Eastern than I am in Moquoian, but having a conversation with him is like . . .”

  Talking to a brick wall, I finish silently for her.

  “Well, it’s challenging,” she says.

  “Did you get this impression of him when you exchanged letters last year?” Rou asks.

  “Not at all. Did you, Veran?”

  She’s being kind, asking for my opinion. She’s the one who drafted all the letters to Iano—I merely proofread them for grammar. I shake my head. “He seemed perfectly friendly in his letters, and ready to negotiate.”

  “That’s right,” Eloise agrees. “He had all kinds of ideas on partnering with the university, funding the Ferinno Road, transitioning industrial labor away from bond labor, all that. But since we’ve gotten here, any time I bring up policy, he almost pretends not to hear me.”

  “Hm.” Rou frowns in thought. “I wish I could say I’m surprised, but herein lies our biggest challenge with this Moquoian effort. All the courts back east are familiar to us—we share a language, and borders, and cultural groundwork. But the sea and desert routes have distanced us from Moquoia for centuries. These are new steps we’re taking, and it’s likely there are norms in place we don’t understand yet. If I had my way, we’d have a year just to familiarize ourselves with the Moquoian people before broaching policy at all. But the trafficking uptick in the Ferinno has accelerated everything, and instead of a year, we have eight weeks—and we’ve already used up four of them.”

  A golden gleam breaks through the dark cedar trunks and turquoise lanterns. Up ahead, the Hall of the Ashoki is brimming with light and noise, threaded with the spicy scent of hot cream tea. Rou eyes the approaching doors, and he slows down, patting Eloise’s hand.

  “Tell you what, Lady Princess,” he says. “What if Veran joins you this morning, instead of coming with me? It might come across as more casual—a pair of friends instead of a lone diplomat.”

  A spark of unease flares in my stomach. “I’m not trained in policy, though.” Not to mention that alongside people like Eloise and my oldest sister, Viyamae, both heirs to their respective thrones, I’m generally as helpful as a toddler playing make-believe. Eloise may only be two years older than me, but I’ve always felt she’s on a rung I’ll never quite reach.

  “Let’s leave policy alone for the morning—though you’re better than you think you are, V.” Rou bumps my elbow reassuringly and then gestures at the turquoise banners hanging from the trees. “It’s the first day of the new si—a day for celebration. Perhaps we haven’t been striking the right chords. Just be friendly, and maybe the prince will warm to negotiations. You can even try the junior delegate route, if you think it might work—maybe Iano will open up if he thinks he’s mentoring somebody.”

  Eloise doesn’t look convinced, casting a doubtful glance at her father. “Can you manage with Queen Isme without Veran translating for you?”

  He closes his eyes, pained. “Once again, lolly, I am offended—”

  “Two days ago you told her Moquoia is like a verdant tumor,” she interrupts with reproach. “Whatever that was supposed to mean!”

  I snort and then stifle it. Rou had said that, with a completely straight face, and I had to keep from laughing while I offered the similar-sounding paradise to the scandalized courtiers.

  “Ah, but there are so many worse mistakes I could have made,” Rou says, half wincing, half grinning. “And I still maintain that there is absolutely no difference between those two words.” He waves at us both as we jump to insist on the subtle inflection. “I’ll manage for the morning. Her courtiers think my slipups are amusing, and I plan to mostly listen to the gossip about the new ashoki, anyway. What do you say, Veran? Join Eloise for a little while, see if you can warm Iano up?” He gives a quick nod to Eloise. “Not that I think you haven’t done a supreme job already . . .”

  “No, I’d be glad for your company, Veran,” she says. “If I’m honest, talking to Prince Iano has been the most vexing thing I’ve ever attempted. Perhaps he’ll be more interested in you than in me. Just as long as you don’t start an international incident, Papa.”

  Rou grimaces. “I’ve done that before, and it’s exhausting. My revolutionary days are over—that’s your responsibility now.”

  He gives a bark of laughter at the absurdity of his comment given his present company—the exemplary diplomat and the tagalong interpreter—and shepherds us toward the gleaming doors.

  Lark

  “There you go, Whit.” I tighten the last strap on the little girl’s feet. The traveling boots I took off the bearded man in the stage are miles too big for her, but she’s outgrown her last pair of shoes and has been padding around with her toes sticking out. I’ve used leather thongs from an old bridle to cinch them to her feet. Not pretty, but it works.

  She mumbles a thank you, the th sound distorted by her cleft lip, and shuffles away, leaving tracks in the dirt. I sit back on my heels and take off my broad-brimmed leather hat. The creases are lined with dust, and I beat it against my calf a few times. Nearby, Rat lifts his head at the noise, his bat ears perked up.

  “Dust, dust, dust,” I say to him. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re all really purple or green underneath, but we’ve all turned the color of dust.”

