by Carrie Patel
It occurred to Jane as she crossed the Pheasant’s mysteriously stained threshold that she would have more trouble looking inconspicuous here than she had in the streets outside. A dozen pairs of eyes, most of them yellowed or bloodshot, followed every tentative step that she took. Their owners nursed tumblers filled with amber liquid, or greasy glasses brimming with beer the color of sickly urine, and many held either a cigarette or the hose of a water pipe. The crowd was thick enough to fill the tables but thin enough that everyone seemed comfortably ensconced in a seat. Regulars, she suspected.
That was one way to get used to the smell.
In the far corner of the room, Jane spotted a rickety stairwell that seemed to lead up to another floor. It might not be any pleasanter up there, but it might at least get her away from the other patrons’ curious stares. She then saw the bartender, who stood in front of a row of casks cobbled together with rusting rings and rotten wood. He followed her gaze and plunked a heavy mug onto the bar, looking back at her.
Jane approached the bar, casting quick glances at the other patrons’ glasses. “What do you have?”
The bartender seemed to chew on something before answering. “This barrel and that barrel,” he said, pointing to two casks behind him.
“What’s the difference?”
The bartender shrugged and pointed to two different patrons across the room. One looked comatose while the other was guardedly sipping his drink and peering about the room.
“What he’s having,” Jane said, nodding to the conscious patron.
The bartender poured Jane a draught that settled a good inch below the rim of her glass. She slapped a couple of coins on the bar and continued upstairs.
The upstairs room was quiet and musty, with a few ancient but sturdy chairs gathered around scarred and stained tables. Guttering candles burned just brightly enough to cast long, furniture-shaped shadows across the uneven floor and walls. It looked like just the sort of place that Roman would suggest for a clandestine meeting. She hoped he would arrive soon.
Not ten minutes had passed when Jane heard a soft but heavy step on the stair and, more disconcertingly, felt it in the creak of the boards below her feet. Roman’s face appeared at the landing followed by a full mug of the same stuff that she had ordered. He slid into the chair across from hers without once looking at it.
Jane’s thumbnail picked at a rough spot in the glass. How did you greet someone when you’d seen them just hours ago but hadn’t really spoken with them in months? When you’d fully and reasonably expected that you probably wouldn’t again?
“Glad you made it here safely,” he said, setting his own glass down as if afraid of the noise it might make.
She laughed at the unexpectedness of it all. “Me too. Feels like ages.”
“Didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” he said, turning the glass in one hand. He rushed ahead before she could clarify her meaning. “Matters on the way over required careful attention.”
“You mean the fireworks?”
His eyebrows inched together. “I told you. It was a distraction.”
“For a spy, you’re not very subtle.”
“I’m incredibly subtle. Distractions, by definition, are not.”
She remembered her own diversion back in the market, the roaring crowd, the scout’s hand on her wrist. “Who were they?”
“Qadi’s eyes, I suspect.” He raised his glass and sniffed the pale yellow liquid. Finally, he took a sip and smacked his lips, shrugging.
But Jane was still thinking back to the scout’s accent. “They didn’t sound local.”
He held the glass motionless in midair. The thin meniscus of beer moved not an inch. “You heard them.”
“Just one of them. Latched onto me instead of your distraction.”
He muttered something that had the shape and timbre of a curse. His head whipped over his shoulder, gaze locking onto the stairs from the first floor.
“He didn’t follow me here,” Jane said, irritation rising like bile in her throat. “I made certain of that. But he didn’t sound local.”
Roman’s gaze swiveled back to her, wary and curious.
“I didn’t recognize the accent at all,” Jane said.
“Could be a foreigner in the Qadi’s employ,” Roman said. Jane strove to identify the look in his eye. Suspicion? Accusation?
Or something else seen through the veil of her own warring emotions?
“Could be,” she said. But she wasn’t convinced. And he didn’t look it, either.
Silence followed, scratching at the back of her throat like the smoky air downstairs. Jane had already swallowed a mouthful of the flat lager before she realized she’d raised the glass.
“On that subject.” Roman frowned at some distant corner as he followed some private train of thought. “What exactly are you doing here?”
The question felt like an echo from her own thoughts. Several answers rose to her mind. “Surviving,” she finally said.
“Seems you’ve put yourself in the line of fire,” he said.
“Trying to stay out of it last time didn’t much help.” She took another drink, as if to wash down some of the frustrations and objections on the tip of her tongue. “Besides, I could say the same to you.”
He grimaced. “Despite my best efforts.” He set his glass on the table in front of him, anchoring it there with a broad hand. “The transition in Recoletta has been difficult. This back-room welcome today, it’s more than we’ve received anywhere else so far.”
Jane’s elbows rested on the table, two pivot points as she leaned forward.
He noticed her posture and hesitated. “I don’t suppose you’re in a position to help,” he said.
A tingle of foreboding ran along the back of her neck. “Help how?”
“Information,” he said. “Some hint as to how the rest of the gears are moving, where the pieces are assembling against us.” His fingers twitched around his glass, a moment of indecision. “This is survival.”
