by Carrie Patel
But Petrosian shook his head. “Hasn’t been much good in Recoletta for a long time. Men like Ruthers rotted this place to its core. All Sato did was kick us around and shake us out.”
“What about Roman?”
Petrosian’s laugh was like wind through dry grass. “I said I like the boy. I never said he was good.”
Jane wanted to rebut and tell him about the violence Roman had tried to prevent, but she didn’t suppose Petrosian had stopped by to debate Roman’s goodness. In fact, she was becoming more interested in why he had approached.
Likely as not, he was hoping to pry loose the same secrets Burgevich had wanted.
The whiskey merchant raised his glass to his lips, and his smile was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “The way things are going, he won’t be with us much longer.”
“You sound awfully certain of that,” Jane said, trying to ignore the chill creeping along her back.
“Roman Arnault’s fate rests in the hands of a foreign premier who sees Recoletta as little more than a firebreak for her own city, a whitenail who’s been awaiting her rise for the last six decades, and a chief of police with more power than she knows what to do with.”
The Qadi, Lady Lachesse, and –
“Chief of police?” Jane asked.
Petrosian stopped himself short with a kind of mock surprise. “Ah, yes. That much is still news, at least.” He gave her a sly look, glancing from the bar back to her as if he were tallying her tab in his head. “Liesl Malone, formerly of the Municipal Police, will soon be appointed interim governor of Recoletta.” He drank again, smacking his lips. Enjoying himself.
“Meaning what, exactly?” Cold prickled at the back of Jane’s neck.
“Meaning she’ll be a Council of one until a true Council is appointed.”
Jane mulled it over. It certainly sounded as though there could be worse outcomes. Worse people for the job. But she remembered Malone as she’d met her in the old Council’s final days, dogged and striving against Ruthers. Something about the woman’s transition to the very nest of power she’d once despised sat uneasily with Jane, though maybe she was seeing malice in every shadow and corner now.
But Petrosian appeared as though he’d made up his mind already.
“You don’t think she’s good?” Jane asked.
“She thinks she is. Nothing makes a person more dangerous.”
“I met her once or twice. She seemed reasonable.”
“You met her before the city collapsed. Before she became Sato’s chief of police.” He leaned in. “Before she became a friend to rebels and farmers.”
This was also news to Jane, but she tried not to let it show. “You’re saying she’s changed.”
“I’m saying she believes in something now. And Roman Arnault’s trial and death may allow her to save it.”
Jane took it all in with another sip of her whiskey. The old man was trying to goad her into something. She could feel it in the way he kept dangling Roman before her, and yet she could feel her resolve giving way. Her throat burned and her head swam, and it was hard to tell how much was the alcohol and how much was the deluge of new information.
Petrosian was talking again, and she had to make a concerted effort to focus on what he was saying.
“Malone could perhaps be convinced that Arnault is not her biggest problem. But you’d need rare information, and to find that, you’d need to know where to search,” he said. “That will cost you.” His falsely avuncular manner had all but faded.
She knew she shouldn’t ask. Because she knew that whatever he asked for, she would give him. “What do you want?”
He placed a heavy key on the table. Jane had seen keys like it before, back when she’d worked for the rich and powerful whitenails. “I’m offering you a treasure trove of information. In exchange, I’ll need a powerful and important secret.” Petrosian was regarding her with a gaze that could have pried the lid off a jar.
“What makes you think I have something like that?” Jane asked.
Petrosian smiled, but only with his lips. “Think about it, Miss Lin. I’ve got glasses to refill.” He disappeared to tend to other customers, leaving Jane with her almost-empty glass and a view of stained wood and crowded shelves.
She stared at the key and tried to think of something useful, anything to avoid telling him about the one secret she had promised herself never to tell anyone.
But what could she say about the Qadi, or Lady Lachesse, or even Roman Arnault that he wouldn’t already know? What could she tell him when he had already shared Malone’s rise to power like idle gossip?
In the panicked minutes after Ruthers had told her the vault code, she had privately sworn never to breathe a word about it. If the Qadi, or Lachesse, or any of their allies learned the code then Roman – and even she – would never be free of it.
Yet if Roman died, none of her earnest efforts or noble intentions would matter.
Petrosian was circling back, the bottle in his hand nearly empty and the smile on his face as satisfied as if he’d drunk it all himself.
She could lie to him. Make something up. But a man like him didn’t become an information broker without learning to tell good information from false.
Petrosian returned.
“What did you do before everything?” Jane asked. “Before Sato and the fall of the Council, I mean.”
“Much the same,” Petrosian said. “Though my shop was nicer and the clientele better dressed. And most paid in coin.”
He didn’t say it with any particular longing, and yet she had no doubt that Recoletta was full of whitenails trying to claw back as much as they could. “Is that what you want, then? To return to those days?” Jane asked.
“There’s no such thing as a return. And at my age, I’m beyond hoping for one. I merely want to know which way we’re headed.”
That was encouraging. Perhaps he’d be content with something less than the vault code itself. But she needed to draw that out of him, just to be sure.
