Carve Out My Heart Where The Shriekers Fly

Chapter 1 — Chewing Grief with the Staggering Man

The Staggering Man crooned to his dead, dark box.

That day, the Hellblaze scorched the Burnt like a pan’s black bottom. The red-eyed shriekers that circled, looking for things dead and about to die, wavered in their flight.

The Staggering Man had been close to dead so long that the birds paid him no mind. He was fried through to the bones. In a voice like sand running down an old clay cliff, he spoke to his box:

“You light up. You purr with life. You speak!”

The box did none of those things. There was more life in the rocks. The paint-flecked box had been made long ago. A wire trailed in the dirt.

“Only voices you hear are in your head, Stagger! In your fool sunbaked brain!”

Stagger’s eyes rose over the edge of the box. “Hazz.”

The visitor, Hazz, jostled for room under the cascalote tree. He was a boy of thirteen, with batbrown skin. On his shoulder he carried a stringed gourd. An oud, Stagger recalled.

“Got any Grief seeds? Gimme.”

“No.” But the Staggering Man pulled a pouch from somewhere. Into his cracked palm he shook three, five, six red specks.

The two broke the seeds in their teeth. They waited for the Grief.

“Your Pa know you come out here?”

“He doesn’t care.”

Stagger laughed, a sound like shale sliding. “You the Heir. Be Honcho of Krook’s Dravers someday.”

“Not me. Zeek is Heir. He’s older. Maybe kill me when he’s Heir.”

Stagger said, “Him?” but right then, the Grief bit.

You couldn’t say much when the Grief had you. Too busy rolling in the dirt and puking. Then only the Big Man could know what came next.

For Hazz, the sky went red. He saw himself back with his people.

There was a punker going on, like the one from a few nights past. The Mothers were there, welcoming the Dravers back to camp.

Over the fire, roasting on a steel spike, was Hazz’s own body. The Dravers hollered and laughed. They seized hunks of Hazz’s flesh with tongs. They crammed the meat into their crooked mouths and washed it down with hooch.

Tall Lilah, the Mother who’d always been kindest to Hazz, walked right into the fire. She bent down and whispered in Hazz’s ear as the flames rose around them.

“Watch with eyes open. Wait till new stars rise, and old stars have set. I’ll be waiting.”

Tall Lilah opened her mouth. A torrent of blood cascaded over Hazz, quenching the fire. The blood washed the Dravers away down the dry valley.

Hazz was tossed and tumbled, drowning and choking, until the blood faded and he lay on the bare dirt with the Staggering Man looking down at him quizzically.

“Grief got you good, boy. You were yellin’. About them Dravers.”

Hazz sat up. “I have a bad secret. I can’t be a Draver, Stagger. A Draver’s got to be Hard. That’s what Zeek says. But I’m not Hard inside. I’ve got something in my Inside that’s like soft jelly.”

You could say what you wanted around Stagger. His mind was always jumping somewhere else like a sand flea.

Hazz said, “I saw Slicer stomp a baby jacker to death, and my Inside just about fell out of me. Why? What do I care about some rabbit?”

“He the hardest, that Krook,” the Staggering Man said. “I seen him cut a man down. Man came to beg. Spare us farmers, man said. Crop bad. I seen Krook’s hand on the splitter. Fast as snakefang. Came to beg. What kind of man...” Stagger caught himself.

“Relax, you dried-up coot. I don’t say anything to Krook. I’m like a tumbleweed to the Dravers. I blow by, they don’t notice.”

Stagger jumped back to stroking his box.

Hazz’s Grief was over, but only the kind that came in seeds. Time to go home.

High mesas to the west. Everywhere growing: barberry, skunkbush, sawgrass, needlegrass, sage. Everywhere scuttling: rattlers, skinks, locusts, spattershells, millipedes. And blossoming: redtops, bluestems, dunebroom, greasewood, bricklebush, poppies, marigolds.

And living, like the shriekers in the sky. And dying, like a jacker’s bones by a dry stream.

Father Toad would say that life or death was up to the Big Man. That the Big Man tested a person, and if a person failed a test, the Big Man would take his kraith up into the Hellblaze.

Hazz thought life or death depended on paying attention to where the hell you were going. Finding water—in a pricklebelly or a pearfruit. Finding food—a pinon with its oily nuts.

Ahead, Hazz spotted the black hulk of the Bus. Totem of the Dravers, palace of the Honcho.

Time to go home.

Today the Dravers were away. Busting up a settlement, carting off its goods.

Hazz, being Soft, did not go on Dravings. Neither did a few others: Junkman with his game leg, or Stoopid, with his wormy eyes and makeshift goggles. The Mothers stayed behind also, and ran the camp.

Mother Thunder caught sight of Hazz, and laid into him.

“Work to do, and where are you? The laziest hanger-on at least lifts a log.”

Hazz ignored her and grinned. Thunder could scare a sanddog, with the scar up the side of her head, her arms like knotwood, but she wouldn’t lay hands on him.

“Go feed the Oxmen,” Shorty Jane said, and Hazz thought that was something he’d better do.

The tub slopped over with steer’s guts butchered for the punker. When Hazz dragged it near the Oxmen, they strained their chains and hooted and whomped their chests. Five of them hitched up could drag the Bus a hundred miles.

Hazz watched the Oxmen fall on the gory mess. He unslung his oud and trickled out a tune he’d thought up.

I’m a stinkin’ brute

Stupid as a butte

But oh, how a pile

Of guts makes me smile

My sisters and my brother

All try to eat each other...

A pain struck Hazz in the back. His oud flew, skidding on the dirt. His brother Zeek had ambushed him from behind.

“Where you been, dick-tickler? Out there tickling your dick?”

Hazz grimaced. “Thought you were on the Draving.”

Zeek was taller than Hazz, more solid, with a small-eyed slab face. They were both Krook’s sons, but the boys had different Mothers. Zeek’s Mother was Mother Thunder. Hazz’s Mother had been Bucktooth Laura. A snake bit her when Hazz was just small. Sometimes the Grief showed Hazz a kindly, dentally-advantaged face, which Hazz knew was probably her.

Hazz knew enough to just let Zeek talk. He’d get bored, move on. The danger was if he didn’t.

“Don’t go talkin’ about how you’re Krook’s son.”

It was not something Hazz ever talked about.

“I’m the son of Krook. The real son. You just happened cause he fucked a whore. A snaggle-teeth ugly whore.” Zeek threw Hazz down, placed a foot on his chest.

Bucktooth Laura had been a full-rank Mother, as much a Draver as Mother Thunder. Hazz knew better than to speak.

“Wasn’t no snake killed her. I killed her. Fucked her for fun, then broke her ugly neck.”

This was unlikely. Zeek would have been four years old when Hazz’s mother died.

At the edge of his sight, Hazz saw Junk and Stoopid watching from afar. Too much crowd would make Zeek try to prove a point. Hazz had to do something.

Hazz whined, “I’m helping brew hooch tonight. I’ll sneak a bottle just for you.”

Zeek raised his foot. “They’ll beat your ass if they see you.”

One last kick to Hazz’s ribs. “Better get me that hooch.”

By the bus, Junkman put a hand on Hazz’s shoulder. Hazz knocked it away.

“You a threat to that boy,” Junkman said.

“I don’t go near him. He’s the Heir. What more does he want?”

With the Dravers gone, Hazz could hide from heat and kin inside the Bus.

The Bus had been made long ago, when people were better at making things. Time and age had worn its color away, eaten holes in its bulbous armor. Inside were bunks for the privileged Dravers, and at the back, Krook had his lair. When the Dravers moved camp, looking for new settlements to raid, the Oxmen pulled the Bus in braided harnesses.

Someone had already thrown Hazz’s bunkroll out the door onto the rocks. The Draver men would be claiming the bunks for themselves later, celebrating the Draving with the Mothers in a ghastly group chorus of yells and moans. Hazz grabbed his blankets and looked for a safe sleep spot as far out of earshot as possible.

Coming around the side of the Bus, he saw Shorty Jane and Tall Lilah doing a trade with a couple of Burnt dwellers. Mad Slim was there with a brace of jackers, and Spittle too, his sledge loaded with scrap metal.

To his surprise, Hazz saw the Staggering Man had come. He’d brought thorns as Hazz had suggested. The skeletal figure bowed and tottered as Tall Lilah counted out the going rate in ladles of water and hoecakes.

A flash of blond spun Hazz around, and when he got his balance again, he saw Zeek by the trading table.

Zeek upended the table, scattering thorns and cakes. The Mothers wouldn’t have put up with this, not from a Draver covered in glory. But it was Zeek, and they stood aside.

Hazz watched helplessly as Zeek delivered kicks and blows to the Staggering Man. When that broken figure tried to flee into the falling night, Zeek chased after him and did not stop until Stagger was far from the camp’s edge.

Chapter 2 — Punker By The Big Burnt Bus

The oud spoke to the night, trembling, ticking, chiming, singing.

No one had shown Hazz how to play an oud, nor how to tune it. His ears had to be the guide, and they learned from crickets, sanddogs, the trilling of nightjars. The oud had come to camp on a wagon atop a pile of loot. There were pegs for twelve strings, but Hazz could never find more than three or four suitable wires at a time.

Hazz sang to the brambles and the rising moon.

If I were a bird

That flew on the night

I’d fight with the wind

Bold in my flight.

A man can feel sadness

A man’s born to grieve

A man’s chased by troubles

But a bird can just leave...

A shadow moved nearby. Hazz stopped singing. He tensed.

“A well-turned threnody, my clever scion of the wicked.”

It wasn’t Zeek, it was Stoopid, goggles glinting in the twilight. Stoopid’s poor eyesight kept him from going on Dravings, but Stoopid wouldn’t have been a warrior anyhow. In spite of his name, he was the sharpest Draver, their technician and mechanic, and, most precious, the alchemist of their hooch.

“Thank you, Stoop.”

“There is no place for a minstrel among thieves, of course,” Stoopid continued. “Here a man must know how to kill, or fight, or force. Or otherwise, to lift, to work, to make. No use for an ornament such as you.”

Stoop’s bluntness could be a pain. But it was time to stop playing music. The punker would start soon.

“Help with the hooch,” Stoopid said, and Hazz recalled his promise to Zeek.

Behind the Bus, in the dark area away from the growing fire, a low flame glowed under a copper ball. It was Hazz’s chore to eye a bottle until the drips filled it an inch from the top. No drop must be spilled. The Mothers only allotted a certain amount of grain for hooch.

When a bottle was ready, Hazz handed it to Stoopid. Stoop filled the rest with his homemade flavorings: pricklefruit sap, wolfberry, dwarf persimmon. Hazz had tried a sip of hooch once. It had felt like a rock falling on his head.

In the shadows of the booze operation, Hazz sequestered a bottle with no flavor added yet. He’d add his own recipe later, just for Zeek.

In the distance, they heard whoops and shouts. The first Dravers were back.

