Angel Of The City (18 page)

I can hear scattered sounds of automatic weapons fire even before I look out through the cracks onto the street.
Some of the rioters have broken through. A few are running, some armed, as they exchange shots with Counselors and each other. Someone from another quarter; a Counselor; all anyone wants is a target. A yellow haze hangs over everything and a great cloud of smoke rises from the Aramaic border.

I move awa
y from the window. This area is too hot to try and leave now. “We’ll have to stay until they either finish up with this area or get called out to put down another riot.”

“
How long do you think it will last?” Abby asks.

“
I don’t know. Most disturbances are local. I’ve never seen a city-wide riot before.”

I settle down on the floor with my back against the wall. The effort makes me wince in pain. Abby sits next to me.

“How many rebellions have you been a part of?”

“
None. I told you, I’m not a revolutionary.”

“
I meant as a Counselor.”

A
bby’s expression is hard, yet there’s a faint tremor in her voice. I don’t blame her for that. She was held by Counselors, even if just for a few days. “I may be naïve,” she continues, “but I’m not stupid. “Even if I hadn’t heard what Buyam said to you, I think I would have eventually figured it out. Or at least suspected.”

I stare at floor, unable to look at her.

“How could you… be one of them?”

It
’s an impossible question to answer. What do I say? That I was poor, near starving, and took the only way out offered me? It’s true but it doesn’t explain everything. It doesn’t explain how I took to the training so easily, how the frightened boy became the man who was able to do the terrible things he did. There’s nothing I can say to make her understand and so I say nothing.

“
I always heard that once you were a Counselor, you were a Counselor for life.”

I nod.

“But you found a way out.”

I nod again.

“How?”

The headache is back along with a knot in the pit of my stomach. But this time
the pain and sickness isn’t due to some shadow maker’s knife. It’s shame. I stand and go to the window, watching as a Counselor drags a body across the street. “Please don’t ask me.”

“
I have to.”

“
You won’t like the story.”

“
I know.”

I stumble
, not knowing where to begin, yet as soon as I begin to speak, I know I’m going to tell her everything, even as each word that pours out cuts something deep inside me.

“
I’d been in the CIS for fifteen years; achieved the rank of Liedercounselor, working directly under Keillor. Do you understand what that means; the things I’d had to do, to get that far?”

She nods,
her expression forcing me to look away.

“
We had intel that a group of terrorists were meeting after curfew in the seventy-second. There was a rumor that weapons were involved. My team was ordered in. Keillor made it clear he wanted prisoners. We were to take as many alive as possible. Keillor knew he could count on me to give him what he wanted. I always had.

“
The meetings were taking place just before dawn, an hour before the end of curfew in an abandoned school house. We had surrounded the building and I was set to lead my team in. We followed procedure and broke down the door, then threw in a flash grenade. They create a blinding flash that disables anyone in the room, but doesn’t cause any real harm.

“
We entered quickly to find twenty-two people lying sprawled out on the floor, hands over their eyes, crying out. But the intel had been wrong. They weren’t terrorists, they were scrap-boys. They’d been getting together before curfew to divvy up the trash heaps, to try and prevent the battles and turf-wars that went with that kind of life. They’d been meeting for weeks. Bobbies; just a bunch of bobbies.”

I take a deep b
reath, but it doesn’t stop the tremor in my voice. “Keillor was furious. He’d been fighting the Council hierarchy since his promotion and now this. He’d look like a fool if word got out and he couldn’t allow that. Technically they had broken curfew—a capital offense.”

“
Nooo…”

“
Why not?” I snap. “They were guilty, weren’t they? Age is immaterial, that is the law.” I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. “Keillor signed the order of execution himself. They were loaded into a personnel carrier that night in secret and taken to the eastern out district for commission of sentence.”

She
’s weeping softly now, her hand wiping away the tears. I want to stop talking; to just end it here, but I can’t. I have to finish it.

“
All but one. The leader, some kid, twelve, thirteen years old. Keillor wanted to make sure there were no future surprises, that no other meetings were taking place. He ordered the boy interrogated. He needed someone he could trust; someone who would be discrete, but thorough. He sent for me.”

“
Please stop…just stop…”

My ears pound; my throat dry and my voice cracking
, I continue. “They brought him to the Two Twenty-Three. It was undergoing renovation and was temporarily vacant. The whole building was empty, except for him and me. Keillor had him delivered bound naked to a gurney, terrified. The instruments of interrogation were already there, gleaming on the tray in front of him.”

She
’s crying uncontrollably, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking her head.

“
I stood over him for the longest time, a scalpel in my hand as he pleaded and begged. And I just… froze. It was ridiculous. How many interrogations had I performed? A dozen? Two dozen? None were this young, but why should that matter? The law is the law. But I couldn’t make myself move. I just stood there, staring down at him, sweating and shaking.”

I blink back tears
I didn’t know had formed. “I finally cut him free. The next thing I know, I’m hauling him by the hair down the hallway, cursing and screaming. I reached the back door and tossed him out in the pouring the rain. In a flash, he was gone, disappearing into the darkness. I stood there in the rain—I don’t know for how long—then I started walking, first to my office then back onto the street and I didn’t stop walking until I sat down in a shadow maker’s chair.”

The weeping stops.
I can’t look at her and stare out the window as silence fills the room again. Minutes pass, then a touch on my scalp, fingers tracing the scar.

I
try to pull away but her hands grip my shoulders, turning me, forcing me to look at her. Her eyes are wet with tears and tinged with sorrow. And something else. Not fear or loathing, but something worse. “Dinnae look at me like that,” I croak, my voice broken. “Nae pity. Nae for me.”

