ARC: The Buried Life (25 page)

“A coup?” The word stuck like peanut butter in Jane’s dry mouth.

“Much more. Not only a shift in the regime, but an all-out revolution that will change the way Recoletta is governed forever. Never in our history, nor in the known history of any other city, has the top been replaced by the base.” Again, Jane heard awe tinged with low-frequency terror in his voice. His eyes returned to hers, and he seemed to recognize the cautious dismay in her face. “If it eases your mind, Jane, consider this vengeance for your parents.”

“What?”

“Ruthers, who orchestrated the Sato murders, was also behind your parents’ deaths. They wanted to see him removed from the Council, but they dug too deep for his liking.” He held up his hands. “If I knew more, I’d tell you, but that’s all.” Jane swallowed, limbering her tongue before asking more.

“And what’s your part in all this?” She dreaded what the answer might be.

“I’ve been Jakkeb’s informant and inside man from the beginning. We were friends through our childhood and youth, so he relied on my abilities and my sympathies when he explained his plan. Once this conversion reaches its bloody conclusion, I’m to serve as his lieutenant and right-hand man.”

“So you’re doing this for a promotion.” She felt a stab of pain somewhere indefinable, as if he had betrayed her as well as his colleagues.

Roman scowled. “Miss Lin, you surely cannot think me so base. You of all people should know that I don’t savor the limelight. Jakkeb has good reason, and I would be cold-hearted indeed not to sympathize. After all, his parents raised me as their own.”

“Yet Councilor Sato didn’t tell you anything about the Library.”

He ignored her. “Furthermore, his revolution has a certain sense to it. The current regime is on its way down, and the Council can smell it.” Roman looked at Jane’s puzzled expression. “Corrupt, inept, and desperate. If you haven’t noticed it before, consider how they’ve handled the crisis of the past few weeks.”

“And what are you going to do tonight? Are you to staying here to ride it out?” she asked, hopeful.

He bowed his head. “No, I have a part to play as well. I’ve been here, awaiting the appointed time and preparing.”

“Preparing?” Wordlessly, Roman pointed to a small table where Jane saw a crystal decanter filled with brandy and a matching tumbler. “That hardly seems prudent,” she said flatly.

He stiffened, his mouth set in a firm line. “I’m not a drunkard, Jane, but I don’t look forward to what I must do tonight. Still, I know the role I’ve been assigned.”

“So you’re going to jump from being the hatchet man of one regime to the hatchet man of the next.”

“I know my strengths.”

She took a step toward him. “Jakkeb Sato and his followers may have murdered the guilty, but they’ve also sacrificed innocent people to their cause. You can’t pretend that they’re the good guys.”

He squared his shoulders against her, gazing down and into her eyes. “I don’t. But tell me this: when there are no good guys, which bad guys do you choose?” She fell silent. “There are no heroes, Miss Lin. Only survivors.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t be risking yourself to save me.”

Roman glared intently at a spot on the carpet. “You should be going now, Jane.”

Instead, she pressed her advantage. “Roman, you don’t have to get caught in this violent cycle. You talk as if you have no choices, but you’re free to go whenever you want. People aren’t fixed in one place from birth, and their fates aren’t written in the stars. You’re only a victim to the traps that you let yourself stay in,” she said.

“Then why do people live out their lives in the same miserable cycles? If we can choose, why do we always choose so poorly? Do you really think that whatever catastrophe sent our world underground was so different from the one that we’re embarking upon now?”

Jane could feel hot tears of frustration beginning to boil up behind her eyes. “Just come with me tonight. You don’t have to spend your life gambling on the lesser of two evils. You could still redeem yourself. Let me help you get out.”

Now she was looking away in an attempt to hide her misery. Tenderly, he raised her chin with a knuckle. “Don’t you understand, Jane? You are my good deed.”

#

Hours before, Jakkeb Sato had recounted the same history to Liesl Malone with, necessarily, a different perspective. She had listened in silence as the whole mystery of the past sixteen days unraveled before her in a way that even she had not foreseen. The double surprise of Jakkeb Sato and his revelations numbed her pain, and she was able to put Sundar’s death out of her mind for the moment.

“What I still don’t understand,” she said, trying to put everything in its right place, “is why Councilor Sa – your father opposed the rest of the Council.”

