Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  The cavernous interior of the Wheelhouse opens around us as we glide in under the vast concourse roof. Gendarmes are out in force but separated from our platform by the sheer monstrous size of the crowd that has mobbed the Wheelhouse in response to Candace’s flash-invite. Any spark will set off a stampede. I glance at Sun, wondering if she will sacrifice citizen lives to protect her own.

  She catches my eye and says, “Your turn, Persephone. The gendarmes won’t use lethal fire for fear of hitting citizens on the queen-marshal’s wedding day.”

  I cup hands around my mouth so no camera can read my lips. “Our target is still the 1435 Green Line to Drum Tower. There are surveillance cameras covering 83.7 percent of the Wheelhouse concourse and corridors. The best dead zones lie in the corridors between levels. Best chance we have to confuse the cameras is to change clothes in dead zones and then reverse direction and split up. In smaller groups we’ll make our way in a roundabout manner to the correct platform for our train.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “When I was fifteen I spent months plotting an escape route from my family. With the war on, there are not enough resources to fix minor things like broken surveillance cameras in the transportation system.”

  “Ah. All right. Alika, we need outerwear and masks.”

  I’m struck by how she’s pulled in her fire, letting Alika hog all the attention. She’s not that different in appearance from the girl who’d first screamed, the one still pushed up against me, who also has chin-length straight black hair and wears a red-and-gold festival tunic like Sun’s. No one around us is looking at Sun, but I know the cameras at either end of the open-gang train are without question fixed on the heir specifically. People who work for my family know Alika is a distraction even if it might be hard for these observers to look away. He’s wearing an embroidered gold sherwani, the knee-length formal wear traditional at Vata House. It’s wrinkled and still a bit damp but nevertheless magnificent. His long black hair is pulled back into a now disheveled bun that somehow makes him look even more appealing, as if he needs a little tender loving care from you, yes, random you there in the audience.

  He segues into a strumming refrain and speaks over it in his concert voice. “Peace be upon you, my friends! Welcome to the Wheelhouse. The city of Argos is celebrating. I am here to help you find your joy! But look what happened! I lost my festival ornaments on the way.”

  Amid shrieks and cheers we get hit by a shower of masks and myco-facture helmets and the long embroidered jackets that are Chaonia’s most common festival wear. I grab several jackets and a kaiju mask as the train reaches a platform and sighs to a stop. Seeing Alika, the people outside start pounding on the windows and shouting his name. The doors don’t open.

  “We split up.” I speak into Sun’s ear. She’s holding a mermaid crown in one hand and a Lady Chaos mask in the other. “You take the Gatoi and Ti and a change of festival gear…”

  The doors still haven’t opened.

  “You trapped us.” Sun grabs my arm, her grip so tight it hurts.

  I don’t try to shake off her hand. In a way, her consternation makes me cocky. “I’m way ahead of you, Princess.”

  “Because they’ll lock down the doors for as long as it takes to evacuate the concourse? We’re fish in a barrel—”

  “That’s what they’re supposed to think. But this is an old Diamondback model with specific structural quirks. I know my trains. Watch, listen, and learn.”

  The people packed inside with us start murmuring impatiently as they realize the doors should have opened already. I pitch my voice to carry above their talk.

  “Oi! I just got word from the conductor. The automatic door opener broke. You need to pull out the emergency windows. Those who can must crawl out. Make space inside so no one gets crushed while we wait for rescue. Just don’t panic.”

  Right on cue, Alika starts shouting for people to remain calm, which of course only agitates them more. As emergency windows get opened and people start to climb out I start hammering on the locked cab door.

  “Oi! You in there!” The door is a thin sheet of metal and not soundproof. “A passenger is caught in one of the doors. Press the manual release! Open the doors before their leg is crushed!”

  “Turn your face to the wall.”

