Scorched Earth

by Tommy Wallach

  Six soldiers: flattering that Chang assumed it would take that many to bring her in.

  She considered waking Flora to say good-bye, but she didn’t trust that the girl wouldn’t try to help her somehow, so she just leaned down and kissed the cheek offered up by sleep. Flora murmured something soft and insubstantial, her subconscious mind refusing to heed the vow of silence, and turned over.

  Paz took the stairs two at a time, stopping in the kitchen only long enough to arm herself with a paring knife that still smelled sharply of green onion. The house had a back door that opened up onto a small garden—or what used to be a garden, anyway. Left to his own devices, Mitchell had let the whole thing go to seed. Withered tomato vines still clung to the trellis like crazily articulated spiders’ legs, and the raised plant beds were quilted with fallen leaves and insectile seeds. Paz waited until she heard the firm knock at the front door—“Mitchell Poplin, this is the Protectorate. Open up immediately!”—then vaulted the short brick wall into the backyard of the house next door. She clambered over another, taller wall and arrived in a short alleyway connecting two equally forbidding unknowns. Before she could decide which way to go, a flash of red burst out from behind a rubbish bin, and she found herself on her stomach with a soldier crouched on top of her.

  “She’s over he-eeeaaagh!” he shouted, the words morphing into a cry of pain as Paz sank the paring knife up to the hilt in his upper thigh and then slammed the back of her head into his nose. His grip loosened and she slithered out from under him. Standing again, she delivered a quick kick to his temple, stilling him. Just one more callow young soldier unready for the viciousness of a real fight. When Paz had joined the town guard, her father had taught her the cardinal rule of hand-to-hand combat: If you aren’t willing to put your thumbs through a man’s eyes, you’re gonna lose.

  Paz took off at a sprint, taking the turns as they came, confusing herself in the hopes of confusing her pursuers as well, until at last she arrived, breathless and damp with perspiration, at a bridge arching over the Tiber, not far from where she’d emerged from the aqueducts only a few hours ago. She shivered as a breeze chilled the beads of sweat on her brow, bristled at the feeling of being watched. She looked around and caught the eye of a street urchin encamped in the doorway of a tailor’s shop across the street.

  “Spare a shekel, miss?” the urchin said as Paz approached.

  “Maybe. Depends what you’ve got for me.”

  The urchin coughed, shifted beneath the blankets. “What do you need?”

  Paz would have to use what she’d learned from Mitchell Poplin to take a stab in the dark. If Clive was still alive, he would probably seek out his father, the disgraced Descendancy minister and infamous defector. “Information. About the Mindful.”

  A smile, missing some of its key players. Paz realized she couldn’t tell if the urchin was a boy or a girl. “I might know something about them.”

  Paz took off the ring her father had given her on her thirteenth birthday and held it up. “It’s gold. Should be easy enough to sell.”

  “Give it here.”

  “Talk first.”

  “I gotta bite it to see if it’s real.”

  “Talk first.”

  The urchin glanced to the left and right, as if there were anyone around who might overhear. “There’s a girl comes out at night to put up posters. Soldiers almost caught her a couple days ago. She had to drop everything. And let me tell you, wheat paste doesn’t taste near as good as it smells.” The urchin put out a hand. “Ring, please.”

  “You didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Sure I did. Because that same girl was just here. See?” The urchin leaned out from the alcove and pointed at a poster affixed to the wall of a milliner’s shop: THE MINDFUL ARE WATCHING. It was still slick and shiny with paste.

  “Thanks,” Paz said, handing over the ring. The urchin slid it onto his finger; and it was a he—Paz could tell from the hair beneath the knuckles. He held his hand out, admiring the new adornment. “You are going to sell it, aren’t you?” Paz said.

  The urchin looked genuinely uncertain. “I’ve never had anything made of gold before,” was all he said.