“We never hit too hard,” Stoopid had explained to Hazz when he was younger. “Take too much from a farm or ranch or water station, there won’t be enough to sustain the residents. When we return the next year, there’ll be nothing. Same for killing. Kill too many, no more loot. Only kill those who resist. Most often, they don’t resist. Many a Draving, no one gets hurt. Same for women. Violate the women, population goes down, less food, less loot for us the next year.”

Hazz thought perhaps what Dravers told themselves they did wasn’t always the same as what they actually did.

Slicer ran into camp first, his mad eyes dancing. Ugly Joe and Bugfuck followed. Then came Shish Kebab, so named because he’d taken a spear through both cheeks. His mouth was a mass of scar tissue.

“We ripped ’em, we slashed ’em, and O how they screamed!” That was Slicer, gleeful and black-blood-crusted down his shoulders. “They try to hide, but old Slicer can sniff ’em! Come out, come out, little men!”

“Was there gunpowder?” Junkman wanted to know. Shish said there had been petards and a shot-pipe, but no threat. The coming of guns to the desert was a topic of worry, for the Dravers had no guns. There were not many guns in the Burnt, but every year there were more.

The Mothers were there, grim-eyed and already counting. “How fared the wagons?” Mother Thunder demanded.

“Loot, loot!” Bugfuck affirmed. “Ten wagons full, three of corn, three of dried meats. One flows over with a freshly killed cow. Two with tools and trinkets, breads and fruits, herbs and spices.”

“That is nine wagons,” Mother Thunder said. “What of the tenth?” But these first-returning Dravers didn’t want to talk about the tenth wagon.

The carts rolled in a few at a time: corn sacks, meat, water, tools, trinkets, bread, fruit, herbs, and spices. Thickness, Fumble, Dogtooth, Screechem, Lights Out, Cleaves, Hijack, Grinder, Bloody Bill, Longshot, the Marquis, Maggot, Fancy Jack, and Rumbleguts followed. No casualties this day.

The Mothers noted and counted and checked off all loot, for it was theirs to store and distribute. The tenth wagon had yet to return, and the Honcho himself had yet to return.

Then Krook arrived: Krook of Krook’s Dravers.

Hazz couldn’t catch sight of his father without his Inside twinging. It was like looking at a mountain you had to climb, and knowing you could never climb it.

Krook wasn’t big compared to most of the Dravers. Hair like black smoke ran down his back. A flared nose sat between a full mouth and eyes like steel gates. Those eyes didn’t let the thoughts behind them get through. Krook was Hard in the way a Draver talked about Hard. He had launched the Dravers on their first Draving twenty-one years ago, and in all that time, no one had challenged him as Honcho.

Two boys were in line to succeed Krook as Honcho, but really only one was.

And the other? What about Hazz? Too Soft to be a Draver, but a son of the Honcho couldn’t be a hanger-on. Hazz was a complication, a braying note in a song of war.

Krook of Krook’s Dravers rolled into camp in the last wagon. All eyes were on the Mothers. The eyes of Mother Thunder and Kinah were narrow, their mouths hard. Split Lip came up, and her face twisted up too.

In the tenth wagon was a woman.

She was a settler, bound, and bloodied, with matted hair and a torn farm smock. She lay in the wagon behind Krook, not moving, but sobbing softly.

This had not happened before. No Draver had ever done this.

The Mothers said nothing, but their faces said much. The other Dravers were tense, ears up, waiting for the first word to be spoken.

Krook broke the silence.

“This is my prize,” he said, loud enough for all to hear, but not shouting. “I risk all, every Draving. Through me, all loot comes. We will have a punker, a raging balls-down punker for Dravers and Mothers to enjoy. And after, I will go get this woman, and I will have her. I am Honcho. I’ve spoken. I’ll hear no more about it.”

The fire roared, and the meat was roasted. The Dravers sprawled around the bonfire and roared and laughed and recounted how the frightened farmers of Greengold had run from their attackers, and been spitted on spears.

Hazz, watching from just outside the firelight as he always did, knew this punker was too quiet by half. The Mothers always sat with the Dravers, demanding every detail of the Draving, swilling as much hooch as the men.

Tonight, not a single Mother sat fireside, not one ate of the roast, not one of them touched Stoopid’s hooch. They stood by the Bus in a knot, talking in muffled tones.

Hazz had a feeling like a great iron spring was about to be let go. He thought of the poor woman still tied up in the wagon. She was probably hungry and frightened. Hazz couldn’t be Hard enough not to think about that. His Inside wobbled.

And suddenly his head spun. Zeek had cuffed him from behind. “Where’s my hooch, dickjerker?”

Hazz handed Zeek the bottle. The hooch was pale yellow. “I got you a pearfruit. Stoopid’s favorite.” Zeek grabbed it and ran off.

The night wore on, the fire leapt, and the Dravers were deep in their bottles.

Screechem said, “Let’s drink to the old days. When the Burnt ran black with bandits. Remember the Dirty Birds? The Savages? The Madness?”

And Fancy Jack chimed in. “The Whiptails. The Slashers. The North Burnt Helldogs. Grym Grinder and the Ruin Ryders.”

“All gone now,” Bloody Bill said, taking a guzzle. “Only the Dravers remain. The Burnt belongs to us.”

Krook spoke. “Because we were the strongest, the Hardest. Remember that, before we let some persuade us to be Soft.”

Hazz must have been too close to the firelight, because Fancy Jack caught sight of him.

“Hi-yi! Minstrel boy! Grab that lute of yours! We want a song!” Other Dravers took up the cry, “A song! A song!”

Hazz had never been asked to play around the fire at a punker before, with everyone present. Certainly not with Krook sitting right there. But the cry was going up. Running away could make things worse.

Sliding into the circle with his oud, Hazz felt exposed. Maggot clapped him on the shoulder. “Krook, you keep this boy hidden! I’ve heard him play, he’s born to it!”

Avoiding his father’s gaze, Hazz poised his instrument on his knee. Now what?

“Does he know the tune to Bust Up City?” Slicer shouted, and luckily Hazz did.

Shakily, he plied the first three notes, and Slicer sang the words, with the other Dravers taking up the refrain.

A rogue wobbled south from Bust Up City

(Bust Up City where the roads are gold)

To Azrab’s fort where the girls are pretty

(In Bust Up City’s where the tale is told)

He said to the Bartizan, raise the gate

(I’m from Bust Up City where the roads are gold)

But the Bartizan said, man, the hour’s late

(In Bust Up City’s where the tale is told)

The rogue said “Gold I’ll place in your hand”

(From Bust Up City where the roads are gold)

But that was no use to the Bar-ti-zan

(In Bust Up City’s where the tale is told)

As these lines were sung, Hazz’s eyes met the eyes of Krook. And Krook’s eyes told of snakes and death and the chill of the grave. Hazz’s Inside turned upside down, and his hand fell to his side.

The song fell silent. Krook smashed his bottle on the rock beside him.

“I am going to have my woman,” he announced, and he stalked into the dark.

As he did so, Hazz saw the Mothers by the Bus stir themselves like poked wasps. Hazz knew what had happened.

By the time Krook reappeared, in a drunk fury, swinging a gutsplitter at anyone who came near, and cursing the Mothers in terms that would scare a gowrow, Hazz was already heading out of camp. He heard Stoopid telling Junkman, “Someone untied her, let her go.”

“I bet it was Thunder. Shit gonna smoke now, boyo.”

Time to be gone for a while. The last thing Hazz saw before he slipped into the moonlit scrub was Zeek, crouched in the bushes by the latrine. Zeek was puking gushers, painting the sand with his pearfruit hooch.

Hazz wasn’t surprised. He’d filled the last part of Zeek’s hooch by urinating in the bottle.

Chapter 3 — Father Toad

The Hellblaze raged, though it was not yet high sun. The tents were hot as kilns. Father Toad’s acolytes huddled in the thin shade of a tattered awning.

The Twins, four years into their silence, clasped hands and bowed their heads. Father Toad perched in the doorway of his wheeled shack, letting the sun punish him as usual. Two spavined burros shifted and swatted flies.

Karona looked up from counting her stone rosary, shaded her eyes, and saw Hazz coming from the west.

“Your cub is back,” she called to Father Toad.

“Father! Father Toad!” Hazz croaked, dry from searching all night. Karona nodded toward the water jar, and he drank.

“There’s trouble at the Bus,” Hazz reported. Father Toad’s face didn’t change.

Karona said, “So you ran away.” It wasn’t a question.

“There were fights. Dravers against Mothers. Thunder gut-punched the Marquis. It was ugly.”

No one asked for more, so Hazz squatted on the gravel beside Karona.

Karona was between Zeek and Hazz in age. Father Toad’s small retinue spent their days meditating and gathering medicinals to trade at the Bus.

“The meal was an hour ago. You’re too late,” Karona informed Hazz. “You’re in time for the reading, though.”

Hazz hadn’t come for food or scripture. He had come for Karona. He often dreamed of heading into the Burnt with her and finding a green valley of their own.

“Today’s homily,” said Father Toad, “is from the Lay of Jorix, the Cartwheel Man. It concerns Mercy.” Without looking up from the Stern Black Book, he asked Hazz, “Do Dravers show Mercy?”

“I’d say not,” Hazz replied. “A Draver wants to be Hard. They think Mercy is a flaw, and flaws get you killed.”

“In the Lay of the Cartwheel Man,” Father Toad intoned, “we are told that the Big Man tested Jorix.

“Now it was a day of Hellblaze, and Jorix swooned. The Big Man asked Jorix if he could set Mercy aside in his heart in order to kill a beetle. Jorix replied that a beetle was of no account.

“So the Big Man told Jorix to step on a beetle that crawled before his feet. And Jorix did so.

“Then the Big Man said, you have killed a beetle, is it such a step to also kill a gecko? And Jorix said, no, a gecko is not much more than a beetle.

“So the Big Man set a gecko before Jorix, and Jorix crushed its neck with his heel.

“Now, said the Big Man, what of the coyotes that kill your flocks? Is it such a greater thing to kill a coyote? Jorix said he would kill a coyote, and soon an arrow flew, and a coyote lay in the dirt.

“I have passed your test said Jorix, but the Big Man said, no one has passed any test to whom a beetle and a coyote are the same.

“The Big Man then said, what of a stranger who comes to your door in the night? You know him not, and your son sleeps within the house.

“Jorix said, honor demands I give shelter to a stranger, but the Big Man said, a stranger could well be a thief, and could murder your son.

“Then I will kill that stranger, Jorix replied.

“The Big Man set a stranger knocking at the door of Jorix, and Jorix held the stranger by the throat until the stranger’s breath stopped within him.

“Here is a friend come unto you, the Big Man said, and Jorix said I would defend the life of a friend with my life. The Big Man said, a friend might gain your trust, but steal from you when you were turned elsewhere, and Jorix said, betrayed so, I would kill that friend.

“And the Big Man put distrust of a friend in Jorix’s heart, and Jorix laid that friend low.

“Now, said the Big Man, what of your own son? On my soul, Jorix said, I could never harm my son. The Big Man said, you have killed without hesitating a beetle, a gecko, a coyote, a stranger, and a friend, why do you stop at killing your own son? Jorix wept and said, my son is flesh of my flesh, is mind of my mind, is forged of my own heart’s metal.

