The Song of the Dead

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The Song of the Dead Page 33

by Carrie Patel


  Malone and Jane were seated at opposite ends of a long, narrow dining table when Rothbauer emerged to meet them. Malone hadn’t had a chance to speak to Jane – they’d been separated since the events on the mooring tower. She looked unharmed, but had already retreated into herself in that unassuming, servant-in-the-background way she had.

  But at the sight of Rothbauer, her eyes opened just a little wider, and her fingers spasmed into a fist on the polished table.

  Rothbauer’s attire was every bit as imposing and chaotic as the huge mishmash of a city around them. He was a big man – more like Arnault than Ruthers in that regard – and the wide ruff around his neck, the raised epaulets at his shoulders, and the heavy, flared cape at his back only made him loom larger.

  Though it was hard to tell how he was supporting all that weighty regalia, or if it was really the other way around.

  Rothbauer settled into the chair at the head of the table. His blue eyes – bright and cruel like Ruthers’s – flickered between the two women.

  “I am told that you arrived with my great-nephew,” he said to Jane, “and that he is missing once again.” His accent was lighter than most of the others she’d heard, or maybe she was just growing accustomed to them. He turned to Malone. “And I hear you traveled as the prisoner – or collaborator – of Geist, the man who killed the rest of my family. And then you disrupted his bombing plot at the Porte Nord mooring tower. Is that so?”

  Malone nodded, relieved that at least this much could be straightforward. For now.

  “But what I do not know,” he said, his voice disconcertingly even, “is what has become of my younger brother.”

  Ruthers.

  “He’s dead,” Malone said, hoping he would ask no more. As angry as she’d been with Jane, she couldn’t really count Ruthers’s death among her crimes, especially when it was one she would have gladly committed herself. Besides, given how the Continentals fawned and fretted over Arnault, it didn’t bear thinking on how they’d treat his great-uncle’s killer.

  It was hard to read the emotion in Rothbauer’s puffy face as he absorbed the news. “By what means?”

  Malone kept her eyes on Rothbauer’s as she tried to concoct a lie with just enough truth to be reasonable and just enough fiction to spare them both.

  “I killed him,” Jane said.

  The laundress’s knuckles were white around her clenched fist, and her gaze was locked on Rothbauer’s. Malone felt both proud and sorry for the girl despite herself.

  But Rothbauer burst out with a thick, phlegmy laugh. “Augustus always was a fool.”

  “He was a tyrant,” Jane said, her voice tight. Malone was surprised by her vehemence.

  “Is that why you killed him? Because he was cruel to you and all the other people with dirt under their fingernails?”

  “I killed him because he wanted to use Roman,” Jane said. Her eyes accused Rothbauer right back.

  But he only smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Angry the old man was going to beat you to it?”

  Jane recoiled. She said nothing, but her gaze burned with protest and affront. Malone found herself wondering why. After all, the girl only had to portray herself as Roman’s deliverer from the buried cities. It wouldn’t be a hard sell, and it would gain her all of the power and security she’d come to the Continent seeking.

  A servant placed a cup like a tiny wineglass by Rothbauer’s right hand. The old man picked it up with surprising delicacy and sipped from it. “Come now,” he said, “what is it you want? Money, land, fame? You brought Roman back to us – I will forget the rest and see you well rewarded.”

  “I want nothing from you,” Jane said. Malone willed herself into the background, wondering how this would play out.

  Rothbauer smiled and wagged a finger. “Everyone desires something. But not all desires are reasonable.” He watched her for a second. “You must know that Roman has certain responsibilities here. Responsibilities which you’ve no part in.”

  “You mean the vault,” Jane said.

  The baggy flesh around Rothbauer’s eyes pulled back. “So you know of it. Its secrets are not for you, whatever Roman might have told you of it. What did he promise you?”

  Jane flashed a bitter smile. “To destroy it.”

