Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  “You’ve found other protectors since then.”

  He grinned. “The Bricklayer’s been doing your job for you lately. And if he finds out that you’re doing favors for this one,” he said, jerking his chin at Dalton, “I’m afraid you’ll regret it very much.”

  Malone dragged a stumbling Dalton forward, and the crowd parted around them, still watching warily. The mob was already loosening ahead of her, its invisible connective tissue stretching and warping as people gave up on the spectacle and resumed their march to the factory districts. Malone didn’t slow and didn’t look back until she heard the dull thud of hundreds of footsteps receding into the distance. Dalton was either too bruised, stunned, or scared to speak.

  They rounded a corner, and Malone pushed Dalton face-first against a veranda wall, grabbing an extra set of cuffs from her belt as he groaned. She twisted his arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists together. “If I don’t see Farrah and the others when we get to the safe house, I really may hand you over to the mob.”

  He said nothing as she yanked him after her. The idea that she should send for help to deal with the mob vexed her like an unreachable itch. Even if she hadn’t had Dalton to deal with, there weren’t enough police to keep a night shift, and Sato had Covas’s forces stationed around the borders. By the time she rousted help, the rampaging whitenails would have finished their work, anyway. And so the factory districts would burn tonight, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  The thought hollowed her out. She chewed on it, turning it over in her mind. She was so distracted at first that she didn’t notice the trail of leaflets that papered the street, trampled and mottled so that in the near-darkness, they almost blended in with the cobblestones. She picked one up, examined it, and tucked it into her coat.

  As they reached the quiet outskirts of the Vineyard, Malone tied a plain black blindfold around Dalton’s head and pulled his hat low. She kept a firm grip on his arm, steering him around rubble and over rough, broken paving stones. The longer they walked, the more unnecessary the blindfold seemed – between the gates torn from their hinges and the crude fortifications piled around other verandas, the place was almost unrecognizable. The fine marble verandas looked as if they’d been plopped into the dark, deserted streets of the factory districts.

  To Malone’s surprise, she found Arnault’s address easily enough. She circled and backtracked a few times, watching for signs of anyone lurking nearby and enjoying Dalton’s obvious confusion. Besides, something about the meticulousness of the ritual calmed her nerves and slowed her breathing after the ordeal with the mob.

  When she was satisfied, she rang the bell at the veranda gate. She didn’t have to wait long for Arnault to appear.

  A door creaked open somewhere below them, and Arnault ascended the stairs from the residence to the veranda in long, smooth strides. His face was motionless, but the upper lip gleamed with sweat in the glow of his lantern.

  “They’re fine,” he called down the stairs, opening the gate of the sleek black veranda. He fastened four different latches once they were through and leaned a scuffed slab of plywood against the gate.

  “The most important defense,” he said, catching Malone’s gaze.

  “What’s that?”

  “Camouflage.”

  Dalton snickered.

  “You first,” Arnault said, holding the lantern aloft at the head of the steep staircase.

  They proceeded down the stairs. The door was open, and the other three Revisionists huddled in a circle of chairs in the drawing room, looking like children awaiting punishment.

  “About time.” Farrah swept in from another room, her cheeks puffed with relief. She glared at Dalton while Arnault engaged the door with a noisy and extensive combination of bolts and keys. “I hope you’re worth the trouble,” she said.

  “I hope you don’t make more,” Arnault said. He slid a bolt with an emphatic thump.

  Parsons, Macmillan, and Cabral hid their faces behind cups of tea. Dalton looked on at their meek pleasure for several seconds. But none of his comrades spoke up, either to offer him a cup or any word of commiseration, and he finally dropped into an armchair just outside of their orbit.

