Hands In the Rusting Highlands

Content note: This story contains reference to financial entrapment, employer abuse, and mental control over another person's actions. References are also made to severe injury and murder, but the depictions are not graphic. Thank you!

Hands In The Rusting Highlands

We met because I needed a groom and you were available. You weren't impressive and didn't stand out particularly against the stable's other choices, but they were all busy.

Running short on time necessitates compromise.

I remember dismounting into a pile of leavings, I remember the whirr of my spurs retracting and how it alerted you to my arrival. The sweat and smear of oil on your brow convinced me you'd be sufficient. It had stained into your skin, into the furrows of the frown you fixed on my boots.

I'd interrupted your sweeping in the most obnoxious way and earned your working class wrath.

That was the best sign. It agreed with the filthiness of your coveralls to say, yes, this is the one. This one has their priorities in order. This one will do.

I was, as I usually am, right about your proficiency, of course. You mocked the brightness of my dress with compliments.

"I see your vest is newly dyed. I haven't seen such a crisply pressed hat in a while, and not discolored from the sun at all? Impressive."

I had to pull that hat down in salute to hide my smile.

Silence followed during the inspection. Fairline passed your muster, impressed you even, with how well she'd been maintained. My boots were clean, sure, but my horse was well oiled and her screws tight despite the bright brass rub of her joints and the age of her model.

"When'd you get this mare?"

"About thirty odd back."

"Only thirty?"

"She'd been run for about thirty before that. Got her as an apprentice."

That would've sat well with you if it didn't set off suspicion. Suspicion I could read in the corners of your eyes, but that you held in your gut. Another good sign. You were full of them.

After two weeks regularly boarding Fairline in your care with just as regular and generous tipping, we began riding together. You rode Fairline like you'd been her steward for years. I like to think I made a good showing with the stubborn nag you had me on, but your eyes never met mine once that first time. It was good. I got to watch you work Fairline with the ease of touch reserved for models an eighth her age.

I like to think I might look like that on her, too.

I doubt you'd tell me if I do. Your eyes are where praise lies.

I'm not subtle as all that.

"You been riding for a long time," I'd offered to your back as we whizzed along the barren expanse of rusting towers, "haven't seen turns like that in a hot minute."

"I don't intend to fall to my death."

"Still," we took the switchbacks at a pace that'd chill passenger types, "you'd be a master on the plains."

"And you'd know a thing or two about those."

"Well I'm flattered!"

"Don't be. I've been running a search on you."

Fairline cleared a downed pole without scuffing it. My nag had to be coaxed at quarter speed, and for a moment I thought you might have fully left us behind.

But the two of you were waiting two bends ahead. Not facing me. Waiting at a slow trot for the sound of rubberized steel striking sparks from the iron and slate. At the hoofbeats you revved Fairline back into a gallop.

I thought maybe we'd return to silence, but your quiet voice sizzled to life again against my eardrums.

"The name you gave the stable registry is dead. I found it in an obituary from two months back."

"Then you can see why it took so long to find a boarder."

"Fairline is registered to a scrapper who belonged to your name."

"And what's happened to that scrapper?"

We hit the plateau of the peak and stopped to tip our hats to the rising suns.

"Drowned in the boiling river and swept out to sea."

"No better way to account for a body."

We sat on the lip of the world in silence.

That silence held. And it kept holding for three more morning rides. On our fourth outing, you actually let me ride my damn horse. A fact I remarked on to nothing but a glint from your eyes.

"What's the thigh bandage for?"

Fairline smelled like lubricant every time I visited her and shone like a showpony despite her penchant for rolling in dust. And I'd seen her doing so in the stable pastures. You'd decided I was worth your curiosity.

I'd decided you were worth an answer

"Chemical burn. I've been on wire stripping for the recycling center in town. The old wrecks are dripping corrosives."

"And you're too experienced for a hazard suit?"

"Too poor. Your boss boards cheap, but not enough I didn't have to sell my greaves."

"Someone else might've sold Fairline."

"Sure, someone else might've."

"Where've you been sleeping?"

"I'm a scrapper, where do you think?"

That's the reason I brought you with me, no horses, to the ship. You in your dented, borrowed suit, me in just a helmet and what real clothes I had left. You'd never been on board a freight wreck before, too busy with horses and dogs in your youth. We left the horses in the gaping hangar to let them graze on rust and began the climb to my nest. Intricately carved doorways for giants arched stories overhead, and again I got the pleasure of watching your focus at work. This time to absorb it all.

"It's barely been touched," you picked up mysteries quick.

"Rumor is it's haunted by the echoes of the things that built it. Rumor is it's alive, even. Dying half buried in the mountain."

"Why this one? Why not the others too?"

"Old brains in town say there've been voices here specifically. They say scrappers get the feel of something pulling on them. Not to pull em down, even, to pull itself up."

