Ninth City Burning

by J. Patrick Black

  I’ve never been around the Square during a muster, and I’m surprised at how many important people there are. I guess it makes sense, since they all work around here, but it’s still kind of strange to see all these faces from telecasts and news publications and so forth. There’s even Qu, the Prefect, walking around in her muster commander’s armband. Right behind her is Ghalo, the Sub-Prefect of Production, Camareen’s boss’s boss. Both of them are watching us all put on our vests and caps like it’s the most exciting thing they’ve ever seen.

  Even though Camareen was still a little mad at me before we heard the muster alarm, I can tell she’s forgiven me by the way she squeezes my hand as we wait for everyone to line up. This is only our second muster since we started in the militia for real, and it’s scary as anything. Most hellions near Granite Shore have learned to stay away, and even when they try something, the sentries at the outer fences usually take care of them pretty quickly. They don’t sound the muster alarm unless they’re worried the tower guards won’t be able to handle things. Last time they called a muster, a whole bunch of hellions had just charged the fences, trying to break through. They didn’t stand a chance, though, those hellions. In the end, only a few militia squads got sent out, and no one I know went with them.

  But when the trucks start pulling into the Square, I know we’re really going out this time. Camareen’s hand tightens around mine, but then Ghalo comes along counting us all off into squads, and I get put in the first load of trucks while Camareen waits for the second. She raises one hand to wave as my squad drives off, and I just watch her getting smaller and smaller. I think about how this could be the last time I ever see her, and there’s this punch in my chest, like someone’s really punching me. I tell myself they always send out way more militia than they need. Like last time no one got killed at all, except a whole bunch of hellions. It doesn’t make me feel any better, though.

  I’m so worried about Camareen, I don’t even think to be scared or nervous on the ride out. Everyone else in my squad is some clerk or low-level bureaucrat. They sort of look at me but don’t say anything. They can tell I’m a factory worker.

  Three trucks have already arrived by the time we unload in the open ground beyond the fences. Probably they’re from some of the factories or the fields out at the edge of the settlement. The militia captain waiting for us is some bureaucrat by the looks of her—she’s got a tie on beneath her vest. I guess she knows what she’s doing, though. Her name is Ubstia, and she tells us guard towers five through thirteen have all reported hellions in the woods outside the settlement. They’re guessing there could be two hundred hellions or more out there. “Probably an exaggeration,” Ubstia says, “but the Prefect wants to take this situation seriously.”

  Hundreds. I can’t stop thinking about it, even when we set off for the woods. Hundreds, boyo. That would be like the biggest attack in years. I’m just glad a few other squads went in ahead of us. There’s gunfire off in the woods, and I hope it’s us shooting and not them. Hellions are bad enough when they only have bows and arrows and axes and whatnot.

  It’s sunny out but still cold, and when the wind blows, you can smell smoke. The smell of smoke gets stronger as we go, and pretty soon, it starts to look like we’re getting near the fighting. We see one dead hellion only a little way into the trees. He’s got on what looks like a suit made out of grass and leaves, and he’d probably be real hard to see out here if he wasn’t all covered in blood. A bit farther in we see another dead hellion, then another, until there are dead hellions like everywhere, some looking like they’ve just gone to sleep, but some looking pretty awful. There’s one with about three-fourths of his head gone, and one with her guts fallen out and tangled all over the place. It’s not just people, either. There are animals, mostly horses, all in just as bad shape as the hellions.

  Eventually, we come up on one of the other squads. I’m thinking they’re the ones who must’ve killed all these hellions, but their captain tells Ubstia the hellions were all dead or dying when they got here. That seems really weird to me. I mean, hellions fight each other all the time. They’re supposedly like savages who’ll kill just about anyone for no reason whatsoever. I just don’t know why they’d do it so close to our settlement when we’d be sure to come out and find them.

  The gunfire isn’t as loud now, but I can’t tell if it’s dying out or just farther away. Our two captains decide to move on, to make sure there are no hellions planning to like wait around until night and attack the fences. We all spread out in a line, everyone pretty much in sight of everyone else. The woods are sort of like a dream, just full of things you’d never expect to see in real life. There’s this one fat gray horse, sort of pudgy and cute, except he’s dead, with all these bullet holes down his back. And this other huge hellion, just gigantic, leaning against a tree, with a little tiny dog attached to his leg. They’re both dead. I’m thinking about how weird a sight it is, the big guy and the little dog, when the dog makes a sound. Or I think it does anyway. Sort of a whimper. I’m about to go and look when I hear something else behind me, like a click. When I turn around, there’s a gun right in my face.

  Some girl has appeared out of nowhere, and she’s pointing a pistol at me. I can just see her over the barrel. She has these huge brown eyes, and freckles. Freckles. Sometimes I think about how I might die, but I never thought I’d be killed by someone with freckles. She’ll do it, though. Shoot me, I mean. I’m sure of it.

