“Probably. Where are the windows, though? I swear there should be windows.”
“If you go inside, you might find the lights,” Elinor pointed out.
Laura stepped in, reaching to the right in search of a switch. She found a wooden shelf laden with glass objects she realized were Eggs. While she pondered this Okane walked farther in, and everything brightened dramatically. A multitude of tiny, circular glass lanterns of various colors spanned the ceiling, each slightly bigger than an Egg, so densely packed they hid the ceiling entirely with their glass, metal, and chains. The scattered colors illuminated reinforced shelves upon shelves of Eggs both empty and full that reached from floor to ceiling. Most bore Eggs in rows, though one set of shelves on the left wall contained Pit Egg–size equipment, the parts not yet fit together, along with tiny capsules filled with blue. Laura approached this shelf and picked one up.
“These again,” she murmured. “What are they?”
“They’re called Sinkers.”
Everyone jumped. Laura scrambled not to drop the capsule, Okane backed up into a shelf and rattled the Eggs, and Elinor gasped and clapped a hand to her chest. The newcomer snickered at their reaction. A woman stepped farther into the room—a brunette with gray eyes, a skinny frame, and a limp that made her skirt swish more than normal. Her hair hung longer on the left side of her face, and she pulled this back to reveal nasty scarring along her cheek, just missing the eye and reducing the ear to little more than a shriveled lump. These scars crinkled as she grinned.
“Wondered when you two would stop by.”
She spoke as if they were familiar, and she looked familiar. After a moment Laura recognized her as the one-eared woman who’d been at Clae’s wake.
“Who are you?” Elinor demanded.
“Name’s Amelia. Amelia Huxley, ex-Sweeper. I’m the armory’s warden these days. And you two—” She stepped closer. Laura happened to be nearest of the two Sweepers, so she reached her first to shake hands with a firm grip. “You’re the ex-apprentices! Congrats on the promotion! And the un-promotion. Wow. Shame about the circumstances.”
“I think I saw you at the potluck?” Laura smiled weakly. Was this one of Clae’s apprentices? As far as she could tell, it was a rare one that hadn’t died on the job.
“I knew the Sinclairs pretty well. I was his dad’s apprentice, so I’ve known Clae since he was tiny. It’s weird thinking he trained some fully fledged Sweepers of his own.”
She ruffled their hair with the kind of fondness Morgan used. Laura wasn’t sure what to think of it. Okane immediately leaned away from the woman’s hand. Amelia snorted.
“Sorry.” She pulled her hands away and folded them together. “I’m a touchy person. Most people are used to it, so I keep forgetting around strangers. Anyway, I’m not officially a Sweeper but I’m counted as part of the department and I know the lingo. If you need help with anything, be it advice, equipment”—she tilted her head toward the Sinkers—“you name it, feel free to call me. My number should be pinned up next to the telephone back at the shop. If that doesn’t work, throw something at my window. It’s right next to the door here.”
True enough, there was an open window in the apartment building, directly on the level of the railing. Had Amelia jumped over?
“Are you the one who had this building painted?” asked Elinor.
“It was due for a repaint. Got to keep up to a certain image in this neighborhood. Besides, I thought we might want to impress the new head Sweeper.”
“And you paid for the painting yourself?” Elinor frowned.
“That was the deal: I get to store things in here, but I have to pay for upkeep.”
“You store things here?” Laura echoed, confused.
“I’ve got an automobile downstairs, some furniture upstairs. More incentive to keep an eye on the place.”
Elinor looked annoyed; this probably made everything more complicated. “You’ll have to list your possessions in detail.”
While not the politest person in the world, Amelia seemed very genuine, and the simple fact that she’d been mentioned in Clae’s letter put Laura more at ease. She held up the blue capsule and prompted, “You said this was a Sinker?”
“Yep.” Amelia tapped it lightly with her finger. “I’m not surprised you don’t know about it. It’s a last-resort type of thing because it smashes the root amulets to bits. We don’t want Sweepers smashing amulets all over the place, so apprentices get regular Eggs drilled into their heads so they don’t just rely on Sinkers. Some other cities don’t even make them, they’re so dangerous.”