  Malone surveyed the domicile. Someone – Arnault or one of the infamous looters – had stripped the place of all but the minimum comforts. The beds in the rooms along the hall, the rugs spread across the tile floors, the deeply cushioned chairs on which the Revisionists now perched – all were variously torn, stained, or worn thin. The teacups the Revisionists cradled were chipped, and the scattered furnishings – a ripped oil portrait, a broken vase, a frozen clock, and splintering dressers – wouldn’t have been worth the effort to carry into an adjacent room, let alone another domicile.

  Arnault and Farrah had seated themselves in the living room by the time Malone finished her circuit. She pulled up a chair across from the Revisionists.

  “Where should we start?” Farrah asked.

  “Or when,” Malone said. She watched the four agitators avoid her gaze and one another’s. All save Dalton seemed to understand their changing circumstances, but none wanted to turn traitor to their cause. Whatever, exactly, it might be. “Tell me what brought you together,” Malone said, feeling strangely as if she were repeating someone else’s words.

  Dalton remained silent, and Cabral and Parsons nuzzled their teacups, but Macmillan spoke up.

  “For me, it was the chaos. Sato’s invasion took us all by surprise. Most of us locked our doors and waited for the madness to end. But some people... they caught the scent of what was going on outside and it made them hungry. Doesn’t take much with some folks.” He nodded at the surface. “You saw that lot outside.”

  “I remember,” Farrah said. Her voice was quiet but firm, and Malone remembered the secondhand account she’d heard of Farrah’s long vigil just outside Chief Johanssen’s office – now her office. “The City Guard thought that the police were trying to overthrow the Council, and we thought they were just looking for an excuse to round us up and shoot us.” She paused. “But the fighting ended that night.”

  Cabral looked up and scowled. “Maybe for you.”

  “The soldiers stopped fighting,” Macmillan said. “The Municipals were decimated, and the City Guard had lost to a foe they’d never even seen. Sato’s army had officially won, but what were the thousands Sato had brought in supposed to do?”

  “Sato called his lieutenants almost as soon as he arrived in Recoletta. They were to order their squads to stand down.” Even as she said it, Malone heard the hollowness in that statement.

  “I’m sure he did,” Cabral sneered. “But they weren’t soldiers. Not in the conventional sense. He couldn’t have expected to control that many people turned loose in the city they’d just conquered.”

  Macmillan set his cup back on the table at his knees. It leaned under the added weight. “The bigger problem was the rest of Recoletta. Chaos breeds anarchy, and anarchy breeds opportunism. Even once the shape and weight of Sato’s leadership began to fill the void, he couldn’t police the entire city. Not the way his dramatic entrance had left it.”

  Malone knew that all too well.

  “Besides, some groups saw Sato’s victory as their victory.”

  Farrah folded her arms. “Let’s be clear. By ‘some groups,’ you mean the ones that came from the factory districts, right?”

  Macmillan nodded. “Primarily. At first. But those lines began to blur after a while.”

  Parsons cleared his throat and refilled his teacup while the table pitched and yawed. “They marched into the Vineyard first. Most were from the factory districts, but plenty weren’t. I don’t think they even knew what they wanted when they arrived, but they figured it out quickly enough. Money. Valuables. Violence for its own sake. Entire homes, in some cases.” He scratched an ear, and for the first time, Malone saw the burn mark that rippled the flesh of his lobe. “Some of us fought back. Some of us fled.”

  Even though Mal
one had always seen her involvement in Sato’s regime as mainly circumstantial, the four Revisionists were looking at her – and at Farrah and Arnault – as if they were somehow the avatars of this blundering injustice.

  Farrah crossed her ankles. “There were proclamations against that kind of thing. We issued them. So did Sato.” Malone heard something of her own defensiveness in Farrah’s tone.

  “And who was around to enforce them?” Cabral asked. “Besides, not much credibility in telling people to leave their neighbors alone when Sato swooped in and invaded an entire city the same way.”

  “Sato didn’t see it that way,” Malone said. She wasn’t sure if she was arguing on behalf of Sato, her own presumed allegiance to him, or the simple principle that one injustice didn’t excuse another. “He thought he was rescuing Recoletta from its illegitimate overlords, not seizing it for himself.”

