The Buried Life

by Carrie Patel

  “F-from my office. In the north wing.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked. But the man only stared at her with a wide-eyed panic that pained and frightened her, and she realized that if she did not maintain some kind of command over the situation he would bolt like a mare in a fire.

  “I’m here to get everything under control,” she said, and saying the words even made her feel it a little. “When did everybody start running?”

  The man licked his lips and jiggled the frames of his glasses. “Bombs. And shooting. Then Dominguez came, said everyone was to leave–”

  “Did you see a reporter?” Again the blank look. Of course not, she thought; what are the chances that Fredrick would just march into Dominari Hall and announce himself as “The Reporter”, come for the story? Pretty good, actually. “Who’s in charge?”

  “Dominguez. And R-Ruthers.”

  “Are they still here?” He nodded. “Where?”

  The man pointed a shaking finger straight down the hall. “East wing. All the way at the end. Brought g-guns…”

  Jane was off before she could hear the rest, and she hurried down the main hall toward the offices and reception rooms, where the pack thinned further. In a matter of moments, she was clear of any detectable human presence.

  The tumult behind her was only a din, and she reached a grand double staircase that descended further into the heart of Dominari Hall. She could neither see nor hear movement in that direction, but a faint glow spilled onto the bottom steps, and it seemed as likely an avenue as any. Tiptoeing where red velvet crept over white marble, she edged down the stairs.

  Emerging into a new hallway, this one more impressive than its predecessor, she slowed her pace. The faces of cherubim emerged from the creamy marble, staring down at her from the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. Below them hung portraits of Recoletta’s long line of councilors, the men and women affecting regal poses within their golden frames. A dim glow reflected off of the smooth polish of the mahogany doors lining the hall, looking warm to the touch.

  The only light came from much further down the hall, and Jane’s position was in semidarkness. Picking her way down the hall and peering into darkened corridors, she chided herself for not having thought to bring a lamp but decided that the advantages of stealth outweighed those of visibility. Listening more carefully, she continued.

  As she watched the floor for snags in the carpet, something caught her eye: a patch where the velvet carpet appeared to run outside its bounds and pool against the wall. With closer observation, she saw that the pool was a good deal darker than the carpet. Blood.

  The puddle had spread to just less than six inches in diameter, and it trailed in drops and streaks down a side corridor. She followed the track a few feet down the corridor, around a corner, and into a dim office, sickness and dread rising in her throat. Just on the other side of the doorframe, Fredrick sat propped against the wall. Gasping, she rushed to the slumped figure and knelt in front of his bowed head.

  His upper half was bent over his knees, which angled imprecisely upwards and outwards. His right hand clenched something on his abdomen, and red bloomed between the white fingers and knuckles. His face was turned downwards and obscured by limply hanging hair. She lifted his head gently, feeling the sweat that slicked his brow and temples and noticing, even in the low lighting, that he had achieved a dangerous pallor.

  “Freddie? Can you hear me?” she whispered. To her unparalleled relief, he let out a low moan, and she had to stop herself from squeezing him in a joyful hug. “Thank goodness, you’re alive.” Watching the listless way that his head and limbs swayed, though, she wondered how long that would be true. She took his hand, feeling more warmth than she expected. “Listen, we have to go, it’s not safe for us here.”

  Groaning, he lifted his head and it lolled out of control, thumping against the wall. “You don’t say.”

  “Save your witticisms for later, Freddie; we’ve got to get out of here. What happened to you?”

  Fredrick heaved a few labored breaths. “Short. Bulgy eyes, creepy mustache. I came, after you’d left, to get answers. Whole place in an uproar. Found Ruthers and a few other councilors; said something about hostile takeover.” Fredrick paused, briefly overtaken by a fit of coughing. Jane was pleased to see that none of it came out red. “They asked me who sent me; I said ‘Roman Arnault’, and this guy shot me. Name’s Dominguez, I think.” With his left and relatively clean hand, he reached into his pocket and pressed something cold and hard into Jane’s palm.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a gun. I brought it for a worst-case scenario,” he said, chuckling weakly. Holding it up to the light and, with a little trouble, pushing out the cylinder, she could see that it was a six-chambered revolver, fully loaded. “Cock that little catch on the back to shoot,” Fredrick added. She pocketed it.