“And yet, the Big Man said, a son can betray his father. A son can murder his father because he covets what the father has. Only if my son came at me so, Jorix replied, it would hurt me sore, but had I to fight my son, I would kill him too.

“And the Big Man set Jorix’s own son against his father. And Jorix lashed at his son, but could not deliver the fatal blow.

“I am the foolishest of creatures, Jorix said, I who cannot tell the difference between a beetle and a gecko and a coyote and a stranger and a friend and my own son.

“The Big Man said, You are the foolishest of creatures if you cannot see that all of these creatures are one and the same, that all are flesh of your flesh, that Mercy to one is Mercy to all. That withholding Mercy from the smallest Life is to deny mercy to all Life.

“And the Big Man lifted the swoon from Jorix. And Jorix saw the beetle scuttle away unharmed, and Jorix wept.”

“I’d like to read the Book myself sometime, if you’ll let me,” Hazz said.

“Can Dravers read?” Karona asked.

“Most can, if the words are plain. I was called Hazard because Krook saw it painted on a mine entrance east of Big Top.”

“We need herbs,” Father Toad said. “We’re short on globe mallow, mullein, and wasp-nettle. Karona, take the cub gathering, and return before the cigales chirr.”

This was what Hazz had hoped for: time alone with Karona, though it never went as he imagined.

Karona never answered as Hazz expected. Compliments met sarcasm or nonsense. Questions got strange replies. Yet sometimes she gave him a word or look so warm it stunned him. And like a spark flying upward from a bonfire, Hazz would have no idea where it came from or how to rekindle it.

“You hate me because I’m a Draver,” Hazz said, as they gathered fistfuls of leaves from cracks in a cliff.

“If I hated you, I wouldn’t take you herbing. And if you’re a Draver, then Dravers are sorry twits who couldn’t raid a cheeky-nest.”

“I mean, you and Father Toad and the Twins are holy. Reading about mercy. Praying to the Big Man. I’m amazed you let me in camp.”

Karona drew her bag shut and prepared to move on. “Why not? We come to your camp.”

“Only to trade herbs for food.”

Karona muttered that better shoes would make for better herbing. Only as they returned did she say:

“We rely on Draving as much as Dravers do. Farms won’t deal with us, so our wandering church survives on what you steal. We don’t kill, but we eat the fruit of murder.”

Near the wagon, Karona added, “Father Toad is holy. I’m only in it for the herbs.”

They crushed and dried the wild harvest in silence.

Hazz blurted, clumsily, “I wish I could stay. Meditate, gather, read the Stern Black Book.”

“The Dravers would hunt us down,” Karona said.

“They wouldn’t. They don’t care about me.”

The silence grew awkward. At last Father Toad said, “You are young, but you have eyes and a mind. Open the first. Use the second. Think on your situation.”

“He means...” Karona began, but Father Toad lifted a finger ever so slightly, and Karona stopped.

Silence returned. Over seeds and honey, Father Toad told Hazz, “Certain truths about your standing among thieves should be plain to a thinking man. Because of who you are, I cannot tell them to you. But I can teach you how to think.”

“I would like that,” Hazz mumbled.

“Come often, but not every day. I will show you the truths of the Book.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“You may stay the night with us,” Father Toad said.

When little owls showed yellow eyes to the moon, it was time for sleep. Hazz had never spent a night among these strange penitents.

“You stay with me,” Karona said. “Don’t try anything stupid.”

Hazz lay beside Karona under the thin tent, moonlight showing through. His Inside jumped like a frog in a rain pool. What did she think of him? Did she feel any of what he felt? Why could he understand nothing about her?

Beside her in the half-dark, Hazz listened to her breathe. Someday someone might lie here with her every night. His face burned with jealousy over that imagined person.

But his Inside, for once, was the better part of him. Calm yourself, fool, it said. You spin phantoms out of moonlight.

He slept fitfully and dreamed he floated over the Burnt, playing his oud while woman-headed snakes sang raiding songs.

Chapter 4 — Somewhere West Of Bad Bitch Bottom

They had packed the Camp in silence, they had fed the Oxmen on the bones of the feast, they had hitched the Oxmen to the Bus, and they had left, probably soon after dawn.

And Hazz had not been with them. An hour after dawn, he found his people gone.

It would not be hard to track the Dravers and catch up. The Bus tracks, the Oxmen’s footprints, and the torn shrubs were easy to read.

When a Draver is not present at breakout, Hazz knew that Draver is said to have deserted.

Would the Dravers let Hazz come back?

Hazz guessed they’d gone maybe eight leagues in the time since the sun showed itself. He could certainly move faster than the lumbering caravan with its heavy Bus and the groaning beast-men pulling it.

But he was out of water, and getting Dry. Too Dry and you dropped in the heat. A shrieker wheeled overhead. The hellsent birds could sense this sort of trouble.

Without wasting time on thought, Hazz set out after his people.

The trail led west, out of the Dry Heights and downwards, where the air was thicker. There was more vegetation in these areas, and more water, but no shade-giving outcrops or mesas, and there were fewer places to set up a camp that wouldn’t be visible from a distance.

The Dravers had always avoided this region, which lay along a treacherous floodbed called Bad Bitch Bottom. There must have been dispute. The Mothers, after a muttering council, would have ordered the caravan to turn north towards the foothills of the Sierra Despera, or East, where the Dravers had not ventured in a couple of years. East, the farmers and herders would have got complacent, ripe for Dravings.

Here was a country of sudden floods, of night sickness, of ill fortune. It was closer to the settlements established by the speculators from Bust Up City. The Dravers had never ventured this close to a city before.

Why had they come here? Had the Dravers lost their minds?

From far off, Hazz spotted them: the Bus swaying and lurching west. He had caught up. Would they shun him, tell him to leave? He remembered Crooked Foot, who years ago had slept through breakout and been sent weeping into the Burnt, where the shriekers waited.

Strangely, when Hazz caught up to the Bus, no one said anything. He swung himself up top. Maggot, Longshot, and Tall Lilah were up here. Tall Lilah nodded curtly. These three were not friendly company at the best of times. But at least Hazz knew he was in good standing.

From inside the Bus, Hazz heard Zeek’s voice. And now Zeek was swinging up to the Bus roof.

“Deserter!” Zeek hollered, breaking the silence. “Get off, you traitor. When the Bus leaves, Dravers go.” Zeek grabbed Hazz by the shoulders, and began to push him off the roof.

An extraordinary thing then happened. Tall Lilah said “Leave off.”

That was the first time Hazz had heard anyone give Zeek an order. Zeek’s jaw gaped. He began pushing Hazz again.

And now Longshot, who had never shown he knew Hazz existed, laid a huge hand on Zeek’s chest. And pushed him. Zeek sprawled on his back on the swaying Bus roof.

Zeek, with a look like a kicked gowrow, clambered back down inside the Bus.

Longshot passed Hazz a skinbag of water. This too had no precedent. Hazz drank gratefully.

Tall Lilah spoke a quick hard word. “Heads down.” At the same time, she rapped on the Bus roof three times, and then two more times.

The Bus halted, and Dravers poured out like bees from a struck nest. They grabbed gutsplitters and spears and halberks and fanned out.

Hazz hadn’t spotted the attackers yet when a projectile whipped past his head.

“Get down,” Tall Lilah hissed.

Flat on his belly on the Bus roof, Hazz could see little of the fight. He heard the Dravers whooping, and he heard voices screeching. And Hazz heard an unfamiliar sound: like someone striking a rock with a hammer, but the sound echoing, reverberating, with a zigzagging whistle.

“Gun,” Tall Lilah muttered, “that is a gun’s sound.”

Hazz’s Inside went cold. He pictured the Dravers, dead in the sand, with perfect round holes through their middles, which was how he imagined a gun wound might look.

But now the voice of Fancy Jack reached his ears, and it was gleeful. The attack was done, the attackers were dead.

Hazz swung down from the roof.

The first thing he noticed: Dogtooth lay prone in a slick of blood.

Stoopid found the gun. It was a simple pipe, with a wooden brace on one end, and a hole drilled. “They touch a coal to powder, and the shot fires,” Stoopid explained. “It will take time to load. It can only be shot once in a fight.”

Krook was there, delivering his verdict. “It is crude. Now that we know this weapon, we will not fear it. It killed Dogtooth because we didn’t know what it was. Like a new kind of snake, once you know its stripes, you know how it strikes.”

“How did they overtake us?” Mother Thunder wanted to know. “How did they come out of the Burnt so quickly?”

Thickness and Ugly Joe came running out of a thicket, waving their arms. “Stoopid, come see this.”

Hazz followed the others. Thickness had found a conveyance unlike anything the Dravers had seen. It lay on its side. It had two wheels, one behind the other, a saddle in the middle, and two handles to steer the front wheel. Below the seat sat a copper cylinder like Stoopid’s hooch-kettle, surrounded by tubes and small wheels.

“This is an ill advent,” Stoopid declared.

Krook demanded answers. “Where is the harness? Where is the Oxman that pulled it? What is this thing, Stuart?”

That was rare, for Krook to use a Draver’s given name.

“It needs no Oxman,” was Stoopid’s reply.

“How does it stay upright?” Krook demanded.

“If it goes fast enough, the rider balances. As for movement, the wheels are driven by this rod, and the rod is driven in its circuit by steam. See the scattered coals? They are still smoking.”

Steam! Now there was disbelief. Slicer said, “I’ve seen water push rocks down a river in flood. I’ve seen fire split rocks. Those have power. But steam? I can put my hand through steam, Stoopid. It has no strength.”

“Give steam no escape, and it has the power of a river, the wrath of fire. Our attackers sprinted across the Big Burnt, clinging to this thing as it leapt the gullies.”

“They were young people,” said Screechem, examining a body. “Rich, to guess from their clothes. From the City. That’s how they got their fancy toys. They were no match for Dravers.”

“They were cleverer than us,” Krook snapped. “We have no gun. We have no steam rider. Stuart, can you make us a wagon like this?”

Stoopid replied that he could not. “The principle is simple. The construction, I could work out.”

“Then what is stopping you?” Krook was not angry, but genuinely concerned.

“To make a machine like this, you need smaller machines. To build those, you need a City, where things stay put. And you need people. A lot of people.” He gestured at the overturned steamrider. “This is not something wandering Dravers can make. This is what Cities can do.”

The steamrider could not be repaired, so Stoopid and Junkman stripped it for parts. The boiler would make a second hooch still.

Hazz’s Inside was singing. He could imagine himself astride this miraculous contrivance, racing across the Burnt. He could get everywhere, be back before anyone knew he was gone. He felt the balance of it, though he’d not yet ridden one.

Hazz compared the spry, fast steamrider to the hulking, lumbering Bus. Were the Dravers becoming slow and old-fashioned? How long before more steamriders came, with more guns?

There were other calamities. Zeek was missing.

Worse, Fumble had spotted the Heir fleeing the battle. Krook said nothing when he heard. He kept his thoughts hidden behind his cold eyes.

In the middle of the next day, the Dravers made camp. The Mothers had always chosen the spot, but this time, Krook chose it. Split Lip was outspoken in her opinion.

