The Sightless City

by Noah Lemelson

  He found that his gaze was searching around the room. It took him a moment to realize what his subconscious was looking for: Desct’s grin. Marcel had been to dozens of parties such as this, and every time he had felt at the periphery, at odds with the pomp and schmoozing, he had found that grin. The one other person who would poke fun at the whole endeavor, who could share snide asides in some back corner. The one other person who had actually understood what suffering had been spent to create a city where such frivolity could be thrown so freely. They hadn’t always talked much, especially as the years passed, but Desct had always been good for a joke, or at least a smile.

  And now even that was gone.

  “Ah, Marcel!” The familiar voice cut through the din, as Lambert appeared out of the crowd, a young woman in one arm, a thin mustached man led by the other. Marcel didn’t bother to figure out if the woman was new, and Lambert didn’t bother to introduce her, instead turning to the man.

  “This is Mr. Wojik, a fellow Justice Minister. Please, this is Mr. Talwar, one of my fellow soldiers in the Huile Sewer Rats. Unsightly name, I know, but then, aesthetics hold little clout on the battlefield.”

  The man took Marcel’s hand. “A pleasure.”

  “Mr. Wojik recently presided over a fascinating case, what did you call it?” Lambert began. Marcel tried to think of a polite-ish way to show that he wasn’t interested, but his friend was already in the grip of his own words. “Yes, yes the Vidish Lumber Defection Case. You see, we had some smugglers on hire in Videk, transporting wood they had raided from Principate lumber camps. It was all under normal contracts, of course, transport over the Atsols and all that…”

  Marcel nodded along and Lambert spoke with his fingers.

  “But then they sold half their cargo to uh…” Lambert paused.

  “Adaldorf,” Mr. Wojik said.

  “Yes, Adaldorf! Whose mayor had recently signed a treaty of friendship with the Imperial Governor up in Videk. No surprises there, that city’s political whims flick like the leaves in a storm, a sad state of affairs, truly.”

  “Right,” Marcel said, not listening.

  “This was an obvious breach of contract, you see, practically selling the smuggled goods back to the Principate. But, of course, the smugglers, scoundrels to the last, claimed that because Adaldorf had been neutral when their original contract was signed…”

  Marcel maintained his blank nodding, allowing the words to fade into shapeless noise, until he noticed the woman start to laugh, with Mr. Wojik brushing off what must have been a compliment.

  “…13,000 frascs and the ringleader will be facing a two-year sentence if he ever shows his face in Resurgence territory again!” Lambert finished.

  “Impressive,” Marcel said. Then, noticing the stare of Lambert, he realized the onus of the conversation had fallen on himself.

  “So,” Marcel began, facing Wojik, “where are you stationed?”

  “Ordone,” the man said.

  “Really?” Marcel said, a sudden burst of excitement now flowing back through him. “How’s the Corvin Gall case going?”

  “Corvin…?” the man asked, eyebrows tilted.

  Lambert laughed. “My dear apologies, Marcel. A mix-up, I don’t believe I mentioned, that case was shifted last-minute to Quorgon. It’s a whole hubbub you see, just nonsense, bureaucrat stuff. I won’t bore you with the details.”

  Marcel deflated. He opened his mouth to ask another ques-tion when Lambert’s head turned.

  “Oh! I didn’t know Gaius Couture was here. Have you met him, Mr. Wojik? He just wrote a most wonderful book on the Second Schism. Excuse us, Marcel.”

  And the trio was gone, as quick as they had come, disappearing into a ring that surrounded a bald, elderly man kept upright by two metal limbs. Marcel wondered if he should force himself to join them, but knew this, like everything else here, was pointless, empty flattery and vacant nods. Marcel put down his drink. Why had he even bothered to come at all?

  These parties could be as vapid as Alba had declared. They were beneath them, or so she had insisted, but then, everything seemed to be beneath her in those weeks after the battle.

