They were met at the front door by a huge bruiser named Jimmy, who worked for the Perfectionists. He had a spiral scar on his hairless scalp, all the way from his eyes to the nape of his neck, and he always boasted that someone had stuck his head into one of those kitchen machines that hollows out a melon from the inside, during a fight that he’d won. Jimmy took all of Alyssa’s weapons, and then insisted on searching Mouth five times, because he couldn’t believe Mouth was unarmed.
“I know, I know,” Alyssa said. “I’ve been saying.” But she didn’t tell Jimmy about Mouth’s new condition.
Everything in the White Mansion had a scent that reminded Mouth of the first sweet thing she’d ever tasted as a child, when just the concept of sweetness had seemed revelatory.
Jimmy led them down a long hallway, past a huge ballroom with velvet drapes, to a side room that could still fit a hundred people comfortably. There, Bianca was sitting on a huge sofa made of some red leather that Mouth could tell at a glance would be softer than moss.
“There you are!” Bianca waved and gestured to a couple of chairs facing her couch. “Come join me.”
Mouth and Alyssa sat, and Jimmy withdrew to the far end of the room, out of earshot. Bianca fixed both of them with her easiest smile, as if they’d all gone to university together. They hadn’t talked since Bianca had called Mouth horrifying and almost consigned her to death. Somehow, Mouth found herself thinking about Barney’s parting words, about helping people find their way. Any wilderness where Bianca might be lost, Mouth had helped lead her into.
They made chitchat for a few moments, about Argelan food, and poor Reynold, and some rugby game that had been delayed due to rain. Then Bianca got to the point.
“Mouth, I have some excellent news for you. That book you wanted? From the Palace? The one with all the poems and things? We can get it for you. I will hand it to you myself.”
At first, Mouth couldn’t even process the words Bianca was speaking. A snatch of some other conversation, from a different time and place. Then Alyssa kicked Mouth, and the meaning sank in.
“Oh,” Mouth said.
“That’s all you’re going to say? After everything you put me through just to steal that one book? And now I’m telling you, it’s yours.”
Mouth tried to bring back the vision she had nurtured in her mind that whole time in Xiosphant, of lifting the crystal volume and paging through it. Seeing all of the old wisdom about how to see both horizons with a clear mind. That vision had quickened her soul back in Xiosphant, but now she just felt sad, and a little lightsick. She couldn’t think of the Invention without hearing Barney say “doggerel,” or remembering that vision of precious fragile blooms dying inside an ancient mountain, which some old book wasn’t going to help her understand.
The Invention might as well be a heap of blank pages now.
“Oh,” Mouth said again.
“We’re going on a mission soon,” Bianca said. “It’s a huge secret, but I’m letting you two in on it, because we’ll need some stealth experts. We’re going back to Xiosphant.” She kept talking: armored vehicles, heavy weaponry, a hand-picked force.
Alyssa kept nodding. “You’ve got it all figured out. This is a solid plan.”
Mouth was remembering when Bianca used to ask her, How many people have you killed? And Mouth had answered with a boastful vagueness, as if the fact that she hadn’t kept track made her a better role model. She remembered the first person she’d killed, a tubercular, silt-voiced Argelan man who’d seized her throat from behind when the Citizens’ funeral ashes were still fresh on her hands, and the last, one of the men guarding the food depository. But in between?
“You know whose house this is.” Bianca gestured at the mahogany walls and the view out the window, of a tiny walled grove of what looked like apple trees. “He runs the Alva Family, which now controls the Perfectionists, who you both swore allegiance to, according to the badges you’re wearing. So we could just order you to do this, but I’m choosing to be nice.”
“I’m kind of retired from traveling,” Alyssa said. “But, well, this sounds like a whole other trip, and I’m dying to see how it turns out. And truth be told, I’ve been missing all those Xiosphanti grains. Need more fiber in my diet.” She elbowed Mouth in the side.