“Too exposed. We are on low ground. From there, and there, we could be attacked, and hard-pressed to defend our position. This hollow will gather the night fogs, and with them come fevers. The Oxmen could sicken, and then who will pull the Bus? Hazard?”

Mother Thunder agreed. “Bust Up City is a three-day journey to the West. Not close, but closer than I’d like.”

The decision had been made. The Mothers were merely cavilling. To Hazz’s surprise, Krook kept arguing the point he’d already won.

“You are women. Strong women, but weaker than a Draver, and do not forget that. You are growing old, and like old women, you are scared of shadows. We are dropping stakes here. We will raid Company One tomorrow. We will have more loot, and better prizes, than ever before. And the Dravers will thank Krook, who is Honcho. Not a gaggle of grandmothers.”

As the noon meal was being put together, Hazz overheard Stoopid say to Junkman:

“When a house creaks in its joists, it won’t stand long.”

Gathered by a thin travelers’ fire, Krook announced to all, “We will raid West, to where the river gathers during rain. When the sun is high, and the settlers are at rest, we will fall on them like shriekers from the sky.”

Mother Thunder vetoed this immediately. “You are talking about Company One, Honcho. That is a City outpost.”

Split Lip said, “You’ll bring the Enforcement after us.”

There was silence among the Dravers. All eyes turned to Krook.

“I am Honcho,” Krook said. “I made the Dravers. Through me, we have endured. We will attack Company One. We will take their grain, their fruits, their tools and weapons. Stoopid, if they have machines such as we saw today, we will take those too, and any smaller machines needed for building them.”

Again Krook was compelled to remind the Dravers that he was Honcho. Were they starting to forget?

There was a rustling in the bushes outside the firelight. Hands flew to blades. “Hold,” Krook said.

Into the firelight Zeek stumbled. His tunic was torn, his hair was matted with leaves. Most shocking, his eyes were swollen and red. Had Zeek been weeping?

Dravers and Mothers melted into the dark of the camp.

Hazz made himself scarce, too. He decided to avoid his bunk in the Bus tonight, and took his bedroll to one of the outlying wagons, taking his chances with widows, sidewinders, and scorpions.

No matter where anyone was sleeping in the camp, they could not avoid the voice of Krook, dressing down his eldest son. “Coward. Spear-dropper. Disgrace.”

If Hazz had been the thinking man that Father Toad had spoken of, he would have fled the camp and taken his chances in unfamiliar territory by night.

Instead, he was drifting into sleep when his wagon overturned. Hazz rolled onto sharp rocks. Zeek stood over him, kicking and stomping. Hazz staggered into the bushes, where moonlight fell on strange-colored catalpa.

Hazz’s front was soaked in blood. When he breathed, his chest felt like it was on fire.

He could have killed me, Hazz thought. Next time, maybe he will.

And another thought came to Hazz. I’ll have to fight Zeek. Only one of us will leave that fight. It’s easy to predict how that fight will go.

There, under the moon in a strange land, Hazz made up his mind.

I am not Hard. My Inside won’t let me be Hard.

I have seen what Dravers are, and I am no Draver.

And Hazz said to himself, I’ll leave.

Chapter 5 — Magnificat in the Witchgrass

In a clearing under a morning sky, Karona was trying to teach Matins, but Hazz’s mind was elsewhere.

“It must be spoken before the sun comes over the world’s edge,” Karona said. “You face East. Hand like this … like this.” She folded Hazz’s hands into the gesture of supplication.

“Now, say as I say it.

I am grateful that I see the sun again.

For the times of my seeing are numbered.

Each time I see the sun, I know I am a spark.

On my way upwards into darkness, even as comes the night.

And my flesh longs to sink and rise forever as the sun.”

Hazz was thinking of Karona. The prayer slipped away.

“You’re hopeless,” Karona said. “Go be a Draver, why don’t you? Go kill for fun.”

“Hopeless at that, too,” Hazz confessed.

“You’ve got no place in the Burnt, do you? Not one thing, not another.”

Karona didn’t say it, but Hazz wondered if she saw him ending up like the Staggering Man. A waste-wanderer, without tribe, without purpose.

The clank of a mallet on metal rolled through the chill. Karona and Hazz returned to the wagon. The Twins had cooked piñon gruel and wild onions in the dented kettle.

The meal was to be taken in silence, and Hazz was glad to be silent. He had left the Dravers’ camp without a word, bleeding onto the dirt. None of his clan knew where he’d gone. Of his silent declaration to leave them for good, they had no inkling.

Hazz had come two nights ago, still wounded, remembering Father Toad’s offer to teach him to think and study the Stern Black Book. But Father Toad had not repeated the promise. Did he remember it? Had he changed his mind?

For two more days, Father Toad said nothing. By day, Hazz learned Matins, Nones, and Vespers by heart; by night, he lay awake beside Karona in the cold tent and tried not to think of wanting her.

On the third day, Hazz finally gathered the courage to ask Father Toad about teaching him from the Book.

To his surprise, Father Toad replied:

“You cannot learn anything from the Book. Your head is too hard, you are too green and raw to learn.”

“I’ve learned the Prayers by heart!”

“That is memorizing, not learning. It is my judgement that you are not teachable. You are free to stay, and listen to the readings, but I cannot shepherd you to the pastures of wisdom.”

Choking back tears, Hazz told Karona he’d be leaving. “Don’t know where I’ll go. Can’t be a Draver, can’t follow the Book. Guess I’ll lie down in the Burnt and let the Shriekers have at me.”

Karona was furious, but not with him.

“I suppose you are obtuse, if you can’t see that. Father Toad’s taking his own disappointments out on you. Any fool can learn from the Book.”

“Thanks?”

“Go away for a little while. Get some of that amaranth I showed you from the lakebed. I’ll talk to Simon.”

It took a moment for Hazz to realize she had referred to Father Toad by his given name.

When Hazz returned with fistfuls of mullein (he hadn’t paid attention to Karona’s herbing lessons either), Father Toad summoned him.

“You are a creature of the Burnt. The Burnt must teach you the wisdom of the Big Man. Better that, than listening to an old man read aloud.

“Take water for one day. Go on a journey that lasts for three. Head North, towards Dog Head Mesa. During this time, do not eat. Be silent as well; do not speak. Listen to the wind, to the silence, to your own mind.

“At the noon hour on the third day, when the Hellblaze is at its peak, follow whatever instructions the Big Man chooses to send your way. Once those are complete, return.”

Frantic, Hazz sought out Karona. He found her hanging herbs from a line.

“He’s exiling me,” Hazz sobbed, but she shook her head.

“I’ve followed the Book for two years, and Father Toad has never deemed me ready for the Big Walk. Take it as the honor it is.”

“How am I going to get ‘instructions’ out in the Burnt? Who does he expect me to meet?” But Karona only said Hazz would know when he got there.

By the end of his second day in the wilderness, Hazz was starving. He had rationed his waterskin, but it had been empty since mid-afternoon, and his throat was dry enough to ache. How was he going to survive another day?

If it came down to a choice between enlightenment and dying of thirst, Hazz would forego a chance to meet the Big Man for a chew of thornbarrel pulp to moisten his agonized throat.

That night was the worst Hazz could remember in his short life. A freezing wind blew down from Dog Head Mesa. Exposed, starved, painfully thirsty, and shivering, Hazz writhed under the glittering stars.

He fell asleep at sunrise, and when he shivered himself awake, a fever had gripped him, an onrushing sickness that desperately called for water.

It was enough. He would return to Father Toad, drink lifegiving water, choke down some not-very-nourishing millet, and come to terms with his failure. All he’d found out here was misery and isolation.

Hazz was turning back when he saw a thin figure move in the distance.

Who was out here? And why?

Driven by forces he didn’t yet understand, Hazz dragged himself in the direction of the moving shadow.

As he drew closer, Hazz recognized the wreckage of a settlement. The gates had been torn down. A storehouse had burned. The soil was fertile, but brickle and witchgrass had long since replaced the crops. Whatever had happened here had happened long ago.

The figure faced Hazz. It was dressed in a tattered shepherd’s coat.

“Stagger!” Hazz said, through dry lips. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

The Staggering Man registered the presence of Hazz, but looked past him, as though addressing someone else.

“Time to bring the crop in,” he mumbled. “Rye rots when rain comes.”

“The hell you talking about, Stagger?”

“Don’t ire me, child,” came the reply. “Tend to the goats. Chores don’t wait.”

“You’ve really lost your mind. What are you doing in this ruination? Who are you talking to? You got any water, maybe?”

Instead of water, the Staggering Man held out a palm speckled red with the seeds of Grief.

Grief was the last thing Hazz wanted right now. He needed water, and food and rest.

Stagger said, to Hazz, but not to Hazz: “Do as I tell you, child.”

Were these the instructions Father Toad had meant? Sit with Stagger and watch the sands bleed?

Stagger had something on his mothworn mind. He was gathering armfuls of fibrous grass, carrying it about in a fevered performance, for an audience in his own head.

Hazz made his decision. Instructions were instructions. He took the handful of seeds, more Grief than he’d ever chewed in his life.

Waiting for Grief to bite, Hazz again asked the Staggering Man what he was up to.

The Staggering Man was pulling grass up to clear a bare spot. Hazz took a closer look.

In the grey dirt, he could just make out two rectangles, a shade darker than the surrounding soil. At the end of each one, a sun-splintered slab of wood was stuck in the ground.

“Are these graves? They’re graves! Stagger, who’ve you got buried under here?”

For an answer, the Staggering Man fell to his knees at the foot of the smaller grave.

“Rouse, rouse!” he cried. “Chores don’t wait! Rye rots when rains come! Up you lazy!”

“What?” Hazz started to say, but it was then the Grief kicked him like the foot of a horse between his eyes.

The grasses lay flat like a Santana wind was whipping, but the air was still.

Out of the soil came snakes and lizards and gowrows, bubbling from rocks came blood. That was all the usual Grief stuff. But Hazz’s eyes turned skyward, where the wind was gathering itself up into human form, stacked high like a black thunderhead.

Under Grief, the Hellblaze no longer hid the sky. Hazz saw up and up into a shocking emptiness, a Nothing higher than the moon and reaching past all thought. Down here were people and birds and cheekies. Up there was nothing. The vastness drove him to his knees.

Through this implacable Nothingness, something stirred. We are all there is, came an unspoken sentence. It was somehow spoken by every beetle and every shrieker and every human that was anywhere. We are all there is. We are nothing, but also all and everything.

In his Grief-sodden mind, Hazz knew it was a verse from the Stern Black Book.

We are rain that the soil drinks dry

We are sparks that the night snuffs out

We are lost souls in a dry land

Hazz saw how pitifully small the world was. Smaller than the moon, hardly as big as a rock drifting between stars.

We are the katydid, that dies in a day.

The air turned upside down. The Grief now showed Hazz two women. The first he recognized as Mother Thunder. She was younger than Hazz had ever known her. The scar on her right temple hadn’t yet been plowed into her flesh.

