Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  If she had powers, she didn’t know how to use them. But one thing had always been with her—the thrum of ethereal music inside her.

  He tried to yank his arms from her, and she pulled him closer to her, and she listened for her song. If he could hear the music of fate, he would have to understand. She wanted him to understand. Understanding was so much more beautiful than killing him—and that might be the only alternative.

  She caught the strains, and it grew louder, and she moved her lips as though she might almost be able to join in as she tried to open it up to his ears.

  He cringed and looked around him. “What is that sound?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “It’s the sound of balance. It’s the song of the other world.”

  “It’s—horrid.” His eyes widened. “You’re filling my head with this. You are magic. I knew—” He pulled his hands away from her and covered his ears, but he still seemed to hear the music after breaking away from her. It was inside him now, just as it was inside her, but she breathed in the beauty of the slow notes that swirled around her and filled her up. This was her magic, her mission, and for the first time she didn’t feel awkward and lost, but extraordinary.

  Valkenrath had backed up against the wall, bending over, gripping his head. He was breathing hard. Something in him seemed loosened, as if thoughts he had previously blocked from his mind were forcing their way through the cracks. A clock on the wall ticked slow seconds in the sudden silence, and he didn’t say anything.

  Now someone knocked on the door. The spell broke. Valkenrath turned sharply on his heel, finally tearing away from her, and opened the door.

  “Rory?” Gerik said. “What’s going on?” He looked at Nan.

  “I’m trying to find out what she is,” said Valkenrath—no, Rory, she thought, as if knowing his given name gave her more power. He sounded ragged. “But she’s done something to me.” When Gerik started to walk into the room, Rory put a hand on his chest. “Don’t touch her.”

  Gerik halted. “Freddy’s gone,” he said. “Arabella is at the door, and she says he ran off. I don’t really know what she wants, why she’s come back, but I don’t trust her, and I’m worried about the lad.” He frowned at Nan, seeming uncertain. “What did she do to you? You look awful. But so does she.”

  “I don’t—quite know.” Rory looked reluctant to even attempt an explanation. “Why don’t you try to find Freddy. I’ll deal with Arabella.” He glanced at Nan. “You come with me.”

  Nan caught a split second of Arabella’s usual composed expression before she noticed Nan was there. “Nan? Dear god…” Her eyes swept over the bloody work suit. There was still a hole in it right over Nan’s heart. “What happened?”

  Arabella stood in the entrance room, late afternoon sun flooding the space behind her from a row of windows that faced west.

  Rory was a storm cloud darkening the room, glowering and troubled. Although Nan’s spell had been interrupted, he seemed rattled, gesturing and raising his voice when he was usually so controlled. “You took Freddy,” he said, “and then you lost him?”

  “Quite a trick he pulled on me,” she said. “He brought my hunting mounts to life.”

  “What about your guard-spy?”

  “He’ll be informing the rest of my associates of what is happening.”

  “You know this girl,” he said, grabbing Nan’s arm and jostling her forward. “What is she?”

  “I don’t know much.” Arabella straightened her stance, as if prepping for a duel. “But I believe she is something special. Not quite human. I thought she might be brave enough to destroy you and this world you’ve built. But it seems you’ve broken her instead.”

  “I’m not broken,” Nan said.

  “Well, you haven’t killed Freddy, you haven’t stopped Valkenrath, and you haven’t freed my daughter. It’s all right, Nan. I suppose you haven’t come into your powers. I can only trust myself, in the end.”

  Nan let the words go. Arabella was not her goal, and she didn’t really care what the woman thought.

  “Since we’ve reached this point,” Arabella said, “I want to see my daughter, who I believe is trapped down in your hellhole.”

  “Your daughter couldn’t possibly be down there,” Rory said. “We don’t revive upper-class citizens.”

  “She wasn’t exactly living like an upper-class citizen. She ran away from home to live in a sad little flat.”

  “I certainly will not take you underground. You’re asking me to destroy everything I’ve built. If I call the chancellor, he’ll have both you and Miss Davies imprisoned on some charge until we can decide what to do with you.”

