Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  The second officer’s eyebrows shot up. The third eyed the gray-haired merchant.

  “He wasn’t happy about the rate,” Jane said, “but he took it anyway.”

  “She’s lying!” the whitenail spat. “You found someone in the market who was willing to corroborate your version of events, and here she is.” He cast Jane a withering glare, taking in her ragged clothing, her tangled hair, and her trimmed fingernails. “Testimony from the likes of her means nothing where we come from. There’s a reason her kind can’t–”

  The vendor slapped him hard across the face. The sharp, staccato note of flesh on flesh rang in the suddenly silent room.

  “Let her speak,” Jane’s officer escort said.

  “I watched him count it,” Jane said. “She gave him twenty-seven bills.”

  “You normally count money passed between strangers?” her escort asked.

  “I wanted to know the price of a dirram,” Jane said.

  The other two officers looked at each other and then at Jane’s escort. “That’s exactly the number we took from him,” one of them said. “In dirrams, anyway.”

  Jane’s escort crossed his arms. “Then it seems the matter is settled.” He raised his hand when the whitenail began to protest. “Get the two of them out of here, and see that the necklace is returned.”

  The two officers led the whitenail and the merchant away. Jane moved to follow.

  “Not you,” her escort said. “You’ll come with me.”

  His voice was stern and serious. Jane felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach. She had done what was asked. If more was required of her, it was likely not a good thing.

  The officer led her deeper into the labyrinthine corridors of the Majlis. Jane caught glances – curious, perhaps apprehensive – from the men and women she passed. She looked down, only to find herself dizzied by the mosaics in the floor. The marble and wood-paneled walls hemmed her in on either side, and the policeman kept a gentle yet insistent grip on her arm.

  She had only just arrived, and already, she was trapped again.

  At last, Jane was brought to a room. It felt smaller and darker than the last. Candelabras branching from the walls cast dim, flickering light and threw shadows that jumped and shrank. Everything in the room seemed to move with a sinister, furtive energy.

  The policemen led her to a hard-backed chair, and she sat stiffly, bracing herself. A table, small and low and scarred with use, stood inches from her knees. A man in dark robes entered the room from behind her, laid something on the table with a metallic clatter, and turned to face her.

  His lips moved, silent against the rush of blood in her ears.

  “Please,” she said, her upper lip slick with cold sweat.

  Expressionless, he turned back to the table. A noise, high and thin, jangled through the cotton in her ears.

  He turned back to her, a cup of tea in his hands. He stood there for what felt like an eternity while her brain registered the tulip-shaped glass with its gilded rim, the dark and comfortingly familiar liquid within, and the forbearance on the man’s face. Finally, she took the glass, less because she wanted tea and more because it seemed to be what was expected in this moment.

  He retreated, and she noticed that the policeman had also left. So she sat alone in the strange, darkened room, and took a sip of her tea. It was sweet enough to make her cringe.

  Something moved at the other end of the room. At first, she thought it was a trick of the dim, guttering light – who lit a room only with candles, anyway? – but after several seconds, she saw movement again, stately and sweeping. Then someone glided across the room toward her, emerging from the wall where no door had been.

  It was a woman, Jane realized, dressed in a brocaded but smooth-fitting robe that rose to her neck, wrapping under her jaw. What Jane first took to be a long curtain of hair was, she realized, a curtain of fabric that circled her draped head and rode across her shoulders. Something about her face seemed vague and hazy. It was only when she took the seat on the opposite side of the table that Jane could see that she wore a veil.

  It didn’t quite obscure her expression, but it made it harder to read, especially in the low lighting. It took Jane an extra second to parse that the brilliantly crimson lips beneath the veil were smiling. The woman raised a cup of tea beneath her veil and took a drink.

  “Cakes will be arriving shortly,” the woman said. “I trust you’ve been made comfortable?”

  The question seemed almost comically absurd, but Jane didn’t know what to say other than, “Yes.” She sipped her tea again, fighting back a wince.

