A Trickster in the Ashes

by Felicity Savage

  Ferupe (“New Kirekune”): Kingsburg

  They reached Kingsburg early in the morning. They couldn’t have picked a better time if they’d tried: as the fields gave way to the southern outskirts, they were overtaken by a flood of workers (mostly women and children) trudging from their homes to the factories north and west of the city. The unwitting multitudes acted as Mickey and Crispin’s guides through a hopelessly confusing tangle of streets in which even Crispin admitted it would have been the work of a moment to get lost. The first factories on the continent had gone up in Kingsburg. Because the Ferupian capital’s industrialization had been organic, unplanned, a snowballing side effect of a war everyone expected to end next year, no rowhouse tenements had been built here to compare with those in cities like Kherouge or the northern mining towns, where the collectivizing of ancient industries had been consciously organized. Kingsburg’s expanding workforce had constructed their own hovels, their own neighborhoods, annexing more of the surrounding countryside each year. These do-it-yourself suburbs had engulfed dozens of outlying villages. The result was a haphazard salmagundi of architecture the like of which Mickey had never seen in his life.

  And the factories were no longer confined to the northern banks of the Eine. He and Crispin nearly came to grief when they heard the thunder of traffic on the southern trunk road, and realized the knot of workers they’d followed were heading not north, but east. A moment later, a cluster of smokestacks hove into view over the roofs like a ship’s funnels breasting the horizon. The next side street held a kinetoscope slot-view of the trunk road itself. All the trucks, tanks, and cars were painted black. Fascinated and horrified, Mickey gathered that for obvious, if unsavory, reasons, the occupation had scrapped the edict forbidding heavy traffic during the day.

  Evidently, two years after the victory that had broken its spirit without breaking a single window, Kingsburg was suffering a Significant boom. The hub ports of the protectorates, Kherouge and Redeuiina, had flowered as a result of the Kirekunis’ permissive internationalist policies, benefiting from New World investment, increased trade revenues, oil prospecting, and so forth. But the only money that had arrived in the former UDF itself was Kirekuni hard currency. Valdes’s prosperity stemmed from the locals’ ingeniously marketing themselves to the occupation. Kingsburg’s new and retrofitted factories, their products, and their profits circulated in a closed system whose participants were all Kirekuni. Not a sentime had found its way into the locals’ pockets. Thus, Kingsburg still looked like what it was—a city bankrupted by a lost war, indemnity taxes exacted from an already starving populace, and a generation of young men slaughtered in the retreat.

  The factory they passed shortly was a windowless brick monster whose roofs must have covered an acre and a half. They hurried past the crowd gathering outside the gates and plunged back into the warren—but not before Mickey saw the gigantic cast-iron characters on the smokestacks. ATARAMACHI MUNITIONS, they said in Kirekuni. That made a nasty kind of sense. The last place he’d seen a steam-powered factory was Okimachi, where the East Bank of the Orange, formerly the promenade of the “leisured Dead,” was now being touted as the largest concentration of heavy industries in the Western hemisphere (outside Philadelphia and New York, Mickey would graciously concede if his guests were American).

  Here he saw not a single automobile on the streets and precious few beasts of burden. Doors bore the red ; root vegetables grew in windowboxes; the only showbills on the lampposts were ancient decrees announcing that Kingsburg had been (unimaginatively) renamed “Ataramachi” (“New City”).

  Greater Significance was, of course, modernizing the Ferupian capital not for the good of its inhabitants, but for the purpose of consolidating its hold over them. And after all, Mickey thought bitterly, recalling the catchphrases his schoolmasters and later his QAF commandants had used to justify expansionism, Significance was synonymous with morality! Significant policy was the very definition of good! And even now that Significance had become Greater Significance, composed largely of military types with little blue blood in their veins, the mere fact of Governor-General Kuroi’s Significance rendered his leadership superior to the inert, arbitrary rule-by-superstition of the Ferupian oligarchy!

  The streets had quieted. The early-morning sunshine was chilly. The southern trunk road served as a sort of aural beacon—as long as they could hear it, but not see it, they knew they were heading north. They found their way to a broad street leading downhill. Here, a pale simulation of city life persisted: widows-cum-childminders with strings of diseased toddlers on ropes, unemployed men loitering outside closed pubs, merchants guarding pitifully scant displays. The locals served, at least, to distract the attention of the Disciples who patrolled on foot and in jeeps.

