“Nice shot,” Chang said, casually plucking the gun from her hand and using it to beckon to Clive and Paz. “Get a move on, you two. We haven’t got much time left.”
5. Clover
THIS DOESN’T EVEN FEEL REAL,” Kita said quietly, as if from the depths of a dream.
And maybe they were dreaming; where else but in a nightmare would you find yourself walking through an unending hellscape of fire and smoke; of bombs exploding and masonry tumbling; of arrows twanging out into the rain-rippled darkness, each one representing a life cut short; of seeing everything you knew falling down around your ears and nothing you could do to stop it?
Where were they even? Wandering a city he used to know, only all the landmarks had been scrambled, all reference points lost. It was like trying to read a book with half the words turned upside down. Clover still wasn’t sure why Athène had invited him and Kita to travel with her, but he guessed it had something to do with a lingering sense of responsibility toward Gemma. Otherwise, the woman now wearing the mantle of Andromède showed no mercy toward anyone not of the tribe. She and her blood-drunk army of marauders killed indiscriminately, ecstatically. Sometimes it was a cadre of Protectorate soldiers, other times a wayward clutch of Sophians. And sometimes it was a family clearly trying to escape the Anchor, clutching their bags and their babies, their only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Wesah seemed to care for little now but destruction for destruction’s sake, and Clover couldn’t imagine a more efficient vector for mayhem than these zealous and pitiless warriors.
About half an hour ago, one of Zeno’s planes had finally succumbed to the perpetual barrage from the guns atop Notre Fille, but that still left two to terrorize the skies over the Anchor. Clearly they were landing somewhere just outside the city to refuel and load fresh explosives. How had Zeno transported them from Sophia without anyone knowing? How had she found the time and resources to build them in the first place?
“This way?” Athène said in Wesah.
Clover tried to orient himself, but the stars were hidden behind the storm clouds and he didn’t know the street. “Maybe.”
Slowly but surely, they were making their way toward the heart of the city: Notre Fille. Everything had an inexorable quality to it now, a sense of predestination. Clover had to remind himself that this was only in his imagination. In reality, almost nothing was determined. The war was poised on a knife-edge; the smallest gust of wind could change the outcome—and here they were standing in a hurricane.
He stepped close to Kita and spoke under his breath, though there were few in Athène’s party who could understand them and even fewer who cared what they had to say. “Who do you think should win?”
“Win what?” She raised her eyebrows. “You mean the war? How should I know?”
“I keep trying to choose a side, but maybe it really doesn’t make a difference anymore.”
“Just because there isn’t a simple answer doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. Didn’t you ever study math? I thought you were supposed to be smart.”
“I don’t feel smart anymore.” Athène, walking a few dozen feet ahead, glanced back at him. Was that solicitude in her eyes, or suspicion? “But you’re right. There must be an ideal outcome.”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know. But I’m starting to think it doesn’t have anything to do with who wins.”
“What else could it have to do with other than who wins?”
“How they win,” he said, and sensed the rightness of it even if he wasn’t completely sure what it meant.
At last they reached an area of the city Clover recognized—only a few blocks from Notre Fille. Athène called the naasyoon to a halt in front of an old warehouse. A broken padlock swung from the doors, but there was no one inside. Immediately the Wesah began to pile up furniture to make a fire. Clover was still considering the ramifications of his recent epiphany when Nephra, Athène’s second-in-command, tapped him on the shoulder.
“Andromède want us,” she said. Then, to Kita: “Not you.”
“That’s rude,” Kita said to Nephra’s back.
“Get dry if you can,” Clover said. “I don’t think we’ll be staying here long.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Athène was waiting for him and Nephra just outside the warehouse. She’d found a ladder affixed to the side of the building, and though it was missing two rungs and moved in unsettling ways as they climbed, they were able to use it to reach the roof. From there they leapfrogged between the closely spaced buildings until they reached a place where they could see out over Annunciation Square.
