waterfly

OUT TO SEA

(Scrap)

The first time I saw Tin after three years I noticed that his face was cut off from me. Cold. Dispassionate. The last letter I received from at the fort was full of his warm humor and written laughter, so seeing him as a shock of cold water on my skin. Even if he wasn't closed to contact I couldn't say anything to him. In the hallways of the blush stone fort there was no place left unattended by the Family or their staff. I also knew there was no way I could just seek him out.

Yet I was almost grateful.

It killed me to see him like this.

Every day, after my threshing part of my day was over and my grain lay in fragrant stacks across the floor I took Tin's last letter out of my burlap skirt from a pocket I'd stitched in precisely for this purpose. My work didn't take me as long as the staff thought it did; for hours I could enjoy the sweet breezes through the punctured windows until it grew dark, and then I dragged myself our the door, beginning the twenty-minute walk to a stone box I shared with my mother and three brothers. Privacy was a luxury given to me at work -- and by accident. So, I memorized each of Tin's letters knowing each hour alone and unsupervised in the threshing room could be my last. Two hours before I saw Tin for that first encounter in years, I read this letter:


Scrap;
these letters are such a pain to write. I hate you for them. But better paper than scratching with my fingernails on banana leaves, so ...

It's getting difficult for me to pretend to agree with people. I might be eighth in succession, but I'm in succession. My best hope is that they'll -- gently -- push me away from the fort and I'll be a free and almost impoverished citizen. I won't have to agree with anyone. I'll become a lonely philosopher in the woods. On your Break days you may come and visit me.

The Institute watches me daily. They insist it's part of the normal scrutiny because I'm Family, but Martin and Schell were both able to escape to Vynburg without any problems while they studied here. But If I even think about leaving they sniff me out. It's a waiting game. I can wait them out.

But I'm not writing you because of any of this. The Crackpot Intellectuals here insist that The Rorscht are expecting an insurrection. Supposedly they have intelligence that Forester is going to put up something on the scale of Bloodbath.

Here is where I don't agree.

But what does that matter? Being Eighth means that they don't have to take me seriously. The Family will expect the Rorscht to react to this imaginary threat by putting curfews on the field-workers, then the men in the mines, down to the day-labourers. The timeline is getting tighter. Soon it'll be down from eight months, to six ... I know you are all safe in the fort, but watch out if ever you have to do make errands.

Wait -- you don't have to do that anymore, do you?

The next time I want to hear from you is when I come there. It's getting risky to send letters.
-- Tin.


It was eight months since that letter and there was no second Bloodbath. Nor was there talk of it. Tin always accompanied his letters with deadly announcements. The fort sat on two thousand acres and the army sat in clumps along the wall; there was no way that the Bloodbath was going to take place again. The Fort was too strong. The event was almost fiction, it happened so long ago. Tin says one hundred and fifty years ago is nothing to those who died, but I never agreed with him on that. Time is a great healer. And Forester was dead. And though I tried hard to find out about the curfews, it was very difficult to leave the fort, and we no longer had anyone on the Outside since my father passed away.

I didn't read these letters because of what they carried. I read them because of his handwriting. Because he laid his skin against the paper and wrote these letters himself.

I read them because he was too important to write to me, and he did. That was all.



I put the paper back in my skirt and walked out the room when the sun set. The brilliant orange made the stone beneath me glow. But there'd be no light and no reason to stay around so I left. Some of the grain stuck to my hair, but I couldn't be bothered removing it, because who looked twice at a girl walking in a burlap skirt with a ripped seam and a blouse that was sewn in my mother's girlhood?

The corridors were bare, just glowing from the soft, dying sunlight from the carved windows.

While I wasn't paying attention Tin came out through the door next to me. I didn't notice his face at first; I knew him from the way he walked. His hands held behind his back, his head bent down to face the floor. His all-blackness, his ability to move like shadows in a place saturated with light. He wasn't at all tall -- not an inch taller than I was -- but it never seemed that way when he spoke. Which wasn't doing at all with me.

I know he saw me because he lifted his head. Not for long enough for me to react to him, but long enough. His skin was still very olive and smooth from being holed up inside the Institute for three years. But his eyes hadn't dimmed from scholarly battering. They were still sharp. Lively. He had seen me.

After he left thought I would have to breathe shallow breaths and stand this quickening heartbeat for the rest of my life. I listened to those familiar footsteps until they were inaudible and I walked the rest of the hallway and out the fort doors.