  Before I can quite think about what to do, Ubstia is there with her rifle, yelling at the girl to put down her gun. Two guys from my squad have started running our way. The girl doesn’t even look at them, just keeps her gun pointed right at me. I’m thinking about whether she could really be some crazy bloodthirsty hellion who’d kill me just for fun, when all of a sudden Ubstia drops her gun. This other hellion has come up behind her, and now he’s got a knife to her throat and another pistol aimed at me. He’s more how I always imagined hellions looking, with like a leathery face and a tangled beard and whatnot. He looks mean as anything.

  The man yells something at me, but I don’t understand because he’s speaking his crazy hellion language. There are hellions all over the place now. Like they’ve just come out of the trees and bushes and everything. And they all have guns. This one woman has a rifle under each arm, pointed at the two guys who’d been coming to help Ubstia and me.

  We’re all in real trouble now, us and the hellions. Any minute, another squad is going to come through here, and maybe they’ll shoot the guy with the knife or the woman with the rifles, maybe they’ll kill every hellion here, but those hellions won’t go down easy, and this little girl is going to get me first. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.

  The dead dog whimpers again, but this time I see it’s not actually the dog whimpering. There are two eyes looking at me from behind the huge, dead hellion. It all just comes together then, when I see those little brown eyes. I look back at the girl, and she’s still got her gun on me. But now I know what to do.

  “Hey, little girl,” I say. Not in hellion. I’m speaking Aux, the language we use in the settlements. “Can you understand me?”

  She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes sort of widen.

  “So listen, little girl, you’ve got me, I’ll admit it. And you got my kiddos here, too. But see, there’s a lot more of us around, and some are gonna come through here pretty soon, and when that happens, they’re gonna shoot you. You’ll probably shoot me first, but they’ll get you eventually, is what I’m saying. So how about this. How about you and your friends all come into the settlement with us. I bet you’ve come a real long way, and you just wanna rest. You won’t have to worry about all these hellions out there. I’ll need you to give us those guns, though. We can’t let you in if you’ve got all those guns.”

  For a while I’m afraid she really doesn’t understand me, but then she blinks. It’s the first time I’ve seen her blink. S
he shouts something in hellion to the others. Old Black Beard with the knife shouts back, and they have a sort of argument, but finally the girl throws down her pistol. “On behalf of my coda, I accept your terms,” she says. Her Aux is real good, though she makes some of the words sound a little funny. The others look kind of unsure, but, eventually, they drop their guns, too. The guy with the knife is the last one to do it.

  Ubstia calls in the rest of our squad. A few stand with guns ready while the others gather up all the rifles and knives and pistols and so forth on the ground. Things get sort of tense for a second when the girl runs to the big dead man, like Ubstia thinks there’s another gun hidden there or something, but I tell her she’s just getting the little boy. And sure enough, there’s this kid with wispy blond hair hiding behind the dead man. He starts crying hysterically, the boy does, but the girl slaps him hard across the face, like real hard, and he stops.

  “You want to tell me how you pulled that off?” Ubstia asks as we’re walking back to the trucks. “I’ve never known a hellion to understand Aux.”

  “They’re not hellions,” I say. “They’re bivvies.” Bivvies do a lot of trading in the settlements, so some of them have learned to speak our language. And as soon as I saw the boy hiding beneath that dead body, I knew these people weren’t attacking our settlement. They were running from the hellions. That little girl had been trying to fight them off, using the dead gray horse for cover.

  “Right. Well, you probably saved us all from getting killed, so nice work.” Ubstia sounds sort of annoyed, though. “I should have figured that out. The old guy probably told me, even.”

  “You speak bivvie?” I’m pretty impressed. You can always hear bivvies talking in that language of theirs whenever they come to trade. It kind of makes you think they’re laughing at you most of the time.

  “They teach you a few phrases in captain training, but I couldn’t understand a word that guy was saying. I don’t even know which language it was.”

  “You mean like if he was talking bivvie or hellion?” I guess if Ubstia’d known that, we probably wouldn’t have had a problem to begin with.

  “No, a lot of hellions and bivvies have the same language, but there are a bunch of different ones out there. The tribes around here mostly speak English, but there’s some Français and Español, too.”

  That sort of surprises me. I’d always figured every hellion could talk to every other hellion, and the same for the bivvies, but maybe they have as hard a time understanding each other as we do understanding them.

  “You ever consider being a militia captain?” Ubstia asks. “I could get you into training.”

  “I just want to go home.”

  Camareen is there, waiting in the Square when our truck pulls up. She’s the only one around—the other squads have all been dismissed, but she waited for me. I guess her squad never even went out. I’m real glad about that, so glad I don’t even know what to say. While she kisses me, I write my next grievance in my head. It’s about not being kissed enough.

  I even forget about my satchel, sitting there in the arsenal locker, until she throws it over my shoulder. She went and got it as soon as they dismissed her squad, and the milk and bread are all still there.

  NINE

  VINNEAS

  Being an eminently important person does have its benefits. You get your own private quarters overlooking the Forum, and you’re allowed to skip to the front of just about any line you come across. Cadets are expected to salute you, which combined with line-cutting privileges can result in a few sparkling moments of comedy. There’s also a special washroom—two, I’ve heard, though I haven’t quite located the second one. Oh, and the food. The food can be rather spectacular at times.