Nobody was fighting yet; in fact, as far as Clover could tell, there wasn’t a single Protectorate soldier in sight. Thousands of Sophians were arrayed behind one of the big guns Zeno had used to maintain her siege. It had just finished reducing the doors of Notre Fille to splinters, but some kind of iron grating had been constructed behind the wood, so there was still no way to get through.
“This is only one army,” Nephra said in Wesah. “Where is the other? Hiding?”
“The Protectorate army is much larger than Sophia’s,” Athène replied. “They have no reason to hide.”
“Chang must have a plan,” Clover said, grateful yet again for the uninterrupted weeks he’d spent studying Athène’s language. “If the Sophians make it into Notre Fille, it’ll only be because he wants them to.”
Athène frowned. “Our scouts say they saw many hundreds of Protectorate soldiers going into the church all day. Chang must have blocked off the doors within the last few hours.”
“Why?”
“Only he knows,” she said, tapping her temple—the only place a secret could ever be truly safe. Clover hadn’t noticed before, but her index finger was badly injured, bent at an ugly angle and wrapped in a bloody cloth. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the medical know-how to reset the bone.
“Your finger won’t heal like that,” he said. “It needs to be splinted.”
“The otsapah can look at it, when the war is over,” Nephra said.
But Athène shook her head. “Some wounds aren’t meant to heal. It will be my way of remembering all this.”
“I think I’d remember it just fine without a broken finger,” Clover said, proud to earn even half a smile from the leader of the Wesah nation.
Athène’s strategy was predicated on the Protectorate and Sophian forces annihilating each other, so there was nothing for the Wesah to do now but wait. The three of them stayed up on the roof as the sun went down and the square lit up with torches, by whose light they could track the slow progress of a large log floating through the crowd as if down a river on the way to the mill; ostensibly the Sophians planned to use it to batter down the grate. Clover realized he hadn’t heard Zeno’s planes in over an hour. Perhaps she’d deemed the skies unsafe; the rain was coming down harder than ever now, a downpour that dominated the senses—muffling sound, blurring vision, washing even the smells of sulfur and cordite from the air.
The log finally reached the church, where it was fitted into an apparatus that appeared to have been repurposed from the gallows that had nearly been the site of Clive’s execution. Clover wondered where his brother and Paz were now. He hoped they’d escaped the city safely with Flora, rather than tried to do something heroic—but somehow he doubted it. Clive had never been one for sitting on the sidelines, and Paz was even worse. Not that Clover was anyone to talk; it seemed none of them had ever learned the art of walking away from a losing hand.
He was jolted out of his reverie by the sound of the battering ram colliding with the iron bars behind the bullet-riddled doors of Notre Fille. After about a dozen blows, a cheer went up from the crowd; though Clover couldn’t see it through the rain, the grate must have given way. The Sophian army began to stream into the church.
Clover was struggling to understand why Chang was letting the battle play out this way. The Protectorate’s numbers advantage could only
be brought to bear on a relatively open battlefield; in the close quarters of Notre Fille, manpower would be far less important than firepower, and though Chang had manufactured an impressive arsenal in a short span of time, his soldiers still weren’t particularly well-trained in gunplay.
“We’re missing something,” Clover said to Athène.
“Like what?”
“Like… like…” He trailed off as a white eye opened on a nearby rooftop, followed by another one across Annunciation Square: two enormous floodlights illuminating the stupefied faces of those soldiers who’d yet to enter the church. A moment later, the facades of several buildings simply fell away like sloughed skin—a marvel of engineering that Clover guessed involved a great number of small explosives—revealing guns even larger than the one the Sophians had brought to bear on Notre Fille. The air filled with the rat-a-tat of their rotating barrels, all pointed inward at the corralled Sophians. Simultaneously, Protectorate soldiers began pulling themselves up from the black holes of sewer grates along the roads that fed into the square, blocking off any avenue of escape other than the church itself. Here was Chang’s masterstroke; he’d made sure the Sophians had seen his soldiers entering Notre Fille throughout the day, then used the underground tunnels to bring his men into the sewers and back around again. The Sophians thought they were surrounding, but ended up surrounded. They returned fire on the Protectorate soldiers, but only to give their rearward ranks time to escape into Notre Fille itself.
