Over the course of the next few days, Esther learned exactly how three women on horseback could be considered a package.
She watched them across the fire as she helped Cye cut up jerky for stew. Over the fire, a pot of beans and water and dried tomatoes was just starting to bubble, and the steam from the stew combined with the smoke from the fire to haze the evening air. It put the three women into soft focus, reminding Esther of the Why We Fight reels that always played before Approved films—but these three women weren’t young soldiers fighting on foreign soil for the prosperity of the United States.
They were something else entirely.
Genevieve, Trace, and Amity. They were together, together-together. A real triad. It was an arrangement Esther had never seen in real life before. She tried to ask Cye questions about it, but they only replied with an impatience that was growing familiar. Why do you think you’ve never seen that before? You only ever read about it in stories, right? Why do you think they had to hide in the supply wagon when we rode through the Sedona checkpoint? Why do you think that is?
Cye only got impatient about questions like those—questions that revealed how many things Esther had only ever read about in stories.
Esther had never thought of herself as sheltered before. There was no part of Valor, Arizona, she hadn’t walked through. She’d seen poverty and violence. She knew about war and pain and grief. Those last two, she’d known about long before Beatriz hanged—everyone did. Everyone knew about those, and about hunger, and about fear. The country was at war, seemed always to have been at war, and there wasn’t a soul in Valor who hadn’t lost a loved one, who hadn’t gone hungry on reduced rations so the troops could eat. There wasn’t a soul in the entire country, as far as Esther could figure, who hadn’t at some point eaten an onion for dinner when the meat ran out. Who hadn’t fed their babies watery formula, who hadn’t learned to make shoes out of worn-down tire rubber.
Who hadn’t watched a neighbor hang for “crimes against the State”—an accusation that could mean anything from ration-sharing to assassination to possession of the wrong pamphlet.
But the longer Esther talked to Cye, the more she realized that the list of things she’d never seen before stretched longer than the shadows cast by the desert sun. Not just things she’d never seen—things she’d never known possible.
Things like Bet and Leda huddling under the same blanket next to the fire, a map spread across both of their laps, neither of them looking nervously around to make sure no one saw when their hands touched. Things like Cye’s eyes dancing as they spun tales about switching to trousers halfway through a hoedown to spin the half of the room they’d missed while they were wearing a dress. Things like Genevieve and Amity and Trace hiding in the false bottom of the supply wagon as a jovial sheriff with a black-eyed Susan on each hip poked around for contraband.
Things like those same three women fearlessly laughing over a shared flask and talking about the goat farm they wanted to start up in Provo.
Well, no. Genevieve and Trace laughed. Amity didn’t. Esther thought at first that she was imagining things, but she started watching Amity closer and found that it was true. Amity’s dark curls never bounced with laughter; her warm brown cat-eyes didn’t glint once with quiet amusement. She covered her mouth when other people laughed, just the same way anyone else might if they were laughing along, but her face remained still and watchful.
But she didn’t seem unhappy. None of them did, even in the moments when they were focused and working, even in the moments when they were angry with each other. Under everything they did, there was a current of satisfaction.
These were people who were happy with themselves. They liked themselves, not in spite of who they were but because of who they were. It didn’t make sense, not hardly. That kind of joy shouldn’t have been an option for women like these ones. It was as lush as a table laid to creaking with ripe fruit and crackle-skinned meat and whole-fat butter. It was a temptation. It was a promise. It was impossible.
She wanted that satisfaction. She wanted it for herself, wanted it like a half-starved alley-rat watching that table through a window on a bellyaching night. She didn’t know how to get it—but she had a feeling that if she stuck with the Librarians for long enough, she might be able to figure it out. How to feast instead of starving.
How to like the person who she was instead of fighting it.
“Stop staring,” Cye hissed, jabbing Esther in the ribs with their elbow. “Are you finished with that?”
Esther grimaced and handed over the jerky she’d chopped. Cye examined it before dropping it into the stewpot. A few seconds later, the rich smell of the salt and spices the meat had been cured in rose into the air along with the steam from the steadily-boiling beans.
“You did a fine job on that,” Cye said, passing Esther a damp rag to clean off her cooking knife. Esther tried to take the rag without letting her fingers touch Cye’s. She saw Cye notice the careful way she took the cloth, and before she could flinch away, Cye’s hand had closed over hers, rough-skinned and strong. They gave her knuckles a squeeze before letting go, and the ghost of smile lifted the corners of their mouth. “Cut it up evener than I did.”
