Thresholder, ch 161, The Fallen City, pt 1

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The rest of the train ride to Charlonion was uneventful, though that wasn’t to say that there weren’t things to see and learn about.

They spotted a caravan of covered wagons on the horizon, and Anaksi pulled the shutters closed for the next few miles.

“They’ve been there for centuries,” said Anaksi. “The Long Migration.”

“Going where?” asked Perry.

“No one knows,” said Anaksi. “Circles, probably.”

“And — sorry, I don’t get this — they just live that long, hundreds of years?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Anaksi. “There are children born on the Long Migration, people who have lived their whole lives traveling, and others are called to be with them. A man gets up one day and decides to join, bringing his family with him, or leaving them behind.” She shook her head. “Better not to look.”

“Because it’s a contagious form of insanity?” asked Perry.

“Just … better not to look,” said Anaksi.

“How do they deal with their wagons breaking down?” asked Perry. “How do they handle provisions?”

“I don’t know,” said Anaksi. “It’s better left alone.”

Perry disagreed with that, but he held his tongue. It wasn’t really important, not unless he suddenly felt the urge to spend his whole life as part of a migration that would never complete. He had all kinds of questions about how it worked, what the underlying mechanism was, but it seemed like they had enough weird shit that no one was too invested in poking at every little corner of the world.

A man who was apparently called a ‘news butcher’ came through the cart and offered them things to buy, including newspapers but thankfully not including meats, as Perry had first thought on hearing the name. Perry purchased a few candies, still using money he’d won playing poker, along with a cigar he had no intention of ever smoking, and a newspaper that was apparently only a handful of days old, from Charlonion, which he set on the seat.

The news butcher’s left hand was furry, looking like a gorilla’s, leathery black on the palm and hairy on the outside.

“What do you suppose that hand’s about?” asked Perry once the news butcher was gone.

Anaksi let that question rest for a beat, as though wanted to see whether he was going to explain why he was asking.

“It’s custom, in Charlonion, to replace missing limbs with animal parts,” she said.

“Huh,” said Perry. “They don’t need to worry about rejection?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Anaksi. “I don’t know how it’s done.”

“One of the guys that was part of the posse, he had a cat’s tail,” said Perry. “What would that have been about?”

“I don’t know,” said Anaksi.

“I mean, are there other methods of getting an animal part, aside from … transplantation?” asked Perry. “Other reasons? Because a cat tail, that’s an addition, not a replacement.”

Anaksi shrugged.

“And, okay,” said Perry. “Wyatt, he’s the one that got shot in the shoulder, he had a mechanical arm. Why do some people have mechanical arms and others have animal parts, if they’re both prosthetics?”

“I’m one of the worst guides you could possibly have,” said Anaksi. “I know about the Eshkee, and the struggles of the Yuuksen. I know some etiquette, some culture. I don’t know medicine, not as it’s practiced in Charlonion.”

They passed over a bridge that seemed to Perry implausibly large, spanning a gorge that ran thick with brown water that churned and created something like a head of foam. There were scraggly pine trees among the rocks down there, and among them, skeletons that were at least twenty feet tall.

“Giants,” said Anaksi. “All dead now.”

“I can see that,” said Perry. “Killed by soldiers from Charlonion?”

“Killed by disease from Charlonion,” said Anaksi.

“What, all of them?” asked Perry.

“No, some were hunted down later on for sport,” said Anaksi. “It’s before my time, I don’t have that story, maybe someone else knows the answers to your questions.”

The Flux they traveled through was varied, and varied more than the real world, with rapid shifts in the biomes. Desert gave way to prairie which led to forests, then marshland, then swamps, and a good stretch of rail that went along a huge lake, followed by a sandy beach that gave way to more desert. Geographically speaking, it was nonsense, but there was something of a gradient to it. The Verdant Moon had made it all lush and green, like mid-spring, which sometimes just meant tall cacti with bright flowers.

“Explain the Fourth Phalanx to me,” said Perry as the train rolled on.