  Malone felt the shock of those words in her bones. After Jane’s stunt at Maxwell Street Station, her parting act of sabotage, her flight across the sea – Malone had been certain her and Roman’s trip to the Continent was all a gambit to seize the influence and security that had eluded them in Recoletta and Madina. That the buried cities that had abused them both were, at best, a casualty, and at worst, a calculated cost.

  But perhaps she’d merely seen that story play out too many times from the likes of Sato, the Qadi, and the rest of Recoletta’s powermongers.

  Suddenly, Jane and Rothbauer were both looking at her.

  “I take it your friend knows about the vault, too?” Rothbauer said.

  “What do you want with us?” Malone asked.

  “To find my great-nephew,” he said. “My best men are searching for him, as are your erstwhile allies,” he said with a contemptuous raise of his eyebrows. “But I am thinking one of you might know where he has gone.”

  Jane stiffened. The movement was little more than a straightening of her back, but Rothbauer caught it like a predator honing in on movement.

  “The young lady remembers something.”

  “He’s in an airship,” Jane said, rubbing a thumbnail. It was as clear a tell as Malone had ever seen. “I don’t know how you miss one of those.”

  Rothbauer swirled the liquid in his tiny glass. “Consider that a tower full of bombs was a considerable distraction. But Geist’s people will waste no such opportunity. And if they find him, they will kill him.”

  Jane waited a long time before shaking her head. “I don’t know where he is. And even if I did, I wouldn’t help you put him in a cage,” she said.

  Rothbauer smiled. “Is that how he told it?” He folded his hands on the table. They were large and smooth, with close-trimmed nails and an assortment of iron-gray rings. “It is true, certain duties will be expected of him. He must produce an heir – several, ideally, given our family’s recent longevity problems.” He gave her a long, amused look. “And he must be prepared to open the vault.”

  “Why?” Malone asked. “You have everything here – flying ships, great cities, prosperous people. Why do you need to open the vault?”

  He straightened. “What we have is history, and history comes with peculiar burdens. That is how we developed these advances of which you speak so highly – by drawing not only on the designs of the past, but on the impetus, as well.”

  Malone glanced from Rothbauer to Jane, whose lips were pursed in confusion. “What do you–”

  “I mean that such developments are as much a matter of social investment as of capital or technological investment.” He sipped his drink again, the glass looking absurdly small in his large hand. “How do you think you mobilize several million people after the near-total destruction of their civilization? How do you persuade them to rebuild cities instead of tearing one another apart?” He motioned toward the shadows, and a liveried attendant emerged to refill his glass. “And when you have a hundred million, already dividing according to custom and culture, how do you keep them working together? How do you stop them from building walls across their cities?”

  “By building a wall across the Continent,” Malone said.

  “You understand perfectly,” said Rothbauer. He sipped his drink and shivered with pleasure.

  “So everything you’ve built – your cities, your airships, the rest of it – it’s all been to defend against the buried cities?” Jane asked.

  “Everything must have a purpose,” Rothbauer said. “And no purpose is more unifying than a common enemy.”

  “Especially an enemy that brought a terrible plague to your shores,” Jane said, scowling. The same story Malone had heard.
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br />   Rothbauer raised his glass.

  “So all this – it’s all over something our ancestors did generations ago?” Malone said.

  Rothbauer opened his hands in apology. “As I said, with history comes peculiar burdens.”

  “This is mad,” Jane said.

  “You think I am happy about this? All we can do is keep our corner of the world moving forward for as long as possible. Authority is not supposed to be pleasant.” He grimaced. “It certainly has not been of late.”

  Malone recalled something Geist had said. About Sato’s sudden appearance and the trouble he had brought. “Did you ever meet a Recolettan named Jakkeb Sato?”

  “Burning red hair and a spirit to match? I would not soon forget him.” Rothbauer scowled, turning the tiny glass between his hands.

  “Why did he come to you?” Malone asked.

  “He desired to see how we work. What we remember.” Rothbauer paused, frowning. “He was not happy with what we told him.”