  “That’s always been his problem,” Arnault said from his seat just over her shoulder. “He’s got one story in his mind, and it’s not the same story everyone else hears.”

  Six heads, Malone’s included, turned to regard Arnault. He only shrugged.

  Malone looked back to Macmillan. “So the underclasses took Sato’s overthrow of the Council as a license to address their own grievances against the Vineyard and its whitenails.”

  He gave her a quick, humorless smile. “That’s the funny thing about grievances, Inspector. Once you air them out, they breed and multiply. It may have started as street sweeps and factory hands against whitenails, but it came to include anyone who’d ever held an advantage over someone else. Whitenails turned on one another over generations-old grudges. The middle classes were caught at both ends.”

  “And now you’re continuing that grand tradition,” Farrah said. “Sending angry whitenails to the factory districts to finish what started there.”

  Cabral’s face reddened. “Have you listened to a word we’ve said? This goes beyond whitenails and factory workers. This is about all of Recoletta.”

  Malone pulled a rumpled leaflet out of her coat pocket and laid it on the wobbling table. Even smeared in grime from the street, the boldface print was clear enough. The slogans variously denounced Sato as a madman, an impostor, and a public menace, and those who collaborated with him were labeled traitors and opportunists.

  “You can’t blame that on us,” Dalton said. He sat further back in his chair as if to distance himself from any association.

  “You all printed these, didn’t you?” Malone asked. Cabral, Parsons, and Macmillan had looked away at first, but they were slowly beginning to examine the paper.

  “So?”

  “You saw them in the streets. The mob left them everywhere. They’ll probably drop them all the way to the factory districts.”

  He pointed an accusing finger at the surface. “Are you blaming that mess on us?”

  “The rioters were clearly inspired by your words. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Dalton gritted his teeth, but the other three were already looking away again, their faces darkened with recognition and chagrin. “We wanted,” he said, “to tell people the truth. About Sato. How he came to power and what he’s doing to our city.”

  “So you did,” Malone said. “And it seems people took a different message from that.”

  “But that’s not our…” The words died in Dalton’s throat with a growl of exasperation, and even he looked away.

  “This isn’t going to stop,” Malone said, surprised at the vehemence in her own voice. “Not with Sato righting old wrongs, and not with you righting his. All you’re doing is splintering your allies and creating new enemies. You’ve got to end this.” It had been a long time since she’d been this angry about anything. It felt good.

  The room fell silent for several seconds.

  Finally, Parsons spoke up. “What do you want from us?”

  “I need to meet your organizers. The Bricklayer, since you obviously know him. This Clothoe person who’s put these resources at your disposal.”

  “Very well,” Parsons said.

  Even Dalton didn’t protest.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fire

  Covas’s soldiers struck in the morning.

  Fog blanketed the outer fields, just enough to camouflage the haze of smoke. Enough of the darkness had burned off that the little tongues of flame were easily missed until it was too late.

  By the time the first cry went up from the reapers three fields away, half an acre of barley was ablaze. When they returned with shovels and field hands to dig a trench, the fire had spread. At the northern horizon, the first flames appeared amongst the hay.

  Only the work of every able-bodied man, woman, and youth saved Meyerston’s crops.

  The meeting amongst the farmers that afternoon was worse. Salazar, Callo, and the rest of the representatives stood on the porch together, much as they had days ago when they were already trying to bolster the flagging resolve of the rest of the group.

  Salazar smelled their shifting commitment like smoke on the changing winds. Before, there had only been doubt and concern. Now, many of them wanted out. Salazar could see it in their eyes, hear the apologetic defiance in their voices.

  “They called our bluff,” Sister Brody said. “We’re lucky Sato’s people burned our fields and not our homes. This was a warning.”

  Murmurs rose. Perhaps this was right.

