by Carrie Patel
“We don’t exchange those,” she said, scowling. “For obvious reasons. The man who normally drops these off goes by ‘Marcus,’ but that’s all I know.”
“Where would we find them?” Malone asked.
She scoffed. “You think they’d tell me something like that?”
“You seem to be a tight-knit network. And I think you’d rather tell me than Sato.”
She licked her lips and glanced around again. “It’s some place on the south side. Outside the factory districts.”
“That’s a big area.”
The cheesemonger rolled her eyes. “It was in one of the neighborhoods that vacated early. Not far from Turnbull Square. They needed some place they could move a printing press.”
It sounded right. Malone’s skin prickled with caution. “How do I know you aren’t just getting rid of us?”
“Because I’m not eager to see the two of you again. Besides,” she said around a spreading grin, “those fellows will do a much better job than I can.” She nodded over Malone’s shoulder.
Malone turned, feeling Arnault shift beside her. Coming toward them were a man and a woman, dressed to blend in but plowing through market stalls as they made a beeline in their direction.
As the woman saw Malone and Arnault turn, she reached into a gray duster and pulled out a pistol.
“Run,” Malone said, but Arnault was already on his feet.
She leaped after him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw their pursuers break into a run. She could only hope they wouldn’t open fire in the middle of the crowd.
There was no time to ask Arnault where they were going. He ran ahead, clearing a path between the merchants and shoppers, and she followed in his broad wake. Everyone here seemed on their guard, as if this kind of thing was not unexpected.
She found herself leaping over fallen pots and crates, casualties of the marketgoers’ haste to duck out of the way.
The wide arch of an exit loomed ahead, separated from them by a couple dozen stalls that glinted with gold and silver. And then she saw another pair – two men – running along the opposite wall at full speed, on a collision course with them.
She didn’t dare waste a breath shouting to Arnault, but he broke into a sprint – he must have seen them. Despite his limp, he was fast. She matched his pace.
The last throng of marketgoers seemed to recognize the situation. They dove out of the way.
Malone heard a cry of surprise in front of her. Arnault was falling, and her panicked brain was struggling to make sense of the copper pot skidding across the ground, the blank stares from the onlookers.
At least he went down behind the cover of a plywood display.
She grabbed him by the collar and levered his feet, her still-tender wrist ablaze with pain. It was all she could do for him.
Before she could take off again in the direction of the arch, a hand seized the back of her coat, reeled her in. She turned to see Arnault snarling back at her and fought the instinct to strike out at him.
“Too late,” he said.
Their adversaries had closed the distance to the arch and now spun, picking a path toward them through the stalls.
Behind her, gasps and shouts announced the approach of their first two pursuers.
And around them, the onlookers had formed a wide circle. Most were backing away, eager to be clear of the imminent collision. But a few eyed Malone and Arnault with predatory glares, their hands twitching at hip level.
“We’ve gotta move,” she said.
He sprang to his feet and darted to their right. Toward the pair approaching from the arch.
“Wait!” Malone called.
But either he didn’t hear her or didn’t care. After a split second of internal debate, she cursed and chased after him.
His instincts for self-preservation were keen enough that he must have a plan in mind.
And as she tore after him, trailing a dozen feet behind, she saw it. A service tunnel stood to the side, its wooden door hanging open.
Close.
Yet Arnault wasn’t exactly running toward it. His path – and hers – carried them down a broad avenue between the stalls, a few degrees off from their goal.
The two men they’d seen near the arch had spun and were dashing to close the distance between them.
Malone heard a deafening crack behind her, and the wall ahead sneezed a plume of dust.
She pushed her legs to catch up to Arnault, but she was at her limit, and her lungs were burning.
Suddenly, he pivoted, picking up speed as he sprinted for the door.
Malone cried out when she realized what he’d done.
The men from the arch were only a few yards away now, and she was directly in their path. Their bird-of-prey expressions locked on to her.
She turned two rows behind where Arnault had changed course, pushing aside a pair of unfortunate merchants. She didn’t have the luxury of his wake now, and she shouted in hopes of clearing a new path.
She ducked and dodged between the few too slow – or too dumbfounded – to move, hearing snarls of frustration as the pursuers closed behind her.
They couldn’t be more than a few feet away. Only a few stands of kettles and glassware stood between her and the door.
She saw a stand stacked high with tin pots and cups. A plan formed in her mind in the split seconds as it loomed closer, something formed of impulse and desperation. She had no words for it, just the dull realization that it would either trip her up or foil her pursuers, who couldn’t be more than a bound behind her.
She grabbed a support pole as she ran by. It came away in her hand.
The entire stand toppled with the clatter of wooden planks and the crash of metal.
Malone could not look back to observe her handiwork, but she saw its effects reflected in the dumbfounded stares of the men and women who gazed on behind her, open-mouthed with shock or delight.
She turned her attention back to the door just in time to see Arnault disappear behind it.
An instant later, it began to close.