“It begins,” Athène said to Nephra. “Prepare the tribe.”
Nephra nodded, quickly disappearing into the sheets of rain. Chang’s guns had stopped firing as soon as the last of the Sophians were either dead or safely through the doors of Notre Fille. Athène looked down on the devastation with an inscrutable expression.
“How they win,” she said in English.
“What?”
“I heard you speak to your friend. You say it does not matter who wins. Only how. How do you think we should win, little Clover?”
He gestured toward the charnel-house scene beneath them. “Not like this,” he said.
“Why not? This is war. War is ugly.”
“Maybe. But even if you take the city this way, you won’t be able to keep it.”
“I don’t want the city. I only want my sisters to be able to live without fear.”
“Fine. Then you abandon the Anchor, and some new leader rises to power, one who remembers what the Wesah did here, who promises vengeance. Is that what you want?”
Athène wouldn’t meet his eye. “No. But what other choice do we have?”
The square was still now, almost silent. Clover imagined that if he could only yell loudly enough, the whole world might hear him; but what good was being heard if you didn’t know what you wanted to say?
6. Paz
IN A KIND OF DAZE, they followed Chang down halls and up narrow corkscrew stairways, through reading rooms lit by a few guttering lanterns throwing the shadows of reliquaries and dusty Filia against the walls, past dozens of spartan offices that reeked of erudition and boredom, and on past the uric tang of the lavatories and the sweat stink of the dormitories where thousands of divinity students had tossed and turned over the years. Flora walked just beside Chang, who had one pistol drawn and another in the holster at his waist. The Grand Marshal seemed different today—calmer, more civil—as if he had finally finished setting all his plans in motion and was now content to sit back and let them play out. Of course Paz still hated him for what he’d done to her, and to the Wesah, and to Mitchell Poplin, but she was curious why he’d bothered to save her and Clive from the Sophian man down in the narthex—curious enough not to immediately choke him to death where he stood, anyway.
“Here we are,” Chang finally said, pushing through a set of solid mahogany doors inlaid with elaborate gold filigree. “Can you believe that old bastard Carmassi used to make this climb every day? It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.”
Even if Chang hadn’t named him, Paz wouldn’t have had any trouble guessing that these were the chambers of the erstwhile Archbishop. The place perfectly balanced pious religious iconography with ostentatious display: an annulus constructed of innumerable strands of silver and gold, paintings of praying saints with glittering gold-leaf coronas, a silver tea set burnished to a shine, thick pile jacquard rugs that stretched from immaculately wallpapered wall to immaculately wallpapered wall. They passed through the antechamber, where a fountain burbled over a sculpture of the Daughter. Across a formal dining room set for service, Paz could see down a hall and into the Archbishop’s bedroom; the bed was a gigantic sleigh missing only a harness and a team of draft horses, wide enough to comfortably sleep an entire family. Beyond the cozy library, with its perfectly alphabetized volumes and a fire burning merrily in the gaping hearth, a pair of doors opened onto a tiered balcony-cum-garden. To the stentorian accompaniment of gunfire, the four of them walked beneath pergolas, immune from the pouring rain, all the way down to the railing overlooking Annunciation Square. A rake leaned against a nearby rose trellis, partially enwrapped in the stems.
“Look,” Chang said, “it’s all coming together.”
Paz tried to make sense of the scene below them, which was now cast in stark relief by two enormous floodlights mounted on distant roofs. Bright sparks stuttered from the ground floors of three buildings; Chang must have hidden the guns somehow, and now they were all firing on the Sophians at once. Rivers of shadows ran along the streets that converged on the church, flickering red and gold beneath the gas lamps and then turning black again. Zeno’s army had no choice but to retreat into the church itself—but wasn’t that exactly where they’d been trying to get to in the first place?