“Concerned citizens,” said Anaksi. “People who think they have a duty to ‘civilize’ the Yuuksen. It comes from an old expression or idea, part of the war they’ve fought against us. The First Phalanx is warfare, the Second Phalanx is settler expansion, and the Third Phalanx is slavery.”

“They make Yuuks into slaves?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Anaksi. “Not anymore. The Third Phalanx is effectively dead.”

“Why?” asked Perry.

“It was inhumane and sinful,” said Anaksi.

“That really stopped them?” asked Perry.

“It was also unprofitable, save for certain very specific situations. Mining, mostly.” Anaksi looked out the window. “There is a common belief that Yuuks don’t make for good slaves, due to our temperament. It was easier for us to run away, to survive out into the Flux, which isn’t a death sentence if you know what you’re doing. And of course we fought it tooth and nail, for all the good it ended up doing.”

“And the Fourth Phalanx is what, exactly?” asked Perry. “Just … people who are like what you told me to say, from the Society for Indigenous Reform?”

“You know so little,” said Anaksi. “Which is strange, given how much you’re asking. You would think a man with this many questions would have found his answers earlier.”

“Eventually I’ll run dry and have no more questions left,” said Perry. “But for me to do that, you need to keep the answers flowing.”

“The Society for Indigenous Reform is one of many,” said Anaksi. “But the Fourth Phalanx is an idea, one that sees a gentler path forward with the Yuuks. They want us all to learn Commish. They want us to worship the Light as most of them do. They want us to forget who we are. They press on us in different ways, some worse than others.”

“And that’s who I’m pretending to be,” said Perry. “And you’re pretending to be someone who … went along with it.”

“I’ve known women who have,” said Anaksi.

“Only women?” asked Perry.

“Men are not given the same opportunities,” said Anaksi. “Do you … need me to tell you how the Yuuksen are seen?”

He was exposing his ignorance. It would have been possible not to, and that would have been accomplished mostly by staying silent, which didn’t seem like a good way to live. Besides, she was going into Charlonion, a place where she would stick out, where she’d be a lightning rod for the bad kinds of attention, and he had some sympathy for that. Better for her to understand how alien he really was to this place.

“I’ve talked to enough people to get the gist of it,” said Perry. “But obviously you’ll have your own perspective, and I’d like to know it, yes.”

“They think we’re violent and untrustworthy, wild,” said Anaksi. “Of course the Commission saw the violence and thought that our men would make for good soldiers, if only they could be brought to heel. They would take us in young, ripping us from our families, or pulling in the children orphaned by wars, and make soldiers of us, Yuuksen who hate Yuuksen. It was so stupid, even in principle. Take a Yuuksen from his tribe and he won’t have any inborn ability to read the Flux, he’ll only know what he’s trained for.”

“And that was a Fourth Phalanx effort?” asked Perry.

“It’s part of the ideal of the Fourth Phalanx, yes,” said Anaksi. “What was your plan if they asked you any of this, these things you’re so ignorant of?”

“Lie,” said Perry. “But to my way of thinking, the Inspectors have this power of interrogation and confirmation, and they must lean on it heavily to get the truth from people, so I imagined that without it, they would be left rudderless. How much training are they given in interrogating people without their powers? How much experience do they have? None, would be my guess, if it’s a reliable crutch for them. You alluded to there being plays and counterplays, but those are within the realm of what’s known.”

“And you’re an unknown,” said Anaksi.

“Yeah,” said Perry. “More or less.”

When the train stopped in Cenneral, Perry elected not to get off it. Instead, he spent the fifteen minutes in one of the other train compartments, an empty one, consulting with Marchand through an opening that was only a few inches wide. Much of this was simply Perry reporting on what had been going on and what he’d learned.

“Sir, if you had consulted me, I would have suggested that hiding inside the shelf would be the best course of action,” said Marchand. “There was simply nothing to be gained by poking the Inspectors, and much to be lost.”

