Intermix Nation (25 page)

“But I just told you –”

Cayus gently grips her shoulder. “I heard
what you said,” he tells her sagely. Cayus points to the red paint
on his arm. “I wear this to remind me that, despite our differences
and flaws, we are all human, part of God’s boundless circle. We are
all children of the sun and moon, made of stars and earth.” He
shakes his head. “It is so easy to forget sometimes…”

He gives her shoulder a final squeeze before
walking away.

#

Nazirah hurries along the coast, aware she
doesn’t have much time. Adamek could rat her out to Aldrik – but
somehow, Nazirah knows he won’t. Aldrik and Nikolaus would have
never let her come here on her own, especially not after the Medi
attack on the slums. But she has to see it, one last time. Nazirah
coughs, casually inspecting the minor burns and scratches on her
arms. They sting, but are nothing serious. She shivers, knowing how
much worse things could have been.

Rafu is a small village, easily walked end
to end. The unfamiliar streets bordering the slums eventually
transform into the familiar paths of Nazirah’s past. Nazirah turns
onto a lane she has not been down in months. A fresh wave of
jitters buzzes through her as she passes several one-story beach
bungalows. They gleam white and blue in the late afternoon light,
traces of the foaming sea on land. Nazirah eventually stops in
front of a small, unassuming cottage right on the water.

It still stands, proud and strong. It is the
cottage Kasimir built for Riva, so many years ago. And it welcomes
Nazirah back. Nazirah’s memories here are tainted, but they are all
she has. Cayus is right. Life in Rafu is hard. But it is her home;
it is where her heart lies.

Nazirah glances around the quiet lane, then
quickly walks through the rusty gate and out of sight. The weeds
are overgrown in the garden. But the scent of jasmine and verbena
linger in the air, watchful guardians. Nazirah climbs the front
steps. She bends down at the top stair, retrieving the spare key
that resides under a hollow stone. Nazirah deftly unlocks the door,
fingers effortlessly recalling the way.

“I’m home.”

Nazirah walks through the entrance, prodigal
daughter returned. Her voice echoes throughout the abandoned
cottage. She doesn’t know why she does this, knowing that no one
will answer. But she does it anyway.

In the living room, she runs her hands over
the surface of everything she sees. Nazirah avoids the area where
she found her parents, the walls now spotless, the wood bleached
clean by rebel volunteers. She tries to think of her happier
memories here as a child.

Nikolaus and Kasimir are in the corner,
playing chess.

Riva is baking, singing, or rocking gently
on the porch swing out back.

Nazirah touches and feels and remembers. And
it hurts, but it’s a glorious pain.

From the fireplace mantle, Nazirah palms a
small mason jar full of smooth black beach pebbles. She stuffs it
into her pocket before continuing upstairs. Her fingers make trails
and swirls in the thick layer of dust on the banister. The
staircase groans under her weight. It’s amazing how Kasimir built
this house with his hands. Kasimir’s were hands of creation. So
unlike Adamek’s, used only for destruction.

Nazirah walks through each room slowly,
lingering, breathing in the salty air that invades every crevice.
She gingerly picks up her parents’ wedding photo, taken by a
traveling peddler. Riva is radiant in a flowing, white, gauzy
dress. She’s barefoot, with a crown of sunflowers in her hair.
Kasimir gazes into her eyes, touching the bump on her stomach.
Nazirah smiles at the photo, removing it from the frame and gently
putting it in her pocket.

She hasn’t come for this. She has come to
say goodbye, not horde possessions like a vagabond. But it seems
wrong for her parents to stay alone in this empty house, smiling at
no one. Nazirah wants them with her, wants them smiling at her.

Time is running short. She walks to the end
of the hallway. Opening the last door, Nazirah steps into her
bedroom. She lies on her bed, bathed in the soft blues and greens
of her walls.

She imagines she can hear her parents
laughing downstairs. Riva sews or drafts a lesson plan. Kasimir
hums an Oseni tune and sharpens his tools. Maybe he’s whittling
something. Nazirah wishes she had the Iluxor, which she knows
Adamek brought on campaign. She could replay these memories in her
mind then, instead of so inadequately imagining. Instead of
pretending.

It’s nostalgic, coming home. It’s sweet, but
painful at the same time. Her room feels like Irri, the girl she
used to be. It doesn’t entirely fit the girl she is now.