Elinor’s frown deepened. “Do you not know about all the equipment?”
“Apparently not,” Laura mumbled, somewhat ashamed. Some expert she turned out to be.
“She still knows a lot more than I do,” Okane pointed out.
“That won’t help determine the value of anything.”
“You’re trying to put a price on this?” Amelia laughed.
“That’s my job,” Elinor retorted. “I’m inventorying the estate of Clae Sinclair, so I need to know the value of his possessions.”
“Then I’m your girl!” Amelia laughed. “I know everything in here. What was his, what was city property, what’s mine. I can give you a rundown on anything you’re not familiar with, too.”
“That’d be wonderful.” Laura cracked a smile, which Amelia returned enthusiastically.
“Please do so,” Elinor sighed, rolling her eyes in resignation.
“Right! Well, this building is Sinclair family property. So are the lights”—she pointed at the lantern-strewn ceiling—“and the door and built-in mechanics. Those are specially worked in with Gin amulets, so they’re useless unless you sell the whole shebang, in which case it’s priceless.”
“Priceless?” Okane gave the lanterns a skeptical look. They did look cheap.
“This is actually a complex system to keep the armory secure. You have the key and you’re authorized. Otherwise you’d get nasty magic backlash and the building would go into lockdown, in which case it seals itself up and gets impossible to crack. If somebody unauthorized with the key gets in, it goes on semi-lockdown and sends a distress signal to registered Sweeper rings.”
“Is that a spell?” Laura asked.
“One of the very few that can be utilized, and only by certain people,” Amelia replied.
Okane shifted his weight uneasily, and she decided that “certain people” meant Magi.
“And the other objects in this room?” Elinor was writing on a pad.
“The Eggs are all city-owned. Council money pays for them. If you’ll follow me.”
Amelia led them through another doorway, into a much larger room that took up the rest of the floor. As they entered, a grand rectangular lantern flared bright pink in the middle of the ceiling, flanked by miniature versions in the corners. On the far wall were doors to two staircases, left one going down, right up. The left wall bore shutters for the windows, and strewn all over in a vaguely organized mess lay Sweeper weapons. Guns, cases of bullets, Bijou, empty Eggs, staffs of varying sizes with patterns carved into them, more staffs topped with enormous nets, bows and arrows, lightweight armor with intricate designs, bandoliers, bags and belts and straps, and worn trunks whose weathered locks hid smaller troves of gear. All of this lay scattered over tables and floor, though many staffs were propped up in a rack. Pinned to the walls between framed pictures Laura could see scraps of paper, articles, more photographs, stray leaves and ribbons from events over the years.
“I’m sure this is what you’re most interested in.” Amelia leaned over a table full of gauntlets to yank the shutters open.
Colored light spilled in, brightening the room further, glinting over the metallic pieces and lending a festive atmosphere. Even full of weapons the place seemed bright and welcoming. Okane wandered to the middle of the room and turned slowly in place, taking it all in.
“This is amazing,” he breathed.
&nb
sp; “The Sinclairs got to be pack rats when it came to supplies. I could’ve sworn at one point I saw old Rosemarie stockpiling food, too,” Amelia laughed. “I haven’t seen half of this used, but they clung to it all just in case. Maybe they expected a Sweeper revival?”
Laura picked her way around spools of wire to inspect the rack of staffs. She lifted one and found it lighter than expected, though top-heavy with the gnarled end.
“I saw one of the Puer Sweepers using this. What is it?”
“It’s a staff. Pretty self-explanatory, right? It’s got Gin on top so you can use it like a spear, and then there’s the fog it creates when active. That protects you, since you have to get up close and personal to use it. The nets work the same way,” Amelia explained.
“There are a lot of them.”
“Used to be a Sinclair specialty. Clae and Anselm—you know he had a brother, right?—they had their own staffs, and Clae used his until he got to be head Sweeper. It’s the little one on your right, with the crappy writing on it. After Anselm died he got skittish and wanted distance, so he switched over to guns. Speaking of which, these rifles—”
She kept going, but Laura turned away to look for Clae’s staff. She found it easily, as it happened to be one of the two smallest and actually had his name sloppily carved into it. She picked it up in one hand and raised it to get a better look at the carvings.