  When Sun gives an order it’s impossible to resist. I pull my scarf tighter around my face. Because we’ve kept a corner of space here at the front of the train, there’s room for Zizou to kick. The latch breaks. He wrenches the door open. I dash inside to find the terrified operator holding down the emergency lock button as a voice speaking from central control blasts through the speaker: “Do not open the doors. I repeat, do not open the doors.”

  “Sorry,” I say as I slam the operator to one side and pound my fist down on the manual door release.

  The doors open with a gasp. Everyone starts shouting as people tumble out of the packed train. I can’t tell if they’re frightened by the stunt with the emergency windows or thrilled that they have an astounding tale to tell of their encounter with the Handsome Alika. Just days before the new season of Idol Faire begins! What a publicity coup!

  What matters is that we grab our bags and as many masks and jackets as we can handle and shove out with all the others. The concourse is a roar of gendarme whistles, sobbing youth, a voice crying for a doctor, and the squeal and hiss of brakes along other platforms. It’s perfect cover for a bold escape.

  The girl who’d screamed and her two friends have joined a seething circle of fans outside the door, waiting for Alika to emerge. As Sun, Ti, and Zizou break away from us, swirling away into the crowd, I tap the girl on the shoulder.

  “Oi! What’s your name?”

  She stares uncomprehendingly at me until one of her friends nudges her. Then she says, “Hana. This is Chūnhuá and Luciana.”

  “You want to be in the adventure? It’s part of the previews for Idol Faire.”

  Their eyes get wide as Alika, with Candace on one side and a somber Hestia on the other, steps off the train. The people who swarmed the concourse haven’t forgotten him. They crowd close, shouting and crying in excitement.

  Candace and I take point and jab a path through the throng, Candace brandishing her furled fans and I bumping my duffel ahead of me like a ram. Alika follows in our wake, strumming in the troubadour-as-vagabond-strolling-about-town style he made famous in Idol Faire. I can’t hear what he’s playing. His trio of acolytes hangs on him. Hestia holds the rear guard with an emergency bag slung over her shoulder.

  No one can miss our progress, and there are seven of us now, including Hana with her hair cut like Sun’s and her long red-and-gold silk tunic, which from a distance looks enough like Sun’s that it will be easy to believe she is the princess.

  Of course I’m risking innocent people’s lives. I’m a Lee House child, after all. It’s what we do. But I’m gambling that on the queen-marshal’s wedding day they will try to avoid causing injury or death to bystanders. If I’m wrong, we’re about to find out.

  20

  The Masks That People Wear

  Zizou’s gaze sweeps the crowd’s minefield of threat. People shove as they try to reach the train from which the Royal, whom the others call Princess Sun, just disembarked. His job is to keep her alive. But never in his life has he moved amid such a burn of heat and moisture and reeking air with so many loud voices clamoring like a relentless hail of blows to his head.

  “This mob is going to make me late for my—”

  “It’s really ALIKA!”

  “No, it’s just a lookalike doing a Channel Idol promo—”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  The Royal speaks. “Zizou, put on this jacket.”

  He drags on a garment whose loose, long sleeves fall to his knees. It flaps open as they keep moving away from the train. Before he can demand clothing that won’t hamper his movement if he has to fight, the young woman who touched him without asking permission hands him an embro
idered sash. He wraps the sash twice around his waist to keep the jacket closed.

  The Royal vanishes from her place at his shoulder.

  He whips around to attack, but she’s merely knelt, hiding herself within the crowd as she tugs on a jacket like his except hers is gold instead of green. She hands him a random mask from among the four she’s holding by their straps.

  A mockery of the face and hair of Lady Chaos leers up at him. He flinches away from the crude blasphemy of the mask’s goggling eyes and a purple tongue made of slimy rubber stuck out between obscenely parted lips.

  The Royal’s gaze sharpens. “Drop it,” she says.

  He can’t move his fingers. Nothing in his training prepared him to fight against the contempt represented by the mask.

  The Royal snatches the mask away and hands him a new one, a heavenly dog with a happy face and perky ears.

  She tugs on a stylized demon mask painted red. “Tiana, have you plotted the best route?”