  “If Freddy wants to let the dead go,” Nan said, “there is nothing you can do except prepare.” She looked at him, and he avoided her eyes—covertly, but she had begun to make him believe her. “Would you rather release the dead yourself, or have him make the choice for you?”

  “What you ask cannot—should not—be done quickly,” he said carefully. “The dead help to run the city.”

  “Then…let us help you replace them carefully,” Nan said. She didn’t really have the authority to say this. That magic belonged to Freddy. But right now she just had to keep Rory calm. Open. She had given him a taste of her power. That was a start. And, hopefully, enough. “Let’s just start with Sigi. If we get Sigi out of the underground, Arabella, will you cooperate with Rory to help the other workers?”

  “I suppose. If he truly does what we need him to do.”

  Nan turned to Rory. “Let us see Sigi.”

  “I don’t even know for sure if Sigi is there,” he said.

  “Well, I do.” Nan added pointedly, “She’s the girl who got caught carrying a flashlight.”

  He raised an eyebrow, realizing now the state Sigi would be in when Arabella saw her—something Nan was trying very much not to think of. “I see.”

  “Freddy told me she’s being kept in a cage,” Arabella said.

  “She tried to escape,” he said. His tone was cool and unrevealing now. “Come with me.”

  He led them down a hall and opened a door with stairs to the cellar. It was like any other cellar, cool and cobwebby. A steel door leading to the underground was tucked behind a supporting beam of the house. Now Nan remembered these doors and passages—the room where Freddy revived her, the hall through which the guards had dragged her.

  “You built all this down here?” Arabella asked.

  “I didn’t build it to begin with. Years ago, this house connected to a network of rooms beneath the royal palace.”

  “It’s vaster than I expected,” Arabella murmured a moment later, seeing halls shooting off to the sides. “I must say, I’m impressed you were able to keep your prisoners from escaping.”

  Of course, Nan knew the way he had kept them from escaping. But Rory didn’t say anything about the serum to Arabella.

  When Rory opened the next door, Nan heard something scream. No, someone. Sigi. Nan hadn’t realized they’d reached a side entrance to the cafeteria.

  Nan lowered her eyes and remained in the doorway while Rory moved forward, Arabella behind him, more reluctant. Nan didn’t want to see Sigi like that again, but she couldn’t block out the sound of her, moaning and scrabbling in the cage.

  “What is that?” Arabella asked.

  “That is your daughter,” Rory said.

  Arabella’s scream drowned out Sigi’s moans. Nan looked up. She couldn’t seem to stop herself. Sigi was withered almost beyond recognition, her eyes too wide in shriveled eyelids. She didn’t recognize her mother or Nan. She thrust her nose between the bars, smelling the life of them, reaching with shriveled fingers.

  “Help.” She spoke hoarsely. “I need blood…blood….”

  Rory was impassive to Arabella’s despair. He took a vial from his pocket, removed the stopper, and han
ded it to Sigi. “Drink this now.”

  Nan took a deep breath. It will be all right, she thought. She clutched at the buttons of her work suit.

  Nan’s eyes were riveted on Sigi, so she didn’t even notice Arabella take the gun out.

  Until the shot went off, echoing sharply in the wide space.

  Rory’s eyes widened, his hand clutching his chest while a stain spread on the back of his jacket.

  Arabella pulled the trigger a second time, and his knees gave out. He died quickly, right at Nan’s feet, with a look of surprise on his face that Nan was sure echoed her own.

  “He was doing what we asked!” Nan said, just those few words short of speechlessness.

  Arabella’s face was streaked with tears. “Look at my daughter. Didn’t you die so that you could stop all this?”

  “Yes, but…shooting a man in the back?”

  “It isn’t on your conscience, Nan. Don’t worry about it.”

  “He was starting to understand. I know he was. I took his hands and—” She broke off, looking at Sigi again. Maybe Arabella was right. But it didn’t feel right.

