Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  She tested the curtain. Probably sturdier than the bedsheets. And quicker, too, if she could avoid putting her full weight on it. She pulled out a knife and made two quick slashes to triple the fabric’s length and a third to separate the new sections from the rings. She glanced into the alley a final time to make sure it was clear, and then she dropped her valise out the window.

  Malone climbed onto the sill. The first-floor windowsill about ten feet below her would allow her to take her weight off of the curtain. As long as she could get there before it ripped.

  She began her descent, bracing her feet against the brick wall and trying to take some of her weight off of the curtain. Her feet scraping against the masonry sounded too loud, her movements too clumsy. She grunted. She’d been stuck behind a desk too long.

  The fabric began to tear, and she quickened her pace, trying to keep her feet steady against the wall even while she felt for the windowsill beneath her. She lost her purchase against the wall as the ripping curtain suddenly dropped her another foot. Searching and scrabbling, her boot smacked glass. She slid another half foot and found the sill beneath her, narrow but sturdy. She steadied herself against it, leaning into the wall just as the rest of the curtain came free overhead and fell into a coil in the dirt.

  Malone hopped to the ground and picked up her valise.

  She turned left, away from the square, and headed toward the darkness. She could only hope that no one had decided to watch for her there.

  Malone kept her head down. As she neared the mouth of the alley, she looked up again to check the way ahead. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.

  She could have sworn it was Sundar, her dead partner, standing in the shadows, a gleeful smirk on his face.

  It took a split second for her to realize that she was gaping at Salazar, but by then, it was too late to run.

  He glanced at the window. “Out here, we typically just use the stairs.”

  Malone felt absurdly embarrassed.

  Salazar turned his gaze back to her, a half smile creeping across his face. “You know, it looks almost like you were trying to skip town. But I think I understand why.”

  She drew her revolver and trained it on Salazar. “I’m glad we see eye to eye on one thing.”

  He looked at her gun. “You’ve misunderstood me. Not that I can’t appreciate your concerns.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Allow me to make an observation,” he said, holding his hands up. “You shoot me in this alley, and that party in the square will turn hostile rather quickly.” He pointed carefully down the alley.

  “It’s a calculated risk.”

  He almost laughed, flashing his strong, appealingly crooked teeth in the darkness. “So is trusting in my goodwill. And, if I may say so, your odds are better with me.”

  “Says the man lurking outside my window.”

  “What, you think I was going to knife you?” His smile vanished in an instant. “I absolutely would if I thought it’d do a lick of good. Though it would send an irrevocable message to your boss, my cohorts are nervous enough as it is. They’re on the verge of giving in, something you’ve already figured out.” He inclined his head toward her, not quite a nod. “Actually, I wanted to invite you to join the festivities.”

  There it was again, that smirk and that glimpse of Sundar just behind his beard.

  She wasn’t quite ready to lower her gun. “And why would you do that?”

  “Because I’ve got old-fashioned notions of hospitality. And because I’m hoping to show you something that may change your mind.”

  She was curious, if nothing else. Curious and almost convinced.

  She felt something else, too. A quaking at her core that she hadn’t had the luxury of attending to earlier. “I hope you’ve got something to eat at this gathering,” she said, holstering her gun.

  His grin spread. “And now you see my strategy.”

  They turned back toward the main square. As they passed her window, Salazar looked up again. “Hospitality aside, I expect Jeffries is going to add that to your bill. Unfortunately, it isn’t some Recolettan castoff.”

  Shame bloomed inside her, along with wonder that she could feel guilt at such a dispassionate observation.

  But he was already looking toward the square. As she followed him to it, she was startled at all of the scents and sounds that she hadn’t noticed from her place in the shadows: meat, savory and crackling on a row of spits in the middle of the square, and crowds laughing and dancing to the music of some stringed instrument that Sundar would have recognized.