The day after Tin came back we got notice of the Curfew. The Heralds came to each of the Staff quarters and announced the curfew. Our Herald was a familiar face; he was the man who assigned me to the threshing room. I was just taking the pot of gelatinous stew off the flames and keeping it on the table. Mother was sleeping in the next room, and since it was very comfortable outside, she left the window open while she slept and there was a nice breeze coming here, teasing my torn hem at the knees. My brothers spent the night bricklaying on the outer Fort walls. They usually took their dinner on site, which left just me and my mother in the house. And Mother was sleeping, so when the Herald came over, it was me, a kerchief and pot on the dining table here to welcome him. The hearth illuminated our large front room and cast darkness on the Herald's very round face.

He laid his sword down by the table and sat with his hands on his stomach. The cross stitched onto his smock was covered in dirt. This was definitely the end of his day.

"Pardon," he said. But he didn't move or say anything.

I nodded, wiping my hands. I offered him some stew, but he declined.

"The Fort is adopting Curfew hours," he said. "From a quarter hour past dawn to dusk you will be permitted to work. Otherwise you will remain here."

I asked him if he wasn't sure he needed stew.

"I thank you, no," he said. I loved his accent. It reminded me of the rolling hills past the Fort, which I'd seen in the grand Gallery when Tin took me there so many years ago.

I sat down in a chair next to him and waited for him to explain. No explanation was forthcoming.

"Why is the Family doing this?" I asked, finally.

The Herald shrugged. "Can't tell you," he said, "except that you should be careful."

Before he stood up he said, "I remember you, too, when you were younger. Keep to the rules."

I nodded.

"Please," he said. "Say hello to your mother."

He closed the door behind him.

For the next week we kept Curfew. The night workers were supervised by the Rorscht guard, and half the shifts were terminated, though I felt bizarrely flattered that my brothers were so skilled that they couldn't be spared.

I couldn't stop thinking about Tin. I had the strangest fantasies that I would bump into him in the hallways and I could hold him by his shoulders and ask him why he pretended not to see me. When he was gone the loss was almost bearable but now his presence ate into me and even the tedium of thrashing this grain could not make me forget. For the next three days my life wasn't so much changed, as the Curfew didn't define my hours, but I was always on the verge of tears. For the next week there was no sign of Tin.

However, there were signs of other problems. The Staff chief, Jon Turhamlen, was fired and then executed for treason in the Fort's Square. I never attended executions, and I was very happy that my perch by the window was far enough from the Square that I couldn't hear the forced cheering. I reported to him twice a week and I never knew anyone more competent, cheerful or suited to his job. At the time of his execution I touched my forehead to the floor and prayed for his safe journey onward. The pain compressed in my head until I couldn't move and I myself felt ready for an executioner's axe.

Whose blade never came down.

Mother slept earlier in the evening as she had sickness of the bones. It wasn't severe, but it kept her from working her shifts and she took her retirement earlier that month in order to cope with it. Whenever she wasn't sleeping, she worked the vegetable gardens we kept in secret, away from the Family. There was something therapeutic about gardening, she claimed, and that the vegetables were a boon on top of this. The sun was getting to be severe, and I didn't know how I would discourage my mother from gardening as the weather grew hotter but who was I to dissuade her from being happy?

The Staff chief replacement's name was Fryderek Jamulsed, and he was a stiff little man. His voice was rougher than dry ground and when he stopped speaking it was as if he hadn't spoken at all. I wonder why he was put into this place, but I noticed the change in all of the domestic servants from the embroiders to the laundrymen to the carpenters and landscapers. Talking was suppressed to a minimum. And though I didn't talk to anyone at all in a day I loved hearing the others speak. Gossip about their neighbors and the high Family intrigue somehow made it through the cracks in my door. Daughters and their ineligible suitors was a popular topic, but I always tuned out then. It always made me think about Tin and there was no way I could afford to do that.

Ineligible suitors, please. I was suited to nobody.

Each time I passed the familiar corridors or even looked out into the grounds I used to watch for those places Tin and I used to stretch out over the stone gardens looking into the deep pools and speak our minds, whatever was on them. Missing him slowed down time, whipped it to a halt, forced it to stand, waiting torturously, for someone to put the feeling itself out of misery.

And then, everything collapsed.



The next week, I went late for work because I rubbed the herbal cream on Mother's foot
before taking my dress off the laundry line laid across the living room, scratching it on my skin, and taking off for the Fort. And though the Laws of Silence were unofficially etched into us, as I descended the last staircase into the belly of the compound. No human coughs, or suppressed giggles. Or breathing. The stone deflected nothing, absorbed nothing. I was walking into a crypt. On our floor, we never associated with the Family, as our work was taken up to them via the kitchens, or the handmaidens who dealt with embroideries.