Sato shot her a crooked grin. “The councilors wanted to uncover the Library’s secrets, but only for themselves. These are the tyrants who would entertain us with Shelley’s odes but keep from us his ‘Queen Mab’.”

“Who?”

Sato seemed to ignore the question. “A visionless oligarchy. No respect for the history they would unearth and no discipline in using it. They would create storehouses of vaccines only for themselves if they could. Textbooks on suppression and propaganda, but none on philosophy.” He paused, tempering his fervor with a thoughtful, confiding turn. “Before the catastrophe, people had weapons that you and I can hardly imagine: bombs capable of destroying the earth in a single detonation and plagues that could wipe out all life in a matter of days, grown like crops and kept in glass. Some believe they still exist, also buried in remote locations. Can you imagine these weapons in the hands of a man like Ruthers?”

“But it wasn’t to be just Ruthers. There’s the partnership with South Haven.”

Sato’s wild red hair waved and trembled. “The South Haven delegations are a farce. The Council only invited them as a show of power, to convince them to submit quietly. Ruthers wants to reconstruct an empire, and that’s what my father opposed. He believed that these secrets had been buried for a reason and that the conflicts and the fear that they recall are best left forgotten. To him, the remembrance was a disease, and if we were to allow it to drive our ambition or taint our good sense, we would become as corrupted and as damned as the ancients.” Again Sato paused, a quiet grin spreading across his face while his eyes flashed with inner fire. “But he was wrong, too.

“The Council was corrupted by their greed, but my father was naïve in his reluctance. He failed to see how this Library can advance civilization. The antebellum peoples engineered their own downfall with their addiction to power and their dependence on weapons, but we know better.” He picked up speed, his voice rising in pitch as he brought Malone to his thesis. “There is so much that we can learn from them, and with the record of their mistakes, we can surpass them. Instead of hiding in our pitiful caves, keeping to ourselves, we can return to enlightenment and once again open ourselves to the world. That knowledge is a birthright – not just of the few, but of many.” The blaze of the fanatic burned behind his words.

Careful not to douse him with her doubt, Malone edged into an objection. “But it’s done that way in every city-state I’ve ever heard of,” she said, watching his eyes for a dangerous flare. “Perhaps we aren’t ready to open Pandora’s box.”

“Long ago, I would have agreed, but I spent fourteen years traveling, planning, and seeing the world. Once you’ve seen all the lands between the mountains and the oceans, you can never go back to the cave. I was born into privilege and I completed my education as part of the chaff. I’ve lived both extremes, and I know that a person isn’t born into his station, he becomes it. And we can become the people that restore civilization.” He leaned in, a few red wisps swaying in front of his eyes. “Would you like to know something else? This isn’t the first revolution in which the substrate overthrows the top. That’s another thing the whitenails and their Council don’t want you to know. History isn’t stable, and revolution has been done before, and successfully.” He gazed beyond Malone with a distant, hungry look.

“And you think Recoletta is prepared for one now?”

“Not just prepared, but ripe. The Council has proven its feebleness and its depravity,” he said. “They began the murders, but I will finish them. You know, I could never even bring myself to hate Mortimer Stanislau. He may have killed my parents, but he was just another instrument of the Council.”

“How exactly does Roman Arnault figure into this?”

Sato smiled knowingly. “My old friend had risen in the ranks without quite joining them by the time of my first return to Recoletta. I know that you’ve been following him. He is a truly brilliant man, and the Council saw that. He served them well, of course, and they were eager to make use of his unorthodox talents. Of course, the problem arises when you begin to see a weapon like Roman Arnault as distinctly your own. The Council had relied so heavily on him as their spy that they could not ever envision him as anyone else’s spy.”

“Then he was the one providing the keys,” Malone said. Sato nodded. Malone asked the next natural question. “And what makes you so sure that he’ll always be your spy?”

“Who says I am? He’s my friend, but I know better than to believe that I can control him. He’s a fierce individualist, and I respect that. I have to. Roman Arnault will stay by my side as long as he believes that it best serves his purpose, whatever that may be. Permit me to say that I know his limits – where I can push, and what he would not allow.” He paused, meditating. “I’ll allow him the freedom he requires, and I’ll keep him close. I know him well enough to make sure that I never give him a reason to betray me. He’s not prone to slavish devotion, and it is partially for that reason that I value his alliance so highly… and his friendship.” He smiled at Malone, looking sly and pleased at sharing a confidence. “I know that you don’t harbor a high opinion of him, but there is no one I would rather have loyal to me than Roman Arnault. Almost no one, that is.” He turned a sharp eye on her as the fall breeze rippled between them.

