Of Dreams and Rust (2 page)

“This scar looks a little better. Faded,” I say as I sink to my knees beside him.

“I don't care what it looks like. I only care whether my leg is functional.”

If that were truly the case, I don't think he would be trembling, but I don't call attention to it. I am careful with him. I always have been. Not because I am afraid he will lash out; he has never hurt me, and I think he would die from the pain of it if he did. No, I am more concerned with hurting him. If I cajole, if I hold back, if I craft my words just so, it makes it easier for Bo to stay with me, to stay himself. “Of course. I only meant that it looked stronger.”

He laughs, just a hiss of breath from his nose. “I see right through you.”

I pour a bit of rose hip oil into my palm and rub my hands together. “How so?”

“Do you really think I am so naive, Wen? You don't have to always say what I want to hear.”

“I know.”

He turns his head and looks at me. “Do you?” His human hand reaches across his body and touches mine. “How can I be your friend if you are always protecting me?”

I let him take my hand. I let him stroke my fingers. It feels both comforting and dangerous. “You always protect me. Why can't I do the same?”

His grip tightens. “Because it's not the same. I would protect you from anything that threatened you. Any man, any creature, any machine. And you, you protect me from . . . you, I suppose.” He lets me go and then clenches his fist so hard his knuckles go pale. His metal fingers click, startling me. “It's the last thing I want to be protected from.”

“That's not fair.” I lay my warm palms on his bare thigh, over the thick, ropy scar. Bo's chest stills and his eyes close. “You know me better than anyone does.”

He shakes his head. “Only the parts you allow me to see.”

I press down a swell of frustration and begin to massage his leg, long downward strokes toward his knee and then upward to midthigh, as my father taught me. It will keep the muscles supple, the blood flowing, the skin from growing taut and angry. I am gentle at first, cautious. I watch my hands moving over his skin. I've memorized every flaw. It makes the perfect parts that much more exquisite, but as soon as that thought surfaces, I try to drown it. It would be utterly scandalous for me to be alone with a man, touching him like this with no one to supervise, but my father trusts us both. Bo is a patient right now, nothing more.

It is impossible to think of him as nothing more. But so is thinking of him any other way.

I remind myself to be like my father, to think like my father, and my movements harden. My hands become instruments, my thoughts technical . . . but with shamefully ragged edges. Bo clutches at his blanket with both hands. His face glitters with pinpoint beads of sweat. I'm hurting him, but Father said it would hurt if I did it right. What he didn't say: how my stomach would knot, how my eyes would burn, how my precision would be worn away by the desire to smooth back Bo's damp hair and kiss his forehead.

“You could take off your mask,” I tell him after a few minutes. It must be uncomfortable when he sweats like this.

“No,” he says in a choked voice. “I don't want to.”

“I see only the parts you allow me to see,” I say, a warped echo, an accusation that I for once do not hold back.

“How can you possibly think it's the same?” he whispers. “You hide beauty from me. The only thing I hide from you is ugliness.” A tear suddenly slips free from the corner of his tightly closed eye, and he swipes it away as his face twists with anger and humiliation. I bow my head because my own tears are about to betray me as well.

Bo sits up abruptly. “I've had enough.”

He says it so sharply that I freeze. For a moment there is only silence and stillness, but then he tips my chin up with his callused fingertips. I wonder if my eyes are red like his, if his chest is as tight as mine. His mouth opens, but his words are locked inside him. We stare at each other. I don't understand why this happens, why we make each other fall apart, why it can't be simple and easy. But as I look into Bo's face, half handsome and half monster, the space between us fills with all the things we do not say. The things we'll probably never say.

His hand falls away from me, landing in his lap like a dead weight. “I'll be out in a moment.” His voice is rough, uneven.

I move quickly, eager to give him the privacy he needs so badly right now. While he gets dressed, I set a bun on a plate for him and start a pot of water heating on a small burner he keeps on his worktable. Once the coil flares red hot, I fill a large teapot with tea leaves and set out the strainer. “Someone saw you two nights ago,” I say, longing to steer our conversation toward calmer waters, to occupy Bo's mind with the now, the real, the things he can control.

“Where?” he calls from behind the partition.

“Have you been to the construction site?”

His metal fingers click together, driven by the jolts from muscles in his shoulder, and he steps into the open, fully clothed once more. “I needed some tools.”

“One of the foremen was still there. He told his crew to be on the lookout for you. One of them was injured by a beam yesterday and told us the story while we were splinting his arm. Some think you were just a thief, but others believe the foreman saw the Ghost.”

Bo snorts. “ ‘Just a thief.' ” He comes over to stand next to me as I prepare our tea.

“It's safer for everyone if that's what they believe,” I remind him.

“I'll be more careful,” he mumbles. “I didn't expect anyone to be there so late.”

“They have received orders to get the slaughterhouse running earlier.”

His eye bores into mine. “You know why, don't you?”

“Feasting season, of course.” My heart skips.

“No, because they want to make sure they have rations for our soldiers on top of the demand for meat during the feasting season. Gochan One supplied much of the beef for the central part of Itanya, and with the need to feed an army moving west, it is indispensable.”

“We are not at war.” It is a silly thing to say and I know it. We have been on the cusp of war for months. The western province of Yilat is churning with rebellion and revolution, and the sentiment is slowly creeping east. Lost in thoughts of men with guns, I reach for the pot and whimper as my fingers skim over the burner.