Almost before I knew what I was doing, I ran up the staircase the way I came and toward the kitchens on the ground floor. Tin's fifth door. It was the door after the kitchens, on the right. It was that simple red stone, no ornamentation but the sound of my feet and I was desperate to get away from the silence. My heart was thudding in my head and I wondered if I was the only soul in this entire Fort, or in the whole world. What cut off their tongues?

Someone grabbed my hand as I went into the kitchen and I screamed as loudly as my voice would let me. I was crushed onto the floor by a hand shoved hard against my mouth.

It was Tin.

"If you say anything," he said, his voice totally flat, "You will get killed."

I was so close to his eyes and his face was almost smashed into mine. My heart was beating with his. When we were this close, he couldn't hide his anxiety. I could hear another set of footsteps running down the corridor. Solid footsteps. This had to be a Rorscht man. Though I didn't know what was going on; I was on the ground and Tin was in the way of everything else.

Then Tin pulled me up, roughly, and slammed me into the wall.

"Do you want me to take her, Ir?"

"I don't need help with her," Tin said. "We plan on having fun all by ourselves."

He sounded ecstatic.

Then he pressed his lips to mine as my skull thudded into the stone wall again. I remembered feeling outside myself. This was not happening to me. This was happening to someone else. And at the same time I was drinking in the familiarity of his skin. The rational, non-functioning part of my brain knew I was going to die, but there was no way to leave. And if this was the last time I ever got to be with Tin, then that was fantastic.

There were worse ways to die.

The Rorscht man laughed and walked past us. Tin wrenched himself off of me, and then he pulled me past kitchen doors. I noticed that they were wrecked, the once intricate carvings blown through and cracked, the dark wood ruined with some sticky, fluid substance.

Blood.

For the first time I noticed that it was everywhere.

Tin took me to the fifth door which was next to the entrance of the kitchen's annex, which was also covered with intricate paneling. From his close-fitting black coat he drew a tiny key and opened it. It revealed a staircase. I knew this place by heart. When he took me down the staircase, there were two doors on either side of the lower landing. We took the right.

His hands were shaking so badly in mine that he could not even get his hands around the gas lamp switches, so I helped him. We were both in this cool, underground room. A monolith bed sat in the center and I went to lie down on it because my head spun too quickly for me to stand. Tin's hand automatically let go when I pulled away.

I watched him crumple along the stone wall.

My stomach curdled at the idea of the blood on the floor and my ribs ached from being so close to Tin. I wished he'd say something, but I had to confront this silence for the longest time before he got up and walked towards the bed.

"I almost didn't find you," he whispered.

"Find me? What's going on here?"

Tin took the delicate antique chair by the headboard and pushed it up against the wall, climbing it to move the curtains covering the tiny roof windows aside. The room felt even larger when the natural light was revealed.

I know he could tell I was practically begging him to sit down next to me on the bed, but he wouldn't. My eyes watered and my head was dizzy from being slammed onto the floor still, so I lay my head down on the royal linens and in a moment, everything went black. In my dreams, there was shaking.



I woke up to shrieking, barely muffled through the windows. There was a crushing, warm weight on my body. I felt the thin fabric of Tin's tunic on my bare arms and legs. He buried his face in my right shoulder.

"If they come in here," he said, "they'll see me first."

I tried to push his weight around, though I didn't dare try too hard. For the first time in my life, Tin scared me. He was unpredictable. His gentleness was gone, replaced by an edgy anger I couldn't identify.

Then I heard the banging on the door. The thudding of stone was the most awful sound I'd heard in my whole life. I could sense Tin's tautness even through his tunic. He was deathly nervous. I prayed -- to what, I didn't know -- that this horror would be qualified. Quantified. Explained in a way that made sense. After two or three agonizing minutes the banging stopped. We could hear whispers outside, but I couldn't distinguish words, though Tin was paying very close attention. And when I could hear footsteps going upstairs he shifted his weight off me and sat up on the bed.

Then the first body hit the tiny window above us, and the blood splattered on the glass.

Tin went up to pull the curtains up against the window, and I got up to stop him when the second body -- third -- fourth -- fifth --

He took my head and we walked over to the other side of the room, where he pushed part of the stone wall, which turned out, and he thrust my head down. I threw up. When I heard the vomit hit the belly of the bowl I didn't have the enthusiasm to feign bashfulness. Then he led me back to the bed. The whole time we had not talked, but there was a secret, wordless conversation between us. In that wordless conversation I asked questions and he asked me to keep quiet.

The bodies were piled up against the window. I expected to smell the stench but nothing was there. The glass was too thick.

