by Carrie Patel
Half a dozen doors lined either side of the corridor. It ended in a barricade of lamed wagons, broken furniture, and one half of a set of double doors. Malone rushed to the barricade and began pulling at shelves, table legs, and anything else she could get her hands on. Behind her, Farrah rattled one doorknob after the next.
“Locked,” Farrah muttered. “Locked…”
A howl of fury rang from the main tunnel.
“Shit!” Farrah twisted another knob, hurling herself against another locked door. Malone listened to the painful thuds that followed while she kept tearing at the barricade. It was deeper and sturdier than she’d expected – for every chair or cabinet she dislodged, another would shift into its place. The screaming, stampeding crowd sounded like it was just around the corner.
Her grip slipped around a tabletop, and she realized her hands were slick with blood.
Malone heard a yelp from halfway down the hall and looked back in time to see a door slam shut. Farrah was gone.
And shadows were licking at the mouth of the corridor like flames.
She cursed and dove through the window of the wheel-less carriage, feeling seven different places where she’d have bruises. If she survived the day.
She sat up and tugged at the corner of the curtain. The figures at the other end of the corridor were little more than shadows in the gloom, but she counted three. No, four. They advanced along the corridor toward her, heads swiveling and voices barely intelligible growls.
“– they go?”
“Try that side. I’ll–”
“– get my hands on–”
One of them was checking the right side of the hall. Two were checking the left – where Farrah had disappeared. Malone hoped anyone else on the other side of the door at least had enough self-preservation instinct to maintain a peaceful silence while the mob was outside.
Of course, someone could have pulled Farrah in just to slit her throat and check her pockets. No noise in that.
Malone was halfway to her feet before she realized she was moving.
And the fourth pursuer was headed straight toward her. Malone forced herself to slide back down, below the window.
But the woman hadn’t seen her – not yet. She was probing the other side of the barricade, searching for a way through. The carriage creaked and groaned.
Malone twisted her arm to the small of her back and drew her gun, slowly enough to feel the barrel scraping the stitches in the leather. She watched the tattered curtain. When the woman found her here, Malone could probably crush her windpipe before she called to her companions. As long as they weren’t looking, she might have time to squeeze off a shot or two before they noticed her. And the noise from the main tunnel had gotten loud enough that perhaps no one else would notice.
It was a good lie.
The other three were still moving down the hall, their pounding muffled through the blanket of noise. The nearby woman’s exploratory thumps and curses were getting closer. Malone braced herself.
She could feel the sudden stillness as the woman stopped what she was doing. And then –
“Ha, wounded! Got you now.”
The blood. The other woman knew she was here.
“Hey, stop! Stop!” A man’s voice, coming from further down the corridor. Near Farrah’s door.
Malone sprang to the window just in time to see the woman sprinting away. And then she lost her in the flood of people rushing into the corridor.
She ducked again, the hairs on the back of her neck becoming needles. The screams and shouts had taken on a different pitch now. The people in the mob were fighting. Killing. Dying. And over what, they probably didn’t even know.
The good news – if she could call it that – was that her pursuers had likely forgotten all about her and Farrah.
She made herself as comfortable as she could against the gutted cushions on the floor of the carriage and remembered the riot at the train station just before Sato’s flight to the Library, when a starving, frustrated crowd had turned into a frenzied horde and killed a third of the inspectors awaiting the food shipment. The crowd had turned in a matter of moments – almost as quickly as the group in the tunnels outside had. It was as though Recoletta’s people, like the city itself, were changing their substance, becoming malleable and reactive. She wondered just who they would be when the dust settled and what kind of city would have hardened around them.
Malone rested her arms on her knees and kept her revolver pointed at the door, though a part of her realized that if the time came to fire it, she’d do just as well to turn it on herself.
Having nothing to do but wait for that moment was the worst of it.
Malone tried to ignore the sounds of violence and the aches of her abused joints, tried to forget the roars of the food rioters and the screams of her fellow inspectors, and counted.
She’d reached seven hundred and forty-three when the last footsteps died away. The shouting had stopped around six hundred and eighty, so it stood to reason that the last of the mob had moved on. Still, she waited for an even nine hundred before she dared to move the curtain again.
Almost a dozen bodies lay in the corridor. There would be more in the tunnel beyond, but under the circumstances this wasn’t as bad as she had thought. It had sounded much worse.
Thankfully, most people were bad at killing. They didn’t really want to do it and weren’t generally sure how. A few of the people on the ground were already stirring. Some would stumble away before help arrived and do their best to forget this.
This hadn’t been a planned massacre so much as a clumsy and spontaneous upwelling of violence. That was better for the obvious reasons, but in another sense it was worse.
A door creaked open. Malone spun, gun raised, to see Farrah standing at the threshold and mirroring her own surprise.
Before Malone could say anything, Farrah rushed over and threw her arms around her neck.
“You look like horse shit,” Farrah said into her collar. “Smell like it, too.”
Malone felt her own body rigid with pain. And shock. “What happened?”
