Recalling Julian’s words, I opened a small cabinet and found his shaving kit and an unmarked dented tin. The salve within smelled green and earthy in a distantly familiar way. It soothed the cuts on my hands and left my skin supple.
I slept restlessly and woke before dawn, my mind a reeling tangle of vines and huge bees and rocks stained with blood. Out my small window, the sunrise painted the mountains gold. I decided to get an early start, leaving for my daily chores as the sky began to turn a watery gray.
To my surprise, Julian was on his way in as I entered the courtyard. He looked somewhat startled to see me. “Off to your duties?” he asked, as if he hadn’t given me the list of tasks himself.
“And to see if I can find some trousers.” I held out my hands. The scrapes already looked less raw. “Thank you for the salve, by the way. Did you get it at the general store? I’d like to get some more.”
Julian’s gaze shifted from my hands to my face and then, oddly, to the chickens in the yard. They weren’t particularly eye-catching. Just six fat hens and a scrappy rooster. “No, it was in one of the food offerings. I don’t know who made it.”
“Maybe the healer,” I offered, recalling that Ezra had a mentor in town. “Or the midwife, anyway.”
“Perhaps.” Julian didn’t have his tools with him. He fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve until I felt that leaving him to his inexplicable awkwardness would be a mercy.
Nodding politely, I exited the courtyard and continued on to my work. With Ezra and his secret not quite on my mind but at the back of it, the morning passed at a snail’s pace. I spent hours outside the Mission, inspecting the most recent work on the machinery that would eventually power the river crossing. Most of the workers kept their distance, speaking to me politely but without warmth. I felt alone in the crowd, aware of their glances and the way their conversations stopped when I approached.
“Alice, how many days until the main line reaches the Mission?” I asked the forewoman—an exceptionally tall woman with straw-blond hair and a nose patchy with peeling sunburn.
She pulled a notebook from her tool belt and consulted it with a squint. “Two weeks, if we’re lucky. Bandits got the blast powder we needed to clear rock away. We’ve got to wait for the next train before we can get started again.” Noticing the way I craned my neck to see her notebook, she opened it and showed me the diagrams. “Got an eye for figures?”
“I’m awful at drawing up plans,” I confessed. “It makes sense in my mind, but when I put it to paper, it may as well be a child’s scrawl.”
“Takes practice, is all.” Alice gave me a toothy smile and clasped me on the shoulder. “You should keep trying. It’s a fine skill for a Conductor to have. How else can someone continue your work if you’re gone?”
My own grin faded. “Gone?”
“The rate people are dying ’round here, I figure I ought to document all I can. No telling who’s next.”
I looked around the workspace, at the crowd of people hauling stones and fitting brass fixtures to carry the spool of wire that currents of radiance would run through. No one looked ill. “What do you mean? Have workers been suffering accidents?”
Alice tucked her notebook back into her belt and gave me an odd look. “Aren’t you an orphan yourself? Surely you’re aware of the wasting.”
“I thought it was confined to the cities. Where people live in filth,” I said weakly, noting that a few workers had stopped and were listening to our conversation.
“We’ve lost four good workers to it this month alone.” Alice tapped her chest above her heart in an old-fashioned blessing. “Most of us came to the foothills to escape the wasting, but it’s a brutal hunter.”
A thin older man nudged Alice with his wrench. His skin was as wrinkled as a walnut shell. “Don’t frighten the girl.”
“I’m not frightened,” I said, aware of how much I sounded like a stubborn child. It was true. I wasn’t scared, but I was unsettled. Thewasting had been a disease linked to poverty and poor hygiene. Frostbrook might not be a wealthy community, but it was cleaner than anywhere I’d ever been. It didn’t make sense for the wasting to spread here. “My own parents were lost to it. I’ve known it my whole life.”
“Then learn how to document your work so it outlives you,” Alice said gravely. “The stars know when it’ll come for you, or me, or any of us.”
I nodded, my mouth too dry to respond. After quickly finishing my inspections, I hurried away, as if I were somehow at risk of catching the wasting by speaking its name. Though reason reminded me that no Child of Industry had ever been known to suffer the telltale symptoms—sudden weight loss, extreme pallor, high fevers. In the cold season, we’d passed around wicked coughs and lingering fevers, but nothing bad enough to cause one to stop eating and drinking and waste away to little more than a bruised skeleton.
My parents had died when I was too young to recall, but my imagination—and my nightmares—left me with vivid images of a man and woman sharing a sickbed, flies feasting on their sores.
Terribly unsettled, I reminded myself that the Mission would be up and running by winter, and Julian and I would be connected to the House of Industry by a thread of radiance that traveled clear across the country, all the way back to Sterling City. I’d spend my days working with hot radiance lines that regular citizens could not touch without burning themselves. I’d repair radiance-powered machines. I’d maintain the Mission. With so much work to do, I’d be too busy to fret about the wasting.
I’d probably be too busy to visit with Ezra.
The thought of that made my stomach ache.
When I finished the morning’s tasks, I set off for the general store. The shopkeeper laughed when I asked for trousers in my size. She sold me a pair of men’s trousers on credit, giving me a knowing look that she knew where to find me once I’d earned a paycheck.
“Ainsley can fix those up for you so you’re not swimming in them.”
“Is she a tailor?” I asked.
“Closest we’ve got to one,” the woman said with another boisterous, musical laugh. Her breath smelled like sweet liquor despite the early hour.