Esther’s breath was stuck somewhere south of her tongue. She looked away sharp, pulling her hand away from Cye’s, taking the rag with it. “I’m good in the kitchen,” she said, her voice as near to steady as she could get it. “My mother, she thought it was important … she wanted to make sure I knew how to do things the right way.”
She found herself stumbling over the words. Her mother taught her the things that a girl should know—managing household finances, cooking and hosting, sewing, cooking with rations. She’d always been patient, kind, generous, tender.
She’d done as well as Esther supposed anyone could have.
But she’d also never stepped in when Esther’s father was cruel for cruelty’s sake. She’d never stopped him from being the kind of man who had to apologize in the morning for what he’d said and done the night before. She taught Esther how to hide bruises, but she’d never done a thing to prevent them.
She’d always said that it was just the way of things. He’s our leader, Esther’s mother had said. He gets to decide how he wants to lead.
Esther never knew if her mother believed those words, or if they were just something she told herself to make up for the fact that there wasn’t a thing to be done about him. Victor Augustus was powerful, but even if he hadn’t been powerful, he had the right to run his household as he saw fit. Esther didn’t know that she could forgive the way her mother had raised her, but she could understand it.
And, she thought bitterly, at least she knew how to dice meat for stew.
“I think that knife’s about clean,” Cye drawled, and Esther realized she’d been lost in thought, scrubbing her cooking knife with the damp rag for so long that it was a wonder the blade hadn’t sawed right through the cloth. She folded the rag carefully, rested the knife on it.
“Sorry,” she said. “Distracted, I guess. It’s been some kind of a day.”
Cye let out a sharp laugh. “Tell me about it. When you showed up, I thought I’d have to watch a hopalong get dragged out into the desert to wander, and instead I got promoted to chief babysitter. Didn’t know how much extra work you’d be.”
Esther winced. “I’m not a kid. You don’t have to babysit me.”
“You might as well be a kid,” Cye said, not unkindly. “You know as much about living out here as a three-year-old knows about drone repair. I just hope you can learn as fast as a toddler would.”
The fire let out a sharp crack, and a log spit sparks high into the air. For a brief moment, Cye’s face was thrown into deep shadow.
Esther cleared her throat. “What, uh—what quadrant are you from?”
“Low Northeast.” From the way Cye answered, it was clear that they knew what question they were really answering: what did you do? There was no formal division of purpose between the quadrants, except for the Central Corridor, but there were practical divisions. The Northeast quadrant was thick with factories, and those factories needed the nimble fingers of small children who could manage military circuitry with precision.
Esther would have wagered that Cye knew exactly how fast a toddler could learn to repair a busted drone.
Her eyes landed on the other women across the fire. Bet and Leda were still tucked under the same saddle blanket. Leda was resting her head on Bet’s shoulder, her eyes on the fire. Bet’s lips were moving, saying something soft that made Leda wrinkle her nose.
Cye poked at the fire with a stick. “Before you ask, I’ll answer.” They spoke in a low, soft voice that didn’t carry to anyone’s ears but Esther’s. “Leda’s from the Northwest. Last name used to be Proud, but she doesn’t use it anymore and you’d do well never to use that word in her hearing, no matter what you mean by it. Nod if you understand, you’re too loud a talker to answer.”
Esther nodded—she’d heard of the Proud family, an organized crime syndicate founded on bloodshed and terrorism. They had once controlled a large swath of the Northwest. Every time her father had hosted a guest from up that way, they seemed embarrassed that the Proud family still existed.
Cye nodded back, then added, “Bet’s from the Central Corridor.”
Esther’s brow furrowed. “From—”
“Yep,” Cye cut her off before she could finish asking.
“But nobody’s from the Central Corridor,” Esther whispered, irritated at Cye’s haughty shrug.
“Not everyone who lives there’s a soldier,” Cye said. “People just think that because no one ever leaves the CC without doing a tour of combat first. But kids grow up there, sure. And I guess Bet didn’t want to fight just because somebody told her she had to.”
