There were still many who didn’t believe she should have been made Andromède, and Athène knew their doubts would only be heightened if they found out she was pregnant—not because chieftains weren’t allowed to have children, but because the tribe was about to go to war. Pregnant women were known to make unwise decisions, to be easily flustered; they even had a name for it—li taanpet di taanfaan, the storm of child. She needed her people to trust in her strength and single-mindedness, not worry she might flee from battle in order to protect her unborn baby. To that end, she elected to make the trip to the Anchor hidden away in the back of one of the stolen wagons, rather than on horseback. This was something of a heresy with the Wesah, but at least it meant she could rest whenever she needed to, and suffer her morning sickness away from prying eyes. Paz and Flora rode in the back with her—the two Descendant girls both knew she was pregnant, along with a select few elder tribeswomen—while a young missive named Hanson drove the oxen. Their wagon was near the back of the Wesah procession, which stretched for a good mile along the road. The tribe ran into many groups of travelers every day—usually Descendant families fleeing the Anchor, but occasionally Protectorate scouts and even one naasyoon that hadn’t been at the tooroon and so knew nothing of the massacre. Any non-Wesah men were killed, while the women and children were sent on to Edgewise, now the only city in the Descendancy—and probably the world—to be populated exclusively by women and children.
Athène reclined on a pile of cushions taken from various Edgewise homes, feeling almost embarrassingly regal. Flora was reading a book, while Paz gazed out on the black ribbon of road unspooling behind the wagon. The two girls had been somewhat aloof since they’d all left the coast. Athène found it hard to believe that after everything they’d seen, they could be bothered by what she and her sisters had done to the men of Edgewise, yet there was no other explanation for their reserve. She didn’t like it; in the days to come, Wesah lives might very well depend on the girls’ loyalty. There was no room for doubts or divisions.
“We are come to the Anchor soon,” she said, hearing the grammatical error but unsure how to fix it. Now that she didn’t have Gemma to speak with for hours a day, her English was quickly deteriorating. “Already Zeno should to begin her… what is the word? Seep? Seed?”
“Siege,” Paz volunteered, just as Athène had hoped; even at her most taciturn, the girl couldn’t resist showing off her intelligence.
“Yes. Siege. I think this is not good way to make a war, to sit and wait for the enemy to starve.”
Paz’s eyes flashed. “It’s better to take them by surprise in the middle of the night?”
Athène was glad for the show of anger; wounds needed to be exposed to the air if they were ever to heal. “All fighting is about surprise. You try to surprise me. I try to surprise you. Your strength meets my strength. That is right way to make a war.”
Paz snorted. “None of this is right.”
“No,” Athène conceded. “But it is necessary. The ships that come to Edgewise carry things to help Chang win his war. Without those ships, maybe there are no guns at the tooroon. Maybe there are less swords waiting for us at the Anchor. The men we kill in Edgewise seem innocent, but this is trick. This is illusion. No matter how they look, they are…” She shook her head, stymied by language. “I do not know how to say in English.”
“Complicit,” Paz said.
Athène didn’t know this word, yet something seemed to loosen in Paz when she said it, as if they’d reached some kind of understanding. It would have to do for now.
Athène didn’t speak again that night, or the rest of the following day. She wanted to savor this liminal period, to gather her thoughts and prepare for what was to come. She already had a plan in mind, the sort of plan that Fox was known for, as clever as it was dangerous. The thought of dying didn’t frighten her anymore, but to be the chieftain who saw her people wiped off the Earth—such ignominy would surely follow her beyond the grave, beyond the very bounds of time. What if all that awaited them at the Anchor was another massacre? What if she saw herself as Fox but turned out to be Crow?
