Everyone stared at Mouth. Alyssa raised one eyebrow. Omar’s eyes narrowed. The Resourceful Couriers had an informal rule against getting involved in local politics, for obvious reasons, and Mouth had sort of forgotten.
“I dunno.” Mouth tilted her head. “I was drinking somewhere and there were these students. I thought it was a funny thing to say.”
“It’s a dangerous ideology,” George said, “aimed at cutting my throat. Cutting all our throats. Wrecking our whole society. People don’t realize how much we’re all just hanging on by our fingernails. This planet really doesn’t want us here.”
“I don’t know.” Alyssa decided to rescue Mouth from an awkward moment. “Maybe people in this town could stand to loosen up just a tad, you know? I’ve been in synagogues in Argelo that were more laid-back.”
“I know you people have been to other places, where they deal with this hostile environment differently,” George said. “But we have almost a million people in Xiosphant, and everyone has food and shelter, pretty much.” He turned back to Mouth. “That phrase you quoted was part of a whole manifesto about living in harmony with nature, which on this planet is antithetical to human life.”
Mouth was starting to understand what that guy had meant when he said people were the most trapped by the walls they helped to build. But she just nodded at George and pretended to fall asleep.
Once the shutters came down again, Mouth would pretend to be awake.
SOPHIE
The memorial to the Second Argelan War looks even uglier up close: the seams in the lumpy black underside, the ochre streaks where it’s rusting away.
The sculptor tried to create the impression of waves and froth below the little section of boat, but they were working with an ungainly metal that couldn’t hold any fine details. I always heard that parts of this sculpture were made of melted-down artillery, but either way the result came out crude, like something your somnambulist hands might shape in the throes of a bad dream. Above the slice of deck, a faceless man in a heavy uniform stands holding a weapon on one shoulder, ready to fire some projectile.
I hunch behind the statue until I hear her voice, then I peer between the soldier’s legs. Bianca walks across the Gymnasium’s plaza with a satchel across her almost-translucent chemise, and her laugh sounds as dazzling as ever. She smiles and waves to the other students who trot past her on their way to class, and then she stops and talks to Cally, an earnest red-haired girl, about homework. I can almost guess which class they’re heading to, and what jibes Bianca is making about the professor.
The crumbling edges of the statue scrape my arms and repel my attempts to lean against them. The soldier scans for enemy boats in the distance. I sink below his leaden feet and look at a tiny rip in my ankle-skirt.
I tell myself this is what I wanted for Bianca. I wanted her to let me go, to get on with her life and be happy. I knew she was bound to forget me. If anything, I should be relieved. But I feel as if I’m made of the same dead weight as this top-heavy soldier, who seems more and more doomed to pitch over. I see nothing but rust and metal fatigue, but Bianca’s voice still comes, from far off.
Copper nuggets weigh down my jacket pockets. I took all the infrastructure chits I’d ever earned at the Illyrian Parlour and went around town to all the markets and scrapyards, buying a little at a time. I couldn’t buy too much in one place, or someone would ask questions.
I’m about to sneak back to the nearest alley, a dozen meters away. But I turn back for one last look. Something to preserve in my mind for later. This time, I see a different Bianca.
She stands alone in the plaza, and her posture has transformed, now that she thinks nobody sees her. She stoops forward, her mouth wraps into a scowl, and her eyes have dark lines. Her right hand makes a half fist. All of the other students have gone, because class is starting, but Bianca stares at the paving stones. At last she forces herself to go to class, walking short measures that make her loose skirt ripple.
My heart wakes at the thought of running over to Bianca. I want to pull her into a hug and cradle her head with one hand, tell her that I’m here. I’m alive. I came back for her. I stare at the tight lines around Bianca’s mouth as she walks to class, and I feel so much longing and compassion and joy and sadness and rage I can’t help stepping around the statue, right in broad view.
But as soon as I’m out in the open, the memory-panic hits. I imagine the cops seeing me, in the middle of campus, and surrounding me. Their black faceplates blotting everything, their hands on my arms and legs. I won’t escape this time. All my former classmates will swarm outside to watch.
I feel my body go taut, and my lungs empty. I’m never going to escape that moment, no matter what I do. I almost white out from oxygen starvation. My armpits feel fresh-bruised, but the rest of my body has no sensation. I manage to stagger back behind the cover of the statue, praying nobody saw me, and then I sink into its shadow. By the time I get blood back in my head, Bianca has gone inside one of the classroom buildings.
I’m left alone, catching my breath, next to the whitestone plaque commemorating our heroic dead.
* * *
I can’t stop cursing myself as I work my way back toward the darker end of town. Bianca was right there, she needed me, and I did what? I stayed hidden, because when I saw the Gymnasium and the students and everything, my execution turned brand new, as if it had just happened. They took me away from her, and they’re still taking me from her. It’s not my fault. I know it’s not my fault. The whole purpose of arresting me and hauling me away, with so much fanfare, was to put fear into people.
So why be surprised that the fear is in me?
Those gloved hands haven’t loosened their hold on me, even after all this time.
I have to stop and check myself, because I’m carrying valuable metal and I don’t want to be noticed in this neighborhood. I try to clear my mind and pretend I’m playing a game of shadowseek.
Every child in my neighborhood learns to play shadowseek at a young age, even middle-class kids like myself. To win, you have to know where the shadows are, and move from one to another without a break. The shadows never change shape or position, so a clever child can memorize them in advance. And if you’re really good, you can stay in the shadows by pure instinct.
But my mind is stuck in the moment when Bianca let her grief show and I almost went to her. I hardly even see my surroundings, because in my mind I’m still stepping out from behind a decaying metal slab, about to console her with an indelible tenderness. All the potential that was in that moment, I let it fill me up so that maybe next time I can …
That thought consumes me—so I don’t even notice the mob until it’s rushing toward me.
They snort and pant, ash-colored jackets swirling as their arms and legs pull at the air. A few hundred of them stampede in my direction, and there’s no way to escape. I’m convinced that I’m about to be swept away. I’ll kick, I’ll struggle, but their momentum will be too much for me. They’ll carry me to justice. No escape this time.
But the mob reaches me and keeps moving. They’re heading somewhere, and I just got in their way. I stop fighting, and move in the same direction as everyone else, and soon the crowd shelters me, buries me inside its raucousness. We arrive in Founders’ Square, facing the Council Building and the Spire.
I stand, pressed in on all sides by people, and stare down at the paving stones, which have a pattern that looks like star charts when the light hits them. My parents used to bring me here to listen to the vice regent or even the prince, and instead of looking up at all the gaudy costumes, or the grandeur of the Palace and the Spire and everything around me, I just ran my fingers over this pavement, marveling at the flecks of mica and agate.
Trumpets sound, and the vice regent comes out on the plinth: a tall man with a slack chin and mean eyes, wearing a long gold tunic held together with a bright red sash. We hear his voice around the square, thanks to speakers but also the amazing acoustics that our ancestors engineered.