The Infinite Sea(115)

            Evan is off the grid. Vosch doesn’t know where he is or if he’s alive or dead. But if Evan is alive, Vosch needs someone on the inside, someone Evan would trust.

            I am the blacksmith.

            You are the sword.





81

            FOR A WEEK, he is my sole companion. Guard, nursemaid, watchman. When I’m hungry, he brings me food. When I hurt, he eases my pain. When I’m dirty, he bathes me. He is constant. He is faithful. He is there when I wake and there when I fall asleep. I never catch him sleeping: He is constant, but my sleep never is; I wake several times a night, and he’s always watching from his spot by the door. He is silent and sullen and strangely nervous, this guy who effortlessly conned me into believing him and in him. As if I might try to escape, when he knows I can but won’t, when he knows I am imprisoned by a promise more binding than a thousand chains.

            On the afternoon of the sixth day, Razor ties a rag over his nose and mouth, clumps up the stairs to the third level, and comes back carting a body. He carries it outside. Then back up the stairs, his tread as heavy empty-handed as it is burdened with a corpse, and another body descends to the bottom. I lose count at one hundred twenty-three. He empties the warehouse of the dead, piling them in the yard, and at dusk, he sets the pile on fire. The bodies have mummified and the fire catches quickly and burns very hot and bright. The pyre can be seen for miles, if there are any eyes to see it. Its light glows in the doorway, laps across the floor, turns the concrete into a golden, undulating seabed. Razor lounges in the doorway watching the fire, a lean shadow haloed like a lunar eclipse. He shrugs out of his jacket, removes his shirt, rolls up the sleeve of his undershirt to expose his shoulder. The blade of his knife glimmers in the yellow glow as he etches something into his skin with the tip.

            The night wears on; the fire dwindles; the wind shifts and my heart aches with nostalgia—summer camps and catching lightning bugs and August skies aflame with stars. The way the desert smells and the long, wistful sigh of wind rushing down from the mountains as the sun dips beneath the horizon.

            Razor lights the kerosene lamp and walks over to me. He smells like the smoke and, faintly, like the dead.

            “Why did you do that?” I ask.

            Above the rag, his eyes swim with tears. I don’t know if he’s teary from the smoke or something else. “Orders,” he says.

            He pulls the IV from my arm and wraps the tubing over the hook on the stand.

            “I don’t believe you,” I say.

            “Well, I’m shocked.”

            It’s the most he’s spoken since Vosch left. I’m surprised that I’m relieved to hear his voice again. He’s examining the wound on my forehead, face very close because the light is dim.

            “Teacup,” I whisper.

            “What do you think?” he says crossly.

            “She’s alive. She’s the only leverage he has.”

            “Okay, then. She’s alive.”

            He spreads antibacterial ointment over the cut. An unenhanced human being would have needed several stitches, but in a few days no one will be able to tell that I was injured.

            “I could call his bluff,” I say. “How can he kill her now?”

            Razor shrugs. “Because he doesn’t give a shit about one little kid when the fate of the whole world is at stake? Just a guess.”

            “After all that’s happened, after everything you heard and everything you saw, you still believe him.”

            He looks down at me with something that closely resembles pity. “I have to believe him, Ringer. I let go of that and I’m done. I’m them.” He nods toward the yard where the blackened bones smolder.