On the eve of the riots that had cost him his title, Shea had already known it would all go to hell.
A dog howled. Terracotta roof tiles and hues of yellow trapped in the windows’ cages, smoke plumes threading from the chimneys, translucent against the setting sun and pumice-like where the evening had turned the sky into burnt paper. Shadows filling into the streets’ troughs. Somewhere in that maze, an animal wailed.
He leaned against the balustrade while a part of him, inside, shrunk back. Remain ministerial, would you? He’d almost allowed himself to believe the day was over and the rioters wouldn’t advance—but the howling sounded like an atonal prelude to something sinister, something that would end up consuming first the windows, then the roof tiles, then the plumes. Shut up, please shut up before you wake the monster.
Two miles of the city lay in front of the Red Hill, in plain sight; beyond that, distance mashed the buildings together. Pine Square, Arts Square, The Canal—he had no idea what was happening there.
“I have some news you won’t enjoy, Minister.”
Darren, the commander of the palace guard, entered the balcony and, without further explanation, handed him a spyglass.
Shea said, “Do you reckon someone’s hurt that dog?”
“What?”
“The howling.”
“Who cares? I’ve got news. Look south.”
“What’s going on, Darren?”
The man propped his elbow on the balustrade and shrugged, which meant, Better you see for yourself.
Even through the spyglass’ lens, all that remained of the city’s southern part was a coal facsimile—devastation and evening erased all detail. One thing they couldn’t erase, though: a wedge of skyrafts, painted orange by the sun, creeping up the sky.
“It’s not that many,” Darren said behind his back. “Nine rafts, but loaded to the brim with gas. They’ll be here in half an hour.”
Letting go of magnification made the howling expand: for a second, the city itself seemed to be the culprit.
“Who gave the order?” Damn that dog—and whoever’s torturing it.
“The queen, directly to me. She also instructed me not to inform you, Minister.”
Shea picked at a hangnail. Okay. “I don’t care what Daelyn’s orders are. We’re not using gas against the protesters.”
“Your job is to deal with the situation in the city, Minister. My job is to protect the palace—by any means necessary.”
“You realize I can overrule you.”
“And that’s why I’m informing you now, against the queen’s wishes,” Darren said. “So we can work something out before it’s too late.”
“There’s nothing to work out. We aren’t using the gas.”
“You may feel differently when things turn ugly.”
The wail segued into jagged barking, and Shea slapped the railing. “What are they doing to that poor bastard?”
Darren leaned over the balustrade, watching his spit fall. “A fire, perhaps? I remember a house once burned down in my town, and—”
“I don’t smell smoke. And do you think we’re the only ones seeing these bloody rafts? Can you spell ‘escalation’?”
“The crowds have dispersed for the day.”
“The Canal, Pine Square? You know what’s happening there?”
Darren produced a scant smile. “As a matter of fact, yes, we know what’s happening. We have men in the attics watching all the key places.”
“I thought we’d agreed not to deploy troops.”
“Those aren’t troops. They’re palace guards.”
They’re not troops. Shea studied him. What is this, a poor joke? No. No. Daelyn’s forcing my hand, that’s what it is.
The new fit of howling lasted at least ten seconds.
He pressed his fingers against his eyelids. “Okay, Darren, you want to work something out with me? Let’s go outside, you and me, and find the dog.”
“Minister …”
“You’re afraid to wander out into the city, or what? There’s nothing we can do today about the rafts, the crowds, or the bloody …” Shea exhaled. “Anyway. We can take care of the dog. Let’s do that, then we’ll talk.”
Darren glanced over the railing as if to spit. “If you wish. I’ll find guards to accompany us.”
“Forget the guards. It’s you and me.”
The man shrugged and straightened.
They descended to and traversed the palace’s ground floor, twenty or so halls stamped with stale floral patterns from a hundred years ago. Outside, an avenue led down into the mouth of the streets.
How old is he? Shea studied the commander. Thirty at most. What was his story—his father had supplied the court with dairy products someone close to the queen fancied? Mother used to be a lady-in-waiting who’d married above her station?
