Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  After her visit with the shopkeeper in Meyerston, she’d exchanged most of her Recolettan marks for Madinan dirrams before boarding the train. She’d suspected that, with so many Recolettans pouring into the city, the exchange rate in Madina might not favor her.

  Before she could continue the thought, she was pushed from behind. Tumbling forward, she barely kept herself from falling into the knot of robed shoppers in front of her.

  As she caught herself, she glanced over her shoulder and saw a woman in a Recolettan dress and petticoats. Her mind turned to Sato’s henchmen, and she prepared to sprint, half-expecting to see a knife in the stranger’s slender hand.

  But she saw only fingernails, three inches long.

  Without thinking, Jane composed her face into the sort of neutral apology that would have been required for a woman of her standing in Recoletta. The whitenail, however, quickly disappeared into the crowd, never having noticed Jane.

  Jane was too relieved to resent the incident, but it set the gears in her mind spinning.

  She nudged Fredrick, who was lost in the spectacle of an intricately latticed skylight overhead, and told him to keep quiet.

  “Why?” he asked, looking absurdly wounded.

  “Just trust me,” she said. Fortunately, he was too tired and hungry to argue further.

  Jane took several minutes to observe the scene around her. The first thing she noticed was that merchants and customers seemed to have lengthy and heated discussions with one another. When she listened in, she realized that they were arguing about prices. The escalation raised the hairs on the back of her neck – this wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in Recoletta – yet just as she was certain a blow-up was imminent, the two parties would reach an agreement and complete the deal amicably. And then go off to repeat the process with someone else.

  It wasn’t long before she heard another angry discussion nearby, yet this time, she recognized the accent of Recoletta. She turned to see a man and a woman arguing.

  “Preposterous,” the Recolettan man said. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe it’s two-to-one.”

  The gray-haired woman stood in front of a stall strung with delicate gold chains. She shrugged. “Believe what you want. That’s the rate.” She looked over her shoulder as if bored. Her accent matched the local dialect.

  The man sputtered and fumed, but seemed to realize he had no choice. He thrust a fistful of cash at her, one broken pinky nail wrapped over the wad, and she took it, briskly handing him a thinner stack of dirrams. He made a big show of counting them, his long-nailed fingers peeling the green bills back one by one.

  That gave Jane an idea.

  She eased her way through the crowd, Fredrick in tow. Her ears were tuned to Recolettan accents and her eyes watched for familiar dress and, most importantly, long fingernails.

  It wasn’t long before Jane found the petticoated whitenail who had pushed her. The woman stood in the midst of the crowd, looking about, consternation etched on her fine features.

  Motioning for Fredrick to wait, Jane sidled up to the woman and greeted her with a bow. The whitenail watched Jane carefully, her eyes taking in her rugged, travel-worn attire and, predictably, her short-nailed fingers.

  “It would seem we’re both strangers here,” Jane said. “An honor to make your acquaintance, my lady.”

  The whitenail gave her a stiff nod. Her expression had not changed.

  Jane lowered her head in acknowledgment of her own low status. “I don’t suppose you’d have Recolettan marks to trade, madam. I’m just on my way back, and I’d much rather do business with a fellow Recolettan. I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

  The whitenail laid a hand on her chest, taking a deep, gasping breath. “What a relief. I’ve been here two days and haven’t dared trade a mark yet. Hard to trust anyone here, the way they scream and shout at one another. Anyway,” she said, pulling back into her coolly genteel facade, “how much do you owe me for this?”

  The preemptive remorse that had seeped into Jane’s gut all but evaporated at the whitenail’s sudden shift and the reminder that, even here and now, the older woman’s trust had almost nothing to do with Jane’s qualities and everything to do with her relative position. Which, apparently, still meant something to this whitenail on the verge of begging in a foreign city.

