by Anthology
All of the buildings in front of her were tall and clean, and none more so than the Hall of Clerical Justice. Here, men and women lined up to pay fines, appeal Clerical rulings, request permits, and otherwise prostrate themselves before the whims of the local Clerical Enforcer and his men.
Nasrin handed her papers to the guards standing on the steps. Her forms requesting holiday travel to Kashan were standard enough, and none of the guards seemed to recognize her as Azad Rajavi’s daughter. And why should they? However the dissidents fawned, he was nobody to anyone except her and Leila.
The hawk-nosed guard nearest to her shoved her papers back into her hands and waved her through the doors. Inside, a long row of service windows was lined with orderly queues and punctuated by more guards. The man standing just inside the building checked her papers again and pointed her to the kiosk midway down the long lobby. Nasrin risked a quick look around the place. She knew the face of the man she needed to find.
All of Arak did.
He was sitting, as she’d expected, at a desk at the far end of the hall, surrounded by bulletproof glass and an aura like a mottled bruise. Where he could see his domain and his domain could see him.
She kept her hands visibly in front of her and her head down as she marched to the other side of the lobby. Her pace remained steady and even as she passed the queue that the door guard had told her to join.
The people waiting for their turns at the windows were silent and still, which made it easy to notice when three of the guards turned their heads to examine her.
She caught an edge in the tile and stumbled. Two other guards peeled off to follow.
She was now past all of the windows; there was nothing but twenty yards of open floor between her and the man behind the desk. When the guards sped up some thirty feet behind her, she quickened her pace. She just needed to make it to the desk.
Clerical Enforcer Shirazi looked up at her approach and, to his credit, his eyes didn’t waver from her face, not even as the guards broke into a run.
The click of safety levers. She was close enough to see his chin pucker at her approach. It was still a desperate gamble.
The bulletproof glass loomed in front of her, and she pressed Farhad’s letter to it. Shirazi’s eyes, already moving to the armed men behind her, told her to speak quickly.
She panted into the tiny holes pocking the glass. “Enforcer Shirazi, I have a message tied to the rebel Farhad.”
His eyes darted back to her.
“I am prepared to identify any other intercepted communications for you and ask only that you release my father in return.”
The Enforcer’s frown curdled into a smile. “And what’s to stop me from throwing you into a cell next to your father and cutting the bones from your fingers until you do this for me?”
She swallowed. “Only your sense of mercy. I bring this to you freely, and I make no demands. Only requests.” Her hand, still pressing the letter to the glass, felt heavy.
He reclined in his high-backed chair and waved the guards away. “Relax, Miss Rajavi. I’ve no wish to discourage loyal citizens from their civic obligations, nor dutiful children from honoring their parents.” He stroked one clean-shaven cheek. “You will give me the letter, and you will scan other messages we have intercepted for auras. To thank you for your patriotism, we will release your father to you.”
She ducked her head to show gratefulness and humility, but not fast enough to miss the Enforcer’s victorious smirk.
“In addition,” he said, “we will recognize you and your father during next month’s Republic Day celebration. God willing, we will have made progress thanks to your efforts, and we can showcase our trophies alongside you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Did he want to drive her father to another act of rebellion? “You honor me too much, sir.”
“It is hardly enough, sister. In time, I am certain we can think of more.”
Five hours later, after interrogations and cross-interrogations, Nasrin led her father home. The walk seemed longer than her journey to meet Enforcer Shirazi. Even along the row of government offices, pedestrians stopped to stare. Passing cars slowed to watch their progress. And why not? She’d spoken with the Enforcer in full view of the Hall of Clerical Justice before disappearing into its labyrinth of offices. The news had had hours to circulate.
The only person who wouldn’t look at her was her father. He shuffled along next to her, bird-thin and seemingly anchored to the ground by his gaze. Maybe it was the pain of fresh cigarette burns and an empty stomach, maybe it was shame and horror at what she’d done, but he hadn’t once met her eye.
