“Argelo was a little too much fun last time. Actually, I like Xiosphant. It’s quiet. They make nice cakes, thanks to all the flour from those farmwheels.”
“I really hope you change your mind.” Mouth drained her jar of swamp vodka. After hauling cases of the stuff across nine kinds of hell, it didn’t taste nearly good enough. “I would hate to lose you. I don’t want to have to share a sleep nook with Reynold.”
Reynold, sitting a couple meters away, overheard and rolled his eyes. He was a big ugly dude with tattooed arms, a broken nose, and weirdly tiny hands. Nobody ever wanted to share a sleep nook with him, because he snored and farted at the same time.
“That’s not why this is upsetting you,” Alyssa said.
Mouth didn’t feel upset, but Alyssa was usually right about these things. “Why, then?”
“You’re scared that if I’m too old to keep doing this, then maybe you are too.”
“It’s different for me,” Mouth said. “I’m going to keep doing this until I die.”
“Why? Because you were raised by nomads?” Alyssa laughed. “You do get that nomads aren’t smugglers, right? Smuggling is for young people with decent reflexes. Do you think you’ll be able to break a man’s head with one hand after a few more of these trips?”
“Nomads have to break heads too sometimes.”
Mouth wanted out of this conversation.
“Are you ready to be the only old person in a crew of young smugglers?” Alyssa asked.
“I’m ready to drink until I pass out. Beyond that, I hadn’t made any plans.”
“Drink faster. Time’s running out.”
And sure enough, just as Alyssa spoke, there was that grinding, squalling sound that Mouth remembered from previous visits to Xiosphant: the shutters cranking up all over town, blocking out the half light. The Low Road went from pleasantly dim to can’t-see-your-own-feet.
Mouth hated darkness. The idea that you would want to sleep under conditions where anything could ambush you, that just closing your eyes wasn’t risk enough, seemed barbaric. Atavistic. All the other Resourceful Couriers fumbled for a corner of the back room to sleep, alone, with their road buddy, or just in some random pile. But Mouth sat, staring. She’d never really been in the dark until she’d first visited Xiosphant as a child and the shutters had closed on her. Discovering a new phobia was like the opposite of falling in love.
The road didn’t age you. Settling down somewhere, gaining attachments and expectations, assimilating—those things aged you. This was a childish way of looking at things, but Mouth couldn’t help it.
The nomads who raised Mouth had included elderly people as well as children, but they’d worked out all sorts of customs to make sure vulnerable members of the community were taken care of. And of course, the Citizens hadn’t been trying to carry fragile, semiperishable goods from one city to another at a decent speed.
Mouth barely slept, even in spite of exhaustion and tipsiness. When the shutters rolled down at long last, and the blue-gray light poured into the room, Mouth felt ugly. The bar owner, a cheery old man with short gray curls named Ray, brought around plates of hot pastries that made Mouth feel less like smashing another head or ten.
Alyssa was right: they really did know cakes in Xiosphant. But their coffee still tasted like shit.
Now the streets were filling up instead of emptying, the Resourceful Couriers all went out to explore. The streets of Xiosphant were narrower than in Argelo, but straighter and laid out in a semi-grid—and better paved, because they’d had more access to fancy technology from the Mothership when they’d laid out this town. One building they walked past had a big stone awning that had to have been fabbed, with little creatures flying around it. Then there was a narrow townhouse, with gold leaf all around the fancy piping that had crumbled to bits but still had some grandeur.
The Couriers made a big effort to clean up and look like they belonged here, because even being a foreigner in Xiosphant was basically against the law. Mouth wore a big ribbony cap that covered up her mohawk and scars, and one of those ponchos that the local women were wearing, but she drew the line at putting a lacy fringe around her ankles. Everyone else blended in, more or less. But in this town, you could tell the pipe-workers, the factory grunts, the shop kids, and the bureaucrats apart just by looking at their clothing and the stains on their hands. Everyone seemed to sneak glances at Mouth whenever she risked walking on one of the busier streets full of food vendors and schoolchildren. A few little kids pointed at Mouth’s mismatched poncho and trousers, and the lack of an ankle-skirt, and made noises.
Everything that happened now, Mouth turned into another opportunity to feel old, after everything Alyssa had said.
They had left Kendrick guarding their stuff, back in the junkyard, and it was all still there when they got back. But time was not a friend here. The police had a million eyes, and everyone in Xiosphant was too curious about your business. With Justin gone, they needed to find someone else to move the merchandise and help them get a new cargo to bring back to Argelo.
“I’ve been thinking,” Kendrick said, his high forehead crinkling in a way that made his many piercings jangle. “We won’t find another fence, not in a hurry. The black market in Xiosphant is pretty tiny, and disorganized, compared to Argelo. But I know a guy named George who might be able to help. He’s the bank for this big roofing company, which means he handles every kind of currency, not just infrastructure chits. And he does a certain amount of bartering to make sure the roofers have access to dental care and toys for their kids. I heard last time we were in town that he also does some moonlighting.”
“Let’s go see George the Bank.” Omar whooped.
They hid the rest of the swamp vodka in the back room of the Low Road, then spent ages disguising the sled with their other goods as a delivery vehicle for one of Xiosphant’s leather warehouses, using mostly stuff they found in this junkyard. Those chimes were rattling again: time running out. “We’ll just have to stick to the back alleys,” Kendrick said. “I know a route.” Kendrick was the guy who knew the way to the spiciest food or the weirdest liquor, wherever you traveled.
“I still don’t get how someone can be a bank,” muttered Yulya. She’d never even been outside Argelo until she talked Omar into letting her tag along, and everyone had expected her to freak out and run home, like Jackie. Instead, she’d taken to the wild road, carrying her share without complaint. She even kept her spirits up on the Sea of Murder. Yulya said she’d always wanted to be a traveling performer, a profession that hadn’t existed since … well, since Mouth was little.
“It’s the screwy economy here in Xiosphant,” Kendrick told her. “They have like ten different kinds of money, for different things. Food dollars, med-creds, infrastructure chits, energy rations, and so on. So the roofing company gets paid in infrastructure chits, but George the Bank also has to make sure the employees receive all other kinds of money, by making side-deals with medical providers, food companies, and the power plant. And so on.”
“That’s … literally insane,” said Yulya, still speaking Argelan, in a low voice.
“It’s their way of avoiding scarcity and hoarding.” Mouth shrugged.
“It’s how they keep everybody in line,” said Alyssa. “Everybody’s so busy trying to get enough of all the different kinds of money, nobody has time to stop and think.”
Just then, red-and-blue smoke filled the sky, which signified the midpoint between shutters-down and shutters-up.
The roofing company was all the way over on the bright side of town. Still indirect sunlight, still just creeping over a big-ass mountain, but there sure was a lot of it. Mouth could see all the little hairs on the back of her hand, and everything had colors. The air smelled different this close to the day: sulfurous, tangy, kind of salty. Sweat collected inside Mouth’s collar.
“I guess being stuck in this part of town would make you think about the importance of a good solid roof.” Alyssa snorted.