Farrah drew back and surveyed the small passage with professional detachment. “My guess? Someone feels left out of the reconstruction effort.”
That wasn’t what Malone had meant, but she could already see Farrah’s mind working and knew better than to derail it.
“Though it appears things got out of hand,” Farrah said, chewing her lip. “You’ve been talking with some of the dethroned bureaucrats.”
More than she could count. It felt as though she’d done little else since her appointment, and every pompous whitenail and lowly clerk she dealt with was either offended by someone else’s advantage or indignant about their own lack of one.
But this wasn’t the work of just any disgruntled politico. This was someone who had power and knew how to mobilize it.
“Attrop,” Malone said. The woman had spent a lifetime building and destroying dynasties. She’d been a whitenail under the old Council and infamous “Bricklayer” under Sato. And she’d made it clear the night they’d destroyed Sato that she expected a seat at the table.
Farrah balked. “If that’s where we are, things are worse than I thought.”
Malone remembered the sounds of chaos and violence. Attrop was a fool to think she could control that kind of juggernaut.
Or she was a fool not to have seen it coming.
Malone shook her head. “Much worse.”
Farrah’s wide eyes prompted her on.
“Attrop wanted a demonstration. Not a murder,” Malone said, testing the idea out. “Definitely not a massacre.”
Farrah’s eyes widened further. “If she’s not controlling them…”
“They did this on their own,” Malone said, looking at the bodies. Trying to focus on the ones that were moving.
Farrah cursed under her breath. “This is what I was talking about. We need to get at the source of her power.”
“How? I don’t
even know where she–”
“Not like that,” Farrah said, biting off each word and closing her eyes. “The battleground is politics. We don’t need to flush her out, we just need to give people something bigger to stare at.”
“Then let’s get some more trains going.”
Farrah laughed humorlessly, her eyes still closed. “Even if it were that easy, nothing stops Attrop from doing this again. We need something big, Malone. Something she can’t interrupt and can’t take credit for.”
“Next week–”
“And we need it now.” Farrah opened her eyes and turned them on Malone, daring her to offer up another useless idea.
Malone felt sick to her stomach before the idea even took shape in her mind. “I could move up Roman Arnault’s trial.” She’d barely stopped herself from saying “execution.”
Farrah nodded and licked her lips. “That could work.” Her skin was especially pale.
Malone stood there a moment, waiting for Farrah to give her a reason not to. She knew she wouldn’t. They both knew anything was better than the mess around them.
“I’ll set trial for the day after tomorrow,” Malone said. “Can you get everything mobilized before then?”
Farrah looked offended.
Malone threw up her hands. “Fine. Just tell me what to do.”
“You’ll need to make an announcement.” Farrah looked her up and down, taking in her ripped and bloodstained ensemble. “Good thing Jalbani has your measurements.”
Malone glanced down, feeling something squish under her boots.
Horse shit.
Chapter 8
Trading Words
“Culpa,” the interrogator said. “So I say from the commenso.”
The guilt was there, all right, gathering like a gallstone in Jane’s gut, even edging out the nausea. But not for the reasons the interrogator thought.
“No space aki for perturbers and rowdies. Need discipline. Orden. O we cast ‘em out.”
“Just calm down,” Jane said. “You wanted to know how I got here, and I’m telling you everything.” Or as much as she dared. Everything but the vault and Roman’s full name.
The motion outside picked up, tossing the little room about. A few sharp jolts almost knocked Jane from her crate.
The interrogator raised his eyebrows. “What I hear ess you make problems. Maybe we cast you out now. Prevent more problems.”
“Let me finish,” Jane said, steeling her voice with a confidence she didn’t quite feel. She wanted to brush the stray hairs from her face, but she didn’t dare let the interrogator see how clammy her palms were, or how badly her hands might shake. “That was a mistake. But it’s not even what I got into trouble for.”
“So what ess?”
“Telling the truth.”
* * *
“You told me we would stir up trouble. You didn’t tell me anyone would get killed,” Jane had said to Madame Attrop the day after the ordeal at Maxwell Street Station.
“My dear, you didn’t ask.”
They had returned to Ruthers’s mansion. Jane stood with her back to a smoldering fire. They’d retreated as soon as the crowd had chased Malone out of the station, and now Attrop sat in an overstuffed armchair in a parlor that seemed absurdly large for her little band of spies and schemers. The lantern-jawed man – Dalton – paced the door as if he were waiting for someone to come down the stairs after them. Hoping for it.
Jane shook her head to clear the first furious response that flashed into her mind. “The point was to outdo Malone. Not to–”
“No, the point is to unseat Malone, the Qadi, and their bogus government by any means possible.” The high back of the chair scooped the old woman up, and the arms rose around her like cresting waves. She looked thin-boned and fragile in it. She fluttered a hand. “Though, if it makes you feel any better, Malone and most of the fools who chased after her walked away in one piece.”
“How comforting.”
Attrop cocked her head, a wry smile painted on her lips. “I wonder, are you angry that our gambit turned to violence? Or just that people were chanting your name when it happened?”
