by Carrie Patel
She’d shivered and wondered what could have aged him in the few days since their last meeting.
“Sit, please,” he’d said.
She’d sat.
He’d swept the papers aside and seemed to clear his mind in the same impatient motion. “I have something rather unorthodox to ask of you, Malone.”
She’d bitten the humorless grin from her lips.
He’d pulled a yellowing envelope from his desk drawer, pinching the edges. “As if our problems from our neighbors, our own citizens, weren’t enough.” He’d handed it to her.
The envelope had felt coarse, and pulling back the torn flap had released a flurry of strange yet familiar smells: woodsmoke, grass, and the mingled musk of man and beast. Smells of the surface.
She’d pulled out the letter and read:
* * *
To President Sato:
We wish to congratulate you on your recent ascent in Recoletta. The story of your departure and return, and of your mission for justice in the city, has made the rounds among our communes.
In fact, your story has become an inspiration to us all. We were heartened to hear of your commitment to establishing better conditions for your citizens and encouraged by your dedication to a more peaceful, equitable order.
It is with these principles in mind that we extend our enthusiasm for your changes as well as our hopes that they will extend to us. We have tried to offer these sentiments on previous occasions, but we understand that our congratulations have likely been eclipsed by your other responsibilities.
However, we are confident that you will understand our position.
Our provision of certain foodstuffs and materials to Recoletta has become unduly burdensome. And while we would like nothing more than to continue supplying the city, we would require certain assistance to compensate for the time we spend in forest and field.
Specifically, we need the regular services of doctors, educators, and engineers to afford our people the time and opportunity to continue feeding your city.
Again, we are assured of your reasonableness in all things, and we’re grateful that you have set such a promising model of the future to come. We are confident that you will be quick to include us in it.
We are happy to host you to discuss the details in person, and we will await your response with hope and patience.
* * *
Yours,
Meyerston
Shepherd’s Hollow
Woodsey
Fairview
Wheatton
Logan’s Valley
* * *
Sato had looked back at her, his arms hanging loosely from slumped shoulders.
“They sent this along with half of the normal food production. We can’t have this. Not in addition to everything else.”
Everything else – black markets, rising crime, political instability, and the ceaseless hemorrhaging of capital and skilled labor. Malone’s shapeless, malformed city was at risk of collapsing upon itself.
Sato had leaned forward, spreading his hands across his desk as if it were the only thing holding him up. “Do you know what makes the cities so different, Malone? Why you might travel to South Haven or Underlake or Ciudad del Mar only to find the accents so strange, the food intolerable, the customs so bizarre?”
She must have shrugged, or nodded, or blinked, because he’d continued.
“It’s because we all grew up differently. After the Catastrophe… yes, I see you squirming, you don’t like hearing about it any more than anyone else, but this is a history lesson you need to hear. After the Catastrophe, the cities kept their doors locked and their tunnels sealed. Probably didn’t even have the skylights that allow for those gardens we all love. And they stayed that way for decades. Over a century, in some cases.” He’d raised his hands, warming to his subject.
“Imagine that you and your inspectors lived in Callum Station on one side of town and Arnault and I lived here, in Dominari Hall, on the other. Imagine we never talked, never wrote, never heard news of one another. Can you imagine how different we’d be after fifty years? After a hundred?
“That’s how it happened with the cities. And when they finally threw their doors wide and crawled blinking out into the sunlight, it wasn’t a yearning for contact that drove them to it. No, it was hunger.”
His eyes had glittered within their shadowed sockets.
“For all our differences, Malone, that’s what all the cities have in common. We depend on the farming communes. Won’t survive without them. And that’s why we have to nip this in the bud.”
Malone had stared at the letter then, wondering how ink could be filled with so much poison.
“There’s a train leaving tomorrow that’ll pass through Meyerston,” Sato had said. “I need you to deal with them.”
Her stomach had plunged. That would mean leaving the detainees for at least a full day. And while she trusted Farrah to take care of them in that time, she still had her doubts about Arnault. “Sir, have you considered sending Ambassador Chakrun?” Even as she’d made the suggestion, it had felt feeble. Once Sato made up his mind about something, little could change it.
He’d dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand. “He’s reached five new shades of gray since our last Cabinet meeting. I can’t trust him to handle much more than official relations with the other cities at this point. Besides,” he’d said, lowering his voice. “I need someone who can make an impression.”
She’d watched his eyes, two pinpoints of darkness. “Not a deal.”
“Not a deal,” he’d agreed. “I didn’t liberate Recoletta from the Council only to be chained down by the communes.” Sato had curled his hands into claws and scraped them back across his scalp. “We still need them, and they still need us. That second part is what I want you to go and remind them of.”
What he wanted was a blunt instrument, and he meant to use her like one. As much as she’d wanted to point this out – the way she might have to Johanssen, had the old chief ever given her cause to – the gauntness of Sato’s cheeks and the grim contrast between his pale brow and his darkened eyes advised against this. “I see.”