  “It makes me ashamed to be a Kirekuni,” Mickey muttered.

  “If I were you, I’d be feeling pretty gung-ho,” Crispin said. “Your lot have done what the Ferupian aristocracy couldn’t manage in a century.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “I mean it! Way back in the twenties—when the first militaryaircraft factories were being built—the peers realized the industrialists had edged them out of the military’s good books. And, of course, the military had the ear of the King. Ever since then, the aristos have been trying to starve these slums out—to make them into docile little constituencies, answerable only to the Heart. They wanted, more or less, to eliminate private enterprise.”

  “That sounds like history.”

  Crispin touched his breast pocket. “I learned it years ago.”

  “From Gift Mills, the famed daemonologist, I suppose.”

  “The same. He didn’t teach me to read, but he taught me everything he knew about the determining factors of the war, which was a lot considering he was the last ambassador to Kirekune, back in the sixties.”

  Mickey hadn’t known that. It put a whole new spin on things.

  “It’s been coming back to me lately.”

  Mickey’s tailbone ached from holding his tail flat and still against his back, under his coat. Drab, poorly cut Western-style clothing seemed to have superseded the traditional Ferupian garb of floor-length, multilayered skirts for women, wide trousers with baggy blouses for men, and voluminous coatrobes for all—perhaps because Western styles required less material. Perhaps for the same reason (or just because the morning was starting to grow warm) Mickey hadn’t seen anyone else wearing an overcoat. He was back to disguising himself: he was wavering back and forth between Kirekuni and Ferupian as often as he and Crispin switched back and forth between the two languages when they spoke in private. It was disorienting. He was horribly nervous. This was like Domenische, only worse. Whenever a Kingsburger directed an evil look at him, or a Disciple’s glance lingered in curiosity, he knew why. At any moment, any moment, he would be exposed.

  Last night, trying to fall asleep in the corner of a field, he’d contemplated leaving Crispin flat. Deserting seemed to be one of the few things he was good at. He was sure that in a city the size of Kingsburg he’d have no trouble losing the half-breed. And anyway, it won’t be long before the shapeshifters come down on him like a ton of bricks. Who says I’ve got to be there when it happens? Who says? The dew had already started falling at midnight when they stopped to rest. The overhanging branches of a chestnut provided scant shelter. Even lying bundled with Crispin in both their coats, Mickey was so cold he couldn’t fall asleep. His fingers and toes grew numb. After a while, so did his conscience.

  Who says?

  And yet now—as they penetrated deeper into the city, down the undulating slope to the Eine, as the jeep patrols became ever more frequent, and the occasional horse carriage drummed past with a liveried footman clinging on the step—Mickey understood that Kingsburg was certainly the worst place in the continent to be a Kirekuni criminal.

  He’d last about as long as it took to remove his overcoat.

  Anyway:

  he had nothing of value on his person
save his Karanda, his ace in the hole, and just like Crispin he’d developed a mental dependency on the firearm; he could no more have sold it than a mother could have sold her baby—

  Anyway:

  even if Crispin hadn’t had all their remaining sen in his pockets, using it to buy anything here was probably a criminal offense—

  Anyway:

  “We’re in Hastych,” Crispin said suddenly. “We’ve got to cross the river. The university’s on the far side, on top of the hill. But Millsy lives in the Burg.”

  “That’s the bit with walls.”

  “Yeah. It backs on the river about a mile north. But we’d be better off crossing here. Even in the old days, you couldn’t get across the Burg bridge without an invitation.”

  “He’s not an aristocrat, is he?”

  “Maybe originally, I don’t know. You don’t have to be an aristocrat to live in the Burg anymore. Rotterys is the only part of town that’s anything like it was.” Crispin pointed.

