Bianca wanders into the grayest part of town, close to the Warrens, and knocks on a plain metal door in an abandoned paint factory. I find a tiny window, on the other side of the building, that has a view into the dingy room where she emerges and starts hefting an ancient rifle in both hands. Around her, people study plans and maps of the Founders’ Square.
Seeing Bianca next to this pile of guns, I feel the cold go through me. She’s going to do something stupid. Spots fill my eyes, almost like an attack of lightsickness, as I think about the helmets, the guns, the casual murder. The thick gloves seizing Bianca this time, or hoisting her dead body.
I have to close my eyes and picture myself out in the ice floes, kilometers from the nearest drop of illumination, clawing the tundra in total darkness.
When I make myself look into the basement again, I notice someone who seems out of place, even among rebels and misfits. They turn their head, and I recognize one of the foreigners who came to the Parlour. The Resourceful Couriers, they called themselves. This is the tall, angry one, with the strip of hair cutting across the hash of pale scars on her head. She’s hoisting a large gun in both arms, like a baton in some obscure game.
mouth
The air felt sickly, like the chemicals from the old paint factory had seeped through the groaning cement ceiling and the meter-thick insulation down to this maintenance pod. They’d taken all of Mouth’s weapons, except the two that were hidden in places nobody ever searched. Bianca escorted her past a couple of smudge-faced pipe-workers and three artfully scruffy Coliseum students, until they reached a small pale man with a wispy beard.
“Derek, this is Mouth. She’s the foreigner I was telling you about.”
“Bianca says good things about you.” Derek gestured at a well-annotated map of the Palace, the Spire, Founders’ Square, and the surrounding areas. “We’re ready to move soon. When they shot unarmed protestors, they showed their real faces and exposed the contradictions at the heart of this broken system. If we strike now, the people will be on our side.”
Derek worked at a shoe-tacking place, and his callused fingers were always moving things around and making marks on paper. Everyone in Xiosphant seemed to have fidgety hands.
Besides Derek, the other key people included a physics student named Jeff (tall, with big hands and a great mane of black braids), a rangy, red-faced pipe-worker named Vicki (who made sculptures from detritus she found in the abandoned mine tunnels), and a big crusher named Brock, whose shaved pink scalp had lost too many fights with ringworm. Plus three skinny white-haired men who worked together in the same linen factory, whom everybody called the Gumdrops, on account of the bright-colored stains on their faces and hands.
“I’ve seen you at a few of our meetings, sitting way at the back.” Derek squinted. “You always stood out, even with your head covered up.”
“I wanted to see if I could help.” Mouth smiled. “Somebody needs to do something about this town.” Then she quoted from Grantham: “‘The worst way to deal with failing technology is to transform human beings into machines.’”
“So, you’ve been paying attention.” Derek grinned, revealing crooked teeth that he hadn’t had enough med-creds to fix. And he seemed to reach a snap decision. “Here’s what we could use your help with. We have seven incendiary devices we put together, and they’re located in a safe place nearby. Somebody needs to transport them to the Founders’ Square after the next shutters-up, arriving before the Span of Industry.”
“That’s when the blue-and-red cloud appears, right?” Mouth said.
“Right. If you can help us get them to the far end of the street market off the Founders’ Square, you’ll be met by our team there. The explosives will create a lot of noise and smoke, but they won’t hurt anyone. The perfect distraction for me to lead a small team inside the Palace service tunnels by removing this solar power transformer box, which provides access to the maintenance crawlway. We’ll take the High Magistrate hostage when his guards move him from the Receiving Room to a secure location once they hear the blast.”
“Okay,” Mouth said. She only half listened to Derek, because she was trying to memorize the maps and plans in front of her. Now that she knew how they planned to get in, she could just go right now, make a run at that vault—but she’d probably have a better chance during the chaos after those incendiaries went off.