  Malone thought back to Sato’s fervent pursuit of the Library and its contents. She’d never understood what drove him to unearth an ancient trove of stories, studies, and histories, much less why he seemed to need the people of Recoletta to explore it alongside him, but she was starting to.

  He’d learned the Continent’s terrible history and how the ancestors of the buried cities had wrought the Pesteland. And he had wanted to find another version of events to refute it.

  Malone remembered his descent and increasing desperation. He hadn’t succeeded.

  Jane smirked. “He made a mess in Recoletta, too. How badly did he stir up your people?”

  “I told you Roman is in danger from unsettled elements. Is that not enough?” Rothbauer drank a final time from his glass and set it aside. “Whatever our enmity with your homeland, let it never be said that we are not gracious hosts. While you are my guests, you shall be housed comfortably and fed amply.”

  A servant appeared behind Rothbauer and pulled the chair back as he rose. Another bore the empty glass away on a shining silver tray.

  “And in the meantime, I urge you to think very hard about what you might remember.” Rothbauer aimed this remark at Jane. She was staring at her folded hands on the table, her eyes sharp with a private conundrum.

  After the meeting, Rothbauer’s attendants took Malone to a room with the most comfortable bed she’d ever lost sleep on.

  The mattress and pillows were as soft and cool as cream. Malone was confident she would have noticed even if she hadn’t spent the last few weeks sleeping on the hard, flat cot on the Glasauge. Yet she tossed and turned, trying to find a position that didn’t leave her feeling as though she were being swallowed by the bed.

  Even though Jane was the one who had been led away under guard, even though Malone had opened the door of her room to find it not only unlocked, but also unguarded, she felt trapped. By the lies she had told, by the lies she was still telling, and by the realization that she was probably going to have to keep lying before this was all over.

  At least she wouldn’t have to kill Roman herself – Geist would find him while Rothbauer fumbled and Jane sulked. Yet she didn’t find as much solace in that as she should have.

  When at last she grew bored of watching the ceiling, she got up and dressed. If she was doomed to stay awake, she might as well stretch her legs.

  The tiled hallways of Rothbauer’s apartment were cool and quiet – she doubted anyone else’s wandering thoughts were keeping them awake. At dinner, Rothbauer, and even Jane herself, had sat fixed and firm with a kind of clarity Malone could only envy.

  Before she realized what she was doing, she was heading down the corridor where she’d seen Rothbauer’s men take Jane.

  Malone didn’t know what she’d say to Jane, and had even less of an idea of what the younger woman would possibly say to her, but suddenly the idea of talking to someone she’d known before, even briefly, felt like a beacon in a storm.

  She met no one as she continued along the hall, passing one empty room after another. It seemed as though everyone in Rothbauer’s household slept.

  It also seemed as though what counted as an apartment on the Continent would have been a Vineyard mansion in Recoletta. If this was the temporary residence, she wondered where the family lived the rest of the time.

  Had lived, she remembered.

  At the end of the hall, moonlight spilled through the windows and fell on a single closed door. A key protruded from the lock.

  Surely this was where they’d taken Jane. Yet Malone couldn’t see any guards.

  She pressed her ear to the door and heard muffled commotion. Like someone was making noise but trying not to.

  Malone glanced down the hall a final time. There was no one in sight.

  She turned the key and pushed the door open to find the room in disarray.

  * * *

  Jane had made up her mind the moment Julius Rothbauer walked into the room: she was going to get the hell out of there.

  And then she was going to find Roman and get him far away from all the people who wanted to catch or kill him.

  She was just working out how when Inspector Malone showed up.

  She’d been granted a suite of rooms – a bedroom bigger than her entire apartment back in Recoletta, a bathroom, and a small sitting room. Once, so much space would have felt like a luxury, but after getting used to the tight quarters and packed crowds on Salvage, the openness only made her feel exposed.

  And, as if to prove her point, Malone herself was now standing in the open doorway.

  “Shut it, will you?” Jane asked. The last thing she needed was this woman with all the subtlety of a whitenail in the factory districts, drawing Rothbauer’s people to her.

