Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  Something launched itself from one of the upright compartments. It was a someone, she realized, shrieking and flailing in the middle of a shroud of flames. The unfortunate dove into the grass, rolling wildly. But the flames burned on as the poor soul’s efforts slowed and stopped.

  And then Malone realized that the patches of flame in the grass were other men and women, crawling and twitching while their bodies smoldered. It was like looking into a swarm of ants – once her mind registered the first quivering movement, she saw it everywhere.

  The stench, she realized, was burning flesh.

  “That’s... not normal fire,” Chilson said, sounding as if he were about to be sick.

  He was right. It clung to the dying and dead with unnatural persistence, and even where burning scraps of human and machine debris littered the tall, thick grass, the flames didn’t spread. They clung to their sources and ventured no further.

  Standing on a knoll rising beside the tracks were Covas’s soldiers. The same ones who would’ve guarded the station, Malone suspected. Instead, they looked down on the scene, pointing their rifles at men and women who were already dying beneath them. More than one turned away from the massacre on the tracks, heaving into the grass. They either hadn’t noticed Malone’s group yet, or they didn’t care.

  “Did they... What did they do?” Velez asked.

  “I don’t know,” Malone said. “But we should get back.”

  No one needed much convincing. They turned back toward the solemn, steepled verandas of the city.

  As much as Malone hated to admit it, there was only one person she trusted to give her answers. She needed to find Roman Arnault.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In Motion

  Malone left the other inspectors at Callum Station and instructed them to brief their fellows, spread out, and keep order where they could. The memory of the chaos on the night of Sato’s invasion was fresh enough that everyone moved quickly. Malone felt a stab of guilt at the thought of leaving the rest of the station to handle the building madness in her absence, but if Recoletta was on the verge of another city-wide cataclysm, her presence would do little to stem the changing tides.

  Unless she could get answers and fight this thing at its root.

  So when Malone didn’t find Arnault or Farrah at the station, she headed to the safe house.

  In a way, it was a relief to leave the orbit of Callum Station. Vague rumors of disaster were already spreading throughout the city, and though the particulars of the calamity differed from one story to the next, the same keening note of panic pervaded them all. Everyone had questions – about the riots at the train station, about fires outside the city, about Sato’s ever-changing whereabouts – and she had no answers.

  As Malone made her way through the city, she smelled trouble brewing. Near Callum Station, people had begun to clear the streets, fortifying themselves in their homes as whispers of danger percolated through the tunnels. Yet the nearer she got to the Vineyard, the more citizens she saw boiling out of their homes, congregating and prowling like ants guarding a smashed nest.

  She reached the underground entrance to the safe house and pulled out her key ring. She’d just unfastened the first lock when the remaining two clicked and the door swung open, revealing a wide-eyed Farrah.

  “What the hell took you so long?” the redhead asked, standing in the doorway.

  “Trouble on the other side of town,” Malone said. “The train–”

  “I heard,” Farrah said, closing her eyes and waving a hand in the air between them.

  “Has Arnault gotten here yet? I need to speak with him.”

  Farrah’s eyes snapped open again. “He’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean?”

  “I mean he left. Disappeared. Saw him at Callum Station earlier today talking with Saavedra. He vanished just before I heard about the trouble uptown.”

  Malone sucked a breath through her teeth and looked up and down the still-empty corridor. “Will you let me in already? We shouldn’t be standing in the door like this.”

  “Well, don’t stand on ceremony,” Farrah muttered, finally stepping clear of the door.

  Malone followed her into the bare entry hall. “When did you last see Arnault?”

  “Probably an hour and a half ago. I came here as soon as I heard about the train.”

  Malone looked for any reasonable possibility or contingency that might explain his absence. All she found was the dull realization that she should have seen this coming. “If he hasn’t shown up here, then he must have gone to Sato.”

  “Possibly,” Farrah said slowly, as if testing the word.

  “Where else?”

  Farrah looked at a stain on the wall. “He just... It didn’t seem like he was sticking his neck out only to betray us.”