“How do - - - think it works?” Okane lifted the one with Anselm’s name and weighed it in his hands.
Laura pursed her lips and angled her staff so it clacked against the other like a wooden sword. “Like that?”
“They’re in good condition for that kind of treatment.”
Amelia kept talking to Elinor, who drank in all the information and jotted notes. Laura gleaned from the chatter that nothing in here would be easy to price, and once you gave a price, that could easily be changed: the whole was far more than the sum of its parts, but to Amicae citizens it would only be junk, and if you tried selling it to other Sweepers they’d pretend it was all garbage and only pay a fraction of its real value. With no way to sell them fairly, they were most valuable to Amicae as they were.
Laura drifted over to the doors. The left-hand door wouldn’t open, but the right one swung open easily and soundlessly. Laura started up the stairs.
“Should - - - really be doing that?” Okane whispered.
“He gave me the key, didn’t he?” said Laura. “And it’s your building now. Why not check it out?”
He glanced back at the others before shaking his head. “Fine, but let’s be fast. I don’t want them to think we’re sneaking.”
The next floor had no walls or separate rooms, but the entire expanse stretched open for the length of the building. More lanterns lit the room, illuminating scattered mounds of covered furniture. Laura looked around, a smile slowly forming.
“Hey, Okane. Don’t you think the Kin could fit in here?”
It took a moment for him to catch her drift, to understand that yes, this was a Sweeper building with limited access and a potential ally already keeping guard. He began to nod. “Yes.… Yes, I think it would.”
6
CHIMNEY SMOKING
“How much for a paper?”
A paperboy looked up from his stack and said flatly, “Five argents.”
“That’s almost double the old price,” Laura grumbled, but dutifully searched through her coin purse. “Why the increase?”
“It’s getting dangerous.” He shrugged. “Did you hear the Dead Ringer got bombed by the mobs? Most papers are hiring more protection, and need some way to pay for it. The little papers would’ve closed up entirely, but our news got popular in other cities. Bigger market than we’ve ever had before.”
“What’s gotten other cities so interested?” said Okane.
“Probably the fact that the walls don’t do shit. Boss says Amicae’s reactions are better than films these days. Maybe it’s entertainment. Maybe they’re waiting for more monsters.”
“I don’t suppose Sweepers are buying these?” said Laura.
“Some of our biggest customers. You know Vir Sweepers? Awful people. Their head Sweeper called and just about bit Boss’s head off because the train didn’t bother to keep their papers out of the rain.”
The extra audience was daunting, but Laura still felt comforted. If Sweepers monitored Amicae, they’d be ready to jump into action at the slightest hint of trouble. Amicae could avoid another Falling Infestation.
“Speaking of Sweepers…” The paperboy squinted from her payment to her face. “Have I seen you before?”
“Sure you have,” said Laura, unfolding her new paper. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a Sweeper myself. Apparently I’m a problem child.”
“- - - sound a little too pleased about that,” said Okane, as they turned away from the stall.
“I just did a little remembering. Wasn’t that Clae’s favorite expression? It’s better to be a pain than a comfort.”
“I don’t think Juliana will appreciate that sentiment.”
Laura snorted, flipping the page. Her mood plummeted as she found the headline: REXIAN FORCES SIGHTED EAST OF VIR.
“Oh, great. They’re still on the move.”
“We never did find that last Rexian Sweeper,” Okane murmured. “You know, the one from the infestation?”
“The mobs sheltered him, but they also actively worked against his goals,” Laura recalled. “I doubt they’re helping him now. He might be dead in a gutter.” Okane made a disbelieving noise and she raised a brow. “What, do you know something?”
“I—well—no. I’ve just been looking into Rex more, since they’re supposedly targeting us. Reading’s slow, but Brecht has filled me in on some of their history and politics. They’re a bit more than a boogeyman.”