  Jane hesitated, looking at the bleeding mass under Fredrick’s hand. “I’m going to

  need–”

  “No.”

  “Fredrick, I have to see how bad it is.” She peeled his hand away, and he gasped. The wound was a mess of half-crusted and oozing blood, and Jane couldn’t discern much except that it wasn’t bleeding as profusely as she’d feared. Also, the wound was closer to the side than the center of his abdomen, and while she couldn’t have said what organs were in the path of the bullet, or which had been missed, this seemed like a good thing.

  “Can you walk?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Come on.” Jane tore a strip from her billowing skirt and tied it under Fredrick’s chest as he winced. Pulling his arm around her shoulder, she hoisted him to his feet.

  “OOOOOOOW, ohpleaseohpleaseOHHHH!” Fredrick squeezed his eyes shut as Jane straightened her legs and stood him upright. She took slow, shuffling steps and he painfully dragged his feet beside her. “Just leave me,” he moaned. “It’s not worth it. You’ll have to go without me.”

  She stopped. “Freddie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up.”

  Picking up speed, they shuffled back into the hall. Up the stairs and back the way Jane had come, the din had grown louder. Shouts, scuffles, and gunshots echoed down the hall toward them.

  “Not that way,” Fredrick sighed. Jane nodded and directed them away from the stairs, toward the radiance, as the carpet grew ever brighter under their feet. In less than two minutes, they had reached a great rotunda and the source of the light.

  A massive chandelier sat in the center of the rotunda, anchored and glowing wanly. The ropes and chains descending behind it from an oculus in the ceiling gave it the appearance of a giant, crystalline spider, its multitude of eyes winking at them. Jane stood, transfixed by the sight and forgetting their danger until she caught the odor of smoke and spice in the air. Standing to one side, his back against the wall, was Roman Arnault.

  “They brought it down for cleaning. Interesting, isn’t it? It takes all those ropes to keep it up, but just one to hold it down,” he said, pointing to an anchor in the wall where a lone rope was tied, taught as a bowstring. His voice sounded wearier still than it had earlier in the evening.

  “What are you doing here?” Jane asked. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and smothered it in his stride.

  “I could ask you the same thing, but it appears that, once again, you’ve been caught in the pursuit of a noble mission,” he said and paced around, looking at Fredrick. The reporter glowered back with all the distaste his pained features could manage.

  “How do we get out?” Fredrick asked.

  “You don’t. As you probably heard, they came in behind you and are filling the palace as we speak, casing every office, closet, and filing cabinet. Ahead lies a secret passage to the surface, but it would be impossible to crawl through it in your current state of encumbrance.” He glared at Fredrick, as if holding him responsible for their condition. “In a few minutes, Sato and his army will be upon us, and I’ll have more than a little exp
laining to do. I fear that nothing I can do or say will be enough to save you two. Or me, for that matter. For your entanglement in this, I am sincerely sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Fredrick said. “If we’re about to die, at least do us the courtesy of a little honesty. You’re a lying, murderous pig, and you led us into this.”

  “Right on the first two counts, Mr Anders, but mistaken on the last,” Arnault said, his wrath rising. “If she’d listened to me, Miss Lin would have safely fled and I’d only be apologizing to you. Instead, she came back. To rescue you.” He snorted. “And this has to be the most inept bandaging I’ve ever seen, Jane. Is this supposed to stop the bleeding or hold his trousers up?” he said. He deftly retied the swathes and added a wad of fabric from his own shirt to improve it. “At least he won’t bleed to death before Sato arrives.”

  Fredrick looked down at the fresh dressing as if he expected it to bleed him even faster. “What’s with the ‘us’ anyway? You’re on their side, as I found out the hard way.”