“That’s not fair,” Jane said. Yet something burned in her chest. She pushed Ruthers out of her mind in a way that had almost become routine. “Especially when you didn’t do the talking.”
“Oh, but if I had your clout, I would have. You’re the woman who ended a dynasty with a single shot. That’s power, Jane.” Attrop’s eyes shone.
The burning sensation dropped from her chest into her stomach. She opened her mouth, half-expecting to wretch. “It’s not,” she said instead.
“I beg your pardon?”
Jane took a steadying breath. “That’s desperation.” It felt good to admit it.
Attrop flinched. Jane felt the gesture like a tug on the thread of a spider’s web.
“You’re stirring up a mob you can’t control.” And she herself had been desperate enough to go along with Attrop. She felt guilty and foolish all at once.
The old woman scowled over her clasped hands. “Be careful, Jane. There’s still plenty I do control.”
By the door, Dalton had stopped his pacing and was watching her with his arms folded.
“If people want blood, they’ll have it,” Attrop said. “But we can choose whose they spill.”
Before Jane could argue further, footsteps clattered down the stairs and along the hall at a swift jog. She waited, listening to the echoing steps for what felt like a long time. The emptiness of this big, lonely house rekindled the ache in her chest.
Dalton craned his head into the hall and nodded back at Attrop, all professional solemnity.
A young woman dashed into the parlor, panting but trying to cover it. She blinked between Jane and Attrop.
Attrop sighed. “If you’re going to let your mouth hang open, you might as well form words with it.”
“Sorry, madam,” the messenger said. “I’ve just come with news from Dominari Hall. Roman Arnault’s trial has been moved up to tomorrow.”
Jane wasn’t certain if the room went quiet or if that was just the rushing in her ears. She put a hand on the mantel to steady herself.
She looked up at Attrop when she was certain the room wouldn’t spin out from under her.
“I’m sorry, Jane,” she said. She almost sounded like she meant it. “I could organize another demonstration.”
“It wouldn’t be enough,” Jane said. And if it was anything like the last one, it would be too much.
Attrop nodded. “As I told you, this is a war of distractions.”
Something withered inside Jane, just as it had when Attrop had caught her here in the midst of another fruitless errand. But this time was worse, because more than her feeble hopes had died.
And if she was honest with herself, perhaps that was the worst part of all of it. That everything she’d done for most of the past year had only made matters worse. Cooperating with Malone had painted a target on her back. Sparing Ruthers had set the snare for her and Roman. Killing Ruthers had trapped them again, but in different ways.
Her last card was the truth about the vault code, but she realized that she was even further from playing it now. Beyond Roman’s own fears about the vault – and about being used to open it – there wasn’t a person in Recoletta she would trust with it. If the two revolutions had proven one thing, it was that the people who seized power were the last ones who should have it. Perhaps that was what she had come to admire about Roman – he had the sense to fear the power other people craved. As for the others – Ruthers, Sato, Lachesse, Malone, Attrop, the Qadi – they were all the same. Same bad news, just sung to a different tune.
Something about the idea stuck in places she didn’t expect. When she realized what it was, she laughed out loud.
“Miss Lin, I do hate to be the last one in on a good joke,” Attrop said.
There was still one last thing she could do. And even if it didn’t make matters any better, it
certainly couldn’t make them any worse. Not any worse than they deserved to be, anyway.
“Enough, Jane. What’s so funny?” Attrop asked. Seeing the old woman at a loss spread a kind of trickling warmth through Jane’s blood.
“I need a drink,” she said, ignoring Attrop and shoving past Dalton at the door. She kept moving, up the hall and up the stairs, pushing forward before anyone could think to stop her and before she could second-guess herself. It felt good to have a plan.
* * *
Jane found Burgevich sitting alone at one of the back tables at Petrosian’s bar, almost as if he’d been waiting for her. He looked up as she crossed the room, and it was impossible to tell if his expression was surprise or just an effect of the shivering candlelight.
“I’m glad to see you so soon,” he said, as she slid onto the tall chair opposite him.
“It’s been an eventful couple of days,” Jane said.
“So I’ve heard.” Burgevich leaned forward, his expression hungry. “I’ve been hoping you could tell me more.”
A growling rumble sounded from behind her. Jane glanced over her shoulder to see Petrosian standing behind the bar, two glasses on the countertop. He plunked a bottle down next to them.
“I believe I bought last time,” Burgevich said.
“What I’ve got for you will more than make up for it.”
The shadows around Burgevich’s smile deepened. “I’ll hold you to that, Miss Lin.”
He rose to fetch their drinks, and Jane screwed up her courage. What she was about to do felt right. It felt like what she’d wanted to do from the beginning. She just hadn’t understood how powerful the truth might be, and even if she had, she wouldn’t have been ready for the consequences.
But if Recoletta was doomed to be stuck between corrupt bureaucrats and power-mad demagogues, then perhaps she was doing everyone a favor.
Burgevich set a clouded glass in front of her. She took a drink to seal her resolve.
Across from her, Burgevich swirled and turned his glass. “You were saying?”