  “You’re just going to waste yourself here,” she had said. Back then the festive mood was constant under the glow of victory, as opposed to the occasional soirees of peacetime. Marcel had lost consciousness clinging to Alba as they ran from the depths of Lazacorp, surrounded by death and gas, but awoke to balloons and music, parades and champagne. It was difficult, in those first weeks, to play the role of hero, to put on a stoic face with the news of his dead squad mates, to pretend that his lost leg was a mere warrior’s scar.

  Alba had made the process even more arduous, giving no time to the crowds, avoiding all speeches and social events. She had dragged him from some mid-afternoon festivity, just a few days after the Phoenix had first made its appearance within City Hall, to take a walk outside the walls of Huile, where the wreckage of their first disastrous battle still marked Huile Field.

  He had followed her with some difficulty, lugging his new metal leg more than walking on it, until she stopped and pointed outward towards the rotting ruinscape.

  “This is war,” she had said. “Remember that, Marcel. Not the parades, not the accolades, or songs, or stories to print in pulps, or whatever. This.”

  Marcel rubbed his arms in the early chill, glancing quickly at the crumbled structures and abandoned tanks, at the craters and sunken trenches. The only things intact on the field were several silent tread-drillers, used intermittently to clear the wreckage. Some skraggers still flew about, searching for forgotten graves.

  “I’ve seen it,” Marcel said. “Is that why you wanted to walk out here? Just to take in the… view?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t know who’s listening in there.”

  “Come on now, don’t be ridiculous. We just fought to free this city.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We fought to free this city. We,” and she gestured now to the entire ruined landscape, “suffered to free it. Not them, Marcel, not the bureaucrats and commanders and damn sangleum salesmen. It’s an easy thing to celebrate for them.”

  “I mean, that’s not…” Marcel pulled up his coat, and leaned back on the old towering wall, balancing his weight on the stiff prosthetic. “That’s not fair. Plenty of people suffered, plenty of people risked their lives and livelihood, not just us. Like that Lazarus guy. If he had been caught sneaking out of the Principate camp—”

  “Then I’m sure he would have made a nice excuse for himself,” Alba said.

  Marcel just shook his head. The woman was being plain unreasonable.

  “Well, if you’ve decided to forget what the Confederacy stands for, let me remind you that whatever you might think of Lazarus, or Durand, or any of them, we have gifted to this city freedom. The freedom to think what they want, to do what they want, to say whatever in Inferno they want.” He kicked dust over a scrap of imperial blue fabric that fluttered beneath him. “Except for Principate propaganda and other such idiocy.”

  “You’ve always thought laws were stone,” Alba said, stepping onto the remains of a cracked concrete foundation, which crumbled slightly from the weight. “Well, they’re not even that, I can tell you. You believe in these ideas, justice, freedom. Inferno, I’d like to as well. But out here, Mar, people will use anything they can on you, any weakness. Don’t let your ideals be a weakness.”

  Marcel stretched out his cogleg. “Demiurge, Alba, I don’t even know what you want. We won.”

  Alba turned back, and stared up and down Huile’s wall. The cracks in it had been filled with mortar in places, the rest held in by unmanned scaffolds. The iron spires of Blackwood Row’s refineries peaked over.

  “They cleared out all the bodies there.” She pointed. “All the imperials. While you were still screaming in an unconscious stupor, I went out to see. Haven’t heard if they ever found Henri’s body, or Rada’s, or if they would e
ven be able to identify them if they did.”

  Marcel shook his head and tried not to think. The faces melting into mush, the screams echoing down the hallways. There was a reason he didn’t add in those details when speaking at official events, they were grim, nauseating, agonizing. If only Alba would stop trying to force them back into his mind, maybe one day they might even fade away, like a bad dream.

  “I told them it was a terrible idea, Roache’s plan,” she said. “I argued. I did my duty in the end, but I argued first. If we weren’t the only intact squad maybe I could have shifted the job but…” she shook her head. “Any victory that required that, it’s not one I’m keen to celebrate.”

  Marcel felt his own scowl. “It almost sounds like you feel bad for the imperials. You heard Lazarus, they’d have done the same. They were even planning on releasing the gas on their own citizens, as punishment.”

