Savage City

by Sophia McDougall

  ‘I can’t go to a hospital – not that one, anyway,’ said Varius raggedly, ‘not after that thing on the longvision.’

  ‘No one recognised you – either of us. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘There were cameras there. If we go back someone might remember.’

  He and Una were still camping out in the meagre spare space above and around the printing shop. They would have been back on the Ananke and heading along the coast towards Noriko by now, if not for his injuries. There was no room and no time for him to be ill.

  But Delir was used to acquiring black market medicine. He began a hasty round of calls and within hours he came up with a packet of pills. And these worked fast: Varius was markedly better the following morning, and the red seams across his back finally began to fade.

  After another day he was convinced he was well enough to return to the Ananke. The others tried to talk him out of it, but Varius insisted. Tamiathis felt as dirty and stifling to him now as that hospital, and he was impatient to be out of it. At last Delir drove Varius and Una along the spit of land separating the lagoons from the open sea and they walked to the beach where the Ananke was hidden.

  There was scarcely a breath of wind, but the salt spray cooled the air as they sailed west, rounding the curve of the delta. At first the clean, blue space was as welcome as Varius had expected, but to his annoyance he found he’d recovered less of his strength than he’d thought, and though steering alongside this unchanging stretch of beach was simple enough, still his head began to ache after a couple of hours and he had to give up the controls to Una much sooner than he expected. Even then, with little to do except keep things tidy and check the radio from time to time, he was conscious of the continual effort of adjusting his balance to the movement of the waves. He sat down and started trying to make a list of things they needed to do, but then without noticing himself do it, he laid down the pen and let his head rest against the window, and soon he was asleep on the padded seats inside the cockpit.

  Una glanced at him with a small pang of worry. She turned the engine to neutral and came closer, wondering if it had been a mistake for him to leave the town, trying to search for signs of fever without touching him.

  But he was simply deeply asleep, and the wounds must be healing well if he could lie so easily on his back. Relieved, Una sat down on the bench opposite and marvelled, with a rush of affection for him, that he could sleep like that, his body so straight and composed and yet unguarded, open. He had not even turned his head, or raised a hand to hide himself from the daylight – almost like a corpse laid out on a bier, although she flinched away from that thought.

  He looked younger when he was asleep, and more trusting, the curve of his eyelids clear and unbroken; the anxious lines on his forehead softened to nothing. She wondered if it was possible he could ever look so peaceful when he was awake, and hoped for him that it was. But she decided that even if it was not, the usual quiet tension that he carried had its own grace too.

  His hands, she thought, were beautiful: the bones of each long wrist fine-planed under sandalwood-brown skin, like the neck of a musical instrument – a viol, or a sitar. The fingers, too, were long, narrow and square-cut, the fingertips slightly flared and tilted. His right hand lay open beside him, she wanted to run her own fingers over it, she wanted to lift it and carry it to her lips—

  A small start ran through her. Swiftly, carefully, she cut the thought off there and discarded it. She would not allow herself to notice it, even to be shocked. She looked away from him.

  But it was not so easy to expunge the faint trembling in her body, the rawness in her throat and behind her eyes. She stalked out onto the deck and stared at the sea until it faded.

  Then she lowered the anchor and began rather noisily preparing lunch, and Varius stirred and looked up at her. He gave her a drowsy smile, and Una blinked stupidly as if a shaft of light reflecting off a windowpane had flashed across her eyes. He said, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why?’ said Una, her voice involuntarily brusque.

  ‘Falling asleep in the middle of the day.’

  ‘You’re tired,’ said Una, grimly. ‘We’re all tired.’

  *

  The Battle of Yokusawa scarcely happened. Roman volucers had been bombing and strafing Nionian positions in the hills above the little oasis town for two days, but when the first Roman attack units approached, they met only a few ragged remnants of the heavy resistance they had expected, and they were already retreating. Sulien’s cohort never even fired their guns.

