“Da!” Clive said.
But Daniel was out cold; his chest quivered disturbingly with every breath.
“We have to get him out of here,” Clive said. “You keep a lookout, and I’ll try to find something I can use to—”
“Clive,” Paz interrupted, “you see how he is. Even if we… he won’t…” She trailed off, unable to bring herself to finish the thought.
“I know,” Clive whispered. “Of course I know. But not here, okay? Not chained up in the dark.”
Paz thought of her own father, cut down outside Riley’s pumphouse. Was there anything she wouldn’t have done to make his final moments a little easier? To say a proper good-bye? “Fine. But we have to move fast.”
Daniel’s chains were affixed to metal hooks sunk deep into the stone wall behind him. There was no hope of breaking the thick iron links, but maybe the hooks themselves could be pried out—with the right tool.
“Sometimes it feels as if all I’ve done for the past year is escape from places,” Paz said, running her hand along one of the crudely mortared walls. “I’m beginning to feel like a prisoner who keeps breaking out of her cell only to end up in the cell next door.” A pointed jag of granite wobbled under her hand like a loose tooth; she pulled at it once, twice, and on the third tug it came free. “This might work,” she said.
She positioned herself above the hook securing the shackle attached to Daniel’s right leg and began hammering away. It came loose after only a few dozen blows. She immediately moved on to the next hook while Clive finished pulling the first one free.
“You’re the Sophian girl.” Daniel had woken again at the sound of stone on metal. “The one who followed us from Wilmington.”
“That’s right.”
“I wish I’d known back then that you were on the right side of things. I could’ve saved Emma. I could’ve saved everyone.”
“I wasn’t on the right side of things,” Paz said. “There is no right side of things.” The second hook came away from the wall in an explosion of stone dust.
“Tell that to the Wesah that Chang slaughtered. Tell that to the men Epistem Turin forced to live underground, developing weapons in secret. Tell that to all the…”
He kept on talking, but Paz stopped listening, choosing instead to focus on the task at hand. The chains binding Daniel’s arms were affixed to the wall about six feet off the ground, which meant she couldn’t get nearly the same leverage on them as on the ones that had been attached to his fetters. She struck at the left hook a hundred times to no effect—other than the sensation that her arms were about to fall off. Clive took over after that, but made no more progress than she had.
“It’s no use,” he said.
“No use,” Daniel repeated, though it wasn’t clear if he even knew what was happening.
“Maybe we can pull out the whole block,” Paz said. She took the jagged rock back from Clive and went at the mortar around the stone that the hook was attached to. It turned out to be even more degraded than she’d expected—probably on account of the year-round damp down here—coming away in fat flakes at every blow. It took the two of them working together nearly an hour to chip off the mortar and shimmy the two stones out of the wall. They immediately set to work on the second block, which came loose slightly faster. When they were done, Daniel was left manacled to a good fifteen-pound weight at the end of either chain—but at least he was free.
They each took one of the stones and then shimmied under Daniel’s arms, half-carrying him out of the shed. He radiated the heat of infection but shivered as if he were freezing; Paz nearly retched at the smell. The coast was clear outside, though a few soldiers could be seen through the glassless windows of the church a few hundred feet off.
They made their way back to the passage that led to the city sewers, but were pulled up short by the sound of voices—distant, but definitely coming toward them.
“Who’s there?” Daniel said, fading in and out of consciousness. “Is that… who is that?”
“Quiet,” Paz said. Then, to Clive, “What now?”
They looked out over the Old Temple. There were at least a dozen tunnels out of the chamber, but only a few had been fitted with electric lights, signaling them as the most likely to lead back to the surface. Paz gestured with her head toward the closest one, and Clive nodded his agreement. Luck was once again on their side, and they made it around the chamber without being spotted. Paz sniffed the air outside the passage, hoping for a hint of fresh air, but could smell nothing over the miasma emanating from Daniel. The narrow corridor began to slope almost imperceptibly downhill—a bad sign for its potential as an avenue of escape—meanwhile aggregating the secretions of the city overhead in a rivulet that ran slow as molasses alongside them. The three of them were hardly moving much faster; Daniel continued to fade, which meant she and Clive had to shoulder even more of his weight—along with the stones attached to his wrists.