  Curator Ellmore made a special show of laying out all the wonderful perquisites I could expect, now that I’d been named Procurator of the Academy. It took all of thirty-seven seconds. Explanation of my new duties occupied the next four and a half hours. The Curator’s point—aptly conveyed by the wry smile she wore while describing some of the more excruciating tasks I could look forward to enjoying—was that the privileges of power should never outweigh the obligations; if they do, there’s something wrong. Sure, I’d have access to as many as two glossy and mostly private toilets, but I would also be responsible for every cadet at the Schools of Grammar and Rhetoric, as if they were my own personal Legion. It’s hard to enjoy even the most regal toilet when you’re facing the migraine-inducing hassles cadets produce on a daily basis. It’s the same with all my other lovely perks: They just aren’t worth it. Take the food. Occasionally, I am presented with some of the most exquisite delicacies Ninth City has to offer, and never do such remarkable meals in any way make up for the company of those with whom I’m forced to share them.

  This evening’s cuisine is beef and a kind of shellfish with potatoes and greens, each fresh and individually plated—quite a luxury, given that Academy food is prepared in batches of several hundred servings and without much attention to flavor, presentation, or the distinctions in temperature between, say, soup and ice cream. I picture Kizabel and Imway eating together off their wooden trays, talking with their mouths full and having a wonderful time, then I revise the image, because Imway is on active duty now and would be eating with his escadrille, and Kizabel is likely asleep in her lab, snoring into a bowl of instant curry or noodles. Frankly, I’d rather be either place than here.

  One of my duties as Procurator is to act as Curator Ellmore’s attaché, which means dining a few times weekly with Command, Ninth City’s ruling body, of which the Curator is a part. She’s sitting at the head of the room, next to Princept Azemon, the most powerful person in Ninth City, and seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself.

  Our venue for tonight’s mess is a particularly grand function room at the Hall of the Principate. The ornate flourishes—the fluted columns, the arched ceilings, the densely textured patterns of stone—hearken back to some of the earlier, more exuberant demonstrations of irrational mechanics, before we settled, unimaginatively, on a plain, no-frills style deemed more appropriate for a time of war. No doubt my preference for places like this over Ninth City’s more austere outer districts is a symptom of being a soft-bellied academic, as any one of my dinner companions would doubtless be glad to inform me.

  I have been seated at a long table of lackeys and petty officers, all of them eagerly talking over the recent battle, playing up their part in our stunning victory. I should be boasting and bragging along with them, I know—part of being Procurator is preparing for command, and in a few years these young men and women will be my colleagues. We’ll have to trust one another in combat, each of us staking our lives on the others’ talent and ability, and it’s a lot easier to take orders from someone you’ve gotten to know over a steak, I’ve heard. This is my future, the life I’ve been preparing for as long as I can remember, the prize for outlasting the cutthroat competition of the Academy’s executive track, for being anointed a future leader of the Legion. I’ll have a good deal of ambitious posturing in my future to go with my juicy tenderloins and shiny toilets.

  But for some reason, I can’t bring myself to join the froth of self-congratulation over the ass-kicking we gave Romeo during our most recent encounter. Part of the reason is that I’m not convinced we kicked said ass quite as much as we think. That, and I’m distracted by the man sitting beside me.

  He’s about twice the age of anyone else at the table, and I haven’t seen him at mess before, which means he’s probably visiting from another city or else the Front. If that’s true, however, he ought to be sitting up with Curator Ellmore, not down here. What really catches my attention, though, is his food. He’s forgone tonight’s fresh fare in favor of what appears to be pickled fish with sour cream, complemented by circles of brown bread covered—“smeared” is probably the better word—in some gooey white substance the consistency of glue. The effect, especially as he spa
ckles the stuff on, is unsettling to say the least.

  So overcome am I with mingled horror and fascination that I don’t see Imperator Feeroy coming my way. My first clue that anything might be amiss is the abrupt cessation of all conversation around me. When I look for the source of this unexpected silence, I see the Imperator standing over me, wearing what passes for a smile on his long, thin face. Really, it more resembles the sort of grimace people make in especially cold weather: thin lips, mostly teeth.

  “Procurator Vinneas,” Imperator Feeroy says, his voice surprisingly basso for such a reedy man. “I’m pleased you were able to attend tonight’s mess.”

  “Thank you, sir. It’s an honor to be here.”

  “I wanted to compliment you on your contribution to yesterday’s discussion. You have an insightful mind, and your comments were quite helpful in our deliberations.”

  “I’m pleased to have been of use.”

  “Of use indeed.” The Imperator’s cold-weather grin tightens. “It is encouraging to know we have someone like you in our ranks. You are an impressive young man, and will doubtless make a fine officer once you graduate to active duty. Perhaps sooner than you imagine.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Imperator Feeroy offers me a stiff nod and departs to take his seat with Curator Ellmore and the rest of Command. The Imperator is one of the Legion’s highest officers, second in Ninth City only to the Dux. To have received such praise from him, and publicly, is a major achievement. My tablemates, who have been watching me sidelong with alternating jealousy and awe, return to their chatter, now inflating their part in the other day’s action until minor contributions have become essential elements of our victory.