Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore

  He didn’t say anything, just kept walking along with his head down against the wind. His expression was pained.

  “What are you not telling me?”

  “I need to think. It doesn’t make sense….”

  “If you tell me, maybe we can make sense of it together.”

  He hesitated, glancing around again. “I cannot underestimate the gravity of it,” he said. “The danger we would be in if you told anyone I’d told you. You have to swear to me you won’t act on this information.”

  “If—” If it’s about Nan, or my father, I can’t swear that. But she had to know, even if it meant breaking Freddy’s trust. “I swear. B-but we have to walk faster. I’m shivering again.”

  “All right,” he said. “It’s just this: ever since the war, when people die from suicide, and sometimes murders and executions, the government has been reviving them. The city has been in need of manpower since the war, and suicide is no good way to die, so it benefits everyone.”

  “Reviving them? After death?”

  “Yes. So they can have a second chance. And do some good work for the city. That’s where I saw Nan. At the rehabilitation center. Gerik has a hand in it, but I can’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  “Nan died?”

  “It’s all right, though! She was revived. She’s fine. But they won’t send her back home as long as they think there’s a risk she might hurt herself again.”

  “How could they ever send her back if it’s a secret?”

  He paused. “I’m sure they must do something to their memories.”

  “Who’s doing all this? Who has that power?”

  “I don’t know, some of the government sorcerers, I suppose.” He looked uncomfortable. “I know it’s a shock. And I knew you’d want to save her. But if Gerik or anyone knew I’d told you, they’d probably have to lock you up and tamper with your memories, too.”

  She walked in silence for a bit. They were getting close to the Café Rouge. It was at the cheap end of Lampenlight, behind Kuka-Kasino, known for having a caged parrot above every table that squawked for the bill. She could see the neon bird on its sign in the distance.

  “What about my father?” she asked, although she was almost afraid. The vision of him she kept seeing—could it be his revival? “Tell me truthfully: have you ever seen him?”

  Freddy hesitated again, and that was answer enough.

  “You have.” She caught his sleeve. “Tell me you have.”

  “Yes…I did. Years ago. I—I witnessed his resurrection.”

  “He was in his army uniform,” she prompted. “But I know he wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

  “They said when a soldier was brought back, it was only following execution for an act of treason. But…maybe they made a mistake.” He said this, clearly knowing he could not suggest to her face that her father was a traitor. She wondered if he really believed it. He showed more emotion than Nan, really, and yet he was harder to read.

  She pulled her scarf closer around her face, trying to understand what she had heard. He was saying her father was alive. He was saying that, wasn’t he? Her father had been brought back from death. And they thought he was a traitor and wouldn’t let him go home. Her mother had been right all along.

  She wanted to cry, to run, to strike Freddy—no, nothing seemed right. It was such an unbelievable, amazing, horrible thing that she found herself looking up at the moon above them, as if she might see something written in the stars. Her jaw trembled.

  Freddy was looking at her warily. “I want to help you,” he said. “I’ll try to find out more.” And then, “Are you all right? Well, that’s a stupid question, but—”

  The wind was preventing her eyes from tearing up, but she quickly wiped them with her scarf anyway. “I’ll manage. We have to keep going.”

  “Not really to a party, I hope.”

  He must trust her, to tell her all of this. So she ought to trust him, too. “To a meeting. Of revolutionaries.”

  The address for the Café Rouge matched a narrow four-story brick building painted green and sandwiched between similar buildings. It had no sign, so the only indicator that she had the right place was the cluster of young bohemian types milling around out front.

  A man was guarding the door. Thea stopped at a distance, watching him greet and nod at some people and stop others. He talked for several minutes with one girl, even after she produced a piece of paper from her purse.

  “Do we need some kind of pass?” Freddy asked her.

  “Well, I know the revolutionaries are always looking for more members. If I talk to them…” But she worried Father Gruneman might see her at the door and turn her away.

  “I’ll admit, with that hat, you don’t look likely to be part of a police raid.”

  “If you tease me about this hat one more time…”

  “I’m more concerned I might be recognized, if anyone’s seen me at the club with Gerik.”

  She turned around to face the street again. “You’re right. A lot of revolutionaries go to the club. It’s too risky to try to talk our way in.”

  “Are you suggesting espionage?”

  “Well, ‘espionage’ is a strong word.”

  “I like it. Maybe Trouble is an apt name for you after all.”

  She smacked his arm gently and then took his elbow. “Well, let’s not stand here any longer, in case we’re noticed. Maybe there’s a back entrance.”

  They made their way around the row of buildings to the back alley. The café sounded packed by now—she could hear the rumble of conversation even through the door, but the words weren’t intelligible. The back door was locked. A fire escape ladder dangled temptingly above them, the bottom rung low enough to grab.

  Thea looked higher up, chewing her lip. The first fire escape was cluttered with potted plants and junk. “It looks like apartments above. I don’t want to break into someone’s house.”

