Cities and Thrones

by Carrie Patel

  Covas’s lip twitched. “That a fact.”

  “Just like you said. This was only ever about Sato.”

  Malone watched as Covas slowly lowered her weapon. Her men did the same.

  Sato’s blood spilled into a widening pool on the floor. Outside, the fires burned on.

  * * *

  Jane was separated from Roman for the train ride to Recoletta. When the train finally rolled to a stop in a wrecked station, she was dragged out to follow Ruthers’s honor guard along the outskirts of the Vineyard to Dominari Hall. Recoletta seemed strange and unfamiliar, though perhaps not as much as she’d expected. In her absence, her imagination had constructed impossible new landscapes from the rumors and fables she’d heard of Recoletta’s famine, chaos, and ruin. In the end, all she saw was a tired and half-deserted city.

  The trip was brief but tense. Most of Sato’s troops were rumored to have followed him to the Library, and those that remained were spread thin around the city. The civilians seemed to have taken shelter in their homes.

  Once in Dominari Hall, she and Roman were separated again, and she was locked away in a small office that had been cleared of all but a few chairs and a desk that must have been too heavy to move. It worried her, but she realized that what frightened her most was being tucked away with no clue as to what plans were being made, what outcomes discussed.

  Roman’s fate, at least in the near term, seemed clear. Ruthers would secure him somewhere to keep him safe and out of trouble until they could travel to the vault. Despite the older man’s previous threat, Jane didn’t think he’d run the risk of killing Roman until he’d gotten what he needed.

  Her future, however, was uncertain. At any rate, she was beyond hoping for reciprocal mercy from Ruthers.

  Several quiet hours blended together and brought no change – no interrogations, no guards, not even the sound of stray footsteps outside her door. Jane began to think she’d been forgotten, that Ruthers and Roman had moved on to the vault and simply left her there.

  When the door to her room finally opened, the last person she expected to see was Freddie.

  She blinked, saying nothing, certain that he’d somehow been brought to join her as a captive. But he opened the door wider and motioned for her to follow him out.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” she asked, following.

  “Nice to see you, too,” he said. “Now hurry up before we both get stuck in here.”

  She followed him into a hall and around a corner. There were no guards to be seen, but she didn’t dare speak until Freddie had led them into a narrow servants’ corridor and sighed more dramatically than was strictly necessary.

  “Should be safe enough here for us to catch our breath,” he said.

  “What are you talking about? And how did you get here?”

  He sighed again, as if she were being impossibly stupid. “Please. I heard the newsroom rumors about two Recolettan prisoners before you’d even left town.”

  “But that doesn’t explain–”

  Fredrick rolled his eyes. “Just back the way we came. Except I hopped a train this time.” He leaned in. “I told you that was faster.”

  “And no one stopped you on the way in?”

  “The point is to avoid Ruthers’s men, not to ask them for a proper welcome,” Fredrick said.

  “I know! I just…” She took a deep breath. “I’m happy to see you.”

  “Likewise. But consider this me returning the favor from all those months ago. In the future, we’ll both try to avoid these situations.”

  “Fine,” Jane said, at last feeling the first warm stirrings of relief.

  “Now, let’s get out of here. Should be able to head back this way,” he said, turning deeper into the servants’ corridor.

  But as she lingered there, she felt the walls of the corridor suddenly tight around her. From where she stood, the torchlit corridor seemed to terminate in a dead end. “Where are we going?” Jane asked.

  “I told you, back this way. It was mostly clear when–”

  “No, I mean when we get out of Dominari Hall. Where can we go? Back to Madina? To our old apartments here?”

  “We can worry about that when we’ve gotten away from this place,” he said, irritation creeping into his voice.

  Her objections caught in her throat, and she followed him further down the hall, swallowing her misgivings.

  They turned a corner and came to a door. Fredrick nudged it open and peered out, cursing.

  “What is it?” Jane asked, already guessing.

  “Guards. They weren’t there before.” As if it made any difference now.

  “So what now?”

  “Uh, back. The way we came.” He scratched his head. “There’s a flight of stairs from this tunnel, but they only lead further down.”

  In other words, deeper into Dominari Hall.

  They scurried through the corridor and back to the hallway where Freddie had first appeared, and when he peeked through the door and stiffened, Jane knew what he saw.

  “More guards,” he said. “And from the looks of things, they’ve found your room.”

  “The stairs, then,” Jane said, already turning back to the tunnel.

  Fredrick winced. “But that’ll only take us–”

  “We’ve got no choice.”

  They headed back to the middle of the corridor, where a wide set of stairs led to the lower levels and main offices of Dominari Hall.

  The next floor down seemed quiet. The torchlit corridor continued on in both directions, but Jane saw a door only a dozen feet to her left, and she turned towards it.

  “Wait,” Fredrick said, his hand on her shoulder. “Let me take a look first.”

  It didn’t seem to matter which of them did it, but she was too tired to argue, and so she stepped back. He eased the door open and looked around. “Looks clear,” he said. “I’m going to see–”

  A noise like thunder sounded from within the room. It was so loud and so unexpected that Jane at first didn’t know what to make of it.

