“So do sixteen others.”
“We lost our stores crossing the cursed desert.”
The guard’s face hardens. “And?”
I stop. The woman has the frantic brightness of someone ready to spend her last strength on fury. The guard looks tired enough to answer the same way. Both of them are sweating too much, which is wasteful and dangerous.
I step between them and lift the basket just enough for both to see it.
“Lower your voices.”
The woman’s eyes snap to mine. “My child is sick.”
“I heard you,” I say.
“Then help her.”
There it is. The terrible expectation newcomers bring with them. Help. As if the word itself contains hidden stores, extra water, a secret chamber of mercy beneath the stone.
I want to tell her there are no miracles left in the City. No endless pantry. No cool river sealed behind a door we have been too selfish to open. The City gives what it can, then gives less, then watches who survives the subtraction.
“South shade chamber. Third level down. Put her near the inner wall, not the cistern stones. They feel cooler, but the damp worsens the fever,” I say instead of recriminating, though part of me wants to.
The woman blinks, and the guard looks away.
“I’ll send water if there’s any left after the fever ward,” I say.
“If?” the woman whispers.
I do not soften the word. Softness is another lie.
“If.”
For one breath, she hates me, and I understand it. Then fear swallows the hate, and she clutches her child tighter. I walk away before she can thank me or curse me. Both cost breath.
By the time I reach the lower habitation, silver creeps along the edge of my vision. Not enough to matter. Not yet. I lean one shoulder against the wall for a single breath. Two. The stone holds a little cool from the night before, faint as a memory. Then I straighten before anyone sees.
I look at the basket with a fleeting hope that another portion somehow appeared out of nowhere. Dangerous thing, hope. Though I expect it, the basket still holds only five portions. Five is enough for five. That is the truth the City is built around.
I step into the crowded dimness of the lower level, carrying food for everyone but myself.
The lower habitation level is louder than it should be.
Not loud by any old measure. Not the way the market on the ship used to sound when I was small, before the crash. When supplies never crossed anyone’s mind. When plenty was all we knew. But loud for the City.
Too many bodies. Too many whispers. Too many small sounds people make when they are close to breaking.
The City absorbs sound the same way it absorbs heat, slowly, grudgingly, through layers of stone and shadow. Voices sink into the old red walls. Footsteps vanish against woven mats laid over cracked floors. Even crying becomes muffled down here, pressed flat by the weight of everything above.
The newcomers haven’t learned that yet. A child whimpers somewhere to my left. A man mutters a prayer in Common. Someone laughs once, too sharply, and stops like the sound startled them.
I stand under the arch, clutching the basket and letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.
Bodies fill the chamber. Not just City bodies, narrow and still. Trained by years of heat. New bodies. Valley-camp bodies. Rosalind’s bodies. People with sunburned faces, torn wraps, sand-scabbed skin. They have the look of people who survived the journey by believing arrival meant safety.
I hate that look. Not because it’s foolish, but because it’s almost beautiful.
A little girl sits on the floor near one of the old support pillars, knees pulled to her chest, watching a City woman grind dried seed with a flat stone. The City woman’s movements are slow, economical. Three circles. Pause. Three circles. Pause. She doesn’t waste strength on rhythm.
