Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  “Not my usual drop,” he said, regarding his own glass as if someone had filled it while his back was turned, “but I wanted you to have some, as well. You always did prefer a nice red to the harder stuff.” Looking up at her through his eyelashes, he sounded like he was reminding her of this.

  Jane picked up her glass, which he was watching intently. It wasn’t a proper wine glass, but rather a tall, narrow water tumbler, thick as an old man’s eyeglasses. Under his hungry, hopeful gaze, she took a sip, forcing her lips into a smile as she swallowed.

  If she’d just demonstrated that the wine wasn’t poison, he couldn’t have looked more relieved. “Feels so nice to have a good time again,” he said, leaning back against his pillows.

  The only thing worse than letting him continue would be bringing him down too hard. She remembered rough nights that had turned to rougher weeks, back in Recoletta when their respective situations had felt less dire.

  So she laid her hand on his arm and spoke in the low, soothing voice one might use to coax a frightened animal. “Tell me what happened today, Freddie. We can talk it out.” She was already eyeing the wine bottle, wondering how she could sneak it away from him and whether he was still sober enough to note its absence.

  “Don’t sound so serious,” he said. “I got this so we can celebrate.” He grinned like a fool before she could prod him further. “I got a job,” he said, whispering as if at the most monumental of secrets.

  Jane had already forgotten about that element of her morning carriage ride with Lady Lachesse. In fact, most of the day prior to her meeting with the Qadi had slipped from her mind, but in all fairness, she couldn’t have imagined that Lady Lachesse could respond so quickly.

  The thought gave her pause.

  But Fredrick evidently mistook her hesitation. “I did so. And it’s a perfectly good job.” He turned away from her, cradling his glass against his chest as if to save it, and his dignity, from her disbelief and disapproval.

  “That’s wonderful news,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the anxiety she felt. “What is it?”

  His pout slowly puckered into a smile. “You won’t believe it.” He was clearly counting on her to. “I’m going to write. For the local paper.”

  “Freddie, that’s fantastic.”

  He winced and held up his hands. “It’s not like what I had back in Recoletta. It’ll mostly just be bulletins – the kind of thing they print and post around town to warn you about a tunnel closure or a market day or something.” The glow returned. “But it’ll be decent money. And I’ll have my ear close to the beating heart of the city – a city, anyway.”

  “I’m so proud of you.” For the first time in a long while, Jane smiled in earnest.

  He wriggled deeper into his pillows. “Anyway, that’s why I wanted us to share this.” He raised his glass and topped it off.

  Jane took another sip, tasting it for the first time. “Mmm.” It was good. Better than either of them had any need to buy. “Where did you get this?”

  “That’s the thing.” He slapped his knee. “It was waiting on the doorstep when I got home. A little congratulatory gift from the new bosses.”

  Her throat tightened mid-swallow. Fredrick was a clever man but easily distracted.

  Looking at the half-empty bottle and the ten-year-old vintage, Jane had no doubt that the gift had come from someone who knew him well enough to know his distractions.

  They finished the bottle together, and Fredrick, thankfully, did not acquire any more over the next few days. And he seemed to settle in well enough at his new job, coming home full of gossip and energy.

  Jane was glad for it, but not quite glad enough to let her guard down.

  When Lady Lachesse’s dark carriage stopped for her again, she was halfway home from a day of work at the Majlis. She was crossing one of the winding, high-ceilinged tunnels that twisted around the market. Tea stalls and sweet shops were catching their second wind while the last light of day filtered in from the great arched skylights. A row of carriages idled along the passage, but Jane felt eyes watching her from within one of them even before the door popped open.

  Jane climbed in, shutting the door behind her, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimness while the street moved beneath her.

  “If you’re going to pick me up not a stone’s throw from the market, the curtains probably aren’t necessary,” Jane said, blinking.

  “Now, Jane. It pays to take precautions where one can. You of all people should appreciate this by now.”