  They roamed abandoned artillery positions in the scrubby hills, and later wandered down into the town they had expected to have to fight so hard for. The quiet had a flat, stale quality; it felt many days old, even before they saw or smelled the unfinished meals still lying rotting on tables. The townspeople must have hurriedly bundled what they could into cars or wagons; cupboards stood open and empty in shops and kitchens. But nothing had been boarded up; many of the buildings were not even locked. The soldiers moved lightly at first, afraid of grenades on tripwires or mines, but there was nothing. Even the hundreds of Roman soldiers exploring the streets didn’t seem enough to disturb the silence that had floated out of the desert and claimed the place, any more than shaking a corpse was enough to bring it to life. A gaunt dog limped across the street and flopped down in the shade, too weak and tired to be interested in the swarming strangers. A very young soldier crouched and patted it.

  ‘Well, look at us, all still alive,’ said Dorion, opening a cupboard in a kitchen with the mild hope of finding something alcoholic. ‘I vote we do the rest of the war like this.’

  ‘This is weird,’ said Sulien, looking at the veil of sand that had already blown in over the floors. ‘It’s just like Shiomura.’

  He had been surprised to find the roads out of Aregaya just as empty and undefended as Gracilis had said they would be, and they had seen no one at the little village on the edge of the salt flats either. But this desertion was larger, stranger. It made his skin itch with distrust.

  ‘You can’t blame them if they don’t want to do another Aregaya,’ replied Dorion. ‘I don’t either.’

  Sulien grimaced and went outside, and he spent half an hour looking for Gracilis.

  He found him at the town’s small fire station, watching as some of the men of his century filled up a water carrier vehicle from the pump.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘what is this?’ Confusion and unease made it come out blunter than he’d meant.

  Gracilis turned, eyebrows just perceptibly raised. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, where are the Nionians? Why didn’t they try to hold us back?’

  ‘We’re getting reports that they’re regrouping about twenty miles to the northeast,’ said Gracilis. ‘Most likely the Sixth Arcansan and some of the Novian Ironclad will swing round and try and hit their flank. We’ll be advancing after them in the morning.’ He smiled unhappily. The flesh beneath his eyes was sagging, greyish. Sulien wondered if he ever slept. ‘I’m sure we will see them sooner than we’d like.’

  ‘But why are they retreating?’ persisted Sulien. ‘They were up in the mountains – we’re coming in across the plain – even if they’re outnumbered, they should have been able to cut strips off us.’

  ‘It could be they’ve decided to give up on Mohavia for now – pull their troops out to the north or west. Thule will matter more in the long run, even more than the capital here.’

  Sulien managed not to sigh in frustration. ‘But sir, what if it’s not that? Are we sure they’re not . . . leading us somewhere?’

  Gracilis did sigh. ‘Look,’ he said, meeting Sulien’s eyes at last, ‘is that a possible interpretation of events? Yes, it is, and yes, it’s occurred to me too. So what do you want me to do? Tell the Primus Pilus? I already have. But we’re one cohort, and there are thousands of us down here on the ground, every one of us with our own ideas about what’s going on. Our orders are clear: we are to keep chasing the Nionians.
If it is a trap, well, by the time anyone listens to us, it’ll be too late.’ He sighed again. ‘You might as well accept that.’

  Sulien opened his mouth, and realised he had no way to argue. He nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The covered bulk of the Onager had been pulled into the fire station, to hide it from the air. Sulien felt that deep shudder of aversion again. Every time he glimpsed it, or thought of it, little tendrils of panic started to creep through him. He found himself constantly daydreaming of good reasons to get his men away from the thing. If it worked, if they were going to use it, then he wanted to be elsewhere.

  There were a few brief skirmishes the following day, and after that, the Nionians melted away in the desert sun like morning mist.

  The heat was crushing. The red hills shimmered and crackled with it. The Roman army advanced on, into silence.

  They anchored the Ananke in a narrow cove between steep ramparts of white scree. Una and Varius followed the twist of the valley back from the sea, looking for a way up.

  ‘Let me see the map again,’ said Varius. ‘I’m not sure this is the right place.’