  Alba shrugged and crossed her arms. “So Roache claimed.” She glanced out again and sighed. “Maybe I do pity them a little. A leg is one thing, but you haven’t seen what that gas does to a whole body. I don’t mourn them, though. I hate the Principate more than you do, Mar, I can promise you that, but not for some ideals, not for freedom or history. They were the enemy, the fuckers in those uniforms against the fuckers in our own. This, this whole thing,” she gestured towards just about everywhere, “this wasn’t fought for some debate you would find in a philosophy book. They had the red stuff in the ground, and we wanted it back. So, we took it.”

  “I can see why you wanted to talk alone.” Marcel pushed himself off, and started to walk, stumble, back the way they came. “Henri, Rada, Danel, what would they think hearing all this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said simply. “And you don’t either. We will never know.” She paused a moment. “I was hoping you would say no, Mar, that you would stay back in the end, that’s why I gave you the chance.”

  “The chance to be a coward,” Marcel said, turning back. “I love you Alba, but you can’t protect me. I’m a soldier.”

  “You weren’t meant to be a soldier,” Alba said. “You had the ambition and the bravery, Mar, but, Inferno, you were a student. You never even shot anyone.”

  “I did my duty!” Marcel said, louder than he meant to. “Since when was that not what soldiers did? I fought and I suffered and we won.”

  She stared at him, with those two sapphire eyes, a look he couldn’t cleanly read. “We survived,” she said. “I’m happy we did, but what happened wasn’t something to celebrate. We survived, and others didn’t, and now it’s past.”

  “We’re heroes, Alba,” Marcel said, gaze at the ground. “Danel… Henri… Rada… they’re martyrs. These aren’t pleasant jobs, but they are the ones we took.”

  They both held their silence as the frost-tinged wind swept across the ruins. The gust whistled as it flew, it was easy to imagine voices in that sounds, thousands of soft whispers.

  “I’m leaving,” Alba said finally.

  “Yeah,” Marcel said, starting to stagger off. “Then let’s get going, it’s getting cold.”

  “Huile.”

  Marcel turned around.

  “I’m leaving Huile,” Alba said, “Our tour is done, we don’t need this mudlion’s shit pit, and trust me it doesn’t want us. Might act like it does, but it’ll get bored soon enough.”

  “We just… After all…” Marcel had to fight to keep himself from sputtering on his words. “We just freed Huile. It’s a new beginning. We can make something of this town, but you just want to abandon it? Inferno, Alba, we have to stay.”

  She walked up to him, stepping over the rusting shards of a half-buried motorcycle. “Why? For what? Your service is up. There’s nothing keeping you here. You don’t even have a job.”

  “Lambert offered me a position in the Office of Justice.” Marcel struggled to keep his balance, forcing his cogleg down with his hands when it didn’t respond right. “To work establishing real Resurgence law.”

  “So, what, you’re going to be a pencil-pusher?”

  He tried to laugh the idea off, even though he had considered it. “I’m just saying I have offers, is all. Huile needs help getting back on its feet.”

  Alba shook her head. Her gaze, which had been hard as stone during battle, and surprisingly soft on moon-lit midnights, was now knife-sharp. “Huile doesn’t need us, Inferno, it’s already just using us as party decorations, as talking pieces.” She sneered. “You’re more than that, you could have a real future. We could have a future, if you wanted one. Could make a life beyond this city and its miseries. We wouldn’t need to follow the orders of self-serving, desk-sitting bastards in two-piece suits, but our own path. Don’t let this battle be your damn crowning achievement, Marcel. You can do more than this town will ever allow. You’re just going to waste yourself—”

  Marcel slammed his undrunk Icarian Rusty onto the table, and rubbed his head. He had proved her wrong a hundred times over, each successful case clear proof that Huile had needed him. Yet still, he could never get the memories to fade, never get her words, her pitying, sneering gaze from his mind.

  The crowd continued its talking, its laughter. Yes, Alba was right about the parties, it was their cyclical inanities that were driving Marcel back to unpleasant memories. Solve a case, wait in his office, visit the next shindig. Over the past two years Marcel had gone from searching for work to merely waiting around for it to fall into his lap. Well he didn’t need to wait, hadn’t needed to twiddle his thumbs, sitting around until Roache’s return. This lingering ennui he felt, it was a wakeup, a reminder that he had made himself the man he was. His dissatisfaction, a reflection of an unnecessary passivity.

