Lament for the Afterlife

by Lisa L. Hannett

  Huffing, thighs burning, he scrambles through the archive, heading for a ramp he can no longer see. The women circle, call out, close in.

  “En’t in maps ‘o’ the world,” he hears, close, too close. “Got a blink on him, Cora?” too close “Lamps low,” someone else says, further back, thank fuck, off to the right; maybe four, maybe five o’clock. “—run to ground.”

  Have to get higher, Peyt thinks, just as his boots clang too loud, too loud onto a tinny surface. Around him, the women instantly hush.

  “Got a blink on him, Dee Dee?” asks the far voice, after a second or two.

  Totally blind, Peyt reaches out with fingers stretched, willing them to come in contact with a shelf to climb. He lifts and sets his feet down in slow-motion. Slow and quiet. Reach and stretch.

  “Got a blink on him, Yvie?”

  Reach and step and inch and splay and—

  “Over here.”

  —Peyt brushes against a barrier, cold and smooth as veneer.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  Lantern light approaches as Peyt frantically soft-pats the wall—it has to be a wall—trying to find a corner, a way around. Too fast, too fast, blackness retreats from his hands. Searching a couple feet to the left, he butts into another wall. He turns around and paces into a third. I’m in a cupboard, he thinks, turning again. Gloom sharpens into lines. A brass railing emerges at waist height. Angles cast inwards through two sliding doors, both stuck half-open. Outside, the shadows dance.

  Wedging himself into a corner, Peytr presses against a panel of rounded buttons that click and creak when he moves. Choking back a whimper, he balls up on the floor.

  “Got a blink on him, Mireille?”

  Peyt’s teeth chatter, though he shoves his knuckles between them and bites hard. Mouth open, he drools so they won’t hear him swallow. Hollows his throat and breathes in slow, hot waves, wishing he could stop breathing altogether. When the gap between doors glows an old summer yellow, Peyt crams himself hard into the shadows. Closes his eyes to hide their shine, scrubbing the wet from his sockets.

  “Mireille?”

  The woman’s soles are supple leather, softly padding across the tiles. An intense patch of whitered swings close, too close, in and out and back in again, shifting the darkness behind Peyt’s lids. The lantern gutters; its oil smells like burnt plastic and pine. The light dims, retreating, but Peyt is sure she’s still there. He can hear leaves of air blooming on each branch of her lungs. The sneer on her face as she smells ammonia. The stew decomposing in her belly. Eggs jostling their way into her womb. Her heart squeezing life out of liquid. Rich rivers coursing through her veins. He can hear her confidence, her cunning. The bullets forming on her tongue.

  I’m sorry, he thinks, biting, tasting blood.

  Make it quick.

  “Renaissance to Reformation: all clear,” she says, loud and near.

  Peyt’s head jerks up.

  That voice.

  Peering through his lashes, he sees her silhouette, outlined through the gap in the doors. Slender hips, broad shoulders. A scarf slumped round her neck. Hair wisping in a vibrant hurricane ’wind. It’s her, he thinks. Mireille. Chest throbbing, he misses what she says next but recognises the timbre, the cadence of her instructions.

  “Head for the Mount,” she calls, her light hazing, then winking out of sight.

  Peyt listens, poised to flee. The Mount, he thinks. The ramp of debris. Who was she talking to? Them? Or me? Sweat trickles down his spine, sogging his shirt. His pants are clinging, reeking. His palms are too slippery for climbing. Carefully, he peels off his jacket, wipes his face and hands, then goes to scrunch it into his—

  Fuck.

  The satchels, his ruck—Peyt’s fuckin’ left them upstairs. At the entrance. All his deliveries. The food. The shirt Esther gave him. His grenades. He’s fuckin’ lost them. Lamps flicker past, twice, three more times, as Peyt’s guts burn. Words roil against his scalp, scratching and gouging, stinging horse-flies of regret. In the dark, he lowers his hood, gives his thoughts free rein. They clatter overhead like pebbles tossed at a window, seeking attention, ready to break. By the time his legs are too numb to support him, the women’s voices have dwindled, the search party called off. Still he waits. Flopped on his side, he pummels feeling back into his muscles. Points and flexes his feet. Gets on all fours. When his ears ring with silence, he takes a deep breath. Crawls out into the dark.

