At last Bianca takes me to the place with that wondrous drink. It’s one of the hottest bars in the Knife, called Punch Face. (The name in Argelan sounds a lot like the word for “shutter malfunction” in Xiosphanti.) The darkness inside Punch Face is so thick and smoky I almost step on a famous torch singer named Marilynne.
But Bianca sees better than me, and also she knows the whole scene by heart. She talks in my ear, just in Argelan, except for a few words in Xiosphanti. “That man you almost kicked, that’s Gabriel. He’s been making a fortune speculating on sour cherries, because they are in huge demand right now thanks to being a key ingredient in this amazing drink that you are about to try for the very first time.” The drink is called an Amanuensis, and my first sip is tart, but with a fizzy sweet afterburn. “See? Forget you ever even tasted gin-and-milk. You could rob Gabriel right now, and nobody would care. Except don’t rob him in here, because I don’t want to get thrown out of my favorite club.”
Punch Face looks no bigger than the Zone House back home, as far as I can tell, without ever seeing the walls. The center of the room is taken up with a black fire, which devours light instead of giving it off—this is something they rescued from one of the old space shuttles, and it has a complicated explanation that I cannot hear over the noise. A group of musicians hunch on one side of the space, slapping a pair of drums and grinding out a rhythmic melody on guitars and a piano, with a singer hissing, “You can trust me, I want to bite you.” People dance in loose clothes that billow like the waves of the Sea of Murder. The air has a sugary tang, as if everyone is sweating out their sweet drinks.
The music speeds up. We all crush into the center of the room, arms under legs. Our torsos slide sideways across each other, and I’m going to implode with happiness. I don’t know this dance we’re doing, but I don’t need to. I follow the music and the other people, and our bodies speak to each other with heat and pressure. All my nerve endings go wide awake. We put everything we have up in the air, then fall on top of each other. I hear Bianca laugh, feel her grabbing my waist with both hands to lift me into the air. And then there’s a man nearby, with no shirt and sweat running along the ridges of his muscles. He laughs too, as his body whips between us. All my usual anxiety is gone. Everything feels brilliant. Bianca and I are alive and we’re together, here on the other side of the world, in this dark warm room full of beautiful dancers. I want to fall into this moment forever.
* * *
Bianca keeps trying to pull me toward another food stall, or a trendy bar. “Come on,” she pleads, “there’s so much you haven’t seen yet.” But I follow my bracelet in the direction of the night, because I’ve put this off for much too long.
“You should come with me,” I say to her. “You can learn to understand the Gelet the way I do, then you’ll know they’re not animals. They can show you their city, and all of the incredible things they witnessed before our ancestors even arrived.”
Bianca considers this. “If I talk to them now, would they come when I called, the way they did for you? Would they help me out if I needed to cross through the night?”
I stop and look at her, and a cart runs into me, loaded up with fabrics on this narrow winding street, with a large man pedaling.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I spent a long time earning their trust and getting things for them. Maybe they would expect the same from you.”
“That seems like a huge commitment. And you’re basically saying I would have to be their servant.” Bianca purses her lips. “No offense, but this whole thing feels creepy. Do you even know what these creatures are doing to you? Like, are they controlling your mind?”
I turn and start walking again, down darker and darker streets. I don’t know how to respond to any of this.
“Plus you can’t just walk into the night from here,” Bianca says behind me. “You heard what Ahmad said. There’s no wall, no mountain, between us and the edge. A lot of people live right up against the evening, and it’s the worst part of town. I bet the crocodiles won’t even come anywhere near that place.” I give her a look, and she says, “I mean the Gelet. Right.”
I pause, because this already feels like night. Rough clay-brick buildings still cluster around me, but I almost can’t see my own hand, a few centimeters from my face, even with a small electric torch. I feel frost-sick, even wearing three layers. Farther ahead, I can almost make out more buildings, and people moving, but they could be my imagination. If you starve your eye enough, it will invent things.
“If anything happens to you, I’ll lose my mind.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good luck with that,” Bianca says. “There’s some effect I read about, where every hundred meters you go deeper into the night, the temperature drops exponentially. Plus you won’t even know which direction the day is. Seriously, come back with me now. I’ll buy you donuts. Please.”
I turn to look at Bianca, who’s a few gray lines. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” At least this time, I have my torch, and the warmest padded jacket and pants I could find in Katrina’s closet.
“I’m turning back. You should too. I’m sure the crocodiles—Gelet—don’t want you to just get yourself killed.” The horizon only has a dim ember left. Bianca disappears back into the city.
I almost collide with a house before I see it. The structure shakes at my touch, and if I’d run into it with my whole body I’d have left just a pile of boards. Someone has lashed some pieces of an old temporary shelter to rotting poles, under a roof of packed mud and slate, and I could stick my hand through with no effort. I can’t imagine what they do when there’s an ice storm.
“Did you find it?” someone inside the tiny house asks. “Please tell me you found it. I can’t hold on much longer. I only need a little bit.” I almost turn away, but instead I grope until I find the door, and it opens inward.
Inside the shack, a figure huddles under a pile of survival cloths and old torn strips of insulation. A tiny lamp perches on a few crates next to this “bed.” The tenant keeps asking if I have it, in a voice like an old man. But I get closer and realize I’m looking at a girl, a little younger than me, with no hair and shrunken features. She raises a hand with no fingers.
“Do you have it? Did you bring it?” She squints upward, realizes I’m nobody she knows, and gasps.
I reach in my bag for all the food I have—the remains of a fish pie from this place Bianca took me to—and I put it next to her bed. Then I turn and run out of there, and don’t look back.
Back in Argelo, the streets spin me around again. Music blasts from all sides, and under my feet. I smell kettles of whiskey-scented stew. Laughter rings out from a half-open doorway, just upstairs on my right. But I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the bed of old survival gear. I feel sick—like nausea, but duller and deeper. Even closer to the temperate zone, I have to step over beggars every couple of meters, something I never saw in Xiosphant.
A sickening phrase comes back to me: “miser generosity.”
* * *
By the time I get back to Ahmad’s, my horror has hardened into pure fury. What kind of city is this? They have enough resources to spare for light shows and sour cherry drinks, but not enough to rescue the people living in a shantytown at the edge of evening. Every self-satisfied chuckling face I pass, I want to scream into.
But Bianca is in high spirits. “Oh, thank goodness you’re back safely,” she says in Argelan. “I’ve been worrying myself to pieces. Did you manage to meet with your friends?”
“No,” I say. “You were right, it was awful. I just saw the ugliest side of this city, and now I can’t unsee it.”
“Well, cheer up, because you’re about to see a whole other side.” She holds up a golden card, embossed with our names and a bunch of Argelan directions that I can’t understand. “My persistence has paid off! I was dancing at Punch Face, and I met one of the top lieutenants in the Unifiers. You remember them, right?”
I toss my head, because of course I do. Ahmad made us memorize the Unifiers’ insignia, along with the other eight ruling families here in Argelo.
“They’re hosting a giant formal ball, with two of the other families, and I just scored the two of us an invite. Absolutely everybody who matters in this town is going to be there.” She claps her hands together. “We’ll have to get ball gowns made, and borrow some jewelry, and dance until we can’t even see straight, and then dance some more, and it’s going to be epic.”