Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  She rolled to the side, and over the thrashing and struggling of the nearest man, heard the other thumping down the tunnel toward them, no longer mindful of stealth.

  One thing at a time.

  The man on the ground clicked his hammer back and fired again, still aiming at the spot where she’d first fallen. The man behind her yelped in surprise, not pain.

  She had already pulled herself into a crouch and raised her revolver when the other man crashed into her from behind. Her gun fell, spinning away from her.

  Malone still couldn’t see, but she could picture her attacker’s stance, right arm raised as a corner of his weight shifted off of her. Lips, no doubt, pulled back in a feral snarl.

  She torqued her body and felt him tumble away.

  The other man was getting impatient. Impatient enough to fire blindly into the dark. His qualms about hitting his own associate were rapidly diminishing.

  And by now, they were all three equally dazed by muzzle flashes and choked with cordite.

  She needed to find her gun.

  She crawled deeper into the tunnel where she’d heard her revolver fall. The two men scrabbled behind her, no doubt trying to get their bearings and a bead on her.

  A hand clamped down around her calf. She kicked and twisted, but he was ready for that this time. A heavy punch knocked the wind out of her, but she had to be thankful it wasn’t a bullet.

  Off to the side, the other man was getting to his feet.

  Her nearest attacker launched himself onto her again. She resisted the urge to kick him off and instead waited, giving him enough time to land a ringing blow to her jaw. She turned her head and bit back a grunt of pain.

  Next to and above her, a hammer clicked. She rolled, gripping her attacker by the front of his shirt. The gun fired, and his body went limp.

  The man who had just fired the gun would only have heard the bullet hit tissue. He wouldn’t yet know that he’d just killed his own associate.

  And that delay between instance and realization was all the opportunity Malone needed.

  She hurled the body still hanging over her into the remaining attacker. His feet skidded on the ground and he gasped in surprise, but his gun didn’t clatter to the floor.

  So Malone ignored the burning protest in her bones and leapt to her feet. The other man was still off balance, stirring up the air with flailing arms and grunting his frustration.

  She raised her forearm to the level of his neck – what she estimated it to be, anyway, and charged. He slammed into the tunnel wall, coughing his emptied lungs into her face. But he still didn’t drop the gun. Malone was starting to guess at how this would end.

  To her left, the hammer clicked again.

  She reached toward the sound and clamped her left hand around his wrist. Drove it toward the wall again. He didn’t waste the shot and didn’t drop the gun.

  And her injuries, vague and indefinite, were starting to catch up with her, drawing reserves of strength from everywhere at once.

  This time, he pushed back. Hard enough to get his arm away from the wall. Once he’d swung it forward, ahead of his body, it became an inexorably descending lever in Malone’s hand. No matter how hard she pushed, her own arms were being forced down as he brought the gun toward her head.

  These were not the options she’d planned for. A little tendon of resolve snapped within her.

  Removing her right arm from his neck, Malone rammed her fist into the soft, yielding joint of his inner elbow. As she’d hoped, his outstretched arm bent inward, swiveling the gun back to his head.

  Her left hand found his hot, sweat-slick trigger finger and pulled.

  The report was loud and close enough that she heard nothing as he collapsed at her feet.

  Even though the body didn’t so much as twitch against her legs, she bent down and took the gun anyway. And, after several seconds of sweeping her hands along the floor, she found her own. Now blind and deaf, she had nothing but the feeling of her hands brushing stone, grit, mortar, and finally metal to guide her. The gunshot had been loud. Loud enough to attract attention several tunnels away. And if someone else – another of the Bricklayer’s associates – came, running or creeping, she wouldn’t hear him.

  Malone reached down and felt for the pulses of the two men, ran her hands along their stiffening bodies, hoping for something salvageable.

  There was nothing. She realized that she should be more grateful to have come out with her own life.

  That had been too close. She turned to the man on the ground. The only difference between them was that he had been too slow to recognize the change that had occurred. She had taken advantage of it.

