Mouth sighed and guzzled gin-and-milk. This goddamn local drink tasted like cat butter that had gone bad. To be fair, even fresh cat butter tasted as if it had gone bad. Who exactly was going to trade bauxite for cat butter? Mouth understood enough of that “calendar” to know George had been stringing them along for thirty turns of the shutters.
“I’m working on something.”
“Uh-huh.” Alyssa stared at Mouth. “So you’re scamming these kids? Or what?”
Mouth looked around, like government spies could be hiding behind the ugly placard outside, which commemorated the victims of the great cattle stampede long ago, during the Seventh Age of Luck.
“I need to get inside the Palace.” Mouth gave up on trying to keep a secret from Alyssa. “There’s something in there that I need. They probably don’t even know they have it. It’s worthless to almost anybody, but it’s priceless to me. Remember how I vanished after our meeting with George the Bank? I was scoping out the entrances and exits, and there’s no way I can get inside the Palace on my own. The guards have guards.”
“So, you need a thief. Someone who knows all about breaking into places like that.” Alyssa had always loved stories of palace thieves, the whole time Mouth had known her. Something about the glamour, the disguises, or the inevitable seduction of some handsome count just did it for her. Mouth had seen Alyssa kill three people with a single knife, but she still melted when she listened to one of her old audios of long-dead actors playing out some sexy burglary. Alyssa’s hometown had no palace, no prince, no councilors. All the Argelan kids grew up with dramas and stories about the fine houses here in Xiosphant, until it became a fairytale of gold leaf, mahogany, and velvet, with trumpets and swooning any time anyone entered a room. You only fantasize about princes when you’ve never seen one.
“No thieves,” Mouth just grunted. “They don’t have a lot of thievery in the fancy part of town, after what they did to the last one they caught. Anyway, I don’t have time to recruit a debonair master of disguise, just to steal one item out of a giant vault.”
“What exactly is it?”
Mouth hesitated. “It’s … all that’s left of my culture. The people who raised me.”
“The nomads?” Alyssa perked up, because she’d always wanted to know more about Mouth’s childhood.
Mouth was going to need a lot more gin-and-milk if they were going to talk about this. She had long since turned her upbringing into a handful of cute anecdotes about “the nomads who raised me,” which she’d crafted with great care, to avoid straying into painful territory. But Alyssa was giving her that look, the one she had whenever Mouth had lightsickness and was trying to cover. And maybe Mouth owed Alyssa more than just a rehearsed story.
Just in time, Ray came over and refilled their cups.
“We called ourselves the Citizens,” Mouth said, slowly. “We had a whole other relationship with the road than the Resourceful Couriers have. Like, the road was where we lived, not just where we passed through on our way to someplace else. It sounds stupid when I say it like that. We believed that if we kept walking out there, we could learn to keep company with the day and the night. We always stopped in these small towns along the way, and we became something different each time. One town, we’d be traveling performers, like a theater troupe or some musicians. The next town, we’d be carpenters. Or pest controllers. We were experts at becoming whatever the local people wanted us to be, so we always earned our keep. Until the end, anyway.”
Now Alyssa had the same expression as when she listened to her old-timey actors having a stolen romance—like Mouth’s loss was the loveliest part of a heartbreaking story. Mouth tried not to hold it against her.
“One time,” Mouth said, “we walked farther than ever before, probably farther than anybody ever had. We came to the other side of the world, and we found a canyon. Wide enough to fit five Xiosphants inside. No way to cross, you couldn’t build a bridge wide enough even if you had all the heavy metals in the world. We just stood there and gawped at the other side, through all the mist, and tried to see all the way down to the bottom. And then we turned around and went back the way we came.”
“So how do we steal this thing that’s in the Palace?” Alyssa said.
“You don’t do anything,” Mouth said. “You enjoy your vacation and live off the spoils from our last job, assuming George doesn’t screw us, which I’m putting at fifty-fifty right now.”
