The City in the Middle of the Night

by Anders, Charlie Jane

  “Infrastructure chits,” Sophie said. “The Illyrian Parlour is boarded up. No idea what happened to Hernan, and Jeremy. My father and my brother Thom wouldn’t accept me even before all this. So I don’t know where we can go.” She touched the star-shaped bracelet on her wrist.

  Mouth pondered. “I know someone. One of my least favorite people in the world.”

  * * *

  The streets were too crowded for ghosts, even when they stuck to all the side lanes. They passed near the Gymnasium, where Sophie had been a student. The place where they’d probably bring a freak of nature to their laboratories for dissection. She pulled her rough wool cloak tighter, hunched over, and cast sharp glances in every direction.

  They passed a pile of rubble on the light side of town where Mouth was pretty sure she’d seen a large brick building last time, with some of those fancy high-tech decorations. Didn’t look like a controlled demolition, and they built these things to last. Mouth stopped and stared, but Sophie didn’t seem interested. Until they passed another pile, this time of whitestone and iron girders, and another. “What kind of weapon—” Mouth said.

  Sophie shook her head. “Not a weapon. Weather.” She kept walking.

  Mouth kept getting lost in this fake grid, and felt immobilized by lightsickness. But at last they came to the roofing plant, and the wire cage around George the Bank’s office.

  “Mouth! Never thought I’d see your ugly face again.” George got out of his chair and opened some dark water. “How did you make it back here? And who’s that hiding behind you?”

  “This is Sophie,” Mouth gestured. “A lot has happened. So, uh, I was hoping for some scratch. We left a lot of valuable gear with you when we had to leave town last time. Now I’m back for a while, and I want to get set up.” Speaking Xiosphanti again felt like the return of an old toothache. She had to bite her tongue to get the right verb constructions for George (manager) and herself (barbarian).

  “Well, I almost feel like you owe me money, rather than the other way around,” George said. “You left me in a raw bitch of a situation when you skipped town. They were arresting anyone who might have shaken hands with you vagrants. But also, you’re trying to call in a favor that someone already used up. Your friend Alyssa made the exact same argument, and I gave her all that I could spare.”

  “Alyssa came here? How long ago?”

  You might as well have stuffed Mouth into a cannon and shot her over the city.

  “I think it was four shutter-cycles ago.” George shrugged. “Eight Honesty after Pink.”

  “I thought she was dead. I can’t believe she survived that fiasco.”

  “She said the same thing about you. Like you’d gone into the night to die.”

  “We all went into the night to die. Some of us were better at it than others.”

  “Can’t tell you where she is now. Don’t know if you saw the rubble, but we had a cyclone. It swooped down, wrecked a couple city blocks, and then dispersed.” George sighed, even though this devastation was probably good for the roofing business. “And meanwhile, things in Xiosphant have gotten somewhat complicated, politically.”

  “Have we ever had a conversation where you didn’t say that?”

  George took another sip of dark water, and seemed to be debating whether it was worth throwing away some money just to get Mouth out of his office.

  “Here.” He handed Mouth a wad of food dollars, infrastructure chits, and a few other types of cash. Mouth also found a big hat and a Xiosphanti poncho that would cover her scarred head and strange clothes—maybe the exact same items that Mouth had worn before. And Sophie picked up a lacy fringe to pin around her ankles.

  “Consider this a retainer,” George said. “I might have a job for you pretty soon, so check back.”

  Mouth started to thank him, but then saw the face at the center of one of the food dollars. Not the best likeness, but they’d captured the eyes pretty well. Hold the dollar one way, she seemed to gaze at Mouth like she believed that they would transform this town together. Look at the money from a higher angle, and she looked furious at Mouth’s betrayal. You could follow the entire course of their relationship, just by moving a dollar around.

  Bianca.

  “Our new vice regent,” George said. “I told you: complicated. Whole new government.”

