“You’ll have to help me gather it,” I tell her and Jeran. “It’s not the easiest metal to find. Would be better if we all searched for an afternoon.”
Before I became a Striker, I spent most days twisting my way through the scrapyards littering the Outer City. You can see them towering in the distance, beyond the jumble of makeshift tin roofs that make up most of the shanties—the silhouette of stacks and stacks of discarded metal, artificial mountains behind wired fencing that rise every dozen or so blocks.
The one closest to my mother’s home—the one I now lead the others to—is no different: an acre of useless dirt and mud, piled highwith a random assortment of everything. Old parts from ruins left behind by the Early Ones, pieces of engines or buildings or machines, things that regularly turn up on farmers’ land and out in the valleys. There are also discarded metals from the Inner City. Broken carriage parts. Pieces of buildings that have been taken apart and rebuilt—roofing, cladding, doors, and window frames. Old pots and pans and cans, chairs with three legs and tables without any. Wheels. Screws. Pipes. Forks and knives and spoons.
It sounds like a broken, ugly landscape, but in reality, I find the scrapyards one of the most beautiful places here.
People in the Outer City scavenge in the scrapyards all the time. My mother and I certainly did. Most of the shanties are built using rusted metal sheets found here for their walls and roofs. My mother learned how to identify the strongest steel for resale, though, and with my help, we would haul the pieces to the gates of the Inner City’s wall and barter them to the Grid in exchange for money. I learned too how to crawl between the stacks of wreckage, my delicate fingers fishing for wire to strip from machinery and my body squeezing through dangerous narrows to find pieces valuable enough to sell.
But as we draw closer this afternoon, I see that the scrapyard has been temporarily transformed into a betting stage. There is a crowd of Outer City folk here, all shouting up at a series of daredevil games in play.
“What the hell is going on?” Adena asks me as we stop at the fencing to stare into the yard at the crowds.
“The Scrapyard Circus,” I sign, pointing at the games set up.
Someone has strung a series of wires high between two metal stacks, and now several are balancing their way precariously along the lines while people down below exchange coins and cheer them on. Elsewhere, people are competing over how far they can throw iron sewer caps or how accurately they can shoot down cans lined along the fence.
They are makeshift games that change every time, a circus of spontaneous entertainment that pops up now and then and offers the populations out here something to distract them from their troubles for a night.
“Is it safe for us to head in?” Jeran asks. “Should we wait?”
I shake my head. “No less safe than any other time. People look happy enough.” Then I push my way in through the fence’s open gate.
Red’s curiosity comes in through our bond, and when I look over at him, I see his head tilted up at the high-wire walkers, watching them wobble and hesitate as people down below shout encouragement. I remember staring up in awe at the competitors when I was small. I’ve seen people make it across on their first try; more often, I’ve witnessed people slip on the wires and go plummeting to the ground, hitting the sharp edges of protruding metal sheets along the way. The memory of the accidents makes me cringe, my muscles tense as I will the current walkers to make it across.
Red looks at me.Did you ever try?
I shake my head.My mother did. She never let me. But the circus is good for distracting others while you dig for parts in the piles.
“How do you know where to find magnesium?” Adena asks as I lead us away from the main festivities toward the back of the scrapyard, where the piles of metal cast long, quiet shadows across the land.
I point at the stacks. Magnesium was something I occasionally searched for as a child. Metalworkers in the Grid paid a good price for it because they liked mixing it with steel and iron. It’s lightweight, good for tools. You could fetch enough from even a small haul of magnesium to buy bread and flour from the markets to feed you for a week.
“The Early Ones sometimes used it in their tools and machinery,”I explain as we reach the stacks. I reach into one of the piles and pull out what looks like a flat, rectangular machine. When I turn it over,exposing its innards, I can see that it’s already been salvaged hollow. I hold the object out to the others.“Look for similar ones that haven’t been taken apart.”Then I point out a massive cylinder of an ancient flying object. “They used them to fly once. You’ll find it sometimes in these hulls, although most have been stripped clean.” I turn my head up.“And the best, of course, will be up high, where fewer people can reach.”
Adena and Jeran look somewhat lost for a moment, like they always do when I explain pieces of my past life to them. To their credit, they don’t question me.
“How did you stay alive climbing these stacks as a child?” Adena grumbles instead as she starts moving her way up one of the stacks. Even trained in the footwork of a Striker, she’s unused to the way the unstable metal shifts and groans with every turn of her body.
Farther up, though, Jeran is already hopping from stack to stack, nimble as a goat on the edge of a cliff, his face intent on the task before him.
I wedge myself in at the same time Red regards me. He starts to unfurl his wings.I can carry you higher, he says.
I hesitate, imagining the thought of being in his arms as he hoists me into the air. It would make the entire process faster, and if I’m being honest, I’ve wondered how it must feel to soar through the air the way he did on the field. Then the idea embarrasses me. It’s probably best not to draw that kind of attention out here, anyway. So I force myself to shake the idea off and frown at him.
You take to the skies here, I tell him instead, nodding toward the crowds,and we might spend the rest of the afternoon trying to quell the panic.I point up to one of the stacks.Just watch for me. If you see any of us slip, feel free to rescue us.
Red scowls.So I’m going to stay down here?
You’re too heavy to climb these stacks, I tell him, then start making my way up the side of one.
It’s been years since I’ve climbed stacks in the scrapyards, but the muscle memory of years spent here comes rushing back to me, and I find my footing as naturally as I always did—gingerly shifting my weight along the edge of a metal sheet until I find the stable spot, knowing where to hop to get to another stack, feeling the body of it move beneath me like a living thing. You had to make decisions quickly out here. I wasn’t the only child scavenging, but often I was the smallest. Other children formed roving gangs, teamed up to both take the best metal and beat down anyone else trying to prowl in the same areas. So I learned how to squeeze my body tightly between the stacks, how to hide myself inside hollowed-out carriages and rusted roofing.
Later, I’d taken Corian here, taught him how to navigate the terrain. We’d chase each other through the stacks, hopping back and forth, me saving him on more than one occasion from crashing down to the ground. We practiced first by daylight, then by moonlight. The Firstblade considered the exercise beneath that befitting a Striker, that we didn’t belong in the shanties. But there was a reason why Corian and I had once been considered the most nimble pair in the forces, and the reason was this.
The memory of his voice teasing me to find him in the stacks brings me up short. I stop midway through digging in the skeleton of a carriage, then close my eyes and try to steady my breathing. I can hear Corian’s laugh echoing around me, still feel him squeezing in beside me as he tried to wedge himself into the same hiding places I could find.
Then the wave passes. I open my eyes. Down below, I catch a glimpse of Red pacing beside the stacks, unused to doing nothing. His usual frown stays on his face.