  The solution was clear enough, and he was glad that Lazarus’s brief sojourn abroad had made it obvious, Marcel would waste no more time, wait no more, take his boots to the pavement and search out his suspicions himself. He had never needed Lambert or Roache’s permission to do so, he worked for himself. To allow himself to forget that would just be proving Alba right.

  With a new determination, Marcel buttoned his coat and made for the door. He would return to Roache on his own terms, when he had the case he wanted to make. He would come to his own conclusions on Gall and Verus, then he—

  “Marcel!” Lazarus’ voice rung through the air. Marcel turned to see the man’s eyes affixed in his direction, a wide smile on his face as he waved him over. Marcel paused his step, and then sheepishly unfixed his coat buttons and walked over, past a dozen other people, a few he recognized from previous parties, others new, who circled around Roache.

  “This, my friends,” Lazarus said, “is the true hero of the hour, and not for the first time.” He raised his glass and the rest in crowd followed his lead, looking at the private investigator as a strange, previously unnoticed, wonder.

  “Two weeks from now, Anseluary fifth,” Roache said, “Lazacorp will be opening its water treatment plant. I think it is a given that you shall all be invited to the opening party. Soon fresh water will be flowing through this city, and it is all thanks to this man right here, who rooted out the damnable snake who had been tormenting our work, a scoundrel who had even murdered a fellow employee. Gone now, thank the Demiurge, to his proper justice.”

  A polite round of applause followed. Marcel couldn’t help but give a small blush.

  “Thank you,” he mumbled.

  Lazarus’s head tilted for a quick moment, then he turned to the men and women around him. “Apologies my friends, but I remembered I have to quickly attend to some business. Marcel, would you mind speaking with me privately? I could use some advice.”

  Marcel nodded, “Sure, though I think I’ll be heading out in a moment.”

  “That’s all the time it will take,” Lazarus said.

  Roache led Marcel, a tad befuddled, from the crowd. They moved together through the party, dodging dozens of interested guests who vied for Lazarus’ attention with questions, small talk, and unprom
pted compliments. The man grinned and disengaged in a courteous and strategic manner until he and Marcel were suddenly up on the second floor, out on a balcony overlooking the city. Well, overlooking as much of the city as could be seen from two stories up, but it did give Marcel a nice view down the city-spanning Viexus Boulevard.

  He took in the dimly glowing streetlight, and above them, the shimmering stars that in his childhood had always been driven from the sky by the constant light of Phenia. Their presence was one of the small benefits to a life at the edges of civilization.

  “You look uneasy,” Lazarus said.

  “Well… The Gall case has been bugging me,” Marcel admitted.

  “Always sniffing,” Lazarus mused, then, catching Marcel’s gaze, “A joke, Marcel. What concerns you?”

  Marcel tapped his fingers on the baluster. He had just planned to build on his suspicions first… but since he was here already there was no point in delaying. “Verus was dogging me at every turn during my investigation.”

  “Verus is a rough man,” Lazarus said. “Trust me, I have much experience working with him. He can be at times… well a griffon’s asshole.”

  Lazarus began to laugh and Marcel couldn’t help but join in.

  “Well put,” Marcel said, “but he was worse than usual, dragging his feet on everything.”

  “I was away.” Lazarus shrugged. “Verus doesn’t like his authority questioned, even when he’s wrong, it’s one of his less flattering characteristics.”

  Marcel glanced at Roache. “It really got him going when I mentioned the missing schematics. Was there a reason you didn’t tell him about their recovery?” He half expected Lazarus to fold his arms in frustration, or at least get a tad red in the face. Instead the man laughed again.

  “You think he was intolerable then? Imagine if I had rubbed his nose in it that you had found the schematics, which he was supposed to be watching over. The man would have been apoplectic.” Lazarus’s face straightened. “I suspected Gall, and there was no way I could tell Verus about your discovery without those suspicions getting back to the engineer. I doubt you would have caught him if he were so on guard.”