The City in the Middle of the Night

by Anders, Charlie Jane

  Alyssa hoisted Mouth over her shoulder and helped her stumble through the slippery tunnel that smelled like generations of diarrhea. Mouth breathed into Alyssa’s ear, barely managing to croak, “Can we,” and some time later, “start over?”

  No response to that, except that much later, when Mouth had collapsed on a bed in a tiny flop that Alyssa had rented over a tannery in the Warrens, and Alyssa was poking a tiny syringe into Mouth’s lung, she heard Alyssa say, in Argelan: “There’s no starting over. There’s only starting again.”

  Mouth tossed her head.

  “So, you’re Sophie’s bodyguard now?”

  Mouth tossed her head again. “Need to find her.” She could breathe a little better now.

  “Ugh. That girl. Beginning to think you’re each other’s jinxes. Well, okay.” She sighed. “I haven’t thrown my life away for a lost cause in a little while. Tell me about it when you can talk.”

  “Okay.” Mouth passed out again.

  * * *

  When Mouth regained consciousness in a filthy room darkened by shutters, she half expected Alyssa to be gone. But Alyssa sat at the tiny cork table, dismantling the shackle on her own ankle, and that was the most beautiful surprise of all. Mouth attempted to smile up at Alyssa, who smiled back and reached to take her hand. Mouth squeezed Alyssa’s palm, like some talisman promising safety, redemption, or maybe just not dying alone.

  Mouth took a deep, miraculous breath. “When I thought you were dead, I was planning one hell of a wake. I was going to get so drunk I’d never see straight again.”

  Alyssa snorted. “I never got a chance to drink to you being dead either. Your wake was going to be incredible: those gross cakes you always liked, fancy high-end liquor, plus maybe some little kids who could sing and pretend to be sad.”

  “Your wake would have been way better than that,” Mouth said. “I was going to set a few dozen firebombs all over town, in honor of your career as a child arsonist. Heaps of food. Including those disgusting cactus-pork crisps. Liters of swamp vodka. The whole town would have passed out.”

  “Fuck off. Your wake would have been the best wake in the history of wakes.” Alyssa poked Mouth’s leg. “Flowers and parades and flamethrowers, and I would have given a whole speech about how you were too dumb to live, but too fuck-faced to die of stab wounds or gunshots, like everyone else.”

  As she spoke, Alyssa leaned forward and put one arm around Mouth’s uninjured shoulder and leaned on her chest, with care. Mouth heard a sigh of almost unbearable tenderness.

  “Your wake would have ended with a thousand more people dead,” Mouth said.

  “Pffft. Your wake would have been an extinction-level event.” Alyssa moved closer, until all of Mouth’s uninjured parts were swathed in arms and legs. “But now I guess we’ll just have to drink to being alive, like boring people.”

  They fell asleep tangled in each other, like old times.

  SOPHIE

  I see my face everywhere: a terrible likeness printed with streaky ink on the Palace’s ancient printing press, but still me. Bianca gives a speech in the Founders’ Square, standing in the same spot where her predecessor as vice regent announced a reduction in med-creds and triggered a riot. “We’ve been invaded by something evil that followed us out of the night,” Bianca says. Behind her, the prince looks pale and lightsick. “Some creature that we’ve never seen before has learned to imitate human form. It may look like a beautiful woman, but don’t let it get close, because its slightest touch will end your life.” Around me, the crowd shrills. I pull my hood tighter, hiding my face. I can’t help remembering when I was swept up by this same mob, and imagining what they’ll do if they find me this time.

  Then I close my eyes, and let the feelings take hold of me, before I remind myself that I’m not trapped now. I’m strong, and I can climb any surface, and I can sense danger approaching before it even sees me.

  I keep thinking that if I could have just showed Bianca that one memory of drinking tea, when we were too young to understand anything, things would have turned out differently. The teapot was like a harmless sun, radiating heat without the assault of light, and we clustered around it, gossiping and making up stories about what we were going to do when we got free.