"It will be safe to leave at night," Tin said. The vibrations of hooves had not dissipated. "They expect the Family to leave."

"Will it be safe for me to leave with you?" I asked.

"I don't want to be your rapist again," he said, with such seriousness my lips twitched.

"Can I be your servant?"

"The Family knows my servant," he said. "I dismissed him ten years ago. We'll just have to leave without them knowing."

I wanted to ask how, but Tin put his finger on my lips.

"Don't talk," he said. "Save your energy. We leave early in the morning."

Early the next morning was a whole day away. How would we eat in this very beautiful dungeon? Apparently Tin had a solution to this problem as well. In the elaborate wood trunk at the foot the great stone bed there were sacks of fresh bread, Chariag cheese, flasks of water and fruit. Two beautiful pies.

We laid our feast upon our bed and ate. While I assuaged my hunger I imagined that I was eating for all of those who couldn't eat anymore. That I could live while everyone was dead was too much to think about, and because I didn't think about it, I survived the next awful hours of not talking. Tin lapsed into silence and ignored me for the rest of the day. When it came time to sleep, he held my hand, said he would keep time, and that I should wake up when he did. After that he was very careful not to touch me. The bed was so massive it was as if he was not there at all. As if we had not already touched in all but the most intimate ways so many years ago, before he left me.

Who was this stranger who'd come back?

(Tin)

I wasn't supposed to come back from the Institute. I wasn't supposed to know about the Family plans. But if I hadn't found out about the plans, then Scrap would be dead. There is no room for me in a world without Scrap.

I say that because it's the truth.

She's why I've done everything that I have.



I woke her up when it was still dark. Lighter than pitch-black, but nowhere near lightness. She sat up and massaged her head. I felt that sick swoop of guilt again. I knew I shouldn't have done what I did.

She was about to say something, but I covered her mouth.

I pushed the wall open again into the washroom. Above the chamber pot was a latch built into the stone. I pulled it open.

"These were the old Army quarters. Before the Family," I explained.

Scrap said nothing. She was afraid of me.



The stone tunnel was almost interminable. I've always been afraid of enclosed spaces, but this was awful. I wanted to stop a million times. I wondered what would happen if the stone compressed just by an inch. I would be dead. So would Scrap. Intellectually I knew from the plans it was a quarter of a mile of crawling, but I was not prepared for three hours of my life spent on my knees. Each movement was my last. And when we reached the sharp shaft upward I stood up and climbed it like a lizard. Scrap stood there for a moment, trapped, but started the climb anyway. I noticed her hair was as long as her ankles. That was a lot for it to grow.

I could've said, "if you went first, you could've thrown it down." But I didn't say anything. When I took her hand I could still feel her flinch.

We were in the Second Stone Garden, halfway to the outer Fort gates. Out here I could still smell the bodies and catch the glimmer of strewn swords. I kept my face tight so that I didn't do a Scrap over the chamber pot. I had to keep what I ate in my stomach. And then she asked me this question: "Are you going to kill me?"

I can't believe I didn't laugh. The resistance against vomiting also prevented me from laughing. Or speaking. If I held her hand she would have pulled away. As to how I managed not to hold her hand ... I don't know that, either. I could feel her tremors from where I was sitting. And the stones were the only places spared of either swords or corpses.

"Are you?" she asked.

"Shut up," I said. I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore; either it was the verbal vomit, or the other kind. "Why would I do that?" I asked.

"Do what?"

"Kill you," I said. "Why would I kill you?" I could have killed her for asking.

She nodded. "It's just been strange," she said. "and then, what you did ..."

"I did what I had to," I said. "and you're alive."

I stood up from the stone and grabbed her hand. We had two miles to go until we breached the Gate. Once I reached, it would be anybody's guess.



We went through the servant's quarters. I could feel Scrap straining in earnest against my grip, trying to leave me to run down her family street, perhaps find her mother and brothers alive.

"They're dead," I said.

She ignored me.

"I'm telling you they're dead," I said.

Scrap really tried to make a break for it, too. With one vicious tug she grabbed her hand from mine and ran down the path going right, the one leading to her house. I panicked and ran right after her -- it was only a matter of moments before I had her caught and pinned. "The Family ordered the murder of the outer laborers first," I told her. "Strongest and the most likely to rebel."

When I finished saying that Scrap remained rooted to the ground. She didn't move toward me nor did she move toward her house.

"Then kill me," Scrap said. She ran past me -- toward the outer gate -- and to yet another pile of hacked bodies. A mostly discarded sword lay almost attached to a severed leg. I was relieved that I couldn't see the limb or the blood hanging onto the blade.

