The Song of the Dead

by Carrie Patel

  * * *

  The trim black ensemble that Farrah had commissioned for Malone looked almost like her old uniform, but it was far too nice. Polished black boots rose to her calves, too tight to conceal a weapon. The toes were pointed rather than blunt, and the heels were ever so slightly elevated: just enough for Malone to notice, but not enough to reasonably object. Farrah was a shrewd one.

  Her slim slacks were tailored. Holding them up, Malone hadn’t expected them to fit, and she was surprised to find them as pliable as a second skin. She could walk, sit, turn, and crouch as comfortably as she ever had, only the fabric was so smooth and expensive that she worried about doing any of those things in it.

  The shirt buttoned all the way to her neck. It didn’t appear drastically different from the dozens of black shirts she’d always worn; only, like every other piece of her new outfit, it felt finer and costlier. She forced herself to stop fidgeting with the buttons when she realized that she didn’t really want to know whether or not they were real pearl.

  The high collar on the wool coat was excessively dramatic, but the only thing worse than wearing fancy clothes was bothering to complain about them. At least it was black. And it was thick enough to hide a gun holster at the small of her back. Farrah was shrewd, indeed.

  She almost looked like an inspector. Which was something to be thankful for, because she felt less and less like one every day.

  She picked up the last piece of her ensemble – a gold pin, some kind of meaningless curlicue studded with small blue gems. It was ostentatious, and Malone’s excruciatingly trained animal brain rebelled at the idea of wearing something designed to draw attention, but Farrah had insisted.

  Perhaps because she still looked and felt too much like a cop.

  Against every desire and instinct, she pinned it to the flaring lapel of her coat and left the office before she saw herself in the mirror again.

  Farrah was waiting outside. She looked Malone up and down with a small, approving nod.

  “Where are we headed?” Malone asked, ignoring it.

  “Maxwell Street Station.” A surreptitious smile colored Farrah’s voice.

  As they swept through Dominari Hall, clerks, petitioners, whitenails, and strangers made way and watched them with gaping, incredulous expressions.

  That was what it felt like, anyway. Malone felt the tips of her ears growing warm.

  “Remind me,” Malone said, “what are we doing at a transit station?”

  Now Farrah gave her a long, incredulous glare. “Restoring railcar and trolley service, Governor.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “The sooner we get Recoletta running, the sooner I can stop, Governor.”

  “Do you have to do that?”

  Farrah spun her head to stare her down again. “Did you even read my report, Malone?”

  “When was I supposed to do that? As soon as I got back yesterday, I had a line of whitenails and bootlickers down the hall, all circling and bickering because none of them wanted the others to know they were even coming to me! Just when I was getting through the first half of them, you shooed them all away to bring that tailor in.”

  Farrah nodded with satisfaction. “Half of them would sell their own children for one of Mr Jalbani’s suits. With any luck, everyone in Dominari Hall has heard that story twice by now.”

  A thrill of anger tickled the back of Malone’s stomach. “And they’ll think I’m as corrupt and decadent as every other bureaucrat who’s held office in there.”

  Farrah blew an exasperated sigh through her nostrils. Malone thought she could almost see smoke. “They’ll think your time is too valuable to waste on petty squabbles and power grabs.” She wagged a finger in Malone’s face. “Figure out how to get rid of them on your own, or next time I’m commissioning a ball gown.”

  Malone bit her lip, feeling the steady clack of her new boots on the tile. “Can I use these?” Malone asked, bringing one foot down hard.

  “Why do you think I gave you heels?”

  Good humor trickled back into her bloodstream like the warmth of a strong drink. She was fortunate to have Farrah as an ally. And Salazar, wherever he was now. She’d worked with a lot of loyal, resourceful people.

  Like Johanssen, her dead chief. And Sundar, her dead partner. They would have known how to play this, and Recoletta would have been safe in their smooth, capable hands.

  Her good feeling vanished as suddenly as it had crept up on her.

