“I can’t leave Clover and Flora alone. Not right now. Not after everything that’s happened.”
The first tear came loose from its moorings. “I know.”
They held each other, and Paz felt her gaze drawn to the giant annulus above the ambo. It had been a long time since she’d known the comfort of religion, but there was no denying the fact that faith had saved all their lives tonight. That ring—nothing but a geometric shape, nothing but the outline of a tree trunk or the full moon, had inspired thousands of men and women to choose peace, to choose mercy. That had to be worth something, didn’t it?
She closed her eyes and imagined the future as she wanted it to be. Riding back down the Teeth with all three of her brothers at her side. Carlos gasping at the sight of the Anchor, still majestic even with many of its tallest buildings reduced to rubble. Terry making some snide comment about Paz’s traitorous heart. Frankie worrying about where they’d sleep and what they’d eat and whether he’d make any friends. They’d pass through the Eastern Gate and there Clive would be, holding a bundle of carnations and wearing that anxious smile of his—never quite contented, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She pulled back from the embrace and looked Clive in the eye.
“What?” he said.
She leaned forward and kissed him, long and slow, promissory. Foreheads together, breath commingling, she whispered, “I’m comin’ back.”
11. Athène
WAGING WAR IS THE EASY part.
Her mother’s words, ringing in her ears as she and Zeno sat across from each other at a too-large table, attempting to direct the future of the world. The parley was not going smoothly; Zeno seemed to think the Wesah had done their part and should now be happy to return to the life they’d known before. She would have Athène pretend that the war had never happened, that the massacre at the tooroon had never happened, that the cease-fire itself hadn’t come about primarily because of the Wesah. The old order lay in pieces; did Zeno really think Athène had come all this way and risked so many of her sisters’ lives just to be sidelined when the time came to build a new one?
“I don’t mean to offend you,” Zeno said, “but you are still a child. You simply don’t have the experience needed to run a city.”
“This is about more than a city,” Athène countered. “It is about a nation. I am wanting for us to make it together.”
“The majority of your tribe doesn’t even speak English. They can’t read. Nations are built on documents. On contracts and treaties. Not songs and rituals.”
“I can read. My sisters will learn.”
“Maybe. But would you hang the fate of this new nation on whether they succeed?”
“I trust my sisters with my life every day. Can you say the same?”
They’d been going back and forth like this for hours, always returning to the same nut of a problem: she didn’t trust Zeno, and Zeno didn’t respect her. Come to think of it, Zeno probably didn’t trust her much either, given the events of the past twenty-four hours. Athène leaned back in her creaky wicker chair and looked out the window, toward the rising sun. Her warriors were waiting for her outside the city. After what she’d asked them to do, she couldn’t return to them with anything less than an unalloyed victory. But what did that even look like in these circumstances?
“How do you make your hair like this?” Athène said, surprising even herself with the banality of the question. “The color is so beautiful.”
Zeno touched her temple, where the vibrant red was ceding to gray. “It’s a plant. Lawsonia inermis. It doesn’t grow naturally on this continent.”
“So where do you find it?”
“I believe we bought the seeds from a traveling merchant, long before I became director. We grow many rare plants in the academy greenhouse.” Her face darkened. “Or we used to.”
Athène had momentarily forgotten what Chang had done. She felt an upwelling of sympathy for Zeno, a wisp of kinship. “I am sorry for what you lost,” she said.
“And I you.” The softness only lasted a moment. “But I’m afraid a shared sympathy doesn’t solve our problem.”
There was a sharp knock on the door—a warning, not a request. A moment later it swung open to reveal a mangled husk of a man standing on the other side. Or half standing, really, as one of his legs had been amputated at the knee, necessitating crutches. His face was gaunt and thickly bearded, but Athène recognized him right away: Burns, the marshal who’d been there the day she met Gemma. She caught a glimpse of Clover, Flora, and Kita through the doorway before Burns shut the door.
“Director Zeno,” he said. “Andromède.” He traversed the room in a few miniature vaults and took a seat at the table—now slightly less too-large than before. “I guess I’m here as a representative of the Descendancy, seeing as everybody else is dead or…” He trailed off, reflected for a moment, then shrugged. “Just dead, I guess.”
“Does the Descendancy even exist anymore?” Zeno said.
“As much as Sophia does, from what I hear,” Burns sniped back.
“We are the same,” Athène interjected. “We all are choosing to surrender.”
“I didn’t surrender,” Zeno said.
“You stop fighting. You drop your weapons. This is surrender.”
“Perhaps semantically. But practically, a surrender is meant to help differentiate the victorious from the vanquished.”
Athène didn’t know many of the words Zeno had just used, but the sentiment was clear enough—and it suggested a potential solution. “The Wesah, we have one leader—Andromède—but she speaks for the whole tribe only when it is necessary. Otherwise, all the chieftains are equal.”
“Sounds like a shitshow,” Burns said.
Zeno snorted. “There are plenty of advantages to decentralized systems of governance.”
“I’m sure there are. That’s why you shared your authority with… who was it again? Oh, right—no one.”
“At least we didn’t murder the Wesah on sight.”