“You really think I’m going to let you do this on your own?” Alyssa slapped the table with one fresh-manicured hand. “What kind of bitch do you think I am?”
“The kind of bitch who knows this is none of her business.”
“Shut your filthy hole. You’re my sleepmate. We always have each other’s backs. That doesn’t stop just because we’re off the road.”
Mouth looked at Alyssa. Eyes all bright and wide. Nostrils flared a little, head thrown back to expose a delicate neck and collarbone. “I’m asking you, just this once. Stay out of this. I can already tell it’s going to get ugly.”
Alyssa kept arguing, but eventually she gave up and went to check on the rest of the Couriers, who were still shacked up in the back of a furniture store while George worked out the kinks in their deal.
* * *
Mouth always met her informant in the same place, at a small table made of unvarnished banyan wood, in the spicy-yeasty cellar of an oatmeal restaurant. And always at the same time: three chimes after the red-and-blue smoke. Mouth usually arrived first and then sat alone, as motionless and slumped over as one of those black banyan trees that lined the dry gullies in the Northern Ranges.
The girl arrived late, as usual, limned with a grief that dulled her gaze and put heavy lines on a face that seemed like it was made for laughter. “Hey,” she muttered as she sat opposite Mouth. “Thanks for waiting.”
Bianca had high cheekbones, ears shaped like dewdrops, and the sleek confidence of the Xiosphanti ruling class—you could tell some of her ancestors had ridden in the New Shanghai compartment, though you could never say so in this town.
“I’ve been having one of those times when I see her face everywhere, and I just want to scream,” Bianca said.
“I’ve lost a lot of people, and I’m very familiar with the thing where the past becomes an optical illusion.” Mouth chewed every other word before she spoke it.
“How do you deal with it? How do you keep from just screaming and breaking things every time you see someone that you know is dead?”
Mouth didn’t have a good answer for that. The whole reason she was meeting with Bianca was to appease the dead, but that was none of Bianca’s concern.
Those fools had stuck the Invention in a vault inside the Palace, just two kilometers away from here, and maybe this, at last, was the reason why Mouth had elbowed her way past death so many times. So Mouth tried to come up with something to say to Bianca.
“I don’t know. Dreams intrude into reality all the time, and you can’t waste your energy getting mad at them.”
The banyan trees this table was made of had been grown from Earth seeds, spliced with DNA from local flora, and the result had been oily flesh, hard-pebbled skin, and misdirected growth.
“I’m not pissed off at dreams.” Bianca laughed and shook her head. She had to stop talking because a waiter showed up, and she was ordering swamp vodka for both of them. Mouth realized that Bianca’s Xiosphanti had gotten less formal, with fewer clumsy attempts to pin a social status on Mouth, than the first time they’d talked.
Mouth had made three short visits to the Founders’ Square, near the Palace, to try to scope out entrances and exits, and had found no obvious holes in the security. But she’d noticed something else: a gang of twitchy young people who were clearly doing the same thing she was. She’d eavesdropped enough to figure out this was the Uprising, and they were planning something serious. Some kind of political action inside the Palace, and they knew about some secret passage that led all the way in. Plus they h
ad some way of getting past the guards outside. Since then, Mouth had attended as many political gatherings as she could.
But none of the leaders of the Uprising trusted Mouth. Except for Bianca, who ate up Mouth’s stories of visiting other places where they did everything different—including Argelo, the City that Never Sleeps.
The swamp vodka arrived.
“Your friend gave her life for the Uprising, right? So you’re honoring her memory the best you can.” Mouth forced herself to drink, even though the fumes made her sick to her stomach.
Bianca shook her head. “Sophie wasn’t part of the Uprising. Neither was I, back then. We were just kids, playing at being revolutionaries. We never would have overthrown a coffee table. But then Sophie … she took the blame for a few food dollars that I borrowed.” She choked down some swamp vodka and hissed in her throat. “The ludicrous part is, if they had found that money in my pocket instead of hers, they probably would have let me off with a warning. They took one look at her and decided she ought to die.”