He would forgive her one day, when scars knit his wounds and covered his sorrow. For now, this was enough.
Nasrin turned the key in the lock and opened the apartment door. Leila’s day of teaching was long since over, but home was empty and dark. Nasrin rushed to her sister’s room while her father lingered behind. The bed was made and the dresser clean. Only her shoulder bag, her coat, and a handful of shirts and pants were missing.
Nasrin found her father in her own room. He knelt, staring at something under her bed. The loose floorboard was gone, and the box with Farhad’s cigarette was missing.
Nasrin gasped. But her father only smiled.
It was the smile of a younger man, defiant and proud.
The Buried Life(Novel excerpt)
by Carrie Patel
Originally published by Angry Robot
Prologue
In a firelit study half a mile underground, Professor Werner Thomas Cahill sweated and reddened under a councilor’s beady stare.
“It’s a wonder,” Cahill said, “bigger than we ever expected.” His hands rested, palms down, on the massive cherry wood desk in front of him, and he licked his lips, searching for words to convey scale. Towering walls crowded around him and disappeared in the darkness above. He felt like a rodent in a viper pit.
The owner of the desk drummed long, slender fingers across it, and Cahill marveled at how clean it was. A councilor of his standing should have a lot more clutter.
Councilor Ruthers leaned forward. “Professor Cahill, you are aware of what this means?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I trust that you’ve been discreet?”
“You’re the first person I’ve told, sir.” Perspiration condensed on the polished wood under his hands.
“Then you know the complications that would arise if this were to surface.” The words came out like the first sigh of snow in the autumn air, unexpected and chilling. Cahill took the councilor’s meaning and shivered.
“Of course, sir.”
Ruthers paused, waving a hand in the air. “That isn’t all I’m talking about.” What frightened Cahill most was not that Ruthers would threaten his life, but that this was, apparently, least among their shared concerns. “This is your life’s work—your dream. It’s the same for an odd three dozen as well.”
“Actually, sir, it’s about twice that if you count—”
“I don’t.”
Cahill swallowed. Working with other people was hard enough. But conniving and backstabbing? This was why he tried to avoid collaborative efforts. And politics.
The chair beneath him whispered as he shifted on the velour upholstery. Councilor Ruthers smiled in what he must have thought was a reassuring manner.
“Werner, don’t worry about this. Your job is research—let me handle the politics. Agreed?”
Cahill nodded. That was all you could do when Councilor Ruthers asked if you agreed.
“Excellent. I want you to begin taking inventory. Prepare a preliminary report for Dr Hask, including an estimation of time and manpower. We’ll start next week.”
“Next week, sir?”
“Phase two.” Councilor Ruthers pulled an inch-thick, bound folder from under his desk and slid it to Cahill. It seemed out of place on the otherwise immaculate surface. Cahill took the folder, feeling slick leather under his thumbs. The co
ver bore one word.
Prometheus.
Chapter 1
The Inspector and the Laundress
The smugglers fled to the surface. Sooner or later, they always did. An underground city only offered so many places to run.
Liesl Malone’s feet pounded a rapid tattoo on the cobblestones, an up-tempo echo of the two sets of footsteps half a block ahead. The smugglers had been faster at the start of the chase, but now they were tiring. And, from the sounds of their clipped grunts and curses, panicking.
Malone’s long breaths filled her with the odors of soot, sweat, and desperation. She hadn’t wanted to move before next month’s clandestine cordite shipment, but the smugglers had recognized her. Someone had tipped them off. If they got away, the contacts she’d spent months grooming wouldn’t just be useless, they’d be dead.
The chase had started in the subterranean labyrinths of the city’s factory districts, where torch smoke choked the tunnels and obscured the murals and carvings left by thief gangs, rowdy youths, and immigrant factions. The factory districts bred criminals the same way sewers bred rats, and she’d spotted the smugglers in a knot around a jewelry fence’s stall. She could just see the whites of their eyes in the flickering torchlight as they squeezed between laborers from the nearby rubber mill. But when a murmur rippled through the crowd about the ghost-pale woman in the black overcoat, the smugglers had noticed her and bolted.
