The Woman from the East

The water rose three meters overnight.

Harlan tied a weight to a rope, lowered it down the hole, and measured morning and evening. Three meters, up from a bottom three thousand eight hundred meters down. On the number alone, nothing much.

Except it didn't stop.

“At this rate, when does it fill.”

“I have not calculated it.”

“So calculate.”

“I do not want to.”

Harlan said it while winding the weight back up.

A man who had spent nine years taking delivery of a paper that said empty was looking away from a number for the first time.

It was Roslyn who did the arithmetic instead.

“Three meters a night. At that rate, filling three thousand eight hundred meters takes about one thousand two hundred sixty days. Three and a half years.”

“Three and a half years. Longer than I thought.”

“It is not long.”

Harlan said it with the weight still in his hand.

“The digging is at the bottom. The pipe, the blade at its tip, the floor the men work on, all of it is at the bottom. Once the bottom goes under, there can be three thousand meters of dry hole above it and the drilling is over.”

“And the bottom goes under when.”

“Three days, that man said.”

Harlan jerked his chin toward One, sitting under the tower with his knees pulled up.

“The hole does not take three and a half years to fill. Sixty years end in three days, and the other three and a half we spend watching the water come up.”

＊

The woman came at noon that day.

She came from the east.

The first to notice was the miner on watch. He pointed at the horizon and shouted something, and then he went quiet.

Marlow looked too.

One figure, running toward them.

Not a horse. Running on human legs. And still, she closed on them at twice the speed of the cart he had ridden in on three days before.

A long tail of sand dust stretched out behind her.

“…What is that,” Drag said.

It was the first time Marlow had heard Drag say what is that.

＊

The woman stopped just short of the line of stones.

She did not slide a single step in the sand as she stopped. Something that had been running had simply turned into an ornament standing there.

Tall. Stood beside Drag she would be only a head shorter. She looked about thirty.

Her hair was gray, hacked off below the ears. Her right eye was brown, an eye that laughed easily. Her left eye had no color. It was gray, like polished metal, and it did not blink.

Her clothes were all patches. For two months he had seen nothing but clean clothes. In all of that, this woman alone was dressed like a scavenger out of the town.

And her left arm, from the elbow down, was not a human arm.

It was the same metal as the walls at Central. There were seams, and thin lines running in regular order. No rust. Five fingers. They moved.

The woman looked all the way around the drill site, and then she laughed.

“Ahaha! Quite the crowd. Am I being welcomed?”

Nobody answered.

“Guess not. Fair enough.”

The woman stepped over the stones without asking, went to the fire without asking, and lifted the lid off the pot without asking.

“Oh, beans. I like beans. Mind if I have some? I'm having some.”

Without waiting for an answer she pinched one up and put it in her mouth. With the metal fingers.

＊

Marlow was afraid of this woman.

Afraid, and he couldn't look away. It was the same as with Sybil. The difference was that Sybil was too perfectly arranged to sit easy with, while this woman was simply ordinary.

Laughing like anyone. Eating beans like anyone. Looking around like anyone.

That was the most frightening part.

Drag stepped forward.

“Give your name. This is an Imperial drill site.”

“Name? Mirabel Grimm.”

The woman said it while chewing a bean.

“Pretty, isn't it. Mirabel. Whoever picked it had taste, I'll give them that. They're dead now, mind.”

“Your business.”

“Errand for Central.”

Those few words changed the air over the drill site.

“They're closing this place. The hole's going to fill, right? No sense keeping men at a hole that's filling, so bring the lot of them east. The nineteen, the chief, and the odds and ends.”

“Odds and ends meaning.”

“You lot.”

Mirabel pointed at Drag, then Roslyn, then Willa, then One, then Marlow, in order. With the metal finger.

“Oh, not you, kiddo. You've got a contract. Everyone except you.”

＊

“No,” Drag said.

“Yeah, thought so.”

Mirabel put the lid back on the pot.

“I'm used to being refused. Hardly ever not been refused.”

“What happens to the ones you take.”

“They walk. East. On their own legs.”

Marlow remembered the footprints in the dry hollow.

Two columns, the same stride, heading east. Fifty-eight pairs.

“It was you,” Marlow said. “Who took the squad last month.”

“That was me.”

Mirabel said it without any weight at all.

“Twenty-one. Picked up thirty-seven more along the way. Picked up sounds bad. Joined? Something like that.”

“How'd you make them walk.”

“Trade secret, kiddo.”

Mirabel closed one eye. The brown one. The metal eye did not close.

＊

Drag drew the weapon at his hip.

A rod with iron fixed to the end. Every man in the squad carries one for beating water-suckers. Swung by an orc's arm, it will break a human skull.

“You don't get the nineteen.”

“Huh.”

For the first time, Mirabel looked straight at Drag.

“You're the Captain of the Wall, aren't you. You only met those nineteen today, didn't you.”

“Two months ago.”

“Two months. And two months gets you talking like that.”

Mirabel laughed. It was a different laugh from before. The laugh of someone enjoying herself.

“Nice. I like that sort of thing. I like it, but.”

Drag came in at her.

He was fast. The whole weight of an orc went forward with him. The rod came around from the side.

It didn't land.

Mirabel had not moved a step. The only thing that moved was her left arm.

Along the line of the metal arm, elbow to wrist, something came out. A blade, thin and long, that gave no light back.

The blade was set in the path of the swinging rod. That was all it was. Set there.

The rod met the blade and became two.

Iron head and all. The cut was flat as a mirror.

The far half spun away through the air and stuck in the sand thirty meters off.

Drag looked at the half still in his hands.

Then he dropped it. One look had told him there was no point going after the other piece.

He set himself bare-handed.

“Still going?”

“You don't get the nineteen.”

“Ahaha! Fine, fine. I told you I like that.”

Mirabel drew the blade back in. It went into the arm without a sound.

“But I'll pass today.”

＊

“…Why,” Marlow said.

He couldn't not ask.

This woman could finish everyone standing there, right there, right then. All of them knew it.

“Because you're interesting, kiddo.”

Mirabel walked over toward Marlow. She stopped three steps short. Willa grabbed Marlow's sleeve.

“You climbed that hole, they tell me? Three thousand eight hundred meters. Took you thirty days.”

“…Who told you.”

“Central. It was surprised, which is rare. First time I ever saw it surprised. Hard to tell, since its voice doesn't change when it is. There was one extra pause.”

Mirabel leaned in and looked into Marlow's face. With the brown eye and the metal eye both.

“So the kiddo who climbed out cuts a deal with it, puts up three conditions, and gets all three. And thanks to the first one, a sixty-year hole is about to fill up.”

“…”

“That's interesting. Right?”

Mirabel sat down on a stone at the foot of the tower.

She crossed her legs and looked up at the sky.

“Three days, was it. Till the water reaches the floor. That's what Central said. I'll sit here and watch till then. See what the kiddo does.”

“And if I do nothing.”

“Then on the third day I take them all. The nineteen, the chief, the captain, the scribe, the missy, and the old man who came up from the bottom of the shaft.”

“And if I do something.”

For the first time, Mirabel's face went thoughtful.

Then she grinned.

“Well, that depends on what you did.”

End of Chapter 25