  Mouth showed the money to Sophie, who swayed like she might faint, or drop to her knees. Cloak moving up in the back, just a little. She stared into those eyes, and seemed to have a whole different dialogue with them than Mouth. Then Sophie looked up and saw George studying her too, trying to guess what this was about. She straightened up and cleansed all emotion from her face.

  “I have to go see her,” Sophie said.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet.” Mouth gestured at George. “Like the man said, it’s complicated.”

  “It’s Bianca.”

  “Let’s just take this one step at a time. If I can find Alyssa, she can give us the—”

  George looked out his window and cursed. “Hide. Hide now!” He gestured for Mouth and Sophie to get behind the row of filing cabinets, with the info crystals where Mouth had first learned about the Palace vault, with the Invention.

  “So good to see you and your friends,” George was saying to a visitor. “Want some dark water?”

  “George, this is not a social call, and I don’t appreciate seeing you drink during business time. The work is behind schedule.” It was a man’s voice, with a slight Argelan accent. Mouth took a moment to identify the speaker, whom she hadn’t heard speaking Xiosphanti before. “We don’t want to have to play rough.”

  “Dash, don’t be like that. Your new Palace roof is going to be beautiful, made of wrought iron. People will wonder if you had it fabbed somehow.” Mouth had never heard George sound so upset, not even when she’d quoted a political slogan by accident. No, not upset. Terrified. George was terror-stricken. Mouth didn’t much care what happened to George, but this still made her nauseous. “I mean. We’re also overbooked, thanks to all the cyclone damage. And we’re doing this job for you guys for free.”

  “You’re not doing it for free, George. You’re doing your patriotic duty. When you say things like that, I feel as though you don’t appreciate the honor we’re giving you.”

  Sophie moved forward, to do something. Confront Dash? Punch him, the way she did Reynold that one time? Strangle him with her tentacles? Mouth got in her way and whispered, “Not now. Not here.” Sophie hunched down again.

  “Of course, we’re honored,” George said. “Such an honor.”

  The next thing Mouth heard was a loud crack, followed by George making a sound like a starving baby.

  “So,” Dash said over George’s wailing. “The way I understand, your facility is just qualified to receive infrastructure chits. Am I right? Great. So the only way you can get other types of money is through private arrangements.” George let out a high gasp. Dash continued: “Y’know, I wonder if somebody should look into that. Make sure it’s all on the level.”

  “If you were going to threaten me with a currency fraud investigation…” George panted. “Why did you have to break my leg?”

  You could hear in Dash’s voice that he was flipping his hands. “I don’t know. Nostalgia, mostly. Or maybe homesickness. Plus, pain drives the message home.” His footsteps moved away, then stopped. “Oh, one more thing. I heard you had a visit from a mutual friend.”

  “She—ahhh. Wanted my help. I didn’t.”

  “Next time you meet an enemy of the state, tell me. Of course, Alyssa’s been handled. We built her a special dungeon under the Palace. So romantic, just like those storybooks I used to love. Okay, see you, George.”

  Alyssa had never seemed so free as the last time Mouth had seen her, and now she was in some ironically “romantic” dungeon. Mouth found herself desperately wishing she was still able to inflict harm.

  Mouth and Sophie waited until they were sure Dash was gone, the
n rushed out and tried to help set George’s broken leg. “Just go,” he hissed. “I’ll be fine. Clean break. Go. Never come back.”

  So they took their money, including the food dollars with the haunting eyes, and left. Now, with Mouth’s big hat and Sophie’s hood, they both looked fully ridiculous.

  “We have to rescue Bianca,” Sophie said when they got out on the street. “It’s obvious they’re holding her prisoner in the Palace. Using her as a figurehead while Dash and his goons run everything.”

  “Keep your voice down.” Words that Mouth never expected to say to Sophie. “I don’t know what’s going on, and neither do you. But now we know where Alyssa is. I learned the hard way, breaking into that Palace is impossible, but I bet anything this new dungeon is a different matter. They probably built it adjacent to the sewers.”

  Sophie stared at Mouth, maybe thinking that Mouth would rescue Alyssa and let Bianca rot, for selfish reasons. There was a nugget of truth to this.

