“Barney?”
“Apologies.” He looked over at Alyssa, who was shaking her head with a skittish look, like maybe this was all too much, too soon, after all. Mouth tried to smile. “You probably knew him as Barnabas,” the professor went on. “He was a member of the Citizens for most of his life. He left the group during their final visit to Argelo, and his place is just a kilometer and a half from here. I assumed you were already in touch with him.”
Mouth had forgotten all about Barnabas, who had cooked for the group and used to sing and laugh at the same time during feast breaks, but now a few scattered memories came back. Nobody had talked about Barnabas after he’d gone missing, that last time in Argelo, and Mouth had just assumed Barnabas was dead.
“Thanks for coming over, Professor,” Alyssa was saying, by way of letting Martindale know that maybe this was enough for now, and they didn’t want to make anyone’s head explode. “We’ll be in touch. I am sure Mouth will be excited to talk some more about the Citizens, and their unique culture.”
“Great, great.” Martindale got up and tugged on Mouth’s hand and then Alyssa’s, and then he was gone.
Mouth stayed glued in the big rattan chair, staring at the chair opposite, where the professor had sat handling the thought box and talking about the ancient mysteries like they were a funny story. Day and night might as well have changed places.
“He doesn’t have a copy of that book you were trying to steal,” Alyssa said. “I already asked him.”
She saw the look on Mouth’s face and sat down in the chair where Martindale had sat, offering her hands.
“Look,” Alyssa said. “I know that was weird, and I shouldn’t have sprung that on you as a surprise, I guess. But you need to find out more about your nomads, or they’ll always be the people who judged you when you were a little kid and then died before you could stand eye-to-eye with them as an adult. I can’t even imagine.”
“You’re right.” These were the two hardest words Mouth had ever spoken.
“I am?” Alyssa was so relieved she laughed and then started to cry. “I thought you were going to kill me for a moment.”
“No, you are right about this. And thank you.” Mouth was in horrible pain, all the way down to the cellular level where all that guilt had lived for so long. But maybe this pain would turn out to be the healing kind. Clutching Alyssa with both arms, Mouth let out a deep, ugly, gasping breath of what might eventually be relief.
SOPHIE
“I found this place,” Bianca says, “where they make this drink. You will never want to drink gin-and-milk again.” As if making me hate gin-and-milk is some accomplishment.
I still stick to the same main streets most of the time, because otherwise I’ll get lost and Argelo will just swallow me whole. I can’t get used to a place where so many people shove each other, and I can never tell who’s just woken up and who’s about to go to bed. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to be tired, and that makes me more tired. Random people want to talk to me about Nagpur, a place I know almost nothing about.
But Bianca already knows all the best places in every neighborhood. “This is the café where they do these donuts. Abraham here is a genius at grinding the stalks and getting them just the right muddy consistency.” She drags me by the arm into a wooden cavern, which reminds me of the Illyrian Parlour except they just drink coffee by the light of tiny candles. She gives me a bite of a donut, and it’s incredible: sweet and crumbly, pure happiness. Abraham, a big guy with a bald head and stretched-out ears, pauses in the middle of grating some dark sticks into a bowl to wave at her.
I stare at all the people crammed onto all the seats, stools, and ledges in this thick air. Two girls squeeze onto a single oak chair, holding hands and whispering. At the table next to ours, a group of students wearing loose, torn clothing argue about the nature of consciousness, in a flurry of Argelan that I about half understand. Are we conscious because we perceive the outside world, or because we are aware of our own thoughts? One young man, with a high forehead and bony shoulders, says that by definition consciousness is the ability to act on our environment with intent, because otherwise sleep would be a form of consciousness. What about crocodiles? someone asks. They have some kind of insectoid hive behavior, but does that make them conscious, or just a complex manifestation of instinct? I tune out this conversation, because they’re idiots. And meanwhile, the two girls are kissing, right in front of the whole café. I can’t stop looking at these girls, with a Xiosphanti voice inside my head blaring Unnatural—and then I’m ashamed to be caught staring, and I look away with my face hot. Bianca’s already standing up, ready to leave.
“Here’s what I learned about Argelo.” Bianca stops to wave at everyone who passes on the street, and they all wave back. “People spend all their time and energy trying to live in the perfect spot, with just enough light to let you see some color. And then, once you’ve got your home in the light, you spend all your remaining money in bars and cafés, where it’s pitch dark.” Bianca dresses like a fashionable Argelan lady, with ribbons, silk, and lace, but people still gawp at her, especially now that she’s put a bold red streak into her lopsided black hair and started wearing luminescent makeup.
At last Bianca takes me to the place with that wondrous drink. It’s one of the hottest bars in the Knife, called Punch Face. (The name in Argelan sounds a lot like the word for “shutter malfunction” in Xiosphanti.) The darkness inside Punch Face is so thick and smoky I almost step on a famous torch singer named Marilynne.