  Malone rose stiffly and hobbled back toward the dim, sickly glow of her lantern. This was unfriendly territory. She would have to hurry out of it and hope that she could get someone at the station to come and collect the bodies for identification. She would have to hope they were still here by the time someone could be summoned.

  She limped ahead, gasping silently at the pain in her bones.

  Something was broken.

  * * *

  A few hours later, Malone was back at the station, her right wrist in a splint and the left side of her face swollen and purple. She was lucky, she’d been told, to have escaped with no fractures, breaks, or sprains, but her aching limbs and joints insisted otherwise. She would just as soon have skipped the hospital visit, with its endless prodding and long, disapproving frowns, but then she’d have never heard the end of it from Farrah. Vague, disapproving lectures were about the only words she seemed to get from the woman any more.

  Malone trudged along the familiar route down a long hallway lit by trenches of flame, accompanied only by the echoes of her own footsteps. In the days before Sato’s rebellion, when the station had bustled with inspectors and clerks and patrolmen – all comfortingly familiar faces, even if she’d never exchanged more than a word or two – the hall had seemed larger. Grander. Now, the place seemed as though it might collapse upon itself without the presence of so many people to prop it up. At last she reached the heavy, bullet-scarred door at the end.

  She was still reminding herself that it was her office and not the late Chief Johanssen’s.

  And, as she swept through, there sat Farrah, ensconced in her nook between Malone’s office and the hall outside. Another of Johanssen’s relics and another aching reminder that this space would never really be hers.

  As Malone passed through Farrah’s office, she saw the other woman turn her head sharply, felt her censure blunted by surprise. Perhaps, Malone thought, it was at her own uncanny ability to seek out injury. Or perhaps it was merely that, this time, she’d gotten herself patched up right away. Either way, it was a small source of satisfaction in the middle of what was shaping up to be a long day.

  And yet these occasions always brought Malone back to the real source of Farrah’s disapproval. Sato and his allies were indirectly responsible for the deaths of Sundar – Malone’s former partner – and Chief Johanssen. It was their revolution that had sparked the conflict that finally cost the lives of these two people Malone had cared about and a few hundred more. And even though Sato’s cohorts had opposed the ones who had pulled the trigger, the City Guard and other supporters of the Council, it was tempting to blame someone who was still standing. Someone who could be taken down.

  Even Malone had felt it. But she knew it for what it was – a futile tantrum of grief. Emotion cut off from the firm, reassuringly practical realities of the world.

  What Recoletta needed was structure. Something to stave off the Bricklayer and his ilk, something to give form and meaning to the changing landscape.

  She looked at her desk and sighed.

  She would have gladly run back out the door and into the Bricklayer’s tunnels if it would do any good. But the piles of papers on her desk were a problem that no amount of violence, force, or careful interrogation could solve.

  She had never envied her late chief’s job, and
now that she found herself reluctantly installed at his desk, she wanted to burn it.

  She sat down and began sorting through reports with a sinking feeling in her gut. Burglaries, looting, fraud, and much more. There was plenty of crime in Recoletta, but so far, most of the perpetrators had been devilishly hard to track down. The tangle of lawless tunnels seemed to absorb them just when her people got close, and even when they managed to nab somebody, a thief or counterfeiter or some other crook, two more sprang up the next week to take his place. Worse, half of her inspectors were new, pulled from Sato’s ranks to fill the growing vacancies in the Municipal Police.

  The revolution was over, but Malone still felt like she was under siege.

  She’d been chief of the new Municipal Police in Recoletta for six months now, ever since Sato’s coup, and she still felt like an impostor. The pleasantly musky smell of the office, the shape of the high-backed leather chair, even the coffee stains on the carpet all reminded Malone that this office should belong to Chief Johanssen.

  And perhaps it still would, if she’d put the pieces together faster. The thought was as painful and familiar as an old wound.

  The trickle of casework had started out slow after the coup. Mercifully so, as it had given her time to avoid this office, to get used to the other side of the desk in small doses. Of course, the calm hadn’t lasted.