  ‘It is,’ said Una, and stopped, pointing up towards nothing Varius could see. She was smiling. ‘There’s Noriko.’

  A young woman wearing sandals and loose trousers rolled up to the knee, her dark hair caught back in a rough ponytail, mounted the ridge. She saw them and came running down across the dunes, beaming.

  She skidded recklessly over the last few feet of gravel and caught Una’s hands. ‘If I could have known when I saw you last! Or even a month ago! That we would both be free!’ she cried. ‘Oh, I am so happy to see you.’

  Una laughed with her, though for a moment the laughter seemed to hitch its way over sobs as they both remembered, but then it steadied again.

  Noriko turned to Varius, grinned, and dipped her head forward in a cheerful bow. ‘Diodorus Cleomenes asked me to tell you he hopes you are doing nothing particularly stupid.’

  ‘I don’t know why he always thinks I’m the one who does stupid things,’ Varius complained mildly. He was still marvelling at how different she was. Unprotected by screens and parasols, Noriko had, for the first time in her life, a pink daubing of sunburn across her nose and cheekbones, and there were even streaks of dark auburn scorched into her hair. ‘Your Highness – I would hardly have recognised you.’

  Noriko’s face dropped, settled into a look of dignified resignation. ‘I am very changed,’ she agreed gravely.

  ‘But not for the worse— I mean, I’m sorry—’ began Varius, but by now they had reached the cliff top and were heading towards a thin, sandy road where a dusty truck was waiting.

  ‘We will drive you to the house,’ Noriko said proudly.

  Another woman with dark, close-cropped hair was standing beside the vehicle. ‘We’ve both been learning,’ she said diffidently. ‘And it’s all flat from here.’

  ‘This is Maralah,’ said Noriko, ‘and she has come all this way to join you. She is very eager, very brave.’

  Maralah nodded with restrained vehemence, staring at them hungrily. ‘I’ll do anything,’ she said.

  A little warily, Varius and Una climbed into the truck, and Noriko jolted them awkwardly along the road. They could see an aqueduct snaking across the landscape ahead, sharp and white against the sky in the hard light, leading off towards the thick white towers of steam from a desalination plant on the horizon.

  ‘Is it safe for you to be out here?’ asked Varius.

  ‘We don’t go into the town, or out on the fishing boat – only Maralah can,’ said Noriko, ‘but driving around a little here where it is so empty, yes – we think so.’

  Driving, Noriko considered, was really much easier than she had once imagined. She pushed along cautiously, very careful not to go too fast. She caught her reflection in one of the mirrors above the windscreen and saw that she was frowning studiously against the bright glare. She forced her forehead smooth at once, to avoid wrinkles.

  She was unsurprised Varius thought her almost unrecognisable. She was not wholly reconciled to her new appearance. She often thought of Makaria, also an Emperor’s daughter, and more weatherbeaten and wild-haired than Noriko was even now, but still, part of her continued to lament that she would never truly look like a Nionian princess again, that her life would always be marked by what had happened. And yet she liked to look at herself, liked to notice the swishing shadow of her tangled hair as she ran across the sand. Sometimes the idea that the court at home would be shocked at the sight of her was perversely satisfying. Even when she was morosely convinced she looked like a peasant, she no longer feared being laughed at, or pitied. She had struggled her way out and brought Tomoe and Sakura with her and she had proof. It was like having a scar.

  Evadne would not be home yet; she worked across the bay at the desalination plant. Her little house was a square, stark white block on the cliff top, its shabbiness bleached away in the downpour of sunlight. There was a garden beside it planted with onions and melons, and a sapling date palm. Tomoe was weeding while Sakura sat in the shade of the house, a radio on the step beside her. Noriko glanced at the garden with pride, because they had worked on it every day for the past week and in even that short time they had made it larger and better. There were still limits to where they could safely go and what they could do, but they had been able to do that, and Evadne might make a little extra money selling some of the produce next year, if she was still there.

  Noriko’s smile faded a little, as she considered everything that might prevent that. Every morning and evening Evadne crossed the bay in a little boat, part of the secret navy, whose battered flagship Una and Varius had just sailed into the cove.

