Your life’s curtain falls, unfazed by your performance.

Its shroud, indifferent, falls upon all souls.

A shade that knows no exemption.

Embrace the void ahead.

Shut out the light.

Die for me.

CHAPTER 3: YOUR INHERITANCE

The wagon rattled and lurched. It was becoming predictable. Bee had become fixated on what passed as the road ahead. Over the hours, it had grown as if a million feet had marched across the dry earth and worn it down between two hillsides. Again and again, she looked up at Ay. He either didn’t care or did an excellent job of pretending not to. Even Em had become dull to the monotony of the journey.

Their supplies had been consumed, day after day after day. The water skins were empty. Mere scraps remained of the meat they ate. The child found staying still made it easier, sitting there, eyes unfocused, letting time just pass by and putting the growling of her stomach and the scratching of her throat out of her mind altogether.

Ay stirred. Bee straightened her back. Em whined hungrily, inspired by their motion. They rode past a skeleton, stripped down to sun-bleached bones. Its form was mutated and distended, its rib cage bloated and uneven, seven legs long and bent.

“Nearly made it,” Ay grumbled with pity. Then, he leaned toward Bee and said, “Get in the back.”

Bee did as he told her, hesitantly, climbing over with Em bundled up in her arms.

“Stay down,” he said over his shoulder. So the child did, getting under with her other sisters. They all squealed until she tucked them away from the light once more.

Then, weaving its way up the beaten path, the wagon crested a glittering dune and rocked down the other side. Slaves and enslaver alike kept a wary eye out now. They made their way between body after body, picked clean of flesh, left with only rags and their treasures too heavy to steal.

They had reached the Oasis.

A vast lake filled the valley. It rippled, still miles away, suspended between hot mirages. Yet it was real, nestled amidst a sprawl of geometric design. Their arrival caused the beasts overhead to scatter away in search of another meal. The smell of blood carried on the wind.

To Bee, it felt like hours in suspense. She lay there in the hot dark, hidden, waiting to see what would happen. Sweat stung her eyes, and she thought about sneaking out for the water skin — to squeeze that last drop out of it — when the wagon finally lurched to a halt. Bee heard voices. Feeling rebellious, she peeked out from under the sheets to see what was happening.

Flashes of colour. Movement. Voices. Bee’s eyes widened, mesmerised as she looked at a crowded street. Freaks and outsiders, clad in shawls, robes, and heavy cloaks, all to shield them from the white-hot spark above. Jewellery and painted skin danced in the light. They shouted at each other, spoke with their hands, and went about their lives in countless discrete ways, impossible to read.

The Oasis had more life than Bee had ever seen — real life that was not wounded and slowly dying as far as she could see. They were no longer riding amidst the dead. Dazzled, Bee could see hide tents strapped between loose structures of caked mud and blasted stone, so different to the growths that covered the city of Sestchek. Freaks of all shapes and sizes sheltered here beneath the crumbling walls.

Bee sat up and let herself out from the sweltering hideaway. Ay grunted when he heard her, looking back with a snap of his beak. Some of the freaks — those with eyes — seemed to recognise her, pointing and muttering amongst themselves. She waved. They did not wave back. Ay set his shoulders, focused on the way ahead.

Their carriage passed through crowds, growing denser and denser. Bee could hardly believe there were so many people out here in the desert. At first, she was excited, but when she saw the resignation and defeat in the eyes of those weary souls, she realised they were just as lost as her.

One of the enslaved freaks pulling their carriage cried out. The crush of the growing crowds had trapped it against its own rigging.

“Out of the way!” Ay shouted with a snarl that Bee had never heard before. He raised his lance.

The freaks howled back, but they parted, and a path between them cleared. The road itself narrowed, and Ay guided them between older buildings, ones that were terraced together, weathered and dark with age, built upon with awnings and second floors. One was open-fronted, with space for hundreds inside. It was nearly filled, those within looking out to see them pass, eyes and scales and teeth glimmering from the shadows.

A masked beast with a long neck arched its head down from a low rooftop. Bee nearly jumped out of her skin when she came face to face with it. Em squeaked hungrily, joining in with the shouting, and Bee picked up her little sister protectively. Ay yelled at the thing, loud and wordlessly, turning in his seat and brandishing his fist. The beast retreated with a hiss.

Left then right, Ay guided them down forks in the street. He had been here before and knew it well enough to navigate the older, persistent blocks, to slice straight through the Oasis as quickly as possible. His beak was open now, wet eyes trained on each dark corner. His muscles and sinew were drawn tight. He expected a fight.

Growing older and venerable, the buildings around them began to lean, pressed down by centuries of existence. Closing out the sky, tents, awnings and decking crossed above them. Some of the structures, homes, were lit inside by the flickering of oily lanterns. Bee could smell heady perfume, food, and water in the air, salivating. Her hands were shaking.

