"M-maamel," Phoebe’s body trembled like her words. "How do I … how do I forget something? Forever?"

  There was no world, no room or walls around them. Nothing that Phoebe had time to register, anyway. She pressed against her mother, but it was like hugging a statue wearing clothes. Her maamel's voice didn't conflict.

  "You don't," she said. "I will not touch you or your maamvi’s mind ever again with this magic. And don’t you ever, ever think of asking another witch for help. They will not be as kind as I am. They might actually agree to do it. Now stop crying, let go of my dress, and practice your harpsichord like a good girl."

  But Phoebe tugged at the dress again. This was important. She couldn't sleep anymore. She couldn’t get that image out of her head. She didn't realize it was possible for a single person to bleed so much.

  "What about the thing on Griinel's wrist? She says it stops her from remembering things. And you’re about to leave me here, aren’t you? Can’t you please, please just use this one last spell on me?"

  "So that's where you keep learning new words you're not supposed to use. I will have that girl's caretaker punish her before I depart.."

  That made Phoebe pull away. Her mother used threats against other people often, because she knew they would work a lot better than threats to Phoebe herself. At least she almost never followed through. Almost.

  I just need to talk to Griinel one more time, Phoebe thought. I have to know more about that engram.

  When she got a few steps away from her maamel, Phoebe's eyes opened to a wide open desert sky. The engram on her cheek buzzed and bit, but Oppzis managed to keep just enough of the dream that she remembered the words between her and whoever her maamel was.

  Phoebe sat up in the sand, and rested her head in her hands. She needed more sleep, but everything coming out of her past from behind her engram was so unsettling.

  I want my past back … right?

  Phoebe felt a wave of dread wash over her. It was the undifferentiated, deep sense of dread that paralyzes rather than motivates. She’d been feeling this dread in buckets since fleeing Derek, which was in some ways infuriating. Now that she was finally away from the man, she’d hoped to be at peace. Instead, it was as if she’d caught a disease that made her worry instead of cough. She knew she had a huge lead on Derek, but that didn’t stop the anxiety that he’d be standing over her when she woke up.

  The worst part about this new fear was that it wasn’t just abject and petrifying; it had an outline of respect. For some reason, Phoebe felt like she was somehow the problem, and that any rage she felt at her master was a character flaw. If she could just fix her disrespect and disobedience, none of this would be happening. If she just made Derek happy, she could be happy.

  Ever since I got these holes in my engram, I’ve felt like somebody else. Somebody who bent over for Derek in every way he asked. If he asked her to run, she’d say “how far?” Never “why” or “make me”.

  A growing part of Phoebe questioned if she wanted to get the engram off at all. She knew there were two ways to do it: one unlocked the memories inside, and the other erased them forever. It was much more expensive to keep the memories in most of Barrid, where a good enough scriptomancer was hard to find. Maybe this was getting to be the case even in Aleb.

  Phoebe rolled over in the sand. It was cold in the desert, but Oppzis helped her keep warm with a simple spell that outlined her in a dim silver glow. This was the less extreme desert north of the Thirsting Wastes, where a few edible plants grew and there were bugs and reptiles she could easily catch and kill. One of the prickly shrubs had given her some interesting hallucinations, but it also helped her sleep. Its effects must have worn off by now, as it was so late in the night that Oppzis had set in the eastern horizon. This far north, that meant behind the Crown Mountains.

  Curling up, Phoebe exhaled and closed her eyes. At first, Phoebe had unequivocally wanted her memories back. Almost all engrammed slaves did. But the closer she got to Aleb, and the more this unwelcome new subservient Phoebe whined, the less certain she became.

  She was almost to Aleb. She could find answers there. Griinel was gone, but she could find Mother Marthera. Then she could decide.

  ***

  With a sigh of relief, Phoebe lowered herself and gave her legs a chance to rest at the top of a sparsely-grassed hill. Two weeks later, the city of Aleb lay below her. Named after an old Centralian word for murder, supposedly because this was the spot where a woman murdered her sister out of jealousy before spawning a city with the man she won. Though Phoebe didn't relate to the legendary woman's motivations, she had to admire the ambition.

  The city sprawled out below her. She could smell the life and death of it. It combined interestingly with the taste of the salty inlet’s coastal air. In the distance beyond the city thrashed the Gulf of Kimto, with a fraction of the violence of the Everwhite Seas beyond the capes. The city rested on the river running between the sea and the lake Phoebe passed hours before. Phoebe's eyes were drawn to the Tower of Eyes near the city center, the tallest structure in the world outside Mekkendor. The elongated cylinder held nothing but a staircase, a passion project for a forgotten engineer with a penchant for eye designs along the sides.

  Phoebe squinted at the individual shapes in the streets. She remembered walking them, vaguely, though the engram on her cheek got angry if she tried to remember too hard.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  In Aleb, owning a slave used to have rules. A slave had to be fed. A slave got to see their family. A slave was released when they got pregnant, or injured, or served the maximum time for however they became a slave. Then, six years ago, the Akastamsite traders came in from the west, and started moving slaves around. All those rules disappeared when a slave left Aleb.

  Phoebe forced herself to stand up and make her way closer to the city. She avoided the roads, instead following a barely-visible pathway that probably ended at some farm over the hills. The longer she sat down, the harder it would be to get going again, and she needed to be in the city before nightfall. Plus, she was ever aware of Derek behind her. There was no universe where he just gave up and stopped coming. And while Phoebe had a velocity moon, Derek had a horse, and a horse is a horse.

