Welcome to Bordertown (23 page)

Macys was offering him a pair of … Page was not sure what they were. They smelled faintly of tar or the fuel burned in the Border guards’ lamps. The flat material was wider on one end than the other, and rounded on both, and a thick strip of moss-green fabric and sueded leather sprouted from it and swept back, like the wings of birds. Then he recognized the shape: shoe soles.

“Flip-flops,” said Macys. “Not like they can replace those boots. But you can’t go around barefoot in the city.”

Page took the shoes—yes, they were some kind of shoes—and held them to the soles of his feet.

“Um. Other way,” said Macys shyly. “The part that sticks up goes between your big toe and—oh, here, I’ll show you.” He fitted the shoes on Page’s abraded feet with his own hands.

Page was torn by the host of things he knew he should say, but he could utter only one. “How do you come to have these?”

“It’s what I do.” Macys swung his head like a pointing finger at his pack, now leaning against the wall beside him. “Peddler. I pick up useful-looking stuff and sell it to people who want it.”

“Then … then I should give you payment.”

Macys frowned again, that enchanting expression. “You saved my life, and I’m giving you a pair of six-dollar flip-flops. Excuse me if I think I’m a little ahead on this deal.”

“Then I thank you. May fortune meet you at every turning.”

“De nada.”
Macys squatted before his pack, slid his arms through the straps, and stood. It was a heavy object, but Macys made little of it. “Well. I should, you know. Be going. You okay?”

“Okay?” The word made no more sense on Page’s lips than it had in his ears.

Macys flushed. “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”

“No. No, I will be well. Perhaps … perhaps we shall meet again.”

Macys smiled, and though his teeth showed, there was such brightness in it that it could not be anything but pleasure. “That’d be cool. I mean, I’d like that.” He pointed at Page’s chest. “Maybe I’ll see you there. The ribs are great.”

Page laid his hands over his torso, feeling for the bones beneath.

“OMGWTFBBQ,” Macys said. “On Onion Road in Soho. Can’t miss it.”

The knitted cloth under Page’s fingers reminded him that his shirt was new and strange, and printed. That was what Macys had pointed at. The letters named a place, and the ribs in question were not the sort under Page’s skin. At least, he hoped not. “I shall seek it, then.”

Macys turned, straight-backed, and strode to the end of the short, narrow street. He turned and waved at Page; then he disappeared around the corner.

Page walked carefully (the sandals required a certain knack to travel in, but he mastered at last how to grip with his toes) into the part of the city that lapped around the base of the hill. Bordertown seemed to wear a glamour it had lacked before—or perhaps, a glamour had been lifted. He saw brilliant-colored cloth at windows and in doorways, wild plants rioting in barren spaces between the old structures, buildings devoured by flowering vines until they seemed made not of stone but of leaves and nodding blooms.

A sound like the rolling of an ocean swelled ahead of him. As he drew closer, it sorted itself into elements: conversation, music, the growl of wheels on paving, shouts, and the creaking, clattering, grunting chorus of weighty objects being moved. Then he rounded a building painted with a mural of a beautiful blue-skinned man, and stopped on the shore of a sea of sound and scent and color.

Bright awnings sheltered stalls down the center of the street. Smoke rose from cooking fires beneath the awnings, and the mingled odors of food made a strange and delightful banquet for his nose. A massive structure framed with heavy pillars and floors but almost without walls rose many stories above the street on one side. In its shaded confines merchants hawked clothing, cooking utensils, lumber, and objects Page was certain he could not have named even before his memory was snatched away. Pennants and merchandise hung from the upper floors as if in galleries or display windows.

Across the way another building seemed devoted to trade. So was the building beyond it—indeed, as far as Page could see along the street, people were buying, selling, or trading. And when his gaze finally climbed high enough, he found he stood under an arch of wrought metal of many kinds, twisted to form the words “TRADER’S HEAVEN.”

Did Macys sell or buy here? It seemed the sort of place one might linger and at last see every person one had ever known.

He passed beneath the arch and into the tide of people.

They were of the Blood, and half-Blooded, and human. They exchanged gossip, japes, and laughter as well as currency across bins of vegetables and baskets of eggs. They wore brilliant silk or armored leather or ragged cotton—sometimes all three—and shouldered good-naturedly through the press of bodies unmindful of riches or rank.

A human woman, cooking cakes on a sheet of heated steel, began a song demanding the listener not speak ill of her baby. At her side a woman of the Blood, scooping dough from a bowl and patting it flat with her long white hands, joined a harmony to her melody, passing words between them like a tossed ball. The scent of the frying cakes made his stomach ache and his mouth water.

He could beg for food or the coins to buy it—he saw others doing so—but for all his resolve, he found he had yet too much pride for that. So he found a human who kept a sewing shop, who was pink and sweating and scurrying like a distressed quail, and asked him, “Have you simple work I could do, to earn the price of a meal?”

Page swept dust, scraps of paper, trimmings of cloth, bits of thread, and lost pins and buttons from the floor. He sorted through the sweepings for the pins and buttons and put them in a tin dish before he disposed of the rest in a bin behind the shop. And the shopkeeper smiled and gave him three engraved gold beads, a spool of strong thread, and a packet of vivid red spice he called paprika.

Page offered his pay at the market stall that smelled strangest and most exciting. The half-Blood man who accepted it looked a
little like Macys, with his fine dark skin and black hair. He took the thread and the spice and returned the beads to Page.

Page was certain, for all his lack of past, that he had never had anything like a “roti,” nor anything as good. The filling built a fire on his tongue, and the wrapping bread cooled it, and when he had eaten the last of it he felt as if he were dancing and laughing, as if the food had become an engine of joy inside his belly.