  It was not hard for Jane to feign a demure and grateful smile. She thought back to the exchange she’d witnessed moments ago and doubled the rate. Four Recolettan marks for one Madinan dirram. Such was the whitenail’s faith that she didn’t hesitate to surrender her money to Jane. Jane took it, fighting harder now to hide her surprise and satisfaction even while something warm and sickly wormed its way back into her stomach.

  The deal done, Jane made herself scarce as quickly as possible.

  “I say, did you just do what I think you did?” Even Fredrick, who had suddenly lost interest in the patterned skylights, had caught the significance of what had just happened. He gawped at the money she hastily stuffed into her pockets, licking his lips. “Think we could get one of those fried thingies about now?”

  Though Jane’s appetite had suddenly deserted her, she recognized that Fredrick was about ten minutes away from a meltdown. She paid for their meal with most of her remaining Madinan coins, taking another opportunity to observe the souk.

  Changing her money back at a reasonable rate would, she hoped, be a little easier.

  Once the fritter had settled in her stomach, she approached another vendor, a man she’d seen sell half a dozen skewers of roasted meat. She smiled and said “Peaceful days,” a greeting she’d heard exchanged among the locals.

  He smiled, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “Peaceful days to you. Something I can get for you, miss?” He gestured at the slowly turning spit of meat with a grease-slathered knife.

  “Actually, I was hoping to exchange some money.” As she said it, she saw the shape of his wide, curious face slowly change, narrowing in calculation.

  “Why, yes–”

  “I couldn’t help but notice,” Jane said, eager to stop him before he got too far down that line of thought, “that you’ve seen quite a bit of business in the last several minutes.”

  He was quiet and smiling faintly, and Jane didn’t know enough about local custom yet to know whether she’d been too forward. Based on what she’d observed, she thought not.

  “I could exchange my marks uptown,” she said, hoping her vague lie sounded credible, “but it’s gotten rather busy, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Besides, I’m certain you’ll give me a fair rate.”

  He smiled and quoted a figure that was astonishingly close to the deal she’d witnessed between the whitenail man and the local woman.

  Jane frowned slowly. “Is that the price you’ve heard?” She looked back at Fredrick. “Where did you trade your money? Back on the other side was it?”

  Fredrick, still cognizant of her earlier cautions to silence, raised his sandy eyebrows and muttered something that could be interpreted as a vague agreement.

  But the vendor was paying attention, and just as Jane turned away, he called back over her shoulder. She stopped, and when he beckoned her back, she only came slowly.

  The rate he gave her wasn’t much better, but given the exchange she’d made with the whitenail woman, she found that she now had twice the cash she’d had thirty minutes ago. The thought both thrilled and nauseated her.

  And still, it was only a start. What she really needed was work. Ideally, something that not only paid a decent wage, but that also offered some kind of security. Or, failing that, the ability to see trouble coming. Her job in Recoletta had put her just close enough to the whitenails to get into their trouble without having access to any of their resources. She wouldn’t put herself in that position again if she could help it.

  But what options did that leave her in Madina, where she was unknown and unconnected?

  Just as she was thinking about this, she felt someone else barrel into
her. This time, the force knocked her to the ground. She pushed herself up, venom behind her lips, whitenail or no.

  The culprit darted across the market. She saw him just long enough to recognize him as the whitenail she’d seen changing money earlier, jagged fingernail and all. A gold-colored chain dangled from one clenched fist and as he ran, he jammed his prize into his pocket, the broken nail catching briefly on the fabric of his trousers. The crowd parted for him, though perhaps not as quickly as he would have liked. A delayed furor followed him, like a thunderclap after lightning, and Jane saw the vendor who’d changed his money, pointing after him and shouting.

  As Fredrick pulled her up, the noise around them thickened. The crowd was developing a sense of purpose and a will of its own, and even Fredrick, scanning the crowd with hooded eyes while he bent down, seemed to realize that this was dangerous.

  “We should go,” he said, barely loud enough to be a whisper.

  Jane agreed. But no sooner was she on her feet than the crowd around them had changed course, turning its focus inward, looking with new interest at the young foreigner dusting herself off and turning to go.