  * * *

  Paz knew how suspicious she looked, walking briskly from street to street in search of Mindful propaganda, stroking each poster to try to discern how recently it had been posted. Twice she was certain she’d lost the trail, only to spot the telltale gleam of moonlight reflecting off wet paper somewhere in her peripheral vision. The last poster had been sopping with paste; she had to be close now. Still, her good fortune seemed to meet its end in a small plaza in the Seventh Quarter. A stone chapel at the center of the square was boarded up, and the sign that would usually advertise the schedule of services read only DAUGHTER PROTECT US. Paz looked everywhere, including a good ways down each of the three roads that fed into the plaza, but came up empty. After a fruitless fifteen minutes, she knew she was beat; the trail would’ve gone cold by now—or more accurately, dry. She lay down on the steps of the chapel, cold and disheartened, and drifted off to sleep.

  It was still dark out when she started at the sound of footsteps on the cobblestones. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, wearing an empty satchel over her shoulder, scuttled around the edge of the plaza and disappeared behind the chapel. Paz stood up, her chilled bones cracking loudly, and followed. Peeking around the corner, she watched the girl speak to someone through the open back of the chapel, then trade out her empty satchel for one packed with rolled-up posters. Paz let the transaction finish; when the door closed again, she stepped into view.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “is this where—” Lightning quick, the girl reached into the waistband of her jeans and produced a gun. Even in the weak, cloud-diffused starlight, Paz could make out the mark on the barrel. “The man who made that gun is an old friend of mine,” she said. “I had one just like it when I served on the Sophian town guard.”

  “Good for you,” the girl replied, cocking the pistol.

  “My name’s Paz Dedios. I’m looking for Clive Hamill.”

  “Never heard of him. Or of you.”

  “I think you have.”

  The girl considered. “What did you call yourself when you first lived here?”

  “Irene.”

  “How did you stop the Hamill ministry from getting away last year?”

  “I filed down the axle so one of the wheels broke off.”

  “Did you ever love Clover?”

  Paz was impressed; the question actually threw her. “In my way. But not how he wanted.”

  “Daughter on a dill pickle,” the girl said, shaking her head as if at a miracle. “You’re really her.”

  “That’s right. Now any chance you want to put that gun away?”

  “Sure. But I just have to say one thing first. I’m with Clover now, okay? He’s mine. So don’t go trying anything.”

  Paz wanted to smile but knew it would look patronizing. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Good.” At last the girl holstered the gun. “Let’s go then.”

  “Go where?”

  “Clive and Clover are out on a mission tonight. A big one. Their da told me I couldn’t come along, but bein’ honest, I was looking for an excuse.”

  It felt like this night had already gone on forever, but if it meant seeing Clive again, Paz would’ve gone without sleep for a year. “Lead the way.”

  5. Clive

  CLIVE WAS MANY THINGS AT the moment. Tired. A little scared. Pungent from two weeks without a proper bath. But more than anything else, he was hungry. Since Sophia had set up their siege, nothing had come in or out of the gates, and while Chang had stockpiled plenty of food, one had to produce identification to claim the weekly ration. Many Mindful operatives didn’t have the required birth certificate or employment contract; others, such as Clive and Clover, were too notorious to make use of the IDs they had. This meant three square meals a day had become two and a snack, then just two, then one and
two snacks. Everyone was a little on edge, a little quicker to anger, a little less happy to carry out his or her share of the endless crimes and morale-destroying displays that were the purview of the Mindful.

  Finally, a few days ago, Daniel Hamill had announced that he would be leading a raid on one of the food storage warehouses around the Bastion. The attack would kill two birds with one stone, simultaneously feeding the Mindful and starving the Anchor. Just after midnight, most of the cell decamped from Ratheman Chapel, splitting up so as not to look like the invading army they were. Clive’s group was made up only of himself, his brother, his father, and a married couple who’d been won over to the cause just last week. Kita had thrown a Kita-caliber fit about being excluded, but Daniel was adamant that no sixteen-year-old girl would be killed on his watch.