The thought of an armed mob storming the palace seemed incongruous with the city’s morphine stupor, but such stupor always follows one day of violence and precedes the next. “Queen Daelyn built a tower, took gold from every man, breast milk from every mother …” Soaring taxes, cuts to poorhouse programs, all for the sake of a thousand-foot monstrosity nobody needed—no wonder the people were furious.
The sound came from their left, from an alley caked with shadows. A woman clutching her apron stood on a porch like a figurine forgotten outside the toy box.
“Oi.” She stirred when they passed her. “Oi”—followed by something unintelligible.
The howling grew stronger. And it grew familiar: Shea realized it had sounded familiar from the get-go. The moment he almost remembered, they entered a wider street, and his attention shifted elsewhere. Not a single couple strolled along the pavement, the tables at a pub’s entrance stood reduced to shadows, lampposts, stand-ins for people. Nobody leaned out of a window to beat a carpet.
“What’s going on?” he said. “Where’s everyone?”
Darren kept silent. In the gap between two buildings, visible to the naked eye now, one of the skyrafts crawled against a patch of cobalt blue.
The howling, what does it remind me of?
Then Shea saw the faces.
In an open first-story window, a man whose skin seemed to be a map of a continent. In another, the curve of a woman’s neck. Further up the street, two kids, mouths agape, palms flattened against the glass. Frozen eyes upon frozen eyes.
“Something”—Shea swallowed—“something’s about to happen—”
“The critter’s there, Minister. In that house.”
He turned to realize he was no longer the lead: Darren’s languid disinterest was gone. The man strode toward a tall four-story building that looked too respectable to serve as a source of the obscene sound.
“How can you tell?” Shea called after him.
“We should go in, Minister. Now.”
The frozen eyes followed him—he felt them until the house’s front door opened into compressed warmth that smelled of sugar, pancakes, mothballs. Above Shea’s head, the staircase folded around a black well. Indoors, the dog’s wail became sharper and rounder: there was no accompaniment except for the disjointed choir of the stairs under their boots.
Under the attic’s triangular roof, Darren knocked on the only door. No one answered, and the howl didn’t change pitch or intensity, as though the being that produced it was trapped in its own separate reality.
Shea said, “Perhaps we should ask the housekeeper—”
Darren swung the door open. The room was dusk, a single drop of light in the middle—the window into the city—spilling in strands onto the floorboards. Another color mingled into the palette, crimson, and the air reeked of a butcher’s shop.
Shea first took the dog for a small person: it stood on its hind paws, front ones on the sill. The horrible thing in the corner seemed almost an afterthought, a piece of furniture someone had tried but couldn’t find a place for.
Darren knelt beside the body and felt the jugular. “Dead. He was supposed to watch Pine Square.”
He pushed the animal away from the window—the howling halted—and leaned out. In a second, he was back inside, sucking in air.
The silence became deafening.
“Can you hear it, Minister?”
What, Shea wanted to say, hadn’t it just stopped?
Waves, water lapping against the shore, in the place he’d left long ago, where the river meets the land …
“Minister, quick!”
That’s what the wailing reminded me of, he thought. The horn of a ship about to enter the harbor. But why the hell did he hear waves? There was no sea, no rivers near the Red Hill—
“Minister!”
Shea stumbled forward.
“Look, m’lord, look. They’re all there.”
“What are you talking abo …”
In the distance, Pine Square, all fifty thousand yards of it, smoked and murmured. The adjacent streets teemed, too, and the alleys behind them.
“We need to inform the palace,” Darren said. “We need to …”
The crowd began a slow roll forward.
In that instant, a thought sprouted fully formed, without deliberation, as if it’d come from outside—the blood will remain in this room.
“Minister, please!” Darren called from the doorway.
As they raced down the staircase, the thought beat against the inside of Shea’s head—No more blood, no more blood, the blood stays here even if it costs me my station. No one will force my hand. “This is it,” something whispered in his ear. “The real price of it all. Authority is about making decisions, and the important ones always come with guilt.”