“Good. Because with everything that’s already going on in the city, I can’t have it known that there’s a threat of food shortages. Contain the problem, Malone. And if they aren’t amenable to suggestion...” He’d slid a paper packet across the table.
The gulf in her stomach had grown. “What’s this?”
“You know exactly what it is.”
She’d picked it up, felt the way the powder whispered under the paper as it shifted. “And who exactly do you want poisoned?”
“The leader, obviously.”
In Malone’s experience as an inspector, questions, rather than arguments, had a way of wearing down a flimsy story. She’d phrased her next one carefully. “And they’re supposed to let me go my way when this leader mysteriously dies during my visit?”
“I’m nothing if not discreet, Malone. It’ll take twenty-four hours for that powder to kick in, and when it does, it’ll look like a bad cold. I wouldn’t discard you so easily.”
It had brought Malone both a strange comfort and a buzzing sense of distress to think that that he still had use for her.
“Another thing.” She’d tapped the letter with the corner of the packet. “This came from six different communes. What makes you think there’s one leader?”
He’d laughed. “There’s always a leader, Malone. You don’t set this many people in motion without a unified vision. It may not be an official designation, but someone is setting their course. Get rid of him and the rest will fall easily.”
She’d traced the hard edges of the packet as she framed her question. “That would mean that you’ve got a plan to deal with the entire group.”
“As you said, there are six communes, and it’s taken them this long to act decisively. They can’t be all of one mind. We can nudge them to a better course of action.” Again, he’d smiled. �
��But let me handle that. For now, just worry about the task in front of you.”
There had been lazy comfort in that directive, and it had scared her. But she’d needed time to think, and there was nothing to do but take the poison packet with her.
She’d risen and left the office, slipping the poison into her pocket like a bribe. While Sato’s momentary lack of interest in the pamphleteers had seemed like a relief, his new preoccupation changed that equation considerably.
There had at least been one thing to be thankful for: an excuse to sleep before her journey.
But first, Callum Station.
By the time Malone returned, Farrah had already finished getting the detainees settled in.
“They’ve got cots, blankets, and enough food and water to last the night,” Farrah had said as soon as Malone had walked into the other woman’s office. “And a bottle of merlot to share.”
Malone had stopped on her way to her own office, looking back at Farrah.
The redhead had shrugged. “You said they weren’t prisoners, strictly speaking. And you want them to talk.”
“How did they seem?”
“Nervous. Quiet. If you were thinking of going down to have a chat, I don’t think this is the time for it. They’re still rattled, and I didn’t give them nearly enough to get them drunk.”
Malone had, in fact, been considering some preliminary questions. But Farrah had a sense for moods and inclinations where Malone only saw motives and facts. She’d learned to trust the other woman’s judgment.
“Parsons’ll be fine, by the way,” Farrah had finally said, frowning. Disappointment, likely, that Malone hadn’t already asked. “Arnault only managed to clip off his two small toes.
“That’s great.” She’d cleared her throat. “Listen, I’ve got to run an errand for Sato. I’ll probably be out a day, maybe two.”
“Good, because I’m not waiting around like this tomorrow night.”
“Just keep an eye on our guests. I don’t want anyone else going to see them. Someone asks, say they’re suspected looters getting the silent treatment.”
“And Arnault?”
She’d sighed as she considered it. “Let him see them. But tell me if he does.”
Malone had finally returned to her apartment to see that the hours had evaporated like cheap liquor on the tongue. She’d have to leave for the train station in little more than six hours.
At any rate, it had given her less time to dwell on the sorry state of upkeep at home.
Many Recolettans – even some of her own inspectors, she was sure – had taken advantage of the sudden shifts in real estate to upgrade themselves to nicer, larger units. Or, at least, to avail themselves of the luxuries left behind in abandoned homes – real silver, fine china, marble busts, and portraits done in oil.
The idea left a bitter taste in Malone’s mouth, and besides, the time and hassle involved seemed like unnecessary burdens. She’d barely kept up with her own minimalist accommodations as it was.
And as she’d stepped over the threshold, a glance at the wall clock and a faint tingling of unease had reminded her that she hadn’t been home before midnight in over two months. The rumpled bedsheets, the stacks of unwashed coffee cups, the brim-full trash bin – these had all reminded her of what her tasks had been keeping her away from.
Then again, perhaps it wasn’t that simple.
The only thing that wasn’t layered with dust was the cello sitting in the far corner of her bedroom. Malone had bought it after Sundar’s death, and she still hadn’t worked up the nerve or the energy to play it, but she polished it once a week before collapsing into bed. She’d stopped and considered it, as she did every time she found herself alone and home, but she couldn’t stand the thought of her inexperienced fingers wringing sour notes from the instrument. Instead, she’d packed a valise and collapsed into bed for a few hours of fitful sleep, her dreams plagued by crumpling cities and faceless councilors standing before their nooses.
She arose early the next morning, thankful as ever for an excuse to flee the silent apartment.
The walk to the train station was too quiet. Every footstep echoed in empty streets. Recoletta felt like a ghost town. The problem was, there was plenty going on. It was just happening in rogue districts and out of sight.