Unfortunately for these two, Malone’s feet were just as sure in the tumbling, jagged passages as theirs were, and her sharp elbows parted crowds as quickly as their girth. The smugglers had drawn their weapons, but she knew they wouldn’t dare fire. Most of the passages in the factory districts were as tight as they were twisted, leaving little open ground for a clear shot. Only the most desperate of fugitives would open fire in the melting pot of gangs and ruffians there. Even the lowest newcomers made allies, and everyone had a long memory.
Above the crowded tunnels and warrens of the underground city, the moonlight and shadows must have promised concealment, and the midnight chill must have tasted like escape. For whatever reason, a fugitive on the last leg of flight almost always made for the surface the way a wounded rabbit crawls to the bushes to die.
And now Malone pursued them through the stone forest of verandas, entrances great and small to the city below. These crumbling shacks listed toward one another, throwing sweeps of ancient brick and concrete into the street. The ones that still stood in this part of the city were especially small, barely big enough for three or four people to stand in. She would not have trusted the rusting chain-winch lifts and staircases within most of them for a seat on Recoletta’s ruling council.
Just ahead, one of the smugglers stumbled and nearly tripped on the cracked cobblestones. Deep trenches from years of carriage and wagon travel gouged the streets in this neighborhood. The air stank with factory smoke, which billowed into the night sky from outlets above the mills and foundries. Malone hoped that a stray wind wouldn’t send the chemical-blackened fumes their way to add to the darkness.
The first smuggler dashed behind a sawtoothed brick wall. His redheaded partner wasn’t as nimble. He smashed into the opposite structure, his pistol clattering into a nest of rubble, before he pivoted and dashed away. She rounded the corner just in time to see him speed ahead. Malone tracked the smugglers’ flickering movements in the moonlight as they wove between half-standing walls.
Reaching a jumble of tumbledown construction that looked more like a ruin than a city block, the smugglers predictably split up. Malone followed the man who had dropped his gun as he peeled off to the right and into a rubble-strewn alley. The smuggler glanced over his shoulder long enough to see her and bent to pull something out of his boot as he loped ahead. She ducked into a scarred crevice between two walls before he could turn again.
She scaled the weathered sandstone building in front of her, digging her hands and boots into jagged pockmarks. She crouched atop it and watched the smuggler five feet below back further into the alley, his eyes scanning for the black-clad inspector. Her polished black boots made nary a sound as she squatted and side-stepped just over the smuggler’s head. He continued to squint into the alley, but when a bank of clouds slid away from the moon, Malone’s shadow appeared at his feet, and he stiffened.
As the smuggler whirled, derringer raised, Malone kicked a foot out and sent a spray of loose sandstone and grit into his face. He clawed at his eyes and fired high, and Malone slid from the veranda in a rain of debris to land behind him. He turned, blinking frantically as her foot sailed toward his outstretched arm and sent his gun spinning to the ground. He grasped at his hip with a shaking hand, drew a knife, and rushed at her.
She retreated to the end of the alley and into the cross-street behind it, hoping that he would notice her revolver and reconsider. He hurled the knife instead. As Malone dodged left, the knife wheeled past her elbow and a bullet whistled by her nose. She saw the other smuggler out of the corner of her eye and heard a click as he thumbed back the hammer on his revolver. A quick release of sweat cooled her scalp. Malone dove back into the alley, knocking the redhead off his feet. She drove her elbow into his stomach and rolled past him, kneeling between him and his fallen derringer as he gasped for air. She pocketed it while he struggled to his feet.
“Back out of the alley. Hands behind your head,” she said, making sure he saw the grinning “O” of her revolver’s muzzle.
He coughed, rising slowly. “He’ll shoot me.”
“So will I.” Malone pointed her gun at his right kneecap.
The smuggler’s face went white. “You can’t do that!”
“I never miss at this distance.”
“But I’m unarmed!”