* * *
By the time the tribe reached the Anchor, Zeno’s siege was already in place. Massive guns, even larger than the one Chang had brought to the tooroon, were set up a few hundred feet from each of the city’s four gates. Though Athène could see no sign of the airplane at present, Zeno had already explained how it would be used to inspire the maximum possible fear and uncertainty in the citizenry: striking at random intervals and in random locations. Zeno’s hope was that morale would eventually weaken to the point that the people of the Anchor would beg Chang to surrender. In this way, Sophia could win the war without ever fighting a single traditional battle.
Which wasn’t to say Zeno was unprepared for traditional battles—many thousands of soldiers, culled from the towns and villages around Sophia, had answered her call, and their canvas tents checkered the hills around the Anchor. Nephra, an older tribeswoman who had once been Athène’s mother’s most trusted companion, took charge of setting up the Wesah encampment while Athène went to speak to Zeno.
The director’s tent was fifty times the size of a normal one, like those used by the circuses and Descendant ministries Athène had seen traveling the Tails. She had to wait while the soldiers standing guard outside announced her. A moment later she pushed her way through a dozen scowling advisers to find Zeno standing over a table on which an impressively detailed model of the Anchor had been constructed. The director wore the same dull gray uniform as always, but her freshly dyed hair was as vibrant as a blown ember.
“Andromède,” she said, her voice betraying the pleasure her face so seldom did. “Welcome. I hear the attack on Edgewise went well.”
“We lost eighty warriors.”
“To cripple the Anchor’s supply line and appropriate four wagons full of supplies. This will feed the siege for weeks, to say nothing of what it cost Chang.”
“So your strategy is not changed? You sit out here until they give up?”
“There is no reason to risk lives unnecessarily.”
Athène bristled, though this was mostly performance; she needed Zeno to feel a little guilty. “Only Wesah lives.”
“Our lives too. We lost Kittyhawk a few days ago, along with our best pilot. And don’t forget, I didn’t force your hand. I suggested that a strike on Edgewise would be strategically valuable, and you agreed to carry it out.”
“Yes. And now I am asking you for something in return. I must go into the city. This plan you have, to starve the people—it is slow and cruel. Many innocents will die. But if I kill Chang, maybe this whole war is over. Do you agree?”
“Agreement is irrelevant,” Zeno said. “The Wesah are not my servants. You can do whatever you want.”
“It is not this simple. I need distraction to get inside the Anchor.”
“Distraction?”
“Yes. Sophian lives. Risked. Necessarily.”
“Ah.” Zeno frowned. “How many?”
“Why not eighty?”
“And what would you have these eighty do?”
“Attack the southern gate, draw the attention of the soldiers. I will go in through the river.”
“The river? How?”
It was one of the secrets Athène’s mother had passed on to her with the title of Andromède. Many decades ago, there had been a period of relative peace between the Wesah and the Descendancy, and the Andromède of that time had been granted access to the tunnels that ran beneath the Anchor, so she could come and go without fear of being harassed at the public gates. Even as relations had soured between the two peoples, the key that opened the door to these tunnels had been passed down from leader to leader; Athène now wore it on a chain around her neck.
“I have my ways,” was all she said.
“When?”
“Tonight. One hour after sundown.”
Zeno smiled to herself. “We could’ve gone by the chimes of Not
re Fille, if the bell tower hadn’t been destroyed. I think I’ll rebuild it to match the one in Sophia, when the city is mine.” She disappeared into this reverie for a moment, then seemed to remember Athène. “You’ll have your distraction, Andromède. Good luck.”
Zeno went back to playing with her model, and Athène returned to her sisters.
* * *
The Tiber River entered the city at the northern edge of the Sixth Quarter, made a slow 180-degree turn, and exited at the southern edge of the Seventh. At the outlet point, a semicircle about thirty feet across had been cut into the bottom of the Anchor wall and latticed with thick steel bars that churned the water just before it cascaded down a twenty-foot drop to the natural riverbed. At the bottom, a narrow stone walkway ran alongside the river for a good half a mile. It dead-ended at a flat steel panel gone rusty with spray from the cataract. In the murky twilight, Athène couldn’t make out any sort of keyhole.