“I didn’t tell them anything,” Daniel said. “Let Ariel know I didn’t say a word.”
Ariel—strange to think of Director Zeno having a first name, or having some kind of relationship with Clive’s father. “Is there anything left to tell?” Paz said.
“I know what’s coming.” He made a sound that was either a laugh or a cough. “It’ll be here soon.”
“What will?”
“You don’t hear it?” This thought seemed genuinely upsetting to him. “It’s so loud.” He looked up at the slick ceiling of the tunnel, as if he might see the sky. “Loud as thunder.”
“What’s loud as thunder?” Paz pressed.
“He’s feverish,” Clive said. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
Daniel’s breath was acrid, decaying. “The angels,” he said. “The avenging angels.”
And now Paz did hear something, only it wasn’t thunder: footsteps, echoing along the corridor behind them. Perhaps they’d been seen coming out of the shed after all, or else Daniel’s disappearance had been clocked. It felt like some kind of existential joke when the corridor chose that exact moment to fork—two paths curving symmetrically away in either direction. Paz looked to Clive, who shrugged: same difference. They chose the right one and sped up as much as they could manage.
“There’s something up ahead,” Clive whispered.
A chain-link gate secured with a padlock prevented access to a large opening in the right-hand wall of the tunnel. Paz could hear the sound of rushing water on the other side. “It’s the aqueduct,” she said. “It would take us right into the Tiber, if we could get to it.”
The rivulet at their feet joined up with one coming from the other direction and emptied into the aqueduct.
“The annulus,” Daniel said. “We’re inside the annulus.”
Paz’s heart dropped as she realized what he meant. In front of them, the tunnel kept on curving; they were in a loop, just like the annulus. The footsteps of their pursuers came from both directions at once, like something out of a nightmare. Though it hardly made a difference now, somehow continuing on the way they were going felt safer than turning back. They tried to move silently, but the tunnel was like the brass bloom atop Zeno’s phonograph, amplifying every little click and scrape of their boots. Light flickered in the distance—a lantern. They turned around and headed back the other way, but ended up facing the same thing a few minutes later; the soldiers had divided themselves up between the two forks, a classic pincer maneuver. Paz and Clive, now practically dragging Daniel between them, retreated to the place where the tunnel fed into the aqueduct. Paz rattled the gate, not caring how much noise she made anymore. The footsteps reverberating through the tunnel quickened—the soldiers smelled blood.
“Clive,” Daniel said urgently, placing his hands on his son’s cheeks, “I was so wrong. My whole life I was wrong. And you—” He choked up, set himself to coughing again. “I let you down.”
“You did your best,” Clive said.
From somewhere farther along the tunnel, a soldi
er called out: “Whoever’s there, lay down your weapons and put your hands on your heads!”
“Step back,” Daniel whispered.
“It’s over, Da,” Clive said. “They’ve got us.”
“I said step back!”
Suddenly Daniel pushed both of them away, hard enough that they dropped the stones they’d been carrying for him.
A lantern burst into view: the first group of soldiers. “Don’t move!” one of them yelled.
Daniel closed his eyes and began to growl; the growl became a roar as he lifted the stones by their chains. With a bloodcurdling scream, he slammed both of them into the padlock on the gate. The second group of soldiers arrived. Guns were cocked. A black bloom had begun to spread across Daniel’s shirt—his injuries reopened. He emitted an unearthly, inhuman noise as he raised the stones again. There was a sound like skin splitting, like ribs cracking, and this time when the stones met the padlock, it broke open.
“Go,” he rasped.
Paz pulled off the padlock and pushed through the gate, clinging onto the chain links as she swung over the aqueduct.