  They reconvened outside a shuttered factory in the Fourth Quarter, just southwest of the Bastion proper. The warehouses were well guarded, of course, but Daniel hoped to avoid direct conflict. The cell had spent the weekend spreading a rumor in every café, public house, and brothel in the city that Chang was planning a clandestine disbursal of rations from one particular warehouse at just this time tonight—a gift to some personal friends and relatives. As a result, hundreds of Anchorites had shown up to protest—or perhaps be included in the handout. And this was only one of the Mindful’s planned distractions. Those members of the Ratheman cell who weren’t here had been tasked with raising as much hell as possible across the city: starting fights, setting fires, posting propaganda—anything to diffuse the Protectorate presence around the Bastion proper.

  The warehouse they’d chosen looked much like all the others—built of thin, overlapping steel sheets, crimped like the edges of an apple pie—but it was uniquely large, stretching across an entire city block. The main entrance faced onto the same plaza as the Bastion, so the guards there would have their hands full with protesters. Clive watched as a few Mindful members emptied out their satchels onto the cobblestones—an incomprehensible jumble of machine parts Clover and a few others set to screwing and clicking together with breathless speed.

  “What is it again?” Clive said.

  “This part’s an engine,” Clover replied, “like the one that powered Kittyhawk. It’ll provide the electricity to run that.” Clover pointed to a disc of serrated steel, the purpose of which was immediately apparent even to a technological simpleton like Clive.

  “Is it ready yet?” Daniel said.

  “Close,” Clover said. “Strike up the band.”

  Daniel nodded to a trio of men who’d proven to have the loudest singing voices among the Mindful. They linked up arms and began stumbling toward the Bastion, belting out a theatrically drunken rendition of “What a Weight” at full volume.

  Halfway through the first verse, Clover pulled a cord on the engine, which sputtered to cacophonous life. The saw spun up, whirring rather pleasantly until its teeth were set to the corrugated steel carapace of the warehouse; the result sounded like a thousand unhappy infants crying at the same time. It took two men to operate the machine, which quickly cut a two-foot-long vertical scar into the wall. The men pulled it out when they reached the ground, lifted it in line with the topmost point of the first cut, and began sawing horizontally. A veritable river of sparks cascaded onto the cobblestones. It seemed impossible that the singers could hope to drown out this terrible noise, but just because the guards heard it didn’t necessarily mean they would investigate.

  The men turned the saw vertical and cut all the way back down to the cobblestones, at which point Clover switched off the generator. The rectangle they’d cut out was still attached to the rest of the siding by a small tab of steel; it took about a dozen kicks to knock it free. Then Daniel got down on his knees and started crawling through the hole.

  “Da,” Clive said, “are you sure about this? Someone must’ve heard all that.”

  “Too late now,” his father said, making the statement true by continuing on into the warehouse.

  Clive looked to his brother.

  “We picked our side,” Clover said—the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

  Clive knelt down and followed his father inside. A weak glow filtered through the skylights overhead, illuminating a labyrinth of shelving units piled high with boxes. The air smelled sweetly of cedar and onions. Rats squeaked in the rafters. Clive stood up and dusted himself off.

  “Get out of the way,” Clover whispered, trying to come through behind him.

  “Give me a—”

  A Protectorate soldier stepped out from behind a column of crates. “Who’s there?”

  For a fraction of a second, Clive pitied him. He could remember a time when he too might’ve stopped to take stock of a situation like this, allowing for the possibility of a misunderstanding. The soldier hadn’t yet learned that there could be no room for hesitation or compassion in wartime. And now he never would. Crack. The man’s eyes went distant and strange; he fell backward as Daniel reholstered his gun.

  “Douglas? What was that?” a voice said. Footsteps fluttered on the warped wooden floorboards: at least two or three more soldiers. Daniel had bet everything on there only being guards outside the warehouse; now the whole plan was ruined. Clive helped Clover up and the three of them took off to the left, down the corridor made by the towering shelves. They got out of sight around a corner just in time.