“I thought you would be on your knees thanking me for this opportunity,” Bianca said to Mouth. “I honestly don’t understand you at all. I used to think you were so wise. I hung on every word you spoke to me. Now you just look like some kind of tragic vagrant.”
“A lot’s happened,” Mouth said. Then she tossed her head. “I promised to help you before, in Xiosphant, but I had my own agenda, and I was selfish, even though I thought it was for a higher cause. So I owe you my help now. You don’t need to bribe me.”
Bianca’s eyes misted up, as sudden as a weather shift on the road. “If you had only said that to me a long time ago, a lot of things might be different now.” Then she glanced up at Jimmy, signaling the interview was over. “We’ll be in touch about logistics. Keep your pagers with you at all times.” She got up and walked out of the room without looking back at them.
SOPHIE
The most famous story of Anchor-Banter, which I still don’t completely understand, is about a prince and a tailor, in the fairy-tale version of Xiosphant that everyone loves here: twinkling castles, rowdy banquets, valiant knights. The prince has a perfect life, except he’s in love with a beautiful young apprentice in the royal gardens whose touch restores every rare bloom to health. The prince keeps trying to woo her, with tiny flying machines and musicians, but every plan goes awry. And this ugly old royal tailor is always nearby, giving a crooked leer, whenever another disaster ruins the prince’s courtship. At last the prince decides to have the tailor imprisoned, on some pretext—but then the prince loses everything and becomes a beggar, outside the walls of his own palace. The beautiful apprentice gardener throws a flower into the former prince’s cap every now and then, without knowing him. The prince stays out there for uncounted ages, in the dirt, but his royal garments never tear or sully, and they become a pillow and quilt when the city sleeps. These clothes are a miracle, and at last the prince realizes: that tailor never received proper payment for his work, or credit from the throne. With that, the curse is broken, and the prince is able to return and kill everyone who betrayed him.
The first time I tried to understand this story, I had thought “Anchor-Banter” referred to the apprentice gardener, and the prince’s destructive love for her. I didn’t even get the thing about the tailor. Alyssa’s explanation helped a lot, though the whole thing still seemed incongruously mystical.
Still, Alyssa says when you identify your Anchor-Banter, you have two choices: You can figure out why this person is connected to you. Or you can join forces with them, and cause trouble for everyone else.
* * *
According to Mouth, every pile in this scrapyard tells a different story about Argelo. She points out a wire-mesh bundle of filthy, corroded old Founders’ Celebration rattles, from a brief period when Argelo tried to mass-produce cheap junk to send to Xiosphant in exchange for food or technology. On the other side, a heap of busted shell casings and shattered bayonets, from the last great war with Xiosphant (either the fifth or the sixth, depending on how you reckoned). She gestures at a wall of garbage that includes: melted plastic farm implements from when the Argelan People’s Congress launched an “Everyone Farms” campaign; tarnished badges from political parties and families that nobody even remembers; rust-eaten prospector gear from the heyday of treasure meteorites; packages for various fad cures for lightsickness, fungal infections, and delirium; and rotted placards depicting the great exodus from Xiosphant to Argelo.
I wrap a cloth around my mouth and nose to protect against the fumes from some combination of rotting plastic and battery acid.
“Well, you said you wanted to talk someplace where nobody could hear us,” Mouth says, gesturing around at the brightly colored piles.
“Yeah, I did. I need your help, and I don’t trust anybody in this blighted city anymore.”
Ever since Bianca showed me her invasion fleet, I’ve been dizzy, as if the sheer weight of my rage has sprung my inner ear. I feel like wrecking this whole city with my bare hands. Every time my anger runs out of fuel, I fall into mourning, as if my feelings for Bianca have gone sour forever. Part of me still can’t believe that Bianca has changed, but another buried part has seen this happening for a long time. I keep thinking back to everything that’s happened since we left home. The look on Bianca’s face after we survived the Sea of Murder, the way she insisted on seeing the Gelet as my servants, the frenzy with which she threw herself into high society. Even the things she said in the storeroom, when we first slept here. She’s been planning to use me, almost since we left home.