  “Arnault picks winners,” Malone said. “And he plays both sides as long as it takes for a victor to emerge.” She felt downright foolish – how could she have missed this before? Understanding rose in her mind like so much noxious, billowing smoke. “Now that Sato’s revealed his arsenal – that fire, Covas’s army – Arnault is playing his hand.”

  Farrah didn’t look convinced. Still, it was the most logical explanation, and there was no time to take a chance on distant contingencies.

  “Sato’s troops could be here any minute now,” Malone said. “We need to go.”

  “Didn’t want to leave without you, boss,” Farrah said, scowling. “Besides, they wanted to talk with you first.”

  Before Malone could ask Farrah more, the other woman guided her into the drawing room, where two elderly matrons sat, flanked by the Revisionists. Where one was tall and wizened, the other was, as if by design, short and rotund. Yet with teacups and saucers in their hands and a patrician languor tugging at their eyelids, they looked as if they were holding court.

  “Chief Malone,” Farrah said, “Meet Madame Francine Attrop and Madame Lucinda Clothoe.”

  “A pleasure,” the taller woman, the one Farrah had introduced as Attrop, said. “I’ve been following your work closely these past months.” Her manner was too genteel for even Malone to perceive a taunt.

  “I suspect I could say the same,” Malone said carefully.

  “I’m certain you could.” Attrop smiled, showing teeth.

  “You’ve been leading the Revisionists.”

  “Not precisely. That honor belongs primarily to my ally.” She gestured with gracefully unfolding fingers to Clothoe, who had yet to say a word. Attrop seemed to notice Malone’s confusion. “You can see why she prefers letters to speeches.”

  Farrah’s face was still, as if none of this was news to her. All four of the Revisionists, even Dalton, were solemn in their silence.

  Malone looked back to Attrop. “Then that must make you the Bricklayer.”

  The older woman actually blushed. “I’m afraid I never chose the name. Still, it has a certain bourgeois charm.” She raised her teacup but a fraction of an inch, and Macmillan took the teapot to refill it.

  Distantly, Malone supposed that she should feel insulted at having been thwarted these months by a woman who looked to be at least seventy years old. She couldn’t quite muster the vexation, though.

  She did, however, feel the anxiety of seconds ticking by, each likelier than the last to bring Sato’s forces down on them. Yet the two women sat in their chairs as if to hide the cushions. Malone knew just enough about social niceties to recognize that no command but their own would move these two.

  “Parsons must have brought you,” Malone said, hoping to remind them of the purpose of their visit and the urgency behind it.

  “Sato did, in his way. We’d been planning on making our introductions to you soon enough, but Sato’s rashness today pushed things along faster than we had intended.”

  With her surprisingly knobby fingers wrapped around the teacup, however, Attrop hardly looked like a woman in a hurry.

  “That’s interesting,” Malone said. “Because
it seems as though Sato’s given you exactly what you wanted.”

  Attrop’s smile was flat, but her eyes flashed with intelligence. “What might that be, Chief Malone?”

  Clothoe’s beady eyes danced between them.

  “A nail in his own coffin,” Malone said. “You have all the proof you need of Sato’s incompetence and his excess. And sufficient motivation to move your followers against him.”

  “Straight to the point,” Attrop said. “I thought I’d like you.”

  “And what is it you want from me?” Malone asked.

  Attrop took a slow sip of tea, and Malone marveled at the woman’s claws. Along with Clothoe’s, they were, perhaps, the longest, straightest fingernails Malone had ever seen.

  “As much as it may surprise you, I am not entirely pleased with Sato’s latest move,” Attrop said. “As you gathered, I was hoping he would expose himself. However, I had hoped he would not do it so... boldly.”

  “You were just hoping he’d crack down on a few of your rioters,” Malone said.

  Malone counted it as a point in her favor when the other woman scowled. “I had hoped Sato would create a manageable disaster. But this,” she said, tapping the blade of one nail against her teacup, “a burning train loaded with invading troops? In the middle of a food shortage? Even I can’t control this.” Occupying her chair like a throne and sipping her tea, Attrop looked much more like a frustrated chess player than an architect of overthrow.