Rex wasn’t simply scary because of its frequent attacks on neighbors, though stories and pictures coming out of ransacked satellite towns made even the toughest men wince. A deeper problem wound through these stories and twined deep into the city like a disease. Few outsiders glimpsed Rex’s interior, and fewer escaped to speak of it.
To Laura’s knowledge only a couple of Carmen citizens, lured in to discuss some treaty, had ever made it out again. But, Carmen being a city dedicated to films, it was only a matter of time before it depicted the event. Laura had asked Clae to see the film with her. Rex supposedly had the biggest, toughest Sweeper force in Orien; being starved of any Sweeper content in current media made her eager for anything, and surely seeing a film with an expert on the subject could be fun. She expected him to at least gripe about whatever effects they used for the Sweeping. He’d looked at her a long time without saying anything before finally agreeing. In retrospect she really should’ve expected what she got; no one could watch anything related to Rex and expect entertainment. The film had been given a tame rating, but just because it showed no blood didn’t mean it wasn’t horrifying.
It followed the tale of the treaty, with Carmen’s mob-run officials arriving in Rex, and it seemed at first that these schemers were the villains and Rex was a paradise. The entire city gleamed, triumphant with great arches and statues and beautiful people who greeted them with songs and gifts.
“Is this a single family they’ve turned out?” wondered a Carmenian, the first man in the film to notice strangeness. “All these people look remarkably similar.”
The others laughed at him and brought the delegates to a lavish hotel, where still more smiling Rexians waited on them hand and foot. One of the servers related to them the history of Rex: how it was among the first cities fortified after the spread of infestation, meant for the king of Zyra to live in, but how that king had spurned them to live in Litus instead. From there they delved deeper, uncovering more and more truths that cracked their perfect image. They met a pregnant twelve-year-old with no husband, who proudly told them that her child belonged to none but glorious Rex itself. Shopkeepers smiled to their faces but washed down anything they touched or
even threw the offending item in a fire after they’d passed. The Black Guard constantly followed them, spiriting away anyone not properly accommodating. It became clear that all the beauty and hospitality was a façade. Their hosts offered prostitutes, ten women all identical, and here the Carmenian broke and demanded an explanation. Where were the other people? Where were the Ralurians, the Ashain, the Kalu, the natives? The Rexians replied that there weren’t any. Why should they allow such trash within their walls? Only Zyrans mattered. Zyrans were the only true human species. Any others were accidental, subhuman offshoots that could only smother the blossoming of glorious Zyrans. Glorious Rex.
The film continued to explain how, back when the walls had gone up and the people clustered together for protection, they’d sought to purge weakness. They attacked the natives with a vengeance, and at that time the Ralurians, Ashain, and Kalu did the same. But then they turned to the Ralurians, denounced their supposed weakness, threw them, too, into the fires, into the mines, into the gaping maw of infestations. Then came the Ashain. Then came the Kalu. Until it was only Zyrans, and then they had to seek out new cities to “convert.” You should be honored, they spat at the Carmenians, that we stooped low enough to tolerate your filth. Because the Carmenians were Zyran, but not Zyran enough. They fled, and lost three of their number before escaping the gates. The film ended with an aged professor, tapping his finger atop an ancient skull.
Many people fall into the trap of sympathizing with Rex, he said. Perhaps they feel threatened by other nationalities or beliefs, either due to city policy, or even the simple and silly matter of race. They think it better to repress another group to bolster their own. A classic tactic of power is to unite a group against another, because it’s easiest to impress rules on a willing public under such “wartime” conditions. I ask you, though, is unification against true monsters not enough? Furthermore, once you have eradicated the so-called lesser group, will you be satisfied, or will you insist on continuing to eat yourself?
Allow me to be frank. This is not a matter of race. This is a matter of irrational hatred. There has never been any kind of scientific proof or reasoning to suggest that any race is anything less than human. Indeed, the mere notion only originated in cases where one group wishes to feel validated in their mistreatment of another. We are all human, and the hallmark of humanity is empathy. Embracing our diversity is not only the key to advancement, but the key to survival.
The Monstrous Citadel Page 11