  They’d come out onto a riverfront street. The Eine was much narrower than Mickey had expected: a black slug speckled with garbage. An expanse of gray, reeking mud, crossed by rivulets of sewage from drainpipes protruding from under the street, along whose beds scavengers as gray as the very mud sloshed, separated it from the cobblestones. On the far side of the river a stone wall rose straight from the water to a promenade. A hundred yards south, a twelve-arched bridge combed the worm into strands. Docile crowds waited on both sides of the checkpoint at the top of the bridge.

  “I hope to hell they’re not checking papers,” he said.

  “If they are, I’ll show them this.” Crispin laughed, waving the letter from Millsy. Mickey caught a glimpse of a Western-calendar date in Kirekuni numerals. Aout 13, 1899. “Why, this would probably even get us across the Burg bridge.”

  “In case it’s escaped your notice, we don’t have a private horse carriage. And we aren’t going to pretend we’re professors, either.” He dragged Crispin into the stream of pedestrians.

  “Bloody niggers,” a woman said behind them. “Wot I tell you, Bess. They’re orl in it together.”

  Crispin whirled, grinning at her. “Like to elaborate, ma’am?”

  “In the name of Significance,” Mickey moaned, and yanked him onward, into the crowd at the high point of the bridge, where the wind sheared away the warmth of the morning sun. They found themselves waiting right in front of the same two women, who staged an offensive condemnation of “niggers” in their nasal Kingsburg accent that was an offense all on its own. Mickey dug his fingers into Crispin’s arm as Crispin twitched in silent rage. He’s on his own—I swear it he’s on his own—

  “Get a bloody move on then!” a Disciple shouted into Mickey’s face. He spoke Ferupian far better than the SAPpers in the outlying domains, Mickey noted in the back of his mind; and paralyzed with terror, he was suddenly, acutely conscious of how shabby he and Crispin must look in the clothes they hadn’t changed since the Joy of Okimachi. Could the Disciple tell that before Mickey slept rough in his overcoat, it had cost a great deal of money?

  “Unless you’ve a bone to pick!”

  “And if I have?” Crispin said, unbelievably, terrifyingly.

  “Then take it to the Center for Poor Relief and give it to ’em to make soup!” the Disciple retorted, clearly delighted with himself. As his comrades roared in approval, Mickey dragged Crispin down the other side of the bridge.

  “Are you off your head?”

  “The bastards. The bastards.”

  They passed out of the crowds on the bridge and descended into the district called Rotterys. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of being arrested!” They walked fast along the promenade, where a higher class of childminder strolled with their charges in perambulators. Two Kirekuni teachers drilled a troop of Ferupian boys in flag-flourishing maneuvers.

  “Nothing to worry about,” Crispin said. “We’re nearly there.”

  A Disciple turned sharply to look at them. Crispin grinned and blew him a kiss.

  Mickey nearly snapped his tail out from under his coat. “If you want to get yourself arrested so you’ll be safe from the shapeshifters, go ahead! Giving up is the easiest thing in the world—all you have to do is show that blackcoat you’re carrying an illegal weapon, and he’ll jam you in a nice, safe cell for the rest of your very short life!”

  Please—

  “For a coward, you have a terrible sense of discretion,” Crispin snarled softly as they passed ten feet behind a patrol.

  “Maybe I’m just fed up of this wild-goose chase.”

  Impressions of the sun drifted like purple balloons on Mickey’s vision.

  “Look, you can already see the Burg. That tower there—it’s the Hall of Justice. The tallest building in the Heart.”

  “How ironic.”

  Crispin ignored him. “Now all we have to do is get in.”

  But after one look at the Salubrious Gates, even Crispin admitted that penetrating them would be next to impossible.

  “Told you so,” Mickey said bitterly, longing for a mug of the overpriced hot soup whose fragrance wafted from the vending stalls outside the gates.

  Crispin slung an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the side of the face. Mickey’s body tingled, and the old physical helplessness washed over him like rage. He didn’t need soup, only Crispin. Only Crispin could do this to him. “Loverboy, you’re the very soul of enthusiasm. But you’ve got to cooperate. The fallback plan depends on you.”