“Why’d you kill Mitchell Poplin?” Clive said.
“Who?” Chang looked confused for a moment. “Ah. The old man. I didn’t authorize that. Apparently he came at my men with some… woodworking tool? I don’t remember the details. They’d only come to get the girls.”
“Girls? Not just Flora?”
“I told you, I was there that night too,” Paz volunteered. “I ran as soon as I saw the soldiers. I didn’t think they would hurt anyone.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Chang said. “Odds are it would’ve all happened the same way if you’d stayed.”
Only Paz knew that wasn’t true. She never would’ve let them take Flora; she’d have died first.
“But why take them at all?” Clive said. “Haven’t you tortured us enough?”
Chang pulled a pocket watch from his uniform jacket and wiped its rain-flecked face. “Don’t be a hypocrite, Clive. How many people have died so that you and Paz could still be standing here? I took Flora because your father had information I wanted, and I needed leverage to get it.” Paz noticed Chang’s watch wasn’t showing the correct time, or anything close. Even so, Chang looked to be pleased with what he saw there, replacing it in his pocket with a grunt of satisfaction. “In the end, it didn’t even matter that he didn’t talk. I’d always known Sophia might have other planes. It’s why I sent my army underground. If that’s really Zeno’s best move, then I’ve already won.”
Lightning flashed, illuminating for an instant a thick cable running from a corner of the balcony out into the space above the square. A power line? Only there didn’t seem to be anything running on electricity in the Archbishop’s chambers. Maybe the Descendancy had developed its own telegraphy—but whom would Chang be talking to now, and about what?
“Where is everyone?” Paz said. “Why is this place empty?”
“Who else would be here? The Church hierarchy was purged weeks ago. My soldiers are out corraling the Sophians. The Library is going up in smoke as we speak, and I imagine most of the attendants are either dead or on their way out of the city. The work is almost finished.”
“The work?”
Chang struck a match off the railing and lit a cigarillo. He took a long drag and flicked the spent match through the exhalation
. “I realized something over the past few months, and I think I have you two to thank. You can’t keep building new things on top of old things forever. It’s like a roof. At a certain point, it just gets too damned heavy and the whole thing collapses. You have to be willing to tear off the old layers first. Or better yet, burn everything to the ground and start over again.”
“Scorched earth,” Paz whispered.
Chang smiled. “You were always quick, Dedios. I’m glad you’re not dead. There might just be a place for you in the new world I’m making.”
“I think we’ll pass.”
“Of course. Because of your principles. You’re so much better than me, aren’t you?” Chang gazed out over Annunciation Square, over this masterpiece of carnage and chaos he’d brought into being. The sense of accomplishment on his face was unmistakable. “Men like me make the world go round, children. I’ll probably be dead by the time you realize the truth of that. Civilization is the world’s most effective medicine. The Descendancy has provided order and meaning for hundreds of thousands of people since its inception. It has saved their lives. So yes, I would do anything to protect it. And I have.” After a last long savor of the view, he turned back to them. “Let’s try this one more time. I know you hate me, and with good reason. But plenty of working relationships have thrived on hatred. So why not join me? Help me rebuild the Descendancy, without all the superstitious trappings that made us vulnerable in the first place. I can forgive your trespasses if you’ll forgive mine.”
“Why not just kill us?” Clive said.
“I suppose I could try, but it doesn’t ever seem to stick with you two, does it?”
“Maybe we should kill you,” Paz said icily.
Chang sighed. “Aren’t you bored of this game by now? You may not believe it, but I’m a practical man. I’m tired of wasting my energy on you. I’d rather have that energy working for me. There’s gonna be a lot to do when this war is over, and if nothing else, you two have proven to be absolutely relentless when you put your minds to something. And I can be good to those who are good to me. I didn’t hurt Flora here, did I?”
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