She handed the sword to me, but before she could complete the transaction she dropped it and it fell heavily on my foot.

The sky was beginning to lighten. My hand was on her arm again. Though we were in the open air I felt just as claustrophobic as I had in the tunnel. Maybe even worse, as we kept tripping over bodies or dead twigs. We could hear the moans of the dying. Every step that Scrap took was agony, I could tell that. It was for me, too, but I was focused on getting us out the Gate.

When we arrived it was mostly dawn, and we were fully visible to everyone who looked at us. The imposing gate was still staffed by the Family soldiers, the only survivors of the massacre. Through the latticed openings I could see the black armored Borscht leaning on their clean swords. Through the door I could see we approached the edges of the sharp cliffs that descended onto a beach and shallow beginnings of ocean. There was no way to escape via this vantage, which was why it made sense for the Fort to be built here. It was, above everything else, a prison.

I banged my fist against the latticed walls, and a Rorscht officer peered through the door. My hands sweated against Scrap's arm. She was vibrating so badly I held my other hand around her shoulders. I knew that the sea was beneath us. The boundary between me and the Rorscht was pretty porous where we were, which was why it was heavily manned.

"I'm Puhtar Oorangathsary," I shouted. "Eight."

The Rorscht man whose attention I received turned around. He had a very thick mustache and rubbed at it very often. I recognized him, but I couldn't point him out. He saluted me, as he should have.

"You're leaving early," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I have to take ... the ship."

"The carriers are not able to help you," the Rorscht said, lamely. Or, rather, the carriers were all dead (hacked to pieces and bits and strewn all over the beach). There would be no one to help ferry us along the sea.

"Never mind that," I said. "I'll take it out myself.

The Rorscht man pulled the door open for us, still keeping the sword close to him. When I brought Scrap out with me he had the blade to her throat and slammed her against a cliff rock. When she tried to get up he knocked her down again. If I touched the Rorscht man this would all be over. He would know I had something to hide. Though he was obligated to let me go, my father gave him orders. He didn't have to listen to me when it came to her. And If I presented a serious enough threat the Rorscht could detain us. Scrap lay unconscious on the ground and I was so angry the Rorschter barely registered.

"She's Parang's girl," I shouted, hoping that my sister had left the Fort by now. "She asked me to keep her."

The other guards by now were watching this exchange -- one of them bent down to her legs for markings and found the series of tattoos up the inside of her thigh. I smacked the man's hand away. "If you touch her," I said, "I'll have hell to pay for it. She's very attached to the girl."

Parang wasn't capable of human attachment, but these guys didn't have to know that.

"She'd be enjoyable," said the man examining her. He rubbed the hands he'd pressed on her thigh. I could see her sparse, light hairs among the ugly green inkmarks. One more second of close inspection and I would've snapped his tendons with his own sword.

"I can't wait," I told the Rorscht man. "The first-half of Succession will be leaving by this nightfall." I didn't know that for sure. "Parang is halfway to Tevaro by now and this girl is part of her dowry. She is a Weaver. You know how the Women get when they don't have their dresses."

I prayed that Weavers didn't have specific markings. Or, barring that, I hoped the Rorscht were too stupid to consider that possibility.

The second proved to be right.

"Damn the Women," the Rorscht said, and gave me a nod. "Do you need help with her?"
They weren't going anywhere near Scrap.

"No," I said, "I'm fine."



It took me a fifteen minute walk along the cliffside until I reached the very small shaft system built into the rock with a rope-pulley device. I laid Scrap on the metal platform and stood myself, roping me down into the ground. Around me was the cool smell of the ocean and the earth. The shaft wasn't as small as the washroom tunnel, but I was still extremely glad when we reached the bottom and out the carved doorway. We were on the beach. The water was clear, blue and bloodless in front of us. The Rorscht above were no more than specks along the blueing sky. I held Scrap roughly by the arms and dragged her across the sand, to the line of boats a few hundred feet ahead. The Family kept their vessels here.

I could see Ir Khan and Imma's personal vessels kept there; my parents would undoubtedly leave separately. They couldn't stand the sight of one another, though they kept their marriage alliance publicly strong. Even the Family's ancestors abandoned the presence of marital fidelity after the Golden Anniversary (the five-year mark.) Ir Khan has four thousand concubines. Someone like Scrap might've easily been a concubine. I know that my eldest brother (First) took fourteen last year. The others have taken them as well, except in smaller numbers, and Six has stayed with one since his eighteenth year (a three year period of marital fidelity). We are sometimes forced to hear about unequal marriages and the damage they cause; why would we enter a potentially void contract when they can be had on the side of a legitimate wife?