  “I see doors,” Freddy said. “They might open into a hallway for more than one apartment. We just need to have a reason for poking around. Like we live down the street, and we lost our cat, and we just saw him on the roof.”

  “I guess that might work.”

  Freddy hung from the rung. “So, are your arms strong enough to haul your entire body up to that ladder?”

  “No.” She cast around the alley. “We need something to stand on. A milk crate won’t be enough, will it? We have to hurry! If we miss the meeting, it’ll all be for nothing.”

  “If you grab on, I can support your feet,” Freddy said. “You can go ahead.”

  Thea didn’t much like the idea of sneaking around the building alone, but they had already come this far.

  The ladder rattled alarmingly as Freddy boosted her up, but she managed to hook her heels over the thin rungs and clamber onto the platform. As she glanced around at rusted tins that housed herbs and a few scattered tools, her eyes alighted on a crumpled sheet. Perhaps it was meant to cover the plants on cold nights.

  “Freddy, there’s a sheet here. Do you think if we knotted it, you could use it to climb up?”

  “Maybe. Toss it down.”

  She tied the sheet around the top of the ladder and looked left and right. “This is looking really suspicious now.”

  “Hurry, hurry.”

  He quickly made a slipknot in the sheet, to use as a foothold. She crouched to try to help him up. Her body shivered from the cold, but she was too nervous to truly feel her discomfort.

  Moments later, she was grabbing his arms, helping to support him as he climbed his way up, grimacing. Once his foot was over the railing, she was so glad to have managed it that she almost forgot the whole point of the endeavor.

  “Let’s never do this again,” she said, laughing with relief.

  “You don’t have to tell me. Whose idea was it?” He
tugged her hat brim over her eyes.

  They untied the sheet and put it back in its place. Freddy looked in the small window at the top of the door leading from the landing. “It is a hallway.” He opened the door.

  As soon as the door opened, the voices from the meeting became audible again. Thea was breathless with triumph as she stepped into the warmth of the indoors. The smell of cigarettes, coffee, and perfume trailed upward from the interior staircase.

  She turned to Freddy. “What now?”

  “We’re not going to be able to sneak in, so I think we should just act like we belong here.”

  Thea tried to look confident and breezy as she took the steps. The door to the bottom floor hung wide open, and people were crowded into the lower stairwell. Indeed, the girls on the stairs, who looked to be about her age, didn’t seem to think it was strange for Thea and Freddy to come in behind them, even though Thea’s heart pounded as fast as a jackhammer.

  Father Gruneman and Arabella von Kaspar were standing on a small dais in the corner of the stuffy room, which was packed wall to wall with revolutionaries, some of them at tables, but most standing. “We are at the point now where we know what must be done,” Father Gruneman was saying. “We must free our brothers and sisters. It is simply a matter of working out the how. According to our intelligence, when the workers are freed, they may not have their memories.”

  “Workers?” she whispered to Freddy. “Are those the revived people you were talking about?”

  “Maybe.” He tapped his chin, thoughtful, almost nervous.

  “Should this prove true,” Father Gruneman continued, “it will take considerable organization to reunite them with their families. We must all do our best to protect them, and each other, when the time comes. This will be our opportunity to—” He stopped as Arabella sidled up next to him and put a hand on his arm.

  “Do you hear what Viktor asks of you?” she said to the crowd, her voice fierce and furious, where Father Gruneman’s had been firm and calm. “We have spoken of revolution for years, but the hour is almost upon us. I am prepared to fight and to die, if I must, for the thousands who have fought and died before me. For my daughter. For your son. For your father, your grandfather, your friend.” She met eyes as she named relations. “We must not tremble when the hour is upon us. We must not hesitate when the enemy is before us and the gun is in our hand. Because if we do, they will squash us as they have squashed so many others, this ‘republic’ of ours.” Her voice rang throughout the room, and the crowd around Thea stirred like the leaves of a tree touched by the wind. “Do you hear the call?” she asked the crowd, pounding her fist to her palm, the bracelets on her arm clacking. “Will you fight?”

  The crowd responded with hooting, shouting, murmuring. Drinks were lifted to the ceiling.

  Father Gruneman shook his head. “I don’t want our focus to be bloodshed. We risk killing innocents. Our loved ones need our help.”

  “Our loved ones do need our help, yes,” Arabella said. “But it isn’t going to be pretty. This is war, and the person responsible for this needs to pay.”

  “Is she talking about the person who has been bringing back the dead?” Thea asked Freddy.

  “Perhaps.” His already pale face was a shade paler.

  “What’s wrong?” His reaction reminded her that he might know more than he had told her. “Do you know who it is?”

  Some of the crowd were beginning to murmur now.

  “I agree that this won’t be bloodless.” A bearded man standing near them lifted a hand. “But we need to stay on topic, and that’s assigning task forces. We know from Karl’s reports that we’re going to see widespread power outages. I’d like to form a response team to deal specifically with that side of things.”

  Even though Thea’s apartment didn’t have electricity, just gas, she felt ill at the very suggestion of power outages. But if it meant saving her father—well, she would sit in the dark or stand in breadlines again. Whatever it took to have him back.