Nazirah breathes in, then sits up abruptly.
It took her awhile to realize. But it doesn’t smell like her, past
or present. She gets up, looks around cautiously. Everything seems
to be in place, but Nazirah knows something isn’t right.

Someone has recently been in her room. A
neighbor? One of the Caals? What if the Medis know she’s here?
Nazirah hurries down the stairs, exits through the back door. She
passes Riva’s porch swing, watches as the ocean crashes onto the
surf. She should not have come. But Nazirah will be leaving soon.
There’s only one more place she needs to go.

Nazirah walks slowly across the dunes behind
her home and kneels before two flat headstones. The wind whips her
hair and the ocean air stings her burned skin. Nazirah cries salty
tears, so it makes no difference.

“I miss you so much,” she says. “I’m sorry I
didn’t make you proud. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.” She touches
the smooth stone, tears streaking the remaining ash that cakes her
face. “I don’t know how to live, when you aren’t here to help
me.”

She sinks down lower into the ground,
sobbing. “Why did you have to leave me?” she screams bitterly,
hoarsely, digging her hands into the sand before her and flinging
it away. “Why didn’t you run, or fight?” She lies beside the
graves, pounding on the stone. “Why were you so stupid and foolish
with your lives? Why?”

Nazirah closes her eyes, remembers to
breathe. She kisses each headstone before slowly returning to her
knees. “I will avenge you,” she whispers. “I promise I will. I
swear it to you.” She balls her fists. “I won’t fail you
again.”

Nazirah begins to rise, wiping her red eyes.
She’s distracted by a dark object protruding from the hole in the
sand before her. Eyebrows knitting in confusion, she pulls it out
slowly. It’s black and supple and all too familiar. A pair of
fingerless gloves. Nazirah shakes, watching as something falls out
from inside one of the gloves, small and delicate, glittering in
the dying Eridian sun. Nazirah stares and stares and stares and
still doesn’t understand.

It is Adamek’s amnesty pendant.

Chapter
Eighteen

The train ride from Krush to Rubiyat drags
on, hours wasting away. The night paints the landscape in murky
black, stars hidden behind rolling, navy clouds. The allies share
one cramped train compartment, bribed for at the last moment.
Aldrik, new eye patch secured, snores loudly next to Adamek. Drool
hangs from his chin in thin strings, pooling and puddling along his
dirty collar.

Nazirah sits across from them, uneager to
return. The overwhelming, suffocating crimson dust, the poverty and
prison, the first time she met Adamek … none are memories she
particularly cares to relive. The silver lining is that Nazirah may
get to see Cato – but she has no idea where he’s stationed or how
to contact him.

Nazirah guiltily thinks of Caria’s locket,
now safely tucked inside her bag. Cato should have been the one to
visit Rafu, not her. There is nothing for Nazirah there but bones
and stale memories and bitter emptiness. Cato still has a living,
breathing family. Like Cander said, Cato’s entire life revolves
around Nazirah. And she takes him for granted.

What if she is holding him back?

“Staring won’t make me burst into flames,”
Adamek says, startling Nazirah out of her thoughts. “Unfortunately
for you.”

“I was thinking about everything that
happened today.”

“You mean in the slums?” he asks
pointedly.

“Of course.” Nazirah is thinking about the
slums, how could she not? She still has the burns on her arms and
the grit in her hair as reminders. But she is also thinking about
afterwards. There was a promise made, a pendant surveyed.

“You’re a shit liar, Nation.”

He’s a liar too, only he’s better at it.
Adamek said he forgot to put the pendant on this morning, but he
hadn’t. At some point yesterday, he came into her home, into her
room. He visited the graves of her parents, leaving the chain and
gloves behind.

Why?

The pendant now hangs around Nazirah’s neck,
out of sight, a lingering reminder. For reasons beyond her
comprehension, Nazirah did not leave it in the sand with his
gloves.

Why?

She has no answers for anything,
anymore.

“I’m not lying,” she mumbles. “I just don’t
want to talk about it.”

Adamek interlocks his hands casually behind
his neck. Nazirah sees a brief flash of a small tattoo on his
wrist, one she’s never noticed before. It is four digits, followed
by a strange character. Nazirah doesn’t dare ask him what it means.
She wonders why that number is so important to him, why it is the
password he uses for everything.