  “Just let me talk to Alyssa first,” Mouth said. “We need more information. Please just hang tight for now.”

  Sophie started to argue, then just shrugged and said, “Okay. Go see your friend. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re not going to try and see Bianca?”

  “No, of course not. Go do what you have to do.”

  So Mouth left Sophie hiding in an air vent on a redbrick tower, and hoped for the best.

  SOPHIE

  Bianca has learned this way of flexing her wrist joint when she listens, and her eyes draw closer as her nose wrinkles. She perches on a wooden chaise with gold leaf, with a crimson gown hanging off one shoulder, and a tiny glass of some fluky green spirit sitting on a side table next to her. Dash is here, talking to her about the delays in finishing the new Palace roof, and she’s giving him an exasperated look.

  “This is important. We need a stronger roof, before the next cyclone comes over the Young Father and just rips everything apart,” she says.

  Seeing Bianca again, my heart gets pulled off-kilter. All of my old feelings rise up out of the past, as though her smile and her voice have the power to bend light, restructure time, make everything new.

  “This is not what I thought I’d be spending my time doing here, in the Clockwork City,” Dash says in Argelan.

  “What did you think you’d be doing, Dash?” Bianca laughs. “Just eating fancy cakes all the time? Doing elaborate dances, and scattering petals everywhere? I’m dying to know.”

  He shakes his head. “I used to find your sarcasm so intoxicating. I actually thought about marrying you, did you know that? I pictured you and me marching through Founders’ Square, wearing the most resplendent silks and lace, and getting the High Magistrate to officiate the biggest wedding this town ever saw.”

  “We executed the High Magistrate, remember? It was a whole occasion.”

  This Palace probably is impossible to sneak into, just as Mouth said—unless you have your own tentacles, with cilia that grip harder than any mechanical clamps. I managed to keep them hidden under my cloak, even as they helped me scale the wall overlooking the quiet rear plaza, adjacent to the market stalls. I could sense the Palace guards moving underneath me, hear their chatter. Any moment, they were going to look up and see me, and I would die. I had to stop and melt into the wall a few times until I felt calm again. But I had no choice. I needed to see her. Now I’m clinging to the ledge outside her window.

  “I’m not the marrying type,” Bianca is saying to Dash. “But we did have fun, didn’t we? We make a good team, and we’re just getting started.”

  Dash comes over to the window to look out over the city, and I scoot out of the way just in time. “This town always sounded so adorable when that fussy old tutor was teaching me Xiosphanti. All the elaborate phrasings, and the way every moment in time seemed to have its own special name. But the real Xiosphant turned out to be just a sad gray husk.”

  I don’t need to see Bianca’s face to know she bristles at that. “You’ll learn to love this town the way I do. And maybe then you’ll understand how to get what you want without shouting and hitting people.”

  “Sure. Maybe.” Dash turns away and heads for the door to Bianca’s gilt-edged chamber. “But for now, I have to go browbeat more tradespeople. I wish we could just throw another party.”

  “We’ll party when we have a reason to celebrate.”

  “That’s a barbaric notion. Parties are only fun if they’re unreasonable. See you later.”

  They kiss for several endless heartbeats, and then Dash walks out, shutting the door behind him.

  I only came here to learn more information, as Mouth suggested, and now I’ve learned quite a bit. So I should leave, quietly as I came, slip away and plan my next move. But she’s so close to me, and I never thought I’d get another chance to speak to her again, and her flowery scent reaches me from all the way across the room. Maybe now that I can communicate in a whole new way, everything can be different between us.

  I’m next to Bianca before she even knows I’m there.

  * * *

  Bianca looks up and lets out a gasp. Her face turns to clay and she coughs, spits, and starts to cry. The liqueur glass falls and lands intact. She gasps for breath, with a hyperactive twist to her mouth and red borders around her eyes. Bianca and I are both stiff, made of brittle wire, until she reaches out and pulls me into a hug. I pull her head onto my shoulder, careful to keep my tendrils away, and she weeps on my neck.