The train station itself was surrounded by a contingent of guards. Sato had begun looking for ways to stem the flow of emigrants, and it was telling that this had perhaps only halved the rate of egress. Assuming there was any truth to Sato’s numbers.
Even as the guards saw and recognized Malone’s black uniform, they didn’t step aside until she showed them her seal.
She settled into a nearly empty compartment with an odd sense of relief, squeezing her valise into the overhead rack. The train rumbled beneath her, steam flooded the tunnel, and with a lurch, they were off. Malone was removing her long cloak by the time they reached the surface and the soft glow of morning light. The sun played hide-and-seek between rows of sober pines and bursts of wide-open sky, and just as Malone would start to nod off, the sun would flash, brilliant and red against her eyelids.
As the train pulled farther from Recoletta, it shed something of the city’s atmosphere, too. The air felt lighter. Malone wasn’t sure what she was really looking forward to more: the reprieve from Recoletta or the chance to explore what she’d only glimpsed before.
The train stopped in a handful of communes along the way. Men and women loaded and unloaded crates to and from the cars in the back of the train, and yet there was more fuss than activity. More than once, she saw the train’s cargo handlers point at the cars, their bodies leaning forward and their faces reddened with the force of argument. The farmers’ responses were shrugs, folded arms, and shaking heads.
By the time the train slid to a stop in Meyerston, it was late in the afternoon. Of the handful of passengers in the car, Malone was the only one who rose. Few people traveled outside their cities, and fewer still made stops in the communes. Malone descended from the train, the wild agoraphobia that had gripped her the last time she’d been out in the open like this little more than a tingle at the base of her skull.
Commune laborers bunched around the train. Their ruddy arms gripped sacks and cart handles, and they spoke among themselves in low, conspiratorial tones. As Malone passed, their heads turned and their eyes narrowed – whether at her or at the glaring sun, she couldn’t tell, but whispers and mutters rose in her wake.
She followed a dirt path across a tree-specked field and into town. Recolettans talked about farmers as if they lived in one-room shacks and mud-thatched huts. But many of the communes were only a few hundred years younger than the cities, and each was large enough to provide food and goods for several thousand city dwellers.
Meyerston stretched out as far as Malone could see, swallowed by a copse of dark trees in one direction and rolling hills in the other. Looking at the expanse of stone, brick, and timber construction rising from the earth, she thought she could see where the town had started and how it had expanded, each new layer radiating outward like rings in a tree.
Carving space from stone and hollowing caverns under the earth – this made sense to Malone. But wrangling form from the void, taming and ordering empty space – this was an enigma.
She reached a paved plaza with roads continuing in four directions. It brought a smirk of surprise to her lips to see horse-drawn carriages not unlike the ones that plied their way along Recoletta’s subterranean streets.
Smoke curled from chimneys and dissipated in the cooling air. Malone heard all the sounds of a busy day’s final activities: neighbors and friends shouting snatches of conversation out windows and across streets, laden carts rolling by, the squeak and gush of a water pump, and a hammer cracking in a yard. And for all their familiarity, there was something perilous about them – they rose and died in the open air when they should have echoed along tunnels and caverns.
And as she continued, she caught curious, sus
picious glances from the farmers, who recognized her as an outsider. Whether it was her pallor, her dark clothes unbleached by the sun, or simply something foreign in her gait, they knew. There was always a tell.
With that thought in her mind, she followed the aging buildings toward the center of town, hoping that the protest movement’s organizers would make themselves obvious.
As Malone continued, she picked up on the current of the foot traffic – the purposeful energy of people headed toward something and the backwards glances and lowered voices of those headed away. She followed the former and proceeded down cobbled streets, straight and narrow, between the buildings, to a din of voices.
The crowd thickened, and Malone emerged into a wide plaza framed by the brick and timber faces of some of the oldest buildings she’d seen yet. The town square was packed despite its size, and when Malone felt her pulse rise, she had to check herself and remember that she hadn’t seen many gatherings this large in several months.
And when she did, it was usually a bad sign.
The onlookers faced a two-story building with a long, raised porch. Ten men and women stood on it, looking back at the crowd. The eldest of the group lingered at the front of the porch, his rounded paunch brushing the railing as he leaned against it.
Yet as he talked, his fingers drummed the railing and smoothed back his cotton-white hair. He had been pushed to the forefront by circumstance, necessity, or his fellow communers. But he clearly had not chosen the position at the front of the railing.
Malone paid attention to his words.
“You said you wanted a change. You wanted our grievances brought before the cities. I remember – I counted the votes thrice. And so that’s what we’ve done. We’ve sent a letter to Recoletta, and now it falls on the city to respond.”
A voice from the middle of the crowd called back. “I can tell you how they’ll respond, Callo.”
An agitated murmur rippled through the crowd, and Callo raised his hands for silence. It took several seconds, and while the whispers and grumbles slowly faded, one of the men behind Callo shifted, his arms crossed.