  Yet as they stayed here bandying challenges, precious minutes slipped away. Even Farrah was beginning to gnaw at a nail. In the five or so minutes they’d wasted here, they could have been clear of the block and halfway out of the Vineyard.

  “What’s the next step in this plan of yours?” Malone asked.

  Attrop showed her a brittle smile. “That is why I came to you.”

  “What exactly do you expect from me?”

  “Aid. Succor. In Parsons’ telling, you’ve got as much to lose as I if we’re caught.” She favored the Revisionist man with an approving nod.

  Hairs rose along the back of Malone’s neck. Attrop’s nerve was galling, but the woman had a point. “Maybe so,” Malone said, “but I still don’t understand what you think I can do about it.”

  “Are you not the chief of police? With hundreds at your disposal?”

  Malone laughed humorlessly. “Maybe a hundred. If you want to count the ones who’ve been properly trained. Hardly an army in numbers or discipline.”

  “You are part of Sato’s Cabinet.” Attrop waved her hand at the word as if she were shooing away a bug. “Am I to believe that none of your confederates are similarly disillusioned?”

  What had felt like a promising and fortuitous alliance was rapidly deteriorating into an exasperating farce. “They’re all disillusioned. Thanks in no small part to your own antics behind the scenes, by the way.” She glared at the old woman, willing her to take responsibility for this much, if nothing else. “But there’s a wide gulf between disillusionment and willingness to take part in a second rebellion. Particularly after seeing the means Sato has at his disposal.”

  “What about Arnault?” Cabral asked.

  Another dry laugh scratched at Malone’s throat. “The man who helped Sato seize Recoletta in the first place? He’s not here. We have to assume that means he’s thrown in with Sato.”

  “Which is why we should get going,” Farrah said, folding her arms.

  “Come to think of it, you’ve got far more at your disposal than I ever did,” Malone said to Attrop. “The crowd I saw marching on the factory districts must have been a few hundred at least. But you’re not throwing them at Dominari Hall, are you?”

  “Don’t play the fool, Malone. The role hardly suits you,” Attrop said coldly. “You know as well as I that you don’t put that kind of power into the hands of the mob.”

  That was when Malone realized that Attrop and Clothoe were desperate. They weren’t the kinds of people to throw themselves at her mercy based on a hunch.

  “There’s an option,” Malone said. “But you won’t like it.”

  “My dear, Recoletta today is full of things I dislike. Your proposal could hardly be any worse.”

  “The farming communes.”

  Attrop’s smile fell, as Malone had known it would. But, to her credit, she picked it up and tried it back on like some broken, precious thing she’d dropped on the pavement. “An interesting notion, Chief Malone.”

  “You won’t like their creaking, overheated huts. You probably won’t like them. And you certainly won’t like the majority of what they stand for,” Malone said. “But they’re the one group that’s just as firmly against Sato as you are. And they’re the only people who wouldn’t dream of handing you over to him.”

  Attrop smoothed the wrinkles from her long, ruched skirt and drained her tea. “Then it seems we’ve no better alternative. Let’s go.”

  “Hold on. I know where the commune is, but getting out of the city–”

  Attrop held up a hand, her nails slicing through the air like knives. “Leave that to us. You can be certain we’ve kept a few escape routes open for contingencies such as this.”

  Attrop and Clothoe stood with more speed and grace than Malone would have expected from women of their age and led the way out.

  * * *

  Jane had not heard from Arnault or Lady Lachesse in days. She had not heard from much of anyone, in fact – Bailey and the Qadi had left her to her regular duties, and she’d had no further run-ins with Chancellor O’Brien or Father Isse. As much as she wanted to take satisfaction in keeping out of the meddling of so many mercurial and opposing groups, being suddenly cut off from them left her uneasy. They were, of course, still meddling, but now she had no perspective on the details.