  But Fredrick’s knees buckled and he fell forward, and she understood.

  Instinctively, she ducked. Voices shouted from the other end of the room. It was too dark for her to see where they were coming from, but they sounded like they were still a dozen yards away.

  She looked at the motionless body in the doorway that her brain only dimly registered as Fredrick. She fled.

  Jane ran back to the stairwell and took the steps two and three at a time. She had no thought of where she was going, just somewhere away from Fredrick and their attackers.

  She turned into another corridor on a lower level and stopped long enough to catch her breath. Voices echoed down to her from two floors up, muffled and distorted.

  Jane took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to focus on escape.

  There was another door at the end of this corridor, not far. She reached it with quick, soft steps and put her ear to it. Silence.

  She hesitated, but only a moment. The noises two floors up had shifted from arguing voices to pounding feet.

  She cracked the door and peered into a hall much like the one she’d left. It looked deserted. There was nothing to do but go.

  Jane turned into the hall and eased the door shut behind her. The space felt too wide and too open, and a feeling of vulnerability prickled at her from all sides. She moved forward in an awkward, halting manner, caught between competing urges to run and to crouch and hide. But gaslights bounced off of clean, white tiles, casting no shadows.

  A set of double doors huddled in a nearby alcove. Jane had turned the knob before she could stop herself, and so she froze, gripping the polished brass and waiting for someone to descend on her.

  But no one did. When she finally worked up the nerve to ease the door open, she found nothing but a dark and empty office on the other side.

  She took a deep breath and vowed to be more careful.

  Jane continued on to another set of doors. This tim
e, she noticed a keyhole, yawning and lined with brass. With a final glance down the hall, she knelt and peered inside.

  The keyhole gave her a surprisingly clear view of the room beyond. Like the last, it was mostly dark – only a few scattered radiance stones showed her the outline of chairs and a long, rectangular meeting table. She was sorely tempted to seek safety inside, but she didn’t need a place to hide. She needed a way out.

  Jane looked down the hall, which turned a sharp corner four doors away. It was certainly no worse than any other option.

  She continued onward with only the briefest glances at the doors she passed.

  Just as she was about to turn the corner, she heard a cough. Looking to her left, she noticed light spilling from beneath the final door. With a silent gasp, she flew around the adjacent corner and waited, listening.

  She heard nothing else. She wondered if she’d imagined the noise.

  After several seconds of waiting, her curiosity got the better of her. Perhaps it was unnecessary, but a part of her wanted to know it was nothing. Peace of mind suddenly felt like a precious commodity.

  Jane shimmied back along the wall and knelt in front of the door, gazing through the keyhole.

  The room was empty – no desk, no chairs, no carpet – except for a man.

  Roman sat on the floor, his legs crossed and his wrists manacled together. He raised his head and looked up, not quite at her but close enough to pretend.

  Something – bitter anger or bitter relief – warmed behind her eyes. She shook with a sudden, unexpected sob and raised her hand to the doorknob.

  And stopped. And watched.

  Roman’s hair hung about his shoulders, loose and unkempt. Behind it was a purpling eye, and beneath it a jacket ripped at the shoulders.

  She had no key for the door, no pick for his manacles, and nothing for the small army that encircled them both. He was still trapped, and she was just as alone.

  Jane heard a small ruckus from further down the hall, back in the direction of the servants’ corridor she’d left. She hurried back around the corner, her steps swift and silent.

  The hall emptied into a lobby of sorts, a spacious rectangular room paneled with painted wood and portraits of long-dead councilors. It sprouted broad hallways in front of and behind her and two narrower halls on either side. She took a left into one of the small hallways and away from the curve of her own.

  She was beginning to realize that Dominari Hall was bigger than she’d thought. She missed the familiar, labyrinthine corridors of the Majlis. At least there she’d had the benefit of a disguise.

  As she turned into yet another paneled hallway, she realized she had little idea of where she was going and no clue as to whether it led out of or deeper into Dominari Hall.

  The other notion that struck her was the stark absence of guards. It felt almost as if the place were deserted.

  That meant two things, she realized. First, she stood a better chance of escape than she’d thought. Second, if Ruthers’s forces were limited, they were likelier than not to have clustered near the exits and the main thoroughfares.

  It at least gave her a place to start.

  Jane crept back towards a wider corridor and realized that she could hear the moderately distant sounds of activity through the walls – the low murmurs of conversation, the muffled clatter of feet. She followed the sounds.

  A few more halls and a flight of stairs later, she found herself outside a winged gallery lined with fluted columns. It certainly seemed like a way out.

  No sooner had she gotten a good look at the place than she heard footsteps echoing toward her. She retreated back around a corner and into an alcove and waited.

  Eventually, the melody of distorted voices joined the slow cadence of footsteps. Jane waited and listened, and as the patrol drew nearer to the end of the gallery, their shadows growing and solidifying on the wall opposite Jane, the voices resolved into fragments of a conversation.

  “…doing here,” one voice muttered.

