night, had originally meant “I love you,” but it had, over the years, become a more all-purpose signal of anything positive. Here, Vidya took it to mean “you did well.”
Hours passed. Hunger pinched Vidya’s stomach-she and Prasad had skipped breakfast to save food-and she was sweating even though a thick layer of clouds blocked the sun. It was warm for early fall. The world of Rust had an even, temperate climate because it had no moons to stir wind and water to anything greater than a balmy breeze or gentle rain. Vidya had dim memories of torrential rains and rushing winds, but after her parents emigrated to Rust, all her experiences with weather involved slow, easy swings from sun to clouds to rain and back again. Now the above-average temperature made her uneasy. Had the Unity done something to the weather as well as spreading the blight? Vidya’s stomach growled, and a hunger headache coiled behind her forehead.
“We need to eat,” Prasad said. “Perhaps over there.”
They guided cart and barrow to the edge of the road and into what had been a hayfield. Mushy stalks squelched under Vidya’s shoes, and the fetid smell lessened her appetite. A waist-high stone wall divided the field in half, however, and this was Prasad’s goal. Other people were taking advantage of the wall as a place to rest, but Prasad, Vidya noticed with satisfaction, warily kept his distance from them. They wheeled their respective conveyances to a likely spot and pulled themselves up to the wall’s bumpy top. Vidya groaned as her weight left her aching feet.
“May I sit with you?”
The whip was already in Vidya’s hand and pointed at the speaker. It was a woman with a pack on her back and two small children at her side. Vidya didn’t lower the whip.
“Of course,” Prasad said gently. “Do you need help?”
“Prasad,” Vidya warned. “We can’t-”
“Our old community was destroyed,” Prasad replied. “If we wish to survive, we must build a new one.”
“We can be three more pairs of eyes to watch for thieves.” The woman nodded at Prasad’s cart. “Or duck- nappers.”
A laugh popped from Vidya’s mouth before she could stop it. She motioned for the woman and her children to sit. The woman’s name was Jenthe. The children were her sister’s.
“My sister was Silent,” Jenthe continued. “Her owner planned to hide just her-not her husband or children-in case the Unity won the war. I think she was planning to run away, but then she and her husband disappeared. Now we’re traveling to Ijhan because they have food.”
Vidya shot a glance at Prasad’s cart. “Do the children belong to your sister’s owner?” she asked bluntly. “Are they Silent, too?”
“Vidya,” Prasad said. “We don’t need to be rude.”
“We need to know,” Vidya replied. “If the children are Silent, they’re valuable.”
Jenthe pulled both children closer to her. They looked at her with wide eyes. Vidya sighed. Jenthe’s gesture had answered Vidya’s question as clearly as a shout.
“I’m not going to take them from you,” Vidya said quietly. “But someone else might. It isn’t duck-nappers we have to worry about.”
“I’ve worried about that since we left,” Jenthe said, and changed the subject. “Have you heard if we’ve surrendered to the Unity yet?” She rummaged around in her backpack and took out half a piece of flat bread. She divided it between the children but took none for herself. Vidya sighed and waited. On cue, Prasad offered Jenthe a piece of their own flat bread. Jenthe refused, but finally accepted after minimal pressure from Prasad. Vidya mentally went over their tiny store of food, all that remained after six months of bombs and blights. It would take them three days to reach Ijhan, maybe four, and they could do it without slaughtering the ducks if they ate two small meals a day. If they fed three more mouths, though, they’d have to eat the ducks, and Vidya had been counting on using them as trade goods. She had a feeling that the money they carried wouldn’t be worth much.
“I haven’t heard of surrender,” Prasad was saying. “Perhaps we’re winning.”
Vidya glanced at the river of refugees on the road and suppressed an acidic remark. There really was no point. Words wouldn’t change their situation.
“May we sit with you?” said a cautious voice. Vidya sighed and chewed her bread.
It took four days to reach Ijhan. In that time, their group had grown to twenty people. Prasad’s crate had four ducks left.
Vidya had visited Ijhan half a dozen times in her life. She remembered it as a sprawling city of trees and low buildings. It still was, but now a refugee camp had sprung up around it like a moat around a castle.
“They aren’t letting anyone in,” Mef reported. He was fourteen and on his own now. Prasad charged him with scouting ahead because he still had energy for it and he had a knack for gathering information. “They’ve built sandbag walls around the whole city. Trucks came out with food four days ago, but that’s been it.”
A murmur went through the group and Vidya bit her lip. Counting the ducks and Gandin’s two geese, the group had enough food for two or three days. The filter on Vidya’s water bottle would also give out soon, and she didn’t want to think about what filth had accumulated in the ponds and streams. The area around the city already smelled like a sewer.
“There aren’t letting anyone in?” Prasad asked. The desperate note in his voice made Vidya’s heart lurch. The past several days had been hard on all of them, but it showed most on Prasad. The skin around his eyes sagged with hunger and fatigue and he spoke little. When they curled next to each other to sleep, she had felt the tension in his body grow with each passing night. She wanted to comfort her husband, this strong man, but she didn’t know how to do it other than to stand beside him.
Mef shook his head. “No one goes in. The famine is just as bad in the city.”
Vidya took Prasad’s hand and squeezed twice. He squeezed back, but the gesture lacked any strength.
Vidya clasped her hands around her shins beneath the overturned hand cart. Soft, gentle rain washed down from the sky to form soft, gentle mud. The latrine pits had already overflowed. Turds mixed with dirt and piss mixed with water until it was impossible to tell one from the other in a mix like sloppy pudding. Cholera and dysentery swept the camps. Babies and young children, already weak from lack of food, fell sick and died in mere hours. Vidya’s last meal had been a handful of beans four-or was it five? — days ago. They had cost her and Prasad the tent. The only water Vidya had was what she could catch from the sky. Her skin was waterlogged and flaccid, with white sores Prasad said were a form of mold.
At first, all Vidya had been able to think about was food. Thoughts of tender goose, crunchy felafel, sizzling beef, and hot flat bread with sweet honey bombarded her until she thought she would go insane. Now she wasn’t thinking of food, or anything else. Her stomach no longer cried out and it had long ago become a dull ache inside her. Prasad had left several hours ago on an errand he refused to discuss, but Vidya didn’t have strength to care. She stared into the rain from the scant shelter of Prasad’s cart, not even wondering what would happen next.
“My wife,” Prasad said.
Vidya looked up. Prasad stood in the rain in front of her up to his shins in mud. His skin was blotchy like her own and his frame had gone gaunt. A lump rose in her throat at the sight of him in such a condition.
“My husband,” she whispered.
He reached for her hand and squeezed twice. She squeezed back and he tried to pull her up. His body lacked the strength, and she had to manage on her own.
“You must come with me,” he said.
Vidya let him lead her away, leaving the cart behind. The energy whip made a lump in her pocket. She had tried to trade it for food, but there had been no takers.
Vidya and Prasad passed the pitiful shelters of the tiny community of twenty they had gathered, now shrunk to less than a dozen. Jenthe and her children had vanished days ago. Gandin had died of cholera. Mef was still alive, a coughing ball of misery beneath a scrap of wood. The boy didn’t look up when Prasad and Vidya passed.
They moved through the camp, and it eventually penetrated Vidya’s mind that they were heading toward the city. The sandbags walls were broken only by gates which were watched by guards who looked as hungry as the refugees. Prasad showed something to one of the guards, who waved them through.
All this barely registered with Vidya. The stupor that had fallen over her was unshakeable. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other beside Prasad without sparing a glance for the city.
