Somewhere in the eaves, a pigeon cooed. Voices could be heard from the street. Clouds flitted across the sky, scattering shadows. The world going about its business, regardless of all their little plans. “So what do you think we should do?” Clover asked.
“We should leave the city. Right now.”
At first blush, it seemed absurd. Over the past year, they’d been to hell and back—literally, in Clover’s case. To simply drop everything and run would be to admit it had all been for nothing. Now that war was finally at hand, Clover felt a sort of responsibility to stay and see how it all played out. But where did that sense of responsibility come from? Except for Flora, who was safe enough with her grandfather, all the people he cared about were right here in this room. If he kept on fighting, what would he even be fighting for?
“It’s hard to imagine just up and going,” he said. “But maybe it’s for the best.”
Clive and Paz shared a heavy glance. “When we were in Settle, you told me you wished we could stay there forever,” Paz said. Clive didn’t answer. Clover felt a twinge of jealousy—or maybe it was just a twinge of memory. “We’ve done our part, haven’t we? Don’t we deserve to just be happy? We can go back to Settle. Or better yet, let’s go somewhere new. All of us. Together. We can start over.” Paz placed her hand at the center of the table. “Who’s with me?”
“It was my idea,” Kita mumbled, placing her hand over Paz’s.
“Anywhere’s better than here,” Clover said, adding his hand to the pile. They all looked to Clive.
“I think we’re making a mistake,” he said. “I think we should see this thing through to the end.” A pause. “But if this is what you all want, I won’t argue.” He put his hand on top of Clover’s. It was a bitter note on which to leave things, but there was nothing to be done about that.
“So now that we’ve decided to go,” Clover said, “how in the hell are we gonna do it? Zeno’s still watching all the gates.”
“You think I would’ve suggested leaving if I didn’t know how to do it?” Kita said. She looked to Paz. “Remind me, when does the next patrol come around?”
* * *
Clover had never had much cause to visit the Old Town, which was located just east of Portland Park. While plenty of lowlifes could be found around the dance halls and cheap studios of the Second Quarter, it was Old Town where the Anchor’s more professional criminal element did its business. Here were the brothels and gambling dens, the gang hideouts and adulterers’ hideaways. Clover wouldn’t usually have risked coming here even in good times—he couldn’t imagine how dangerous the place had become now that everyone had so much less to lose.
“And just how exactly do you know these people?” Paz asked Kita, who was leading them along streets so narrow they felt like wrinkles on the skin of the Anchor. A never-ending cat’s cradle of laundry lines blocked out the stars overhead.
“My cousin Louise was this amazing musician, right?” Kita explained. “So she was basically friends with everyone. Folks around here were always hiring her to play their weddings and birthdays and whatnot. I started coming along just for the fun of it, and I guess I made some friends myself.”
“Okay,” Clive said. “But how are they gonna help us get out of the Anchor?”
“What with all the rules around anathema, people have been smuggling things in and out of the city for centuries. And that’s all we’re really looking to do, isn’t it? Smuggle something out? It just happens to be, you know, us.” She stopped in front of a set of black doors. Overhead, a sign advertised THE SILVER BALLS.
“Tell me this isn’t a brothel,” Clover said.
Kita laughed. “If only. It’s a pétanque hall.”
“A what?”
“You’ll see.”
There were no windows inside, and the gaslit air was thick with the smoke from flavored tobacco. The patrons were spread out among the dozen or so rectangular dirt courts built into the floor. The sound of metal balls clanking together was strangely pleasant, almost musical.
“Wait here,” Kita said, slipping away past the waitresses scurrying up and down the aisle that ran between the courts.
“Who is this girl?” Paz said, her admiration palpable.
“Honestly, I’m starting to think I have no idea,” Clover replied.
Kita returned a minute later. “He’s busy right now, but I reserved us a court. We just need to wait for the group that’s playing to finish.”
Clover watched the last few throws without receiving any further insight into the rules of the game. A barmaid brought over a pitcher of ale and four tin cups as soon as they took over the court.
Kita picked up a ball and tossed it to herself. “So you wanna go couple versus couple?”
Over the next half hour, she proceeded to single-handedly trounce Clive and Paz, deftly backspinning the ball in all sorts of crazy ways, overcoming even the utter haplessness of her partner. “We had a court set up behind the workshop,” she said after yet another dominant performance, clearly a little embarrassed. They were midway through their fourth game and second pitcher when the summons came. A woman dressed like a burlesque dancer yet somehow maintaining the air of a professional secretary rapped on their table. “Good evening,” she said. “My name is Tara. I’m here to take you to Mr. Holmes.” The moment they stepped away from the court, another group moved in; Clover heard one of them refer reverently to the girl who’d just “wiped the floor” with her friends.
Tara led them past the bar and through a pair of swinging doors into a chamber where six men sat around a hexagonal felted table, playing some kind of dice game. The walls were covered in black fabric curtains to deaden sound. Tara pulled them apart at some invisible seam and gestured her guests through the opening. On the other side, a short hallway led to a single door painted a garish silver.
“Wait here,” Tara said, and promptly disappeared back through the curtain.