“Young sir!” an urgent voice called from behind him, and a white hand dropped on his shoulder.

Page sprang up—the wobbling marketplace stool clattered to the pavement—and spun, half-crouched, to face a threat. To be touched without invitation—yet he had seen others touch and be touched here in the market, and none thought ill of it.

The man behind him was of the Blood, as was the one a step behind him. They were dressed richly, soberly, their long jackets plainly tailored in dark, dull shades and fine stuffs.

In their faces and bodies, Page read uncertainty and fear. He’d seen too much fear of late, and was coming to hate it. Was he the cause of it?

“I beg pardon, young sir,” said the man who’d touched him. He was older than Page, perhaps older than the man with the ferret he had seen in the street. “I cannot—I would address you properly, but the Silencing prohibits me, it would seem. We had not meant to leave you exiled for so long.”

“We have searched this benighted place for hours,” said his long-faced companion, disapproval laid as a guise over his fear. “Were you not to take a residence near the Gate and await word that the quarrel was mended?”

Page recognized neither of them. “Strife was the cause of my journey here?”

The two men shared a look between them that seemed to give
them no comfort. “Did you not understand, young sir?” asked the elder.

“Nor care?” added the disapproving man. “Strife is your familiar in all things. Why should it trouble you now?” Then his eyes grew wide, and he pressed his fist against his thin lips. “Your pardon, young sir,” he whispered, bowing his head. “My words were too hot and my wits too cold.”

Did he delight in strife, that boy he’d been beyond the Gate? But Page had mastered his anger at the two who’d stolen from him and taunted him. “My memories were taken from me when I passed out of the Realm. I know you not.”

He watched as horror slid across the men’s features, mixing with fear like two colors of paint.

“Young sir—” the older one began, and his face was that of a man approaching a wild animal.

“This place is changeable and unchancy by nature,” the one who had chided Page spat out. “But to work such a woe as that—Came you through the Gate, as you were directed?”

“Was I so directed? Aye, I passed through, and a fine trick it played me. It bore me no ill will, I’d venture.” Page smiled. They seemed as little used to confusion as he had been at daybreak.

The chider wrung his hands. “Ill fortune matched to folly! Perhaps, had you not broken the journey to drink and wench and brawl—”

“Mirasal,” snapped the older man, his voice sharp with warning.

“Oh, this was a madman’s venture all along!” the one named Mirasal wailed.

“Enough.”

Mirasal closed his lips and frowned at the cracked paving beneath his feet.

“We will take you home,” said the older man to Page, like one used to leading. “The crossing will give back what it stole. And if not, there are those who can heal your mind and return you to yourself. Young sir, your father and your kin wait for your return, now that all is settled.”

Had he a father? And kin? Were they proud? Did they take what they pleased, offer haughty words in return? Were they quick to anger and offense? Had they modeled for the boy he’d been when he passed through the Gate, or was that boy of his making alone?

If he had made that boy, he could unmake him.

“Come, young sir,” the older man bid him firmly. “Let us hope the hours of the Uncertain Lands have passed much as the Realm’s do, this once. You will be home and in your proper place by fall of night.”

“No,” said Page. “I thank you, but no.”

The older man stood with mouth agape, but without words.

“I am home. Though I look like the man you seek, I am not he. I was born in this city, today, in a witch’s garden and a street in shadow. My name is Page.”

They argued, coaxed, demanded, but in the end, they could do nothing but admit to failure and return whence they had come.

*   *   *

Page could not retrace his steps from the market, aimless as they had been. He had to begin from Elfhaeme Gate. The guards on duty were not the two who had brought him kicking into the world.

At last he found the embankment, and the many-colored house at its top. He followed the street to the front steps, then the flags to the front door. It was painted blue as the afternoon sky. Beside it was a copper bell, green with age, with a bright
braided cord tied to its clapper. He pulled the cord and made the bell shout.

She swung the door wide (no fear in her pale, cheerful face) and stood framed in it, head cocked like a listening sparrow. “Oh!” she said at last. “Maybe-Blank Page!”

“I have come to thank you, Lady Witch, for your great service.” He drew the bouquet from behind his back and offered it with a good bow. The flowers, he thought, were the right ones: no careful palette, but a frenzy of blooms, blue, magenta, red, orange, yellow, pink, white, purple.

She turned her eyes upward, a gesture she must have learned from humans. What did it mean? “My name’s Camphire. Not a witch. Painter. Really, really, really.”

Page tried to contain his laughter, but it slipped out the corners of his mouth and bent them. “No, Lady. I have had proof of your powers. All passed as your curse foretold. I learned who I am from the next person I met.” He stretched his arm, until the flowers were almost in her hands. “And from you. And for that, I shall never fail in gratitude, or in any service you may ask.”

She took the flowers, peered down into their vivid wilderness as into a puzzle she meant to solve. She sniffed at one and smiled wide, showing many teeth, and he knew it was a gesture of delight. “All’s well that doesn’t end with somebody falling off a building, I always say.”

He wondered what events would give her cause to say so with any frequency, but he feared it would be rude to ask. “Should you require a strong arm and a weak wit, send word to Page, and I shall serve happily according to my name.”

The look she cast him across the bright blooms was suddenly clear and piercing. “You
were
a blank page. But now you’re not.
Could be a good story you’ve got there.” As quickly as it came, the acuteness in her face was gone; her smile was wide and vague. “Thank you, Page. Have a swell life.”

“I shall endeavor,” he said. She closed the door.

Overhead the stars were appearing. Page wondered if somewhere in this city full of new magic there was a place he might go to dance.