“Inspector Malone, I’ve been following you for months now, and I am impressed. In fact, it was downright flattering that the Council had to take you off the case. I’m offering you a place among my ranks. Like Roman, I want to keep you close.”

Malone was speechless. At first she thought he was joking, but the seriousness of the situation began to sink in, along with the realization that Jakkeb Sato did not seem like a man accustomed to joking. “I am an inspector of the Municipal Police,” she replied, measuring her words carefully. “For all intents and purposes, I still serve the regime you want to tear down.”

The jump in his voice suggested a laugh of surprise. “The same regime that just murdered your partner?”

“And where were you and your army?” Malone said suddenly. Her throat tightened.

Sato’s fierce look softened. “I came to intercept you as soon as I heard you were coming,” he said. “I didn’t know about your partner until it was too late, or I would have brought reinforcements. But I didn’t know what this was going to turn into, and neither did he.”

Malone nodded dumbly.

“Inspector, the regime stopped serving
you
a long time ago. The order you believe in has been feeding off of Recoletta like a parasite.”

As Sato waited for her reaction, a startling realization came over her that she would not have so much as entertained a mere week ago. He was right.

Seeing the understanding dawn on her, he rose and offered his hand. “There is a long night ahead of us, and I have allies from all corners waiting in the city. There is nothing left for you in the Council’s Recoletta, but I have a special place for a woman of your genius in the new government. Will you join me?”

She looked at his proffered hand with her last shred of skepticism. “Do I have a choice?”

Again, Jakkeb Sato smiled. “There is always a choice, Malone.”

It hardly surprised her that she accepted the hand and the future it entailed, and when they met the train with Sato’s cheering and hooting faction, waiting almost at the spot where she had jumped another like it hours ago, it was as though there had never been a choice, only this next inevitable step for her and for the city. As they returned to Recoletta under the sheen of the late morning sun, Malone sharing her berth with energized radicals rather than crates, she began to appreciate what that new step might bring.

Chapter
1
6

The Machine in Motion

Jane was running again, this time from Roman Arnault’s domicile. His matter-of-fact yet tender words resounded in her ears, making her hasty exodus even more difficult than it would have been half an hour ago, but he had succeeded in instilling the proper sense of urgency. Now that he had revealed his maneuvers on her behalf, all she could think of was returning home to find Freddie and flee for the safety of all three of them.

Passages that had been a crush of panic and people only a little over an hour ago were now deserted, leaving eerie, abandoned streets that spoke of human presence in the past tense. The tunnels she traveled, wide and narrow, straight and crooked, smooth-faced and rough-hewn, cast irregular echoes of her footfalls, reminders that she should be moving faster. Jane had the uncomfortable feeling that her departure was already overdue.

Even the public transportation, normally a metronome for Recoletta and its way of life, had stopped running. The rail shuttles that crossed the city and the suspended cars that ran along the major thoroughfares were all still, many stopped with their doors askew at the last exit their drivers had reached after hearing the explosions.

The sun was setting. Jane could see its last slanted rays entering through the skylights, and the feeble light they cast on the walls of tunnels and buildings was distinctly sanguine. Heaps of rubble and gaping holes blown into passageways and edifices that had attracted mobs of the morbidly curious before were now as empty as dried honeycomb.

Night had fallen by the time Jane reached the apartment. The hints of movement behind her neighbors’ doors and the poorly-hidden glow of lamplight behind drawn curtains were the first reminders since leaving Roman that others still inhabited Recoletta, and she found these small tokens comforting, if bittersweet. She moved quietly now, uncertain of what to expect. Jane tapped softly at Fredrick’s door and listened for the same stirrings she heard elsewhere. After several moments, she pulled out the spare key he had given her and slipped inside.

The place itself was in its usual state of disarray. Papers littered the floor, spillover from the writing desk against one wall. Jackets, overcoats, and unbuttoned shirts were also scattered about the room, draped over chairs and hung on any available corner. With a rising dread, she continued her search in the back rooms.