  And just like that, the knot of people tightened, and she was trapped. The eyes around her carried a range of interested emotions – accusation, concern, curiosity, and suspicion – all of which were fixed intently on her.

  It was then that the crowd parted again to admit a man dressed in dark, crisp trousers and a matching shirt. His presence cooled the mob, but he was also looking at Jane with interest.

  “They say you saw the thief. You understand me, miss?” he asked.

  “I saw a man running away. I didn’t see what happened just before that,” Jane said. As the crowd’s attention settled back on her, she took a step away from Fredrick, hoping he might be forgotten in the middle of this mess.

  The policeman – she hoped that’s what he was, anyway – frowned and said, “I think you’d better come with me.”

  Jane obeyed, not daring to look back at Fredrick, but hoping he had the sense to follow at a distance.

  Her escort guided her into a carriage. Unlike the carriages used by the Municipal Police in Recoletta, this one was mostly open. A gossamer canopy covered the top, and when she took her seat, she noticed that the doors and sides rose only as high as her upper arm. Were it not for the staring crowd, she almost felt as if she could have jumped out and run off.

  She caught Fredrick in the middle of the crowd, fear etched plain on his face. She turned back toward the front of the carriage and took a deep breath, trying to settle her suddenly tempestuous stomach.

  The nice thing about being carted away by the authorities – if there could be a nice thing – was that it gave her the chance to observe this new city. Her new city, perhaps, if she survived this ordeal.

  The carriage clattered away from the market and into the open, leaving behind the curious onlookers. As it broke free of the crowd, Jane’s pounding pulse subsided, and she finally allowed herself to look around without nervously scanning the crowd.

  They rolled past the last of the shops, and the massive cavern seemed to widen in greeting. Jane was struck by how bright it was until, looking up, she lost herself in lacework of lights.

  When the policeman at her side looked suddenly over, she realized she must have gasped aloud. Recoletta had skylights looking down on some of its larger thoroughfares, but this was something more. A steeply pitched roof came to a long, sharp edge some two hundred feet overhead. Yet the angled slabs that covered the tunnel were not solid stone, but rather a painstakingly carved grid of geometric patterns.

  The flat winter light peeked into the tunnel between radiating and intersecting lines and through identical, star-shaped apertures. The tunnel seemed to curve away in the distance, but even there, it was suffused with a soft, pale glow.

  Jane couldn’t help herself. “It’s like this the whole way down the tunnel?”

  The policeman gave her an odd look, and for a moment, she feared she’d said something wrong. “How else do you keep it lit?”

  Jane was silent the rest of the way, watching the ornate skylights and the locals in their loose trousers and fitted robes. As the tunnel they passed through widened, the sides of the tunnel sprouted suspended sidewalks that opened up on the balconies and porches of homes and shops, all seemingly marked by silk awnings or ornamental, carved doorways. Overhead, gangways and bridges connected the two sides of the tunnel, bearing the colorfully dressed residents and carts filled with stacked produce and other goods. As they continued, the walkways and balconies seemed to grow more numerous and more populous by the minute. In all of this, she felt echoes of Recoletta that vanished as quickly as they appeared. The two cities seemed like siblings snatched from the cradle and raised by different parents, with different manners, different rules.

  Finally, they emerged onto a wide plaza, and the carriage stopped. Jane waited for her escort’s signal to descend, and when she did, she stepped onto smooth gray stone that had been polished to a mirror finish. The plaza was large, easily broad enough to hold several dozen of the shops and buildings she’d passed on her journey through the farming communes, yet it was dwarfed by the wide steps leading up to a five-story stone facade.

  The structure, whatever it was, wrapped around the stairs on three sides. From a distance, the flanking walls seemed as smooth as the polished floor, but as Jane got closer, she saw not only windows, oblong and pointed at the top and spaced in regular rows, but also embellishments and patterns that matched the style she’d seen on the skylights and elsewhere in the city.

