by Carrie Patel
When the guards had disappeared up the stairs, Malone and Arnault darted back into the hall. She went right. He made a left.
This time, she grabbed his arm.
“They said east,” he whispered.
Malone pointed off to the right. “East.”
He thought about this, then shrugged and motioned for her to lead.
As they continued, Malone found herself oddly grateful for the Maxwell Street Station riots. After that ordeal, most of the guards were out on patrol rather than prowling around the Barracks.
By the time they reached a T-junction at a rough-hewn wall, Malone could feel freedom like warmth in the air.
She rapped the wall. “Solid. We’re home free if we can get to the other side.”
“And get past the patrols.” Faint light glowed to their left. Arnault led the other way. They soon found a low passage burrowing through the wall and a door framed by slitted windows just a few inches wide.
“No guards?” he asked.
“One-way door,” she said. The outer walls of the Barracks were designed to keep people out rather than in. Once they left this way, there’d be no getting back in. Which was just fine by Malone.
She pressed her nose to the slit windows but didn’t see any movement outside. “Let’s go.”
They eased the door open and scanned the cavern. The outer walls rose a hundred feet away. Somewhere out there was a tunnel that would take them deep into the city. Safety felt so close, but the muted sounds of patrols reminded Malone that they weren’t free yet.
“Behind us,” Arnault whispered.
She leaned back into the hall and heard guards approaching. No time to hesitate. They slipped out the door together.
Malone tried to ease it shut, but it still closed with a loud clank. Arnault tensed, ready to run, but she shook her head and pressed herself against the door, just out of view of the slit windows. He grudgingly did likewise.
The marching footsteps came to a stop somewhere on the other side of the door.
“Did you hear that, sir?” asked a voice.
“Hear what?” said another.
“The door–” A faint shadow flickered across the slit of light on the ground. Malone wanted to press herself further into the door, but she didn’t dare move. She held her breath as a single pair of footsteps drew closer.
“What is it?” asked another voice further back.
“I don’t know, but I–”
“You’re going to get us all in trouble if we’re late. Let’s go.”
The footsteps retreated with a crunch of grit and swish of fabric. Malone didn’t move until her thudding heart had quieted enough that she was sure of the silence.
Arnault’s particolored face glistened with sweat. He slicked a damp lock of hair back from his forehead and nodded to Malone.
With the one-way door at their back, they had the protection of short walls to either side – just enough to protect a party leaving the Barracks as they assembled beyond the door. It gave them a chance to check the rest of the cavern in relative safety.
Arnault crept along the wall and peered around the edge.
“Two guards patrolling forty yards away, backs turned,” he said. He pointed to a tunnel in the cavern wall that Malone had to lean out to see. “That takes us straight to the Bureau District.” Which was empty enough to provide some hiding spots – the administrative district had been the first to go. “We run, we can make it,” he said.
“Too risky.”
“If they see us, they’ll give chase.”
“Especially if they see us running.”
His sigh was a growl. “First alarm, I’m taking off.”
“Just keep pace with me. We’ll walk fast.”
After a silent count of three, they stepped away from their hiding spot and marched toward the distant tunnel with brisk, regular strides. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred and twenty yards away. Malone tried to focus on that steadily decreasing number and on the drumbeat-regular pace of her steps. Anything to keep from looking at the patrol to her left, Arnault to her right, or the battlements behind her.
She could feel Arnault resisting the same urge.
“As long as we don’t make any sudden movements, we’ll blend in,” she said. More to convince herself than anything.
Arnault grunted.
By the time she brought her attention back to the exit, they were almost halfway to it. They’d been out of cover for twelve seconds. If someone was going to come after them, chances were they would have already done so.
Malone heard a shout come from somewhere behind her.
She didn’t run. Not yet. Next to her, Arnault bucked like a skittish horse. Malone resisted the urge to place a restraining hand on his arm.
Another shout, quickly followed by a peal of laughter. Relief puddled in her veins. Arnault let out a whooping sigh.
Malone’s hands shook with adrenaline as they slipped into the tunnel and away from the Barracks. The sluggish calm of relief and post-adrenaline exhaustion swallowed her along with the high, narrow tunnels of the Bureau District.
They found a quiet corner next to the abandoned Census Directorate. Most of the people who would have worked in the district were holed up in Dominari Hall, trying to rebuild their structures and organizations the same way soldiers and sweeps were clearing the tunnels. She’d always hated the bureaucracy here and the petty men and women who managed it, but now the thought of something so dependably predictable was a strange comfort.
Besides, it might fall to her to rebuild it in the coming weeks.
She could only hope the new Council formed sooner rather than later.
Arnault leaned against a tunnel wall that was polished to a flat shine. The whole district was wrought from a hard, angular kind of beauty that brought to mind a maze of mirrors.
“What now?” he asked, panting.
“Get Jane and go. Anywhere as long as it’s far from Recoletta.” She didn’t expect she’d need to tell him twice.