The closet, bedroom, and bathroom all showed signs of a total lack of upkeep, but nothing more serious. Drawing deep, steadying breaths, Jane convinced herself that he must have gone across the hall to her apartment to await her return.

Yet when she came to her own domicile, only her piles of abandoned laundry greeted her. In the context of the impending transformations in her life and the city around her, it was jarring to see her home exactly as she had left it, and probably for the last time. Ashes in the fireplace and kettles on the stove, but no sign of Fredrick. Or Olivia.

The bathroom was clean, polished, and empty. The workshop was full of clothes and bedding but devoid of people. It was not until she reached her bedroom that her search returned any clues. What she found left her numb with dread.

Placed upon her nightstand next to the made bed (a stark contrast from Fredrick’s disordered quarters) was a note written in his familiar, hurried hand.

Jane,

If you’ve gone where I think you have, then I have the comfort of your safety, but I have my own leads to pursue. Olivia left shortly after you and refused to elaborate on what is happening. She told me to stay here and wait for you, but I can’t be sure when you’ll return. If you read this note, know that something very big is about to take place, and I have gone to Dominari Hall to find out what.

Her heart sank as she read the last sentence. Knowing what she knew, she could not possibly leave Fredrick in what was about to become the epicenter of the battle. Her flight would have to wait. She glanced at the clock: barely after 5.30. The official curfew did not matter anymore, but she worried about another that might descend without warning.

She filled a satchel with a few articles of clothing, some food, and the money and valuables she kept stashed in her nightstand. She would have to hope that whatever city she landed in would accept her currency. On a second fleeting thought, she grabbed a couple pairs of trousers and button-up shirts from the drying line for Fredrick. They would be among the least of their original owners’ worries, and planning for Fredrick’s eventual flight with her restored a measure of hope. She returned to the streets, praying that she was not too late.

Jane was running faster now, racing against an unseen army descending upon the city and the doom it spelled for her and Fredrick. Given the Council’s desperation in the final hours of its reign, her friend was walking into a volatile situation.

The streets were darker than usual, owing to the absence of groundskeepers... or anyone, for that matter. Most of the city’s radiance stones still glowed bravely, and the fire-trench lighting remained strong in the larger halls, but a few untended torches had begun to go dark, casting perilous shadows. Jane struck her foot against an uneven curb and stopped, gasping in pain. That was when she heard the gunshots.

Echoes resounded through the passage, and she could not tell where they were coming from. When she heard second, third, and fourth rounds, she was certain they were in different locations. Looking up at the line of skylights in her high-arched, oval-shaped tunnel, Jane saw only blackness. The lit torches flickered ominously in their sockets, but she was sure they were the only things moving.

#

Mayhem erupted in pockets around the city. Jakkeb Sato’s army was trickling into Recoletta from all sides, and supporters already in place were coming out of the woodwork. The City Guard was distracted and scattered by the afternoon bombs and unprepared for the guerillas that advanced from the shadows. Confused guardsmen alternately fired blindly at the darkness and fled into the traps their attackers had set up. Though trained as a fighting force, Recoletta’s erstwhile stability with neighboring powers had kept them out of any major skirmishes. The mysterious attacks threw them off balance and cut them off from their commanders and one another.

In the chaos that ensued, the guards fired at anything that moved.

Chief Johanssen had heard the shots, as well. One battle had erupted outside Callum Station, and though he could not tell who was firing, the combatants were getting closer. Most of the inspectors and officers had set off throughout the city in the wake of the bombings. Of the few that remained, some were listening intently in their offices, and many others were standing in the halls. Farrah poked her head into Johanssen’s office, an expression of concern clouding her normally calm features.

“What’s happening, Chief?”

“No telling. Wait here,” he said, moving into the hall. He heard a scream come from somewhere in the rotunda, followed by yelling and several more shots. “They’re inside the station,” he said. Already the haze of gun smoke was making it difficult to determine who was firing… or being shot. “Stop! Hold your fire!” he yelled down the hall. The shots continued and the cloud of musket smoke advanced closer. A bullet whizzed past his nose, and he ducked back into the office. Across the hall, one of Johanssen’s officers fell under a volley of bullets. The thick layer of smoke, combined with the unknown scatter of his own men, kept him from adding his own shots to the fray.