“How do we get in?” Paz asked. She and Flora had opted to accompany Athène; both were eager to return to whatever passed for normal life in the Anchor these days.
“I do not know,” Athène said. “My mother tells me only there is door.”
Flora got down on her belly and plunged her hand into the river, as if there might be an answer below the waterline. Athène tried the stone wall on their right, checking between the granite blocks for some kind of hidden mechanism.
Meanwhile, Paz was running her fingertips along the smooth surface of the metal panel. “Could I see the key?” she said.
Athène took off the necklace. Paz frowned as she examined the key.
“It hasn’t got any teeth,” she said.
“Teeth?”
“That’s how keys work. The ridges line up with tumblers in the lock. But without any teeth, this could never open anything. Unless…” She touched the key to her belt buckle—click. It stuck there, as if with sap.
“What is this?” Athène said.
“A magnet,” Paz replied. She started tapping the key against the metal panel, as if searching for something. There was a resonant ping when she found it: the key adhering to the metal. Paz turned it and the panel swung inward, revealing a glistening tunnel, gaping like the mouth of some hungry, toothless monster. Flora lit the lantern they’d brought and plunged through the doorway, every bit as fearless as her sister.
The walkway turned to the right and then became a kind of switchback, reversing direction every few hundred feet. Everything was wet, water leaking down from the aqueducts above them. Mushrooms craned out from the cracks in the stonework, and here and there a spangle of sunset light arrived by way of a steep-angled shaft in the ceiling.
“Is there any chance you’re going to tell me why you’re doing this?” Paz said suddenly.
She’d stopped walking, so Athène did too. Flora, however, kept moving; the sphere of light floated off into the black. “I already tell you. I am here to kill Chang.”
“How? You won’t get within a hundred feet of him with a weapon.”
“So I use my hands.”
Paz shook her head. “You’re smarter than this. And so am I. What are you hiding?”
“You worry too much,” Athène said with a smile. “Now come. We must reach the end of this tunnel before Zeno sends her soldiers to the gate.”
They walked on in silence. The tunnel turned back toward the river as they drew up level to it again. Here was another half circle cut into the Anchor wall, another lattice, but the passage was blocked on this end by a door made of iron bars, rather than another panel. A section of one of the bars was rubbed smooth; Athène assumed that was where the key was meant to go. Beyond the lattice, the river wound through what she’d been told the Anchorites called a “park,” which apparently was a portion of natural land placed in the middle of a city so people could pretend they weren’t in a city. Above and to the right, silhouettes could be seen moving along a low stone wall that ran about eight feet above and parallel to the river. At the top of a set of stairs leading down to the water, something flared red, like a firefly.
In one smooth motion, Athène ripped the lantern out of Flora’s grip and threw it into the river behind them. Then she put her hands on Flora’s and Paz’s chests and shoved them back against the wall. The firefly—which was actually the tip of a cigarette—came hurtling toward them down the steps. Barely breathing, Athène watched as a Protectorate soldier came to stand just on the other side of the iron bars. He peered into the tunnel.
“Hello?” he called out.
There was a skittering sound from somewhere close by. Athène got her hand over Flora’s mouth just as the rat ran between their legs and out along the walkway. She felt the girl shudder.
“Fuck!” the soldier said, leaping backward. The cigarette flew through the air and was extinguished in the river.
“What is it?” someone out of sight said.
“Fucking rats. Made me lose my cigarette. Roll me another, would ya?”
The soldier climbed back up the stairs. He and his companion must have been stationed here to guard against anyone coming through the tunnel. There was nothing to do but wait and hope Zeno would be as good as her word. Athène watched the river flowing fast out of the city, like a body purging. A strange gray dot grew larger as the water carried it between the bars of the lattice and past them into the tunnel. Athène wondered if she’d nodded off for a moment, because she’d imagined it was a corpse, even though it hadn’t been at all the right shape—one of her fallen sisters floating like a felled tree on its way to the mill, swaddled in dark cloth, arms crossed over her chest. A fan of blond hair around her head, soft as anything…
She came to her senses suddenly: even the most distant gunshot had that sort of incantatory power. She waited to see if it was only coincidence and was gratified to hear another few pops soon after. The soldiers at the top of the stairs were whispering, a brief argument that ended in both of them running off toward the gunfire. Athène pressed the key to the polished spot and turned; like magic, the door opened on its cleverly concealed hinges.