  She turned to Salazar, but her escort had disappeared. Before she could look twice, he was back at her elbow, a tin mug in each hand.

  “Is every evening like this?” Malone asked.

  He laughed. “You cave folk have funny ideas about us.” He took a drink from the mug in his hand. “Here,” he said, passing her the other cup. “Try this. Better than the stuff you had at the meeting house.”

  She only hesitated a moment. It was beer, strong and hoppy, but refreshing. Malone drank gratefully.

  “We do this when we have guests,” Salazar said, stretching his hand to encompass the fire pits and the clusters of people. “But that doesn’t mean it’s really for you.” True enough, everyone seemed to be focused on the roasting meat and cheery music.

  “Do you get many guests?”

  “No. That’s why we do this. Here, try the venison.”

  Malone found herself accepting a steaming hunk of meat with her free hand. The grease running into her sleeve would normally have bothered her, but she was famished, and the flavor was unlike anything she’d ever tasted.

  “You seem to have a good life here,” she heard herself say as she reached the bottom of her mug. She was starting to notice the symmetry of the streets and the structure of the plain, sturdy buildings. She didn’t know how she’d missed it before. “What do you really want from Sato?”

  “You see this,” Salazar said, waving a rib-bone at the scene, “but you didn’t see the pox that took a child from every other home last year. You don’t see papers because only a few of us know letters. And you don’t see how damn hard life out here can be when we’re busy filling our quotas. We want safety and comfort, Malone. And we want opportunities in the city.”

  Malone ate the rest of the suddenly flavorless venison.

  “You have much experience negotiating?” he asked.

  “Not the way you mean it.” She pulled the poison packet out of her pocket and showed it to him. “Sato conquered a city overnight. What do you think he’ll do to you?”

  He looked at the tiny envelope for several seconds. “He ambushed Recoletta, and he spent months bringing his friends in first. You’re overestimating him. Especially if he needs to resort to this.”

  She shook her head. “There are, what, five thousand of you? And how many guns? You can beat your ploughshares into swords, but not into rifles.” The flickering firelight painted the festivities in shades of chaos and violence.

  “If your President Sato wipes us out, who’s going to till his fields?”

  “Are that many of you really willing to see your families dead?”

  “Better than slaves. Funny how a person’s got plenty to say about injustice when he’s looking at the man on top of him. Not so much when it comes to the one below him.”

  “Recoletta’s reorganizing,” Malone said. “Give us another year and I’ll try again with Sato.”

  He laughed again, this time without joy. “And in a year’s time, you’ll say to wait another year. Sato’s dug himself a hole that’ll take a generation to get out of.”

  “These things don’t change overnight,” Malone said. She realized her mistake as soon as the words escaped her lips.

  “Oh, but they do,” Salazar said. “They do for you cave dwellers. Your whole city changed overnight. It’s changing so much, you people don’t know what to do with yourselves. Now it’s full of books that your too-fine ci
tizens don’t even want to read. But it’s good to have some things that stay the same, isn’t it?”

  Malone’s lips tightened. “We’ve been operating under the feudal system for centuries. Sato hasn’t added one ounce to your burden.”

  “Nor has he eased it. Not when he was too busy grabbing himself a city.” Salazar took another gulp from his mug.

  “That’s because it’s still a fair deal. Your communes supply us with food and raw materials, and we provide protection and emergency relief.”

  “Protection from what? The only ones have ever threatened us are you cave dwellers. I’m asking for schools, doctors, and professionals.”

  The moon was a sliver behind the trees. “You’re asking for cities,” Malone said.

  “Why shouldn’t we have what you folks have?”

  “Who’s going to grow your food?”

  “I’m not saying we’re all going to leave the fields. I just want us to have the same opportunities as you.”

  “The same opportunities,” Malone said. “They’re not what you think these days.”

  “I know,” Salazar said.

  Malone looked back at him.