A moot point. Those concubines were probably dead now. And their wives would take their own boats out.

Ir Khan and my brothers had their massive ships lined up next to one another, and Imma's was further apart. I never owned a ship. I've never set foot on this beach. If not for Scrap I would've breached the Fort from the other side and taken the rail to Stirasha, where the Institute was built. I felt a sudden sickness about these boats. I didn't want to take any of them.

Instead I walked over to the small spare vessel with the one room. It was the black sleek houseboat of a Rorscht who was to go one sea assignments, to make sure there were no miraculous escapes into the water. During the Family's reign there were two waterborne attempted escapes. Both (men) were caught and whipped to death in the Stone Garden.

My hand under Scrap's inert armpits I walked the last few feet into the sand and hoisted her up over the rail. I wonder what would've happened had she not been so thin and fragile. Whether I would've had the strength to carry her. Once she woke up, I would have to thank her for not being fat.

The boat itself contained a single, reedy room with a large cotton mattress on a wooden shelf shoved into the corner, a counter with a portable cooking fire, a few old canisters of spices, some storage built into the wall, and four chairs bolted down to the floor. This would be our palace on the sea.

I placed Scrap on the bed and covered her with a blanket. The Rorscht man waved at me as I gradually pulled up the anchor and slid out into the bloodless ocean. It took an hour and a half for the Rorscht and the cliffside to disappear from view. And when they did I sat down on the bolted chairs and watched Scrap sleep. Under all that hair I could still see her eyes screwed shut and her hands seeking the coolness under her pillow.

(Scrap)

I woke up to the smell of fish. Fried fish. Glorious. With lemon and scented oil. I couldn't reconcile this with the smell of death. It seemed that all I was capable of doing was vomiting. If I moved my head, that was what I would do. So I didn't. Instead I stared at the reedy ceiling above me. It took me five long minutes to realize that I was moving. Then I had to sit up, and the feeling of intense queasiness persisted.

I saw Tin with a fish atop a stove clamped into the wall, turning it as if he had not had servants to do this for him every day of his overprivileged life.

"How long?" I croaked.

Tin turned around. He seemed to be unsurprised.

"About ten hours. The sun is considering setting."

"I don't believe you," I said. The last thing I could recollect was the Rorscht soldier who struck me on the head. I looked forward to the extinguishing of my memories. Instead, I remembered everything that happened before that. In great detail.

"See for yourself," he said. "But don't get up too soon. You'll fall."

I had to get up immediately. The world was rocking beneath me. I felt the fact that we were on the water for the first time. I fell to the scent of fish.

Tin grabbed me by the waist and set me on the bed. He then went back to the fish.

"Where are we going?" I asked him. He took the fish from fire, laid it on the parchment paper kept open on the floor and left the room for a moment to stand on deck and watch the setting sun.

I waited fifteen minutes for an answer to the question.

"We're going to Tevaro," he said, coming back inside. The fish looked amazing from here. I could've eaten all of it. "My sister is there."

"Parang?"

"Yes," he said. "But I'm not going to take you to her, obviously."

"Oh, good," I said. Parang was a real piece of work. She prided herself on having hands that never had to lift anything. She proved this fact by growing obnoxiously long nails. She also had her fiance's concubines whipped as a matter of course. Because he didn't rank higher than she did, she had the right to have them all ripped apart in front of her while she stood in her crystal covered gown, chewing out her nails at the sight of the agony at her feet. Nails aside, she was a woman with phenomenal good looks and she knew it.

"I'm going to leave you with Fynn," he said. "I knew him from the Institute. He has a compound in Tevaro that's untouchable even by Family."

"I can't give them anything. I am not so well learned," I said. It was almost automatic. This was insane. I had never been outside the Fort in my whole life, and I knew nothing about the conveniences of life that I'd merely read about in Tin's letters from his time at the Institute. He sent me books detailing these human marvels of water that spouted from a tap on demand, lights that could be activated by switches, ways to communicate long distances without messengers. I never knew that I might actually see them across the long ocean of Tevaro. Eventually I might've gotten married to a fellow man of the Fort, and then I'd've devoted my life to ironing his shirts before work, and preparing the supper for him before he came home.

There were no more men at the Fort I could marry.

And then I thought: what an absurd concern!

"Don't worry about it," Tin said. "You can read. You can become well learned. It's a gift even most of the Family do not have."

"Not a gift," I corrected. "An ability."

Tin smiled. It changed his face so much I was taken aback. I knew Tin. I knew him better than anyone else in the world, and this grotesque night would be in my imagination just because it ended with this smile.