“I bet if I were Caal sitting here,” he
says, “You wouldn’t be so quiet.”

Nazirah shoots him an odd look. “But you’re
not.”

“Do you see me complaining?”

“I don’t tell Cato everything,” she
says.

“Clearly,” Adamek replies. “Otherwise, he’d
have tried to kill me several times by now.”

The train slows as it nears the Rubiyat
station, whistling shrilly somewhere ahead. Adamek lazily drums his
fingers on the silver suitcase. Bribing the Eridian fishermen was
apparently easy. Aldrik has said they will certainly need the
Iluxor in order to convince the Red Lords, show them exactly how
much the Medis keep from the territories.

“Morgen?”

“Nation.”

“What are you planning to do after the
war?”

“Are you seriously asking me what I want to
be when I grow up?”

“I guess so,” she says, shrugging.

“Ladies first.”

“You’re avoiding my question,” she says.

“I’m evading your question,” Adamek
corrects. “There’s a difference.”

Nazirah crosses her arms. “Fine,” she huffs.
“I don’t know what I want to do. You?”

“That’s not a real answer.”

“Yes it is!” she argues. “I
don’t have a plan! Intermix have never had many options. Die from
disease or die from starvation … or die from
you
. That’s about it.”

His eyes narrow. “But you will once the
war’s over,” he points out.

“So they say.”

“You don’t think your brother wants intermix
equality?”

“Of course he does!” she says. “But at what
sacrifice?”

“Like I said today, there’s always a
price.”

Nazirah shakes her head. “So many of those
intermix we met today, regardless of if they join us or not, will
die in this war … a war that we’re basically forcing upon them!
It’s sad that they will have no future.”

“Why are you so afraid of being right?”

“Come again?” she asks.

“Everything you said to Cayus was true,”
Adamek tells her. “And now you’re shying away from it. The ones
that do survive … think of the future they will have.”

Nazirah does. She thinks of Cayu, of a world
where he could grow up beyond the slum. A utopia where he would
always have enough to eat, where he and Caria could be best
friends, living together in toothless harmony, infamy. And no one
would care except their mothers.

It seems like a dream.

The train rolls to a stop at the Rubiyat
station and Adamek moves to shake Aldrik awake. Nazirah is entirely
aware that Adamek has successfully evaded her question. “I’m tired
of fighting,” she sighs.

“You can’t be tired already,” he replies
quietly. “The fight hasn’t begun yet.”

#

Rubiyat comes to life at night, after the
scorching sun has set. In the small hours of the morning, thick
women in long, layered skirts walk through caked streets. They
balance empty jugs on their heads and set off for the city wells,
waiting in line for hours to receive their daily ration of water.
Young boys and girls dance languidly on flat rooftops to the sound
of drums and tambourines. The scents of sweat and perfume and sex
pervade the air. Yet everything here plays second fiddle to the
dust.

Aldrik steps off the train platform,
unimpressed and sweating profusely. Thick, pearly white marbles
roll down his face. “From what the Commander told me a few hours
ago,” he says, “we should have a car waiting for us somewhere …
even though we were forced to move our plans up last minute.”

Nazirah’s wide eyes wander over the fray,
absorbing every sight. She spots a familiar face in the crowd,
sporting a closely cropped haircut and several earrings dangling
from each ear. “I’ve got it,” she tells the others, smiling.
“Follow me.” Nazirah grabs her bag and finds Adamek has already
lifted her remaining luggage. From the stiff look on his face,
Nazirah can tell he recognizes the man as well.

Nazirah weaves through the crowd towards the
running stretch limousine with tinted windows. “Good to see you
again, Olag,” Nazirah says in greeting. Olag only grunts at the
three of them, motioning them to get in while he loads the
trunk.

Nazirah scurries inside first. She’s
instantly greeted by the cherubic, joyful face of Solomon Salaahi.
“Oh, Miss Nation!” exclaims Solomon, attempting to bow low even
while sitting down. “It is wonderfully refreshing to see you again,
although you have arrived a bit earlier than anticipated! Early
bird gets the worm!” Solomon’s hands tenderly grasp one of
Nazirah’s as Adamek and Aldrik enter.