TWO
TODAY IS A SERIES OF lasts. Our last lunch. Last afternoon tea. Last game of checkers. After tonight it will be over. After tonight, he’ll be gone.
Blaine picks up one of his dark, clay tokens and jumps over two of my wooden ones. I finger the lines of the game board carved into our table as he collects my fallen pieces, smirking.
It’s hard to believe his Heist is already here. It feels like the years flew by, like I must have missed a bunch of them while blinking. The moments I remember with clarity are the milestones of our childhood. Starting school, learning how to hunt. Xavier Piltess taught us over the course of a muggy summer when I was ten. He was fifteen and had his own bow. He sat in Council meetings and got to vote on important issues, and he knew exactly how much a rabbit could go for in the market compared to a deer or wild turkey. The way we saw it, there was no question Xavier couldn’t answer.
Until, of course, he was Heisted as well.
By the time I was thirteen, Blaine and I were selling game regularly in the market and helping Ma in the textile building twice a week. A year after that, Ma caught a chill that even Carter and her medicines couldn’t chase away, and the two of us carried on alone.
As customary, we became men at fifteen, attended Council meetings, and were eligible for the slatings. It’s strongly encouraged, of course, for the boys to make their rounds in Claysoot and follow through with slatings. I’ve always felt a little torn about it, though. Not that it isn’t enjoyable—it always is—but I’ve grown to hate the moving around, sleeping with one girl only to be pushed at another. There’s a level of comfort that is always missing. Each encounter feels like a formality and one that could far too easily result in fatherhood. While I hate the routine, I understand why the Council shoves us at a different girl each month. If we don’t want to die out, there’s really no other option.
Blaine was always a year ahead of me in these milestones, always leading the way, setting the example. When I was uncertain or scared or confused he’d set me at ease. And now he’s just hours away from being gone forever.
“Gray?” Blaine’s voice pulls me from my thoughts.
“Huh?”
“I think I’m going to go to the blacksmith shop. I need to stay busy.”
“No, don’t go to work. Let’s at least finish this game.”
Blaine touches one of his game pieces but pulls his hand back without moving it to a new square. “I can’t do this ’til midnight, Gray. I’m too anxious.”
“I’ll come with you,” I offer.
He shakes his head and points at my chin. “You should get your jaw checked out. It looks worse compared to this morning.”
I notice for the first time it’s already late afternoon. Had we really been playing that long, or are all lasts quicker by nature?
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll stop by the Clinic.”
He nods in approval, almost the way our mother used to, and then tosses my pack into my lap. He pulls on his new jacket, even though the air is now oppressive and heavy, and tousles my hair before leaving. I sit there, staring at the game pieces, Blaine’s clay tokens far outnumbering my wooden ones. Our last unfinished game.
He would have won.
The Clinic has several beds, separated by thin curtains that hang from wooden rods running the width of the building. The curtains aren’t being utilized when I arrive and I can see that Carter is not in. Her daughter, Emma, is there though, reorganizing a set of clay jars on the shelves at the far end of the room.
I’ve known Emma since we were kids. Our mothers had been close, mostly on account of how sick I was as a child. Ma once told me that I’d seen nothing but the inside of our house until I was a year old; and throughout that time Carter visited often, fussing over me and working her magic. Whatever she did, she did it well. Half of Claysoot still stares at me like I’m some sort of miracle, like it should be impossible to be so sick as an infant and still come out on the strong side of healthy.
Ma and Carter remained inseparable through most of my childhood, and as a result, I spent a lot of time with Emma. Sometimes Ma brought Blaine and me to the Clinic and we chased Emma around the wooden tables until she cried mercy. Other days, when Carter had less work, she brought Emma over to our house and we entertained ourselves with games like checkers and Little Lie.
Emma was a scrawny thing back then, but she kept up with us. If we were getting good and dirty in the streets, she tagged right along. If we were climbing trees and scuffing our knees on rocks, she boasted the same battle scars. And even though we spent countless hours together as children, Emma was always closer to Blaine. I’ve never been able to shake the jealousy, but I suppose I brought it upon myself. When I was six and the two of them seven, I pushed Emma over and stole the wooden toy she was playing with. She favored Blaine from that day forward, and naturally that’s when it started. As soon as she favored Blaine, I favored her.
At first it was a childlike thing, but my affection never faded. I watched her change over the years, abandoning her thin frame for the curves that now fill out her dresses. She’s become increasingly pretty as she nears eighteen, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in no one else. I’ve made my rounds in the slatings, but I’d be kidding myself if I said I didn’t want just Emma. I guess it’s fitting that I’ve never been paired with her. I probably don’t deserve it.