Fifteen minutes passed, silent but for a single desperate cry from the room behind them: a bad roll of the dice.
“Do you think they forgot—” Paz started to say, then had to jump backward as the door suddenly swung inward. Strangely, there was no one on the other side who could’ve opened it.
“Kita Delancey!” said the man sitting at the far end of the expansive office. He was in his sixties, white-haired and clean-shaven, dressed in a natty three-piece suit complete with pocket square and watch chain. His face was long and pointed at the chin, and his heavy-lidded eyes somehow made him look sleepy and menacing at once. He wore a golden die on a chain around his neck, and his fingers were tattooed with a royal flush on each hand—hearts and clubs.
“Hello, Roddy,” Kita said.
“And look who you’ve brought with you. The infamous brothers Hamill and the equally infamous Paz Dedios of Sophia. You three have more lives than a litter of cats, don’t you?”
Clover caught his brother’s questioning glance and shrugged; it would’ve been more surprising if the man hadn’t recognized them, really.
“They’re my friends,” Kita said.
“And nothing’s more important than friendship,” Roddy replied. There were no chairs in front of his desk, which was a behemoth of mahogany and leather, its legs unsettlingly carved to look like a goat’s. Standing there made Clover think of being called up to the front of class in school. “So what can I do for you all?”
“We’re looking to get out of town,” Kita said. “I figured if anybody could make that happen, it would be you.”
“True enough.”
“So… can you?”
“Can I indeed.” Roddy put a fist on his chin and violently cracked his neck—first right, then left. But instead of answering Kita’s question, he turned his attention to Clover. “Mr. Hamill, do you know how I met our friend Kita?”
“She said she used to come around with her cousin, Louise. I guess you met at a concert or something?”
Roddy looked back at Kita, raised an eyebrow. “A co
ncert? Really?”
“What?” she said, suddenly defensive. “The truth would’ve taken too long to explain.”
“What truth?” Clover said.
“The Delanceys and I go way back, back before Louise was even born,” Roddy explained. “A smuggler can’t smuggle much without wagons. Preferably wagons with a secret compartment or two.” Something brushed against Clover’s calf—a black cat, tail curling like the top of a question mark, claiming him with its spoor. “By the way,” Roddy continued, “I was very sorry to hear about Louise. Seems she fell in with the wrong crowd. Easy mistake to make, these days.”
“That’s all very interesting,” Clive said, clearly uncomfortable talking about Louise, “but are you gonna help us or not? Because if you won’t—”
“Clive Hamill, the traitor,” Roddy interrupted. “Shame of the nation. Murderer. Why should I help you evade the righteous hand of justice?” He pronounced the last word as if it were a private joke they all shared, but what he said next was anything but funny. “In fact, why shouldn’t I turn you all in right now? I’m sure Chang would find a way to show his appreciation.”
The black cat leaped up onto the desk and sat back on its haunches, observing them with its nose in the air. Clover had the strange sensation that he was being judged by both animal and master at once. He took a chance, reaching his hand out to let the cat sniff at it. “Are you a gambling man, Mr. Holmes?”
“I’ve been known to make the odd bet,” Roddy conceded.
Clover reached into his pocket and produced a silver shekel. “Heads, you turn us in. Rings, you help us escape.”
“Clover, what are you doing?” Kita said.
“He’s being clever,” Roddy answered. “Your friend here has already worked out that the odds of my deciding to stick my neck out for you are significantly less than fifty percent.” He gestured for the shekel, which Clover handed to him. “Such a beautiful object, a coin. I’m told one side is slightly heavier than the other, because of how they’re minted, but it’s all the same if you don’t know which it is.” He flipped the coin, flashing end over end, and caught it deftly in his other hand. “Well?”
“Rings,” Clover said. Bernstein had told him the same story, as it turned out, along with which side was more likely to come up.
Roddy revealed the coin; Clover had never been so happy to see the annulus.
“I’ll admit I was rooting for you,” Roddy said, pocketing the coin as if they’d just finished a perfectly ordinary transaction. “Truth is, I’ve been planning on leaving the city myself. It’s gotten a little too hot around here for my taste.”
There was a knock at the door; the cat jumped off the desk. “I’m afraid I have another meeting,” Roddy said. “And I prefer that my various business associates don’t meet.” He pressed something under his desk and a door opened up in the wainscoting behind him, revealing the alley behind the building. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you all. Keep a low profile for the next couple of days. I’ll reach out when I’m ready.”
“How will you find us?” Kita said.
“I’ll come to the apartment above the Delancey warehouse,” Roddy said, smiling as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “That is where you’re all living now, isn’t it?”
8. Paz
ALL MORNING, EYEING HIM ACROSS the room like some shy schoolgirl, waiting for Clover and Kita to get bored enough to consider leaving the apartment—then having to wait a little longer, until the next Protectorate patrol went past. Listening to the footsteps descending the stairs. Watching the young couple finally emerge onto the street below the window and disappear around the corner.