  As Recoletta began to get used to the new state of affairs, concerns and reports had started to roll in. Immediate survival concerns evaporated and were replaced by complaints that were often calculated but no less frantic. Reports of stolen property, suspicious figures loitering in the neighborhood, and missing neighbors flooded her desk as Recolettans began to test the bounds of their new regime. Malone had to send the ragged and much-diminished staff of inspectors out to triage these various cases and accusations, but in many instances, they were complicated matters of hearsay. Tectonic shifts among the haves and have-nots. There wasn’t a criminal to jail or a villain to blame, just multiple fundamentally irreconcilable sides to a story that grew more convoluted every day. Uncertainty, as thick and heavy as morning fog.

  The only task that felt more futile than sifting through these never-ending grievances was sitting in on Sato’s Cabinet meetings, where similar stories emerged on a larger scale.

  Looking at the clock on the corner of her desk, she sighed and realized she was due at one in half an hour.

  She grabbed her coat from a hook on the door and swept into the hall without a word to or from Farrah.

  On her way out, she passed Inspector Velez and a trailing handful of hopeless-looking rookies. It was encouraging to see some activity, at any rate. Many of Malone’s fellow officers had fallen during the coup, when confusion and suspicion put the City Guard on the offensive at the station’s doorstep. Bullet holes from the conflict still scarred the walls and cracked the corners of halls and doorways. The station was a burial ground, and those fresh reminders never failed to silence the survivors.

  And now, many of them – like Malone and Velez – worked for Sato. The revolution had presented them with a common enemy in the Council and its minions. Sometimes, a common enemy was all it took to forge an alliance.

  She headed to the surface streets and passed the shadows of verandas, the entrances to the city below. Most citizens opted for the convenience and comfort of underground travel, but the paved and cobbled roads aboveground seemed to have changed the least since the transition. Up here, in the relative quiet, Malone could pretend that nothing had changed, that she was still prowling her beat instead of shuffling from one stifling office to another.

  Malone arrived at Dominari Hall, its great marble veranda still cracked and stained with blood, oil, and smoke, and the guardsmen nodded at her without a word. It had been the seat of the Council, Recoletta’s former ruling body, for generations, and now Sato occupied it. He’d taken steps to make a few aesthetic changes, trying to distance himself from the Council he’d overthrown, no doubt. But even with the councilors’ portraits removed, the place retained an unmistakable air of pomp and authority. And the wall hangings still smelled of gunpowder.

  Yet as she navigated the lavish maze of offices and corridors, her mind was back in the Bricklayer’s tunnels, charting a route and plotting her next move.

  She followed the now-familiar path down lushly carpeted hallways and under gilded and marble-paneled archways until she reached the Council’s old meeting chambers, where other members of the Cabinet were already assembling. A few pairs of eyes flickered in her direction, took in the bruises and the splint, and looked away again. It wasn’t exactly politeness. Everyone simply had larger matters on their minds.

  A wide, round table seemed to grow from the marble flooring, and the chairs surrounding it were all equally and obnoxiously ornate. Sato had changed much about the way Recoletta’s government ran, but the gathering at the round table was one tradition he had kept. It was likely as much a matter of convenience as anything else. Malone couldn’t imagine anyone moving the massive table from its place.

  As Malone sat, Sato entered, flanked by two of his other advisors. Those who were already seated made a great show of coughing and shuffling their papers purposefully, but Sato didn’t seem to notice. His snarl of red hair was wilder than usual, and dark circles dimmed his eyes. Malone remembered when she’d met him, like some vagabond prince, outside the Library of Congress. The scars and stains of travel had seemed glamorous on him, and the color in his cheeks had complemented his boyish vigor.

  But after futile months in the city he’d fought and schemed to reclaim, an ashen pallor had settled over him like dust from Recoletta’s crumbling streets. Looking at Sato was uncomfortably like looking into a mirror, Malone realized.

  Sato and the other half dozen advisors chose seats around the table, and Malone felt rather than saw Roman Arnault sit directly across from her.