  The Xerenoche Plaza at the foot of the hill, in contrast to the rest of the district, was empty but for a few stray cats nosing through the garbage, and pigeons. A dune of cobbles washing against the Burg wall, it felt evacuated, a plague site. Loud Kirekuni-accented voices echoed from the gate in the wall. “This used to be a songbird market,” Crispin murmured as they strolled out into the expanse, affecting nonchalance. “You could hear them singing for streets and streets.” He aimed a sideways kick at a pigeon, which fluttered out of harm’s way. “It’s just not the same.”

  Four Disciples in the shadows of the gate were taunting someone they’d caught. None of them was more than twenty; all were too involved in their game to interfere with a Kirekuni who looked as if he had every right to go wherever he wanted. A moment later, the shadows of the arch fell from Mickey’s and Crispin’s heels and they were in the Burg. Mickey saw nothing, his pulse thudding, his whole body weak with relief despite the fact that he’d changed back. As he stated his business to the Disciples in Kirekuni, he’d locked gazes for a moment with the Ferupian boy cowering against the wall. Fear had galvanized him, transforming his stuttering paralysis into panache.

  He’d argued the cause of his overcoat all the way through Rotterys, still convinced Crispin’s fallback plan would be the death of him. In the end Crispin had as good as tricked him into discarding it by taking him to a bathhouse on the teeming hill of Xerenoche. Hoping irrationally for sex, a last sensual fling, he’d flung off his clothes and dived into the foggy inferno. Crispin, of course, had other plans: amid the steam, black-market money changers did business out of the waists of their towels, and Crispin changed the last few sen of Cloud’s two hundred for sterling. Outside, both of them purchased bright new shirtfronts, put on their ties, and had their shoes shined.

  “Nothing like hiding in plain sight,” Crispin said jubilantly now, yanking Mickey out of the path of a crawling motorcar. “The best disguise is none at all!”

  “We’re still undepressed,” Mickey growled.

  The meretricious visual bedlam of the Burg made his skin crawl. It was a veritable gallery of all the things he’d once loved more than love itself. Palaces like Houses of Ecstasy designed by perverted millionaires, and the sort of clientele Mickey drooled over in his dreams. Phalanxes of Kirekunis—some in Western suits, some in traditional Kirekuni robes of office—charged out of the majestic halls, into idling automobiles, and got out again a hundred yards down the street. Officials s
wept past surrounded by bevies of attendants whose job was to fan exhaust fumes away from their faces. Foreigners, of whom Mickey was surprised to see not a few, traveled in style: open-topped Renault sedans with national flags fluttering from the hoods. In such a fetishistically motorized enclave, the horse carriages and clapped-out Supaidos of the Ferupian peers appearing here and there looked smelly, demode. Mickey wouldn’t have let them park at his door.

  In fact, no parking seemed to be allowed anywhere. The streets were so narrow two automobiles couldn’t pass. Cars, carriages, and troops of pedestrians followed each other around and around in what seemed like an endless parade. “We’re in the Heart now. The old fortress is that way,” Crispin said, jerking his thumb. “Used to be the royal residence; now it’s the governor-general’s. The KPD HQ is that way, and I expect it’s the Disciplinarian HQ now, so we don’t want to go near there. Millsy lives in the Comptroller of the Waterworks’ Palace, what used to be the Charthreron family’s; they used to own most of Greenslope Domain. Everything used to be something else. Shouldn’t be far. In fact”—while he spoke, they had kept walking—“this is it.”

  Mickey tipped his head back to see the topmost turrets of a cloud castle realized in stone. Scaffolding obscured the front of the palace. Stonemasons on catwalks were busy replacing daemon-gargoyles with heads of Significants past and present—each one labeled in hautrelief for the edification of ignorant Ferupians.

  “Have a gander at the towers!” Crispin breathed.

  Mickey swore aloud. Each of the five irregular steeples was really a gigantic statue. Five lanky, elongated demogorgons: judging by the windows dotting their torsos, each was more than thirty feet tall. They posed contrapposto on the corners of the roofs, each with one arm raised spirelike over its head, fingers cupped as if waiting for the sun to drop like an orange.

  “Apparently the comptroller hasn’t got around to replacing those yet.”

  “This place is like…” Mickey felt more and more dazed. “Like they took all the fabulous castles from everywhere in the country and dropped them down here. There’s hardly room to get between them! It’s amazing! The old city was nothing, even in its heyday, compared to this!”