Natural Ordermage

LX

The evening slop was worse than usual, and even Blacktop had to pause after scooping out the first half of it with his bread and swallowing each mouthful convulsively. He followed each with a small swallow of the bitter beer. He knew he’d want several swallows after eating to rinse away the rancid taste.

“Rather eat ground steel’n this shit,” muttered Brick from where he sat beside Blacktop. “Or slag.”

“Or coal,” murmured someone else.

“Slag would cut your guts to pieces.” Absently, Blacktop traced out the word steel in the dust of the tabletop, then the word copper. No matter how often the tables were wiped, there was always dust, either from the furnaces or the ovens or from something else. He frowned. There was something that linked the two. Pen nibs-they were copper-tipped, but how did he know that? He must have seen one. But what had he done that he would know that?

Abruptly, an image formed in his mind-one of a red-haired girl handing him a pouch that held pen nibs. He could not see them, but he knew that was what the pouch had held, and she had said, “Here they are.” She had said more, but he could not remember what her words might have been.

“What’s that?” asked the loader across the table.

“Nothing,” replied Blacktop. “Just designs.”

“They were words,” said Brick from beside Blacktop. “I don’t know ’em, but I know words when I see ’em.” His voice rose slightly-just enough for two of the guard patrollers to move toward the table.

“He was just drawing in the dust,” muttered the loader.

“How would you know, Flats?” demanded Brick.

Without another word, Flats rose and carried his bowl and cup to the next table, reseating himself with his back to Brick and Blacktop.

The two guards halted, then half turned, surveying the cookhouse for signs of other unrest. Both had their hands on the hilts of their falchionas as their eyes passed over each and every one of the loaders, breakers, and sloggers.

From under a lowered brow, Blacktop watched the two guards. He didn’t want any trouble with the guards. He’d seen what happened when a loader went against the overseers or guards.

“They won’t bother us none, so long as we’re quiet,” Brick said in a low voice. “Never have, anyways.”

Blacktop finished the dinner slop without saying anything. The guards moved slowly until they were out of sight behind him. He wasn’t about to look back because that would draw their attention.

Brick leaned closer to Blacktop. “They were words, weren’t they?”

Blacktop nodded, just slightly.

“Can you write my name?”

Blacktop didn’t want to, not at all, but without Brick’s help he would have been a slogger. He leaned closer to the older loader, then wrote Brick in smaller letters in the small area of dust beside the older loader’s tin cup.

“What are you doing there?” The words came from an overseer who strode toward the table, followed by the two guards Blacktop had lost sight of.

“Writing…” Blacktop admitted.

“You know your letters?”

“I seem to know a few, ser.”

“Overseer, Blacktop.”

“I seem to, overseer.”

The overseer paused. “Don’t do it anymore.”

“Yes, overseer.”

“You do it anymore, and you’ll answer to more than me, Blacktop.”

“Yes, overseer.”

The mumbles that ran around the tables were so low that Blacktop could not make them out, but he had the feeling that most of the loaders were less than pleased at the attention he had brought to them. Just from a few words?

He finished the last sip of the beer, then rose, with a few quick words to Brick. “See you later.” With his tin dish and cup in hand, he headed for the wash racks, where he left both. Then he turned and stepped out through the doorway and took the foot-packed walk to the loaders’ bunkhouse. Overhead, the low gray clouds were tinged with a sullen red glow from the ovens and furnaces.

Later, as Blacktop lay on his straw pallet, looking up at the underside of the cracked roof tiles, he couldn’t help but ask himself why the overseers were against his writing simple words in the table dust? It didn’t make much sense, because he hadn’t been writing anything, and whatever he’d written would soon be gone. Besides, Blacktop hadn’t run across anyone else among the loaders and breakers who could read single words, let alone more.

What was it about words? But then, how did he know about them? It was as though his hands and fingers remembered more than his head, but he had to admit he was beginning to remember images. Still, why had he lost his memories, and why couldn’t he remember more? And who had the redheaded girl been? Why had he remembered her when her face had looked so disinterested and as if she couldn’t have cared less?

He looked at the tiles above, trying to find answers to those questions…and to others he could scarcely frame, questions lost in the fuzziness of a forgetfulness whose source he also could not remember. And beneath it all, he knew, was rage, a seething red force whose cause was also lost.