She shouted, fury and dismay boiling out of her in something that wasn’t so much a word as pure atavistic expression.
Her mind divided the seconds, then divided them again. No matter how slowly the door seemed to close, her strides felt slower still.
Moments earlier, her legs had refused to chase faster after Arnault, had kept something in reserve that even the force of her will could not tap.
They held nothing back now. She drew on the last of her strength and threw herself toward the door in a final, desperate push.
Pain split her shoulder, and darkness hovered on the other side of her closed eyelids. Something heavy slammed shut.
It wasn’t until she heard her own heavy breathing echoed a few feet away and heard the muffled sounds of commotion that she realized she’d made it through.
A clunking noise sounded, reassuring in its weight.
“Get up,” Arnault said, moving away from the door. “We’ve got to go.”
Her breaths were still coming in deep, heavy gasps. Prying words from between them felt like snatching flesh from a hound’s jaws. “What. The hell.”
“We can argue about this later. That lock won’t hold them.”
Her eyes were adjusting to the relative darkness. “You...”
He stood over her, holding out an open hand.
She slapped it away and crawled to her feet. He was already walking down the hall, and she had to move in a limping trot to keep up.
Arnault half-turned. “They’ll have to double back a few times to catch up to us. That, or break through the door. Either way, if we move fast, we can get out of here first.”
Malone stuck closer, determined not to give him any opportunity to slip away again.
After a couple minutes of following the winding tunnels lit with the dying stars of undercharged radiance stones, her breath had returned to an even swell, and the quivering meat of her legs felt stable eno
ugh. Still, her own voice came out of her chest like something that had been run over jagged stones.
“What was that?” she asked, sounding calmer than she felt.
“An escape,” he said. “And a narrow one.”
“You know what I mean.”
He finally looked over at her. “I reached the door first. I had no idea whether you would make it in time, and so I made a decision.”
“You were going to shut me out.”
His laugh was shallow and humorless. “When I glanced back, you were still a ways behind. And then I heard a crash. Tell me, would you have waited? Held the door open for me with armed attackers just steps behind?”
She knew the answer in a heartbeat, but it seemed beside the point. “I wouldn’t have led you into them.”
“If only I were so cunning.”
She didn’t believe him. She saw him register this. He didn’t care.
Malone was quiet for several seconds, following him as he followed the angles of the service tunnel. Wherever they were, they were well past Maxwell Street Station by now. “Who were they?” she asked.
“How should I know?” he said. “The Bricklayer’s enforcers, if I had to guess. They certainly didn’t look like station security.”
She looked at him again, and he looked back and shrugged. It was possible that he really didn’t know.
“We’re almost out,” he said.
They finally exited into a wider tunnel, just a few blocks away from the whiskey merchant. The streets were clear, and they hurried back to safer territory before that could change.
“We can follow up on the factory district lead in a few days,” Arnault said as they stepped into the Spine, the half-mile wide tunnel that stretched across Recoletta.
“I work better on my own, Arnault.”
“As much as I’d love to oblige– “
“You seriously think I’m trusting you again after this?”
“Trust has nothing to do with it,” he said. “You need my information, my networks. You need someone who knows the factory districts.”
“I know them just fine,” she said.
“Not like I do.”
Malone was about to argue, but she said nothing. As much as she hated to admit it, he was probably right.
“What I don’t need,” she said between clenched teeth, “is a knife in the back.”
He closed his eyes. “And here I thought you were a professional.” They snapped open again, and he glared. “You don’t trust me. I get it. The feeling is mutual.” He took a step forward, one hand resting on a stone balustrade. “And if you can honestly tell me that, under the same circumstances, you wouldn’t have shut that door, I’ll resign today.”
“That isn’t the point,” she said.
“You’re right. The point is, you need me if you want to find these people.”
“And why are you so eager to help me do it?”
He only turned and grimaced at the expanse beyond the railing.
“Fine,” she said. “Then tell me when I’ll have the pleasure of your company again.”
His voice softened. “Like I said, it’ll be a few days. Sato’s given me another chore as of this morning that shall require immediate attention.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to share what that is.”
He gave her an unreadable look and turned to walk back to Callum Station.
Chapter Four
Diplomacy by Other Means
As much as Jane wanted to reject Lady Lachesse and everything she stood for, she knew the older woman was right. About her vulnerability, about Recoletta’s vulnerability, about her own need to find leverage. In the days that followed, she found herself hearing the hidden threat in conversations with her superiors and noticing how easily her colleagues and neighbors could become captors and informants.
And yet here she was, more secure and, in many ways, more comfortable than she’d ever been in Recoletta. She had risen by her own resourcefulness and by the unaffected practicality of her new city.
At least, that’s what she’d told herself. But thinking back, peeling away the layers of this story slice by painful slice, she realized there could be more to it. Fragments and motives that it had been all too convenient for her to ignore.