  Gripping his jacket in one hand, Peytr stands, bracing himself against the elevator’s cold metal doors as he tries to get his bearings. Three streaks of grey illuminate shelves and cabinets in the distance before him, but he can’t remember which hole he fell through. Can’t tell if it was any of these. Reaching back, he finds the wall. He stretches his arm out to the left. Changes his mind. Didn’t he come from the right? Before he has a chance to decide, Peyt is blinded by a lantern’s glare.

  “Turn around.”

  Peyt squints, blinks water down his cheeks. Light flares in his vision, starbursts of brightness that sparkle on his lenses, on shelf fronts, on the trickle of piss on his boots. Perched on a low pedestal across from the lift, the woman is a perfect statue. An ancient idol, saint of the lost and directionless. One hand raised, holding a lamp. The other gripping a sword, the blade’s tip pointing out a path through the dark.

  “Go that way. The Mount’s forty paces past the armoires.”

  Fierce. Peytr stares, his legs refusing to move. Thoughts scattered, uncontained. Strong jaw… . Sharp nose… . A hawk… . A hunter… . ’Wind pulsing to the beat of his heart. I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead… . The moment stretches as he guesses her age. Eighteen? Twenty? Younger, he thinks, than she acts.

  “Mireille,” he says, and she scowls at her name. Thank yyyyyyyy …

  Her scowl deepens.

  “We’re even,” she says, shooing him with her weapon. “For yesterday.”

  “The girl,” Peyt says, picturing her little foot near-stepping on the landmine. Her little foot shackled to the balustrade. He takes a step forward. “Tessa? I didn’t mean to scare—”

  “Don’t make me scream,” Mireille says. Muscles twitching in that strong jaw, clenching and unclenching. “I’m serious. Get out of here. Now.”

  Peyt drops his jacket. Gaze locked on Mireille’s, he can’t bend to pick it up again. Not without losing focus.

  “Keep it,” he says, though he’s already shivering. “For the girl.” Then he digs in his pants pocket, pulls out a sodden rosette. “And this, I think, is for you.”

  Mireille sniffs, her beak sharpening into a sneer. “Just go.”

  For three days, Peytr tries to find new satchels to match the ones he’s lost. He’s got no idea where the Pigeon got those shoulder bags in the first place—their straps the perfect length, the packs sectioned and lined with perfect pockets—but he guesses the place is long gone to the greys. After mucking old Jeharl’s goat pens, cleaning turnips for Mischa and polishing a trove of stainless steel for the Wintersons—who were richer and so stingier than most—Peyt earns just enough at the night markets to buy equipment that simply doesn’t compare. The tanners’ leather is cracked, thin, the wrong colour. The dressmakers’ cloth is too flimsy. He doesn’t have time for dump-binning in the hopes of turning up something good—every hour off the route is another meal missed, far as Peyt’s concerned—and though the general outfitters clean their wares before putting them out on the rack, they still have the reek of dead evacs on them. And nowadays no one makes canvas as sturdy as the stuff Jean found, ages ago, when she stitched Peyt’s rucksack together. No one makes them, like she did, to measure.

  Shame to waste all that fine work.

  Outside the museum, he watches the boltholes from daybreak until well past noon. None of the women emerge. No ghosts flit in the fossil garden. No greys slink around corners or hide under arches and buttresses. No little girls make mud castles in the square. Once the sky darkens from pewter to slate, Pe
yt sneaks up to the building. He edges along the foundations, finds the same rupture as before. Crouched next to it, he steadies himself and listens.

  Wind ruffles his hair, sends his thoughts scouting ahead. A plastic bag scritches into the breach; it snags on an exposed iron strut, then crinkles and flaps an irregular rhythm. Water drips—somewhere. Nearby. From a cache, he thinks. Not a rainpipe. It hasn’t rained in months.

  Craning his neck, Peyt shifts closer. Peers around blasted bricks and rough stone. On the landing, his bootprints have been scuffed clean, erased by the passing of many feet. A small brass key sits on the threshold, its teeth blunt from use. Peyt picks it up. Looks, listens. He tilts his head, strains for whispers, for hammers being cocked. Last time, could he hear the hum of flies right away? The din of mothers? The children laughing, playing, crying? The rasp of blades on whetstones? He doesn’t know. Can’t remember.