“Clive!” she said. “Come on!”
She watched the two men regard each other in the flickering torch light. Both of them knew that Daniel wouldn’t be coming with them; he could never stay afloat with those stones attached to his wrists.
“Good-bye, Da,” Clive said, ducking through the gate as the first shots rang out and Daniel twisted up, somehow not blown off his feet right away, as if in these last moments he’d become invincible. Paz let go of the gate and fell backward into the aqueduct, trusting it to take her somewhere better than here.
3. Athène
THERE WAS A KIND OF liberation to be found in moving through the world as a pure predator. The Wesah had no allies in the Anchor, nothing that should inspire their pity or humanity. If it moved, you put an arrow through it. If it survived—or if you missed, but you did not miss—you stalked it to its hiding place and finished it off with your knives.
There were some who’d refused to enter the city at the last moment, either out of cowardice or conscience. Athène had allowed these “objectors” to retreat to the Villenaître, with the understanding that they were sacrificing their eligibility ever to be either chieftains or mothers. In the end, she was left with what she’d guess was slightly less than thirty-five hundred warriors. A paltry number next to the armies of the Anchor and Sophia, but if all went well, it might just be enough. Once inside the Anchor, she divided her warriors up into ten naasyoon—Wesah always hunted best in smaller groups—and directed each one down a different road. The warriors rode off screaming through the rain, hair slicked back, knives out. Athène’s heart swelled with pride at the thought of the terror they would inspire.
“Where should we go?” asked Nephra. By rights, the woman should’ve been leading her own naasyoon, but Athène needed someone to act as her counselor.
“Wherever blood is most likely to be spilled.” Athène spun a slow circle, taking in the small plaza just inside the Southern Gate. Bodies were strewn everywhere, the bloodstains already washing away in the rain—Protectorate soldiers mostly, killed trying to hold the gate against the Sophians. In the silvery early-morning light that filtered through the clouds, they looked posed, almost peaceful, like a bunch of children’s dolls arranged just so.
The warriors Athène had kept with her gazed about at the fruits of the Descendancy’s ingenuity—filigreed metalwork around clear glass windows, the scalloped iron bases of the gas lamps, the cobblestone roads like so many elaborate beaded necklaces. A crow cawed, then flew off at the sound of gunfire. What good were signs you couldn’t interpret?
“Have you been to the Anchor before, Nephra?” Athène asked.
“When I was very young. My naasyoon brought furs to trade. Relations were different then. We came and went from the city as we pleased.”
“What changed?”
“Perhaps we were too aggressive in our recruitment. But we could have come to an understanding if the Descendancy had been willing to negotiate. Instead they began killing us on sight.”
So there was plenty of blame to go around, it seemed. There usually was. “This is a war between knowledge and faith, yes?”
“False faith,” Nephra corrected.
“Even so. I know of a place in the city where knowledge and faith join together. I learned of it while I was a prisoner of Chang’s hospitality. There is bound to be some blood shed over it.”
“And what will we do there?”
“Shed more, of course.”
* * *
The Library was tucked away behind its own wall, like an Anchor inside the Anchor. It bloomed vociferously, chaotically, a mishmash of incongruous additions made at various times over the centuries—if Athène’s memory of Gardener’s Anchor History served. Turrets rose from turrets, as if the various corners of the building were competing to see which could reach closest to the heavens. Windows were few and far between, mostly high up on the facade to keep any unwelcome eyes from seeing inside.
A lone soldier stood outside the cracked gates that opened onto the gardens beneath the Library. Though soaking wet from the rain, he’d managed to light a drooping cigarillo that hung from his bottom lip. It fell when the arrow pierced his heart, landing in a puddle at his feet with a tiny hiss.
“Hold!” Athène shouted to the naasyoon. She approached the gates and peeked through the crack between them. A few hundred people were congregated about a quarter mile away, across an autumnal collage of fallen leaves and naked trees. They had plenty of guns but no uniforms, which meant they were Sophians. They must have come here to take the Library, yet it was clear that the assault had yet to commence—which made it all the more surprising when they turned away from the building and began walking back across the gardens.