They would leap at each other then, furious at having to wait, at having to spend chaste night after chaste night in this torturous apartment without any walls or doors, without a single place to be alone besides the definitively unromantic bathroom. She’d thought she’d lost him, would never touch or hold or kiss him again. And even though they’d found their way back to each other, the memory of that loss charged the space between them, made it crackle and spark. She wanted him every moment of every day, wanted to feel his skin on her skin, his stubbled cheek rasp against her smooth one, his desire for her frightening and careless, transcending even love. The only check on their passion was a sop to biology; she couldn’t even imagine what it would mean to bring a child into a world so uncertain.
(And where now was Athène, who was well on her way to bringing forth a child in spite of that uncertainty? Had she succeeded in her attempt to woo the Grand Marshal? Just as likely she’d never made it to him, or that he’d gunned her down the moment he saw her—an unintentional double murder.)
They would always dress quickly afterward; it would’ve been nice to bask in the afterglow, but neither of them wanted Clover to come back while they were still luminescing.
Still, Paz would regret her hurry on days like today, when Clover and Kita hadn’t returned to the apartment long after she and Clive had finished making love. She could’ve used that extra bit of intimacy and consolation; she wasn’t sleeping well these days, and not just because of thwarted desire. The city felt like a prison cell whose walls were slowly closing in. There had been a kind of doomsday euphoria for a few weeks there, but with the food stores running low and the curfew making it impossible to blow off steam at night, the tenor of Anchor life had changed irrevocably. Paz couldn’t wait to hear from Roddy so they could all get out for good.
But before they left, there was one thing she had to do.
* * *
“Where are you going?” Clive whispered.
It was past midnight. Clover and Kita were breathing evenly in the other cot, innocently arranged back to back. Paz wondered if they were secretly indulging their youthful passion as well, on the rare occasion that she and Clive risked a turn around the neighborhood.
“Just getting some water, love. Go back to sleep.”
He mumbled something and turned over. Paz put on the green woolen overcoat that she’d taken out of Mitchell’s house. It must have been Gemma’s once—still smelled of her, in fact. Paz pulled up the hood as she stepped outside, both to obscure her disciplinary tattoos and protect against the autumnal chill. Dangerous to break curfew, but what wasn’t dangerous these days? At least she knew her way around the city now and could choose from a dozen different routes from here to there. The first portion of the journey went so smoothly that she let her guard drop a few blocks from her destination—and nearly ran headfirst into a Protectorate patrol. Thankfully, she clocked their laughter just in time to duck behind a rubbish bin and let them pass; she was more careful from then on, slipping from shadow to shadow, stopping often to listen for footsteps.
The doors of Ratheman Chapel were still boarded over, though half the planks had been pried loose, put to use for some makeshift construction project elsewhere in the city. The sign out front had been vandalized, DAUGHTER PROTECT US modified to NO ONE WILL PROTECT US. It was possible the Mindful had moved on since the night of the warehouse raid; when Paz knocked on the back door, she only half expected anyone to answer. But after a moment, the door opened to reveal an unfamiliar and strikingly unwelcoming face. The man was perhaps forty-five years old, with lank gray hair and a gold stud in his left ear. His right arm stopped just below the elbow, and the stump was still bandaged—a recent injury.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter. I just need to talk to someone who’s actually from Sophia, or who’s been there recently. I only need a minute.”
“Why do you want to talk to someone from Sophia?”
“Because that’s where I’m from.”
“So what?”
Well, anonymity had been worth a try. She pulled back her hood. “My name is Paz Dedios. I was part of the posse that captured Daniel Hamill. I spent two months being tortured by the Protectorate. So go find me someone from Sophia before I lose my fucking temper.”
The man absorbed th
e abuse impassively, then slammed the door in her face.
“Shit,” Paz said. She’d already turned to leave when the door creaked open again.
“Paz?”
She turned back around, blinked as if her eyes were playing tricks on her. Sheriff Evan Okimoto, erstwhile leader of the Sophian town guard, looked much the same as he had the last time Paz had seen him, the night they’d gunned down Ellen Hamill, Eddie Poplin, and poor little Michael. The only noticeable differences were his lack of beard, mustache, and sheriff’s badge.
“Hey, Mr. Okimoto.”
Paz had lost track of whether the two of them were still on the same side or not. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. All she knew was that seeing him had brought her whole life in Sophia rushing back to her, an overwhelming cascade of guilt and longing and grief. She let him hold her there in the threshold of the chapel.
“Come inside,” he said. “We can talk proper.”
Paz withdrew, wiping away a tear. “I can’t stay. I’ve got people waiting for me.”
“The Hamill boys?” Paz nodded. “They stayed here at the chapel for a couple of weeks. Never recognized me.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Yeah.” He laughed, as if there were anything funny about it. “So did you just come by to say hello?”
Paz shook her head. “I haven’t had any word about my brothers since I left Sophia. I just wanted to make sure they were all okay. I figured someone here might know.”
Something darkened her old friend’s face—the shadow of a cloud scudding across the sun. His smile tightened, calcified; he rubbed his cheeks as if to loosen it up again. “Genny Moses moved into your house not long after you left.”
“You mean the Widow Moses? From Amestown?”
“That’s right. She’s looking after the boys and seeing to the farm.”
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