  On the other side of the crowd, Brother Danvers added his voice to the rising swell. “It’s not worth it. If they’re willing to go this far, what else will they do?”

  The voices grew louder, arguing and speculating. Next to Salazar, Callo and the other representatives looked between one another, saying nothing.

  Salazar stepped forward, gripping the rail. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “And listen well, because it’s much worse than whatever you’re thinking.”

  The spring sun hung over the square, and the murmurs died down. Salazar waited until he knew he had their attention, until he heard nothing but the crowd’s slow, steady breathing.

  He paced the top step of the town hall. “Sato burned our fields because he’s scared. That makes him dangerous.”

  A few in the crowd glanced at one another and shuffled their feet. Salazar continued. “Sato would rather see Recoletta starve than compromise with us. He can barely keep his own city in line – there’s no chance he’ll show us mercy. He will answer any challenge, whatever the form, to his authority. He can’t afford to do otherwise.” He stopped pacing. “And if we show him any weakness, he will dig in and pry it open until he breaks us.”

  Danvers, Brody, and the rest of the doubters pursed their chapped lips.

  Jack raised his arms in an expansive shrug. “Do you think that, if we step down now, Sato will forgive and forget? Remember this: he’s not trying to make a deal with us. He’s trying to force us to submit. Sato will never bargain with us. A bargain is a compromise, a sharing of power. And if Sato shares any of his, his fragile empire will collapse beneath him.

  “He’ll bear his victory like a trophy, lest any of the poor sods in his caves get the wrong idea. He’ll double our quotas. Send his troops to occupy our homes. He’ll divide us into work camps and use our loved ones as hostages if he believes it will keep us under his heel.”

  Now, they were starting to look worried. Good.

  He spoke again while they were gripped by images of labor camps and executions, before they had a chance to return their thoughts to burned fields and marching troops.

  “The road ahead will be long and difficult. We know this. We knew it when we chose to strike. But the choice now is not between months of hardship and a return to the status quo, but between months of hardship and years of slavery.”

  He looked briefly over the crowd, at their wide, fearful eyes and the grim set of their mouths.

  “Philips, Vasquez, and Dormer, organize your teams and clean up that field. Widen the firebreaks around the others. We’ll hold our regularly scheduled t
own hall meeting tonight.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Consequences

  Perhaps against her better judgment, Malone had agreed to release Parsons to summon Clothoe and, if he was to be believed, the Bricklayer. It wasn’t as though he could just pick them out of a crowd – there were certain channels, which none but a trusted associate would be allowed to pass through. It was a risk, but the other three Revisionists had agreed to stay readily enough (actually, Cabral and Macmillan had agreed to stay, and they’d silenced a grumbling Dalton). And, to her greater surprise, neither Farrah nor Arnault had objected.

  Realistically, they didn’t have much choice.

  So Malone, Arnault, and Farrah had left the other three locked in the safe house and allowed Parsons to disappear into the night, hoping they wouldn’t return to find their remaining leads gone.

  But Malone remembered their uneasy silence after the mob, and she had seen the looks on their faces as she’d described Sato’s latest developments. They were running out of options, too, and they knew it.

  Now, she found herself in an anxious lull. There was nothing to do but wait for Parsons to surface. Sato had disappeared immediately after the Cabinet meeting three days ago, and she’d heard no sign of him since. There was news that a squad under Covas’s command had set fire to one of the farming communes, but it seemed impossible to get details from anyone but Covas herself, who was nowhere to be found.

  All anyone in Recoletta cared about was that Madina’s trains were bringing rations to make up for the lack from the communes.

  Yet beneath the uneasy wait, Malone felt the little tremors that warn of an earthquake, saw people moving around her like pieces on a game board.

  She focused her restless, nervous energy on churning through the stacks of reports on her desk. She and Farrah had said almost nothing to one another all day, and so she was surprised when the other woman walked into her office with a folded square of paper and a nervous expression.