The Song of the Dead

by Carrie Patel

  Jane felt a hand on her shoulder and heard Roman’s voice in her ear. “Jane, we should go.”

  But she was transfixed by the words on the plinth of the statue: “FARAJ ARNAULT, SAUVEUR OF THE CONTINENT.”

  “Please,” he said, “before someone sees us.” His breath was a warm patter on the back of her neck, as faint and rapid as a bird’s heartbeat.

  The sensation brought her back to the present, and she allowed Roman to lead her into the alleys. His hands were slick with sweat, and his gaze darted from side to side as he checked to see whether anyone was watching them.

  They didn’t slow down until they were two streets away and beyond most of the evening traffic.

  “We need to be careful,” he said. He was still peering around, not meeting her eye.

  But they were going onward. To a larger city, he’d said. Where his family estate sat.

  “Roman, are there more,” she said, nodding back toward the plaza with the statue, “where we’re going? In Nouvelle Paris?”

  He barked with bitter laughter. “There are streets named after him. Paintings of my entire family in the National Gallery. Yes, there’s much more.”

  No wonder they had recognized him on Salvage.

  He still wouldn’t meet her gaze, but in his wide, flickering eyes, Jane saw the look of a haunted animal. A few things were clicking into place for her – his suspicion of authority, his distaste for the spotlight – but what she still didn’t know was why these things bothered him so much.

  Yet it was clear that for a man who guarded his privacy as much as Roman did, few things could be worse than having his family name and image held up around the Continent.

  “I’m sorry, Roman,” she said, without really understanding why.

  “For the honor of descending from such a noble man?” he said hollowly.

  “What did he do?” Jane asked.

  He pressed onward. “The sign for the station was pointing this way,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll find another route.”

  But as it turned out, they didn’t need to. After they’d passed a few more streets, a tall spire pierced the lumpy canopy of buildings. Three enormous, egg-shaped balloons hovered next to it, and suspended below each was a long compartment like a train car.

  “Are there people in that thing?” Jane asked.

  Roman only shrugged. He appeared too exhausted for wonder.

  “Maybe one of those is going our way,” she said.

  As they drew closer, Jane was so distracted by the height of the tower and the impossible size of the airships that she didn’t notice anything else until she felt Roman tense beside her.

  Then she saw the crowd of people gathered around the base of the tower.

  “It’s fine,” she whispered. “Most of them don’t even look like they’re going up. See? They’re all focused on something else.”

  When she got close enough, she saw what it was.

  The low wall around the base of the tower was plastered with posters, much like the bulletin boards of Recoletta. The posters showed a man with dark hair, delicate features, and a long scar across his left cheek.

  Even without reading the text underneath, Jane recognized the bold lettering and stark lines of a wanted poster.

  The crowd in front of it sounded like they were arguing. “What are they saying?” Jane asked.

  Roman seemed relieved, at least, that the crowd’s attention was focused elsewhere. “It’s about the man in the poster. Geist.” Roman listened for a moment. “They’re saying he stole one of these.” He jerked his head up at the moored behemoths.

  Jane listened, too, trying to hear in the agglomerated babble the words and meaning that Roman had found. It was there, faint but growing clearer as she got a sense for the shapes and sounds of syllables. Ballon, stehl, pirat.

  “They’re arguing over whether he’s alive or dead. Something about a crash at sea,” Roman said.

  Jane could hear much of that, too. Crash, sturm, viv. But there seemed to be something else that he wasn’t translating. Assassinat, fameel, escahp.

  She wasn’t sure whether he was leaving something out on purpose or whether he was just distracted. He jerked his head toward a gate. “This way.”

  No sooner had they passed through it than two guards stepped out of the shadows at the base of the tower, dressed in black and crimson silk. They were probably the only two matching outfits Jane had seen since reaching the Continent.

  “Un minoot,” the male guard said, holding up a hand. “Identification, pleece.”

  “I was forgetting it there,” Roman said. The local patois was starting to make an intuitive kind of sense to Jane. Most of the words were similar to those she already knew, with some syllables drawn out and others clipped short. “En the one arriving from Nouvelle Paris.” Roman pointed to the airships.

  The guard gave him a doubtful frown that Jane supposed was common to guards around the world. “You are choosing a goot time to leave that place.”

  Jane hazarded a quick glance at Roman, wondering what the guard meant by that.

  The first guard turned to the female guard next to him. “Go und cherch for the gentleman’s documents.”

  The woman nodded and called a lift from the bottom of the tower. Jane was content to be politely ignored, but the first guard’s attention was on her already.

  “Und you?” he said. “Wass of your documents?”

  Jane nodded to Roman. “He also was having mine,” she said, trying to put the same unusual accent on her words. It came naturally enough, and anyway, it was merely a stronger version of the slight accent she’d heard from Roman since their meeting.

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Where are you from?”

  She thought she’d been doing well, anyway.

  “Second Lichtenstein,” Roman said.

  Something about the name delighted Jane, and anyway, it seemed to satisfy the guard who now focused his full attention on Roman.