  The other woman smiled. “You’ve come to Madina recently. Along with many others from Recoletta.”

  It didn’t sound like a question, but Jane said, “Yes, ma’am,” anyway, setting her half-empty glass on the tray.

  “Understand that we have no intention of turning anyone away. We believe in hospitality,” the woman said, refilling Jane’s glass. “But welcoming so many newcomers at once presents certain challenges. My sources tell me you’ve witnessed one already.”

  Jane picked the tiny glass up by the rim, resolving to drink it more slowly. “There was a disagreement between a merchant and a whit… a man from Recoletta.”

  “And you chose the merchant’s side,” she said, her voice fluttering with amusement.

  Something about this irked Jane. It made her decision sound calculated and disingenuous. “Everything I said was true.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” The woman set her own cup on the gold tray and refilled it. “But there aren’t many who would side with the foreigner in a matter like that.”

  After a beat, Jane realized that the woman was referring to the merchant, the local, as the foreigner. From Jane’s perspective. “I’m the foreigner now,” she said, thinking but not adding that returning to Recoletta wasn’t exactly an option.

  “That’s clear-eyed of you,” the woman said, pursing her lips. “And yet it would seem that not all of your peers are gifted with the same perspective.”

  Jane couldn’t suppress a small smile at the idea of the whitenails being regarded as her peers.

  It seemed as though the woman’s full, painted lips quirked in response. “And, curiously, it seems that you did not share all of their advantages.”

  Jane felt tension creeping into her face, setting her grin into a rigid rictus.

  “Ah, the cakes.”

  Jane sat there, her spine feeling numb against the hard chair, while the black-robed man swept into the room and deposited a platter of flaky pastries next to the tea service. The veiled woman took one and ate it, chewing slowly while the attendant departed.

  The silence gnawed at Jane’s nerves. “Am I a prisoner here?” The question felt uncomfortably blunt, but Jane was losing her patience for empty pleasantries.

  The woman looked genuinely shocked, her expression quivering behind the veil. “I thought I made it clear. You’re a guest. Now, have some cakes.” She raised the plate to Jane.

  Though her mouth felt too dry and her stomach too turbulent for any kind of food, Jane took a cake and dutifully popped it into her mouth. It was as sweet as the tea, layered with honey and ground nuts, but under the circumstances, it tasted as bland and mushy as a mouthful of porridge.

  “Your countrymen have been pouring into Madina for over two weeks now. My counterparts in other cities have experienced similar influxes.” The veiled woman wiped her fingertips on a crisp linen square folded on the tea tray. “It has not escaped my notice that you don’t seem to match the dominant demographic.”

  Jane involuntarily glanced at her practical yet rumpled clothes, her short fingernails, and the stained canvas bag next to her chair.

  Yes, she supposed she did strike a rather sharp contrast with the whitenail arrivals.

  “I fear the trouble you witnessed will only become more common as my people get used to their new neighbors and as yours get used to their new... home. It would be useful for us to h
ave the benefit of an honest broker. Someone who knows the customs of Recoletta and can help us settle matters equitably.”

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but don’t you already have people who do this? Men and women who know Recoletta?”

  “In all your years in your home city, how often did you come across a Madinan?” The veiled lady smiled at Jane’s silence. “Good intermediaries are rare, and few would have your perspective. Besides, there’s something about a familiar accent that engenders trust, yes?” She tilted her head at Jane.

  Feeling the heat rising in her face, Jane was suddenly grateful for the dim lighting.

  “These are strange times. I need resourceful people, and I don’t care where they come from.”

  Jane felt something like hope welling up in her chest.

  The woman seemed to notice the change. “This is an offer, not a demand. But the manner of your arrival suggests you won’t be returning to Recoletta any time soon. You will need some kind of employment here. And I can always make use of someone of your acumen.”

  Jane had to swallow twice before she could get the words out. “When do I start?”

  “You already have.”