Why had the Qadi herself needed to meet Jane if she were only being hired as a jurist? Jane had initially thought the position one of great prestige – still did, she told herself, setting her lips in a grim frown – but the cases Jane handled were almost exclusively mundane affairs that concerned relatively small amounts of money. And she had not seen the Qadi since that mysterious meeting over tea and candlelight.
For that matter, why had she been hired in the first place? Because she had unique insights into Recolettan culture and society? Because she had the right accent for breaking hard realities to embittered whitenails?
Her value was that of a convenient middleman and an insightful insider. This was a story she’d been told, that she’d reinforced and fleshed out herself, that was now a perilous and widening blind spot. She could almost hear Lady Lachesse tut-tutting her, her red lips a ribbon-thin smirk.
The idea made her face burn with anger and shame.
She made her way to the Majlis, as exposed in the broad, open plaza as a mouse in a field. She climbed the stairs, engulfed by the two surrounding wings and feeling the presence of their tiny, high windows like roosting owls.
Jane was so enveloped in her own thoughts as she entered the Majlis that she didn’t initially recognize the crackle of tension in the air: furtive glances over veils, careful whispers shielded by raised hands. She didn’t notice that everyone else was moving carefully and quietly until one of the guards stopped her, raising a hand to bar her passage.
A sudden flare of irritation burned through her blood despite the man’s politeness. “Sayideh, your pardons, but it will only be a moment.”
A question, indignant and inquisitive, rose to her lips, but years of quiet deference held it down. Nevertheless, she followed the guard’s quick glance over his shoulder and saw the procession that must have been the cause of the fuss.
Two men argued, trailed by a train of attendants that followed in respectful – or purposeful – silence. The men themselves were notable in that they did not wear the veil or dress of the locals, and they seemed heedless of the quiet that their squabble broke. One, stern and bearded, wore slacks and a close-fitted jacket that might almost have passed for local dress in Recoletta. The other, slender and smooth-faced, with a dark, clean-shaven head, wore a long-sleeved, tailored robe that accentuated his own narrow build. It was black like the servants’ robes in Madina, but it seemed to be made of a starchier material, with a row of buttons from the short, stiff collar to the bottom hem. As Jane looked on, the two men turned to a spot where the latticework bordering the hall was broken by a curtain and disappeared behind it. A couple of their attendants followed, and the rest dispersed as if they’d been bound for other destinations all along.
The guard standing in front of Jane nodded and melted back into his post by the wall. Jane continued on and passed the spot where the two foreigners had vanished, glancing at the half-hidden hallway out of the corner of her eye. She remembered seeing the Qadi emerge from a similar passage, and in the succeeding months, she’d noticed them all over the Majlis, snaking along and between other corridors and rooms.
In that time, she’d come to understand that they served a similar function to the veils she and others wore, allowing various functionaries to conduct their business and move between meetings with a degree of privacy. Not that she had ever used the latticed halls herself – whenever anyone gave her directions around the Majlis or assigned her to visit a particular person or meeting room, they pointed her through the wider main halls. It was yet another sharp contrast from Recoletta, where back entrances and quiet corridors were used to allow people of Jane’s station to pass without disturbing their superiors.
But, like the locals, J
ane had developed the habit of averting her gaze from those private corridors, aware nevertheless of intermittent, flickering movement.
Yet even while she looked away from the hidden corridor, she began listening to the whispers and murmurs around her. They were vague and guarded now, but she knew of one place where she might count on freer gossip. She considered the time and decided that she might excuse a few minutes’ lateness with the fuss surrounding the two foreigners.
Her decision made, she turned down an adjacent corridor and ducked into the women’s restroom. There were a few things that remained constant between Madina and Recoletta.
She entered just as a trio of women were making their exit, and she took advantage of the commotion to slide around the bank of mirrors in the middle of the room. The high-walled stalls provided ample cover.
Yet before she could retreat into one, she heard two women on the other side of the sinks, whispering in the urgent singsong of friendly conspirators.
“A beast of a man, that one,” said the first, scandalized and delighted.
“Which?”
“The chancellor, of course. Who else?”
“How should I know? All these foreigners seem the same.”
Jane held her breath, trying to listen while she clutched the fabric of her robe.
“Well, he’s the worst, from what I hear. A taste for drink.”
“I could say the same of more than one of our illustrious leaders.”
“Yes, but could you say that they keep a bottle stashed in the bottom of their desk drawers? And that a good half of it empties every day?”
“No! Where did you hear that?”
“From Rahim. He has a taste for serving boys, too.”
Feet pattered, and Jane took an unconscious step backward. It was past the point where getting caught would be awkward.
“But what is he doing here, anyway?” the second woman asked.
“The same thing as Father Isse, I’m sure.”
“Oh, clever you. I suppose that’s all you can say when you don’t actually know.”
“I do, too. Only...”
Jane heard the whispers and backed into a stall, fighting the urge to ease the door shut. Hesitant, clattering motion followed around the corner.