Whoever designed the Palace had gone for a circular design, in homage to Jonas’s original principles of Circadianism, but the rooms were still rectangular, which created some weird bottlenecks. A handful of access hallways bisected those “spokes,” but most of the rooms only opened onto the central hub. The service corridors ran around the outside of the circle, with stairs leading down to the basement level, where the kitchens and maintenance areas were, or up to the second floor, where that vault lay at the end of a side corridor. Mouth imagined herself holding the Invention. Reattaching a long-lost part of herself. She had been half awake for too long.
“This Palace is made of chokepoints,” Mouth said aloud. “You get into a firefight with Palace guards, they’ll get you from both sides.”
“We’ll worry about that,” Derek said. “You just help Bianca get the explosives into position.” Then he turned to Bianca. “You’re responsible for this smuggler, since you brought her in. Keep her with you the whole time.”
“Will do,” Bianca said, with a sober expression.
“Okay,” Derek said. “Both of you show up here right after the next shutters-up. This place will be our rally point.” He walked away to talk to the Gumdrops, who were inspecting some rifles.
“I can’t believe it’s going to happen,” Bianca whispered as she led Mouth back to the entrance. “Just one more shutter-cycle, and we’re doing this. What if we succeed? What if we really capture the High Magistrate, and force them to negotiate? I can’t even imagine what it would look like for Xiosphant to treat everyone like an actual human being.”
Brittle ice coated every nerve lacing through Mouth’s body, but her blood was hot. She looked at Bianca and saw the same confusion of symptoms. “You’re doing the right thing,” Mouth said. She repeated this, like a blessing. “You’re doing the right thing. You’re doing the right thing.”
“I’m so glad I met you.” Bianca put her hand on Mouth’s forearm, right when she was in the middle of strapping all her weapons back into place.
“I’m glad we met too.” Mouth smiled. “You’re going to set this old town on fire. After this, everyone will remember Sophie’s name.” Then Mouth heard those fucking bells, once again, and realized she was late to meet up with the Resourceful Couriers.
* * *
On her way back into the glare, Mouth stuck to the trashy alleys, and tried to convince herself that she had some kind of shot. Derek’s plan had enough weak spots to ensure that every single member of the Uprising died, including poor Bianca—but all Mouth needed to do was give Bianca the slip after they delivered the bombs, and make her way to that loose solar power transformer in time to follow Derek’s crew inside. Then it was just twenty meters from the maintenance hatch to the service staircase leading to the second floor, with the vault, while the Palace guards were distracted. Mouth tried to form a clear mental image of how this would go down, and then she realized someone was following her.
Even with this ridiculous hat and poncho, Mouth had enough visibility to catch the motion in her blind spot, and whoever it was ducked behind a garbage pile or a doorway whenever she turned. Mouth retraced her own steps, until she came to the spy’s hiding place, a narrow gap between two factory buildings.
Mouth’s tail was the quiet girl from the Illyrian Parlour, the one who’d brought spiced coffee while they’d unloaded some of their cat butter. Dark, pretty, big hazel eyes, small twitchy nose—she looked solidly Xiosphanti middle class. Full mouth, which never smiled or opened. She recoiled, but showed no fear, even though Mouth outweighed her by a lot.
Mouth smiled. “Did I forget to pay for my coffee?”
The girl just stared, not flinching or backing away. Mouth let go of her collar.
“Why were you following me?” Mouth said. “Who do you work for? What’s your game?”
No response. Mouth hadn’t heard her speak at the coffee place, either. Maybe she was mute? That would be a handy trait in a spy. Mouth tried a few more questions, but got nothing.
The two of them were stuck together in the pale shadow of the leatherwares plant. Dank, reddish smog pooling around them. Mouth didn’t want to hurt this girl, not without a much better reason. No point trying to capture her, because then you’d be stuck with her.
This whole situation felt weird, like Mouth had been stalking the girl instead of the other way round. At last Mouth gave up.
“Don’t follow me anymore. Or I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands.”
She turned and walked away, without looking to see if the girl had obeyed.
* * *