Bo's machine hand moves quickly, like reflex. It snatches the pot away from me. “Let me do this. I never get burned.” He flashes a grin that fades instantly. His impervious metal fingers pour the water over the little pile of tea leaves, then place the lid on the ceramic teapot. “You may be worrying over nothing, Wen.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “He may already be dead.”

My throat aches, like he's closed those metal fingers around the stalk of my neck. “Melik is alive,” I whisper. Right before he walked away from me to return to the west with his younger brother, Sinan, and all the men from his village, he promised me that I had not seen him for the last time. I believed him.

Bo rolls his eye. “You can't know that. It's been a year of fighting and bombing and turmoil in Yilat. The Noor are staking their claim on the west. And this time they have united with the lower-class Itanyai in that province.” He slaps two teacups down and pours the bitter brew. “They are better equipped and organized than they have ever been. They want their own autonomous region.” He fumbles with the strainer as he removes it from his cup, leaving a spray of sodden tea leaves across his meticulously neat worktable. “Don't tell me you believe your red Noor would sit idly by while his brethren fought for such a ridiculous goal. He was always full of similarly romantic, unrealistic sentiments. It very well could have gotten him killed, just like it almost did when he was here.”

“What nearly got him killed when he was here was the irrational hatred of the Noor.” And the fact that Bo framed him, but I don't mention that. I never mention that, or how often I've had to forgive Bo for it, because every time I think of it, it leaves me hot with anger.

It's one of the things I hide from him. I doubt he would find it beautiful.

Bo turns his back on me and carries our cups to the table, where he sits down. “He was agitating for more rights for the workers. It made him an easy target.” He puts my cup in its usual place and waits for me to join him.

I use my cloth to wipe his work surface. “You didn't know him, Bo.” He won't even call Melik by his name.

“I watched him like I did everyone else.” He grimaces. “More, even.”

I stare at the floor. “I cannot think of him dead. No more than I could think of you that way.”

“Do not compare us.” Now even his voice is made of steel. “I am here. He is gone. Long. Gone.”

To continue this conversation would be like stepping into one of his traps. I tuck my hands into the pockets of my skirt. “I need to go help my father. I will see you tomorrow morning.”

Bo is silent as I walk past my steaming teacup and out of his chamber, as I stride through the tunnel toward the stairs. But just before I reach the door that opens to the world above, I hear a low curse followed by the sharp slam of metal onto metal.

I do not go back to see if he is all right.

Chapter

I CLIMB THE stairs and feel the vibrations of Gochan Two coming to life. By the time I exit the stairwell at the ground floor, the beast is awake, giving birth to war machines. The hiss of steam, the crash of the enormous metal presses, the whine of engines, the shouted orders from the foremen, all of it echoes through the hallway as I walk to the clinic. The sweat prickles on my upper lip and at my temples. When the factory floor is alive, the temperature inside Gochan Two soars. Outside the season of cold is beginning, but within these walls we cook year-round.

I round a corner and nearly collide with Boss Inyie, a broad-shouldered, round-bellied man with a scrubby mustache. He is still wearing his hat and is flushed from the cool air outside. His secretary, Sondi, a tall, bespectacled woman with streaks of gray in her hair, puts her arm out to protect him from my clumsiness. “. . . called a few minutes ago, Boss,” she is saying. “I told him you would ring him back, but he said he would wait.”

Boss Inyie hands her his hat. He doesn't even look at me. “It's about time,” he says as he strides into his office. “Cancel my morning appointments.”

Sondi looks over the rims of her glasses at me. “Shouldn't you be in the clinic?”

I am about to reply when I hear the word “Noor” spit from Boss Inyie's mouth like a curse. The door to his inner office slams. I tear my gaze from his doorway to look up at Sondi. “I-I—yes. Yes, I should.”

Her eyes narrow. “I've heard about your sympathies. Onya told me all about them.”

Onya, one of the secretaries from Gochan One who is now employed here, has not forgotten how I paid the Noor's debts last year. I wish she had. “Forgive me, Ms. Sondi, but Dr. Yixa is expecting me.”

She lets out a dry chuckle. “Tell him to stay away from the liquor tonight. He needs to be at his best.”

My brow furrows at her gleefully conspiratorial tone. “Any particular reason?”

Her eyes widen, full of false innocence. “Only that I am looking after the welfare of our hardworking Itanyai men, dear. Now, as you said, the doctor is expecting you.”

I keep my head down and rush past her, eager to be back at the clinic. Generally, people at Gochan Two have been kind to me, either because they don't know that I feel differently about the Noor than most around here, or because they, too, recognize the Noor as something other than barbarians. I don't know which, because it is not something I talk about. My father told me to be absolutely silent about it, about Melik, about my time at Gochan One. We have so many secrets to keep.

Perhaps Sondi does too. I spend my walk to the rear of the factory pondering her words and the fact that Boss Inyie was talking about the Noor during his urgent phone call. When I enter the clinic, Dr. Yixa is already in his examination room with a patient. His rumbling voice easily penetrates the flimsy walls as he tells the worker that he can bind the back injury so he can return to the factory floor, but what the worker really needs is a week of bed rest. The injured man begs Dr. Yixa to bind it tightly and asks for opium.