  Inside, the museum sounds cold.

  The fires are banked, the embers grey. Spits and pots and jump-ropes have vanished. Weaponry cabinets are cleaned out. Barrows have been filled and rolled. Beds are nothing but rectangular gaps in the dust.

  All the ghosts have now gone, except one.

  Chained to the banister, she’s curled on the floor. Lying on her side, knees drawn up, arms splayed. Wearing nothing but a shackle and the coat Peyt gave her. A frown. Where it’s not scratched and bruised, her skin is pale clay. A pool of blood has dried beneath her temple and cheek. The proud beak of her nose is mashed, off-kilter, crusted with black-red. It whistles faintly when she inhales.

  Her wordwind is faint. Drowsy. Letters float and fall on her head like ash.

  Mireille. He runs to her, kneels by her side. Unsure if he’s spoken aloud, he repeats her name. When he opens his mouth, her ’wind fluctuates. Her nightmares snag on his tongue. Spitting and coughing, Peyt inches back, staying close enough to touch. He jams his hands under his arms.

  A sour fug wafts off her, ripe as the herdboys. Musk and crevices and stale onions and shit. She smells, Peyt thinks, like the trench.

  “Mireille,” he says, staring at his jacket, on her.

  Slowly, her lids peel apart.

  “Mireille, I’m sorry.”

  “Save your sorrow,” she whispers, then licks her cracked lips. “Give me your water.”

  “Right.” He jumps up and runs over to the entrance. Flexing his hands, relaxing them. The bags, thank fuck, are still there. He rummages in the ruck until he hears muffled sloshing, then dashes back to Mireille. Puts the canteen where she can reach it.

  “Thirteen seconds,” she says. “Plenty of time.”

  Peyt smiles. Can’t help it. He smiles at her gumption, her practical nature. Is she ghost or grey? Or neither. Maybe this one’s neither.

  “What are you?” he asks, just to be sure.

  Mireille swallows twice then breathes, twice more, then speaks, as if following a set pattern.

  “A traitor, apparently,” she says between gulps. Almost as bitter as she is exhausted. “And you—”

  Peyt shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No.”

  “—are a soldier?”

  She’s thumbing a white cross painted on the green bottle. While she takes another swig, Peyt thinks for a minute. Which is more reassuring—a man who carries the dead, or one who carries their parcels?

  Grey or ghost?

  “Field medic,” he says at last. “Red star. I can set that.” He gestures at the mess of her nose. “If you want. You know, so it won’t heal crooked. Can’t do much for your mouth, though. Sorry.”

  He winces when she says, “Stop apologising.”

  “Sorry.”

  Easing herself upright, Mireille grimaces but doesn’t cry out. She grits her teeth and keeps pushing until she’s vertical. The jacket hangs loosely from her shoulders, sagging open where buttons are missing. Revealing a scarred belly and small breasts. Spilling into her lap, hiding nothing. “The key,” she says, tonguing gaps in her teeth. “You’ve got it, haven’t you.”

  Reluctantly, Peyt nods.

  “Well.” Mireille’s breath catches. Lips trembling, she swallows hard. “You know how these things work. Finders keepers.”

  Peytr closes his eyes and thinks, This can’t be real.

  Ghost or grey?

  “I’m sorry.”

  Grey or ghost?

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “Maybe not,” Mireille says. “But it did.”

  And when he passes the key to her shackles, the woman’s grip is solid.

  “Nothing will change unless we stop fighting amongst ourselves.”

  The senator’s voice is muffled through the thick oak door, but Euri recognises the twang Nolasco’s got to her vowels. In the corridor outside the makeshift council room, Euri pauses, hand on the brass knob, not turning. Always listen before acting, Armin had told her once, years ago. Once was enough: Euri has always been a quick study. Watch and wait, he’d said, soon after he’d become Prime Minister, long before the greys prematurely ended his term. Listen, and remember.

  Euri watches.

  She waits.

  She listens.

  “We are our own greatest enemy,” Nolasco continues. “Mark my words.”

