فصل 25

25 Sunlight and Shadow

Though helping Anastasia escape Amazonia was fraught with strife, that strife had receded to the horizon behind the Spence—which was now, Jerico mused, no longer a salvage ship, but a rescue vessel.

The seas were easy as Amazonia faded behind them, and the sun rose before them. By nine o’clock all signs of land were gone, and the bright morning sky was dotted with occasional puffs of meandering clouds. Jeri would have much preferred a low cloud cover today—or even better, a soup-thick fog—for if those North Merican scythes figured out that Anastasia was traveling by sea, the Spence could be targeted and sunk.

“Rest assured they won’t come after you,” Possuelo had told Jeri. “I made sure they intercepted a ‘secret’ communiqué I sent, and they took the bait. As far as the North Mericans know, Anastasia is weaving a circuitous route south by train all the way to the Land of Fire, where the region’s High Blade is supposed to have offered her sanctuary. And to make the story stick, we’re leaving glaring traces of her DNA for them to find along the way. It will be days before they realize it’s a wild-goose chase!” It was clever enough. Northern scythes saw Amazonians as too simple to concoct such a ploy, and the Land of Fire, Jeri knew, would be suitably uncooperative with the North Mericans. The scythes down there were obstreperous to an extreme.

At full speed, they would reach safe harbor in just under three days.

From the bridge, Jeri could see the turquoise figure of Scythe Anastasia at the starboard rail, looking out over the sea. She was not supposed to be alone—Possuelo had made that clear—and perhaps his paranoia was justified, considering that he had been betrayed by one of his own. Jeri trusted the crew of the Spence implicitly; they had grown fiercely loyal to their captain. Even so, it was always wise to take precautions.

The only reason Anastasia would be alone would be if she ordered the officer assigned to her out of her presence. The command of a scythe overruled the orders of a captain. Sure enough, Jeri saw the officer one deck up, keeping a tight eye on her from a distance. It seemed that the only way to effectively guard the willful scythe was to do it personally.

“She’s going to be a handful,” Chief Wharton said.

“To be sure,” said Jeri. “But a handful of what, we don’t know.”

“Misery?” suggested the chief.

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” Then Jeri left the bridge to join her at the rail.

She wasn’t looking down at the water. She wasn’t looking at the horizon, either. It was as if she was gazing at something that wasn’t there.

“Are you contemplating a leap?” Jeri asked, breaking what felt like a considerable layer of ice. “Should I be worried?” Anastasia glanced at Jeri, then returned her gaze to the sea. “I got tired of pacing down below,” she said. “I thought being on deck might calm me down. Have you heard from Possuelo?” “I have.”

“What does he say about Rowan?”

Jeri took a moment before responding. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.” “Then he’s been captured,” Anastasia said, and pounded the rail in frustration. “I’m sailing to freedom, and he’s been captured.” Jeri half expected her to order the ship to turn around and go back for him. If she did, they’d have to oblige, for she was a scythe. But she didn’t. She was wise enough to know that it would only make matters worse.

“I cannot, for the life of me, understand your devotion to Scythe Lucifer,” Jeri dared to say.

“You know nothing about it.”

“I know more than you think. I was there with Possuelo when we opened the vault. I saw you in each other’s arms. It was the kind of intimacy not even death could hide.” Anastasia averted her gaze. “We shed our clothes so the cold would kill us before we suffocated.” Jeri smiled. “I suspect that is only a half-truth.”

She turned and considered Jeri for a long moment, then changed the subject. “Jerico—that’s an unusual name. I seem to recall a mortal-age story involving a wall coming down. Are you a collapser of walls?” “You could say I find things in the ruins of walls that have already fallen,” Jeri told her. “Honestly, though, it’s a family name that has no bearing on the story of Jericho. But if you find it off-putting, you can call me Jeri. Everyone does.” “Okay. And what are your pronouns, Jeri?”

Jeri found it refreshing that she asked so directly. There were still people who were too awkward to ask—as if Jeri was being accidentally ambiguous, and not intentionally so.

“He, she, they, zhey—pronouns are tiresome and lazy things,” Jeri said. “I’d much rather call a person by name. But to answer your deeper question, I’m both male and female. It comes with being Madagascan.” Anastasia nodded knowingly. “You must find us binary people strange and confusing.” “I did when I was younger. I never met someone born to a single gender until I was well into my teens. But I’ve come to accept, and even appreciate, your quirky rigidity.” “So, you see yourself as both—but I imagine there must be times when you’re more one than another.” Not only direct, but insightful, too, Jeri thought, liking this resurrected scythe more and more. She asks the right questions.

“You could say it’s dictated by the heavens,” Jeri told her. “When skies are clear, I choose to be a woman. When they are not, I am a man.” Jeri turned to take in the sunlight shimmering on the surface of the sea. It was marked by the shadows of the occasional cloud, but right now the ship did not fall beneath one of those shadows. “At this moment in time, I am a woman.” “I see,” she said, without the judgment that some might show. “My father—who’s a scholar of the mortal age—said that the sun is almost always seen as masculine in mythology, and of course there’s the man in the moon. Choosing to be feminine in their light creates a balance. There’s a natural yin and yang to it.” “And to you as well,” Jeri said. “After all, turquoise is symbolically the color of balance.” Anastasia smiled. “I didn’t know that. I chose it because it’s the color my brother wanted me to be.” An inner shadow seemed to cross her face. A pang at the thought of her brother. Jeri decided it was too personal a heartache to delve into, and allowed her privacy on the matter.

“Does it bother you,” she asked, “to always be at the mercy of the weather? I would think that someone like you would want to be subservient to as few things as possible. Besides, it must be awfully inconvenient on partially cloudy days like this.” As if on cue, the sun slipped behind a small cloud, then out again. Jeri laughed. “Yes, it can be inconvenient, but I’ve gotten used to it—embraced it, even. That unpredictability has become part of who I am.” “I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to have been born in the Madagascan region,” Anastasia said. “Not that I’m really interested in being a man—but I wonder what it would have been like to explore both sides when I was too young to know the difference.” “That’s the whole point of it,” Jeri told her. “And the reason why so many people go to Madagascar as a place to raise their children.” Anastasia considered it a few moments more. “I suppose, if I divided my time between land and sea as you do, I might choose to be one way on land, and another at sea. That way my gender wouldn’t be at the mercy of the winds.” “Well, I would enjoy your company either way.”

“Hmmm,” Anastasia said coyly. “Flirting with me in sunlight. It makes me wonder if you’d also do that in a storm.” “One of the benefits of being Madagascan is that we see people as people. When it comes to attraction, gender is never part of the equation.” Then Jeri looked up as the light dimmed slightly. “You see? The sun has passed behind a cloud again, and nothing has changed.” Then Anastasia stepped back from the railing, a gentle smirk still on her face. “I think I’ve had enough of both sunlight and shadows for now. Good day, Captain.” Then she turned to go below, her robe fluttering behind her like a loose sail in a gentle breeze.