  “I know how to get to the Green Line.” Accomplished Tiana has disguised herself behind a handsome red-and-white fox mask and a cape fringed with fluffy tails.

  “Ping me the map.”

  “I don’t have a map, Your Excellence. But I’ve been through here a thousand times like everyone else in Argos who doesn’t have an aircar. We’ll go roundabout. Like Perse said.”

  Seen through the opening of the mask the Royal’s eyes flicker with a narrowing he interprets as anger, but immediately afterward the Royal chuckles.

  “Point for her. Lead on, cee-cee.”

  Tiana elbows her way through the throbbing press of the crowd. The Royal falls in behind, and he takes up a rearguard defensive position.

  “Zizou! Put on the mask.”

  “It blocks my full field of vision.”

  “Put on the mask.”

  He puts on the mask, although he hates it.

  Over her shoulder Ti calls back to him, “If you twist up the cloth of the sleeves you can tie them up so they don’t get in your way.”

  It’s a practical suggestion that works surprisingly well. He’s sweating already; the atmosphere is kept much cooler on wheelships, and he’s not sure why they turn it up so high here. Then he recalls a fact from school about planets and climate zones.

  An erratic movement to his right grabs his attention. He swings around to confront.

  A youth has fainted. Friends are trying to haul the limp body out of the press before they’re trampled. No one notices. The crowd’s attention has fixed on a clot of gendarmes headed their way. The Royal elbows her way through to the frantic group. She grabs the fallen youth. The friends are too fearful and shaky to react efficiently, so Zizou cuts in behind and shepherds them like a ball in play toward a trellis alcove where they might find shelter. Whistles blast as gendarmes close in. He braces for impact, hands into fists, muscles charged with adrenaline.

  But the enforcement officers blaze past, headed toward the train, not noticing the Royal because she looks like just another masked celebrant assisting a hapless companion out of danger. Smart thinking on her part.

  The alcove contains benches and a statue of a local deity wearing a beatific expression and holding a hand in the sign for fear not. Sim screens float at the entrance, gleaming with the characters for Respectful Happiness and May You Always See Heart to Heart. A bigger screen broadcasts images of the food being eaten at the wedding feast. Platters of sizzling beef and displays of red, orange, and green melons carved into the shapes of flowers glisten celestially. The whistles of the gendarmes get drowned out by the crowd’s thousands-tongued voice lifting in a song even he knows: “I have left my home behind me, and I seek what lies ahead.”

  “Can you manage from here?” the Royal asks the friends of the unconscious youth as they huddle within the alcove’s shelter in disheveled shock.

  “Yes, yes, please accept our gratitude.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  The Royal gives the rescued people a curt nod before gesturing to Ti to head onward. She doesn’t look at him because she knows he cannot shirk his duty to protect her. The expectation steadies him. By fulfilling this duty maybe he can erase a fraction of the taint of capture that stains him. Maybe. It would have been better to die with his squad.

  As they push outward from the center of the concourse the press lessens and they see no more gendarmes. Breaking their original party into two groups has worked to give the Royal space to escape; good tactics on the part of the one who suggested it, the Persephone whose name is tribute to a goddess of death and rebirth. The name nags at his thoughts. He worries he did something terrible at the feast that he can’t recall.

  “This way, Your Magnificence,” says practical Tiana in her harmonious voice. Then: “Zizou?”

  He snaps back into focus and pads down a wide stairway in their wake. The Royal has a brisk stride and confident posture that her mask and new jacket can’t disguise, while Tiana gives herself a stoop and slight limping roll to confuse anyone scanning the passageways via camera. He slouches, and shortens his steps, shifts of gait that won’t hinder his ability to respond to an attack.

  They head down an underground corridor that, like any enclosed passageway, has a unique pattern of vibrations and echoes. Groups of people rush and wheel past in the opposite direction, murmuring about train delays and the threat of a riot and ridiculous Channel Idol stunts and will we really see him, is he really truly here in the Wheelhouse giving a concert?