“You’re saying you’d rather keep secrets than use them?” she said.
“Meddling is a messy business,” Petrosian said. “And the very best secrets are like fine wine. Exposing them diminishes their value considerably.”
“Then knowledge of a thing would be just as useful as the thing itself.”
Interest kindled in Petrosian’s eyes. “Presuming we’re talking about something of sufficient value.”
He held the bottle over Jane’s glass, a question in his eyes.
Petrosian had little reason to be interested in the vault. No, he wanted rare and valuable information, something to ferret away with all of his other secrets, and perhaps to barter for another rarer and more valuable secret in the future.
But by the time he did that, Jane planned to be long gone with Roman. And if she wasn’t, this indiscretion wouldn’t change much.
“Roman Arnault is the key to an ancient vault of wonders,” she said.
Petrosian tilted the bottle back a degree. “That’s hardly a secret to me.”
“But the code to the vault is,” Jane said. “That much was a secret to everyone but Jakkeb Sato and Augustus Ruthers.” She paused. “And me.”
His wispy eyebrows shot up. “You have the code?”
“Ruthers told me before he died.”
His eyebrows rose even further, and he inclined his head toward her.
But she had him trapped. “Just a moment ago, you agreed the knowledge of the code would be as valuable as the code itself.”
A defeated smile quirked at the corners of his mouth. “But how am I to know whether you’re telling the truth?”
“Even if I gave you the code, you’d never know if it was the real one. Besides, this would be a very foolish secret for me to invent since it would likely send Lachesse, the Qadi, and Malone after me if they got wind of it.” And by Petrosian’s meticulous logic, it would then be of little value to him.
At last, he nodded and poured a thin s
tream into her glass. “The estate of Augustus Ruthers,” he said, pushing the key toward her. “May you find something there to distract our dogged governor.”
“What exactly am I looking for?” Jane asked, sliding the key into her pocket. The metal was cold but as smooth as polished wood.
He pressed his lips together. “Without having been there myself, it’s hard to say. But rest assured you’ll find something, and you’ll know it when you do.”
“That’s less specific than I’d hoped,” Jane said.
“I offered you an opportunity, not an answer. But go and look around. If you feel I’ve shortchanged you, I’m sure we can come to another agreement.” He bowed and departed to look after the rest of his patrons.
Chapter 5
The Hidden
Geist sat back. “Keska say? I was not knowing that I was speaking to the gouverneur of Recoletta! Marveyoo.”
Malone probed the tenderness at her neck. “Safe to say I’ve been deposed.”
Phelan returned, bearing a new cup. She placed it before Malone and filled it, then gave another to Geist.
It looked like tea, but darker and thicker. Malone sipped hers and nearly gagged – it was as bitter as a bad memory.
Geist winced in apology, his scar shriveling on his cheek. “Myself, I prefer it warm, but the gas is most volatile.” He lifted his face up toward some indeterminate presence above. “We must avoid unnecessary flamme while aloft.”
Malone couldn’t imagine that anything less than a gallon of water would improve the taste, but she kept that to herself.
Meanwhile, Geist enjoyed his drink with obvious gusto, closing his eyes and humming with pleasure. It seemed to revive him. “So,” he said, “this Qadi, you say she wears a masque?”
“A veil. It’s common among Madina’s wealthy.”
“Hmm.” Geist exchanged a thoughtful glance with Phelan, who was picking up fragments of the broken cup. He craned his neck to peer out the window behind her. “And alles that you are telling me, it is happening below, in the refuge?”
“The what?”
He blinked. “The bunker. Soo-terr. Underground.” For the first time, he appeared just as confused as Malone felt.
“You mean the city?”
“Ya, of course.” He sipped his drink quickly. “But you were about to be telling me of this Jane Lin. She is who?”
“Like I told Lachesse, she was nobody.”
Geist’s eyes focused on her. “Everybody is somebody.”
“She became somebody, all right.” If only she’d seen it sooner.
“Tell me,” Geist said, while Phelan knelt to mop up the spill.
* * *
Once Malone had gotten official word of her appointment, it hadn’t taken long for the crises to roll in. Half of Dominari Hall’s administrators and all of its whitenails had accosted her on her way out, attempting to extract various promises that she would punish or reward someone or the other. Fulfilling all of those requests would have meant promoting and then firing nearly everyone in a position of influence at least once.
Malone had the sneaking suspicion that the rest of Dominari Hall had known about her appointment even before she had. Which, given the way politics ran on gossip as much as paperwork, made sense. Worse, with the exhausting influx of requests, demands, and entreaties, she was also beginning to suspect that Lachesse had appointed her merely to wear her down and get rid of her.
And after her first day, she was well on her way to offending or displeasing nearly everyone in a position of influence.
Not that this had ever bothered her before.
But this time, it wasn’t just her future at stake, but the future of Recoletta, the farming communes, and two other cities as well, and the very idea of that weight on her shoulders when she’d returned from the battlefield less than twenty-four hours ago made her head ache.
It also reminded her that she needed a bath, a meal, and sleep on a proper horizontal surface.
She could get at least two of those things at her apartment, provided it was still there.