“Cease fire!” he bellowed at unseen the attackers. “Stop shooting, dammit!” But still the advance continued. “Miss Sullivan, get into the office,” he said over his shoulder.

“But Chief–”

“Get into the office and open my bottom-right drawer. Toss me one of the hand-mines inside.”

“A
what
?”

“Bottom drawer. Now.” He extended his hand toward her, his eyes glued to the open slit of the doorway.

Farrah reached into the specified drawer and produced a small, roundish ball about the size of her fist. She held it almost as far from her body as her extended arm would allow, as if a few extra feet of distance would spare her the disaster of an accidental detonation. She looked back up at Johanssen, certain that he must not have realized what he was asking her to do. “Chief, I don’t think this is–”

“Then don’t miss,” he said, finally turning his head to her. Those unsmiling eyes and that firm-set mouth told Farrah all she needed to know about his earnestness in the matter.

Catching her breath, and not for the last time, she hoped, she lobbed the mine to her chief in her softest underhand. Johanssen caught and cradled it with more delicacy than his massive paws had seemed capable of. He checked the hallway once more, but the other officers were either retreating or had already fallen under the gunfire. Pushing the door to the hall most of the way closed, he snaked his arm above the frame and balanced the mine atop the remaining wedge. He pulled Farrah’s desk into his office, pushing it against the heavy double doors as he shut and locked them. His fortifications complete, he crossed back to where Farrah waited behind his desk as if barricading the office were a daily bit of business.

“Nice arm,” he said.

Her lips curled in a kind of shocked rage, and she wondered how long he had kept a box of mines in his desk, which sat not twenty feet from hers. “You can say that again. Because if I’d thrown just a couple feet short…”

“We’d probably be breathing through our handkerchiefs. It’s a smoker, Miss Sullivan.” His eyes glittered at her, and Farrah found herself taken aback, as usual, by the chief’s rare flashes of humor.

Reaching into a cabinet, Johanssen handed her a howdah pistol and a bag of ammunition. “You know how to use this?”

She knitted her brows in exasperation, her eyes only leaving his to check the breech as she loaded and cocked it. “Chief…”

He threw a hand in front of her. “Get back.” They knelt behind the heavy oaken desk that faced the double doors.

“What’s the plan?” Farrah asked.

“The smoker should scatter and string ’em out on their way in. With the red-eye they’ll get, they won’t be shooting straight, either. Get ready. I think they’re about to come through the–” He stopped at the loud hissing in the other room.

“Door?”

“They’re in your office now. Keep your sights level.” He reached under the desk and pulled out a double-barreled shotgun, steadying it on the desk. He set a box of shells by his knee. The shouts they heard from the other room, though, were both more numerous and more ordered than either of them had expected.

“Chief?” Farrah was just beginning to lose her cool. “What’s going
on
?”

“I don’t know, but I want you out of here.” Johanssen pulled a small lever under the desk, and the fireplace at their backs swung open to reveal a secret passage.

“I can’t leave you here!”

The first shot tore through the double doors, and Johanssen returned fire.

“You have to. Get to Malone and tell her what happened. If she got as far as I think, she’s the only one of us who understands what’s going on.” A bullet lodged itself in the mantel above their heads. “Go!”

Nodding mutely, Farrah hurried down the passage as Johanssen pulled the lever again to seal it and snapped it at the base. Johanssen managed to exchange two rounds with the attackers before the first of the band broke into the office, and it would be impossible to say whose confusion was greater: Captain Fouchet’s or Chief Johanssen’s.

“Fouchet! What the hell are you doing here?” Forgetting that he was under assault, Johanssen almost rose to his feet in disbelief.

“Putting an end to your little insurrection.”

“You think this is us? Have you lost your mind?” He slid two more shells into the breech.

“No, I followed my ears. Rather telling when the attackers strike from the vicinity of your station and retreat into it, don’t you think?”

Johanssen felled a gunman that had knelt just inside the doorway and taken aim. “Fights are breaking out all over the city, you moron,” he said.

Fouchet ducked back into Farrah’s office, yelling through the haze. “And where else would a small army have gotten so many weapons, eh?”

“Your Barracks, that’s where!” Johanssen saw a shadow shift in the doorway and fired into the wall just to the right of it. He was rewarded with a gasp of pain from Fouchet. Johanssen reached for his box of shells and grabbed two more.