  “Yes,” a young woman said. “And we need to talk about safe houses for the workers. I’ve been talking to Mr. M. about different locations where we could shelter them as we help locate their families.”

  “We won’t have time to shelter them and locate their families!” Arabella said. “I don’t care what Viktor says—it’s impossible! They won’t have their memories, and there are too many of them.”

  Father Gruneman was locking eyes with Arabella, and Thea had only seen him look so angry when the old hymnbooks had been taken away. He was standing as straight as his slightly hunched old back would allow. “It’s been our mission from the beginning to find out what happened to the missing people and then to save them. Well, now we know what’s happened. If we give up, if we indulge in some violent impulse, our chance is gone. Sigi is gone with them.”

  “I told you not to speak of her.” Arabella turned from him.

  “And I tell you, you should. I know it pains you—” Father Gruneman put a hand on her shoulder, but she pushed it off.

  “It doesn’t pain me. Don’t you turn ‘Father Gruneman’ on me, Viktor. I’ve seen far too many sides of you for that.”

  Thea was startled by Freddy putting an arm around her shoulder and whispering, “Let’s go.” When she didn’t move at first, he said, “I don’t think we’ll learn much more.”

  “But we’ve been here only a few minutes, after all that trouble to get up the fire escape!”

  “At least it’ll be easier to get down again. And I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  The cabdriver was whistling a jaunty tune, seemingly oblivious to the heavy mood of Thea and Freddy in the backseat. Out of the corner of her eye, Thea could see the city lights racing across the strong, straight lines of Freddy’s face.

  In this quiet moment, she began to move the pieces in her mind, to see how they fit together. Freddy, with his silver hair, bringing a strange vision of her father and an odd story about Nan…and this talk of a sorcerer who could revive the dead…

  It couldn’t be him.

  Surely it couldn’t be him.

  He wouldn’t be here with me if he had that kind of power. They wouldn’t even let him go out.

  But—

  The cab pulled up in front of her apartment building and they both got out, but Freddy walked around to the driver’s window and exchanged a few words before giving him money.

  “Sending a message to Gerik,” he explained as the taxicab drove away.

  “He won’t worry that you’re out so late?”

  “Not if I tell him the right thing.”

  Thea approached the stairs apprehensively. These were dank, poorly lit stairs trod by well-worn shoes, and she hated to bring him here. But when he had asked if there was a private place where they could discuss things, the only truly private place she could think of was her apartment. Although it sounded strange to call it that. It wasn’t really her place. It was still paid for, in part, by checks from her father’s military service. It was waiting for her mother to come home.

  “Step quietly,” she whispered. “If Mrs. Weis or Miss Mueller hears me bringing a boy up, heaven knows what.” She fished out her keys.

  After she hung up her coat and lit the gas lamps, he looked around curiously, as if her apartment were an exhibit. She cringed inwardly. The apartment was dusty, the floor grimy, dishes piled up and needing attention….Mother had been cleaning less reliably in recent months, and Thea really hadn’t felt like picking up a broom or a rag since she was taken.

  His eyes wandered to the photographs on the ledge—her parents’ wedding photo, and another of Father in his army uniform. Freddy picked that one up. “This is your father?”

  “Yes.”

  Freddy studied the picture for a long moment. “I remember,” he said. “I always remember.”

  Thea stood near the table, not k
nowing where to put her hands. “Remember what?”

  “It’s a wondrous, humbling thing, bringing someone to life,” he said, his voice trembling. “Why would I be granted such a gift? But I was. I brought back your father, and Nan.”

  It’s true.

  She wanted to sit down. But she couldn’t bear to make all the noise of dragging out a chair. Instead, she took the picture from him. Father’s smile looked out at her. Mother was right. All along. I never should have doubted her.

  “It is you, then,” she said. “You’re the sorcerer the revolutionaries are looking for?”

  “It was probably stupid of me to walk into their den. But then again, it was probably the last thing they’d expect.” He looked at her kitchen. “Would you mind if I had a bit of that bread? I’ll give you money for a new loaf.”

  “Is this really a time to be eating?”

  “It just—it makes me hungry all the time, the magic. Gerik says it eats away at people, and so sorcerers are always eating away at something else. Magic does things to a person. It turns hair silver, too.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Not many people do. Strong magic has never been common. I still try to keep my hat on unless I’m someplace where it would be too conspicuous to wear a hat, like the dining room of a nice club.”

  She took a deep breath. “So…these people you bring back…where do they come from?”

  “Gerik and Uncle—Gerik’s brother—bring them to me.”

  “And they’re the ones who told you all the people committed suicide?”

  “They must have,” he said. “I mean—it must be true. Why would they bring so many people back otherwise? I’m giving them a second chance.”

  “But are you?” Thea grabbed the bread for him and started slicing it; at least it was something for her hands to do. “My father hasn’t come back.”

  “Well, Gerik isn’t a monster. He wouldn’t want to bring back soldiers who fought for this country and never let them see their families again.”