  One of the guards rushed through the door, halting in his tracks when Arabella pointed her gun at him. “Stop right there! Put your hands over your head. I’m a damn fine shot, as you can see.”

  A second guard had come in behind the first one.

  “Madam, there are a lot more of us than there are of you.”

  “I will take out as many of you as I can before I go down,” she said. “I don’t care. I’ve done what I came to do. And that is my daughter in there.” With her free hand she pointed at Sigi, whose moaning had grown subdued after drinking the serum. She was crouched on the floor of the cage. “He did this to my daughter. I just want to see her before I go. So leave this room if you don’t want to join him.”

  The guards looked at each other. The first one nodded. They slowly backed out and shut the door behind them. Nan doubted they went any farther than that; they were only biding their time. She hoped they didn’t think her an accomplice. She didn’t know how many times she could handle dying in one day.

  “Arabella,” Nan said, speaking as carefully as she could. “Please. Sigi will be all right once the serum takes effect.”

  “Sigi is going to die,” Arabella shouted back. She was still holding the gun, not quite pointed at Nan, but close. If she shot now, it might nick Nan’s arm. “I don’t know if I can describe how it feels to lose your daughter and feel like you were the one who had driven her to her death.”

  “You’re in pain from seeing Sigi like this.” Nan spoke haltingly. What else might Arabella do in her grief? “But she isn’t gone yet. You can still say what you want to say. It’s not too late.”

  Arabella’s cheeks were flushed, anger and hurt mingling in her red-rimmed eyes.

  But she lowered the gun.

  “Sigi!” Nan turned to Sigi, who was still huddled in the corner of the cage. Even her curls were listless as they spilled over her face. “Talk to me. Is the serum working?”

  Nan’s heart was beating faster. She grabbed the cage, and her suddenly sweaty hands squeaked on the bars. “Sigi, I want to get you out, like I promised. Please.”

  She turned to Arabella again, feeling an alarming desperation. “I don’t know how quickly the serum reverses. I told her I’d make sure she saw the sunshine before she died.”

  “Was there something between you and my daughter?” Arabella said.

  Nan didn’t answer. She took a deep breath. Sigi is going to die.

  Sigi is going to die.

  And she had to let it happen. She had to make sure Freddy accomplished his mission, and see that he got out safely so his magic couldn’t be abused again. She had forgotten the guards outside the door, but they were there, and they wouldn’t stand idle for long.

  Sure enough, she heard Gerik’s voice booming, and he burst in the door, a furious figure brandishing a gun of his own, brisk steps in expensive polished shoes. His eyes alighted on the fallen body of his brother. “Who did this?” he demanded. “Which one of you killed him?”

  “I did,” Arabella said. She spoke without anger or arrogance; in fact, she sounded subdued. “My daughter is a living corpse crying for blood. You can’t scare me with your weapons. I don’t care if I die.”

  Gerik was hurrying to Rory’s side. “Where is Freddy? Damn it, this is all your fault. You took the boy and now my brother.”

  “Did you hear a word I said? I don’t care one whit about your brother. He started this. And if I see Freddy, I’ll kill him, too.”

  This seemed to jar Gerik. He had crouched beside Rory and taken his hand, but now he turned. “Arabella, please. I am sorry that your daughter somehow ended up in the rabble. That was surely a mistake. We don’t keep people with noble blood.”

  “What does it matter how noble her blood was?” Arabella said. “No one deserves this! But I know it’s too late for Sigi. Maybe it isn’t too late for you. I want you to give an order for all of your workers to evacuate aboveground.”

  “I—I cannot do such a thing! We’ll have blackouts and shortages, and without serum they’ll turn into…” He waved at Sigi. “What would I tell the chancellor?”

  “I want blackouts,” Arabella said. “I want shortages. I want the people to know how you’ve betrayed them.”

  Nan approached Gerik very slowly. “I could have helped your brother understand, if I’d had more time.” Now she was almost standing face-to-face with him. “You can’t keep the workers, and—” She was conscious of Arabella’s impatience. “I think it has to happen now, even if it does mean blackouts. Freddy can’t let them go one by one, and we can’t tell the people one by one. They deserve to know what’s happened.”