“You Municipal scum,” Fouchet muttered, stumbling around the wall and training his sights on Johanssen through the smoke. Farrah was halfway down the passage when she heard two final shots, one the blast of a shotgun and the other the report of a musket.

#

Jane had reached the Spine, where the firing seemed more remote. The flames ribbing the walls burned red, and the distant shouts and rumbles of gunfire furthered the impression of standing inside a great, dormant beast on the verge of awakening. She was alone with fading radiance stones like dying stars, and the emptiness was immense and the darkness barely warded off by the sputtering torches and the reddish glow from the wall.

The tiles appeared molten under Jane’s flying feet in the low, shifting light, but they led inexorably to Dominari Hall and the Barracks. She was running along one of the lower tiers of the Spine, and other than the soaring ribs and floating points of light, she could discern nothing in the darkness above. Her legs burned when at last the towers of Dominari Hall came into view, rising to the surface like the roots of a mammoth tree.

Lights shone from behind windows, and bright torches illuminated the plaza around the Hall. A tangle of shapes ran in every direction across the plaza, and in the patches of shadow and light, it was impossible to tell who was coming and who was going. The only thing evident was massive confusion.

When at last she reached the overhang where Dominari Hall, and beyond it, the Barracks, was perched, she ascended in the shadows. In the frenzy of activity, no one stopped to question Jane.

Inside were fewer people but still running in all directions. The mayhem seemed to defy the ordered, pristine interior of Dominari Hall. Ivory and porcelain-enameled walls rose to chandeliers of gold and crystal that hung over a scene out of a pauper’s opera. With only a little choreography, the leaps over upturned tables and the semi-musical sprints through shattered mirror-glass would have fit perfectly in several productions that Jane had seen in what she already thought of as her former life.

It would have been pointless to call for Fredrick and, in any case, she doubted it would be a good idea to advertise her presence, regardless of the disorder. Nevertheless, searching Dominari Hall from top to bottom would surely take more time than she had and likely bring her to one of her antagonists before Fredrick. Realizing this, she stepped into the path of a woman heading straight in her direction.

Jane made eye contact, or she thought she did. “Excuse me, I need–”

The nameless bureaucrat continued looking through Jane as she galloped along in a beeline, slamming into Jane’s shoulder. Jane crashed against the wall, barely straightening her back again before attempting to hail another clerk mid-flight.

“Hello, I just–”

This time, Jane swung out of the man’s path before he could collide with her, but he paid her no more notice than the woman before him had. If she wanted to get anyone’s attention, she would have to seize it more forcefully.

Fortunately, Jane only had to wait seconds for the arrival of her next target. A middle-aged, bespectacled man sped toward her, the red blooms on his cheeks standing out against his spotless, white shirt. As he reached her level, Jane extended her foot in time to send him sprawling.

Hearing the thud that his body made as he hit the carpet and seeing his confusion and terror, Jane’s first impulse was one of deep guilt and regret. She extended a hand to help the man to his feet, but as she did so, she reminded herself that Fredrick’s life depended on her quick action.

“You! Where did you come from?” Jane attempted to sound authoritative; to her own ears, she only came across as crabby. But to the man she had tripped, she was evidently convincing enough.

“F-from my office. In the north wing.”

“What’s going on?” she asked. But the man only stared at her with a wide-eyed panic that pained and frightened her, and she realized that if she did not maintain some kind of command over the situation, he would bolt like a mare in a fire.

“I’m here to get everything under control,” she said, and saying the words even made her feel it a little. “When did everybody start running?”

The man licked his lips and jiggled the frames of his glasses. “Bombs. And shooting. Then Dominguez came, said everyone was to leave–”

“Did you see a reporter?” Again the blank look. Of course not, she thought, what are the chances that Fredrick would just march into Dominari Hall and announce himself as “The Reporter”, come for the story? Pretty good, actually. “Who’s in charge?”

“Dominguez. And R-ruthers.”

“Are they still here?” He nodded. “Where?”

The man pointed a shaking finger straight down the hall. “East wing. All the way at the end. Brought g-guns…”

Jane was off before she could hear the rest, and she hurried down the main hall toward the offices and reception rooms, where the pack thinned further. In a matter of moments, she was clear of any detectable human presence.