  The Royal hesitates at the first intersection, trying to read signage, some of which is painted on the walls and some of which must be visible in augmented reality in the Chaonian state network he doesn’t have access to. But he’s used to navigating passageways marked with symbols, so he spots the Green Line symbol before the Royal figures it out.

  “No, this way.” Tiana waves them down a different passage.

  “That’s to the Red Line,” says the Royal.

  “Exactly, Your Munificence. We don’t want to take the most direct route.”

  The Royal nods permission. The farther they get down the echoing tiled passageways, the more the traffic clears out. People stride past with heads lowered, no one offering an acknowledgment as they would at home. It’s as if everyone is invisible to everyone else.

  They come to an intersection. Tiana takes the direction marked prominently with Red and Blue Lines rather than the one listing Green and Purple. After counting to ten steps under her breath she halts against the faded pink tiles of the wall, strips off the fox mask and the cape, and adds, “According to Perse’s directions we’re in a pocket of surveillance opacity right here.”

  The Royal pulls off her mask, then shucks the jacket and turns it inside out. The lining is a nondescript brown. She examines the two masks left to her before glancing up at him as he pulls off the dog mask. The people walking past barely glance at them as Tiana says, a little too loudly and in a voice pitched higher and more nasal than her normal tone, “Whew! That mask is so hot. Glad to get it off.”

  The Royal holds out a cheap-looking elephant mask with crumpled tusks and a gold token affixed to the forehead as a sign of good fortune. “Zizou, I was wrong to hand you that first mask. I should have paid better attention. It was disrespectful.”

  “No problem,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say and he’s startled by her words. It is easier to pull on the elephant mask and take a gray jacket to tug it on over the green one, obedient to the plan. Tiana stuffs the discarded masks into her duffel.

  The Royal fixes the final mask over her face; it’s a white hockey mask striped with red, the universal symbol for sudden, violent death. Tiana has already transformed herself with a mermaid crown whose half mask covers her eyes and nose with sea-green sparkles. She swings on a cape of fluttering ribbons that hangs to her hips, disguising her distinctive clothing.

  “We go back—” she says, taking a first step back the way they came.

  The Royal wiggles her fingers to say, Wai
t.

  A group of three masked revelers rushes past toward the Red Line. Only then, when the cameras will see three people moving on, do they walk back to the intersection as if they are coming from the Red Line. The long, curving passageway they take now might almost be one of the main rings on a wheelship, the infinite circle that gives the ships their Ouroboros-class designation. He starts to feel more comfortable, not that home ever has this much grime on its surfaces or stink to its scrubbed air, but the sense of containment settles him.

  In a low voice Tiana says, “Your Auspiciousness, I just got a ping from Perse, on our private duo-net. She says she’s starting phase two.”

  “Phase two? Does she always talk like that?”

  “I couldn’t say, Your Benevolence. She wants us to take the 1435 to Drum Tower as with the previous directions but instead get off at Thunderous Surf Station. With all the attention on Alika she’s got to split up their group. She can’t do that and also make the 1435.”

  “Did she say all that in one ping?”

  With or without a mask, Tiana is an Ishtar come to life. But it’s her quirk of a teasing smile—he would never dare tease a Royal—that makes him decide to forgive her for the unasked-for touch.

  “No, Your Beneficence. But it’s my job as her companion’s companion to be able to comprehend the whole from the least.”

  “You’re slipping up,” says the Royal, deadpan. “Benevolence and beneficence are a bit too alike.”

  “Apologies, Your Perspicaciousness. It’s the press of activity and the risk of arrest and death that puts me off my game.”

  The Royal laughs. The echoing sound causes an elderly passerby to look their way with the smile the grands get when they see the young ones enjoying life. He remembers how the socks his grandmother knit for him were callously yanked off his feet. A spike of hot anger scalds him.

  The Royal’s gaze snaps to Zizou. “You notice something, soldier? Anything to report?”