You'd shuddered some. I think from enchantment.

"Have you felt that? Heard voices?"

"Oh sure," I helped you get a better foothold on the carved ridges of a wall, "I hear them right now. I just have a horse to feed and contempt for holy places."

I don't think either of us expected to stay long in the nest I'd made in the ship's vents.

I don't think you planned to pull me under and hold me there, in an act of sublime irony.

I know I didn't plan to let you taste me. I didn't plan to feed myself on the leather of your sunskissed neck.

I know I didn't realize I was hungry until you pressed your mouth into mine.

The horses were where we'd left them, Fairline drinking the spillage of a rat she'd caught underhoof. Its oil cast a rainbow on her maw under the humming ancient lights.

The second time we visited the nest, you stood above me, suit-less, and counted my scars.

The third time we visited the nest, you showed me where your tibula had once pieced through to the light after a horrific fall.

"It still hurts. When the clouds come it hurts even more."

"They do that. Sometimes when I venture low enough, and the pressure starts to build, I can feel my spine trying to dig itself out."

"You didn't say anything about that before."

"I didn't."

"It embarrasses you."

"It ruined my life, in a way. It caged me."

You stayed quiet. You kept your eyes off mine, and you waited.

You're too good with animals. It puts me to shame.

"I was a contractor, I was trained as a contractor. I was trained to stay moving and never put down roots. It worked for me for twenty years. It worked for my traveling party, too."

"And then it didn't," you nodded, ahead of me as usual.

"I got attached to a patch of plains and my friends did too. Good grazing, good work. A break from scrapping to do some herding and show off in the saddle. We stayed on a contract and planned to move to the next once it was up. Long contract, longer than we'd ever worked, but still, ultimately, temporary."

And then... the night at the saloon. Shipment workers talking about an old land transport that'd crashed into a narrow ravine in the area years back. No scrapper hears that and walks away. But we should have at least went to bed first.

"They didn't tell us, or didn't remember, or we didn't hear over the booze, but the transport had been carrying nitro fuel."

"Oh."

"Nobody knows how it stayed intact on that first impact... but it did. Sat there destabilized for nearly a decade just waiting for some poor drunk pack of idiots to disturb it."

"Were you the only one who made it out?"

"None of us made it out. I was just in big enough pieces to stitch back together."

You lay by me then, and pressed a palm into the jagged line at my shoulder. Your hands were warm. I let the crook of your arm hold my head for me.

"The surgery would have taken decades to pay off, and that might've been fine if I'd asked for it," I tapped my earpiece, "but my boss wanted more than gratitude. While I was under, he had a number of fancy adaptations installed to make me worth the money. All of those would've cost a whole couple more lives than I had to pay them off, and even then it might have been bearable. Maybe. He crossed the line having them drill a compulsion implant into my skull."

You'd met indentured people like me before. Just, never one traveling alone. Even those of us with a dead master usually had their kid or grandkid to contend with.

My master died childless.

"I know you've been curious. About why I didn't just stable Fairline here, in the freighter, and go into town for feed."

Your eyes glimmered with respect.

"My master wanted me to give him those extra lives of labor I would owe. You know how the medical empire is."

You'd nodded.

"With the compulsory chip he could get kids out of me, but he needed a marriage contract to make them legally responsible for my debts."

"So you killed him."

"So I faked an accident during a roundup. Three months later I snuck in, gave him a shot of air between the toes, let him have a little embolism, and took my damn horse back."

We laid together, then. Entwined like particularly lazy snakes. The way you touch me is how I've seen you pet the stable dogs, and I'm in no hurry to change that. I wouldn't mind if you chose to be rough. I would welcome it the way I welcome your teeth on my lips.

But I know you won't. Gentleness is the only language you let yourself learn.

It wasn't until we'd slept and woken, until we'd started to make our way back through the whispering husk of the freighter, that you remembered to finish your interrogation.

"You're free."

"I am now."

"Why go to town? Why risk recognition? Why be honest with me?"

"Why not?"

Gentleness never extended to your glares. I remember laughing as I told you.

"The compulsion implant would kill me if it came out, and it'd kill me if I didn't actively pursue my ex-master's last command. He wanted me to get married, but he knew I "delighted in women." His words."

And knew, of course, that I would make sure to find one who couldn't offer me children. Not all men would have been compatible in that way either, of course.

"I made sure to confirm his very specific wording for the implant before setting my plan in motion."

I left it there as we descended once more to the horses. Your steed of the day and Fairline got along better than other pairs we'd tried. They were waiting for us with their solar panels unfurled, recharging against each other in a sunbeam the broken hangar roof let in.

We held each other on the ladder and watched a while, loathe to disturb that peace.

"He told you to find a groom," you murmured in my ear, victorious and soft.

"A suitable groom," I looked to you for confirmation, feeling entirely small.

In that moment, your eyes held the sunrise.