  “Sir, you are sembling familiar,” he said. From anyone else it would have been an innocuous comment, casually offered and easily brushed off, but to a guard whose suspicions were already aroused, it was nearly an accusation. “Have I seen you before?”

  Roman bristled admirably. “Most likely when I was passing through here earlier.”

  The guard frowned. “I only just arrived at my post.”

  “Then how am I knowing?” Roman asked.

  Shouts erupted behind them. Jane peeked around the wall and saw that some kind of argument had broken out between members of the crowd. Voices climbed in pitch and pointed index fingers soared.

  A woman stood in the middle of the action, her clothes almost as worn and dirtied as those she and Roman had abandoned. Her dark hair was wild and her eyes flashed as she spun her head this way and that. She looked – and sounded – like she was in a panic, so it took Jane a few seconds to make out what the woman was saying.

  “He is here! I have seen him!”

  Jane’s heart leapt into her throat.

  But she channeled her alarm and whirled back to grab Roman’s sleeve. “They’re fighting! We can come back tomorrow.”

  The guard cursed and squeezed past them. “Pardon.”

  He’d only be out of sight for a moment, but that was all they needed. Jane and Roman rushed past the now-empty post and around the corner to one of the waiting lifts. When the doors closed on them, Jane laughed, all the pent-up tension of the last few hours rolling out of her at once.

  She’d just contained it when they reached the top.

  The lift released them onto a wide balcony that ran all the way around the tower. A shrieking chorus of wind whipped across it. Jane had never been this high off the ground, but the view of the motley city through the opening doors was strangely beautiful. The mismatched buildings tumbled over one another below her, their bent backs and jutting angles reminding her of children at play.

  “All aboard for Nouvelle Paris!” cried a voice from one corner of the tow
er. There, tethered to a mooring, was one of the great airships. Several uniformed men and women were already bustling about, casting off lines to prepare for departure.

  Jane and Roman hurried over. The breeze snapped at her clothes and tugged her hair. A walkway extended from the main balcony to the open door of the craft. The man guarding it eyed them officiously. “You have tickets?”

  “We’re running late,” Roman said. “But this should suffice.” He withdrew one of the coins Jane had taken back in Recoletta and dropped it into the attendant’s hand.

  The man’s eyebrows climbed an inch.

  “You must be careful about showing such wealth when you reach the city. Things are getting especially bad in Nouvelle Paris of late – many demonstrations, many agitations. Not like here.” He gave them a conspiratorial look. “But you will be setzing in premier class,” he said. “Pleece follow.” He led the way across the catwalk.

  He was several feet ahead before Roman leaned close to Jane. “Better than crackers and protein paste,” he whispered.

  Jane heard him, but any pleasure at their victory had disappeared into the yawning void below the walkway.

  So had her ability to move.

  It felt as though the wind might carry her away. But then Roman’s steadying hands found her shoulder and the small of her back. “You can do this,” he said. “One step after the other.”

  Jane slid one foot forward.

  “That’s it,” Roman said. “Just like the gangplanks.”

  She stopped again, remembering the crashing waves around the Kennedy, the long crates falling into the sea. “That’s not helping.”

  “Then remember there’s hot food, a soft chair, and probably a bottle of wine waiting inside,” he said.

  Jane sucked in a deep breath and hurried the rest of the way across. She tried not to think about the way the catwalk rattled and swayed underfoot.

  The interior of the airship was warm and inviting, paneled with russet-hued wood. The scent of mingled perfumes – honeysuckle and rose mixed with lavender and jasmine – hung in the air. Their usher was politely waiting, ignoring their delay. “This way, pleece.”

  He led them past double doors, where the rippled glass framed a distorted picture of a crowded lounge. The people in it undulated like fish beneath the waves.

  They followed the usher up a spiraling, wrought iron staircase to a third deck. There, the man opened the glass doors and bowed.

  The deck reminded Jane of fancy salons in Recoletta where whitenails had listened to the music of strings. A wide aisle ran between two rows of cushioned, cordoned seats. The deck must have been twenty deep, but the soft, low light and the way the carpets and curtains swallowed all sound made it easy to pretend she and Roman were the only two people around.

  “Your setz,” the usher said.

  What he pointed to wasn’t so much a pair of seats as a small cabin. A velvet curtain as thick as a tenement wall hung open before a linen-draped table and a pair of wide, cushioned seats.

  “I should have told you how valuable those coins are,” Roman said.

  They took their seats. Jane groaned with pleasure as she sank into hers. “I could sleep in this,” she said. It was softer than her bed back in Recoletta, to say nothing of the bunk she’d spent the last few weeks in.

  “You should,” said Roman. “The trip will take all night.”

  Another liveried attendant appeared at the table. “Dinner will be served shortly,” he said. “Curried chickpea salad und filet mignon.”

  “Very goot,” said Roman.

  Jane didn’t know what most of those things were, but they sounded good to her too.

  The airship shifted, and the scenery outside the window began to move. A murmur of exhilaration rippled through the deck. They were off.

  Jane watched out the window. She didn’t realize she’d been clutching the seat until Roman gently pried her fingers away.

  “Think of it this way,” he said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. “You wanted to see the Continent. Tonight, you’ll see miles of it.”