The second woman was thin, with long braids and a trusting, wide-eyed face. Her teeth overflowed her mouth. Hazz realized he was seeing his own mother, Bucktooth Laura.

Laura carried a bundle. Hazz knew the bundle was himself.

Laura sat down on the desert soil. Her leg bled from two puncture marks. A blackmouth had gotten her.

“Give me the babe,” Mother Thunder was saying. “I will return to the Bus and fetch alum and ox-sorrel to draw out the poison.”

Bucktooth Laura’s eyes grew big. “You are the Heir’s mother,” she gasped. “This babe could fight your son someday. He could take your Heir’s place.”

“Your time grows short,” was Thunder’s reply.

“I can only do this once in a lifetime,” Laura said. “I invoke the Oath of Jorix. That whoever I name can’t come to harm.”

Thunder was silent.

Laura said, “You’re going to say there’s no need for the Oath.”

Thunder said, “You may invoke protection only for one. This babe, who could threaten my babe. Or yourself, who could live to champion him for the Heir’s place.”

Laura retched on the sand. “For the pity of Jorix, Thunder.”

“You had best choose whom to save,” came the cold reply.

Laura was fast losing the ability to speak. “Hazard,” she said at last. “By the Oath of Jorix you are bound.”

“I am bound,” said Mother Thunder. “The child shall not be harmed by me, nor shall I let the child come to sorrow.” She picked up the bundle that was Hazz in her huge arms.

“Hurry back with the medicines.”

“Goodbye, Laura.”

The world swirled up around Hazz and threw the full storm of its sorrows against his heart. He sobbed into the grass, and the last water that was in him fell on the ground.

At the point where Hazz thought he might be ready to die, a peculiar calmness overtook him instead. Drawing strength from somewhere, Hazz sat up in the rough grass.

Something was welling up through him. The solid floor of the Burnt was the Burnt he’d always known. The sky was his sky, the one he’d been born under. Like every tick and moth and coyo, Hazz was part of the ancient pulse of birth and song and dying.

He raised his face to the lightening sky, and from his mouth came words that sounded like the Stern Book, that he might have learnt without listening.

And Jorix asked of the Big Man:

Big Man grant me wisdom, that I may see the road ahead.

Big Man, smite my foes, that the road ahead may be clear for me

Big Man, guide my hand, that I may work deeds according to Right

Big Man, judge my heart, that I may know all was done according to your will

And the Big Man replied to Jorix:

The wisdom of the Big Man is only that wisdom you impart to Him.

The guidance of the Big Man is where you guide yourself.

The judgement of the Big Man comes from your judgement.

Once Men made gods, and dreamed their deeds were the gods’ doing.

Dreamed gods made the world and the wickedness in the human heart.

Now the dream is over, let that awaken you.

The only world is the world Man makes, and let that terrify you.

The worst was over. Hazz opened his cracked eyes and found the Hellblaze at its height.

Wracked by thirst, weak from hunger, Hazz could hardly stir himself.

He had to get back to Father Toad. He had to find water and shelter. Or die.

And he was two days from either of those things.

A shadow stood over Hazz. It was the Staggering Man. He held out a shallow bowl.

Water! Hardly any water at all, a cup or two’s worth at most. Hazz sucked it down greedily.

The Staggering Man gestured to a stone-lined pit. “Cistern. Fills up a little at a time. Wait, and there will be more.”

Hazz let the Staggering Man water him back to life. He stood to leave. It was easy to say goodbye to the Staggering Man, whose attention flitted like the jumps of a bug.

On the way out of the ruined farm, Hazz saw something curved and metal in the dirt. He worked it side to side until the roots gave it up. He brushed the caked dirt away.

It was the blade of a gutsplitter. Scratched deep into the steel, so that even the rust could not erase it, was a letter K.

Whatever had happened here long ago—to the barn, the crops, and the two small graves—the Dravers had done it.

Hazz made his way back to Father Toad.

It was Hazz’s fifth morning since he had returned from his Big Walk. Father Toad was reading from the Book.

Peacefully did Jorix build up a house, and he inlaid the walls with white stone.

Peacefully did Jorix say to the Big Man I have endured the lash and the storm and come through to the end.

In the twilight of my days, I have earned my respite and my long look back, for my future is behind me even now.

And the Big Man said Does the storm know the sailor’s age? Does the snake’s tooth spare he who has endured?

For Jorix, though he had come to safety, though he was at rest, though his tale was told, yet trouble came.

“Hazard.”

The voice came from behind Hazz. He stood and turned around. It was Mother Kinah.

No Draver had come to Father Toad’s wagon before this.

Kinah nodded awkwardly past Hazz’s shoulder to Father Toad. To Hazz, she said, “There is something going down by the Bus.”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Hazz said, and he sensed Karona’s shock even though she was behind him.

Kinah stepped forward and slapped him, hard. Hazz’s ears rang.

“Who you are is as important as what you do,” she said. “Never forget that.” She turned and started back towards the Draver camp.

Hazz looked back once. Karona’s face was unreadable. Father Toad stared at his Book. Hazz ran after Mother Kinah into the Burnt.

Chapter 6 — Throw The Foul Bones Down

As Hazz and Kinah approached the Bus, Hazz saw Dravers gathered around and heard voices raised.

When Hazz saw what was happening, his Inside wanted to crawl out of him.

The Dravers had captured the scrap trader Spittle. Zeek stood in front of the prisoner, a gutsplitter clenched in both fists.

Why would Zeek want to do this, and why would they do this for Zeek? The answer came fast: this was Zeek’s punishment for cowardice.

Krook announced, probably for a second or third time:

“Zeek, my son, my Heir, will prove he is Hard. He will prove he’s no coward. He will kill the woman’s heart inside him by killing this man.”

Slicer and Bugfuck and several others cheered and whooped, but Cleaves scraped his feet in the dirt, and Shish Kebab looked ill.

Spittle stood straight with defiant eyes. He was unarmed. The only contest would be within the heart of Zeek. The Heir of Krook raised the gutsplitter.

Was Zeek weeping? Was he afraid?

Did Zeek have an Inside?

The Mothers were nowhere in sight.

Zeek raised the splitter again but stayed his hand.

“Show us,” Krook said in a flat tone. “Are you a coward? Are you Soft, like your brother?”

Zeek did not move. Krook asked him, “Shall we make your brother the Heir?”

With a cry, Zeek whirled around. He slashed at his father. The blade’s tip caught Krook above the ear and painted his neck with blood.

“Is this what it appears?” Krook asked, in his terrible, flat voice.

Zeek answered, his voice choking. “I will be Honcho, or you will.”

Krook raised a hand. Slicer ran up with a gutsplitter. Krook grasped it without unlocking his gaze from his son.

Spittle fled. Son and father circled each other in the brutal sunlight.

Mother Thunder ran up, flanked by Shorty Jane, Tall Lilah, and Split Lip.

“Stop this at once,” Mother Thunder bellowed. Neither consort nor son would heed her.

Like an awful vision brought by Grief, Krook and Zeek jabbed warily, each looking for a weakness in the other.

Zeek saw his opening and lunged. The blade caught Krook in the ribs. Blood cascaded down his side and the father stumbled. Zeek advanced, but Krook raised his blade, and the son stepped back.

There was no ending to this that Hazz wanted to see. He retreated to the Bus, threw himself on his bunk, and pulled his blankets over his head. In the distance, he could hear yelling and the screams of the Mothers.

Hazz did not know how much time passed. When Stoopid came inside the Bus and shook him gently, the orange glow of late afternoon was streaming in.

“Your brother is dead.”

Hazz stepped down from the Bus lightheaded. The Dravers and the Mothers stood at the camp’s edge.

“The body is lying there,” Junkman reported. “The shriekers are circling it.”

Stoopid said “It had to happen.”

“The blades have spoken, and that’s that. But the Honcho will not let us have a funeral. He says to throw the boy’s foul bones in a pit, and let the beasts eat them.”

This was a wrong beyond wrongs. For the body to be eaten while they watched...

“His kraith will not go with the Big Man,” Junkman said. “The Big Man will only take a dead man’s hand when the dirt is laid, when the songs are sung, when we sing down the kraith into the dark of no returning.”

For three days, the Dravers were mostly silent, feeling the weight of the cursed act. The body lay on the dirt a short distance from the camp.

No one knew why, but the shriekers had not touched it. Shorty Jane said the birds feared the curse. But they’d soon lose their fear.

Krook retired to his Lair in the back of the Bus. No Mother would join him for company.

On the third day, Mother Thunder said, “Someone will have to speak to the Honcho. Someone not Mother, nor Draver.”

There was only one person in the camp who fit that description.

Hazz approached Krook’s Lair, as the broken fingers of the sun poked through the Bus windows. He knocked on the pillar by the red curtain.

“Go,” came Krook’s voice.

“Father,” Hazz said. Was this the first time he had addressed Krook directly?

Krook pushed aside the curtain slowly. His eyes were letting no thoughts through.

“You,” he said.

“Father. Please, can you bury Zeek? Can you sing him into the dark?”

Krook said “You had no love for your brother. And he had less for you.”

Hazz thought about what to say, and Krook allowed him time to think.

“Father, I didn’t love Zeek. But his kraith can’t be left to wander.”

“So my Soft son believes in ghosts and gods. Here’s what I believe.”

“To be Soft, like you, is a privilege. You frolic around the Burnt, you sing like a mindless cricket, while the Hard one gives orders and bears the hate.

“Someone must be Hard, boy. Someone must fight weakness, or we’ll lie butchered on the sand like rabbits cornered by coyotes. So if you fear me, if you hate me, good. Fear and hate keep us alive.”

The words tumbled out before Hazz could cull them. “Zeek is dead, Father.”

“So he is.” Krook was silent a moment. “Zeek tried to be Hard, but lacked the wits to lead. Still, he didn’t desert us to play with priests and Grief-eaters. That’s more than I can say for you.”

Krook went on. “If I could combine Zeek’s Hardness with your wits, I’d have an Heir worthy of the name. Instead, the gifts were split, fatally, between two sons.”

Hazz said, “The Dravers need you to bury Zeek. Even if you don’t believe, they do.”

Krook raised a hand to strike, then stayed it. “You didn’t want to come in here. You came anyhow. That’s new. Now go.”

A short time later, Krook emerged from the Bus and told the Dravers he had changed his mind. And that was a new thing for Krook, too.

The funeral for Zeek lasted well into the night, until the edge of the sky glowed white and the Whiptail was setting below the world’s edge. Hazz played the oud with no fear of his father’s ire, while the Dravers sang.

You can die in a bed, so the city men say

You can die in a chair like a learned sage

You can die an old man with your hair gone grey

But to die young and wild, that’s the Draver way!

Give me a death under wild bright skies

Cut down my bones with my blade raised high

Carve out my heart where the shriekers fly

Show the mad world how a Draver dies!

Over the Burnt where the shriekers fly

Show the mad world how a Draver dies!

Now the Mothers had a funeral song, and this is what Shorty Jane sang to the plaintive ticking of Hazz’s oud:

There was a bird

Free in the sky

When the twilight was falling

When nightjars were calling

To you and to I

For the sad bosoms heaving

For the mourners all grieving

For the kraith that is leaving

With the Big Man on high

Oh Jorix show mercy

When it’s our turn to die

Deadeyed with sleepiness, Hazz stumbled back to his bunk. Mother Thunder was there, her face twisted.