  Chapter Two

  Unfamiliar Territory

  In the six months since Sato’s revolution, Recoletta had become an underground archipelago. Pockets of civilization lay isolated by half-crumbled tunnels ravaged by Sato’s bombs. Abandoned and half-ruined passages cut through the city like poisoned veins, allowing only the most toxic elements of society to pass between the dwindling havens of productivity and population.

  Malone had prowled her ravaged city for six months, and still she barely knew it. It left her physically nauseated some days, just trying to keep up with it. The landscape changed daily as the ruin and corruption receded in one place only to bloom in another. The citizens that remained in Recoletta – and out of the shadows – shifted in their scattered pockets of civilization like nervous flocks, colonizing and abandoning new areas of the city each week. And yet even as they kept away from tumors of crime and neglect, their own movements only stirred the filth into new configurations, like sediment swirling at the bottom of a murky pond.

  And yet it felt good to run through the city, even if it wasn’t the one Malone remembered.

  She turned down one passage, its mouth funneled by a heap of rubble. She had to slow her pace and light a lantern – the torches had all been stolen from the walls here. The approach didn’t lend itself to speed or secrecy, but it was necessary nonetheless.

  A mat of fungus had grown along one damp wall, and it filled the air with a musky perfume. Malone held back a sneeze.

  She still didn’t understand the politics of this new Recoletta. It didn’t take more than common sense to know that things were bad and getting steadily worse, but she couldn’t follow the minutiae of gestures, expressions, and inflections in the Cabinet meetings with Sato well enough to know whose fault it was from week to week (even if it was hers) or how promises and bargains were made over a raising of eyebrows and quirking of lips.

  But this she knew and relished. Hunting her quarry through tunnels – even tunnels made unfamiliar by new layers of rubble and lichen – and becoming the hunted in a series of shifts and maneuvers every bit as sudden and deft as those that went on in the meetings. These subtleties differed in kind, not in degree.

  She should have been thankful for the desk job. She could have easily set some hungry young underling like Inspector Angelo after the Bricklayer, let her earn her stripes (a memory of another hungry young underling rose to her mind, and she pushed it back as quickly as she could) while she turned in early and enjoyed the luxuries her position afforded. The opportunity for relaxation. She’d certainly seen enough action in the month leading up to Sato’s coup – a month of murders and unrest in Recoletta – to have earned her rest.

  But the wood-paneled walls of her new office only seemed claustrophobic. Johanssen’s heavy oak desk – she still couldn’t think of it as her own – felt like a weight pinning her in place.

  Nor did the quiet of home offer any comfort. Recoletta had become an amorphous place of ragged flesh congealed around broken bones, and in the darkness of her apartment, she imagined she heard it contorting around her. The thought filled her with a kind of dread she was unable to admit even to herself. She closed her eyes each night, wondering what kind of city she’d wake up in.

  Yet dashing and skulking through tunnels, she could feel the city under her feet, hear and smell the evidence of thousands of people still making their way in it. It reminded her that it was a real place of stone and metal and not merely an idea shaped by the debates between Sato and his cronies.

  Her cronies now.

  She got enough of a glimpse of the tunnel’s progress ahead to douse her own lantern. If she could remember her reference points well enough to pick her way through the darkness, she could catch her opponent by surprise. It was simply a matter of navigating in temporary blindness.

  She glimpsed a faint glow up ahead.

  As disoriented as Sato’s Cabinet meetings left her, the Bricklayer was someone she understood. A man – or woman – built by circumstances just as Recoletta was being undone by them. Where most people saw supply shortages, unkept passages, and broken gas lines, the Bricklayer saw opportunity. And in the last several months, he had constructed a niche for himself as the restorer of services, black-market provider, and rogue enforcer in the sections of the city where Sato’s reach didn’t extend.

  And those sections grew with each new contortion and realignment.