The tumult behind her was only a din, and she reached a grand double staircase that descended further into the heart of Dominari Hall. She could neither see nor hear movement in that direction, but a faint glow spilled onto the bottom steps, and it seemed as likely an avenue as any. Tiptoeing where red velvet crept over white marble, she edged down the stairs.

Emerging into a new hallway, this one more impressive than its predecessor, she slowed her pace. The faces of cherubim emerged from the creamy marble, staring down at her from the shadow of the vaulted ceiling. Below them hung portraits of Recoletta’s long line of councilors, the men and women affecting regal poses within their golden frames. A dim glow reflected off of the smooth polish of the mahogany doors lining the hall, looking warm to the touch.

The only light came from much further down the hall, and Jane’s position was in semidarkness. Picking her way down the hall and peering into darkened corridors, she chided herself for not having thought to bring a lamp but decided that the advantages of stealth outweighed those of visibility. Listening more carefully, she continued.

As she watched the floor for snags in the carpet, something caught her eye: a patch where the velvet carpet appeared to run outside its bounds and pool against the wall. With closer observation, saw that the pool was a good deal darker than the carpet. Blood.

The puddle had spread to just less than six inches in diameter, and it trailed in drops and streaks down a side corridor. She followed the track a few feet down the corridor, around a corner, and into a dim office, sickness and dread rising in her throat. Just on the other side of the doorframe, Fredrick sat propped against the wall. Gasping, she rushed to the slumped figure and knelt in front of his bowed head.

His upper half was bent over his knees, which angled imprecisely upwards and outwards. His right hand clenched something on his abdomen, and red bloomed between the white fingers and knuckles. His face was turned downwards and obscured by limply hanging hair. She lifted his head gently, feeling the sweat that slicked his brow and temples and noticing, even in the low lighting, that he had achieved a dangerous pallor.

“Freddie? Can you hear me?” she whispered. To her unparalleled relief, he let out a low moan, and she had to stop herself from squeezing him in a joyful hug. “Thank goodness, you’re alive.” Watching the listless way that his head and limbs swayed, though, she wondered how long that would be true. She took his hand, feeling more warmth than she expected. “Listen, we have to go, it’s not safe for us here.”

Groaning, he lifted his head and it lolled out of control, thumping against the wall. “You don’t say.”

“Save your witticisms for later, Freddie, we’ve got to get out of here. What happened to you?”

Fredrick heaved a few labored breaths. “Short. Bulgy eyes, creepy mustache. I came after you’d left to get answers. Whole place in an uproar. Found Ruthers and a few other councilors, said something about hostile takeover.” Fredrick paused, briefly overtaken by a fit of coughing. Jane was pleased to see that none of it came out red. “They asked me who sent me, I said ‘Roman Arnault’, and this guy shot me. Name’s Dominguez, I think.” With his left and relatively clean hand, he reached into his pocket and pressed something cold and hard into Jane’s palm.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a gun. I brought it for a worst-case scenario,” he said, chuckling weakly. Holding it up to the light and, with a little trouble, pushing out the cylinder, she could see that it was a six-chambered revolver, fully loaded. “Cock that little catch on the back to shoot,” Fredrick added. She pocketed it.

Jane hesitated, looking at the bleeding mass under Fredrick’s hand. “I’m going to

need–”

“No.”

“Fredrick, I have to see how bad it is.” She peeled his hand away, and he gasped. The wound was a mess of half-crusted and oozing blood, and Jane couldn’t discern much except that it wasn’t bleeding as profusely as she’d feared. Also, the wound was closer to the side than the center of his abdomen, and while she couldn’t have said what organs were in the path of the bullet, or which had been missed, this seemed like a good thing.

“Can you walk?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Come on.” Jane tore a strip from her billowing skirt and tied it under Fredrick’s chest as he winced. Pulling his arm around her shoulder, she hoisted him to his feet.

“OOOOOOOW, ohpleaseohpleaseOHHHH!” Fredrick squeezed his eyes shut as Jane straightened her legs and stood him upright. She took slow, shuffling steps and he painfully dragged his feet beside her. “Just leave me,” he moaned. “It’s not worth it. You’ll have to go without me.”

She stopped. “Freddie?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

Picking up speed, they shuffled back into the hall. Up the stairs and back the way Jane had come, the din had grown louder. Shouts, scuffles, and gunshots echoed down the hall toward them.