  Grandstander, Euri thinks, picturing all the pens now forced to scratch across legal pads inside. Nolasco overuses the expression almost as badly as Yusou does—and as one of Armin’s oldest advisors, she should really know better. Yusou, at least, is new to the cabinet; stole himself a seat somehow in the reshuffle, though his disbelief is as prominent as his big rubbery lips—lips that flap far too close to the new Prime Minister’s ears, in Euri’s opinion. For weeks Nolasco and Yusou have been getting the clerks to mark their scepticism, inscribe it in ink for posterity, while the more sensible ministers—Wroe, for instance, Carrock and Talus—keep their opinions hooded. If Armin Nycene’s calculations prove accurate, if his truths, when revealed, are as effective as he’d planned all these years, it’ll be political suicide to have opposed them on record.

  Nycene’s successor understands this well. ’Windless, Prime Minister Ashtad Cardea runs no risk of imprinting anything unintentionally—a trivial reason to earn people’s trust, Euri thinks—and the woman considers her words from all sides while projecting them onto the wide glass faceplate of her helm.

  “Consider them noted, senator,” Cardea says. With the volume on her headset permanently turned low, it’s hard to hear the new PM at the best of times. On the far side of a big room, on the wrong side of a closed door, Euri now strains to catch what’s being said.

  “Time is pressing on all of us, so perhaps we can move the discussion along?” There’s a pause; Euri imagines the group shuffling their papers, signalling at mute clerks for water, asking typists to read out this line or that in the marked transcript. Doing anything but looking Cardea in the screen. One short month sitting at the head of a boardroom table does not a leader make, Euri thinks. Respect is the product of years, not days …

  “Senator Rourke,” Cardea says. “How go the ceasefire negotiations?”

  “As instructed, twenty-five mediators were despatched last week,” Rourke replies, enunciating each word carefully, slowly, to keep from stuttering. “Each carried instructions to five of our outposts before crossing into grey territory. Treating with insurgents …”

  Behind Euri, there’s a squeak of footsteps on marble tiles. She turns to see a young Pigeon squelching up the curving staircase to the second floor, water pooling around his sneakers with each step. His plaited black hair is dripping, the silver beads tipping each braid clacking together as he takes the stairs two at a time. At the landing, he stops to catch his breath. Gripping a fat brass railing that’s half-worn with a patina of palm prints, he leans over and shakes the rain from his ’wind. Yet another reason Cardea chose to meet here, Euri thinks, half-turning back to the door. After trekking up all those stairs, everyone’s too tired to cause trouble.

  Give credit where it�
��s due, Armin always said, and, yes, Euri will admit Cardea’s temporary headquarters make sense. While gov’t house is being reconstructed once again, where better to congregate than the old commonwealth bank? Even without access to the vault—no diatribe is vehement enough to blast into that steel fortress, and any keys or combinations are long lost—the building’s outer walls are solid granite, four feet thick. To help prevent theft, the architects devised complicated mosaics, pillars and embossed metal ceilings to distort mentalegraph signals, so there’s little chance deliberations will be overheard. The boardroom is tucked in the corner of a lofty gallery, high above the trading floor below. With no entrances but the one under guard behind Euri, no access to the second floor other than this one grand staircase, and no reason for anyone who isn’t invited to come up here, the bank is an ideal substitute parliament building.

  “… to replace the ones who haven’t returned. Thus far, what responses we have received from the front are as the Prime Minis—Pardon me, Your Honour—I should say, they are much as Armin Nycene predicted they would be. Our ambassadors weren’t shot off the field, which is promising, but no real discussions were had. If I can be frank”—Rourke pauses, waiting for Cardea’s flicker of approval—“this brand of idealism went out of fashion back when my great-grandfather was in short pants. I respect the attempt, Your Honour, I really do. But the consensus from the field is unanimous: there can be no armistice agreement with an enemy whose negotiation techniques include ambushes and scatterbombings; whose primary means of recruitment is abducting our soldiers, brainwashing them, and turning their stolen guns against us; and whose appetites are as alien as they are insatiable. Throughout this treaty process, the greys have been incommunicado—”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Yusou interjects.

  “—which means we cannot simply stop proceedings now and blindly hope for the best.”