Opposite us are Kate and Walter, who’ve been here the longest and always start shoving, running, and pillow-fighting the moment we’re done playing at languid slowness.
Everyone else seems to be asleep, but I just lie there and hug myself. I remember the defiance on that woman’s face at the Square, right before she didn’t have a face anymore. All of my old fears feel even more rational than before, and the gloved fingers grip my armpits more tightly. My last thought before sleep is of Bianca’s ghost smile, slowly dispelling.
When the shutters open, I wake groggy, and remember dreaming of helmets on a mountainside. Meanwhile, Walter, Kate, and Jeremy are whispering that our next clients will be the worst, now that everyone knows someone who got trampled or shot at. A feeling of dread seeps through all of the hand-gilded murals and reproductions of classic wooden furniture.
Hernan takes me aside as soon as I’ve dressed and tied my wavy hair back with a neat ribbon. “Sophie, I know you had a terrible experience. Do you feel up to working this shift? We can always give you some time off.”
Over in the far corner, Jeremy’s eyes widen, because if I take a surprise vacation, Jeremy will be left dealing with all these people on his own, and he’s still not ready.
I shrug. “I’ll be okay.”
Hernan stares, because he knows I’m lying.
“I’m close enough to okay,” I say. “I know how to get out of a situation if I start feeling less okay.”
“That will have to do, I suppose.” Hernan smiles, and then offers me a hug. I hesitate a moment, then lean into his stocky chest, close enough to see a loose silver thread on his brocaded jacket. “I wish I knew why you were sneaking off all the time, with my old padded jacket and those new boots that you spent all your clothing vouchers on. You never quite explained how you survived being forced up that mountain, and now I wonder … I just hope that whatever you’re doing, you keep yourself safe.”
I feel like saying, Nobody is ever safe, but instead I smile and say, “Of course.”
* * *
Long after I have forgotten what everything in the Illyrian Parlour looks like, the scents will stay with me. The musk that hangs in the air after I’ve slept in our tiny bunkroom with Jeremy, Walter, and Kate, the flowery, pungent scent of coffee brewing in the tiny cracked-tile kitchen behind the beautiful client room, the aroma of sandalwood and fresh-cut lavender, the comfort of soap. These scents have come to feel like home, and if I even notice a hint of sandalwood or dark coffee anywhere else, I feel a recognition that my mind only catches up with after a moment.
I find myself trying to memorize every detail, so I’ll remember this place whatever happens, and also because Hernan created a place where the world feels bigger, and yet also more intimate, than anywhere else in this city. I wish I could figure out how he pulled that off. My mother used to smile at me and say these funny things, which I now recognize as quotes from the books Hernan has made me memorize. A fen has more dignity than a mountain, because the fen settles according to its own weather. Or: Listen to yourself, hear your own footsteps, your breaths, your heartbeats, oh, how many rhythms you make as you come and go! you are an orchestra. I remember my mother saying that to me: “You are an orchestra.” And laughing, until I laughed too without getting the joke.
* * *
Jeremy and I work together, while Kate and Walter play music or hustle behind the scenes, and Jeremy’s grateful enough that I’m working that he covers for me when I have to shut my eyes and ride out a small memory-panic. Some part of my mind has combined the guns that forced me up a mountain with the ones that took a woman’s head apart, as if those were one incident. And meanwhile, the people who sit across from us flail around, grope for stillness, and make too much noise and commotion, in spite of all our work. Jacek, a pipe-worker who always seems ashamed of his fetid odor in this clean, fragrant space, keeps looking in all directions, biting all his fingers one by one, muttering, “They didn’t need to shoot anyone, they didn’t,” and twitching. Our next client, a tall athletic woman from the power plant, seems better, breathing slow and shallow, hands on knees, until I realize she’s in shock.
Nobody is okay. Nothing we do helps. I breathe slower and louder, confuse them with morsels of old stories, sprinkle petals in their coffee. Client after client. The shutters close, and open again, and it’s the same thing again. Even after two more shutter-cycles.
It’s okay, I want to say, I know how you feel. Like slow-dancing with a rockfall.
After another endless shift, I let myself slump, so exhausted my arms fall like rags. I turn to Jeremy and ask, “Have you ever had something happen to you that scared you so much you felt like you were going to keep reliving it forever?”
Jeremy pauses for a moment, his round face creasing. “Hernan always says that a perfect moment of beauty can last forever. But maybe some moments are so ugly that they never end, either. All you can do is be patient with yourself.”
mouth
Mouth spent way too much time obsessing about how to get inside Bianca’s head when the two of them weren’t sitting together in the oatmeal place, eating overseasoned mush and drinking bad liquor. Bianca’s main weakness seemed to be the dead girl, Sophie. Mention that name, and she just devolved into a weepy mess, but this always led to a conversation about loss and revenge rather than any actionable information about their Palace job.
“Every time the shutters roll down and the light comes into my room I lay there, and I just look up at the milky sky. I curse, and I stare at the shelf where Sophie used to sleep.” Bianca closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose. “Hope doesn’t get me out of bed. Duty definitely does not get me out of bed. The only thing that does is making the bastards who took her from me pay.”
By this point, Bianca had talked about the dead girl half a dozen different times—but Sophie never once sounded like a real person. According to Bianca, Sophie had possessed no flaws, not even the slightest jealousy or negativity. “She always wanted to see the good in everyone.” Bianca held the bowl of oatmeal to her face and breathed in the sour vapor. “She managed to see through all the hypocrisy, using kindness instead of anger.”
“There’s no way to replace someone who had so much life. But I guess you can still make her death worth something.” Mouth could smell all the spices and the rankness of boiled tomatoes in the kitchen upstairs. The scent brought back a powerful recall of this one herb that the Citizens used to pick out in the far plains way past the other side of Argelo, which Yolanda insisted was great for your digestion, but which tasted like salty dirt.
“You’re the only person I can talk to about her,” Bianca said. “Every body at the Gymnasium just decided to pretend Sophie never even existed as soon as she was gone. And Derek and the other organizers of the Uprising don’t want to hear about my selfish motivations for joining the fight. Everybody’s supposed to be in this for the pure light of justice, and liberation from the endless cycle of toil.”
“There’s no right reason for wanting to make a difference.” Mouth kept seeing that picture of the Invention from the catalog in her head. She imagined picking it up and letting light into all its contours, and feeling as though maybe her life had a purpose after all.
“Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the Uprising. I think Xiosphant was a great place once, before the wars and the isolationism and the Circadian Restoration, but now it’s grown into something elitist and corrupt.” Bianca looked up at the pockmarked clay ceiling. “The only goal this city has is to maintain. We’re just supposed to keep the city the same for another four or five generations, and after that, everything breaks beyond our ability to repair.”
Mouth wanted to say, You shouldn’t get yourself killed in a pointless gesture. But she thought about the Invention, and instead she said, “I bet Sophie would be proud of what you’re doing.”
“I hope so.” Bianca smiled, and the backlit shadows turned it into a scowl. “I just can’t keep feeling like this. Ever since they took her, I’ve hated every breath. And I want to take all of this pain and give it to someone else. Let them see how they like it.”
Mouth sensed she was running out of time to find out how these revolutionaries were going to get inside the Palace. If she could just sneak inside under their cover, she’d only need a few hundred heartbeats to get upstairs, crack the vault, and grab the Invention.