“Position the bulk of our warriors out of sight down these alleys and put our best archers on the rooftops,” Athène said to Nephra. “Tell them not to strike until every Sophian has come out of those gates.”
Nephra frowned. “But they are unprepared. They do not even know we have named them our enemies.”
“So?”
“So what honor can there be in—”
“This is the only way we survive,” Athène interrupted. “If there’s no honor in this, then there is no honor in anything but dying. Now do as I commanded.”
“Yes, Andromède.”
When the entire naasyoon was hidden, Athène climbed up the side of one of the buildings herself, vaulting from a rubbish bin to a balcony, then clambering across some diabolically slippery terra-cotta tiles to reach the apex of the peaked roof. From this vantage, she could see out over a large portion of the city. She counted eleven columns of smoke whose source fires were powerful enough to withstand the rain; Zeno was certainly making her presence felt.
The company of Sophian soldiers began to stream through the gate a few minutes later. When they’d all reached the other side, a woman who was clearly their leader climbed up onto an old apple crate and began to speak.
“I understand that a lot of you aren’t happy with this decision, but it was mine to make, and I’ll take the blame if it comes to that. Now, Zeno said we should converge on Notre Fille once we’d finished here, so that’s where… what is it?”
The woman had noticed that some of her fellow soldiers were pointing back up at the Library, and soon the entire Sophian contingent had turned to look: one of the turrets had just caught flame. Squinting, Athène could make out an orange flicker behind many of the windows. A black halo of smoke was beginning to form around the topmost spires.
The confused murmuring of the Sophians made it clear they were surprised by the fire; but if they hadn’t caused it, who had?
Athène drew her bow and nocked an arrow. Perhaps someone would be alive at the end of this who could answer that question. Or perhaps not. She blinked rainwater from her eyes, then gave a single sharp bark.
From every conceivable
angle flew the slim brown bolts. There was no need even to aim; the Sophians were congregated so densely around the gate that a third of them were incapacitated or killed within the first few seconds. They drew their guns and began firing back, a thunderous fusillade that shattered windows and cracked stone but failed to slow the hail of arrows plunging into belly and chest. The Sophians scattered, breaking for cover. Athène picked off two of them before noticing a few of her warriors were pinned down in an alley just beneath her, crouched behind an empty vendor’s stall. A group of Sophians had armed themselves with a piece of metal grating they’d pulled off the Library gatehouse and were slowly encroaching on the stall; the holes in the lattice were just large enough to fit the barrel of a pistol, but too small to admit a Wesah arrowhead.
Athène waited until they were almost directly beneath her, then gritted her teeth and rode the smooth soles of her moccasins down the steep roof. The Sophians saw her flying through the air and responded just as she’d hoped—by angling the grating upward, giving her a nearly flat surface to land on and forcing all of them to the ground. She had both her daggers out, and though she could only get an inch or so of the blades through the grating, that was more than enough. The Sophians screamed as she stabbed out again and again, blood gushing up everywhere, like a ship beginning to founder. Though many of them were badly wounded, they eventually found the presence of mind to push the grate away. Athène held on as it tilted back up to vertical, finding her feet at the same moment she found herself looking down the barrel of a gun.
“I have daughter,” she said in English. “Please!”
“I’ve got three kids,” said the Sophian woman holding the gun. “So fuck you.”
Athène braced herself for the shot, but before it could come, the warriors who’d been crouched behind the vendor’s stall leaped up and threw themselves at the grating, sending the whole thing down to the cobblestones again. She went along with it, still holding tight to the lattice, and screamed as her right index finger was crushed between the grate and the shinbone of one of the men trapped beneath it. The warriors made short work of the helpless Sophians, but by the time Athène was able to extricate herself, her finger was mangled beyond recognition, a shaft of red, molten pain; she would never use a bow and arrow again.
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