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.
But I don’t like remembering. It’s a useless, painful pastime, and anyway, we have plenty of real-life problems to fret over instead. I flex my hands and splash water over my face again, trying to banish that sour feeling in my stomach. Droplets trickle over my lips, salty with my dried sweat.
In truth, we’re all a mess.
Rose’s false leg doesn’t fit her. Sedge fashioned it after seeing someone wearing one in Snaketown, but all the parts are random scraps—old leather saddle straps and a woolen shirt and buckles from who knows where. She walks with the stump end dragging in the dirt. Sedge is determined to make her a better one, but despite his capability with turning odds and ends into other odds and ends, a false leg is more complex than a slingshot. He tries, bless him, because he loves Rose with all his heart. I think if he could cut off his own leg and give it to her, he might just do it.
I might, too, for that matter.
She’s hardly the only one with something wrong—Pickle gets sores all over his lips that nothing seems to cure, adding to the old scars left over from a bout of childhood smallpox. Andras is always getting eye infections, pink and weeping. Lila doesn’t talk about it much, but I know she worries about her periods—they’re irregular and painful, sometimes just a few droplets, sometimes an intense flow that sees her puking for the better part of a week.
Whit worries me the most—her cleft lip affects her speech to the point that she often prefers to stay silent, but it’s not her only issue. Lately she seems to be disappearing bit by bit, her eyes sinking deeper into her paling skin. I wonder sometimes if she’s sick with some invisible disease. She needs to be seen by a healer, but the closest one is in Snaketown, a three-hour ride away—and besides, we don’t have the money to pay for that kind of medicine or surgery.
Sedge is probably the healthiest, or maybe Saiph—and I’m just waiting for the day one of them cracks their head open during a raid. Saiph, being the most educated among us, often has to serve as healer, despite him being younger than most of us and knowing practically nothing besides how to stanch blood flow.
And me. I suppose I’m healthy, too, unless you count a body that creaks and groans from constant abuse, a quarry cough that flares up now and then, and a gnawing anxiety that the bottom is about to drop out of everything. That someone will finally give in to one of the million things ready to kill us. That the posses from town will finally decide we’re a scab that needs to be picked and root out our camp hidden up in Three Lines Canyon. That Whit and Andras and Saiph and all the rest will go back in the wagons, their lives bought and sold and dragged to whatever labor industry needs an extra pair of hands.
That, ultimately, the same thing will happen to me.
I sink my hands under the shallow water and leave them there, letting the weight of my hair stretch out the rod of tension in my neck. This is why I hate slowing down—when I’m busy stocking camp and caring for my campmates, I don’t have time to dwell on all the trouble lurking just outside our fire ring. But thanks to that jumped-up bearded stage traveler, all the little anxieties keep finding their way into the rare quiet moments.
Life could be different.
I frown, balling my fists under the water. I would love for things to be different. Pickle could get the right medicine for his skin. Whit could get real food and real care. Andras could go back to his family in Cyprien. Rose could get a false leg that fits, not one that blisters her thigh or slides off when she rides. Sedge could get a paying job, Lila could creep back to Lumen Lake to figure out if that’s really where she comes from. Saiph could go to school.
But rich folk like the man in the stage—folk who have never been on the slimy fringes of society—don’t understand the risk those things cost. If I walk into the nearest town with sickly little Whit, or chapped Pickle, or wayward Andras, what happens next? There’s no scenario I can think of—no plausible scenario, anyway—where someone doesn’t end up on the side of the road, or in prison, or back in the slavers’ wagons.
There’s a clatter of rocks from beyond the windbreak.
“Lark, are you done?”
Lila. I flip my locks back behind my head and look over the hide. She’s standing expectantly by the tiny creek that flows away from the seep, already unbraiding her dark blond hair.
“No,” I reply.
She huffs. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“So?”
“So it’ll get cold, and don’t tell me to get the fire pit going, because then there’ll be smoke, and the whole reason for wash day is to not smell like smoke for a few hours.”
I sigh, splashing a last few handfuls of water under my arms and behind my neck. I could point out that the smoke keeps the flies from biting, but the truth is, I don’t want her starting the fire—over the years, we’ve picked Three Lines so clean of easy firewood that we have to ration it for the cookfire. Lighting a fire just for bathing would be a stupid waste of fuel.
“Fine,” I call. “The seep is yours.” I try to keep the irritation out of my voice—Lila can be annoying, but if she’s vain about her appearance now, it’s only because she finally has the freedom to be that way. I slick some of the water from my skin and stand from the rocks. The breeze up the canyon slices over the water left on my skin.