  The mood was as tense as ever. Everyone sat ramrod straight, steeling themselves for another round of bad news. Only Sato leaned forward, his gaze fixed between his folded arms.

  Mr Vaughn, Sato’s secretary, cleared his throat and shuffled some papers. “This meeting is now called to order. We’ll begin with status reports from all the departments and finish with remarks from President Sato. Going down the line, Mr Grenwahl with commerce.”

  Horace Grenwahl had a thick, lined face and the accent of a street sweeper. Malone couldn’t help but wonder what the Council’s generations of whitenails would have thought to hear Grenwahl’s rough voice and working class slang echoing off the creamy marble walls of Dominari Hall.

  But Grenwahl’s deep-set eyes didn’t miss much, and it showed in his reports. “Good news is, the decline’s slowed since our last chitchat. The bad is, the south and east sides of town have all but shut down, and the market’s down to a hundred or so stalls. Had roundabout nine hundred before.”

  Lines zagged across Sato’s brow. “Last month, you told me we were stable at three hundred fifty.”

  “Last month, we were.”

  Sato’s eyes narrowed. “At that rate, no one will be doing business in another two months.”

  Grenwahl cracked his knuckles and laughed. “They’re doing plenty. Just not all legitimate-like.”

  Sato frowned, and Malone felt a spike of hope. If Grenwahl could shift Sato’s focus from politics to the black market, she could use the opportunity to center his attention on the Bricklayer.

  Three chairs to Malone’s right, another voice broke in. “While I’m ever so pleased you find this amusing, we should focus on the reason our citizens are forgoing licit channels.” The fluting accent and precise diction belonged to Nathan Tran-MacGregor, Sato’s Minister of Finance. Malone had yet to figure out exactly why he’d joined Sato’s revolution. Even though she wasn’t familiar with his accent – he came from one of the many other cities Sato had traveled through before returning to Recoletta – his fastidious mannerisms and affected disdain all suggested privilege. Or aspirations to it.
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  Grenwahl uttered a contemptuous little laugh from the back of his throat. Even if Malone hadn’t known Tran-MacGregor by his voice, she would have by Grenwahl’s reaction. She wasn’t sure if their mutual disgust had started from their seemingly different backgrounds or from their ministerial duties, which always seemed to put them at cross-purposes.

  Grenwahl’s generous lips curled. “It’s a problem of confidence,” he said, and Sato flinched. “The peddlers don’t like opening their bags for swanky suits. So they sell where they don’t have to.”

  Tran-MacGregor rolled his eyes. “If the merchants aren’t willing to declare their goods to the appropriate authorities,” he said, emphasizing his word choice, “perhaps we need to select our agents more carefully.”

  Grenwahl’s wide smile broadened. “They can talk like me or lisp like you,” he said. “The problem ain’t with the agents, it’s with the policy. You need to ease up or you’ll choke the market.”

  It was a familiar argument and a more familiar feud.

  Tran-MacGregor sniffed. “It would seem that we could do much better by choking one of our markets.”

  Grenwahl laughed harder, a rough sound. “Just let the markets right themselves. The only way to bury the black market’d be to fill every tunnel in this city with rubble.”

  It was an unpleasant reminder of the precarious state of affairs in Recoletta and of the lengths to which Sato had gone in order to topple the Council. A moment of fidgeting and silence followed, with everyone but Grenwahl finding something urgent to examine on the table.

  Sato clasped his hands beneath his chin, his teeth seemingly clenched around some new contemplation.

  Grenwahl chose that moment to lean forward, folding his thick-fingered hands on the table in front of him. The gesture almost looked spontaneous. “We need to ease up. On the borders, on the market. Let the merchants sell where they like. The most important thing is to keep up a healthy flow of goods and keep people from hoarding potatoes and trading stockings. As long as no one’s gouging, we let this run its course for the time being. I’ve spoken with General Covas.” He raised his eyebrows at the woman across the table. She met his gaze and nodded for the benefit of all. “And we’re both of the opinion that our security depends on letting people feel comfortable, not backing ’em into a wall where their day-to-day business is concerned.”