A queasy feeling rolled in her stomach, the notion that she’d been naive, tossed and shaken by uncertainty.
Yet she knew his position and could easily believe it wasn’t so different from her own. “This morning was the first I’d seen of any plans to make contact with Recoletta in an official capacity.” She mentioned her surprise meeting with the Qadi and Bailey’s cagey prodding.
She knew the question before Roman asked it. “What do they want?”
Her hands, resting on the table, turned in the smallest of shrugs. “I think they want information, too.”
He grunted. “But what for?”
Jane returned her hands to the slowly draining anchor of her glass. “I thought that was your area of expertise.”
Roman gave her a half smile and snorted into his glass as he took another drink. “Should be. But Sato’s got me playing politics.”
“You’ve always played politics. Just behind the scenes.”
He winced as he brought his glass back down, and Jane wondered exactly what she’d said wrong. “Whose side are you on this time?” she asked.
“The same one I’ve always been on,” he said. “Mine.” Something seemed to close up inside him, mirrored by his hunching shoulders and guarded gaze.
She remembered something Lady Lachesse had said about allies, and she realized she hadn’t yet mentioned the woman to Roman. She looked around the upper floor, alert to listening ears, but the only other person was an old man at the end of the room, too far away to hear, surely, keeping his glass warm with one hand and spinning a coin with the other. A Recolettan mark, she thought. No, wrong currency. A Madinan dirram.
As she watched the coin spin, too far away to know its value, Lady Lachesse’s name was on her lips, something cold and metallic. It was currency, and it occurred to her that she didn’t yet know what she would get for it, how Roman would use it, or even what it was worth.
And she was not in a position to squander resources.
Sh
e closed her mouth and swallowed the words as if stuffing a coin back into her pocket.
He inclined his head. “You were going to say something.”
She sighed, shaking her head.
His chin dropped nearly to his chest. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I suppose not,” Jane said. Something tasted sour, and she didn’t think it was her drink. “With what you and Sato knew about the Council, I’m sure anything must have seemed like an improvement.”
Roman set his glass down with a hard thunk. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He waved a hand around the rickety room, and the candles cast monstrous shadows across the walls. “This. Running and scheming like a pair of criminals. Playing information like poker cards.” He reached his hands across the table, as if to take hers, but they stopped in the middle, palms up and curved, as helpless as two insects on their backs. “I’m just glad you’re safe, Jane.”
Her heart burned like a stitch in her chest. “This isn’t safety for either of us,” she said. “Not yet.”
“I know,” he said, looking at the shallow pool in his glass as if it were a marker of time. “We should go.”
Words welled up in her chest, things she hadn’t said, things there’d been no time or opportunity to say.
“I suspect we’ll meet again under similar circumstances,” he said. “Until then, keep your ears open. And be careful.”
“As always.”
He smiled. Not the careless, mocking grin he’d worn in Recoletta, but something too raw and exhausted to be fake. “You go first,” he said.
She slid the remaining half of her drink to him and rose. She stopped just long enough to kiss his cheek, a surface as rough and cold as metal filings.
She left, keeping her head down as she walked down the stairs and out of the bar. She did not look back.
Chapter Five
The Revisionists
Arnault had surfaced from his mysterious errand only that morning, but it wasn’t a moment too soon for Malone. Working with him made her want a hot shower, but at least she had him where she could see him.
She gave her revolver’s cylinder a quick spin, checking the chambers. “I know Sato believes they’re dangerous, but try to take them in one piece. For questioning.” She peered at him as she snapped the cylinder back into place.
Arnault said nothing. It was impossible to tell what that meant.
They set off, returning to the rubble-strewn neighborhood around Turnbull Square and branching into an abandoned network of warrens. As they passed the last of the guttering gas lamps, Malone reached for her own lantern, uncomfortably conscious of Arnault’s proximity in the shadows. They were in a part of the city where a stray bullet was a convenient explanation for many things.
She glanced over her shoulder. Arnault didn’t look any happier about the arrangement than she did. Not that he ever looked happy about anything.
However, he had drawn on his shadowy network of informants and insisted that this was the place that they would find their pamphleteers. The passage twisted ahead of them, the glow from Malone’s lantern glistening on the condensation-slick rock. While the factory districts themselves had been strongly pro-Sato after the revolution – the denizens had been among Recoletta’s poorest and had taken quickly to Sato’s message of a classless society – the surrounding neighborhoods were a patchwork of loyalties.
And this, clearly, was one of the contested areas. Street signs hung askew. Most of the lamps out here had been smashed or liberated entirely from their fastenings. She made a mental note to send a pair of groundskeepers out here to check the gas connections, already aware that, even if she remembered, it would probably be months before anyone had the time or inclination to get around to it.
The streets were deserted, and the refuse that littered them had settled into the landscape like some sort of invasive plant species. Almost anything of discernible value, from the sturdy wood of storefront signs to the copper fastenings of torch brackets, had been stripped. None but the most desperate, probably fugitives from other parts of town, would have stayed here. On the bright side, that should make finding their quarry easier.