They jogged along the river and then up the narrow stairs, at last arriving at a wide cobblestone street.
“Li boon jheu,” Athène whispered under her breath. Over the years, she’d met a handful of Wesah who’d seen the Descendancy capital—most of them elders in her mother’s naasyoon who’d visited back before relations between the two peoples had soured. She could remember their attempts to describe the Anchor, and how she’d dismissed their awe as vaguely traitorous, refusing to believe the Descendancy could ever create anything truly beautiful.
“One town is like any other,” she would say.
“But it is not a town,” they would insist. “It is a city.”
“What is a city? Just a big town.”
But the difference between this place and the average outerland village wasn’t a question of size, but ambition. The buildings Athène could see were all at least three stories tall, running along both sides of the street as far as the eye could see. Gas lamps spaced out every few hundred feet or so burned brightly, their flames sky blue at the base, making perfect little puddles of light on the cobblestones. A horse-drawn carriage clattered by, and through the window Athène saw a man in a black-and-white suit and a woman in a lacy dress laughing uproariously. The driver was also wearing a fancy suit for some reason, and as he passed, he looked down at her like some kind of minor deity.
“You’ve never been to the Anchor before, have you?” Paz said. Athène shook her head. “It’s something else, isn’t it?”
Athène didn’t recognize the idiom, yet she understood anyway. “Yes. Something else.” Was there a first moment of compunction, at her intention to sweep all this history and craftsmanship away like a pile of dead leaves? No—the heart had to be hardened. She touched the brass crown she wore on her brow, as if to draw strength from it. All creation was but a sculpture made of ash, built by the dead and for the dead. In the eyes of the gods, something wa
s not better than nothing—it was just different.
A ways down the road, a young girl appeared beneath one of the gas lamps and disappeared just as quickly; Flora was already on her way home.
“Guess she’s in a hurry,” Paz said.
“Yes,” Athène replied. “You should go with her.”
But Paz hesitated a moment longer. “I’ve got my suspicions—about what you’re planning, I mean. But I hope I’m wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because I want the Wesah to be better than the rest of us. I want you to be better.”
More gunshots sounded, cries of pain: eighty men.
“There is no better or worse,” Athène said. “We all do what we must.”
“There is no must,” Paz countered, but she smiled when she said it. Flora appeared and disappeared again, even farther away now.
“Say good-bye for me. Flora is a good girl. Like her sister.”
“I will.”
Paz lunged forward; Athène flinched. But it was only an embrace, unexpected but welcome all the same. They held each other for a few moments, then Paz pulled away. She suddenly looked very small and fragile among all those big buildings, all the dangers of the city. “Take care of yourself, Athène,” she said, and walked briskly up the street, brightening and darkening as she passed beneath the lamps.
“You as well,” Athène replied, though Paz was already too far away to hear her.
3. Clover
SOUP BUBBLING MERRILY ON THE stove, sending forth tendril hints of its composition. Rain drumming hypnotically against the windows overlooking the street. The hearth fire, crackling like footfalls on dry leaves. So many cozy, homely sounds: but no words. For the past fifteen minutes, Clive had been perched on a stool by the window, gazing out at the rain. He rocked absently forward and back; the floorboards were uneven, so the legs of the stool didn’t lie flush. Clover kept auditioning possible icebreakers in his head before discarding them as too direct, or too indirect, or too trivial. Time was short; Zeno’s forces would arrive at the Anchor within the next forty-eight hours. They needed to make a plan. But that would require speaking.
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