After a few failed attempts at leaving, Malone finally managed to sneak out of one of the back exits. It was a long way home, made longer by the fact that none of the railcars were running – they hadn’t been for months – and no carriages were out. Not that their wheels could have handled the cluttered ruin that many of Recoletta’s streets had become, anyway.
Worse, the food stalls were all gone and the few cafes she remembered either looted or shuttered. She wished she’d thought to scrounge for something in Dominari Hall’s kitchens, but that would have been another hour of delays and interruptions.
At least her unit was still there, her key still fit the lock, and when she opened the door, everything was just as she’d left it, her tea kettle on the stove and her clothes scattered across the bed.
There was even some food in the cupboard – a loaf of bread that crunched between her teeth and a wedge of sheep’s cheese with a thin rind of mold. She considered scraping it off. Instead, she ate it quickly.
Her eyelids were heavy as she washed off the sweat and grime of the last few days. She pushed her scattered clothes to the edge of the bed and slept.
It was midmorning when she’d finally awoken – hours after she would have started her day at Callum Station in other, quieter times. Yet she didn’t feel rested. Rather, she felt as if she’d spent the night escaping and returning to the same dream about burning trains, burning fields, and burning cities.
Whatever the day held, she wasn’t ready for it.
* * *
Dominari Hall had already been in crisis mode by the time Malone returned, though the place hadn’t left crisis mode in months. There was much to do, but she couldn’t feel anything more than preemptive exhaustion.
Not until she saw Farrah stomping down a gilded and mirrored hall toward her.
Farrah was a capable administrator. She had been Chief Johanssen’s secretary under the old Council and Malone’s secretary under Sato. Malone secretly believed that Recoletta would never fall so long as Farrah, cool, efficient, and pragmatic, was seated behind a desk somewhere, reducing its crises to ink and pulp.
Whatever problem Malone brought to Farrah, she always got the sense that the secretary was only humoring her to take a break from something larger and more important.
Which was why the sight of Farrah’s long strides and bloodless lips gave Malone a shiver of apprehension.
“The hell have you been? I was about to send out a search party.” Farrah was already walking past her.
Malone had no choice but to follow, back the way she’d come and out the grand double doors of Dominari Hall.
“What’s the problem?”
“Not here.” Farrah flashed her a warning expression and pointed at a waiting carriage.
Malone tugged at her chafing collar. The streets and districts that were still traversable by carriage had become minefields of horse shit.
“Someone’s got to get the damn railcars working again,” Malone said.
Farrah shot her a look. That someone, of course, was her.
“Hurry up,” Farrah said. Even the two mares tethered to the carriage were stamping and snorting their impatience.
Malone pulled herself into the carriage next to Farrah. No sooner had she shut the door than the thing rumbled into motion.
And something thudded on top of the carriage.
“Guards,” Farrah said. “Local ones.”
“Want to tell me where we’re going now?”
“Merchant district. Near the old market.”
“The main road’s a mess,” Malone said. “It’s faster if we walk.” Not that she wanted to clean muck off her boots later.
“Not a good idea. Besides, there’s no point in making this a bigger spectacle than it needs to be.”
Malone left the question on her face, and Farrah sighed her acknowledgment.
“Three of the Qadi’s guards were murdered early this m
orning. Outside a tea shop, of all places.”
Malone was still vaguely surprised there was anything of the sort still standing in Recoletta. “Do we have suspects? A motive?”
“Why do you think you’re here?” Farrah asked.
For the first time in ages, Malone felt the old thrill in her blood. “A case.”
Farrah looked at her, something unreadable in her eyes. “Remember, you’re just here to check around.”
It took the better part of an hour of bumping and rattling along the pitted and potholed streets to reach the market district, and by the time they did Malone’s nerves were thrumming. Her senses were alive to everything – the smell of decay and excrement, the patterns of garbage shoved against the tunnel walls, the shadows painted beneath the fogged skylights.
This was what she had risen early for, once upon a time.
The carriage pulled to a stop at the corner, pointed – Malone couldn’t help but notice – down the wide mouth of the tunnel. Ready for a quick escape.
Their escort clambered off the back of the carriage, sweeping the tunnel with searchlight glares. Six other plainclothes guards patrolled the scene, too skittish to seem official and too stiff to blend in. Malone wondered if they were dressed so to avoid a spectacle or if the street clothes, like the guards themselves, were simply all that was available.
Farrah took in their surroundings with a businesslike scowl. “Let’s make this fast,” she said.
Malone climbed out after her. The street was quiet. Not the way you’d expect on a regular Thursday morning, but nothing had been regular in a long time.
Most of the shops here were boarded up or smashed in, too. Commerce had largely moved into the black market – and its ambulatory bazaar, the Twilight Exchange – but a new, secret life had replaced the old, like fungus growing on a tree stump. If Malone looked for it, she knew she’d find signs of that life everywhere – piles of rags where people had taken to sleeping, clusters of holes where the temporary residents removed and replaced boards to cover up their shelters. Old bloodstains and bullet holes that no one would have bothered to clean up.