On the other hand, it gave Arnault ample opportunity to attempt to dispose of her without any witnesses. If that was his intention. After all, he’d been the one to insist that they continue their search in this neighborhood.
Arnault shoved his hand in front of her, and Malone’s darted to her gun.
“Tracks here,” he said, pointing to a pair of deep grooves in the stone.
She relaxed, letting her hand fall from her side and shining her lamplight at the disturbance. She could just make out a pattern of hard edges and ridges in the dirt.
“Went that way,” she said, pointing down a narrower tunnel on their left. But Arnault was already heading in that direction with his rolling, strangely graceful gait.
The passage widened into a moss-rimed cavern littered with rubble. Chunks of the walls and ceiling had fallen away, presumably dislodged by one of the bombs Sato’s men had placed on the night of the coup. Through the gaps, she glimpsed the darkened corners of abandoned rooms and halls.
She scanned the rubble littering the cavern, jagged chunks of rock strewn and precariously stacked. If any of these places had maintained structural integrity, it could be an ideal place for a hideout. Or an ambush.
She looked for Roman, only to see a shadow disappear around a boulder. She followed, aware of the crunch of pebbles under her feet.
Rounding the boulder, she found a dead end of piled debris.
A voice whispered over her shoulder. “This way.”
She spun, catching her breath between her teeth. Arnault beckoned her with one curling finger.
She followed him around another curve of wreckage to a cleft in the cavern, barely perceptible until she almost stepped into it.
She glanced at Arnault, who stood a few paces behind her, wondering how he’d found it. “Ladies first,” he said, gesturing at the entrance. As much as she disliked having him at her back, she liked less the idea of letting him know it.
The cleft led to a narrow hall that stretched into darkness. Malone lowered the filter on her lantern, dimming the light to a matte glow. Pressing on, she soon heard voices echo down the hall. She stole a brief backward glance at Arnault, who loomed behind her like a portentous shadow.
Still the voices continued unchanged and unabated. She couldn’t catch what they were saying, but their dull monotone bored cadence suggested that the speakers had not heard them enter the hall. Which is why Malone believed she and Arnault had the drop on the dissenters and why she was surprised when a heavy hand shoved her to the ground.
She cursed herself for not properly anticipating this.
Malone twisted onto her back and drew her revolver, but she had already heard two shots. Her sights zeroed in on Arnault, and her finger was tickling the trigger when she realized that he wasn’t even facing her. She followed his aim further down the passage, the way they had come, and saw a silhouette standing against the gray light of the tunnel mouth. Arnault fired another shot, and the figure collapsed.
Arnault looked down at Malone, and his eyes flickered to her gun, which remained pointed at him. “I’m good at covering my ass. You should be thankful,” he said, lowering his gun.
She heaved herself to her feet and brushed at her coat. “I’ll be more thankful if you haven’t just killed one of our witnesses.”
“Maybe next time I’ll push you in front, and then you can deal with him yourself,” he whispered between his teeth.
“Don’t get snide with me. This is your job, too.”
“And he walked in behind us, and I made a judgment call. I know what it looks like when someone means to kill.”
I’ll bet you do, she thought.
Yet Arnault was right, and Malone was rapidly readjusting her estimation of the people Sato had
sent them after.
At the end of the tunnel, their downed adversary groaned in pain.
“So much for the element of surprise,” Malone said.
“Twenty seconds ago you wanted him alive.”
Malone shouldered past Arnault to the fallen man. He lay gripping his thigh, his breath a high, sharp wheeze. The ground beneath his leg was slick with blood, but not enough to worry her.
Arnault loomed over her. “Take his gun and give him a handkerchief. We’ve got–”
He ducked as a bullet whistled over his head.
“Too late for that.” Malone turned to face the other end of the hall, drawing her revolver. A shadow of movement flickered, and two more shots chipped the tunnel ceiling over her head.
The straight, narrow walls offered no cover. She glanced over her shoulder. Dragging the wounded man out of the tunnel under fire was going to be a challenge. And if the attackers followed them to the rubble-strewn cavern and picked them off from the cover of the boulders...
Beside her, Arnault fired another shot down the hall. The echoes rang in Malone’s ears, but she still heard him bellow over the gunfire.
“Enough! You’re going to drop your weapons and come out with your hands up or I’m going to shoot him. Again.”
There was a pause and the buzz of fervent whispers from down the hall. At least they seemed to be considering it. Malone hoped they wouldn’t call their bluff.
Arnault thumbed the hammer. “I’m going to count to ten. One. Two.”
The pace and pitch of the whispers rose.
“Three. Four.”
More hisses of argument from down the hall.
“Five. Six.”
The wounded man coughed and forced a grim snarl. “Go on and kill me. We’re not telling you shit.” His voice was hoarse with pain and affected bravery.
Arnault barely glanced at the man. “Seven. Eight.”
Still whispering, and no sign of movement.
Arnault shrugged. “Ten.” He pointed his barrel at the end of the injured man’s foot and fired.
The toe of his boot bloomed crimson. The victim screamed, all traces of courage suddenly forgotten.