  As I leave the Square, my cloak snags on the rusted metal of an old stairway rail, revealing the shape of my body for one eyeblink. I’m not sure if anyone saw, but I duck into an alley piled with old linens and climb one wall, gripping with the ends of my tentacles. Around the next corner, I scale an eave and hide on a crumbling sill covered with laser-carved angels while people walk underneath me.

  I don’t know what happened to that teapot. My old memories haven’t gotten any clearer thanks to my gift, and I only remember what I remember. So the teapot only lives in that one moment, and a few others. Maybe we broke it, maybe it got lost, maybe it’s still in a cupboard at the Gymnasium somewhere. In my recollection, it had green cornflowers painted on it, and a thin crack where the lid connected.

  I take refuge in the very hottest part of town. Corroded corrugated aluminum, hot to the touch, right next to my face. I huddle there, sweating and suffocating, during the twelfth bell, the recessional chimes, and, at last, the shutters-up warning. My shoulder still burns, and I worry it’s infected. I’ve been so stupid. The Gelet are counting on my help, but I can’t stop throwing away my life for Bianca. It’s all I ever do.

  Mouth probably died at the Palace. Even now that Bianca is lost to me, the idea of Mouth being dead cuts deeper than I could have expected. I remember her story of the blue wings, and the way the Gelet recoiled when I conveyed it to them. I should have helped Mouth find another name, one that didn’t remind her constantly of bones and lost chances.

  My love for Bianca feels like a feature of the landscape that recedes farther into the distance the longer I stare. I wonder how much she’s sleeping now that she’s home, and whether she dreams of me.

  I need to leave my hiding place to find some food, and that’s when I spot the symbol. Painted in yellow on the peeling stucco wall of an empty shoe factory, the glyph twists in on itself, with the shape of wings and one long tooth. I stare awhile before I remember where I saw it before: on some of the books in Hernan’s study, at the Illyrian Parlour. I hesitate one moment longer, and then push open the tiny door.

  Jeremy crouches in a wide-armed chair next to a coffee urn in the style of Old Zagreb, with a cloudy ancient copy of a Mayhew tract in both hands. Cyrus the marmot stretches out on one arm of the chair, grumbling. Jeremy looks up and smiles at me. “You made it. I saw your picture all over town, so I tried to leave a message that only you would understand. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  He gives me food, and clean water, and a place to sit, and then he sets about tending my shoulder.

  * * *

  Jeremy talks twice as fast as before, now that we’re a long way from the Parlour. And meanwhile, Cyrus seems even more languid than ever, though he cozies up to Jeremy the same way he used to with Hernan. Jeremy says Hernan kept the Parlour open for a while, and things seemed to quiet down after I left. But some time later, there was another crackdown on anti-Circadianist elements, and Hernan had to close shop after all. This all happened ages ago. I keep being shocked by how much time passed while I was away. It’s already 4 Silence after Crimson, according to the calendar on the wall. Hernan ended up on the run, and eventually died of an infection that spread to his blood.

  Besides Cyrus and the samovar, Jeremy has saved a few other things from the Parlour. He digs in a wooden crate until he pulls out a scrap of wax paper: my mother’s painting of me standing near some barley stalks. “Hernan told me to give you this, if I ever saw you again.” I stare at the tiny figure, whose face is turned away, and the light, from somewhere out of the frame, that limns her cheek and the tips of the newly harvested crops. I count every brushstroke, as if I could see my mother’s hand if I concentrate hard enough. And then I roll it, tenderly, and tuck it inside a pouch in
my cloak.

  Then I sit with Jeremy, and he tells me about the new Uprising: he and his friends are working to unseat our new vice regent and her foreign allies. This dusty storage room, scorching even with the shutters closed, is one of his hideouts.

  “All of that training Hernan gave us.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Turns out it’s quite helpful for politics. I know how to fire people up, by doing more or less the opposite of what you and I used to do.”

  I start to try to explain about Bianca, how I still believe she never wanted to hurt anyone, even now, and Jeremy hushes me.