Somewhere beyond the dusty walls, Bee heard a freak sing out. Their voice trembled, a note long and tenuous until they were joined by a chorus. The child looked around as the sound echoed, channelled outwards. Unable to imagine where the hymn was coming from, Bee gasped. The words’ meaning was lost on her — a language that she didn’t understand, that wasn’t pre-grown into her brain matter.

One final turn, and they were out. The bright sky stung Bee’s eyes again. She had to shield herself with a hand until she could adjust back to the bright light.

The Oasis was just a shallow pool of muddy waters, expansive and shimmering where it caught the sun. It filled the basin in the valley’s centre, pressed in on all sides by this meagre attempt at civilisation. That didn’t matter, though. Bee had never seen such a sight, all that water that could be drunk without cutting the earth and stealing it. She jumped from the wagon, her mother’s bowl clutched in her arms, unsteady legs carrying her down the bank to the water’s edge. The child didn’t even think about it. She was so thirsty.

“Bee!” Ay shouted after her. His voice didn’t register. Desperate, she collapsed into the shallows, at the feet of the outsiders, sucking up what she could. Only then did she look up. Elders stepped back and moved around her, their prayer interrupted. Bee found herself surrounded by the denizens of the desert, soaked robes and shawls hiding their forms, all except the eyes and the claws.

A hand seized Bee by the back of the neck. She was torn, screaming, from the water.

Bee cried out and tried to break free, legs kicking, hands pulling at the sharp, unyielding vice that gripped her throat. Powerless, she was thrown back onto the muddy bank. The impact smacked the air from her lungs. She saw stars, and when she came back around, Bee realised she was still sliding through the red clay, arms and legs trying to get her away, crawling through the muck. Her dumb fight or flight was stuck on trying to flee, but it didn’t work right. She couldn’t get up, slipping.

Scrambling desperately, Bee kept going until she hit something. Whimpering, she looked up to see Ay’s armoured belly coiling in the mud. Higher still, she saw he was standing tall, beak fixed dead ahead, eyes on the zealots at the water’s edge.

“I’m taking her,” the hunter growled.

“The tresspasser stole water,” said a robed monster. “She will return it.”

Ay opened and closed his beak, thumbing one of the rags he wore around his chest. His other two arms raised subtly, biceps tightening, a hand grasped around his lance. He had only moments to decide, eying in the desert-dwelling zealots, then looking around with his beak opened wide. One had a massive, scything arm — marked an auld war aug. The others seemed similarly ancient, long and distorted of face, and he couldn’t tell what enhancements they had, swaddled in clothes as they were. A single scavenger still circled overhead, black silhouette sharp against the deep blue sky.

If he just took the child’s head, Ay thought, it would rot before he got it back to Enelastoia. They still might be able to soup it for the right genes. It was a risk.

A grunt. The Ay shrugged it off and waved an open hand, trying not to reveal his readiness.

“Fine. Bleed her then.”

“No. No!” Bee panicked and clutched at Ay’s serpent body. In doing so, she smeared him with the red clays that covered her, looking around wildly. “Please don’t!”

A zealot waded over with wary eyes beneath its cowl, standing only as tall as Ay’s chest. Their eyes met, both filled with contempt and threat.

The zealot gripped Bee by her rags, tearing her effortlessly from Ay’s body, muck dripping from her body. But the instant he lifted Bee, Ay snapped out, seizing him by the throat. Limbs tightened. Bone blades emerged from the robes of those baptised in the Oasis. The scavenger circling overhead drifted lower, inch by inch.

Letting that moment draw out as long as he dared, Ay growled at the zealot and said, “No more than she drank.”

With a shove, Ay cast them both away. The monster staggered in the shallows, clutching Bee, who screamed and kicked and struggled harder than ever before. A crowd formed on the banks. Looking around, Ay could make out the outsiders native to the desert. He could also see those bent low by dehydration and starvation, slowly dying, cut off from their city and finding no succour here. Denied refuge, they came to see an example made of the young vat-born, perhaps trying to seem devout enough to be spared a drop of water for themselves.

Two of them took Bee, then three. They thrust her high into the air, a prize, chanting out in their incomprehensible language for all to see. Altogether, they drowned out the child’s cries with their voices, her struggling feeble and screaming turned mute. An elder, the face of twisted stone, displayed one of its arms — a blade etched with old runes, its history long forgotten.

A shrill cry. A strike. That was all it took — hacking Bee’s right arm below the elbow. She stared wide-eyed and numb. Slack-jawed, Bee watched the red waters that fountained out of her, pouring into the bowl of the Oasis, filling it so imperceptibly. Dizzy with shock, the child was lost in how the sanguine of her royal blood mixed with that muddy emulsion.