Athène raised her voice to make herself heard over their bickering. “Director Zeno, you are the only leader in Sophia?”
“We were never big enough to require a larger government,” Zeno replied testily.
“And Marshal Burns, I am told the Descendancy has three leaders. One for soldiers, one for the Library, and one for the Church.”
“That’s how it was, yeah,” Burns said.
“And there are three of us. This is perfect, no?”
She watched as Zeno and Burns stared each other down, each waiting for the other to veto the plan. But there was only silence.
“Who would go where?” Zeno finally asked.
“This church we’re sitting in is still pretty important to a lot of people,” Burns said. “I’d say we should govern out of here. You Sophians can take the Library.”
“The Library was destroyed,” Zeno said. “Chang ordered it burned.”
“The walls are still standing. We can clean it up.” He looked to Athène. “That means you Wesah would be stuck in the Bastion, if we’re planning on using all the same buildings as before.”
“That is fine,” Athène said.
“You sure? It’s pretty small.”
“I do not think many of my sisters will want to live in the Anchor.”
“This is all well and good,” Zeno said, “but there still needs to be a primary leader. When the three of us don’t agree, someone must have ultimate authority. I am the oldest here, and the most experienced leader.”
“I don’t even want to lead,” Burns said. “After everything I’ve been through, I’d much rather spend the next few months either asleep or drunk. But I’m telling you this, the people here aren’t gonna accept a Sophian as their, you know, president or whatever we end up callin’ it. Not anytime soon, anyway.”
“The same is true of my people and you,” Zeno countered. “Sophians always respected the Library and the Church, but they despise the Protectorate.”
&nbs
p; “The Protectorate never terrorized a whole city for weeks with a fucking airplane.”
“Only because they didn’t have the intelligence to build one!”
Athène realized she hadn’t even tried the tea someone had set in front of her when she first arrived. It tasted of bitter herbs and had long since gone cold. She took the cup and went to the window as Zeno and Burns continued arguing. The sun had risen, and it shone now like one of those copper shekels, full and round and red, burnishing the rain-slick brick and stone of Annunciation Square. Athène wished she could go back to the Villenaître now, leave all of this behind, but something told her she wouldn’t see that place again for a very long time.
She touched a finger to the crown she wore on her brow, as if to remind herself why it was there.
“There is a third option,” she said.
* * *
Ridiculous, Athène thought, turning first this way and then the other in the glass. The gown was heavier than wet muslin, made up more of precious gems than cloth, and designed in such a way as to push her breasts up toward her chin, like some kind of perverse offering. She’d refused the absurd vaulted shoes at least, and her weathered moccasins were hidden away beneath the dense folds of the dress like a secret. An hour ago some woman she’d never met had tried to “style” her, daubing her face with white powder and then adding a bit of red back to her cheeks and lips. Now Athène looked decidedly un-Wesah—a shame-faced snowman, a blushing ghost. She hadn’t let the style woman touch her hair, but had agreed to brush out some of the kinks herself—a finicky operation she was only too happy to be distracted from by a knock at the door.
“What?” she shouted in English (which was, she had to admit, a better language for shouting).
The door opened to reveal Flora standing on the threshold. Athène hadn’t seen her since the war ended two days ago. The girl wore her own monstrous outfit—an elaborate sculpture of pink taffeta and silver lace, bulging at the shoulders and the rear—and her long hair had been sculpted into a pointlessly artful labyrinth of braids and whorls.
“You look almost as stupid as me,” Athène said to Flora’s figure in the mirror. “I am feeling better already.”
Flora closed the door behind her and crossed the room. She was holding a large black box, which she set down on the vanity.
“What is that?” Athène said, returning to the knotty problem of her own hair. Flora shrugged. She still wasn’t speaking, which was part of the reason Athène had summoned her—but only part. “Flora, I am asking you here today because I want to make a deal. Is that possible? If yes, just nod your head.” The slightest tilt, almost imperceptible. “Good. What is coming for me—not just today, but in all the months and years ahead—it frightens me. You know what it is to be frightened, yes?” Another tilt. “Some of my people will stay with me, but not many, and none that I know well. You are young, but I trust you. I would like you to—ow!”
The hairbrush had gotten stuck in a particularly tenacious tangle. Athène pulled at it a few times with little result but pain. Without any prompting, Flora reached out and deftly worked the brush free in a matter of seconds.
“Thank you,” Athène said.
The girl nodded, then continued to brush Athène’s hair.
“What I was saying is that I would like you to stay with me. Not as a counselor, or a servant, but as a friend. Do you think you could do this?” A moment’s hesitation, then another nod. “I’m sorry, but that is not enough. This vow of silence, I have not asked you to break it, not since the day your sister died. But now, if you are to be my friend, I need your voice.”
Flora stopped brushing, stopped moving entirely; she seemed paralyzed with indecision.