  Roman rattled a sigh from somewhere deep in his throat and looked away. “You don’t really expect me to stand by while they massacre the two of you, do you?” His voice rang with annoyance, and Fredrick fell silent.

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Jane said.

  “I have unfinished business down the hall.”

  “Is that what you’ve been dreading all evening?” She noticed a faint tremor in his hands.

  “Run, Jane.” His voice had adopted an unfamiliar quaver. “Hide your friend, and perhaps I can draw them off.”

  “Why did they send you here?”

  In the pause that followed, Roman brushed a strand of hair from his forehead with a shaking hand. “Locked in the office at the end of the hall is Councilor Ruthers. One of our moles in the Guard left him there, supposedly for safekeeping until the rioting subsided.” He drew a shaking breath. “As a final test of loyalty, my job is to kill him.”

  Fredrick recovered from his astonishment and remembered some of his loathing for Roman. “Can you be serious? You, of all people, are worked up because you have to kill someone you’ve been betraying all along?”

  Roman’s face was nearly as ashen as the reporter’s as he glared back. “Working against someone and murdering him in cold blood are two different things. It’s true, I share responsibility for the other murders, though I did not commit them with my own hands. While I cannot sympathize with the Council’s actions in the past, I would never have wished for this position. I’m many things, Jane, but not a murderer.” Already a fearsome change took place in him as he struggled to accept his duty. “There’s another thing,” he said, his voice and his eyes hardening. “I cannot forgive Ruthers for what he did to the Sato family, and to many others, but, no matter his crimes, it would never be easy for me to kill him. Augustus Ruthers is my great-uncle.” He gave a sad little laugh. “The only family I have left. But Jakkeb will accept nothing less as proof of my loyalty… and in return for your safety, assuming you’ve left. He thinks that once I’ve done this I’ll be indelibly under his control.”

  Jane paused. “Do you have the key on you?”

  He fished in his pocket and held up a thick, shiny key. “Our contact in the Guard passed it to me on his way out. A double betrayal, though I suppose Ruthers deserves nothing less. I know well what kind of man my uncle is.”

  “But heaven forbid you should become the same.”

  “I wish I had a choice.”

  “I know,” she said with real sympathy. “And I hope that you can forgive me for this one day and understand what I’m doing for you.” Arnault looked up at Jane with mild bemusement, which grew to wide-eyed alarm when he saw the small revolver she was pointing at him. Meeting his gaze with all-but-banished regret, she fired.

  He fell to the ground, clutching his leg and bellowing in pain. “Are you insane? What have you done?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “But I think I’ve got more right to this chore than you.” Rushing to his side, she retrieved the key he had dropped and ran down the hall toward the locked door. Fredrick watched the series of events unfold as if in slow motion, and only the subsiding sounds of Arnault’s gasps and growls brought him back to realtime.

  “Oh, shut up,” he muttered, hobbling to the chandelier.

  Jane’s own pulse was surprisingly steady as she dashed to the end of the hall, the rotunda disappearing in a final curve. A lone door, gilded and carved masterfully, was set into the left-hand wall. She knocked.

  The sounds of stirring reached her through the thick wood. “Sergeant Gorham? Is that you?” The voice was firm and commanding, and she recognized it well from an afternoon at the market that seemed like years ago. She unlocked and opened the door with the stolen key.

  The man on the other side of the door looked from her disheveled figure to the revolver in her outstretched hand with open wonder, though not a hint of fear. Those pale blue eyes settled back on hers, daring her to be done with it. Feeling a touch of dread herself, Jane detected something unpleasantly familiar in the cold, malevolent stare, and she fired.

  The report of this second shot sounded louder in this small room, but Jane’s hands were still steady on the gun when she lowered it. She took a moment to catch her breath, gazing at the motionless man through the gunpowder smoke, before sprinting back to the rotunda where the ruckus had grown louder. Roman had regained something of his composure and was kneeling awkwardly where he had fallen, having staunched his wound. His eyes met hers with pity. Crouching beside him, she looked at his leg.