  “It shouldn’t have been me,” Malone said to herself.

  But Farrah looked up and scowled. “Like I said, the sooner we get the city sorted out, the sooner you can go back to being anonymous and inconsequential.” She said it with a vitriol that sounded too forceful to be real.

  They passed through the high double doors and into the subterranean plaza in front of Dominari Hall.

  Malone frowned. “Farrah. Didn’t you say we got the railcars working again?”

  “So you were listening.”

  “Why are we taking a carriage? It’s faster if we just–”

  Farrah seized her elbow and dragged her towards the waiting coach, and Malone fought back a wince at the iron grip on her expensive sleeve.

  While they rumbled toward the Vineyard, Farrah rattled on about appearances and presentation and public confidence, and Malone listened just enough to catch the salient bits – flip the lights on, make a show of it, and hope the sweeps had gotten around to cleaning Maxwell Street Station up a bit.

  Given the musty smell of manure in the tunnels, Malone was not especially hopeful on that front.

  The rest of her was watching the detours they were taking around barricaded tunnels, the rubble that had been swept into piles but not cleared, all of the things that a few working railcars wouldn’t fix.

  “– about distraction,” Farrah said.

  “What distraction?” Malone turned back to her.

  Even in the semidarkness, she could see the irritation smoldering in Farrah’s eyes. “Skies above, have you been paying any attention?”

  “I was planning our escape route.”

  Farrah was silent for a few seconds, probably trying to decide whether or not she was joking. She wasn’t certain herself.

  Finally, the other woman made a noise of disgust. “It’s a ribbon cutting, Malone. The worst you’ll have to deal with is boredom.”

  “You weren’t here last time,” Malone said, recalling the visit she and Arnault had made only weeks ago, when Maxwell Street Station had been temporarily transformed by the mobile black market known as the Twilight Exchange.

  The carriage pulled to a stop. A few guards in Recolettan uniforms flanked the arched entrance to Maxwell Street Station, and a dull roar rose from within.

  Malone’s stomach twisted. She’d always hated speeches.

  Maxwell Street Station had been the transit hub of the Vineyard in the old Council’s day. Under Sato, it, like the rest of the Vineyard, had become contested territory between the shifting influence of criminal gangs and insurgent leaders.

  Whoever had cleaned the place up had done a better job here than in the tunnels.

  Maxwell Street Station had always been the functional gem of the Vineyard, a place where grandiose aesthetics met functional design. It used all three spatial dimensions in the finest tradition of subterranean architecture, spinning steel bridges and loading stages over railcar platforms bordered by long, wide steps, all beneath a great dome of softly reflective tile.

  Today, it was actually polished to a mirror shine.

  Even without the benefit of a skylight, the station was one of the brightest corners of Recoletta. Pillars of white flame rose behind panels of glowing, frosted glass. Fresh radiance stones studded the underside of the dome and the arched entrances to the railcar and trolley tunnels, and the distant girders that clung to the dome like strands of a spider’s web gleamed. Every tile and light-reflective inset had been polished, and a crowd of a couple of hundred spectators stood arou
nd, their eyes bulging from hunger-lean faces with awe and suspicion.

  Even Farrah seemed to have forgotten her irritation. “I didn’t think they’d have time to fix the gas lines,” she said, her voice soft with wonder.

  Something was tingling in Malone’s skull like the first sign of a cold, but she couldn’t yet tell what.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?” Farrah muttered, pointing to the nearest platform. A single railcar sat in the middle of the platform like a beast awaiting slaughter. The brass had been polished and the wood varnished to a luster it probably hadn’t had since its first voyage across town. The throng standing before it watched as if they expected the thing to come to life on its own.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  Farrah gave her a gentle shove. “Next time, read the report.”

  Malone climbed the steps to the stranded railcar and waiting crowd. She was halfway there before she realized that she didn’t know how far the railcar lines had been repaired, let alone where this one was going.