  “You think we hear nothing? This railway is a conductor for many things, Miss Malone. Tap it on one end and the reverb will carry all the way to the next city.” Something in Malone’s look must have given her away. “And that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Recoletta’s problems aren’t a secret.”

  “And neither are developments in the other cities, are they?”

  A slow smile spread across Salazar’s lips. “You’re quick, Miss Malone.”

  “It’s Inspector Malone.”

  “So, Inspector. This comes down to one question: is your loyalty to Sato, or is it to Recoletta?”

  “You already know or you wouldn’t ask.” She gulped the warming beer in her mug. “But defending a city calls for difficult choices.”

  “Don’t I know it.” Salazar raised his mug to her. “That’s one thing we have in common.”

  She lifted hers, metal clinking on metal. “So. We both recognize that Sato isn’t going to give. And if you push him, you’ll wind up with a confrontation. Where does this leave us?”

  “I suppose that depends on what you plan to tell him. Are you going to give him the information to crush us?”

  “I don’t think it matters what I tell him,” Malone said.

  Salazar grinned, looking again like Sundar. “It’s not a question of what, but of how. You said yourself that it takes tough decisions to defend a city. You willing to betray your boss to do it?”

  She said nothing. Again, they both knew the answer.

  Finally, she spoke over the rim of her mug. “There will be a cost for you, too. An army at your doorstep. Blood in your streets.”

  “I’m ready to make the hard decisions, Malone. That’s why I’m standing behind Callo.”

  Malone took a long, slow drink, tasting every barb and bite of bitterness.

  “Stop your shipments altogether. Do it now, together, before the rest of your allies have a chance to rethink it. Force Sato’s hand.”

  Salazar stared into the flames. He gave no sign of acknowledgment.

  The next morning, Malone boarded the train headed back to Recoletta. As it pulled away, she looked back at the commune to see the farmers standing shoulder to shoulder, a wall in the morning mist. Their hands were empty and at that distance, their faces were blank and anonymous.

  Chapter Eight

  The Father and the Chancellor

  After her meeting in Lady Lachesse’s carriage, Jane put her ear to the ground. She needed something she could use, something that would illuminate the inscrutable backroom politics of the Majlis.

  Something that would placate her newest patron.

  The Majlis seemed to sprout new windows every day. It wasn’t possible, Jane knew, but the increasingly complicated plots in which she was finding herself – and the paranoia that was beginning to crowd the edges of her vision – drew her attention ever more toward windows with high vantage points, flickers of movement in the shadows, the rasping tones of whispers.

  And so when one of the Qadi’s messengers came to fetch her the afternoon after her meeting with Lachesse, she assumed the worst. But with the messenger’s cool brown eyes on her, she had no choice but to follow and try to hide her trembling knees in a swift gait.

  She walked with the man down familiar corridors – the same, she thought, that she’d walked with Bailey a few days ago – but just when she thought she knew what lay around the next corner, they’d turn in a different direction or find a wall where she’d remembered a door.

  When the disorientation became maddening, she turned her gaze to the floors and watched the mosaics unroll at her feet.

  Finally, the light from incandescents and fractal-patterned windows overhead dimmed to the discreet glow of candlelight, and Jane knew they must be near their destination. As the messenger guided Jane to a massive, carved-oak door, the sound of voices on the other side was little more than a melodic hum.

  The messenger pushed the door open to reveal the Qadi, Chancellor O’Brien, and Father Isse reclined on settees and perched on long, angling chairs, all the while seated around – what else? – a low wooden table laden with tea.

  “Jane,” the Qadi said. “So good of you to join us. Come, there’s a seat for you here.”

  Jane accepted the Qadi’s invitation to join her on the small, low-backed sofa as the sliver of light from the door behind her disappeared. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to sit, or if perhaps she was expected to recline, and so she settled on an awkward position in one corner of the strange chair, the short back curving against her tailbone. It was a small comfort, however, to see that the chancellor looked even more uncomfortable, propped on his elbows in a sloping settee.