  “Never mind it.” He took her face in his wide, surprisingly smooth hands and inspected it with sadness and awe. “I never meant for you to be in this position, Jane. What have I done to you?” He brushed a lock of dark hair from her cheek. “I’m so sorry.” Drawing her face closer to his rough jaw, she kissed him.

  As their lips met and searched, holding on to that tender moment as the world fell around them, Jane’s senses took her back to the orphanage, where a single jar of honey gleamed golden against bowls slopped with insipid, grayish porridge. The honey was reserved for the headmistress and her cohorts to drizzle on their bread, but, when no one was looking, Jane would dip her own spoon into the jar so that she ate the bland porridge with the taste of honey on her lips. In this moment, she thought of nothing so much as bitterness refined by a touch of sweetness.

  The bursting of gunshots in the rotunda broke them from their reverie. “Jane, I think they’re firing at me!” Fredrick said, ducking behind the chandelier as crystal and glass exploded around him. “Oh, I don’t want to get shot… not again!”

  Jane looked at Fredrick clinging to the chandelier, and an idea occurred to her that would have seemed foolish a few minutes ago. “Go,” Roman said, giving her hand a final squeeze. She tumbled behind the chandelier, holding Fredrick against one of its golden rings.

  “Hold on,” she said, pulling out the revolver.

  “Why?” he asked, fearful. Jane aimed at the anchor on the wall. Seeing her, Roman drew his own gun and did likewise. Two shots erupted simultaneously. One embedded itself in a section of plaster near the fastening, and the other splintered it, sending the chandelier rocketing skyward as Sato and his men erupted into the rotunda. The only sound louder than the hissing of the rope was Fredrick’s terrified scream as he and Jane shot toward the ceiling.

  “Stand down,” Sato said as the chandelier bounced one hundred feet above their heads. “It’s finished.”

  Jane managed to rock the mass of gold, crystal, and glass to the outer edge of the oculus, where a railing and fastenings permitted her to anchor it steadily enough for her and Fredrick to climb to safety. A short flight of stairs later, they were at the surface and running as fast as Fredrick’s injury would permit. The skylights under their feet flashed and rumbled like the gates of hell as the fighting continued below them.

  “Jane?” Fredrick’s voice sounded stronger now, and the color began to return to his cheek
s as they hurried.

  “Yes?”

  “You remember back there when I told you to leave me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I really didn’t mean it. I’m glad you came back.”

  “I know, Freddie.”

  Back in the rotunda, Jakkeb inspected Arnault and his leg wound. “Who did this?”

  “The laundress. She’d brought a revolver with her,” he added, seeing Sato’s incredulity. Sato continued to look between Roman’s eyes and his wound, as if waiting for the rest of the story.

  A voice, feminine, chimed in from somewhere behind Sato. To Roman, it sounded familiar but impossible to place. “She’s a laundress, not a marksman, Sato. And Roman’s lucky. Another foot, and he’d have more than a limp to worry about.”

  Sato nodded, still mesmerized by the wound.

  Leaning closer to him, Roman whispered. “That’s not all she did. I told her the truth about her parents.”

  Sato’s eyes went wide in astonishment. “I see. That’s just as well.” Sato paused, looking back at Roman’s leg. “Does this change things? Shall I…?”

  “No,” he said. “Let her go.”

  “Are you going to be alright? Your leg…”

  “It’s fine,” Roman said. “I’ll get it properly dressed once this is over.”

  “It very nearly is, my friend,” Sato replied. “And as such, it’s time you met our newest associate. Roman Arnault? The former Inspector Liesl Malone.” Sato stood aside as the pale blonde drew from the assembled group, and Roman recognized the speaker from moments ago. The two regarded one another with undisguised hostility.

  The arrival of a panting militiaman cut the tension. He hurried to Sato and whispered something in his ear. Nodding with concern, Sato drew the messenger aside and questioned him. After several minutes of anticipatory silence, he dismissed the soldier and beckoned Malone with a bony finger. “Malone, please.” She came and he took her aside, his features drawn. In the echoing rotunda, the action seemed more like a gesture than a real moment of privacy, but she understood that it portended something grave all the same.