  He yawns and shakes his head, flapping his ears. A dirty cloud drifts from his fur.

  Saiph emerges from the bushes, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, toweling himself off with a piece of sacking. “Seep’s free, Lark.
”

  “About time.” I get up and head through the scrub oak. Rat follows at my heels.

  The seep sits against the wall of the canyon, deeper than a puddle but not enough to be a real pool. It’s born from our water pocket, the natural well in the rocks above that provides all our daily water. The pocket was how Rose and I first found our way into Three Lines Canyon, following the old three-lined petroglyph carved down near the mouth that proclaimed a source of water. The top of the pocket sits high up the canyon wall, and it takes a burning climb to get up to it, but in my four years holing up here, it’s never run dry. The water is cool and sweet, and as it trickles down the rock face, it leaves slick black streaks that attract clouds of yellow butterflies and dozens of sandy lizards that snap up flies.

  The seep is low today, barely covering the pebbly bottom. It’s why we’ve designated this a washing day—if things dry up any more, all our water will have to be drawn and hauled down from the pocket, and after cooking and drinking there’ll be almost none to spare. Lila’s turn comes after mine today, and she’s pushy on washing days—there’s no time to waste. I start stripping off my clothes. Off comes my vest and dust-colored shirt. I kick off my boots—the only part of my wardrobe that’s really worth anything, as I lifted them off a well-dressed stage traveler a few months ago. After pulling off my trousers and holey stockings, I finally unhook my breast band and drape everything over a juniper bush.

  The breeze is shearing up the canyon like it sometimes does, so I prop up the windbreak—a stiff old bison hide on a wooden frame—and settle down on the rocks lining the seep. I wiggle my feet through the grit and pebbles, letting them grind away the dirt creased between my toes. I bend forward, stretching out my neck, and untie the strip that holds my dreadlocks out of my face. My hair has been locked for as long as I can remember. I have vague memories of tangled curls, but whether my hair locked itself naturally or someone got it started back in Tellman’s Ditch, I was too young to remember. I have no desire to change it—I like how easy it is to keep up. No endless brushing, like Lila, to keep the knots and burrs out. No need to wrap it every night, like Rose, to keep it from drying out in the merciless desert heat.

  I pinch a few of the locks in my fingers—I’m well past due for a wash, but our soap in camp is running low, and I’m almost entirely out of oil. It’s a shame—I found the bottle of high-end scalp oil by chance in a peddler’s trunk Pickle lifted in Bitter Springs. It’s perfumed, light and sweet—certainly the nicest-smelling thing I own, and I’ve been savoring it drop by drop for almost six months. Now it’s nearly gone, and I don’t have enough coin to justify buying another bottle, even the cheap stuff I can sometimes find in town. Sighing, I run my fingers through my hair, feeling the grit and grime along my scalp. No, I’ll have to wash today, oil or no, and bear the frizzing and dryness that will come along with it.

  I cup handfuls of water and splash my arms and neck, leaving little tracks of slightly cleaner skin. I wipe at the dirt covering the tattoo on the inside of my right forearm, glad to see the ink isn’t bleeding. This tattoo—my longsword—and the other on my left forearm—my buckler—are two of my oldest. The point of the sword drives into the scarred concentric circle on my wrist, the brand all nonbonded laborers got in Tellman’s Ditch. I frown at the back of my hand, where the sun—my most recent tattoo—looks a little blurry near the ends of the rays. Ah, well. Rose told me the ink might not be as strong as it should be for that one.

  The two words circling my wrists are clear, though. Strength on my right, my sword arm, and Perseverance on my left. I had to ask Saiph how to spell that word, and he stood over Rose’s shoulder as she worked, scratching out the letters in the dirt one by one so she got it right.

  I twist to check the vaguely larkish bird on my right shoulder, and then lean back to check the coyote on my rib cage, its head thrown back in song like Rat sometimes does when he gets a wild hair about him. In this position, I see the six spots making an off-center circle around my navel. I rub at them. Sometimes what I think are marks are just flecks of stubborn dirt, but these have always been here. I think perhaps next I’ll have Rose connect them in a star. I saw the Alcoran flag once hanging on the wall of an outpost—a shiny white jewel surrounded by six-pointed stars. The idea of tattooing one of their national symbols onto my skin makes me smirk. It gives me the same satisfaction as naming my horse Jema after hearing about some famous old queen. Or young queen, or not-a-queen-anymore—I don’t know what the politics are. I just liked the idea of adding a fancy, stolen name to a fancy, stolen horse.

  I splash my face and then crane my head to look at my last, and oldest tattoo. A river, starting at the top of my left shoulder and streaming down the outside of my arm. This is the only one Rose didn’t start, though she’s added to it over the years, making a sleeve. I got it started when I still worked in the rustlers’ camp. The big, dirty cowhand had just finished cutting a curvy lady into the big, dirty bicep of the cook when I sat down in front of him.