“Not that way,” Fredrick sighed. Jane nodded and directed them away from the stairs, toward the radiance, as the carpet grew ever brighter under their feet. In less than two minutes, they had reached a great rotunda and the source of the light.

A massive chandelier sat in the center of the rotunda, anchored and glowing wanly. The ropes and chains descending behind it from an oculus in the ceiling gave it the appearance of a giant, crystalline spider, its multitude of eyes winking at them. Jane stood, transfixed by the sight and forgetting their danger until she caught the odor of smoke and spice in the air. Standing to one side, his back against the wall, was Roman Arnault.

“They brought it down for cleaning. Interesting, isn’t it? It takes all those ropes to keep it up, but just one to hold it down,” he said, pointing to an anchor in the wall where a lone rope was tied, taught as a bowstring. His voice sounded wearier still than it had earlier in the evening.

“What are you doing here?” Jane asked. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and smothered it in his stride.

“I could ask you the same thing, but it appears that, once again, you’ve been caught in the pursuit of a noble mission,” he said and paced around, looking at Fredrick. The reporter glowered back with all the distaste his pained features could manage.

“How do we get out?” Fredrick asked.

“You don’t. As you probably heard, they came in behind you and are filling the palace as we speak, casing every office, closet, and filing cabinet. Ahead lies a secret passage to the surface, but it would be impossible to crawl through it in your current state of encumbrance.” He glared at Fredrick, as if holding him responsible for their condition. “In a few minutes, Sato and his army will be upon us, and I’ll have more than a little explaining to do. I fear that nothing I can do or say will be enough to save you two. Or me, for that matter. For your entanglement in this, I am sincerely sorry.”

“Sorry?” Fredrick said. “If we’re about to die, at least do us the courtesy of a little honesty. You’re a lying, murderous pig, and you led us into this.”

“Right on the first two counts, Mr Anders, but mistaken on the last,” Arnault said, his wrath rising. “If she’d listened to me, Miss Lin would have safely fled and I’d only be apologizing to you. Instead, she came back. To rescue you.” He snorted. “And this has to be the most inept bandaging I’ve ever seen, Jane. Is this supposed to stop the bleeding or hold his trousers up?” he said. He deftly retied the swathes and added a wad of fabric from his own shirt to improve it. “At least he won’t bleed to death before Sato arrives.”

Fredrick looked down at the fresh dressing as if he expected it to bleed him even faster. “What’s with the ‘us’ anyway? You’re on their side, as I found out the hard way.”

Roman rattled a sigh from somewhere deep in his throat and looked away. “You don’t really expect me to stand by while they massacre the two of you, do you?” His voice rang with annoyance, and Fredrick fell silent.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” Jane said.

“I have unfinished business down the hall.”

“Is that what you’ve been dreading all evening?” She noticed a faint tremor in his hands.

“Run, Jane.” His voice had adopted an unfamiliar quaver. “Hide your friend, and perhaps I can draw them off.”

“Why did they send you here?”

In the pause that followed, Roman brushed a strand of hair from his forehead with a shaking hand. “Locked in the office at the end of the hall is Councilor Ruthers. One of our moles in the Guard left him there, supposedly for safekeeping until the rioting subsided.” He drew a shaking breath. “As a final test of loyalty, my job is to kill him.”

Fredrick recovered from his astonishment and remembered some of his loathing for Roman. “Can you be serious? You, of all people, are worked up because you have to kill someone you’ve been betraying all along?”

Roman’s face was nearly as ashen as the reporter’s as he glared back. “Working against someone and murdering him in cold blood are two different things. It’s true, I share responsibility for the other murders, though I did not commit them with my own hands. While I cannot sympathize with the Council’s actions in the past, I would never have wished for this position. I’m many things, Jane, but not a murderer.” Already a fearsome change took place in him as he struggled to accept his duty. “There’s another thing,” he said, his voice and his eyes hardening. “I cannot forgive Ruthers for what he did to the Sato family, and to many others, but no matter his crimes, it would never be easy for me to kill him. Augustus Ruthers is my great-uncle.” He gave a sad little laugh. “The only family I have left. But Jakkeb will accept nothing less as proof of my loyalty… and in return for your safety, assuming you’ve left. He thinks that once I’ve done this, I’ll be indelibly under his control.”