  “Orders of the chancellor himself,” said another. “I don’t question those.”

  The two men’s voices were thick with the brogue of the Hollow, but Jane had heard enough of the accent by now to discern their conversation well enough.

  “I’m not questioning the orders, just the intent,” said the first man. “What does the chancellor – or either of the other two, for that matter – want with this Ruthers character?”

  “Someone to clean this place up,” the other man said, his shadow flickering against the wall. “You saw it on the way in.”

  “And I also saw how few of us the chancellor sent. Barely enough to hold this place.”

  “Because there’s no one to hold it from. That Sato character ran and hid in the Library. Besides,” the second man said as both turned the corner. “Our friend here. What’s his name.”

  “Ruthers.”

  Jane circled behind the marble pedestal as the two guards drew nearer.

  “Ruthers didn’t want this to look like some foreign invasion. Not after Sato’s foreign invasion.”

  “Speaking of the man, where is he? Ruthers, I mean.”

  “Holding court somewhere on the top floor. A few of his old cronies wanted to congratulate him on getting his old job back and see if they could get theirs. That’s what I heard, anyway,” said the second man.

  “And I’ll bet you he’s handing those jobs out like candy, if only to make sure that he’s got enough support to keep his.” The first speaker paused as two sets of footsteps passed Jane’s position. “Which brings me back to my first question.”

  “When’s dinner?”

  “No. Why do our chiefs care one way or the other about this guy?”

  “Let’s just finish the round. Right now, all I’ve got room to think about is dinner.”

  Jane listened to their footsteps recede down the hall and around another corner before daring a peek from her hiding place. When she saw the way was clear, she hurried back to the gallery.

  An idea was forming in her mind. Not quite a plan, but the outlines of one. She only hoped it would take shape while there was still time to act.

  She scuttled along through the wings of the gallery, and by the time she emerged on the other side, the sounds of a gathering were clear enough. Something down the main hall and off of yet another tributary corridor. It was easy enough to avoid.

  There was open space up ahead. A wide lobby with a grand stairwell if she was even half lucky. As a lifelong city dweller, she could feel the subtle changes in the shape of a space in the drafts on her skin.

  But there were voices, and they were headed toward her.

  She ducked into a room on her right – she didn’t have time to check it first.

  Jane found herself enveloped in darkness. She backed away from the door and into a closet as the voices drew closer, passed outside the door, and moved on. Only when they faded to a distant echo did she feel herself breathe again.

  Jane stepped out of the closet and took stock of her surroundings. The faint light of radiance stones showed her an office that had been commandeered for haphazard storage – crates were clustered in one corner of the room, and jackets, belts, and other fragments of uniforms had been strewn across a long desk.

  As she moved toward the door, something gleamed atop one of the gray jackets. She looked again and saw a gun.

  It was a revolver, dull chrome with dark wood stocks. It felt heavy in her hands, yet the weight was somehow familiar.

  She took it and tucked it away, not yet certain what she could even use it for but feeling that it would be foolish to pass it up.

  Jane left her hiding spot and moved back toward the lobby. Just as she’d hoped, the wide arms of a grand staircase opened around her as if in greeting. She took the steps two at a time and almost cried with relief when a wide, carpeted hallway – one she recognized from her last and only visit to Dominari Hall – stretched out before her.

  She was so close to esc
ape. She had to will herself to keep from breaking into a sprint. If there were guards anywhere, they were bound to be here.

  Sure enough, she heard more footsteps approaching the bend in the hall, and she ducked through an open doorway.

  The sound faded more quickly than she’d expected, and it was only then that she stopped to take stock of her surroundings.

  The office was larger than the last few she’d been in, with a soaring ceiling, lush carpets, and curtained windows that looked out onto a small atrium. The gas lamps were turned up, and, more concerning, a leather briefcase sat open next to the desk.

  There was another doorway at the far end of the office. A more inconspicuous exit, perhaps. She eased the door behind her closed and hurried towards it.

  She reached the door only to find herself face to face with Councilor Augustus Ruthers.

  He smiled.

  “You have an uncanny way of showing up at the most interesting times,” he said.

  Jane backed away, tingling with fear, confusion, and a bizarre sense of déjà vu.

  “I’m afraid you won’t get out that way,” he said, tilting his head back at the door behind him. “Though I am curious to hear how you got this far.”

  Jane knew whitenails well enough to hold her tongue until he’d gestured at her with one long-nailed hand.

  “Carefully,” she said.

  He laughed, his lined face strangely fierce. “You’ve proven most surprising. You can’t imagine my shock when I learned that you’d wormed your way into the Qadi’s confidences.” He sauntered over to the desk. “You may as well sit.”

  She did.

  “Then again,” he said, “you managed to do the same with my nephew.”

  “Nephew,” Jane said, feeling something begin to boil inside her. “You mean the man you’ve betrayed and imprisoned here.”

  Ruthers scowled. “He was the one who betrayed me for Sato. You should remember that much.”

  “He’d never use anyone the way you’re using him now,” Jane said.

  “My, but you put such trust in that man.”