  He had eyed me, scrawny and scratchy as a scrub oak, as I rolled up my dusty sleeve.

  “What’cho want, Nit?” he had asked with some amusement.

  “Water,” I said. “A whole bunch of water, like the South Burr.” That was the most water I’d ever seen in my life, a sluggish, dirt-colored channel, thick with the smell of cows.

  He’d laughed. “S’gonna hurt some.”

  “I’ll tell you if it hurts,” I said.

  I watch a trickle run down the path of the river on my arm now. I’ve since seen bigger stretches of water—the river the South and North Burr run into, for one, and a reservoir a half mile wide. But it’s never enough. I have distant memories of the sea, which leads me to believe I started off somewhere in Paroa, or perhaps Cyprien, but these memories are laced with the taste of salt and a thirsty breeze, and they don’t entice me to seek out the coast. Fresh water, the most precious of all resources in the Ferinno, is what I constantly crave.

  Thinking about the sea and tattoos and dirt and grime spurs a now-familiar memory that’s been dogging me for weeks—the voice of that bearded man with the ship tattoo in the stage outside Snaketown. His words have been nettling my thoughts since we wrecked his coach, usually at times like this, when I pause for breath between all the work around camp.

  There are extremely influential people who are very interested in what you do. Life could be different for you and your fellows.

  I close my eyes. Of course things could be different. But it’s easy for rich folk like that man to assume such a feat would be simple, because it all comes back to the system they’ve built, where they sit at the top and pretend not to notice what it is they’re sitting on. Who they’re sitting on. Rose, and Sedge, and Lila, and Saiph, and Andras, and little Whit—and all the uncounted scores of others who get eaten up by the bond labor system.

  And we’re the lucky ones—the ones who got away. Rose had the shortest stint in the quarries of all of us—after her parents died, she entered herself into a three-year bond at the quarries down in Redalo, and when that was up she joined the cattle-rustling operation that found me. But Lila, the oldest among us, was trafficked her whole life, with no inkling of where she comes from beyond the evidence of her pale skin and dirty blond hair, which tells us she must be at least part Lumeni, a story she feeds with tales of shiny pearls and waterfalls she claims to half remember. But she’s not a full-blood—none of us are, except Rose and Andras, with their umber skin and curly black hair from the deep south of Cyprien.

  Unlike Rose, though, Andras was stolen, and unlike Lila, he remembers his home and his parents. He’s my most recent rescue, and I’m working on finding a way to get him back into Cyprien without running up against the trafficking trade again. It’s tougher than the others I’ve managed to send back to their families in Moquoia and Alcoro—Cyprien is on the other side of Alcoro and is apparently half made of water, if tall tales can be believed, but I’ve never been anywhere near it and don’t have th
e first notion of how to get there.

  Saiph is the only other one who recalls anything of his parents. His father was a drunk, he says, a failed trader from Moquoia who headed east into Alcoro to try his hand at cattle ranching. His mother worked for the Alcoran turquoise mines before they were all shut down with the opening of the fancy university. She gave him life and his Alcoran name, but she couldn’t give him much else, and after she died, his father handed him off to the first band of slavers for a sack full of drinking money. He, like me, didn’t have a bond and would have spent the rest of his life a slave if Rose and I hadn’t pulled him out of the wagon.

  The rest of us are merely castoffs, with no history and no family. I scooped Pickle and little Whit up from the wagon train after bandits sold them to the slavers. Before them came Lila and Sedge, our big, sandy-haired probably Alcoran who still has the iron ring around his neck we found him with. On nights when there’s nothing else to do, we often take turns with our worn-out file, working on eventually cutting through the metal. We’ve got one full cut made, but it’s going to take two to get it off.

  And then there are all the others who aren’t with us anymore—the ones I’ve managed to return back to their families. Bitty and Arana and Voss and half a dozen others, mostly little kids stolen from the desert towns and ranches. One or two had been sold by their families, and the best I could do for them was take them to a lodger in Teso’s Ford, where they had the chance of finding work. But doing that costs money—Teso’s Ford is a long way off, and the lodger won’t take anybody for free—and I can’t do it with the younger kids like Whit and Saiph. They’re stuck out here in this burned-out canyon until Rose and I can figure something out.

  Rose has been with me longest—she and Cook found me half dead in the desert after I escaped the wagon. She’s the closest thing I can imagine to family. My skin is tawny brown to her deep umber, but it’s clear I’m part Cypri, like her. That’s my mother’s side in me—that I know from my hazy handful of bleak memories. Not that I remember her, per se, but I remember my father. Or at least, I remember his Alcoran name.