  “Rory’s the one who made all these decisions.” Gerik didn’t seem to want to look at her. “I really didn’t have all that much to do with it. The chancellor—”

  “So now you will blame it all on Rory and the chancellor?” Arabella sneered. “You knew what was going on just as well as they did.”

  “I did, but”—Gerik clutched his forehead—“I never came down here. I never saw any of this.”

  Nan didn’t want Arabella to gain too much control over the conversation. “So, you couldn’t find Freddy?” she asked Gerik.

  “No.” He was looking at Rory again. “No, I didn’t. I—”

  “Please…you must…listen to Nan,” Sigi groaned from behind them. She crawled to the bars and pulled herself up, hand over hand, on shaky knees. “I’ve always known…down here…that…I shouldn’t be here. That I chose to kill myself, and I’m sorry now, but this wasn’t right….I wasn’t supposed to keep living like this. Please…let us die.”

  Gerik looked at his brother instead of at Sigi. As if Rory’s still form would rise from the pool of blood and offer his opinion.

  Sigi is going to die.

  Sigi is going to die, and I will hold her while she does.

  Thea heard the pounding footsteps before the knock. She rose from the table and wiped her hands on a napkin, her thoughts turning abruptly from hunger to panic.

  “It’s Freddy. Please open the door!”

  He practically fell in the door when she opened it. “There’s a cab waiting. We have to go now.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Nan told me to go to Vogelsburg, so that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Nan!?”

  “Just trust me. Gerik, Uncle, Arabella—everyone will be looking for me. I’ll explain when we get there.”

  Thea snatched up the purse with Father Gruneman’s gun and hurried down the stairs with Freddy. She heard Miss Mueller’s door opening behind her and the old woman asking about “all the ruckus,” but Thea didn’t pay attention. Yesterday had been Sunday, her day off, and she had spent it in a state of painful indecision, wondering where
to turn next. With Father Gruneman dead, she didn’t know if she ought to go back to the Café Rouge tonight. She would not hesitate now.

  But why Vogelsburg? It had suffered heavy damage during the war, and no one lived there now. The cabdriver apparently wondered the same thing, because he glanced back at them and said, “You’re sure you want to stop in Vogelsburg? There’s nothing much there except squatters. It’s dangerous for a couple of kids.”

  “We’re sure,” Freddy said. “Drop us off where the subway used to be.”

  “What are you doing there, anyway?”

  “None of your business, mister,” Thea said, with her best Telephone Club sass. “We’re paying you, aren’t we?”

  “It’s not a good place for a rendezvous, I’m telling you.”

  “And I told you to mind your own business.”

  “That’s why I need you along, Trouble,” Freddy said, smiling a little even through the panic in his eyes. She couldn’t ask him what he’d already been through today, not until they had privacy.

  “I hope I’m the worst of the troubles we’ll be dealing with,” she said, trying to tease back, but the words were forced.

  As the city she knew was replaced by the war-torn outskirts, the only shops seemed to sell liquor, with rough-looking men hanging around outside. Drab five-story apartment buildings had gone up, but there were still vacant lots and burned-out husks of buildings.

  A couple of blocks later, the apartments gave way to complete rubble, piles of bricks that had been moved off the street but not off the sidewalk. Some of the buildings clearly used to be quite elegant, with arched windows or attractive towers that still stood while the rest of the buildings were skeletal wrecks. The bright but broken pieces of a street organ rested on the corner, and the occasional book or shoe rotted in the gutter, but the only sign of recent inhabitance was some laundry hanging between windows. The cab slowed.

  “Is this it?” Thea asked.

  “This is it,” the cabdriver agreed. “Used to be a nice old neighborhood, but there just isn’t the manpower to rebuild it.” He turned a corner. A gaunt, tanned woman was tossing the contents of a chamber pot out the window of a house that looked half-destroyed. The poorest people still lived in the remnants of buildings, but there appeared to be only a handful of them.