A too-familiar death rattle signaled that the shutters were closing, and Omar said, “Now’s our chance. Let’s just get going before this town gets any nuttier. Just show us the way out of this shitpile, and let’s get our sled and go.”
Everyone drained their coffees and loaded their packs up with all the provisions Hernan had to spare. Mouth was trying not to stare at Bianca and the not-dead Sophie, and they in turn seemed to be sharing a complicated silence.
If Mouth was lucky, maybe both these girls would catch something nasty from one of those giant insects in the deadlands, or get swept overboard in the Sea of Murder. You didn’t want to wish anyone dead, of course, but Mouth couldn’t handle the thought of traveling all the way to Argelo, empty-handed, under both of these accusing stares.
Mouth slid a massive pack on her back and prepared to brave the empty streets, which were still full of checkpoints and hyperactive triggers. Omar came up and grabbed Mouth’s shoulder in one long-fingered hand. “So I believe you when you say you didn’t get involved in politics and you were just pulling some ridiculous hustle. But I just need to know. What exactly was this thing you were trying to steal from the Palace?”
Bianca was standing right behind them, listening in. So was Sophie, the undead saint.
Mouth swallowed. She and Omar went a long way back, plus she owed him a lot right now, so she couldn’t look him in the face and give him a glib line. Not to mention, this particular disappointment was too fresh for her to have turned into a cute story yet.
“We called it the Invention. It, uh, it was a big crystal volume? It contained all of our songs and lyric writings. And verses.”
“A poetry book.” Omar laughed much too loud as the Couriers crept out into the tiny side street. “You tried to break into the Palace to steal a fucking poetry book?”
Mouth was tensing up, but got a grip just in time. The fists she had made turned back into hands, and Mouth found a smile someplace. “Yeah. It was the only copy, though.”
“Now I know you’re a maniac. A poetry book. You’ll have to do a recital for us once we’re out in the deadlands.” Omar was still chuckling as he strode in the direction of the junkyard where they’d hidden the sled full of merchandise once more, hunched over from his backpack. Lorry engines squeaked in the distance, and smoke billowed from no particular direction. Mouth turned and saw the hatred in Bianca’s eyes, until the rest of the Resourceful Couriers bumped against them, in a hurry to escape this city at last.
As they rushed across one of the main thoroughfares, Mouth spotted scraps of cheap paper that had been trampled into the cobbles: a poster declaring that the leaders of the Uprising would be executed in Founders’ Square after two more turns of the shutters. She tried to avoid stepping on the drawing of Derek’s bony face, out of respect.
At last they came to the junkyard. The wide-open street looked gloomy, here on the edge of night. All of the metal slats on the windows seemed to reject them, and the air seemed colder than usual. Every step Mouth took in defiance of her own rust-spiked heart. The Citizens had been good people, just trying to go through the world making themselves useful, and striving to preserve their culture as best they could. The world had stepped on their memory like it was dirt, and Mouth had blown her one chance to salvage something.
Alyssa came alongside Mouth and whispered, “Keep your shit together.” Mouth nodded, and she tried to empty her mind, the way she had so many times before.
PART
THREE
SOPHIE
I can’t see Hernan’s face, but he has a kink in his neck that keeps his shoulders uneven, and sadness creeps into his voice, even as he gives directions in a jolly tone. Before taking each step, he stares down at the cracks and sawteeth of this mining tunnel. These ancient mines have a hundred dead ends, and countless deep crevasses, and Hernan knows the safe route because a longtime client of the Parlour had inherited a map. Some of the wall struts seem to be starting to buckle.
I touch Hernan’s arm and whisper, “Thanks for helping Bianca and me get out of town.”
“Just keep yourself safe,” he whispers back. “I think I might disappear for a while myself, once I make sure Jeremy, Walter, and Kate are taken care of. This city barely tolerates people like us when things are calm, but during a crisis…”
“I can’t bear to think of the Illyrian Parlour disappearing.” I almost hit my shin on a tiny spur of rock, but stumble aside at the last moment.
