The Claim

1-14-2015: End of Chapter 4

They drew up, at last, to the edge of the mine, a few hundred feet from one of the wide earth ramps that had admitted the great stone-wains to and from the depths. Hasina sat and dangled her feet from the edge, kicking her legs out once. Esker hesitated a moment. Hasina looked back with a raised eyebrow; Esker sat and joined her.

“The recruiters for the Tenoc campaign spent most of their time in the cities,” said Esker, “and then on the big farms down [[south]] in the Tintamarre, where there were hands to spare. We didn’t expect to see them in Metu, only then we heard news from Sage Rock, and we did. It was the five of us who were of age and not married, so it wasn’t any surprise, what was going to happen; the only question was when.

“They started here, of course. They started at the end of the line and worked their way back to the city, so they wouldn’t have to take the recruits from farther up the line down and back. So one day they came just like Ozier and Inber and I—”

He saw Hasina’s fingers flicker, but didn’t catch their sense. He turned to her with the question in his eyes and, before he could ask it, she said Tune.

“Not you too,” he said.

It’s what he wants to be called.

“Like Ozier and Tune and I came, then, with the lemons and the grain. No special stair, though, and no ceremony. But they had a list of names, and an order to hold the train in the yard and depart at dawn.

“We’d all said we’d go to the mine that night, if we could, for a last look before we left for the high ice. But Ozier’s family didn’t think much of his associations, and they kept him; and Inber’s family had prayers and ceremonies that he said he was going to skip out on, but he didn’t. And R—” He nearly choked again. “Ras and I,” he forced himself to say, “we didn’t know any of that, though I don’t say we would have done anything different if we did. And we went a bit early, by a different ramp, and found a cave with a little offshoot that only we knew, and we stayed there a while. The plan was always to join a bit late, and we did. But Kem had been there for hours. Alone.

“And he was—I’m sorry, Hasina, I’m telling it all out of order. I forget what you don’t know. He was terrified. You know him enough to know—he’s got a quick mind and it’s going all the damn time, and he knew enough to be scared of Rooks and runes and ice and war when the rest of us…” He shrugged. “I don’t say we thought it was an adventure, but perhaps I don’t say we didn’t. He was scared, and his mind was going, and he was out on the salt on what he thought was the last night of his life, and his friends had said they’d be there and they weren’t.

“He was the sure-footedest thing you ever saw, Hasina, wet or dry, night or day. He’d have died eighteen times over if he weren’t. But Ras and I found him right down there—” He pointed to the rocks below, colored pastel like the clouds at sunset in the rising light. “—bled white, with that game leg snapped and hanging like a loose tooth.

“There are still remnant carts and wheelbarrows down there from the mining days—all sizes, a few nearly whole, and we knew where they all were. I think that saved him. We loaded him in one—probably ruined the leg doing that—then I pushed him up this ramp—” He indicated it. “—and Ras ran his lungs out back to town. I was maybe a quarter of the way back when Pa and Reshef and Shemet Kotu and the Menkaras met me with Reshef’s floatwagon. It was all out of my hands after that.” He shook his head and let a long breath out. “Ras, Ozier, Inber and I all left in the morning, no sleep. All we knew was that Kem was breathing well, and that we’d been told—we weren’t allowed to see. The next any of us saw him was the first time we saw you, at our discharge.” He chuckled and turned to Hasina. “Is it all right if I admit I didn’t notice you in the crowd?”

I wasn’t there, said Hasina. I lost a brother, a suitor, and two cousins in Tenoc. Before the flood, all of them.

“A suitor,” said Esker.

Hasina locked his eyes with hers. Are you sorry for my loss? she said.

Esker made himself not look away. “That’s a complicated question,” he said.

Well, she said, with a small, satisfied smile. That’s progress.

“It is at that,” Esker said, wondering.

They sat a long time, unspeaking, feeling the sun grow harsh and heavy on their skin. We can’t stay out here much longer, Hasina said. And I leave to visit my grandmother on the noon train.

“Well,” said Esker. “I do thank you for accompanying me. Where are you traveling?”

This mine was dug by the Dahshur Venture Corporation, said Hasina, spitting the words hard enough to crack her knuckles. I understand why you don’t know. Ask me why I do.

Esker blinked. “Why do you?”

Hasina looked down into the mine. The Dahshur Venture Corporation and its business partners are the ones who pushed the Rooks of the Heru flats back to Keissi Souktown, she said. That’s probably before your grandparents were born. I say “pushed”—you’re a soldier, you know what it is to push an enemy. Especially one who’s lived for millennia on the position you’re trying to take. Things happen that you’d rather not think about. Especially to women. My great-grandmother was one. She got out with her life, had my grandfather in Keissi Souktown at fifteen. He grew up with a bad grudge against Jaidari and got his own back, or so he felt, against a settler girl. That was my grandmother. My mother could pass, and she passed all the way through her wedding with my father, who was new in town. He learned the history a bit after I was born. That was the end of my mother. Her gaze returned to Esker. I can pass, too. And mostly I do. But not with you, not any more. Is that a boon you can return, Esker Sepherene? If it is, I’d have it from you. Today and tomorrow, and the rest of the tomorrows.

Esker gripped the edge of the mine with his palms, feeling the salt grit and the precipice’s ragged edge dig into his fingers, and looked down. 

Hasina cleared her throat to summon his eyes; after a long moment, he turned. Another complicated question, she said. Why?

“I feel as though I might fly free of this cliff-edge,” said Esker, “and as though then, a few feet out, my flight might cease.”

Have I misread your hopes, then? Hasina asked. If that is what it is, you need only say it. It will not be the first time I have been wrong about a man’s mind—or a woman’s.

“Your reading was not groundless, of course,” said Esker. “The opposite. And your revelation puts no dint on my heart. But I had hoped—” He closed his eyes and bent his head back, stretching out his spine; the sun beat on his eyelids. “Nothing that redounds to my good character. I had hoped to take some weeks or months more in the childish comfort of affection without obligation. To improve my own position in the world, perhaps, to make the obligation more easily accepted.” He opened his eyes and turned his body full to her, one leg still hanging off the cliff, one curled up on the flat ground under him. “I am done mourning the deaths of those hopes. If you have not yet come to regret your offer—and if you have, you may withdraw it—then I accept.”

She turned her body to face him as he had her; her face was grave but gently joyous. In that case, she said, will you join me on a noon train?