  “There’s a hole in the goddamned wall!”

  “They’re trying to get in! Draw your weapons!”

  Clive plugged his ears against the sound of gunfire. They were on their own now; surely any Mindful still outside would flee. “What do we do now?” he said.

  “What we came here to do,” Daniel replied, heading deeper into the warehouse.

  Clive jogged to keep up with him. “But we can’t get any food out now. They’ve got the doors covered.”

  “Getting food out was always the icing on the cake.”

  “So what was the cake?”

  They’d reached what looked to be roughly the center of the warehouse. Daniel took a canteen off his belt. “Just enough to get things started,” he explained, unscrewing the cap and pouring the contents over the shelves around them. The smell set off an explosion of memory: that moment in Riley’s cabin when this all began.

  “That’s Blood of the Father,” Clover whispered.

  Daniel shook the last few drops out of the canteen. Of course this had been his plan all along; why would they have left behind what they couldn’t carry? The guards were getting closer. Clive drew the gun his father had given him and pointed it vaguely in the direction of the footsteps. He fired twice, neither hoping to nor succeeding in hitting anyone.

  The scratch of a match being lit—a face Clive no longer recognized.

  “Stop,” he found himself saying. “Please.” Daniel looked at him, uncomprehending. “It’s just women and children who’ll starve. Chang’s gonna keep his soldiers fed no matter what.”

  “But those soldiers will have to watch those women and children starve. If it gets bad enough, they’ll stop fighting. They’ll demand Chang surrender.”

  Clive shook his head; in this, at least, he knew better than his father. He’d stood face-to-face with Chang. He’d looked into those merciless eyes. “He’ll never surrender. Not if he was the only man left standing in this whole city.”

  “Clive’s right,” Clover said.

  “Then the blood’s on his hands, not ours,” Daniel replied, and bent to touch the match to the oil-damp wood.

  Clive looked to his brother and knew they were thinking the same thing: they couldn’t let this happen. Clover started moving first, but it was Clive’s foot that found the match and sent it flying out of his father’s hand.

  A guard shouted, “They’re over here!”

  Clive dove for the ground just as the soldiers opened fire. Clover was already crawling through an opening between two crates on the bottom of one of the shelving units. Clive followed him, but turned to look over his shou
lder at the telltale hiss. His father had lit another match.

  “Da, no!” Clive said, but it was no use. Daniel lowered the sphere of cupped light to the puddle at his feet. A phoenix burst to life, flying with exhilarating speed around the whole center section of the warehouse, cutting off the guards. Clive shuffled backward on his knees to get away from the fire. The heat was unbearable, but he stayed long enough to hear the volley of gunshots, to see his father drop to the ground.

  Someone grabbed hold of his ankle. He kicked out to try to free himself.

  “It’s just me!” Clover said. “Come on!”

  The flames were only growing higher and hotter; Clive knew there was nothing he could do for his father now. He crawled backward across the shelf and joined his brother on the other side. They beelined for the front of the warehouse and burst through the door together, surprising an unsmiling line of six Protectorate soldiers and ten times that many Anchorite citizens who’d shown up to protest the false rationing report. Everyone went silent; the Protectorate guards were clearly unsure how to react.

  “They’re handing food out through a hole in the back!” Clover shouted. “It’s all true!”

  Pandemonium: the protesters surged forward, overwhelming the guards before they could draw their weapons. Clive and his brother moved against the current, making it past the crowd just as word began to spread of the fire inside the warehouse. Retreating to the relative safety of an alley, they watched as the protesters dispersed and the soldiers tried in vain to salvage anything from the inferno.

  A clatter behind them—Clive whipped around, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there; he must’ve dropped it back in the warehouse. Two silhouettes emerged warily from the darkness. He recognized Kita first, and then, alongside her…