  ‘Evadne says you’re almost ready – you almost have enough people,’ whispered Maralah to Una and Varius.

  ‘More than I hoped for,’ said Una. ‘We still have to find out if it’s enough.’

  They could scarcely all fit into the little house, so they gathered in the shade outside with Sakura, listening to the radio.

  ‘The warships responsible for the recent attacks on the Eternal City of Rome have been sunk in the Mediterranean, the Department of Information revealed today,’ said a stern male voice. ‘A spokesman for the Emperor praised the resilience of the citizens of Rome and urged them to remain steadfast. We will not be cowed . . .’

  The mood of cheerful reunion evaporated. Una watched Varius, who was leaning against the whitewashed wall, his face set in that look of neutral attention that she knew was just as likely to indicate dread as real calm. Sometimes she could feel them both thinking the same things, even though she tried not to.

  There had been rumours for weeks that Nionian ships had finally broken in the through the Strait of Gaditanum, that hovercraft were skimming north across the Petraean Peninsula, that a submarine had made it through the Pharaonic Canal. They never trusted the news until someone they knew confirmed it, but it was probably true that the ships had been destroyed – they wouldn’t last long in the Mediterranean, even now. The strikes could not have been that heavy, not compared with what Alexandria had endured, but bombs were finally falling on Rome. Varius’ parents were there, he hadn’t seen or spoken to them in more than a year.

  ‘Has anyone heard,’ asked Varius, ‘which areas of Rome . . .?’

  Tomoe looked up. ‘They say Janiculum, Vatican, Aventine.’

  Varius sighed.

  ‘We can call Cleomenes,’ Una murmured to him. ‘He’ll be able to find out about your family.’

  ‘If he’s alive himself,’ said Varius flatly.

  They could not call him yet; they were waiting for Delir to call with instructions from the Nionians, or for contact from the Nionian agents themselves.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Noriko in a low, reluctant voice, ‘if the reason this is happening now . . . If, as long as my brother knew I was in Rome . . .’

  She was guiltily hoping someone would contradict the idea, but Una only gave her a bleak lo
ok and said, ‘We need to see him.’

  Evadne arrived and distracted them from the longdictor and the radio, lifting the despondent atmosphere. She had been a housekeeper to a wealthy family in Sabratha, freed as she reached the end of her childbearing years, with a fairly generous gift of money, but her four children were still slaves. One girl was still serving the same family; she didn’t know where the others were.

  Nevertheless she was firmly, purposefully cheerful. ‘I saw your yacht in the cove,’ she said to Una and Varius. ‘Almost time now.’

  She began cooking, with Noriko helping, her eyes streaming as she clumsily, doggedly, chopped an onion. Evadne opened a drawer and twitched aside a cloth to show a gun lying among the spoons. ‘I have been teaching Maralah this too.’

  Maralah nodded fiercely again. ‘I know there might not be much time left,’ she said, ‘but I will be ready, I promise.’

  ‘I think you’re ready,’ said Una, carefully. ‘You matter much more than the gun.’

  Maralah did not smile, she never did, but her eyes widened a little and a gratified quiver ran over her face.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ said Evadne, covering the gun again and patting Maralah’s arm. She grinned at Varius. ‘Look at this place: six women and just you! I should have brought Thraso and Elius, but we would all be sitting in each other’s laps. How outnumbered you must feel.’

  ‘It’s tough,’ agreed Varius, smiling.

  They were crammed in wherever they could find space to sit down, eating the spicy vegetable stew, when at last the longdictor sounded. Varius was closest, and snatched up the circlet. ‘Is this a bad time to call?’ inquired a tense, faintly accented voice.

  They’d suggested the code and countersign to Zhu Li. ‘Not bad, just late,’ Varius replied.

  ‘Let me speak to the Princess at once,’ demanded the voice fiercely.

  ‘We haven’t kidnapped her,’ said Varius, a little irritated.

  He handed the longdictor to Noriko, who hastily finished her mouthful before answering in Nionian.