“I am sorry about Zeek,” Hazz said, unsure of what he should say.

“Don’t be,” came the cold reply.

Hazz said “But he was my brother. Your son.”

“If he’d defeated your father,” Mother Thunder said, “his first act as Honcho would have been to kill you. Be glad he died first.”

There was no sleep for Hazz that slender remnant of the night, and he went into the next day having had no rest at all.

Chapter 7 — The Heir

The morning after Zeek’s funeral, after gruel and meat had been shared, Hazz’s first thought was to find Father Toad and Karona and tell them what had happened.

Hazz slung his oud on his shoulder and took a waterskin. Mother Thunder laid a hand on Hazz’s arm.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Until now, no one had cared where Hazz went.

“Into the Burnt,” Hazz told her, but Mother Thunder did not move her hand.

“Are you as thick-headed as the dead Heir was?” she asked.

“Krook’s son is dead,” Hazz answered without thinking.

“Krook’s son lives, and stands before me speaking foolishness,” Mother Thunder said. “The Heir of Krook does not go gamboling into the Burnt. The Heir does not cavort with priests and madmen.”

With everything that had happened, it hadn’t occurred to Hazz that he was Heir now.

“Zeek wanted to be Heir. I never did.”

“It’s not about wanting or not wanting. It’s about what you must do because of what you are.”

These were new ideas to Hazz, who had always come and gone freely. Being the backup Heir had seemed a misfortune; now he wondered if, until today, he’d been luckier than Zeek.

“Your father is waiting for you,” Mother Thunder said, and that was how it began.

Hazz’s first dreadful thought was that his father would give him Zeek’s test. But when he met Krook by a wide clearing, there was no prisoner—only the Dravers at a distance, Krook waiting, and a gutsplitter on the ground.

Was Hazz meant to fight his father? But Krook only told him to pick up the weapon and hold it high.

“Now run! Around the circle’s edge.” The thing was heavier than Hazz had expected. His skinny arms struggled to heft the huge blade. He stumbled around the circle, nearly dropping it twice.

“I didn’t say stop,” came Krook’s voice. So Hazz ran the circle again. And a third time.

Hazz lost count of his circuits. If the blade drooped, Krook barked, and Hazz hoisted it high again. His arms sang with pain; his legs felt like saplings bent under a boot.

“In battle, will you drop your blade?” Krook demanded. “Will foes let you rest when your legs tire? On! On with you!”

After an eternity, Krook let his son rest the blade on the dirt. “You would lead the Dravers? You can’t carry a man’s gear.”

Hazz was grateful to be finished, but the ordeal was only getting started. Thickness strode up with the Fist in hand, a massive, gnarled club. Krook pointed to a stout sag tree.

“There is your foe. Until it falls, your Fist does not touch the ground, nor do you rest. Understood?”

Hazz lifted the Fist with both hands and swung gamely at the towering sag. The cactus hardly registered the blow. Its rubbery bulk sent the Fist rebounding.

“This fight is to the death,” Krook said, and the Dravers laughed.

From then until the sun rose high, Hazz belayed the sag left and right, praying for reprieve. At one point, close to fainting from thirst and hunger, he let the Fist touch the ground.

Hazz saw shooting stars. Krook had boxed his ear. Tears slicking his face, Hazz resumed the absurd fight. Not until the sun had passed its height did he notice a split in the trunk. He attacked the weak point. The split widened. Just as hope left him, the ancient cactus cracked like a gun. The split ran to the top, and the tree toppled three-quarters of the way over.

“Victory!” Thickness cried, and the Dravers applauded.

How Hazz longed for food, drink, and a place to rest. Krook brought him a waterskin, and snatched it away after only a little had reached Hazz’s cracked throat.

The enormous fighter Rumbleguts stood opposite Hazz. He brandished a long stick, whose end had been dipped in red paint.

Shish Kebab gave Hazz an identical stick. It was not heavy, but Hazz saw, with his Inside sinking, that he was meant to play-fight this man-mountain.

It went poorly. By the end, Hazz was covered in red paint. To his minor satisfaction, he had drawn “blood” from Rumbleguts—a smear on the brute’s shoulder.

More water came, though not enough. By then darkness was falling and the fire was lit. Hazz was allowed food, though he could barely eat.

“Drink this,” Bugfuck said, handing Hazz a bottle. Hazz took a swallow, and the world kicked him in the brains.

“A man must handle hooch,” Krook’s voice said. “Drink again.”

Hazz managed one more caustic gulp before his dinner came up.

“Go wash yourself, boy,” Krook said. “Then get yourself to your bunk. You’ve started a long journey today.”

Finally, sleep. “The real test is yet to come,” he heard Bugfuck chuckle as Hazz stumbled towards the Bus.

Hazz washed his soiled legs, climbed aboard, and fell into the deadest of slumbers.

He woke when someone lifted his blanket.

It was Mother Split Lip. Had she got the wrong bunk? But Hazz realized with horror that Split was naked.

With a yell, Hazz rolled off the bunk. He ran to one of the wagons, and though the night was freezing, tried to sleep on a pile of sacks.

He thought of Karona and wished, more than anything, to be back in her tent. To feel her warmth. If he could return to the funny little shack on the wagon—find puzzling Karona, kindly Father Toad, the inscrutable Twins—he would never leave. He would study the Stern Black Book with them and devote his life to understanding the Mercy of the Big Man.

A destiny Hazz had never wanted was closing on him like a gowrow’s jaw.

As he shivered in the night wind, a bundle landed on him. His clothing. Next came his boots—one, two.

Hazz dressed, pulled on his boots, and climbed out to find Krook waiting.

Krook said “Come.”

Hazz was weary and bewildered, but curiosity pricked him. He followed his father into the moon-bright Burnt.

To venture out without water, even in the cool moist night, was madness. Worse, they carried no weapons, not even a snakesticker, which Hazz always kept in his boot and which he used often.

Krook and his Heir left the Bus far behind, trekking back into the high country.

“I will tell you,” Krook said suddenly, “about being Free.”

“Are you going to say that Dravers are free?” Hazz asked, but Krook held up a hand.

“I’ll start by talking about who is not free. First, people on these farms and settlements.

“Farmers and herders say they live freely. Their true master is toil: endless labor, the cycles of the earth, the pitiless march of seasons. Plant corn now, harvest now. And their masters punish randomly and without mercy. Drought, flood, a poor crop—death sentences.

“What of a city? No better. The city dweller’s master is an endless web of laws, a thicket of expectations, the terror of being looked down upon.”

“Have you known people from cities?” Hazz asked, and Krook said, “I was born in one.”

This was news to Hazz. Krook explained:

“I was born in Three Towers, a hundred days’ walk from Bust Up City. The streets and buildings are smooth whitewashed brick. I was born wealthy, the son of a councilwoman.”

Hazz was stunned. The hardest terror of the Burnt had been a pampered city child—like the attackers on the steamriders.

“I wore silk buskins—yes, boy! I attended a school! They thought I would be a barrister or a magistrate.”

“How did you become Honcho of the Dravers?” Hazz wanted to know, but Krook said the tale was long, the road full of turns. “We are not speaking of that now.

“The Dravers are free. They live under open sky, take what they want, go where they please. Timid farmers fear them, but in their hearts, they want to join them. Yet even among Dravers, some are not free.”

“Junkman and Stoopid?” Hazz asked, but Krook said no.

“You, boy. And me. To be Honcho is to carry a load heavier than what the Oxmen pull...”

Hazz knew he should listen more closely, but he could not get past what his father had told him.

Hazz had thought the growing cities, expanding settlements, guns, and steamriders were new developments, and the Dravers an ancient way of life—cruel, primeval, but given integrity by time. In his mind, that partly excused their cruelty. Now he knew the Dravers were the invention of a rich city-dweller, and the questions burned in him hot as the Hellblaze.

What were they all doing out here?

“And that is why,” Krook was saying, “you’ll quit seeing those vagabonds in the Burnt—the priest, the girl, the one gone in his brains.”

“They are my friends,” Hazz said, but Krook said a Honcho could not have friends. “It’s one of the great sorrows,” he said. Hazz had never imagined his father wanting companionship. “Your friends depend on the Dravers for trade. If we fail, they die. You help them more by fulfilling your duty.”

Krook and his Heir returned to the Bus, and Hazz slept like a dead thing for several hours. When he woke at the height of the Hellblaze, there were more drills, endurance tests, and lessons in Draver weapons: gutsplitters of various sizes for charging the enemy; flangs, froes, helves, halberks, chains, the two-tail-cat, the leacher, the mace, and the Spinning Sally. All had one purpose: to violate the only flesh a person would ever have, to leave it torn and bleeding onto the dry dirt.

So it went for nineteen days. By the end, Hazz could swing a mid-sized blade, charge with a helve, and cut a sag in half. His arms began to show muscle. The Dravers treated him differently now—not as an amusing hanger-on, but as one of their own.

As for Zeek, no one mentioned him.

When the constellation of the Widow was high, the Dravers prepared a blowout punker. They gathered wood for their tallest fire yet and set aside more hooch than Hazz had ever seen. A ranch raid brought three large beeves, which the Mothers butchered, feeding the squealing Oxmen on the guts.

Around the fire, holding a belly of hooch down for the first time, Hazz said to Slicer, “Don’t the Dravers regret losing Zeek?”

Slicer replied, “We’re lucky he’s dead.”

“Your brother,” Bugfuck said. “A pighead, stupid as an Oxman, mean as a gowrow. No Draver wanted him as Honcho. He was your father’s despair.”

And then Fumble said, “We had always hoped the Heir would be you.”

More hooch went down, and the Widow overhead fuzzed into extra stars. Hazz passed out briefly.

In a hooch-dream, he walked toward the camp, but the Dravers kept him away, telling him to stay back.

In the dream, Hazz’s stomach rippled and split open, as though he’d been stuck with a helve.

Out of his split belly burst a tiny, laughing Hazz. It snatched the oud and fled, cavorting across the Burnt.

With this part of him gone, the dream-Dravers welcomed Hazz, clapping him on the shoulders.

Someone really was shaking his shoulder. There was a commotion behind the Bus. Hazz shook the cobwebs from his brain and ran over to see.

Father Toad was there at night, a time when no outlier ever approached the camp, and the Dravers were drunk and dangerous. Hazz had never seen the priest so frantic.

Hazz pieced together what Father Toad was saying.

Karona. Karona was missing. Father Toad had not seen her in three days.

As this flew through Hazz’s brain, Lights Out and Shish Kebab, stone-gone on hooch, began laughing. Shish Kebab kicked Father Toad in the guts.

“Help me,” Father Toad croaked. His eyes fell on Hazz. “Help.”

Hazz turned away and went back to the fire. His friends were here.

Later, as the flames died and the Dravers faded into the shadows, Tall Lilah touched Hazz’s shoulders.

“Come.”

Hazz followed her to a tent. Inside, extra blankets were laid.