“I always knew that place couldn’t last forever.” Hernan sighs. “We’ll preserve what we can, and reopen when we can.”
The end of the tunnel seems so brilliant at first I have to shade my eyes until they adjust.
“This is where I turn back,” Hernan says. “Don’t forget everything I taught you.”
I lean against Hernan’s slate-gray suit jacket and clutch him as tight as I can. His scent comforts me for probably the last time, the same lavender and sandalwood as the Parlour itself. I try to slow down the flow of time, the way Hernan showed me, to keep this moment from ending, because I can’t even bring myself to walk away from the man who gave me a new family and nurtured my mother in spite of herself. The man who showed me how patience could work as much transformation as a million geothermal vents.
“Thank you,” I say again, “for everything.”
“It was the very least I could do,” he murmurs. “I wish your mother could see the brave young woman you’ve grown into. She’d be as proud of you as I am. Goodbye, Sophie.”
Hernan fades into the darkness of the ancient tunnel, while the rest of us climb down to the dry riverbed that marks the outer boundary of the deadlands.
The Old Mother and the Young Father extend past the city walls, but they dwindle into mere foothills ahead of us. Beyond the mountains’ end, there’s only a reddish-gray rocky terrain that stretches past the horizon, with naked darkness swallowing one side and scorching daylight exposing the other.
As soon as we’re past the walls, the Resourceful Couriers start singing. None of them sings the same song, or in tune, but the raucous clash of shanties seems to cheer them up as we trudge and steer their wobbling sled down to somewhat more level ground.
Bianca hasn’t spoken since we left the Illyrian Parlour, but now I hear her voice, even over the six different choruses.
“I have unfinished business in that city.” Bianca doesn’t look back at the sheer stone wall. “I’m going to make sure the sacrifice of Derek and the others counts for something. Even if it takes the rest of my life. I’m going to burn that fucking Palace to the ground.” She grips her backpack in one hand, like a cudgel.
* * *
I try covering my eyes and looking down at the regolith, but the sky still hurts. Bigger than dreams, sweeping from cinder gray to acrid white, with no buildings or mountains in the way. Even if I wrench my neck, I could never see the whole thing. The “road” ahead looks lifeless, drained by Xiosphant’s endless water demands, but every now and then I see the head of some burrowing creature emerge. The reddish-gray dirt, marbled with ochre and crimson, becomes either rich embroidery or a bloody shroud, depending on which way I turn my head.
I can still look back and see the city that banished me twice; no matter how long we trudge, the golden Spire still glares at our retreat over a hill covered with tufts of scrubgrass quivering in the cold wind from the night.
When I fantasized about walking beside Bianca again, I always imagined this happening after Xiosphant had thrown away all the old rules in some unimaginable revolution, or when we had grown old and found each other again. But now she and I are together, here and now, and we’re traveling to the City That Never Sleeps, where we can be whoever we want. I can’t even trust this much good fortune.
Except that Bianca won’t even look at me.
Maybe I’ve been dead to her too long, and she can’t accept me back into life. All this unsaid garbage is heaped up between Bianca and me, as tall as the Old Mother. And she just keeps staring, red-eyed, at Mouth, the scar-headed smuggler who tricked her. Bianca hasn’t spoken since she said she had unfinished business in Xiosphant, and she hasn’t looked back once. She marches with emphatic strides and gritted teeth, as if she’s heading toward something rather than away from it.
I can’t hear the city’s chimes anymore. I don’t know what time it is, and I feel as if I’ve been out here for half my life. Only the slight changes in the landscape prove time is still passing. I feel like falling on the ground, pummeling my own knees, or refusing to walk any farther along these endless plains.
* * *
Some part of me keeps expecting things between Bianca and me to go back to the way they used to be. She’s supposed to be the one who jolts me out of my silence. She ought to be reminding me that we’re young and we can just laugh at everyone’s stupid limits.