  Her gentle chiding reminded Jane of the wine she’d left for Fredrick, and her gut twisted.

  “Speaking of,” Lady Lachesse said, “how is our dear friend Fredrick enjoying his new job?”

  “We both appreciate that he’s happy and working,” Jane said, swallowing a hot lump of anger. “And that he’s still sober, no thanks to you.”

  Lady Lachesse feigned hurt. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “That bottle was a gift.”

  Jane couldn’t remember if everyone in Recoletta had acted so innocuously oblivious or if this had just been a tactic of the whitenails. “A gift for a borderline alcoholic?”

  “No, it was a gift for you.” Lady Lachesse’s voice sank to a low, quiet purr. “A reminder that an advantage can quickly become an affliction.”

  The hairs along the back of Jane’s neck prickled in agreement.

  “Now,” Lady Lachesse said. “Tell me what you’ve had the chance to learn.”

  Jane told her about the meeting she’d sat in on between the Qadi, Chancellor O’Brien, and Father Isse. She described the chancellor’s stewing perturbation and the understanding that had bound the Qadi and Father Isse.

  “A lovely start,” Lady Lachesse said. “I do hope you were able to find more.”

  “They’re sending a trainload of soldiers from the Hollow into Recoletta.”

  “When? And how many? I need details, child.”

  Jane had read over the pages enough times to have memorized even the deployment numbers by category. Still, Lady Lachesse wanted proof, and that was why she’d kept the papers she’d salvaged from the chancellor’s office tucked in her robes all day.

  She wanted to demand something first, but she sensed that Lady Lachesse wasn’t ready to concede anything, and Jane wouldn’t win a standoff – especially not after what the older woman had just said. So she produced the two stolen pages – the deployment numbers as well as the chancellor’s drafted reply. Lady Lachesse held the pages, as soft with wrinkles as crepe paper, pinched between her fingernails.

  “Nicely done indeed,” Lady Lachesse said after her eyes had crawled over the pages.

  And even though Jane knew that the woman’s opinion didn’t really matter, that this was, in fact, high praise from Lady Lachesse, she gritted her teeth at such a cool appraisal of her efforts.

  But as Lady Lachesse appraised the intelligence with the same cool eye, Jane came to suspect that the woman’s composure came from more than whitenail habit.

  “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you?”

  “It was just a question of when and how. So I needed details.”

  “But you’re here. In Madina,” Jane said. “What does any of this have to do with you?”

  Lady Lachesse finally peeled her eyes from the pages. “I told you, Jane. It’s about adapting.”

  “So in five days, the chancellor’s forces take the city or they don’t.” She said it as casually as if they were discussing the possible outcomes of a handball match, but her gut lurched. “Why do you care about what happens in Recoletta?”

  The whitenail laughed. “I don’t. I’m interested in the Library.”

  Jane felt a response form, fall still, and die in her mouth half a dozen times. “But I thought–”

  “That all whitenails opposed the excavation? That we’d sooner bury the whole mess again?” She clucked. “Then again, I suppose you worked below
us for too long to give us more credit.”

  “When the Qadi and her allies take Recoletta, they’ll bury the Library for sure.”

  “When they take Recoletta, they’ll realize they can’t. The only thing worse than digging it up is destroying it.” She held up one clawed hand, her nails as sharp as little daggers. “Destroy it,” she said, drawing her hand into a perilous fist, “and you show people that it was worthy of their fear. And then they begin to wonder what you’ve stolen from them.”

  “Then what happens to it?”

  “What the Qadi doesn’t yet realize is that the Library is an advantage as well as a burden.” She leaned forward, her hands clutched in her lap. “Jane, it’s one of the greatest repositories of information in the world. And information is a valuable resource.”

  Jane kept her face still as she listened.

  “But like any resource, information must be managed. Maintained. Access must be controlled, in certain cases. It must be organized and distributed in a competent fashion. And the Qadi and her allies will want to entrust that responsibility to someone they trust. Whose pedigree they know.”