  “I don’t need you to tell me anything,” he says. “I want you to show me.”

  I just stare. His face, lit by a single beam from an old handheld light, looks like a landscape of arid gullies. Cyrus is peering up at me too; maybe he recognizes me, or wonders what’s going on.

  “You want me to…” I whisper.

  “That’s why I made all this effort to find you. I’ve been hearing rumors, from someone who works at the Palace and heard her talking to Dash after you got away. They say that you can show people the things you’ve seen, and that’s why the vice regent is scared of you. You know all her secrets, you know the whole truth about her, and anyone who touches you can experience it, as if they had been there in person.”

  I hesitate, fingering the sides of my cloak.

  “Please, show me,” he says again.

  I open my cloak. When I bring the tendrils closer to his face, he lets out a slow breath, like steam escaping the coffee urn. I show him Bianca speaking to the Progressive Students, then try to take him through the glimmering parties in Argelo, Bianca flirting with these oligarchs, and the fleet of armored vehicles. Forcing myself to revisit these things feels like a whole new kind of memory-panic, except with crushing sadness instead of anxiety.

  Jeremy untangles his face from my tendrils, and I realize after a moment that he’s shaking with happiness.

  “This … this is amazing. You could be the single most effective recruitment tool in the history of political organizing. People will want to try this for themselves, and once they do, they’ll be on our side forever. I can see why the vice regent is scared out of her mind.”

  I step away from him, all my senses heightened as if danger could arrive from anywhere. This storage room feels both too claustrophobic and too exposed.

  “I didn’t come back home to be some living piece of propaganda,” I say.

  “She’s trying to destroy you,” Jeremy says. “You have to destroy her first. That’s how it works.”

  “Thanks for the food.” I move away from him, climbing the half stairway toward the blinding glare coming through the doorframe. “And for tending my shoulder. I feel much better. Please take good care of Cyrus.”

  Hearing his name, Cyrus growls and stretches his pseudopods.

  “Please stay here. I have an extra bedroll. We can talk more later. You don’t have to rush into anything. But this is a way for both of us to get our lives back. Now that I’ve experienced your power, I…” Jeremy rushes behind me, hands raised, but makes no move to stop me. “You can control the thing that most of us are controlled by. We could do so much together.”

  I pause at the door. “If you want to become like me,” I say, “climb the Old Mother and just wait at the top. Go alone, no weapons. They’ll come and find you.” Then I walk outside, shielding my face against the sunbaked heat, and hurry back to my hiding place before the shutters open.

  * * *

  My shoulder still burns, and I don’t know whether to curse myself or Bianca against the pain. I needed to run away from Jeremy, because I was afraid I would end up agreeing to let myself be used again. Maybe I’d have tried to share the story of Bianca in a way that made people want to forgive her, even as they rise up against her. And that might be the only way I’ll ever get to share my abilities with anyone, without them reacting the way the Glacier Fools did, or Bianca. People can stand things for the sake of politics that they would never endure for love or profit. But even if I could do that to Bianca without loathing myself, I know I couldn’t stand to deliver that story to people, over and over. I would turn to ice if I even tried.

  The shutters open, and close again, and open again, while I hold myself still and keep my back to the brazier of the Young Father. My shoulder still hurts when I move, but I think it’s getting better.

  I sleep inside my crawlspace without any regard to the state of the shutters, and maybe I’ve just been away too long to sink back into the old rhythm. If anything, now I prefer going out when everyone else sleeps. I don’t fear the Curfew Patrols, not with all my new senses, and Xiosphant looks lovelier when you can see every stone and adornment without people in the way, the interplay of ancient technology and the more recent handcrafted imitations. I can’t believe how much odd little things delight me, like a fluttering wrapper from the cakes we used to get at grammar school, or a sign for the Grand Cinema, the tiny space where they screen old hard-light dramas. Sometimes I catch the acrid scent of tannery smoke, or notice the shimmer of the air in the Cold Front, and I can’t help feeling this tawdry nostalgia.