Tall Lilah leaned over him. Her eyes were huge and close to his. Hazz had always imagined this moment would be about parts of bodies. Now he knew it was about the closeness of eyes.

Outside the tent, the stars set, the earth turned, and Time did its terrible dance towards endings.

When Hazz emerged at dawn, changed in ways he couldn’t have explained, he went to where the fire had been.

His oud lay in pieces just beyond the circle. Someone had stepped on it drunk, and likely mistaken it for a snake.

Hazz tried to summon up a feeling about it, but felt nothing. Today was the day of his first Draving, and he must be ready.

Chapter 8 — The Draving Of Company One

“Hold it so. As you were trained.”

Hazz gripped the splitter, one hand on the haft, the other lower on the handle. It was a smaller version of the one he had paraded around the circle. That had been only a short time ago, but it felt much longer.

“Don’t be in the vanguard,” Slicer told him. “Hang back, and keep a strong man on your right side as you slash your blade to the left. Watch your midsection. A wound there is a wound you don’t come back from.”

For his Draver debut, Hazz had been given a tight leather tunic, leggings of leather, and small chains. A fresh tattoo burned on his skinny shoulder: a scorpion stinging a coyote, the dog’s snout open in rage and surprise.

He was paired up with Thickness, who towered over him. “Stay by me, small one,” Thickness said. “I’ll watch for the Honcho’s cues; you follow mine.”

Hazz had seen the Dravers disappear over the horizon on raids many times. He had never seen the camp disappear behind him, wondering if he would see it again.

He thought about what Slicer had told him: most often, farmers stood aside, and no blood needed spilling.

They walked for most of the morning. The Oxmen pulling the empty wagons grew fussy. Hazz’s stomach growled, even as it flopped over with anticipation.

In the distance loomed a high stockade of logs.

“This is it. Be keen as a shrieker, cruel as a serpent,” Thickness said.

The settlement sat behind a high, sharp wall on the edge of a steep ravine. The Dravers had to attack from the front. To their right, a sloping plain of sliding rocks made retreat ruinous; to their left, the canyon edge was its own danger. The land, Thickness asserted, was not on their side.

As the party advanced and the gates rose higher, Thickness narrowed an eye. “The formation is too spread out,” he whispered. “The approach is too long, too exposed. There is no order.”

Fancy Jack came closer. “Our Honcho has grown lax. He expects every Draving to be easy, every settlement to open its gates and hand over their goods.”

The Dravers raised their yell, hoisted their blades, and broke into a run. The gates opened.

“Sortie!” Thickness said, picking up his pace. “Now we’ll have a fight.”

Out of the swinging gates came not frightened farmers with pitchforks, but a solid block of men in matching helmets. More came behind them, and still more.

“Those aren’t farmers,” Thickness said, “That is an army!”

The sound of guns struck the air.

For Hazz, the battle was short, bewildering, and painful. He and Thickness ran to reinforce the straggling front line. As though in a Grief-borne dream, he saw Slicer spreadeagled on his back, lifeless eyes staring. He saw Roy Cleaves and Shish Kebab fall after a brief clash with two hulking soldiers.

Then a trio of uniforms was on top of Thickness and Hazz. Thickness swung with his halberk and wounded one of them in the side. The other brought a two-handed cleaver down and split Thickness’s shoulder from his neck.

Hazz raised his weapon. As he did so, the second soldier took a step backwards. In the misstep, his arm struck Hazz. Hazz’s foot slipped on the canyon edge.

The blade slashed at empty air. Hazz fell sideways over the cliff. Ground and rocks and roots rushed by his head in a blur.

There was a sickening thud, the smack of snapping bone, and Hazz’s mind went sideways.

Stillness. The fall was over, the battle gone. Hazz knew only the sun swimming in his eyes and dull, relentless pain below his waist. His head throbbed.

A prick of adrenaline snapped Hazz awake. A throaty clicking smote the afternoon air, along with a smell like the inside of something dead.

Hazz raised his head, forced his eyes to focus.

A creature crouched about twenty feet away. A tongue the color of dried blood flicked over rows of jagged teeth. A gowrow.

Some said gowrows were newcomers to the Burnt: toothed horrors from the wet South that had mingled with the poisonous lizards of the wastes. Others said the people who had made the Bus and the timeblown relics had brought exotic monsters from across the world, displayed them in cages, and when the cages rusted, loosed them to hunt.

Gowrows were lethal, but they weren’t fast or clever. Like the shriekers, they preferred their prey already near-dead.

Exactly Hazz’s situation: wounded, hobbled, weary with Hellblaze and thirst. The gowrow took two splay-legged steps nearer.

Hazz tried to stand, and the pain from his leg burst like fire. The best he could manage was a two-arm, one-leg scramble away.

The gowrow’s tiny brain recognized this desperate half-locomotion. It gave a lusty rattle and advanced on Hazz.

Hazz gathered up stones and dirt and hurled them at the thing’s face. Surprised, it shook its wide, flat head and stepped back, giving Hazz a chance to scramble a few feet further.

But the hunter would not delay long. Hazz moved as quickly as he could, but the gowrow closed in patiently. It didn’t need to hurry. Its prey would tire soon enough.

Hazz cast about for a weapon. A gutsplitter, discarded after the battle? Nothing.

He recalled something Karona had said to him once. “Fighting isn’t the only art of survival.”

Another scramble took Hazz into a patch of low shrubs. Trefoil leaves shone with an evil oil. He remembered Karona telling him the name. Skullbane.

You could find animal skulls in the Burnt with the dried leaves still in their jaws.

Hazz pictured trying to shove leaves down the gowrow’s throat. He’d lose an arm that way.

On the ground lay a small sharp rock. Hazz grabbed as big a handful of skullbane leaves as he could manage.

The gowrow, perhaps thinking it was time to feed, waddled closer.

Hazz grasped the rock in his right hand and slashed his left arm as deep as he could bear.

Blood welled up. Hazz held his arm over the leaf pile and wrung blood into it. Careful not to touch his wound with the leaves, he squeezed them into a ball and hurled the mess at the predator.

The gowrow smelled the blood. It gurgled and fell on the gory mess.

A few chews, and the lizard realized its meal was no good to eat. But the toxins had taken hold.

The gowrow advanced unsteadily. Its eyes glassed over. It rolled on its side, kicking its legs feebly.

For all Hazz knew, he had only slowed it. He dragged himself as far as he could before the pain in his leg stopped him.

A shadow blocked the sun from Hazz’s face. Hazz squirmed.

“You’re not dead,” a voice said. Hazz saw two green eyes close to his.

Karona.

She bound his leg, she trickled water down his throat. Hazz tried to summon words.

“I wanted it to be you,” he said, “not Tall Lilah.”

“Good thing she’s not here, then,” Karona said, misunderstanding, and probably for the better.

After a time, his leg splinted and the thirst at bay in a shaded bend of the riverbed, Hazz came round.

“What are you doing here? Father Toad said you were missing.”

“When did Father Toad tell you that?”

Hazz told her about the priest coming to the Draver camp at night, and the beating he’d received.

“He is a fool,” Karona declared. “He knew I wasn’t missing. I told him I was leaving him.”

In response to Hazz’s questions, Karona said, “Sometimes this happens between people. One wants control. The other wants freedom. Then it’s time for that one to go her own way.”

This was a new idea for Hazz. So she and Father Toad had not been priest and acolyte. Or they’d been that, but also more.

“Your battle didn’t go well for your lot,” Karona said. “I watched from the far side of the canyon. The Enforcement has been moving troops into that place for a week. I assumed the Dravers had done reconnaissance. But you all walked right into the trap.”

“What’s ’reconnaissance?’”

“And there’s your problem. You goons think everyone’s afraid of you. Well, you’ve been Draving for twenty years. People aren’t impressed by the scary outfits and the yelling anymore. And they’re sick of the attacks and the thievery. I’m surprised it took the Enforcement this long to come for you.”

“Are they all dead, then? All the Dravers?”

Karona said she didn’t know. “I saw a figure tumble over the cliff. I figured there’s only one Draver clumsy enough to do that. So I came to find you.”

They could not stay where they were. Hazz’s leg would not allow him to walk, let alone climb out of the deep river channel. And gowrows were more active by night.

Karona rigged a sledge out of bugwood and creeper vines. She lashed Hazz’s bruised body to it with more vines. “Now I’ll see if I can drag your sorry self out of here.”

Somehow, Karona managed it. Down the riverbed, where the slope gentled into a switchback, she hauled him up and over the canyon lip as the sunlight faded.

“Now we have a trek ahead of us.” Hazz asked where they were going, and Karona answered, “You need medicinals to treat that leg. We’re going back to Father Toad.”

“My people beat him pretty good. You deserted him. Will he speak to us?”

“He preaches mercy. Here’s his chance to practice it.”

Progress was slow. Halfway through the night, Karona gave up. She thrashed a tangle of bushes to drive out snakes and other nasties, then made camp, laying her bedroll beside Hazz’s sledge.

Soon she was asleep. Hazz lay awake, turning over the battle. Slicer going down. Thickness. Had Krook survived? Were the Dravers defenseless now? He pictured the Bus on fire, the Mothers dead.

The next morning, they found Father Toad perched in the doorway of his wagon. The Twins were holding hands and mouthing silent benedictions.

“Your wounded cub is back,” Karona said. Hazz wasn’t sure whether she meant herself or him.

“Very well, then,” Father Toad said mildly, as though the two had just returned from herbing. “Let us patch him up.”

He and Karona put a proper splint on Hazz’s leg—fractured but not broken—and packed his wounds with acacia leaf and mugwort. By the following day, Hazz could hobble around.

Father Toad passed the recuperation time by reading from the Stern Black Book.

“Now Jorix prepared to journey into the country of the Thistle Sowers. And the Big Man showed Jorix how to find his way. The Big Man showed Jorix the pattern of the stars overhead. The Big Man said, when the hand of the Water Thief points to the Scorpion’s left claw, follow the latter’s tail due South. There you will find the country you seek. You shall not get yourself lost, you shall not perish.

“And Jorix rejoiced, that the Big Man had shown him the way. But Jorix grew lazy. And Jorix took many days in the preparations, and Jorix wasted many days in saying goodbye to his home country.

“And when Jorix was finally ready to begin his journey, he looked overhead for the Water Thief and the Scorpion.

“But the friendly stars of Summer were gone. Above, Jorix saw only the unfamiliar Winter stars, the Hunter and the Blind Wife. And Jorix asked the Big Man to show him whither he should go with these strange stars to guide him.

“And the Big Man said, you are foolish, Jorix. Did you not know the world turns beneath your feet? Did you think the stars of past times would linger on your account?”

“What happened to Jorix?” Hazz asked.

Father Toad said, “A long time before us, Hazard, men knew marvelous things. You can see the remains scattered through the Burnt—the Staggering Man’s box, the Dravers’ Bus. Then that knowledge was lost, and the world lay open to wild men who followed no code but the law of beasts.

“But Time doesn’t stand still. New stars rise. Forgotten knowledge is being found again—not knowledge of boxes and buses, but of how to organize men, how to live with common will and purpose. Those who follow last season’s stars will find they are heading nowhere.”

