“Can I have travel ration recovery?”
“Grow three hands and collapse at the gate. Then we’ll discuss it.”
He looks down, hiding a smile he doesn’t want the other boys to see. Small things. That is what we have left to give each other. A hidden smile. A slightly larger root. A lie shaped like certainty. I leave him chewing and make my way toward Jessa.
She sits in the deeper shade with her infant tucked against her chest, the baby’s mouth working weakly at nothing. Jessa’s eyes are too large for her face. She has one hand cupped over the baby’s skull as if she can shield him from hunger by touch alone.
I give her the seed mash, and her expression cracks.
“Not again,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t take yours.”
“You don’t know that,” I say.
“I know your face.”
“Then stop looking at it,” I say, keeping my voice low.
“You can’t keep feeding everyone else and calling it duty.”
I almost laugh. Not because it’s funny. Because duty is the only word we have left that doesn’t sound like grief.
“Eat,” I say. “Your milk won’t come back on pride.”
Pain flashes through her eyes. I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth, but regret doesn’t make them less true. She looks down at the baby, nods, then eats.
One small bite. Slow. Careful. Like even swallowing too quickly might offend whatever mercy let her have food today.
I stand, and the chamber shifts around me, just enough that the pillars seem to lean, the dim reflected light turning silver at the edges. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. Quietly.
No one notices. Almost no one.
Across the chamber, a newcomer watches.
He is older than me by maybe ten years, with a scar cutting through one eyebrow and the wide shoulders of someone whohad meat more than twice a moon before the journey stripped it off him. One of Rosalind’s people, I’m sure. He’s not a leader, but near enough to leadership to think he can speak for others.
His gaze drops to the basket. Two portions left. Too many eyes. I turn away from him and head toward the fever row.
Fever row used to be storage. Then water storage. Then sleeping quarters. Now it is where we put the people whose bodies have started fighting themselves because Tajss is better at killing slowly than quickly.
Orin lies on a reed mat with his arm over his eyes. His skin shines too bright. Fever-bright. His lips move around words I can’t hear. I kneel and set the strip of hide-meat beside him. He doesn’t move.
“Orin.” His hand twitches. “You need to chew.”
“Water,” he whispers.
Of course he does. Everyone does.
“I’ll send what I can.”
The lie comes easier than it should.
His mouth works, but no sound comes out. I tear a narrow piece from the meat and press it against his lips. For a moment, he doesn’t respond. Then his jaw moves. Good. He’s still here. Still fighting.
I stay until he swallows. When I rise, the newcomer with the scar is closer. Too close. City people know not to stand that close unless catching someone before they fall.