But Bianca sees better than me, and also she knows the whole scene by heart. She talks in my ear, just in Argelan, except for a few words in Xiosphanti. “That man you almost kicked, that’s Gabriel. He’s been making a fortune speculating on sour cherries, because they are in huge demand right now thanks to being a key ingredient in this amazing drink that you are about to try for the very first time.” The drink is called an Amanuensis, and my first sip is tart, but with a fizzy sweet afterburn. “See? Forget you ever even tasted gin-and-milk. You could rob Gabriel right now, and nobody would care. Except don’t rob him in here, because I don’t want to get thrown out of my favorite club.”
Punch Face looks no bigger than the Zone House back home, as far as I can tell, without ever seeing the walls. The center of the room is taken up with a black fire, which devours light instead of giving it off—this is something they rescued from one of the old space shuttles, and it has a complicated explanation that I cannot hear over the noise. A group of musicians hunch on one side of the space, slapping a pair of drums and grinding out a rhythmic melody on guitars and a piano, with a singer hissing, “You can trust me, I want to bite you.” People dance in loose clothes that billow like the waves of the Sea of Murder. The air has a sugary tang, as if everyone is sweating out their sweet drinks.
The music speeds up. We all crush into the center of the room, arms under legs. Our torsos slide sideways across each other, and I’m going to implode with happiness. I don’t know this dance we’re doing, but I don’t need to. I follow the music and the other people, and our bodies speak to each other with heat and pressure. All my nerve endings go wide awake. We put everything we have up in the air, then fall on top of each other. I hear Bianca laugh, feel her grabbing my waist with both hands to lift me into the air. And then there’s a man nearby, with no shirt and sweat running along the ridges of his muscles. He laughs too, as his body whips between us. All my usual anxiety is gone. Everything feels brilliant. Bianca and I are alive and we’re together, here on the other side of the world, in this dark warm room full of beautiful dancers. I want to fall into this moment forever.
* * *
Bianca keeps trying to pull me toward another food stall, or a trendy bar. “Come on,” she pleads, “there’s so much you haven’t seen yet.” But I follow my bracelet in the direction of the night, because I’ve put this off for much too long.
“You should come with me,” I say to her. “You can learn to understand
the Gelet the way I do, then you’ll know they’re not animals. They can show you their city, and all of the incredible things they witnessed before our ancestors even arrived.”
Bianca considers this. “If I talk to them now, would they come when I called, the way they did for you? Would they help me out if I needed to cross through the night?”
I stop and look at her, and a cart runs into me, loaded up with fabrics on this narrow winding street, with a large man pedaling.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I spent a long time earning their trust and getting things for them. Maybe they would expect the same from you.”
“That seems like a huge commitment. And you’re basically saying I would have to be their servant.” Bianca purses her lips. “No offense, but this whole thing feels creepy. Do you even know what these creatures are doing to you? Like, are they controlling your mind?”
I turn and start walking again, down darker and darker streets. I don’t know how to respond to any of this.
“Plus you can’t just walk into the night from here,” Bianca says behind me. “You heard what Ahmad said. There’s no wall, no mountain, between us and the edge. A lot of people live right up against the evening, and it’s the worst part of town. I bet the crocodiles won’t even come anywhere near that place.” I give her a look, and she says, “I mean the Gelet. Right.”
I pause, because this already feels like night. Rough clay-brick buildings still cluster around me, but I almost can’t see my own hand, a few centimeters from my face, even with a small electric torch. I feel frost-sick, even wearing three layers. Farther ahead, I can almost make out more buildings, and people moving, but they could be my imagination. If you starve your eye enough, it will invent things.
“If anything happens to you, I’ll lose my mind.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good luck with that,” Bianca says. “There’s some effect I read about, where every hundred meters you go deeper into the night, the temperature drops exponentially. Plus you won’t even know which direction the day is. Seriously, come back with me now. I’ll buy you donuts. Please.”
I turn to look at Bianca, who’s a few gray lines. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” At least this time, I have my torch, and the warmest padded jacket and pants I could find in Katrina’s closet.
“I’m turning back. You should too. I’m sure the crocodiles—Gelet—don’t want you to just get yourself killed.” The horizon only has a dim ember left. Bianca disappears back into the city.
I almost collide with a house before I see it. The structure shakes at my touch, and if I’d run into it with my whole body I’d have left just a pile of boards. Someone has lashed some pieces of an old temporary shelter to rotting poles, under a roof of packed mud and slate, and I could stick my hand through with no effort. I can’t imagine what they do when there’s an ice storm.
“Did you find it?” someone inside the tiny house asks. “Please tell me you found it. I can’t hold on much longer. I only need a little bit.” I almost turn away, but instead I grope until I find the door, and it opens inward.
Inside the shack, a figure huddles under a pile of survival cloths and old torn strips of insulation. A tiny lamp perches on a few crates next to this “bed.” The tenant keeps asking if I have it, in a voice like an old man. But I get closer and realize I’m looking at a girl, a little younger than me, with no hair and shrunken features. She raises a hand with no fingers.
“Do you have it? Did you bring it?” She squints upward, realizes I’m nobody she knows, and gasps.
I reach in my bag for all the food I have—the remains of a fish pie from this place Bianca took me to—and I put it next to her bed. Then I turn and run out of there, and don’t look back.