A thin figure flitted at the edge of sight, then came closer. The Staggering Man had arrived. Soon came two water-gatherers who were fixtures at Draver-trades, then the scrap-trader Spittle, and the jackrabbit hunter Mad Slim.

“What is going on?” Hazz asked, and Karona said “It’s a council, stupid.”

“What is this council going to talk about?”

“What to do about you. You, plural, I mean. Your people.”

Father Toad said “As soon as they get here, we may begin.”

Two uniformed soldiers came into camp, dressed like those the Dravers had fought at Company One. They came bouncing over the rocks and sawgrass on a steamrider like the one Stoopid had analyzed.

Hazz looked at his hobbled leg. He wouldn’t be able to flee. They would have him.

He needn’t have worried. Father Toad had not identified Hazz as a Draver, and the Enforcers had no reason to think he was.

This was good, because the Council that followed was all about one thing. The Enforcers were marching to pacify the Burnt and make it safe for settlers. And that meant Krook, and all who followed him, must be killed on sight.

Chapter 9 — Of Stars and their Turning

“It is time,” Third Captain Halmer said, “to rid the Western Desert of bandits. We have been hearing complaints for a long time from settlements and farms. Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken so long for Leadership to put an Enforcement squadron together.”

He unrolled a map next to Father Toad’s wagon. “We’re enlisting the help of desert-dwellers like yourselves. We’re sure you’ve been victims as much as anyone.”

Hazz had never seen a map, much less one of the territory he’d scurried over his whole life. At first, he could make no sense of it. Then he understood: it showed the Burnt as a shrieker would see it, from high above. He recognized the high country the Dravers had left, the bluffs and mesas, the great River, dry except when the rains came, and the mark for Company One beside the ravine he’d fallen into.

He could also make out the hollow where the Dravers were now camped. The map was covered in marks and arrows, but the Draver camp wasn’t marked.

They don’t know where the Bus is, Hazz thought. They’re still searching.

I can warn Mother Thunder. Warn Krook.

And while the Captain talked, Hazz scanned the map. There, in the North, there was a spot sparsely labeled. A legend read “Unknown Country.”

And below that it said “Hazardous.”

Hazardous, Hazz thought. Named for me, Hazard. That is where we can go.

The Captain continued. “We’ll need you people to be our eyes and ears as we hunt these Dravers. A word of caution: the ringleader, Batavius Krook, survived the assault on Company One. He is dangerous. Don’t engage him directly. Find him and report back. Our camp is over that rise, with three hundred troops ready to fight. Once we locate Krook, it is over for him.”

“These fools always broadcast their camp’s location,” the second Enforcer said. “They build fires. Visible for miles. If they do that tonight, we’ll find them right away.”

So Krook had survived! (And had a given name.)

And must be warned. How?

Hazz’s leg would get him nowhere.

The Burnt grew dark. Captain Halmer announced that he and his men would stay the night at Father Toad’s camp and return to their regional headquarters at first light.

The Enforcer held aloft a lantern that threw white glare on the rocks and grass.

“How does that work?” Hazz asked, and the Enforcer showed him that the lantern’s tail could attach to a small cylinder. “It is filled with lead and acid. Battery, we call that.”

A battery. So that was how lifeless things from the past were awakened.

Hazz asked more questions, some trivial, some casual, before he got around to:

“How do you make the steamrider go?”

That was a misstep by Hazz.

“Interesting that you know it’s powered by steam. Have you seen one before?” But the Enforcer’s suspicions, luckily, did not rise far. He showed Hazz how they packed the furnace with dense aster twigs, added water, lit the fire, listened for the flywheel’s ticking, and engaged the wheels.

When the Enforcers had retired for the night, Hazz and Karona conferred in soft tones.

“Where will you go?” Hazz asked. “When there are no Dravers to trade with, I mean.”

“Father Toad will return to his old position at the Abbey Dormante, in Bust Up City. I suppose I’ll go with him.”

“Of course,” Hazz said, with bitterness in his voice. “Because you’re lovers.”

“Where did you get that idea?” Karona put her hands in her hair. “Oh, this is too much. No. Father Toad wants that for us. I won’t have him, and he’s been acting like a hurt baby. And now you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Look,” she said, “come to the City with us. Maybe the Abbey has room for you. It’s better than getting eaten by shriekers in the Burnt.”

“I don’t know the City. I know the Burnt.” Hazz grasped Karona’s hand. She didn’t pull away. “Come with me. We can find a… well, a green place somewhere. Build something—a place to live.”

“With you?” Karona’s voice was warm, but Hazz could guess what she was going to say. “No, Hazz. Certain death doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Oh.”

“You can travel with us to Bust Up City tomorrow after the Enforcers leave. Since you can’t walk we’ll put you in the wagon.”

“And when we get there?”

“Hazz, I don’t know. We don’t know what life there will be like. Just promise me you’ll come with us. Get out of the Burnt. There’s nothing left for you here.”

In the tent, as Karona slept, Hazz pictured life in a strange city, knowing nobody, hoping Karona might someday want him as their lives went in different directions.

The next morning, just before dawn, the Enforcement were awakened by the sound of whistling steam. They stumbled from their tent in time to see their steamrider jostling and bouncing away over the rocks, with Hazz astride.

From the opening of her own tent, Karona watched him go, her face as unreadable as the sky over the Big Burnt.

Hazz did not approach the Draver camp too closely. He stopped the rider about a quarter-league distant, and hobbled the rest of the way on his splinted leg.

Mother Thunder saw him approaching and gave a yell. His reception in the camp was ecstatic and a little embarrassing.

“We all thought you were dead,” Tall Lilah said.

Hazz was shocked by how few Dravers were left: Krook, Screechem, Ugly Joe, Longshot, Hijack with a stump where his hand had been, and, to Hazz’s glad surprise, Thickness, his wounded shoulder bandaged to his body. And nobody else, besides Stoopid and Junkman, who never went anywhere.

“My son. My Heir. You’re alive,” Krook said. Hazz perceived something different in his father: something different from the proud, cold Honcho he had known. Krook’s eyes no longer kept his thoughts behind them.

How long had it been since Hazz had been frightened of his brother, had avoided the gaze of his father? Not long.

Now his father’s eyes expressed a need for something only Hazz could fulfill. Hazz tried to summon some kind of affection for Krook, but that had never been there. All Hazz could summon from his Inside was pity and contempt.

“We’ll have a punker tonight,” Krook declared. “Build up a howling fire. Put down all the hooch we’ve got.”

Split Lip snorted. “We’ll feast on lentils instead of meat. No loot from that raid. The Oxmen are starving.”

Hazz’s Inside was bursting. He wanted to warn the Dravers. Don’t build the fire. Get out of here.

A voice from Hazz’s Inside, a voice he hadn’t heard before, said Wait.

Wait. There are other stones that may fall.

They wouldn’t let Hazz help. The Mothers tut-tutted over his wounded leg, fawned on him, brought him the last of the dried meats. Tall Lilah hinted that her tent was open if he wanted to join her later. Meanwhile, the wood piled up, and the pot of sour-smelling lentils bubbled.

The fire was ready to light, but there was a problem. “We have no flints,” Mother Thunder said. So Junkman went out in the night to locate some. It would not take long; sparking stones were abundant in these parts.

Sitting by the unlit logs, Krook held court. To Hazz and Screechem and Thickness and the handful of surviving Dravers, he said:

“We aren’t beaten yet, my Dravers.”

“There’s too few of us for a Draving,” Thickness said. “The smallest settlement would easily repel us, in the state we’re in.”

“We take what we can, for now,” Krook declared. “Tomorrow, we find that priest and his medicine wagon. We cut his fat neck, take what’s his. We’ll seize that girl, too. I’ll show that mocking bitch that a man is to be respected.”

He turned to Hazz. “The girl will be yours. Your prize as Heir.”

Hazz said nothing. His Inside was telling him things.

Lately, Hazz’s Inside, once the source of his shame, had grown solid. It wasn’t soft jelly anymore. Hazz realized he’d come to rely on it when he needed to take the measure of a situation.

“Then Hazard, you put your Soft face to work. You approach a settlement. You pose as a trader. You trade the stolen medicines for things we need. Like so, we build up again from nothing. I built the Dravers from nothing long ago. I will build them again.”

Silently, Hazz made his decision. It came as naturally as the night, but at the same time, it wrenched something deep within him, and he wouldn’t be the same for the rest of his life.

Junkman arrived with the flints.

Hazz did the honor. He touched the sparks to the kindling, and the flames leapt.

When Hazz disappeared from the circle a short time later, the Dravers elbowed each other and pointed to Tall Lilah’s tent.

Hazz was already far from the Bus. The steamrider puttered over the moonlit hills. Behind him, Hazz could see the glow of the bonfire. It was visible for a long way over the Burnt.

The Sun was climbing. The Staggering Man crouched under a flowering tree with his box. He saw Hazz approach.

“I got Grief,” the Staggering Man said.

“I don’t need it,” Hazz replied. “I have something for you. Give me your box.”

That took some convincing. Finally, Stagger handed it over, trembling with suspicion.

Hazz produced the Enforcer’s battery from his pocket. He gathered up the box’s tail. He put the tail’s end in the battery, as he had seen the Enforcer do with the lantern.

The box purred. It lit up.

Hazz turned the knob through hisses and squeals. The hiss died. The box began to speak.

The Staggering Man was transported. He rolled on his back. He cast his blasted eyes to the Hellblaze.

“You live!” he cried. “You speak!”

What the box was saying didn’t matter to the Staggering Man. It did matter to Hazz.

The voice came from a person in Bust Up City. Somehow the sound traveled through the air and into the box, recounting events in the Western Desert.

The voice said that bandits in the far desert had been ambushed by the Fifth Enforcement Legion in the early morning; the criminals had been dealt with, and now settlements could grow crops and raise flocks without fear.

The Dravers had been drunk and unprepared. The fight had been brief. Every last Draver had been killed.

The voice went on to say that a road would be built to connect the farthest-out farms and ranches, and that citizens of the Cities would find new lands open for them.

Hazz filled the steamrider with more wood. He topped the boiler with water.

“Are you going back to the Bus?” the Staggering Man asked.

“There’s a team of surveyors out of Bust Up City,” Hazz replied. “They’re building the big road to the far settlements. They need a person who knows the Burnt—the smoothest routes, the dangerous creatures, the flat lands where the floods come. They’re going to pay me.”

Pay me, Hazz thought. I’ll get money. I’ll have to learn to spend money for food and water.

It was a new idea for Hazz, to whom the Burnt had always freely given pulp to drink, nuts and fruits to eat. But new stars had risen. You went with the new ideas, or you died with the old ones.

“You could trade with the surveyors, now the Dravers have gone,” Hazz suggested.

But the Staggering Man had already forgotten Hazz. He was deep in conversation with his box, mumbling and singing as the voice poured from it.

Hazz threw his leg over the saddle, and the steamrider carried him away. The voices faded behind him, until all he heard was chuttering steam and the sound of the wind.