Snow Like Ashes(83)

A soundless scream boils in my mouth as the man topples from the platform. His body plummets through the air, the black rock dragging him down and down, soaring past the bottom five platforms in painfully slow motion. He smacks into the dry earth below, a puff of dust and debris obscuring his crippled corpse from view.

I’m frozen there, trapped against the platform. But no one else flinches. No one cries out that their husband or brother or son just fell to his death. They just keep moving around me, trudging up the platforms and ramps, walking like they can erase the man’s memory with each footfall.

Someone bumps into me as they pass and I’m dragged back into the current of mindless work, pulling me past the soldier, his eyes flashing at the body so far below.

The field in the distance thrashes in a breeze I can’t feel from here. No one would follow if I tried to escape. They’d just fall through the air, resigned to the fact that they never had a chance of winning. Or they’d be slaughtered in the wake of my feeble escape.

My vision blurs, but I keep walking. I keep the image of the man’s face in my mind, hold it against my impulse to run as fast as I can, to kill as many of the soldiers as possible.

I glance at the ground below, at the dust clearing to reveal the man’s body morphed into a disturbing, haphazard splotch on the dirt. Something wells up in me. Something dangerous and crippling and deadly, something rising from the part of me that flinches whenever Winter’s conduit is mentioned and no one asks the questions I’m always thinking:

What if it isn’t enough? What if nothing we do is enough?

But there is no other option—either we keep trying, or our kingdom ceases to exist.

As the day drags on, the temperature rises to the point where my eyes start to swim around in my head, sweat making everything slick. Stretches of time flash past in which I swear I’m back in the Rania Plains, traipsing behind Sir as we make our way toward Cordell.

Damn my intolerance to heat. I will not give Angra the satisfaction of fainting. He will not get to see me die so soon.

The work too much for you today?

I bite away the memory. Everyone around me seems to react to the heat the same way I do, stumbling, gasping in the stuffy air. They don’t do more than that though; there’s no complaining or collapsing. No matter how it goes against our Winterian blood, they’ve gotten used to the heat of Spring.

By noon, I’m relieved to see that we get a break.

Almost relieved.

The gate leading into Abril creaks open. The Winterians standing in the rock line around me drop their holsters; the rest file off the ramps to stand around us. I follow suit, eyes darting toward whatever is coming at us from Abril.

Winterian children. Some barely old enough to speak let alone work, all hobbling into the worksite with jugs of sloshing water. They spread out among the workers and offer up their burdens, wide blue eyes gleaming from hollow faces, thin arms trembling under the thick clay jugs.

A boy not much older than four or five approaches my line of workers and sets his jug on the ground. He dips a ladle in and lifts it to the person closest to him, a man Sir’s age who slurps down mouthfuls of water. The boy repeats the process for each person in line until he gets to me.

“No water for her—Angra’s orders!” a soldier behind us shouts, cracking his whip beside the boy’s feet. The boy jumps, water sloshing over his hands and splashing on the dirt. His blue eyes dart up to mine as he braces for the impact of the soldier’s next blow.

I fly back, more from instinct than rational thought. Rational thought vanished the moment I saw water, and desperate, clawing thirst reared up instead. All I can see is that jug, but I take another step back. I don’t need water. I don’t need to draw attention to anyone else.

“No,” I croak. “He’s right. None for me.”

The soldier, whip held at the ready, frowns at my retreat. But I turn, grab my holster, and close my eyes when another chunk of black rock is loaded against my spine. The boy moves back to work, water sloshing over the brim of his jug. No pain, no repercussions. No water either. As long as I bow my head and take it, there won’t be trouble.

That’s all I can do. Stay out of the way, make sure I don’t bring trouble to people who have already suffered so much until I can do—what?

Soldiers tossed the man’s body away hours ago, leaving a bloody splotch of dirt next to the platform entrance. I walk through it, staring at the dried blood, feeling the boy’s eyes on me, just another body in Spring’s arsenal of workers. Like the man who fell to his death, a vessel the soldiers destroy for sport.

Dizzy thirst makes me trip, but I keep walking. Just one more step, Meira. Just one more.