“Just finish your story,” Morrow said. “So I can tell mine.”
“The tithe is simple. We offer food to the Muties and leave it in a certain spot, once a month.”
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I feared. In the enclave, we gave them our dead to appease them, so they took less interest in trying to breach our barricades. A similar practice in Otterburn would be smart and practical, though I imagined most Topsiders would find the idea repugnant. As I glanced around, the rest of my men looked quietly horrified, so I didn’t volunteer that information.
“Exactly what’re we talking about, here?” Tully spoke for the first time.
The man cleared his throat. “Anybody who dies naturally, they receive the bodies.”
“And if there are no deaths?” I asked.
Things were better on the surface, so I imagined that in good times, people probably didn’t pass on that often. And the Freaks wouldn’t understand failure to honor the agreed-upon terms. I was shocked to hear they had proposed any kind of deal at all, instead of mindlessly attacking. That development was … beyond worrisome.
The lout hunched his shoulders. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said, low. “But to pay the tithe, we draw lots. And the loser goes out to the meeting place.”
“That sounds an awful lot like human sacrifice,” Spence snapped.
The man flattened big hands on the counter, both angry and defensive. “We don’t kill anybody.”
Thornton leaned in. “The Muties do that for you. How long do you reckon you can maintain your population, paying in that coin?”
“It’s not a permanent solution, and you don’t understand how frightened everybody was after the attacks accelerated, how tired we were of hiding. You never knew when the Muties would strike or who would get to shelter. At least this way the deaths are predictable and you get a chance to say good-bye.”
It was horrible, but true. That didn’t mean I could see myself accepting such a deal.
The counterman went on, “And that’s why I won’t let you speak your piece in here. Nobody wants to anger the Muties by encouraging folk who mean to kill them.”
“Then I’ll honor my part of the bargain,” Morrow said. “If you’ll keep yours.”
“Certainly,” the man replied.
He was obviously relieved as we put a couple of tables together, then Morrow leapt up on one. At first the Otterburn men yelled at him to get down, stop making a clown of himself, but he played a few bars on his pipe, and they took an interest. The tale that followed was wild and improbable—about a boy wizard who lived in a cupboard, then a giant came to fetch him to a magical school, thus commencing a bunch of adventures. We were all hanging on Morrow’s words when he wrapped up:
“And that’s the end … for now.”
To my astonishment, I had cold soup and a lukewarm drink before me. If I had anything of value, I’d pay him to keep talking. Sadly I didn’t and Morrow must be parched. I ate my meal quickly, sad for the folks of Otterburn and sorry for myself. There were no warriors here, so I’d failed on our first leg of the journey. I couldn’t defeat the horde without more men.
Then I put such self-pity aside because I did have a small troop and I had to provide for them. So I signaled the counterman and asked him, “Sir, if I promise to be gone in the morning, would you consent to let us bunk on the floor by the fire? It would be nice to pass the night under a warm roof before we go back into the wild.”
He looked undecided, then Morrow pointed out, “I marked how many pitchers of beer you sold while I was sharing that tale.”
But the man wore a shrewd look. “That was part of our old arrangement, but I’ve a mind to offer you another if you’re interested.”
“Not the same sort you gave the Muties, I hope,” Thornton muttered.
I shot him a quelling glance. “I’m amenable to bargaining.”
“Then you lot clean the common room after I close up, then you can move the tables and bed down. Sound fair? I sleep upstairs, mind, and I’ll count all the jugs and bottles before I retire. If there’s even a drop missing in the morn, there will be trouble.”
“Fine.” I had no interest in more of his warm beer, which smelled like piss to me.
A few hours later, we were mopping as a unit. That wasn’t the kind of action I had in mind when I set out, but maybe the next town would bring better luck.
Of a certainty, it couldn’t get worse.
Failure
It was always a mistake to tempt fate with thoughts like that.
Tegan had explained the idea of fate, a concept passed on by her parents. She knew lots of odd things. And I shouldn’t have thought what I did, because the situation could always deteriorate. In the next month, we visited Appleton and Lorraine. The former was a village similar to Salvation, though they had more modern amenities; I could see why Longshot had enjoyed the trade runs. In both towns, I used his name to open doors, and folks were sad to hear he’d passed on, more so to learn of Salvation’s fate. Those facts were enough to get them to let me say my piece.
But I’d come to recognize the light in a man’s eyes before he laughed in derision. When it was forty or more, the sound could be demoralizing. They took one look at my ragged group, listened to my idea, then fell to uproarious chuckles. And those were the nice ones. A few men threw food.
Today, we stood on the outskirts of Gaspard. We had made a complete circuit, and now we stood on the coast. It had been so long since I saw the great water that rather than continue on toward the town I saw in the distance, I paused on the rocky beach to marvel. The men came up beside me, weary and travel stained. I had pushed them hard for little gain, but so far, nobody had complained. I had no illusion that they’d continue to follow me, however, if we kept wandering without progress.
“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Thornton said.
I gazed out over those blue-gray waters, the waves rocking toward shore. “It’s worth seeing.” I turned to Morrow. “Is this going in your story?”
“It might,” he answered.
Gaspard was built on a jut of land that reached out over the water. It seemed foolhardy. What if a great wave drowned them all? But with Freaks roaming, maybe the sea was the least of their worries. To the front, they had the ocean as a bastion and at the back, they had chipped a towering wall out of the rock and mortared it. It stood higher than any defense I’d ever seen, impressive enough to deter fire and claws, any attack the Freaks could devise. There was only a narrow pass covered by a metal gate. The town had a forbidding air, but it was a stronghold.
The world is bigger than I would’ve believed, down below.
If anyone had told me there were so many people living Topside, I would have laughed. Everyone knew the world above was ruined, uninhabitable. It was hard seeing a constant reminder of how misinformed my people had been. These towns weren’t huge like Gotham, but each held hundreds of people, all living according to different rules. Now I understood how foolish my proclamation to Colonel Park must have seemed. I’d simply go unite everyone because it needed to be done? No wonder she laughed—and people kept doing so.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Stalker said.
I turned to him. “What’s that?”
“What’s the purpose of the tithe? It’s not like one person is enough to feed a large number of Muties, so it can’t be about food.”
Ah. So he was still thinking about Otterburn. I had to admit, I was puzzled too.
“It’s symbolic,” Morrow said.
“Explain.” Fade looked curious.
The storyteller’s face gained a grim aspect. “It means the Muties are letting those people live on sufferance. They’re the victors, the overlords, and the battle hasn’t even been joined.”