Esther scoffed. “Women can’t go to combat, we have to stay domestic to tend the homestead. She could have just stayed—”
“Anyway,” Cye interrupted. “Don’t ask her about the CC. Don’t ask Leda about the Northwest. We all come from somewhere, and none of it is secret or else I wouldn’t tell you, but…” They sighed, their shoulders drooping, and Esther realized that they must be twice as tired as she was. “But it’s not great to talk about. We all had reasons for leaving home and joining the Librarians, you know? Nobody wants to relive those reasons.” Their lips twitched into an insufferable smirk. Esther realized how much she had been watching their mouth as they talked, the way they bit their lower lip and ran their tongue across their teeth—slow and purposeful, just the way they were now. “Unless,” they added, “you want to talk about why you left home. Girl trouble?”
Esther coughed, choking on nothing at all, and Cye’s smirk grew into an actual smile. They had dimples.
Deep ones.
“No, nothing I want to talk about,” Esther snapped, trying to get mad enough to stop noticing how those dimples deepen. She watched Cye stretch forward to stir the stew, their sinewy arm lit from below by the flickering fire. They glanced over their shoulder at her, their eyes wicked and knowing, and she felt herself flush the kind of deep red that had always made Beatriz erupt in throaty laughter.
She fought it back. It felt like a betrayal of the life she was trying to build here. It felt like a betrayal of Beatriz, of what they’d been to each other.
“You’re staring again,” Cye murmured, sitting back onto their bedroll. They stretched their legs out in front of them, balancing the heel of one boot on the toe of the other. The button fly of their jeans glinted in the firelight. “Penny for your thoughts?”
Esther would have charged a great deal more than a penny for the kinds of thoughts that entered her mind at the way Cye looked up at the stars—at the way their shoulders strained at their shirt, at the way the long expanse of their throat opened to the sky, at the way their ropy muscles made their freckle-dusted arms taut. She swallowed hard, pinched her arm to try to get those thoughts to go back where they belonged. “I was thinking about the stew,” she lied. “I was thinking about the jerky. It’s clever.”
“Sure,” Cye said, casting Esther a sidelong glance that said I know that’s not what’s on your mind. “It softens up real nice, gives the stew a good flavor. And we need the protein. We work hard. Beans aren’t quite enough fuel, not out here.”
Esther chewed on her lower lip, staring at the fire so she wouldn’t stare at Cye. “You know,” she said, “we could put a little wine in that stew. Or if we could get a jar of whole tomatoes, or even vinegar—”
“What?” Cye snapped. “Why? It tastes fine with the dry tomatoes.”
Esther cleared her throat. “Sure,” she said. “I’m sure it does. But some acid in there would make the meat get soft faster, so you could eat sooner. And the meat would be more tender.”
“We try not to carry glass in the wagons.” Leda’s voice carried from across the fire, and Esther realized that everyone had been listening to her. “We can’t guarantee that bottles of anything would stay intact, not when the road gets rough.”
“But we could get wine in synth-pouches,” Bet said slowly. “Or a small barrel of beer. Would that work the same, Esther?”
Esther felt cornered. She felt certain that she’d done something wrong, that she’d stepped out of line. She wasn’t used to speaking out of turn, wasn’t used to sharing her ideas out loud when she hadn’t been told to. “I’m— Maybe? I’ve made stew with beer before, so I suppose it might work?” Everyone was staring at her, interested and intent. “What? Why are you all looking at me?”
“Because you’re being interesting,” Amity said. It was the first time Esther had heard Amity speak. Her voice was disarmingly high, light and lilting. “You know how to cook?”
“Sure,” Esther said, trailing off before she could start stammering about her mother again.
“We’ll see what we can see,” Bet announced. “We’ll be in town tomorrow for some supplies. I’ll also put your stew ingredients on the list, and we’ll find out if they do what you say they will. If they’re not too much trouble, we can add them to the regular rotation. You’re on dinner duty tomorrow night. Goes well enough? Well, then I expect we’ll know what to do with you until we get where we’re going.”
With that, Bet returned her attention to whatever she’d been telling Leda before. The conversation was over. Esther couldn’t tell if she’d done something wrong or if she’d done something right. She shared an uncertain glance with Genevieve and Trace, both of whom had watched this exchange with wide, wary eyes; they offered her no answers.
Neither did Cye. “We’ll just have to see, Hopalong,” they murmured, giving the stew a last stir before beginning to ladle it into tin mugs. They shook their head ruefully, squinting against the smoke, not looking at Esther. “We’ll just have to see what you can do.”