Чарли Андерс - The City in the Middle of the Night

You might as well have kicked Mouth in both sides of the head at once.

“Really?” Mouth said. “The Invention? I mean, it was our most sacred book, I thought. It was the story of us. I was ready to kill for it.”

“It’s been a while, and I was pretty burned out by the time I left,” Barney said. “You were at an impressionable age when you lost them, so maybe it was the opposite.”

“But you’re a sage. Or at least that’s what you claimed. You said you achieved the goal,” Mouth said.

“Don’t take my word for it. I wouldn’t, in your situation. You have no way of knowing if I’m telling the truth, or what that even means.”

Mouth tried to remember a single line of the Invention, a single beautiful passage or moving sentiment. Everything came as a jumble, and now that Barney had called it doggerel, that’s what the words sounded like in her head.

I lie half awake in the storeroom, remembering the sensation of standing inside a fortress of ice and stone, of feeling welcomed by a whole community, and then how it ended. The Gelet’s blood, dark and thick, was still on my hand when I got back to Ahmad and Katrina’s place. I can still smell it now. The bracelet hasn’t stopped urging me to come back to the night, but I don’t know how to make it there. Shouts and discordant music blare from someplace nearby.

Bianca opens the slatted door and stands over me. She looks as if she hasn’t slept since the Founding of January: there are puffy blotches under her eyes, which seem red and unable to focus. Her arms keep making tiny gestures, too fast to make sense of. I hope she’s come here to sleep next to me, but instead she nudges my shoulder, harder than she probably means to, and says, “Sophie. Do you trust me?”

I almost say yes right away, but something makes me stop and look up at her.

“I need to know,” she says. “Because I have a plan, but it won’t work unless you trust me with your life. I did it, I found a way for us to go home. We can go back and fix everything we left behind in Xiosphant. We can take down the corrupt machine that decided you were disposable. If Mouth taught me one thing, it’s always cut them when they’re not looking. But I need to know. Right now. Do you trust me?”

For some reason, I still haven’t woken up all the way, even though her voice and her stiff posture alarm me. I ought to be wide awake, alert, but I feel half present.

“What plan?” I whisper. “What are you talking about? There’s no way back—”

Bianca rolls her head and shushes me. “You can’t ask me that. This is why I said you need to trust me. I’m risking everything, even having this conversation with you. People in this city are so paranoid, they’ll lose their minds if they find out what I’m doing.”

Everything shrinks in on me, as if the shadows deform and I’m about to be crushed.

She leans closer and I feel her breath on my face. “Remember when I said I have unfinished business in Xiosphant? We both do. You were just telling me you still feel haunted by what they did to you, and maybe the only way for you to get past it is to face those monsters, and to see them brought down. Take it from me, you don’t just walk away from the place that made you.”

I can tell she expected a different reaction from me—like, she thought I would be excited. But everything about her tone is scaring me.

And meanwhile, I can’t stop remembering when the Gelet came and invited me to their city, and then blood, and then blood. Those people thought they were rescuing me.

“I have my own way of dealing with my past,” I say. “And we have a chance, we can start over here. We can get jobs. I can work in a coffee shop again. I thought you were having fun here, dancing, going to parties. You keep saying we’re famous, and everything is fantastic.”

“Sure, yeah, good times. But it’s all been a means to an end, and it’s finally paying off.” Bianca puts her hands on my shoulders, and I feel an immediate flush of comfort, even in the middle of a terrible conversation. “And Argelo isn’t going to be fun much longer, from the whispers I’m hearing.”

She looks over her shoulder. “I have to go. You need to tell me now: do you trust me or not? Did you mean it on the Sea of Murder when you said you’d always support me?”

I hesitate just a few heartbeats more, and then toss my head, in the Argelan style. “Yes. Of course. You know I do. But you should tell me—”

Bianca’s gone. I hear her dress rustle in the room outside, and then the front door clacking shut.

No way I can sleep after that conversation. I get dressed in silver threads and wander down to the place where I’m most likely to find Bianca. On the way down, I keep thinking about the three food dollars. Back at the Gymnasium, I had fallen in love with the idea of newness, and I’d let myself believe that none of our small rebellions would ever have any consequences. Bianca had convinced me the world could start all over again, untethered to the weight of everything that had happened before we were born. But now we’re older, and she still can’t accept that some burdens are unshakable, fused to the skin, no matter how you try to turn them into unfinished business. And I’m scared she’s going to destroy us both.

The Knife is even more packed than ever with people in rainbow clothing, and they’re all out of their minds on booze or something else. Two shirtless men embrace each other, one kissing the other’s neck, and I look away, blushing, and when I look back, they’re gone. As soon as the crowd swallows me up, I feel trapped, stiff, chafed in my armpits by the memory of police gloves. But I breathe, and let the feelings claim me for as long as they need to. I touch my bracelet, and it reminds me of running across ice, on powerful legs. I imagine the community of Gelet, the closeness that comes from navigating around sinkholes and predators together, across vast distances, without any secrets. I try not to think about the dark blood on my hand.

Bianca’s sitting at a VIP table on the second floor of the Emergency Session, a nightclub that’s tricked out to look like the audience chambers of the old Argelan People’s Congress. Austere wood paneling, crimson carpets and wall hangings, framed pictures of men and women with wild hair, wearing stiff collars and thick-rimmed glasses. I’ve heard bits and pieces about the People’s Congress, which was some kind of anarchist regime that governed after the collapse of the Great Argelan Prosperity Company. Bianca sees me and waves me upstairs, past the bouncer.

“Sophie! There you are. I was hoping you’d turn up. You remember Dash, don’t you?” Bianca gestures at the only other person sitting in the soundproofed VIP booth: the beautiful man from that fancy ball who told me that was his house. “He was just telling me about this revival of a classic Zagreb opera that he went to recently. It sounds fascinating.”

“So charming to see you again.”

I stare, until I realize what makes Dash unique, besides the stunning features that I can’t identify as being from any one heritage. He’s not wearing any insignia to let me know which of the Nine Families he belongs to, the way everyone else in this nightclub is. He sees me looking at all the places his crest could be, and laughs.

“Nope, I’m not wearing one. I don’t need to. Anybody who sees me and doesn’t know which family I belong to is already in trouble.” I still don’t get it, so he adds: “I’m the head of the Alva Family. I’m probably the most famous person in Argelo, in all modesty.”

“I’ll get us drinks,” Bianca says, touching my arm and giving me a wink. “Talk amongst yourselves.” She hustles down the stairs, leaving me alone with Dash. I lower myself onto the couch opposite him.