Back in Argelo, the streets spin me around again. Music blasts from all sides, and under my feet. I smell kettles of whiskey-scented stew. Laughter rings out from a half-open doorway, just upstairs on my right. But I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the bed of old survival gear. I feel sick—like nausea, but duller and deeper. Even closer to the temperate zone, I have to step over beggars every couple of meters, something I never saw in Xiosphant.
A sickening phrase comes back to me: “miser generosity.”
* * *
By the time I get back to Ahmad’s, my horror has hardened into pure fury. What kind of city is this? They have enough resources to spare for light shows and sour cherry drinks, but not enough to rescue the people living in a shantytown at the edge of evening. Every self-satisfied chuckling face I pass, I want to scream into.
But Bianca is in high spirits. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back safely,” she says in Argelan. “I’ve been worrying myself to pieces. Did you manage to meet with your friends?”
“No,” I say. “You were right, it was awful. I just saw the ugliest side of this city, and now I can’t unsee it.”
“Well, cheer up, because you’re about to see a whole other side.” She holds up a golden card, embossed with our names and a bunch of Argelan directions that I can’t understand. “My persistence has paid off! I was dancing at Punch Face, and I met one of the top lieutenants in the Unifiers. You remember them, right?”
I toss my head, because of course I do. Ahmad made us memorize the Unifiers’ insignia, along with the other eight ruling families here in Argelo.
“They’re hosting a giant formal ball, with two of the other families, and I just scored the two of us an invite. Absolutely everybody who matters in this town is going to be there.” She claps her hands together. “We’ll have to get ball gowns made, and borrow some jewelry, and dance until we can’t even see straight, and then dance some more, and it’s going to be epic.”
I still see the fingerless girl in my mind as I shake my head. “I can’t. I just can’t. You should just go without me.”
“Sophie.” Bianca takes my shoulders and looks into my face, and she looks like the fearless rebel who stole all my waking thoughts back at the Gymnasium again. “I want to share this with you. I want to dress you up in the most stunning piece of clothing you have ever worn, and then show off your beauty to all of the fancy people here in Argelo. This is going to be the greatest experience of our lives. I promise you, I know what I’m doing, and this is all for a good cause. But for now, just trust me, and come with me to the ball.”
I’m so startled that she called me beautiful I find myself smiling and nodding. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go to the ball together.”
mouth
The tiny diner had three tables and seven chairs, with a wide counter along the back, at the bottom of a small hill where two streets made of stone slabs converged. The name BARNEY’S was etched across the front window in chipped gold letters, and there was a faded menu. Mouth stood outside and studied the proprietor’s round, beard-shadowed face, and didn’t recognize him. But Mouth mostly remembered Barnabas as a loud voice, and the scent of stews cooking.
Barney had owned this restaurant for as long as anyone could remember, not far from the college where Martindale taught, on the light side of town. Martindale hadn’t even realized there was a surviving ex-Citizen selling cheap food to students and some faculty right down the hill from his office until recently.
Mouth wanted to keep standing outside and staring at the old man in the dirty apron, but Martindale was already pulling the glass door open. Barney saw the professor enter and gave a welcoming shout from behind the counter, then came over and put fresh plates and cheap silverware on the innermost table, with a grin that exposed his front teeth.
Barney filled every moment with patter. “Good to see you, Professor. I got some of that meatloaf you like, and I think we’ve got a few bottles of that grape juice, too. It’s always great to see you. We’ve been lucky enough to get a lot of students coming in here lately. I always treat them right. Students always have the most interesting conversations, you know, Professor. Reminds me of when I used to live on the road, and we’d have all sorts of deep introspect
ive talk when we were miles from anywhere, with nothing but sky in all directions. A man starts to feel his true size against the vastness of the universe. You know? What are your friends having?”
“Actually, I’ve got something of a surprise for you, Barney.” The professor was enjoying himself way too much.
“Oh?” Barney was putting meatloaf onto a tray, and the meatloaf looked, or maybe smelled, familiar in a way that Barney’s face hadn’t.
Martindale gestured at Mouth, who fidgeted and backed toward the door. “This here is another surviving member of the Citizens. Barney, meet Mouth.”
“Oh. Oh!” Barney rushed over and looked up into Mouth’s face, searching for something. Barney’s eyes widened. “Mouth. Of course. Little Mouth, I remember you. Such a tiny pain in the ass. You nearly lit my cooking tent on fire one time. I always wondered what name they ended up giving you.”
“They didn’t,” Mouth said. “Never got around to it.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. Well, I’m sure they would be proud if they could…” Barney stopped and looked down, into the glistening slab of meatloaf. “I mean, if they could be here. If they were still around. To see you grown so big, and so self-sufficient. Not that they really valued self-sufficiency, I guess. They were always about interdependence. It drove me nuts. You couldn’t wipe your ass without…” Barney trailed off again.
There was a long silence. Alyssa grabbed Mouth’s arm, as if one or the other of them needed reassurance in this moment.
“I never found out what happened,” Barney said. “All I knew is, we would come through town pretty regular when I was a member. And then I quit the group, and they never came back. I asked around, nobody saw them again.”
The City in the Middle of the Night Page 19