  Malone had heard many rumors about the Bricklayer, and not all of them seemed to refer to the same person. Some said he’d been hideously scarred in the night of fighting that heralded Sato’s coup. Others said she was a deposed whitenail who’d found a new avenue to power after Recoletta’s class structure had collapsed. Malone had been told that the Bricklayer was trying to rebuild Recoletta the only way he knew how, and she’d also been told that the Bricklayer would, in a few months more, be as rich as Councilor Ruthers had ever been.

  At the end of the day, the Bricklayer’s reasons didn’t matter. He or she was a criminal for the catching, and that was all.

  And the man she pursued now would lead her to the Bricklayer. Provided she could take him alive.

  Malone hurried along, taking swift, silent steps through the dark ruin. The last glimpse she’d had of the tunnel before dousing her lantern was etched in her mind’s eye, but she was reaching the end of the stretch she’d seen. Her toe struck a rock, sent it skidding ahead with a noise loud enough to raise the dead.

  She reached the bend she’d seen earlier. Whatever lay ahead, she hadn’t seen it yet. Water dripped from somewhere further down the passage while a stale draft kissed her left cheek. There was more than one direction her quarry could have gone, and judging from the relative silence and the dark, he was already far ahead.

  The man she pursued had the advantage. He knew this area, the way the tunnels twisted and folded back on one another, where they led.

  But he didn’t know her.

  She would have to take a risk if she wanted a chance at catching him here. Otherwise, there was nothing to stop him from fleeing or from doubling back and sneaking up on her.

  Malone cracked the shutter on her lantern and brought the flame inside to life with a twist of the knob. She screwed off the top of the lantern so that the breeze just tickled the little flame. With one quick motion, she set the lantern just around the curve in the tunnel behind her, back the way she’d come, and felt her way into the branch on her left with gloved hands.

  The lantern cast a dim, shivering glow from the depths of the tunnel. Not enough to illuminate her current position, she thought, but enough to get her fugitive’s attention if he was still watching.

  She would have to hope that he was still watching, that her ploy wasn’t obvious to him, that a sign of her helplessness would draw him back and into the open. I
t was a risk. But eagerness, that mirage of hope when blood pounded into the brain, begat recklessness. It was a problem Malone had frequently observed in others but rarely suffered herself.

  She drew her revolver and watched the blackness ahead of her, keeping her gaze from the light and the vulnerability it would bring. She waited for the barest hint of movement or shift in the air around her.

  As she held her breath, she saw it. Darkness moving on darkness. Flickers of motion, formless but undeniable. He was circling back down the tunnel across from her. One hasty step echoed back toward her, telegraphing his impatience.

  All she had to do was wait.

  Tracking his progress back toward her, Malone held her breath and her position, conscious of the whispers of fabric, the squeak of leather, the unmistakable currents borne by any kind of movement.

  That was when she heard a hammer click behind her.

  She dropped to her knees just as the tunnels erupted with sound. Her back was, thankfully, to the muzzle flash, and for one brief instant it lit up the tunnel and the man across a dozen feet in front of her, his jaw locked in a grimace and one arm thrown over his eyes.

  The half-blinding glimpse wasn’t much of an advantage, but it put the other two men at a greater disadvantage. It was an imbalance she would have to seize.

  She pointed her own gun at the spot where she’d last seen the other man and closed her eyes, firing into the darkness. A crash of thunder, but no cry of pain, no thud of meat falling to the floor. A miss.

  And there was still someone behind her.

  He had charted her quick evasion by now and, even blinded by the firing, could guess at where she was. Something hard and angular – the butt of his gun, perhaps – struck Malone in the back of the head. His aim was off, but even so, he was close enough for the blow to send bolts of red lancing through her vision.

  She was lucky he hadn’t fired. Lucky, perhaps, that his ally was still an indeterminate mass in the darkness ahead of her.

  She fell to the ground and kicked, catching her assailant just above his ankles. He tumbled to the ground, and she used her momentum to pull herself around to face him. She heard a grunt and felt a tremor in the air as he swung his foot inches from her head.