  Jane blinked. “A whitenail in exile. Someone with no commitment to Sato’s other changes.”

  Lady Lachesse sat back in her bench. “Don’t sound so surprised. I was a railway baroness before the revolution, and I know how to maintain connections.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  Lady Lachesse sighed and smiled sadly. “I keep hoping you’ll learn.”

  Jane sat in silence, listening to the rattle and squeak of the carriage wheels. Finally, she said, “There was something else you were going to tell me.”

  Lady Lachesse looked up from the pages resting in her lap with her clawed hands. “About your parents.”

  “You said that they were allied with Ruthers. Until he asked something of them that was too much.”

  “They had outlived their usefulness for Ruthers. And I think they had realized – finally – that he had no real intention of advancing someone of their station. Their ambition had made them convenient tools, but he would never see them as allies.”

  As equals, Jane thought.

  “But your parents weren’t to be dissuaded. They made one last gambit, hoping to convince Ruthers that they were too resourceful to be pushed aside.” Lady Lachesse inclined her head. “And in a way, they succeeded.

  “In their dealings with Ruthers, they’d accumulated certain details about his business proceedings.” She waved a hand. “Evidence of bribes paid and received, competitors threatened, that sort of thing. They’d been prescient – or perhaps foolish – enough to keep evidence of these occurrences, so when they finally pressed Sato about their advancement and got the expected rebuff, they threatened to go public.”

  “They wanted to publish their evidence?”

  “So they claimed. Of course, the paper wasn’t willing to risk a councilor’s wrath to assist in the political maneuverings of two nobodies.” She shrugged an apology.

  “So Ruthers killed them?”

  She barked with short, staccato laughter. “Ruthers isn’t one to waste a resource. He laughed in their faces and threw them out. See, Ruthers had certain rivals in the Council. And that’s the thing about pawns. They’re easy to sacrifice.”

  The muscles of Jane’s jaw clenched.

  “Ruthers was in the on-phase of an on-and-off feud with Councilor Sato, the late father of Recoletta’s current autocrat, and he needed someone to send a message. So it was convenient, in a way, that your parents made their stand when they did.

  “Ruthers had come into possession of certain missives from Councilor Sato that proved his involvement in some rather unscrupulous dealings. Dealings that ran contrary to Ruthers’s interests. So he arranged for your parents to pass them on to an interested third party. In one move, he managed to thwart Councilor Sato’s plans and step out of the line of fire himself. When Sato’s deal went sour, questions were asked, and the fatal leak was traced back to your parents.” She folded her hands in her lap and went quiet as if that explained everything.

  The color seemed to drain out of the carriage. It could have just been the darkness from the curtains. “You’re saying that Councilor Sato killed my parents?”

  “Had them killed. But I suppose it’s a fine enough distinction.”

  “But Councilor Sato...”

  “Was the most beloved of all of Recoletta’s councilors? Was a shining beacon of goodness and light in a corrupt institution? Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Jane.” She settled further into her seat, the padded leather squeaking and sighing as she pressed her shoulders into it. “Councilor Sato was, without a doubt, the tamest of a bloodthirsty bunch. And people did love him. But not because he was all purr and no claws. He got things done, and he generally did focus on the goals that would most benefit the people of Recoletta. And he was comfortable with the cost that these ends entailed.”

  “I...” Jane swallowed. “I was told that Councilor Ruthers killed my parents.” There was a dangerous tremor in her voice, and she wasn’t sure whether it had come from anger at Ruthers, the long-dead Councilor Sato, her own foolish parents, or Roman Arnault.

  “In a way, he did. He knew perfectly well what the consequences would be.” She opened her long-nailed hands. “I’m sure that whoever gave you that version had a perfectly good reason for doing so.” A smile crept up on Lady Lachesse’s face, as slow and deliberate as a bad lie. “You seem distressed.”