  “Glad you could make it,” the Qadi said, as if she’d had a choice.

  Nevertheless, Jane smiled. “Thank you for the invitation.”

  “You haven’t met my companions here, but this is Father Isse of Underlake and Chancellor O’Brien of the Hollow.”

  Both men nodded in turn, the chancellor with a tense grimace.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” she said.

  “And this is Jane Lin, our resident Recolettan,” the Qadi said, a little more slowly than seemed natural. The others murmured polite and indistinct greetings.

  Marshaling a bland grin, Jane gazed at the intricate latticework across from her and over the two men’s heads as the awkward seconds ticked by.

  “Jane, we were just discussing the meeting that you and Bailey shared with that Mister... what was his name?”

  A nervous twitch shivered through her calf. “Arnault.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” the Qadi said. “Quite an enigma, at least according to Bailey. We were hoping that you could provide us with your own perspective. The three of us seem to be at a crossroads.” Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw the Qadi turn her veiled head to Chancellor O’Brien and Father Isse.

  Jane should have felt more nervous, but the raw edges of her fear were blunted by a careless sort of joy at the convenience of it all – here the Qadi and her companions were about to unload their suspicions and inclinations, if only she could draw them out.

  “I’m happy to help however I can,” Jane said.

  Chancellor O’Brien glanced to Jane’s side, probably at the Qadi, but Father Isse kept his steady gaze fixed on Jane.

  “You see, we were perplexed by Mr Arnault’s response,” the Qadi said. “Bailey described the man as on edge. Dare we say... unpleasant? I think this is merely the way of Recolettans, if you’ll forgive the generalization. Formal, uptight, particularly in unfamiliar settings. But the good chancellor here, he sees Arnault’s reaction as evidence of hostility.”

  “As he sees everything,” Father Isse said, almost too quietly to hear.

  The chancellor scowled, although to Jane it looked like the exasperation of a man wh
o simply did not like hearing his opinions trotted out for examination and dissection.

  And as Jane studied his expression, she thought she saw a flicker of movement just above and beyond his frowning head.

  “But if any of us would know how to read a man like Arnault,” the Qadi said, “it’s you. How did he seem to you, Jane?”

  She had to snap her attention from the shadows and back to the conversation in front of her. “Definitely uneasy,” she said. “But I think it was like you said – he didn’t know what to expect. Or how the meeting would progress.”

  “What we need to know is what he’s after,” Chancellor O’Brien said. “Bailey said the man didn’t like his terms.”

  Father Isse rolled his eyes behind rimless spectacles. “And who would have?”

  Chancellor O’Brien glared at the other man. “Then what did he want? Is he even interested in rapprochement?”

  Jane felt the full force of the chancellor’s anger even though she abstractly knew that it wasn’t directed at her. “I- I think so,” she said.

  Father Isse smiled, and Jane studied his placid features as long as she could without seeming rude.

  And then she saw it again. Shifting shadows in the darkness behind the tracery. She was certain of it this time.

  The Qadi pressed something into her hand. “Jane, you must have tea. What kind of gathering is this otherwise?”

  She accepted it absently, peeling her eyes away from the wooden scrollwork at the other end of the small parlor. “If I may ask, what exactly are you trying to figure out?” She blew over the top of her cup, hoping to hide the tremor in her hands. “Perhaps that would help me better answer your questions.”

  The three city leaders exchanged a quick look.

  “We are simply trying to discern Recoletta’s intentions,” the Qadi said.

  “How much of a threat Sato currently poses,” said Chancellor O’Brien.

  Father Isse tilted his head forward, as if about to agree, but he only raised his curving glass to his lips.

  Jane took a sip of tea, wincing as the sweet, hot liquid burned her tongue. “He’s hundreds of miles away. And he’s dealing with his own problems. Or so the rumors say, anyhow. How could he be a threat here?”