Malone flicked her revolver at him. “Hands up. Slowly.” He took shuffling steps backwards, his lips working wordlessly and his face flushing in alternating shades of rage and panic. “You two must not be close,” she said.
The smuggler glanced up from his feet. “Anjoli thinks with his gun, that’s all.”
“He’s still armed. What’s that say about you?”
He glared at her. “Says I got other skills.”
“Like knife throwing?”
The smuggler’s nostrils flared and his jaw clenched, but it was the sudden flicker in his eyes that Malone was watching for. She spun, rolling to the side as a muzzle flashed at the other end of the alley. The redheaded smuggler howled behind her. Malone squeezed her trigger twice, and the figure standing thirty yards away collapsed. She turned back to her recent acquaintance on the ground, hunched over his thigh.
“I’m bleeding,” he said, looking up at her.
She tossed him a pair of handcuffs. “Use these.”
The man winced, taking a sharp breath through his teeth. “What are those supposed to do?”
“Keep me from using this,” Malone said, wagging her gun. She turned back into the alley, pointing her revolver into the dimness. At the other end, Anjoli slumped against a bank of fallen masonry, pawing for his fallen pistol with a mangled hand. Blood poured from two stumps on his right hand and onto the gun’s slickened grip. More pooled under his leg, painting the jagged paving stones a shiny black in the moonlight. Anjoli looked up at Malone with dull eyes and slid the blood-wet gun to her feet.
A shadow fell across the alley from the crooked avenue beyond Anjoli. “That was a problem built for two, Inspector Malone.”
She holstered her revolver and patted a derringer snuggled against her thigh. “I’ve got my own pair.”
Inspector Richards stepped over the rubble, circling around to Anjoli. He snapped a white handkerchief out of his pocket and grasped the smuggler’s hand in it, examining the stumps. Anjoli groaned, and Richards left the bloodied rag in his hand. “Pinch it here and hold tight.” Richards straightened and turned back to Malone. “Surgical shot, Malone. Dare I ask the what-ifs?”
“When a contract is eight months old, one less smuggler is the least of our worries. If
prisoner transport doesn’t show up soon, though…”
Richards glanced over his shoulder. “The welcome wagon’s a few blocks back. The driver doesn’t know what to do on the surface roads here, if you can call them that, and never mind the subterranean routes. Plenty of time to get these guys patched up and taken to the station.”
Malone buttoned her long black overcoat against the night air. “You got here fast.”
“You’re easy to find,” Richards said. “I just follow the gunfire. Or the curses. You have an effect on people.” Anjoli moaned again.
Malone leaned against the crumbling wall behind her. “Is that why you always show up after I’ve passed around the cuffs?”
Richards smiled, a glint of white in the moonlight. “Oh, leave it. I know you wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, Recolettans need to know who keeps their city clean.”
She shrugged, looking back down the alley. The hunkered shadow at the other end raised his arms, showing her a pair of glimmering handcuffs.
Richards followed her gaze. “Is that the better half?” Malone nodded. “How’d you know?” he asked.
It was Malone’s turn to grin. “He told me.” The only reason that Anjoli would have come back for his partner was if he knew about their networks and safehouses. Anjoli would never be safe with his partner in the hands of the Municipal Police, which meant that the other man either had to escape with him or die. The redhead’s fear of his partner told Malone that he knew this, too.
A wooden carriage pulled up outside the alley with a clopping of hooves and the groan of wheels. Heavy bars crossed the narrow windows along the sides of the carriage, and the team inside traded muffled orders as they prepared to bind the smugglers’ wounds and load them up. “Since you’ve got it from here, I’ll walk back to the station,” Malone said. “I can finish my report in a few hours.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Richards turned back down the alley as four uniformed officers jogged from the carriage. “The chief has other plans for you,” he said, his voice lowered. She followed, silent. “Break-in at 421 East Eton. One casualty.” Malone met Richards’s gaze, not bothering to ask why her, and why now, after an all-night manhunt.