I
turn away but she grasps my face, pulling me toward her and suddenly her lips are on mine. Then I’m not pulling away but drawing her near to me, fighting to find her mouth as her arms wrap around me. She’s saying something, crying maybe or pleading, but I can’t hear her, I can’t hear anything but the pounding in my ears.

We drag each other down to
the dirt-covered floor, tearing at each other’s clothes. Or maybe it’s only me who’s tearing at her, trying to get at something I don’t have a name for. I think I’m on top of her but I can’t be sure. I can sense her under me but I can’t see her. Maybe my eyes are closed or maybe I’ve gone blind. I know what’s happening but I can’t feel it, can’t hear; or see; or taste. The whole world is nothing but pounding in my head, rushing me toward something that’s just out of my reach until the pounding and blackness crescendo and everything. Just. Stops.

It’s dark. I raise my head from the floor and see her across the room, sitting against the wall. I don’t know how long I’ve been out. Hours maybe. Moonlight trickles in through the slats on the windows. The candles are half gone. I can’t look at her as I sit up and collect myself. The night passes slowly.

“Does Reed know?” She asks, finally.

“
No.”

“
Never tell her what happened.”

I wonder for a moment if she mea
ns my past or tonight.

“
Would the Council trade me for Pen?”

My head is still in a fog. I
’m sure I’ve misunderstood. I stare at her dumbly.

“
In the morning I’m going to turn myself in. If I gave them Kingston too, would they leave Pen alone?”

“
Abby….”

“
No. Pen is right. They’ll never stop looking for me. I can’t save myself, but I might be able to save Pen.”

“
Do you have any idea what they’ll do to you?”

“
Just answer me. You were one of them. Would they take the deal?”

The Council doesn
’t want Pen, they have no use for her except as leverage over Abby. Kingston is the real prize. They obviously realize that Abby is only a figurehead, but they can’t just let her go. The Angel of the City is dead and she has to remain dead. They can’t risk her resurrecting ever again. They’ll question her before the end and it won’t be painless, but nothing like what Kingston will endure.

“
Yes,” I say.

“
Good.” She takes a tremulous breath, exhaling slowly. “I don’t even know how to do this; where to go…”

“
I do.”

She nods.

The wind picks up outside, but there’s no other sound. At least in this quarter, for now, the city’s rage is spent and the Counselors’ job is done.

She lays down on the cold concrete and closes her eyes.
“You won’t tell Pen? Not until I’m gone?”

“
No.”

I watch her sleep as the candles burn down, the wax spreading on the floor like a pool of ivory, beautiful and glistening in the moonlight. Eventually sleep comes to me as well, in the way it usually does, fast and blunt as a blow to the head. Only
for the first time in years, this night I dream. I dream of Cole.

The sun has barely risen and yet the sounds of battle have already started. I look through the slats boarding up the windows and see Counselors have taken position just behind the wall. Easier to target the rioters as they funnel in through the narrow opening. If the mob is aware of this, they don’t seem to care. They’re approaching warily, but steadily. Yesterday wasn’t enough for them, apparently.

I turn to Abby.
“We better get going.”

Only s
he’s gone.

I reach the top of the stairs
leading down to the church, before I hear the screams. Racing down the steps, I see Abby holding Pen cradled against her, rocking her slowly. I can’t see Pen’s face, but her arm dangles lifeless and blue at her side. On the floor is the empty pill bottle. She must have taken it from my pocket when we were wading through the mob. Devon’s silver tin of coal dust lies next it, empty as well.

Maybe it was an accident. Maybe in the fog of the coal dust she wasn
’t aware of what she was doing, but I don’t think so. I think she saw what little future remained for her and decided to follow those who built this room long ago. It was a leap of faith, faith that there was something on the other side, something better.

Abby is sobbing, repeating again and again that it
’s her fault, that she shouldn’t have left Pen alone. But her plan would have doomed Pen just the same. Pen said once that she wasn’t much use on her own. Without her older sister, I think she would have eventually taken that same leap of faith, either by a bottle of pills and a tin of dust, or a gun loaded with a single bullet.

I stand awkward and mute. I want to say something; some words of comfort. But if I once ever knew any, they escape me now. Maybe they were erased in the years of Counselor training, or maybe that part of me was cut away by the sharp edge of a shadow maker
’s knife. Seeing Pen fills me with a sadness I haven’t felt since I was a boy and yet, no tears come.

I can
’t grieve with Abby, I’ve forgotten how. With nothing to offer, I sit down on the bench across from her and stare out silently at the large letter ‘t’ on the wall and wait until she’s ready.

Half an hour passes before she stands. Pen is lying on the bench, her arms folded neatly over her chest. Abby sniffs back tears, her voice cracked and broken.
“I can’t just leave her.”

“
There’s no other choice. We can’t take her to a public crematorium. Too many questions we can’t answer.” I look down at Pen. In this light she could almost be sleeping.

“
She could lie here peacefully forever, couldn’t she?”

“
A long time, anyway.”

She remains unmoving, her gaze fixed on her sister.

“Abby…”

She wraps her arms around herself.
“I don’t know what to do.”

“
There’s no reason to turn yourself in now. Let’s do what we set out to do and get to the Bonifrei.”

“
And then what? I can’t hide forever. They’ll find me eventually and when they do, they’ll take you with me. I can’t do that to you or Reed.”

“
Then what do you want?”

“
Kingston,” she says, her voice suddenly hard.

“
Counselors will find him. Believe me, he’ll pay.”

“
I don’t want them to have him,” she snaps. “It isn’t the Council he owes, it’s me.” She’s no longer sniffling. Her tears are still wet on her cheek, but sorrow has been replaced by a mask of anger.

“
Revenge, Abby?”

She glares at me.
“What else do I have left?”

I blow out the candles and take her by the arm, leading her u
p the stairs. “All right, if that’s what you want.”