  Jane looked away as her pulse filled her ears. She felt anger – at Roman for his convenient lie, at herself for believing it. At her parents, even, gone because of their own foolishness. She waited for the wave of shock with its undertow of grief, but what sorrow was there in a memory that had never been hers? She breathed the stale, overly perfumed air of the carriage and felt her lungs filled. If the past was a line stretching back to some indiscernible origin and ahead to a fixed but indeterminate point, it had just been twisted and severed. There was no blueprint behind her and no map ahead of her. She was free.

  The carriage had slowed to a halt. “Your stop, Miss Lin. Don’t forget it.”

  The needles in Lady Lachesse’s words seemed to slide off of her skin. Even as she descended from the carriage, her limbs weak and wobbly, she felt the strange enervation of adrenaline. Whatever had just been sucked from her had been replaced with something else, and as it filled and flowed within her, she would discover a strange new strength.

  As she picked her way along the darkening streets, each cobblestone felt solid and firm beneath her.

  * * *

  The restless night and the morning after Jane’s meeting with Lady Lachesse gave her anger at Roman more than enough time to simmer. It also gave her time to soak up this new feeling unfolding within her, this complacency bordering on relief that her own parents had not died martyrs, but rather as conspirators in their own scheme.

  By the time the messenger came to summon her for her meeting with Bailey, she felt as though ire and sweat had sloughed off some old, fragile layer of herself.

  She followed the messenger along a route that was beginning to grow familiar. Even though the Qadi had told her that she and Bailey would have a new message to deliver to Roman Arnault, the memory of her theft from the chancellor’s office hung about her like an odor. She couldn’t shake the fear that someone would have sniffed out her guilt.

  By the time they reached the back exit and its bay of carriages, Jane was thoroughly mired in the many concerns racing around in her head. Were it not for the attendant in the corner of her eye, she would have run into the man gliding toward them. As it was, she saw the attendant gracefully dodge to one side as the doors to the alley swung open, and she was just quick enough to follow him.

  She looked up in time to see Father Isse, his dark eyes shining behind his spectacles and his cassock wrapping his slender body like a funeral shroud. He seemed to be looking at her, but he passed as quickly as a morning fog. Se
conds later, she and the attendant were in the alley where Bailey waited. The air was heavy with the fumes and fury of an unfinished argument.

  Jane’s stomach turned to ice. She didn’t dare ask Bailey what he and Father Isse had been discussing, but the question quickly began gnawing at her.

  Before she could wonder further, Bailey waved at the carriage behind him. “Let’s go,” he said. “It wouldn’t be hospitable of us to keep Sayidh Arnault waiting.”

  They climbed into the carriage, which rattled and bounced on the way to the main streets.

  “I understand that you met with the Qadi and her associates recently,” he said. Gone was his usual veneer of politeness.

  “Yes.”

  He grunted. “Then you know what we’re to offer this time. Not that it needs to be said, but we won’t mention the presence of the chancellor or Father Isse. All Mr Arnault needs to know is what we’re offering. Understood?”

  She nodded.

  “Excellent.” His piece said, Bailey settled into his seat and did an admirable job of pretending that Jane did not exist.

  When they arrived at the meeting house, another carriage was already waiting. Jane followed Bailey into the house to find Roman in the same seat he’d taken last time, his back to them.

  “Mr Arnault,” Bailey said, working his way around the clunky consonants with surgical precision. “So good to see you.”

  Roman rose, giving Bailey a small nod. He only glanced at Jane. “Good as always of you to extend your hospitality.”

  Jane followed Bailey around to their seats. Strangely, as she looked at Roman, she felt only a dull echo of the rage she’d experienced earlier.

  “Please,” Bailey said, gesturing at Roman’s chair as he sat. “You have had the chance to discuss our previous terms with Sato?”

  Jane pulled out her notepad and pen and began writing.

  Roman shifted his bad leg. “You mean the suggestions that we allow one of your people to sit in on all of our internal meetings and compile comprehensive statistics on the inner workings of Recoletta? I mentioned them to Sato, and he reacted about like you would imagine.”