“They were trying to send a message,” Mouth said.
“They were being operated by the machinery of the state. They weren’t trying to do anything, really.”
A single electric torch lit the cellar behind Bianca’s head, casting shadows that gave her two black eyes and a long mouth.
“Most people die for stupid reasons. The most anyone can hope for is to make some noise before that happens.” Mouth forced herself to gulp more swamp vodka, to encourage Bianca to keep drinking.
“I never even got to tell Sophie how much she meant to me,” Bianca said. “I didn’t even realize myself, until she was gone. Nobody else ever saw the side of her that I got to see, when we were alone together. She had these amazing insights. I couldn’t wait to see what she would become. The whole world would have learned to admire her. If only—”
Bianca spat out a little blood from chewing her own tongue, but she still didn’t let the tears out, like she hadn’t earned them.
Mouth didn’t get why Bianca had to join these rebels when she was probably destined for a leadership position inside Xiosphant’s government anyhow, if she just kept her head down, and then she could change things from the inside. But Bianca kept saying she didn’t want to be co-opted, to become part of the problem, and she couldn’t play it safe after what they did to her friend.
“Well, whatever it is you and your friends are going to do sounds tricky,” Mouth whispered. “And maybe you could use my expertise at sneaking sensitive items in and out of secure locations.” Mouth tried to keep her voice casual, like she was offering to help Bianca’s friends out of pure altruism, but she could tell she was running out of time. They were going to make their move soon, and she needed to be there when they did.
Facing the end of the Resourceful Couriers felt like losing your family a second time. Like Mouth would need to recount every one of the tears she’d shed after the Citizens all died. Somehow Mouth had convinced herself that if she could just grab the Invention, and get back one small piece of the Citizens, then she’d be okay with whatever happened after that.
Mouth tried to think of the right thing to say to get past Bianca’s guard. “You won’t find anyone else in this town with as much experience moving high-value items.”
“Why would you even want to help us?” Bianca stared at Mouth and frowned. “I thought you were just passing through town. So why get involved with local politics?”
Mouth considered telling Bianca the truth. But instead, she just scratched both her ears with her knuckles, and said, “I don’t even know when I’m going to be able to leave. Our tunnel, uh, got caved in. And I can’t stand to see the way this town exploits people. Everybody here just works and sleeps, works and sleeps, until they drop dead. I’m just not the sort of person who can see injustice without wanting to tear it down with my own hands.” Mouth paused, to make sure she hadn’t oversold it.
When Mouth looked up, Bianca was studying her, like she wanted to believe that Mouth was for real, and could help. Bianca was getting ready to throw her own life away because of her pointlessly dead friend, and she was just smart enough to be terrified.
SOPHIE
I look over my shoulder all the time when I venture outside. Every soot-stained garret hanging over me, every food cart on the sidewalk, becomes a mob or a police squad, and I go stiff and breathless every time I think I’m about to get caught. Even though nobody’s looking for me, I see threats everywhere. It’s more like the memory of my execution is carved into every weathered sandstone wall and every loose brick of these streets, and I can’t go out without feeling as though the police still have me, and I’m still about to be thrown to my death.
But as I dart my head around, I see only the normal life of the city. Children play shadowseek in the big fenced-in workyard, hiding behind industrial lathing tools and carving machines. The workyard used to be an actual playground, before my time, but they decided the space was needed for more important things. Kids insist on playing there anyway. The pipe-workers are having their shift change because it’s Ninth Chime, and they all meet on this one block of sidewalk, in their muddy coveralls, where the pipe-workers going off shift say the old ritual phrases of consolation to the ones who have to work into curfew. This one old man is hand-churning cake batter, in the exact same storefront where he’s done it since my parents were little. I step on flyers for the Grand Cinema and discarded copies of a cheap magazine full of romance stories, both printed on recycled banyan wood.