  Jane smiled, but she noticed that his palm was cold and slick.

  Dinner arrived when the port town was just a glimmering in the distance. Jane felt she’d never tasted anything so good. The chickpeas were large and pale, with a rich, meaty flavor that sat heavily on her tongue. She was still savoring them when the main course arrived.

  The filet was a thick round of meat that sliced as easily as butter to reveal a deep pink center. She’d never seen anything quite like it, not even in the homes of her wealthy Vineyard clientele. She carved off a bite and popped it into her mouth.

  She’d never tasted anything quite like it, either.

  “Roman, what is this?”

  His attention was focused on his own plate, where he was picking through his chickpeas. “It’s called a ‘filet.’ Tender, isn’t it?”

  It really was. “I’ve never had this.”

  He shrugged over his plate. “It’s an expensive cut of meat.” He didn’t look up. Anyone else might have been fooled, but Jane knew him too well by now.

  “No, I’ve never had this animal before. What is it?”

  He wiped his mouth with a pristine linen napkin. Jane caught a grimace at the corners of his mouth. “Would you enjoy it as much if I told you?” he asked with faux jocularity.

  A horrible thought occurred to her, and she realized that Roman hadn’t even touched his filet. She pushed the plate away. “Skies above, is this…”

  He held up a placating hand. “It’s just beef.” He sliced off a bite and ate it.

  But this was still different. “I’ve had beef before. It didn’t taste like this.”

  “You’ve had bison. This is from a cow.” He made a sound like a rusty hinge. “It’s similar. But smaller.”

  Jane had eagerly anticipated a break from fish, but she hadn’t much considered what people ate on the Continent. “Are the animals here that different?” She thought of the strange clothing and stranger architecture.

  “Some,” Roman said. He seemed to be waiting for her to ask something else. Dreading it.

  “So if we have bison and the Continent has cows–”

  “Cattle.”

  “Whatever. Why do we both call it beef?” Jane asked.

  Roman sighed. “You used to have cattle.”

  “Before the Catastrophe, you mean?”

  Roman nodded.

  “So what happened? Did we eat them all? Did they all move away? Get sick and die?” She’d meant it as a joke, but the unease that shivered across Roman’s face told her she’d hit on something. “What happened, Roman?”

  He winced. “There was a plague. Stories say that it developed because the farmers there used the wrong medicine on the cattle. It was supposed to keep them from getting sick, but instead it turned their own bodies against them. It killed them all – an entire nation’s worth of cattle – in less than a year.” Roman stopped, but that wasn’t the end.

  The deck was quiet. She hoped it was just the insulation of the curtains, but she lowered her voice anyway.

  “In these stories – what happened next?”

  Roman was quiet for a long time, massaging his knuckles and gazing blankly at Jane’s half-eaten dinner. “The disease spread to people.”

  Jane took it in with a deep breath. Then she pulled the golden cord in the corner of their nook. The thick, velvety drapes came loose and fell closed, blocking out the activity in the corridor.

  He sighed. “This is the disease my forefather cured. As it was ravaging your homeland – the Pesteland – the Continent did everything in its power to prevent your people from coming to us. They put up barriers and checkpoints. Eventually, they began attacking the boats and airships that tried to reach us.” He hesitated. “Eventually, they didn’t have to. Those the disease didn’t kill fell to rioting and violence. The few who survived sealed themselves in massive underground bunkers.”

  “The buried cities,” Jane s
aid. It was like hearing a familiar story told out of order. She didn’t want to hear it, but she knew she had to. “That was the Catastrophe.”

  “None of the Continent’s precautions mattered,” Roman said. “The disease reached us too. Only we had a head start in developing the cure.”

  It should have been good news, but Roman’s somber tone suggested otherwise.

  “That’s how the Continent survived like this,” Jane said, willing a happy ending for the shining cities beneath her.

  But Roman uttered his dry, humorless chuckle. “The only workable cure saved some of the sick at the expense of nearly all of the healthy. Do you understand? My ancestor killed more people than any man or woman in history.”

  Jane spoke carefully, searching for the words that would pry him from his dark reverie. “It doesn’t seem like he had much choice,” she said.

  He reached across the table and took her hands. His own were cold. “And I never want to be in that position. Do you understand?”

  Suddenly, she did. In Recoletta, the night he’d helped her escape Sato, he’d said things she hadn’t understood at the time – about the corrupt and violent cycles in which people lived.

  Now, she understood his dark fatalism, his fear of power and his skepticism towards those who sought it. She understood a life of waiting in the shadows, hiding from the terrible burden of authority and the moral blot he saw in himself. She understood self-loathing disguised as humor.

  “The Continent reveres Faraj Arnault.” He shook his head. “My family – my direct bloodline – is the only one that has access to the vault. Any descendants I have would bear the same burden.” He gave her a careful, quiet look.

  Jane waited.

  “My forebears have been tyrants, sybarites, and political hostages. I don’t want to be any of those things. I don’t want to be him.”

  “You’re not,” she said. “You chose to come here to destroy it. That’s proof enough.”

  He drew his hands back and considered the expanse of tablecloth between them. “I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t know what you’d think of me if you knew who I am.”