  “What is this place?” she asked the policeman.

  He looked at her, his brow furrowed in surprise, before seeming to remember that Jane was not local. If Madina was anything like Recoletta, he probably hadn’t met many foreigners before this sudden influx.

  “This is the Majlis,” he said, turning back to the looming stairs as if that simple answer explained everything.

  They climbed the stairs, and Jane couldn’t shake the notion that someone was watching them from behind the windows looming over them. They seemed to have been placed for just that purpose.

  They approached a stone arch, tall and pointed at the very top, much like the windows. It stood in the middle of a short, trellised wall broken by smaller gates, and through this central arch, Jane saw a great doorway that echoed it in size and shape, as if the arch in the wall had been pulled from the front of the building.

  Jane and the policeman passed under the arch and through the door.

  She found herself in a hall that was every bit as busy as the plaza outside. Men and women, dressed in the practical and airy attire to which she was already becoming accustomed, swarmed and ebbed.

  “This way,” the policeman said, leading her across the hall.

  A dome high overhead collected the sounds of shuffling feet and talking, whispering, laughing voices. Light streamed in from a ring of windows just below the curvature. Almost as soon as she registered them they disappeared, eclipsed by the long, arched hall through which she and the policeman now passed.

  The new sights and sounds had, so far, distracted her enough to almost allow her to forget why she’d been brought here. No sooner had she remembered the thief in the market and her accidental role in the incident than the policeman guided her through one of the many horseshoe arches leading off of the central hall.

  She paused in front of a long desk. The woman sitting behind it looked up at Jane’s escort and motioned to another door. “They’ve caught him already,” she said.

  They entered a room that seemed small and dark, and all the more so for the tense company within it. Jane saw the whitenail thief with his arms folded tightly across his chest, his vendor victim, and two other people dressed in the same outfit as Jane’s escort. There were flinty gazes and taut, snarling lips. Jane guessed that they’d just interrupted a heated discussion.

  One of the other officers eyed Jane. “The witness?”

&n
bsp; The whitenail and the vendor looked at Jane. His face was pale, but hers shriveled in resentment as she took in Jane’s clothing. The suspicion was plain on her face.

  Jane’s escort returned a tight nod.

  The third officer sighed. “She says he stole a gold necklace. Grabbed it from her stall and ran off.”

  The whitenail started forward, eyes wide and bulging, until the second officer laid a hand on his chest. “And he claims she’s lying, that she sold him the necklace as part of a currency exchange.” The officer glanced back at Jane with narrowed eyes. “And this woman saw something, yes?”

  The vendor’s eyes were fire beneath hooded lids. The whitenail’s lips were pressed into a thin, prim line. As he met Jane’s gaze, he gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod. A promise.

  “What did you see?” her escort asked her.

  Jane only hesitated a second. “When the trouble started, I was pushed to the ground,” she said, looking at the whitenail, “and I saw him running through the crowd. He had a little chain of some kind that he was shoving into his pocket.”

  The whitenail’s eyes flashed, the corners of his mouth twitching. “That means nothing,” he said, gripping himself more tightly still with his folded arms, addressing the officers and ignoring Jane. “She didn’t even see the face of whoever it was that pushed her. Or were you just looking for the first foreigner you could find?”

  The whitenail didn’t acknowledge her, but the officers looked at her.

  “His fingernail,” Jane said. “The right pinky. The rest are long, but that one’s broken.”

  The whitenail, whose fists had been hidden under his arms, scowled. At a sharp glare from one of the officers, he displayed them for inspection. As Jane had said, the jagged pinky nail was the only irregularity in the otherwise perfect manicure. “That still doesn’t mean I stole anything,” he said. “Like I told you, it was part of our deal.”

  Jane cleared her throat. A sense of the whitenail’s authority clung to her like a bad habit, but she forced the words out. “I remember seeing the trade, actually. She gave him a two-to-one exchange rate.”