  She found herself at the top of the platform, facing a gathering of people who looked as uncertain as she felt.

  Sundar would have been good at this. She’d watched him charm stone-hearted bureaucrats and belligerent thugs alike. Whatever the situation, the former actor had always found the right words. Almost always.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Citizens of Recoletta. Thank you for the confidence you’ve put in your government.” That she didn’t feel it herself made it even harder to say.

  Her listeners blinked back at her. Coughed into ragged sleeves.

  “Recoletta is a great city,” she said, realizing too late that she’d put the emphasis on “city” rather than “great.” Or maybe it should have gone on “Recoletta.” What was it about big speeches that seemed to confound every word?

  “A very noble city,” she continued, “with a glorious and noble history–”

  She broke off to clear her throat, realizing she’d just said “noble” twice. Nothing to do about it now but keep going and hope no one else noticed. She tried to recall Sundar’s calming presence, his natural ease with words. The thought did little for her.

  The onlookers twitched with movement – impatiently shuffled feet, murmurs to neighbors, picking under fingernails.

  “We have prevailed over, um, sinister forces, and now we thrive together,” she said to the ragged, hungry gathering.

  Someone sneezed. A man near the front of the group shook his head.

  How had Sundar managed when she felt like she had a mouthful of pebbles? It wasn’t just that he’d been good at reading people, he’d been good at empathizing with them. When he spoke, it felt as though he meant every word.

  Malone suddenly realized why her own speech was going nowhere. She didn’t believe any of it herself.

  She needed to try something else. At least she knew this couldn’t go much worse than it already was.

  “Listen,” Malone said, “you don’t need me to tell you how bad things have become. We’ve all lost people. We’ve all lost our city.”

  The people below looked at her with hard, wary eyes, but at least they were looking.

  “Your leaders failed – I mean, we failed you. We gave you over to tyrants and cowards, and we became those things ourselves.

  “But this is still our home. And it won’t be easy, but we’ve got to build it back up together. And we’ve got to be patient while we do it. I won’t lie – it’s going to be a long, hard process. The healing always takes longer than the wounding. But we won’t get there if we’re still tearing each other apart.” The words were tumbling out of her, faster and heavier than she’d intended, but she feared that if she stopped, she’d choke on the ones still welling up inside her.

  “I wasn’t ready for this. I’m still not. I can’t make any promises about when things will return to normal, or if we ever will. But I promise I’ll do my best to do right by you.”

  The crowd was rapt now, a couple of hundred pairs of eyes fixed on her. She hoped that was a good thing.

  “Our ancestors came together and hollowed this place out of the Catastrophe, didn’t they? We’ll get some dirt under our fingernails, but we’ll fix it together.” Something in the temperature of the room was changing – it was a spreading warmth in the others, a rising and swelling in her own chest.

  “Let’s rebuild Recoletta together, starting today,” she heard herself say. She couldn’t think of anything else to add, so she flipped the switch before she could bungle the speech again.

  For three terrifying seconds, nothing happened.

  Then, Malone heard the sizzle of electricity and the groan of metal, and she saw victory in the faces of the cheering assembly.

  She turned, and sure enough, the railcar was moving, crawling along the tracks with a slow but steady pace. Relief bloomed in her chest.

  Then the two windows at either end of the railcar slid open, and two men unrolled a banner that spread the length of the vehicle.

  It read: “DOWN WITH FOREIGN CORRUPTION. STAND WITH JANE LIN.”

  Malone was just confused enough that she almost missed what happened next.

  But the commotion from the throng rose like a wave, and Malone followed its energy up, almost impossibly, toward the ceiling, where the empty trolley tracks hung.

  At least, they had been empty before.

  Now a trolley slid along one of the middle tracks with an oiled grace that put the railcar’s wheezing progress to shame.

  Then the door slid open, and Jane Lin emerged from the bank of seats. Even from this distance, Malone recognized her face and the pale, stony terror etched on it.