  Malone retrieved the key and closed the door. “Jane, what are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like?” She’d already shifted most of the furniture and picked through every corner of the suite, searching for something – anything – useful. Now, she focused her attention on the windows. They were high off the ground, but climbing through them was probably a safer bet than trying to sneak out of the apartment and then the rest of the building.

  The inspector paced, the carpet crunching under her feet. “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “Away.” The north-facing wall was broken up by windows. Most of them were barred, and the ones that weren’t only swung open a few inches.

  Malone sighed. “Do you know how big the Continent is?”

  “Big enough to disappear in.” Jane continued into the bedroom. It was full of big, wide windows.

  Malone followed. “What you said back there, about the vault–”

  “Forget the vault.” Jane examined the window nearest the bed. It didn’t open more than a sliver, either, but it measured a good three feet in width and rose three stories above a lamplit garden. It would have to do.

  “You and Roman came all this way to destroy it.”

  “And then I realized the Continent has airships, civilization-ending diseases, and an old grudge against the buried cities.” She found a pillow. It was oddly shaped, but it was just large enough. “Even if we could destroy the vault, these people would find another way.”

  Malone was silent for a while, which allowed Jane to focus on the task at hand. She needed something hard. Like the candelabra on the bedside table.

  The inspector coughed in that artificial way of someone trying to make a point. “I didn’t realize that was why you’d come.”

  Jane hefted the candelabra. It was heavier than it looked. Good. She turned to Malone, standing awkwardly just inside the bedroom. “It was Roman’s idea.” The garden was still dark and quiet below. Jane held the pillow over the glass with one hand and wielded the candelabra in the other. It was a clumsy operation, but after escaping Salvage and the airship she was certain she could manage this.

  She was still trying to hold the pillow in place when Malone’s ghost-pale hands steadied it for her.

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p; “Just try not to hit my fingers,” the inspector said.

  “This doesn’t mean we’re going together,” Jane said. “We’re splitting up as soon as we hit the ground.”

  “You really want me falling back in with Rothbauer’s people? Or Geist’s? Besides,” Malone said, “after getting me hanged, you owe me.”

  Jane was so taken aback that she nearly dropped the candelabra. She looked back at Malone and noticed the scar that rose across her neck, ending in a knot of puckered, ruined flesh just above her collar. Jane had glimpsed it earlier, as the gendarmes were packing them off for their interrogations and as they’d sat in Rothbauer’s dim, carnivalesque dining room. But she’d been too focused on escape to give it much thought.

  She suspected she was supposed to feel guilty, but she only felt annoyed.

  “I didn’t put that rope around your neck.”

  “No, but you stirred up the people who did,” said Malone.

  Jane shook her head and struck the pillow with the base of the candelabra. The pillow muffled most of the sound of cracking glass, but even so she’d hit it harder than she intended.

  “I talked to a reporter. That’s all,” Jane said.

  “You destroyed a peace,” Malone said. “Between Recoletta, the other cities, and the communes.”

  “It was built on lies.” Jane bashed the pillow again, feeling the satisfying crunch of glass. “How strong was it if it couldn’t survive the truth? That Ruthers and the other whitenails were just trying to dig themselves back in?”

  “It was the only one we had,” Malone said. “A lot of people died to create it.”

  Her chiding tone rubbed a nerve in Jane. One that had already been worn raw by Rothbauer’s pressing, Roman’s disappearance, and the anxious, sleepless night that had preceded it.

  Jane gave the pillow a final thwack and felt the last of the glass fall away behind it. She rounded on Malone. “You think you’re the only one who tried to do anything? Or the only person who lost anyone?” She couldn’t bring herself to mention Freddie, or how he’d died aiding her. “I knew Ruthers planned to use Roman to get to the vault himself. I knew the Qadi was sending a train full of soldiers to pacify Recoletta.” She couldn’t bring herself to say what she’d done with that knowledge, either.

 

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