But his eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Because you two are trouble, and people won’t be happy until there’s blood.”
“No, why are you helping me?”
They were wasting time. Malone didn’t want to talk about this. She didn’t know how. “Easier to sleep on than knowing I put a noose around your neck.”
Arnault was quiet a long time. She wished he’d just go, before this got more awkward.
“I’m not the good guy, Malone.” He sounded hoarse, and just as uncomfortable as she felt.
“You’re a piece of shit,” Malone said. “Doesn’t make killing you like this right. Besides, Jane won’t go without you.”
She could almost feel the heat in Arnault’s cheeks. “You thought about coming with us?” he asked. It wasn’t exactly an invitation.
Malone laughed before she realized she’d opened her mouth. “I thought we’d had enough of each other.”
“Being governor doesn’t mean you’re safe. It just means you’ll get the blame when things go wrong.”
She knew it. She just didn’t want to think about it.
“The way I remember it, you pulled a gun on me back there. I just had to go along.” If she kept saying it like that, maybe she could make it sound true. “Besides, someone has to put Recoletta back in order.”
He looked pained. “Doesn’t have to be you.”
She only wished there were someone else she could trust with the job.
“Just get yourselves out of the city so I can rebuild it. Before someone else knocks it down.”
Arnault grunted.
“I’m serious. Jane’s trouble.” Malone had meant to say “in trouble,” but she didn’t correct herself.
“You won’t see us again,” he said, and he stuck out his hand. She stared at it for a second, her confusion building, before she realized he was offering it.
She took it.
“Thank you,” he said.
* * *
Malone shook her head. The young guard locked in the cell was probably the only person they’d fooled at all. Lachesse and the others had figured it out rather quickly, and from there it had just been a matter of waiting through the sham of a trial.
But that was all behind her. What concerned her now was how Geist had seemed to know much of her story already.
“Who else have you been talking to?” Malone asked.
Geist smiled. Phelan returned to clear the cups, and Malone smelled the familiar musk again. Amber and licorice.
Lachesse.
“Of alles your compatriots, she never flet. Valiant, no? Und I am thinking that if I comprend the same history from a woman in richesse and a woman on the gibbet, then it must be vert, ya?”
He was smirking – so like Arnault had – but everything else in the room was blurring and fading into a bruised, red-and-black haze. “Let me off this place,” she said.
“This is being imprudent,” Geist said.
Now that Malone recognized the musky perfume, she couldn’t smell anything else. It felt like she was going to choke on it. “You’ll have to throw one of us over.”
Geist ran his fingers over his goatee and exhaled a long breath. “You are stark furious. I comprend this.”
Phelan withdrew to the safety of the hall, her eyes cast down and her ears reddening.
“Wass do you regard here?” he asked, rising and smoothing one hand over the table. The overlong sleeve almost covered his fingers. “Here?” He touched the blond wood paneling behind him. “There?” He pointed out the window behind Malone.
“I’ve talked enough,” she said.
“The Continent constructed this wunder, und we forty-three voyaged very far to retrieve Roman Arnault.” He circled over to the window and looked down at Recoletta, his hands clasped behind his back. “What are you thinking mine compatriots will do if they apprend that you exiled him? Or esteem him dead?”
“There are other airships,” Malone said. Her tongue tasted like a lump of ash, dry and bitter. She was too numb for horror, but it was only a matter of time.
Geist laughed. “Boocoo, yes. And boocoo persons to occupy them. You will not be finding them so indulgent.” He turned away from the window and took a seat next to her, close enough that she could see the veins crackled across his eyes and smell the sour, bitter odor of the caffee on his breath. “You sacrificed to conserve your city. Recount where Roman went. Or do you resign alles now?”
Malone knew he was right, even if she didn’t have the energy just now to piece all of the implications together.
“He found Jane, and she must have taken them someplace far from Recoletta.” Which could be just about anywhere.
“Her direction?” Geist asked.
“I don’t know where she would have gone.”
“Perhaps no. But you comprend her, and you comprend him. Better than any others, I am thinking. So you will assist.” He smiled with something he probably intended as reassurance. “But goot to do something, ya? Besides, you will encounter this a goot place for maladapts.”
Chapter 10
On The Run Again
The interrogator held his chin in his hand. Now his eyes were starting to look a little bloodshot. “So you tell your relato to the bellman, ee he tells it to the public. Then you escape. To pass aki.”
Jane could only assume he was referring to Burgevich as the bellman, but at the moment it was beside the point. “Well, you seemed to know a thing or two about escaping,” she said.
The interrogator stiffened. “Ess different.”
“It always is,” Jane said.
But he wasn’t amused. His eyes burned, and his sun-beaten face withered into a frown. “Ess different. The Catastrophe was your castigo.”
That was interesting. He was using almost the same word that Recolettans did for the mysterious disaster that brought civilization to a halt hundreds of years ago. She listened, trying not to let her surprise show.
“Ess the problem – your public can’t layer. So many livros left to decay. They conosse nothing.”