  And as the days crept closer to the invasion mentioned in the chancellor’s letter, she found herself more and more on edge. She had to remind herself that Arnault would handle the matter. And, more importantly, that it was not her concern now.

  Fredrick, on the other hand, had remained buoyant since starting his new job. He’d become a font of gossip, narrating rumors about local luminaries that even Jane knew little of and whispering about political ripples that Jane only heard echoed at work a day or two later. He’d even taken to helping out more around the apartment, picking up Jane’s slack without complaint. And he’d said nothing further about Lady Lachesse. If he noticed a change in Jane’s mood or suspected anything about his new position, he certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

  But at the Majlis on the day of the planned troop shipment into Recoletta, Jane couldn’t focus on anything else. Tension seemed to thicken the air at the Majlis, too. Even though no one said anything about the looming offensive, it felt as if everyone were awaiting something, distracting themselves with work in the meantime.

  Jane kept herself distracted with a fairly routine load of paperwork – the kind of thing she could churn through without much effort or attention. Yet as the day wore on, her nerves wore thinner and thinner. When the people around her began packing up and turning in for the evening, she did a double take at the clock in disbelief that the whole day had passed with no news from Recoletta.

  That the Qadi and her allies might have backpedaled on the plan seemed like too much to hope for. Unfortunately, the lack of news could mean anything. And there was no way to inquire without raising further suspicions.

  A thousand wires and fibers had been drawn taut over the course of the day. Jane could feel them wind even tighter, ready to snap.

  She headed home, trying to pretend as though she had no reason for anxiety or concern.

  Outside of the Majlis, the streets were crowded and sultry. All of the homes and workplaces of Madina had sighed in unison, filling the streets with the heat and musk of thousands. And a day of sun had warmed the upper layer of rock and filtered underground through the ample windows, turning the tunnels into a kind of convection oven. Jane was grateful for the loose fabric of her long tunic
and trousers as she squeezed through the crowd.

  She’d been looking over her shoulder for days – for Lady Lachesse, for Father Isse’s spies, for some other informant from the Majlis – only to find nothing. The effort now seemed as pointless as it was exhausting, and she was glad that the enshrouding throng made it all but impossible.

  So she wove through the crowd, brushing against flesh-padded fabric as she moved. But when a hand dropped to her shoulder, she surprised even herself with how fast she spun.

  She surprised Roman, too, who gazed back at her with wide, alarmed eyes.

  Her mind filled with questions and dread. “Roman? What are you–”

  “I’ll explain everything, but we need to go somewhere we can talk. Privately.”

  Her daily routes and routines rarely took her outside of a circuit that included the Majlis, the market, and her apartment. “The Pheasant?” she asked.

  He started to say something but only shook his head.

  She could only assume that, for whatever reason, he no longer believed it was safe. Impatience for answers and certainty burrowed under her flesh. “Where, then? Unless you want to come home with me, I don’t know what else to suggest.”

  He glanced around as if he might find the answer just over the heads of passersby. “Just find us a tea shop. Whatever it is they have out here.”

  “Follow me.” Jane pressed through the crowd, feeling Arnault at her back. She found a tea house on the next street, marked by a bright banner that rose above the throng. It looked crowded inside, but everything would be at that hour.

  Jane didn’t look over her shoulder but wound her way to a tiny table in the back of the shop that seemed far from the people-watching and the view of the street. Roman glanced at the crowds, the distant exit, and the walls hemming them in, but said nothing.

  They sat down. The corners of Roman’s eyes and the edges of his mouth were drawn tight.

  “Talk,” Jane said.

  “It’s about the train,” he said.

  Her stomach dropped. Somehow, she had known as much from the moment she’d seen him in the street. She pictured troops pouring into the city and another round of surprise battles in the streets. For the first time, she noticed his haggard appearance – the greasy knots in his hair, a missing button at his collar, a small rip in the cuff of his sleeve. The all-too-familiar signs of someone who’d left in a hurry. “They- they really did it? The chancellor’s troops took Recoletta?”