  Neither of us talks for a long time, and I’m flooded with an emotion that I can’t even name. I told myself I was finished with Bianca, but this feeling clamps onto me with sharp teeth, sunk deep.

  Then I break the silence, for once. “I thought you were dead. I thought you died out there in the night, or else when you tried to invade here. But you won. You won. I can’t even imagine.”

  “We were so lucky,” she says between sobs. “I can’t believe you’re alive too. I didn’t want that to be our last conversation. Here you are, back from the dead one more time, but this time I have even more things that I never got to say. I couldn’t believe you just walked away and left us there, lost in the middle of the ice fields.”

  “I asked you to come with me.”

  Bianca doesn’t seem to hear me. “You promised to trust me and stick with me, forever. And then you left me to die in the wilderness. But I didn’t die. We made it home. We won.”

  I mourned Bianca so hard in the midnight city, I forgot how alive she really was. Now I step back and look at her. The multilayered hairstyle, jewelry, and shimmering turquoise powder around her eyelids can’t distract from the radiance of her eyes. She could conquer anything.

  “We came over the side of the Old Mountain, and here was Xiosphant, just wide open.” She pours herself another green drink. “We only had one transport left, remember, and just two dozen soldiers. But this city never saw us coming. I knew they would never expect anyone to invade from the night, and those blockheads assumed that people would only attack the city when their shutters were open, because they’d gotten so used to thinking of their sleep cycle as natural. The Curfew Patrols were pathetic. By the time everyone opened their shutters, we were inside the Palace, and we had captured the prince. We killed the vice regent, and all the Privy Council, everybody, and then we were in charge.”

  She uses the most informal syntax, as if we were cousins by marriage, not vice regent and outlaw. And something inside me, underneath my spread of tendrils, opens up at the sound of Bianca’s voice: like clear water flowing down the side of one of those marble fountains, in just the right amount of partial sunlight, back in Argelo. I almost don’t care that she’s telling me about murdering so many people.

  This is the tallest room I’ve ever been in, with walls a good four or five meters high, and a vibrant painting of the Xiosphanti crest, Gelet and tigers embracing, on the ceiling.

  Her drink scathes her throat, and she coughs, and then smiles at me, so I feel myself flush. “Back at the
Gymnasium, I always wished I could be more like you. You used to talk about how you had clawed your way out of the dark side of town, and meanwhile I was just swept along by other people’s expectations. You were just so real, Sophie, as if you couldn’t help being yourself. Maybe this whole time, I’ve been trying to find the person that I can’t help being.”

  The burnt-orange aroma of her liqueur overcomes my new senses, and I’m overaware of a hum in the room, something grinding against itself. I can’t get rid of the dumb fantasy that I’ve somehow scored one more chance with Bianca, that I can still fix things between us.

  “But so, you won,” I say. “And you were in charge. Right? And you had all these reforms, I remember you talked about them so often, all these reforms you wanted to make.”

  She sighs and covers her face with one hand. “We tried. We really did. But you can’t just change one part of the system without upsetting the rest of it. The farmwheels turn on a strict schedule that synchronizes perfectly with the shutters going up and down, and the water pumps are optimized for the farmwheels, but also for everybody washing at certain times. The sewage is optimized for peak times as well. And so on. You start tinkering, and the whole city falls apart, and then everybody starves.”

  I don’t know what to say. Everything she’s saying about the system, we were taught in school, until we all knew it by heart. But she’s acting as if she just discovered it for the first time.

  “Oh, it’s one thing to read about it.” She laughs and rolls her eyes at my expression. “But I didn’t really get it until I tried to make adjustments. Plus meanwhile, I have just a small number of Argelan fighters left who are loyal to Dash and me. Mostly, I have to rely on the Palace guards, and they’re only behind me so long as I have the prince in a safe place. I’ve been hand-picking my own people, smart Xiosphanti, to take key jobs. But I still have to rely on the old bureaucrats and administrators to implement my decisions, and they fight me every step of the way.”