“Is Carter in?” I call out.
“She’s making a house call,” Emma replies, answering my hopes without even looking at me. “Give me a moment and I’ll be right over.”
I sit on an empty bed and rub my jaw, wincing as my hands find an open gash. Blaine was right. I definitely need to have it looked at.
I watch Emma as I wait, admiring how her steady fingers pluck jars from the shelf with ease. She moves so quickly but smoothly as well, her hands confident from years of administering care. They never falter, never slip. Her eyes, too, are focused, darting back and forth. Every time I look into their brown depths, I feel something in my chest heave.
Eventually, when the jars are organized to her liking, Emma meets me at the bed. She has a beauty mark on her right cheekbone, and it almost looks like a single tear escaping down her face.
“I should refuse to help you. After what you did to Chalice and all.” Emma has a soft voice, calm like winter’s first snowfall.
“She deserved it,” I say surely.
“You’re lucky that I believe all injured beings deserve to be healed.” She looks at me, puzzled, her head cocked as if she is studying a wild animal. I know what she’s thinking. It’s what they all think: How can I look so much like Blaine and be so different?
She takes my face in her hands and examines my chin. The open cut stings, but I focus on her touch instead, her fingers against my skin. When she is satisfied with her inspection she turns her back on me and begins to mix various ingredients in a shallow bowl. I watch her crush them, her forearm and shoulder flexing. She finishes, wipes her hands on her apron, and faces me again.
“One scoop should do,” she says. She passes me the bowl, which now holds a pasty mixture. “Rub it on the inside of your mouth, near the gash. It will numb the area, and I need to stitch up that cut.”
I scoop a small handful of the mixture with my fingers and apply it as Emma instructed. Almost instantly, the pain begins to ease.
“And take this,” she orders, handing me a small helping of an ingredient I don’t recognize but swallow nonetheless. “I need you perfectly still, and it will help you sleep.”
Emma is readying a needle when her mother enters the Clinic.
“How’d it go?” Emma asks.
“The baby didn’t make it,” Carter says, putting her bag down and repinning her hair on the top of her head. It is the same shade as Emma’s, light brown like the hide of a young fawn, and full of stubborn waves. “Died during the labor. Just as well though, seeing as it was a boy.”
Emma looks saddened by the news. “And the mother?”
“Laurel is fine.” I know this girl is a good friend of Emma’s. I’ve seen them at the market, giggling and whispering to each other as they trade for goods.
Emma breathes a sigh of relief, but I notice a single tear trickle its way down her cheek. She pushes it aside with the back of her hand and returns her attention to the needle.
“Lie back,” she tells me, and I do. My head feels oddly light; and Emma, leaning over me to examine the wound, seems to shine like dew-topped grass in morning sunlight. She tells me to relax, but I’m stuck staring into her brown eyes and instead I let words bubble to my lips.
“You want to do something after this?”
“Do something?” Her face is a combination of shock and disgust.
“Yeah, like go to the pub or for a walk. I’ll take anything really.”
“My best friend loses her child, you’re about to lose your brother, and all you want to do is take me to the pub?” When she puts it this way, it does seem somewhat despicable. “You’re nothing like him, you know that?” she adds. “You two may look alike, but you’re very, very different.”
It hurts, those words, but they’re true.
“Emma, sweetie, he’s not that bad,” Carter interjects from the doorway. “People cope in different ways.” I’m not sure why Carter’s coming to my defense. Maybe she can’t stop fussing over me, even now, years after I’ve needed her care. Or maybe it’s because she was close with my mother or the fact that I remind her of my father; she’s told me countless times how much Blaine and I look like him. Either way I am grateful.
“Did they put you guys up to this? The Council?” Emma asks. “You’ve been slated to me, haven’t you?” Her eyes cut into mine.
“No,” I admit. “No, not at all. I’m not slated to anyone. They’re going light on me because of Blaine and the Heist. I haven’t had to see anyone for a week, and I doubt I will for another few.” My head is starting to swim now. It wants to sleep.
Emma scowls. “So I should feel honored that this is genuine? I should be happy you’re trying to woo me of your own accord and not the Council’s?”
Her eyebrows are furrowed and she holds her hands on her hips. I’ve never seen her look quite so angry.
“Forget it then, Emma, okay? I was only asking. No one’s twisting your wrist.”
I slump farther into the bed, exhausted. Emma leans over me, her wide eyes focused on my jaw. The needle approaches my skin, but there is no pain. It is just her, stitching me together as though I am a quilt, and then darkness, as I fall asleep.