  But actual people are more complicated. After so much exposure to Argelan culture, I can’t look at random strangers here in Xiosphant without trying to guess which compartment their families traveled in, and how that lines up with their social class here.

  A Curfew Patrol marches away from me, nowhere nearby, but I hear another set of footsteps that sound more furtive, stopping and starting as if someone keeps hiding. I creep over the lintels and around the smokestacks of bleached-brick buildings, getting closer to the temperate zone, until I lower myself into the street in front of Alyssa.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she says in Argelan. “We’d better get off the street. I know a place we can lie low.” I follow her down more alleys until I realize we’re circling closer to the Palace and I’m sure that I’ve trusted the wrong person again. But at the edge of the fanciest street market, Alyssa opens a trapdoor and helps me into a small space under one of the market stalls. This is the closest to the night I’ve been in a while, and my bracelet gives a faint buzz.

  Alyssa shines a small torch around the tiny wooden space. “We waited out the curfew in here on my first visit to Xiosphant. Mouth was bleeding all over the place. Look, you can still see the stains.”

  Her curly brown hair is longer, and she has a couple of new scars on the left side of her face, right next to her wide, protruding ear. She winces when she moves, and even her smile has thicker lines, but her laugh still sounds the same as ever. I hug her and she leans on my shoulder for a moment.

  “Mouth sent me to find you. I’m not letting her out of bed until her lung sounds like a lung again. But she’s been climbing out of her skin with worry. She made me promise to keep looking for you.”

  “I can’t believe Mouth is alive. I saw her take at least two bullets at the Palace.”

  “Must be tough to be a masochist when your entire body is scar tissue, without a single nerve ending left.” Alyssa seems to laugh, but then she stares at me with her mouth pursed. “She was willing to die for you. She didn’t even hesitate.”

  “You should have seen her face when she heard that you were alive, and then when she found out you were in a dungeon. I’ve never seen joy go dark so fast.”

  “Huh.” She raises her eyes for a moment, thinking about Mouth, then looks back at me. “I suppose you’re going to just show me what her face looked like. That’s your new thing, right?”

  I wince, thinking about Jeremy. All his big plans for me.

  “I’m not anybody’s recording device,” I say.

  “Good. The only thing that makes life tolerable is that people forget all the stupid things I say as soon as I’ve finished saying them.”

  We sit in the tiny hutch under the market square for a while, and I can tell this place brings back conflicted old memories for Alyssa. She mentioned Mouth’s blood, long since dried.


  I think something and say it at the same time: “You’ve always been the strongest, out of all of us.”

  Alyssa half laughs, half just shakes her head. “Doesn’t feel like it, most of the time. But then I think about my ancestors, and everything they went through for me to be here, and I just find a way. That’s what this town tried to keep you from having, I guess, because they wanted you to be weak. And now look at you.”

  The scent of old blood has been thickening since we closed the lid, along with a musty loam funk. Something about this earthiness reminds me of the Resourceful Couriers’ sleep nook.

  “Mouth searched for ages for something to believe in, and I couldn’t give it to her,” Alyssa says. “Even this Barney guy, who used to be one of the Citizens, couldn’t. But you did. And now she wants me to join your cult, or your security detail, whichever. But … I can’t be disappointed again. I just can’t. The next disappointment is going to snap me in half.”

  I want to say that I don’t need Mouth’s protection, or Alyssa’s either. But Mouth just took two bullets for me. So I say, “What will you do, if Mouth wants to stay with me, and you decide not to?”

  “Don’t know. I can’t go home. I guess I could turn mercenary, see if the new Uprising wants a fighter. But I think I need a break from overthrowing governments for a while. I could work at a dive bar. The Low Road, maybe.” She makes a peevish noise with her mouth. “I really thought Bianca was going to be great. She had me convinced. How do I know it’s going to be any different if I decide to follow you?”

  I watch her face close enough to see a flicker of hope, in among all the twinges. I don’t want anybody to follow me, or to believe in me. I want to sleep for another five or six turns of the shutters.

  But I was sent back here to teach. So I feel the calm settle into me.