Athène remembered the box on her vanity. It was heavier than she’d expected, made entirely of leather. The brass hinges opened silently. In a crevice of black velvet perched a filigreed confection of precious metals spun by some empyrean spider. Tendrils curved upward from the base, latticing the hypnotic purple depth of a sapphire the size of a chicken egg. Athène lifted it free and was delighted to discover that the jeweler had done as he’d promised: her old brass crown made up the base of this ostentatious knickknack. Gingerly she lifted it to her brow—and her delight curdled. It was so heavy! Her old crown dug into her forehead now, and that lattice would surely catch on everything.
In the mirror, she saw the hungry look in Flora’s eyes: two birds with one stone. In a single violent motion, she slammed the crown down on the edge of the box, breaking off the delicate new adornments. She put the brass circlet back on her head and then stood up, gesturing Flora toward the chair.
“Sit,” she said.
It took some doing, but eventually she succeeded in fitting all the broken ends of gold and silver into the beribboned layer cake that was Flora’s hair, bending the ductile metal down to lie flush with the girl’s scalp. The sapphire ended up resting right on top of her head, like some dark thought Flora couldn’t quite shake.
“There we are.” Athène put her hands on Flora’s shoulders. Their eyes met.
“It’s pretty,” Flora said.
Athène smiled. “Yes. It is very pretty.”
* * *
They moved as a group down the central hallway of the Bastion. The walls were garlanded with long strings of white, red, and yellow roses—three colors to signify the joining of three nations; Athène couldn’t remember which was meant to be which. Flora remained at her side, and behind them were various representatives of the Anchor and Sophia, including Zeno and Burns, both of whom had also been trussed and gussied up. The formality fit Zeno well enough, but Burns looked as out of his element as Athène had ever seen him. Still he managed a smile when she glanced at him over her shoulder. Her “coronation,” as Zeno had taken to calling it, represented the fruits of compromise, the best option they had. She would be more than a figurehead, but hopefully not too much more; power for power’s sake had never much appealed to her. Anyway, Zeno and Burns would be there to guide her in the years to come, and she would be there to guide them, too.
The front doors of the Bastion were shut, a guard stationed to either side. Her heart beat hard at the sound of the crowd waiting for her to emerge.
“Are you ready?” Zeno asked.
“They aren’t all gonna be happy about this,” Burns added. “You’re gonna get some jeers. But it’ll all settle down before too long. I got a good feeling.”
“A good feeling?” Athène said skeptically.
“Sure. Why not?”
She wished her mother could have been there to see her, and even more than that, she wished Gemma were still alive, standing beside her, telling her everything was going to be all right. So many things she wished. Yet this was far from the worst possible outcome. The otsapah had seen blood and fire in the future, and there had been plenty of both. But the Wesah were still here, and the fighting was done. There was no reason not to believe a bright and shining future was on its way—other than experience, of course. And precedent.
Athène nodded to the guards. The doors swung open, drenching the dark hallway with sunlight. Her ears filled with the cries of the people, who were her people now. Head held high, she stepped into the brave new world she’d brought into being.
12. Clive
TO WALK THE STREETS OF the Anchor now was to subject yourself to a history lesson, to a laundry list of losses. Shops and taverns that had stood for a hundred years had been reduced to a splintered sign atop a pile of rubble. Landmarks you’d used to orient yourself no longer existed, such that the whole city felt as if it had been turned on an axis, or else replaced with some aged, ruined doppelgänger. And was it Clive’s imagination, or were there just not as many people around as there ought to have been? Turning onto the Purple Road, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was either late or early for something, that everyone else in the city was attending some event from which he’d been excluded.
It had been two weeks since Athène was named
Minister of the Anchor—a new title invented by the Wesah-Sophia-Descendancy triumvirate. There would never again be an Epistem, or an Archbishop, or a Grand Marshal, or a director for that matter. The Wesah still thought of their leader as Andromède, but even that title was unlikely to last. Everything was changing.
Case in point: this ramshackle two-story house in the Sixth Quarter, fortuitously untouched by the bombings but still wearing a mantle of soot—the dust of the fragmented city, washed away with every rain but still swirling around the atmosphere, circling and alighting over and over again, like a flock of scavenger birds. All through his childhood, this had been Gemma’s house first and her grandfather’s house second. Now both of them were gone, and Clive was learning to think of it as his house, or even stranger than that—his family house. Clive had the master bedroom, while Clover was in Flora’s old room. Flora had moved to Gemma’s room; it wouldn’t be long before she’d grow into her older sister’s clothes, as she was already growing into Gemma’s beauty.
“Hello?” Clive called out.
“Upstairs!” Clover called back.
“You almost ready?”
“Just give me a second.”
Clive went into the kitchen. At Flora’s insistence, the room had been decorated a month early for Landfall Day. Kita had come over earlier in the week, and the four of them had spent the day cutting out paper dolls and hanging them from the ceiling, painting little snow-limned trees on the windowpanes, drinking hot cider, and baking cookies that had somehow only grown more delicious as they went stale. The decorations made the room more cheerful, though the cheer inevitably made Clive wistful for past holidays. It also made him miss Paz, which was strange, as they’d never celebrated a Landfall Day together. Everything made him miss her, really.
His bag was already packed and waiting by the door. They’d be traveling by foot, rather than by wagon or horse, so he’d made sure to keep it light. He was good at that by now.
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