He sat next to me on the bed as we split the fish on parchment. I was still amazed that he managed to pick up this skill which should've been anathema to his ideas of class and stature. He ate it without a shred of high Family manners, licking the fat greedily off of his fingers. As I swallowed the last, succulent bites of fish Tin leapt off the bed, threw the paper into a bag tied to the deck, and came back to rest under the covers. It was a shock to me, as I was under the sheets myself, ready to sleep once more.

"It's the only bed we have," Tin said. "it's a familiar feeling." He slept facing the deck, away from me. Even here he slept compactly; his body was in straight line. He took obvious care to make sure he didn't bump into me.

It was the first mention he made that this had happened before.




The first time I ever met Tin was the day after Father left home. There weren't many places to leave one's family in the Fort, but my father had taken up with a widow. He went to nullify their betrothal contract at the Fort and went to some other servant's quarters to live with the widow and her five children. My mother, at first, went to her house to beg -- throw things -- scream -- but it accomplished nothing, and finally Father threatened to have the Fort Council resolve this matter, and those resolutions never went well for the women. It was considered a consummate failure not to be able to keep one's husband at home. Mother's grief consumed the house and touched everything in it. We neither of us could stay home for long, though Father's absence in every other way was pleasant. We were spared the whip at home. We were no longer required to get up at all odd hours to do things for him which he refused to do for himself. He hated me and tolerated my brothers, though the hatred was better than the tolerance because he used to get very involved in their lives instead of ignoring them as he did with me.

Therefore Father's defection didn't hurt anyone except for Mother, who saw his redeeming qualities in a way that the rest of us were hard-pressed to find. But it hurt to see her so upset, and her depression was suffocating. My older brothers were old enough at twelve, fifteen, and seventeen to take extra shifts, to hang out for longer with the masons-in-training who were their peers. I would have had no recourse had it not been for the Fair.

The Fair was a yearly excuse to spend obscene amounts of money. The Family spared no expense in decorating the three stone gardens, each acres and acres large unto themselves and connected by thin, spry bridges. The gardens themselves had clearings among them where the trees parted and the stones were kept on the boundaries of these huge fields. And when the fair was set up, with booths for winning tiny clay pots and animal figures, the exotic big cats holed up in cages, and the fried corn and beef food stalls I almost forgot the red stone boundaries that kept me confined, just out of reach with the world I hadn't yet come to know.

The Fort's entire Staff turned out for the event and this was the only the time Family deigned to come around and socialize among us. Even this, they did at a distance. The women brought their handmaidens dressed in similar crystal-studded dresses and the men socialized among themselves in exclusive shaded corners. Yet the atmosphere was so festive, the lights strewn around, the day off work felt so generous that nobody seemed to care about this lank of mingling. After what happened at home I was thrilled to be out. I kept my very long hair in a twisted plait and wrapped it in a low hanging bun. The cotton dress I wore I'd stitched on my own out of an old bolt of cloth left strewn in front of a handmaiden's door. I found this by sheer luck, having escaped from my duties at separating the cotton from its seeds in the searing balcony heat where I worked with other girls my age.

I had no friends among those girls, so nobody to socialize with at the Fair. Though I told myself (constantly) that it didn't matter, it definitely did. My head was a very closed place. I couldn't read or write so the experiences of others were closed off to me anyway. I had nothing to talk about even if I did find someone to talk to.

Maybe I could talk to the waterflies.

The beautiful insects with fiery, translucent wings often sat on the backs of my hands. So while everyone else gorged on corn and beef fritters, stopped themselves from stroking the big cats, and competed for clay trinkets, I talked alone, on a stone, to an insect. The only thing that saved me from total embarrassment was that I said nothing aloud; I assumed these bugs had some kind of psychic powers. Or maybe they enjoyed the fact that I was still covered in the juices from the fritters.

I felt someone sitting down to share the rock with me.

"They can kill you if they sting," they said.

When I looked around I nearly collided with Tin. When Tin was twelve he was even smaller than he was now. I was taller than he was. He wore his full length black robes patterned in soft suede. There was no mistaking whom he was. His hair was combed in a side part as per Family custom and his flawless olive freckled skin was untouched by the harsh sun. I got up from the rock and bent to touch his feet with my forehead, which is what I knew I had to do if seen in such close proximity with a member of the Family.

He pulled me up roughly by the shoulders.

"Don't do that," he hissed. "Stand up and look me down."

Shaking, I tried to stand, but I could not. I looked through the trees and at the throng of the fair. A small orchestra of bombastic wind instruments saturated the clearing with noise. The birds were entirely scared away. Nobody could see or hear us unless they were looking. I kept a happy medium. I squatted.