  “Citizens of Recoletta,” Jane called, “you have been crushed too long under the heel of invading despots and their hired friends.” Jane pointed down.

  At her, Malone realized.

  “They tell you to wait for a better future. To submit to them again. And what do they offer but empty promises? Does she look like she’s been thrown from her home? Has she waited hours for half a portion of gruel?”

  Malone felt the onlookers’ gaze on her again, but their warmth had become a blaze. She wanted to explain that it wasn’t as simple as Jane was telling it, but that was a hard case to make in a brand new suit with pearl buttons.

  Jane’s face was whiter than ever and rigid with conviction. Or fear. “Show them you’ve had enough! Cast off their yoke and stand with us!”

  The station rumbled underfoot, and thunder shook the walls. For one terrified moment, Malone remembered the bombs that had inaugurated Sato’s reign.

  Then, railcars and trolleys burst from the tunnels. They filled the tracks with cars stuffed with chanting, cheering men and women. Malone couldn’t make out what they were saying until she heard it echoed behind her.

  “Jane Lin. Jane Lin.”

  Malone turned back in time to notice that the chant was coming from no more than a dozen people at first. People scattered throughout the crowd yet chanting the very same thing at the very same time. People who had been ordered to wait for this moment.

  And their chant was spreading.

  Malone saw it as much as she heard it, saw fury and purpose kindle in their faces amidst the rising din of voices. She saw them looking, fever-bright eyes searching for an outlet for their rage.

  They settled on her.

  Malone glanced up again. Jane Lin was still standing in the open trolley, yelling something, but it was lost to the mob’s chant.

  The mass of people moved like a snake coiling to spring. Farrah was nowhere to be seen.

  Malone assessed her options quickly. The rabble blocked most of her exits, and they were rapidly filling the space between her and the arch through which she and Farrah had entered. There were pedestrian tunnels and railcar shafts behind her, but she didn’t know how far they’d been cleared.

  Or whether the mob’s organizers had another contingent waiting there.

  Malone cursed under her breat
h. She hated the idea of running blind through the maze of destruction at her back, but it beat running straight into the mob. They’d tear her to pieces. They were just waiting for her to move first.

  Suddenly, the horde lurched forward.

  Malone’s heart jumped into her mouth, but they weren’t coming for her. Not yet.

  Commotion spread from the back of the crowd and rippled forward. Someone had taken up a new cry, and it was slowly building into a dissonant harmony.

  Fire.

  Smoke and flame rose from the back of the gathering, where one of the glass flame guards had been shattered. Malone’s police instincts kicked in, and she was trying to figure out what was burning when she caught movement under the arched tunnel.

  Farrah, waving frantically by the exit.

  The fire had thrown the mob into confusion, and the collective animal hadn’t yet decided whether to focus on Malone or the fire. But they would soon.

  Malone ran.

  The crowd’s ragged edge boiled behind her, but the way ahead was clear, and Farrah had already taken off. Malone almost ran into her where she’d stopped in the tunnel just outside the station.

  The carriage was gone. So were the guards who had been standing by the arch. Hearing the frenzy rising from the station, Malone couldn’t blame them.

  Malone retraced the route they’d taken to get to the station, avoiding the blocked tunnels and dead ends she’d noted on the way over. Farrah followed close behind, but Malone was too winded for a told-you-so.

  The tunnel curved and twisted. It was just enough to keep them out of sight of their pursuers who, with any luck, would tire soon.

  Malone darted around a corner and past a rubble-choked tunnel. The sounds of the mob were fading behind them.

  “Hear that,” Farrah panted behind her. It was a question, but the woman was too winded to give it the inflection.

  “Listen. Ahead,” Farrah said, and then Malone noticed it. Shouting voices. Running feet. The mob – or some portion of it – was preparing to cut them off.

  Another corridor branched off twenty feet ahead. Malone was almost certain it was a dead end, but it was something. She swerved into it and heard Farrah stumble in behind her.