  Oppzis told her to stop, and to hide her engram before she kept going. An unattended person with a slave engram would raise questions with obvious answers.

  How? She asked, checking the coast and reflexively covering her cheek with her hand. There were people near the houses and on the roads outside the city, but they weren’t paying attention to her yet. Oppzis explained, and a minute of trying with her silver barrier magic later, Phoebe had altered the appearance of the symbol. Instead it appeared like a shabby disease prevention engram. At least, she hoped it did. Scriptomancy was written in a dead language, Phoebe could barely write in any language, and she didn’t even have a mirror. It would have to do; a curvy line for a snake and a line down through its head for a knife couldn’t be too hard to draw and recognize.

  Carrying on, Phoebe spied a few others on the road ahead of her, where it joined up with a larger one. One had an engram on his face like hers. She sighed. What had once been forceful employment to someone you probably knew had turned into all but a death sentence at the hands of a foreigner. People banded into factions to avoid being sold by their enemies, and the government became just another band like them. People lengthened their contracts to avoid being traded to the Akastamsites. Phoebe was pretty sure by the way her engram reacted that she’d been among them. Maybe that was how Derek had got her instead of some Akastamsite. In hindsight, she regretted that choice a lot. It was hard for her to imagine a worse master than him. Sure, he did a good job feeding her and he didn’t injure her very often, but he had reasons for keeping her body in good shape that more than canceled those “courtesies” out.

  Phoebe wasn’t sure where in that timeline she met the former speed witch Griinel, or what Marthera had done about it, but Oppzis was working on that.

  How did I get to Aleb in the first place? she wondered. She followed a few crowds with her eyes. I'm Adalaantian, aren't I? I've got the narubati looks, and so did my mothers. They spoke Adalaantian in the dreams and I understood it. But it’s on the opposite side of the world ... hm.

  She was on the main road now. The people ahead glanced back at her, but paid her no mind. Phoebe needed a plan. She had to find a scriptomancer who would get this stupid engram off her face, without running into someone who would use it against her. Especially since those could easily be the same person.

  Maybe I'll try the farms all the way to the east of it, she decided. There's gotta be a poor farmer with a slave or two, who can point me in the right direction.

  But first, she had to find Mother Marthera, assuming she was still alive. Oppzis had allowed her to remember where the orphanage was a few years ago, so she could find her way there once she entered the city. It wouldn’t be easy; Marthera might not even live in the city anymore. She might even be dead; she hadn’t been that young when Phoebe left, and a lot could happen in three years.

  Phoebe looked down at her hands and feet.

  And if worst comes to worst, I have some new tricks I can use.

  Her confidence was short-lived as she drew nearer to the city. Someone passed her on the road, and that damn dread voice surged over her again.

  There's a lot of slave catchers in Aleb. This isn’t a good idea.

  I look nervous. I look afraid. Because I’m weak, and I’m an easy target. I’m not a free woman on her own with a disease engram on my cheek. I’m a runaway slave and everyone will know just by looking at me.

  Derek is going to be so, so angry when he finds me. At this rate, I hope he finds me before someone else does. At least Derek loves me. I shouldn’t have run. I should have turned back. I shouldn’t have hit him. I -

  Phoebe pressed her palms to her forehead.

  “At least Derek loves me?” What the fuck kind of bullshit is that?

  She put her hands at her sides, and stood up straight. She didn’t stand out. Most of the people, even the free ones without visible engrams or disease engrams, looked just as ragged as she did. All she had to do was be confident and have a consistent story. She could do that. She knew how to lie. She didn’t lie to Derek very often, but when she did she made it count. She could do this.

  Oppzis, Phoebe sent, making her legs stride forward again before she could argue with herself. Please pause working on my engram until I ask you to. I think I know what I need to until I find Marthera, And I don’t need any more of this timid suck-up attitude it keeps giving me.

  Actually, she added, turning to avoid bumping into someone passing her, please undo all the progress you’ve made on it, except stuff related to Griinel and Marthera and the layout of Aleb. I don’t want any more of the stuff beside that. I need to be confident in there.

  Oppzis acknowledged. It was simple but Phoebe could tell he understood better than if he’d used words to say so. Almost right away, Phoebe felt an unpleasant pinching feeling on her cheek beneath the obscuring magic. It was a pinch that shifted across her skin, like rolling knuckles on a soft surface. Phoebe could already start to feel the voice of terror retreating.

  Oppzis then added that she needed to be careful accelerating in crowded terrain with lots of obstacles. He did not recommend planning on using it to escape down even a long and wide road; the consequences of hitting a wall or a person before she had time to react would not be worth it.

  Oppzis didn't need to add that she’d only taken her last dash two weeks ago, and it had left her with two weeks of walking to get the rest of the way to Aleb. When she did dashes like that, it wore down the magic it took to protect her from getting torn apart in the acceleration. Since she wasn’t very good at it yet - she needed to focus on traveling - and Oppzis was also chinking away at her engram, he needed to do all the repairs himself before she could run again. He could only do that while he was in the sky from noon to midnight, like right now. Her sandals were falling apart, and that only taxed the magic even more.

  Whatever. Phoebe had made it to the city, and now she knew who she was looking for. It was something to focus on and shut up the new dread voice in her head that had been haunting her all the way here. Right now it was trying to make her think about all the slave catchers and rapists she’d probably meet on her way to Marthera.

  Phoebe silenced it the best way she knew how after living with it for two weeks: keep moving forward. She shouldered her way through the traffic entering the city gates, and for the first time in three years, she was back inside Aleb.