As I walk in the direction of night, I imagine what I would say to Bianca if she were here, but I no longer have any idea what she would say back.
Some of the buildings in this neighborhood have survived since the beginning of Xiosphant: you can tell by the perfect blocks of whitestone, quarried by the Mothership or an airborne excavator, plus all the classical detailing. The next oldest buildings, including the Illyrian Parlour, come from right around the time of the Great Insomnia, when half the population of Xiosphant left to found another city across the sea, or a slew of smaller towns. You can tell their age by the smoky quality of the bricks, which were fired in this one type of furnace we don’t know how to make anymore. Next, there’s a mishmash of building styles, including rougher bricks but also hand-lathed stone, hauled from beyond the Northern Ranges, with some crude attempts to copy the older style of decorations. We also had that brief period, between wars, when prospectors kept finding new treasure meteors, and trade with Argelo brought lots of beautiful handcrafted decorations. And then there’s everything from the past eight generations, when we just built as much as possible, as cheap as possible, big blocks of cement like the one I grew up in. You can see the whole history of the city, looking at the buildings in any one neighborhood.
I reach the crack in the wall that I’ve squeezed through so many times now, and remove the skirt around the cuffs of my pants. I hesitate, looking up at the side of the Old Mother and remembering the guns and the taunts, the kicks to the back of my leg. The bruises are long faded, but I still feel them under my skin.
And then I start climbing, because I’m looking forward to seeing my friend.
* * *
I know every crack and promontory on the Old Mother by touch alone, and I’m pretty sure I could scale this rock blindfolded. This climb, which nearly killed me when I did it at gunpoint, has become relaxation, a vessel to empty my mind. I let my body recite the litany of grip and hookstep, while I breathe out all my preoccupations. Even when I lose my footing or miss a ledge with my hands, I know how to recover, and I know to rest if I have a cramp. Except if I look behind me and see the steep drop and the sharp rocks at the bottom, or if I stare ahead and dwell too much on the memory of the first time I did this, then I panic. My breathing gets out of control and my fingers weaken, and those things only increase the fear, and there are guns in my face, and I’m going to fall.
That’s when I have to stop, breathe deep, and remind myself: You’re climbing by cho
ice this time. You’re in control. This is the proof that you’re stronger than the monsters who forced you up this slope before.
When I get to the top, Rose is waiting for me. Her tentacles are cocked in big loops, like she’s been tracking my progress, and she lowers her head and opens her pincer in what I know is a gesture of welcome. Her forelegs are bent so she can crouch close enough for me to embrace her. The milky inlets on the sides of her head, above her pincer, close in slightly, giving her a wistful look. That round crocodile mouth—which always looked ravenous and vicious in all the pictures they showed at school—seems to grin, but also pants a little in the warm air. Her woolly fur shimmers with a touch of iridescence. Rose shrinks away from the light up here, but lets me approach.
“I’m so glad to see you, you have no idea,” I say, still out of breath. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting so long. I guess I’ve become an expert at keeping people waiting, but that shouldn’t include you.”
Rose doesn’t seem to understand a word I’m saying, which is one reason I’m so comfortable talking to her. But she shows signs of picking up on my emotional states, which is more than enough. I decided to call her Rose, after the rose shape of the city she showed me the first time we met.
I open the satchel I’ve been keeping on my back during this whole long climb, and pull out some stuff for her. “It’s not much this time. I wish I could repay you properly. Or at least be a better friend.” I hand over some blackberries, which come from the smallest of the farmwheels and are almost impossible to get, except that one of my clients knows people. And then a few scraps of Xiosphanti tech.
“This tests water quality.” I hold up one gray-and-red box, shaped like a rectangle, with a big loop coming out of one end. “You hold the curved part in the water, and watch for the color on this side. We have a lot of problems with contamination, and I thought maybe you do too.”
The City in the Middle of the Night Page 6