Jane wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but she’d worked for enough temperamental whitenails to know not to interrupt, question, or argue. She kept quiet and listened.
He kept talking. He was on a tear now.
“Your terrens ee the Continent ulcered of corruption. It consumed you. This ess your castigo.” He jabbed a finger at her. “We did not escape. We passed here to be liber of your corruption. Aki where the salt preserves us.”
Jane could only hope. Her skin still stung from where she’d been bathed and scrubbed down with the stuff.
“Aki we guard ee maintain pure until the salt cleanses the sujeira from both terrens.”
Jane waited until she was sure he had finished. She didn’t completely understand his story, but it was something she could work with.
“Then I suppose I’m lucky I found you,” she said. “Because after I spoke about all the corruption I saw, I couldn’t stay.”
The trick was to tell him the rest without mentioning the vault.
* * *
Jane had left Petrosian’s after midnight with only a gun and the grim satisfaction of having set her vengeance in motion. Returning to Roman’s had been a reflex as much as anything.
The last thing she’d expected was to find him there, surprise on his bruised and battered face.
“Roman!” she said, her heart pounding. “What…? How did you–?”
He drew her close and planted a kiss on her forehead. Not the kind of greeting she’d hoped for, but one look at his face told her there were other things on his mind.
“We have to leave,” he said.
Jane looked past him and saw two traveling bags already stuffed with supplies. “What exactly is going on?”
“Malone broke me out,” he said, turning from her to stuff some bundled shirts into his bag. “But they’ll be looking for both of us.” He glanced back at her long enough to give her a mischievous smile that turned her insides to warm molasses. “I hear you’ve been making trouble.”
“Nothing you wouldn’t do,” Jane said. “But what’s this about Malone? I thought she was rushing your execution.”
“Whatever she did before, she risked herself to get me out now.” He fastened one of the bags and dropped it at her feet. “And you, Jane. I don’t know what you did, but it put you on the chopping block.”
Cold dread replaced the warmth in her belly. She wished she could take back her interview with Burgevich. But even if it wasn’t already going to print, he didn’t seem like the type to let a good story go.
Roman fastened the other bag. “She’s not a monster, just a bureaucrat. And a reluctant one.” His face tensed with some private pain – Jane supposed he was thinking about his own role in the last couple of governments. “But once we’re out of the city – and once the trouble you stirred up dies away – things should quiet down for her, too.”
Jane very much doubted that would be the case, but there was no point in discussing it now.
“We’ll have to head to the farming communes,” Roman said. “One on the outskirts. I don’t know that the cities will ever be safe for you.” He gave her a look full of apology.
“What about you?” Jane asked. So far, nothing about this reunion was turning out as she would have envisioned.
“There’s something I have to do.” He spoke stiffly, as though he were still trying to accustom himself to the idea.
“I think we’re past secrets, Roman.”
He nodded, the hint of a smile on his lips. “It’s the vault. I always thought – like my parents did, I suppose – that Recoletta lay far enough from its shadow.” He swallowed. “Recent events have proven otherwise.”
A sense of foreboding tingled at the back of Jane’s neck. “What, then? Where else is
there to run?”
He shook his head. “I’m tired of running, Jane. I’m going to destroy it.”
A thrill of fear and exhilaration shuddered along her spine. This wasn’t the same man she’d seen locked away in Dominari Hall days ago.
“How do you mean–”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to figure it out when I get there. But I’m going to make sure it can’t be used against anyone else.” He looked her in the eye, his resolve as stark as the bruises on his face.
Affection and admiration bloomed in her chest. If he was ready to stand for something, she wouldn’t let him stand alone. “I’m coming with you,” she said.
He winced. “I’m going to the Continent. It’s not–”
“You said yourself I’m not safe here. Besides, you may need me.”
He gave her a smile she remembered well from clandestine meetings in Madina. “I don’t doubt it, but this isn’t your burden.”
“I’ll decide that.” Jane laid her hand on his. It was surprisingly warm. “Besides, I know the code.”
He fell silent, his face slackening in surprise.
“Ruthers told me. Just before I…” She stopped. The memory was still a fresh wound in her mind. “I never meant for you to know. But under the circumstances, it seems useful. Besides, we’re past secrets. Right?”
He nodded slowly. “Let’s hurry.”
They took to the surface streets, where the ornamental spires and pavilions of the underground city cast dark, jagged shapes against the reddening sky. They passed through the quietest parts of the city, communicating with nods and glances as they looked for empty streets and kept an eye out for patrols. Working with Roman felt easy and natural, even as they kept silent. After navigating so many intrigues with Lachesse, the Qadi, Petrosian, and Attrop, she had forgotten how good it felt to be around someone she trusted.
But as they left the cobbled streets and marble verandas for loamy soil and towering trees, Jane found herself thinking about Malone, wondering just what Burgevich’s article would mean for the woman.
She realized belatedly that Roman was talking to her.