"What are you doing out here, ir? Can I help you?" I asked.

Tin shook his head in his hands.

"Forget it," he said, standing up. "I'll get you in trouble."

"With what?" I asked, before I could stop myself from being so bold. I could receive fifty lashes for talking to him so directly. For even having this conversation at all. I was busy considering every option I had for leaving, and found, when I looked into Tin's very green stare, that I could not. "How can I get into trouble for helping you?"

He smiled.

"You're alone," he said. "Why aren't you in the grounds?"

"I like it here," I said.

"So do I," he said. "But I can't even hear you talk." He grabbed me by the arm and helped me up. "The whole Family is here. If you wanted, I could take you out and nobody would ever know."

"Why would you want to do that?"

Tin shrugged.

"I'm not playing games," I said. I had enough. I dusted my knees and smoothed out my dusty hemline. "I came here to feel better. I'm not going to get lashed because I've talked to you."

"You won't get lashed," Tin said, obviously impatient. "Just forget it." He began to
turn away when I felt compelled to follow him. I can't explain this compulsion, except that it was strong, and that I went back with him through the trees and along the clearing. Nobody stopped me. I did not see anyone else from the Family as I followed him through the clearing, the stone gardens and the wide paths that led to the overwhelmingly high Central Tower where Ir Khan himself lived. It made a very pretty picture, this gigantic red stone monolith caressed by the mammoth broad-leafed trees. A Rorscht man guarded the door. Tin nodded his head and referred to me. I didn't realize he knew I followed him.

Tin took the sixth door at the base of the tower. Again, I shadowed him along an interminable spiral staircase. Each time I slowed down he stopped for a second and continued at an even bigger burst of speed.

When we finally reached the last set of stairs we reached a solitary landing and a door that led out to the top of the tower. I was thoroughly out of breath, and I smelled rank, so I welcomed the cool breeze as it fanned the sweat from me. We were at such a dizzying height I did not dare follow Tin to the edge of the balcony, but I noticed that he, too, approached cautiously. He, too, was naturally scared of heights.

"Look at them," he said, when I was too far away from the balcony to look down. When I caught up to him I, too saw what he saw -- the swarms of people talking and dancing and the big cats roaring into the sun-streaked sky. It was magical from here. "They don't know how to be alone."

I was very, very confused but didn't say anything. Instead, I backed away from the edge of the balcony and sat in the center of the terrace, reorienting myself. When I opened my eyes and looked away from Tin I found that I was staring into a gigantic pile of scrap metal. Pieces of old tanks lay strewn on the floor next to tools and there was something covered in a large sheet of burlap that I could only imagine was a real work in progress. Tin saw that I was looking in that direction. It was at that moment, when I saw him flanked by those ferocious cut pieces of metal, that I would call him Tin.

Of course I would never call him anything like that out loud. To his face. No. To me he was Ir and would always remain.

"You're really curious to see what I'm making?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, because I really was.

"Well," he said, suddenly cross, "I'm not going to show you."

When I say that I didn't know what to do then, I really mean that. And normally I'm so resourceful in situations like these, so I was stumped. I'd never dealt with anyone like this before. People had their standard reactions that were programmed. You deal with them one way, and they had a set reaction. Was the Family a set of highly complicated beings? Was that why we were kept as we were, because we could not understand them?

I wanted to leave before he could say anything else. Because I wanted to show that I still had free will, that I could leave without being dismissed.

He called out after me. "What are you called?" he asked. The first thing I could recall were those gleaming scraps.

"I'm Scrap," I said, and I left.

When the Rorscht man hit me and I fell to the ground I felt like I was dying and therefore I was relieved of the responsibility of remembering my name. But now that I was awake, all that I could remember was that I was Scrap. And that I was here with Tin, who was really Eighth in succession to the Family throne and couldn't be called that at all. I knew I owed my existence to him.

I watched Tin sleep the whole night. He did not move and he did not snore. He slept like a soldier. Cleanly and precisely. I wanted to touch and disturb his sleep but it would have been too much. Instead I kept a finger close to his cheek and dared myself to go further. I did not. I turned around and tried to sleep.

(Tin)

From dawn to dusk the next day we were quiet. She sat in a corner of the bed, staring at her feet. But I'd never seen her so absorbed in her own mind. Even when she was quiet she was always engaged in what happened around her.

If I watched her for too long I'd have gotten lost. Instead I went to sit on deck. That passed the whole day, just staring at the water.

I remember how, when I got up from bed that morning, she was up, looking at me.

"Did you get any sleep?" I asked.

"No," she'd said.



Scrap's the toughest person I've ever met.