“Yeah, well,” said Perry. “I came through fine and learned a lot, so.” He looked at the tattoo on his hand. He wasn’t particularly worried about it.

“If you’re going to antagonize people, it would be best for you to do it while armored,” said Marchand.

“I know,” said Perry. “And I think I could almost get away with having the armor in the city. They have some steampunk. But there’s been no one armored walking around, and the moment I draw attention, I’m kind of fucked.”

“I do also think that Miss Anaksi learning about the shelf would solve a number of problems,” said Marchand. “It would allow a link between use, a chance for me to survey from the train’s window, and give her vital information for use in any combat situation. From what you have said, sir, she must suspect much of you. And of course, that information asymmetry is dangerous.”

“How so?” asked Perry.

“Because, sir,” said Marchand. “What does she think you are?”

“Something unknown,” said Perry. “A mystery, wrapped in a — why, what do you think she thinks?”

“Sir, when a person is faced with the unknowable, they make connections that they might not otherwise have made,” said Marchand. “Sometimes these are matters of superstition, other times they are within the bounds of what they understand to be possible. And in the case of Miss Anaksi, what does she understand to be possible?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry.

“Exactly, sir,” said Marchand.

“Did you just set a little conversational trap for me?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir, I had thought you might appreciate that,” said Marchand.

“So by keeping things from her, we’re letting her form her own ideas, and those ideas might not just be wrong, but might fall in some category that we don’t know about,” said Perry.

“I appreciate your use of the word ‘we’ here, sir,” said Marchand. “But I do have to say that you’re giving me a level of participation which I do have, as I have not spoken with Miss Anaksi, nor is she aware of my existence.”

“Well, noted,” said Perry. “But I’m going to elect not to tell her anything, especially if there are Inspectors who can comb through her memories. I didn’t get a chance to see what listening to a conversation is like, but Anaksi assures me that they can do it, and that makes her more of a risk than she would otherwise be. All they would need is someone who speaks Eshkee, if they couldn’t just break her and get her to admit to speaking Commish.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “I suppose I must hope that I have a chance to meet her later.”

When Perry got back to his compartment, he was relieved that Anaksi was still there. She was reading from the newspaper he’d bought from the news butcher, with her brow furrowed.

“Problems?” asked Perry.

“Charlonion is going to be a less nice place than I had thought it was going to be, and I had already thought it would be difficult,” she said. “There was a Yuuk massacre.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Perry. “Though … I guess they weren’t Eshkee?”

Anaksi looked up at him and blinked. “The idea is that we all become a single people,” she said. “It took us far, far too long to learn that what affects one affects all. It was easy to cheer when a rival tribe was taken down. It was easy to make deals with the Commission, too, agreements about what land should belong to whom. Not everyone understands, naturally. There are some who think they’re in favor.”

“And the ones who got killed, they’re what happens to someone not in favor?” asked Perry.

“Oh,” said Anaksi. “When I said a Yuuk massacre, I meant a massacre by the Yuuksen.”

“Ah,” said Perry.

“Two hundred dead,” said Anaksi.

“Holy shit,” said Perry. “That’s … wait, can this newspaper be trusted?”

The train started moving again, taking them on the last leg of the trip. The stop by the Inspectors had slowed them down, and there had been some question of whether or not they were going to keep going, but even being pessimistic about time in the Flux wouldn’t see them traveling at night. And if it came down to it, they would travel at night, since there was no safe way to stop.

“Trusted?” asked Anaksi.

“I mean, newspapers are written by people, those people have their own agendas, the Commission almost certainly has their fingers in there somewhere, if the newspaper isn’t an arm of the Commission in the first place.” Perry held out his hand, and took the newspaper from Anaksi. He looked at the header of it. It declared itself to be The Charlonion Register, and there was a stamp in the upper left corner, which was actually part of the print, that declared it had passed Commision Review. “See, this,” said Perry. “Commission Review, do you know what that is?”

“No,” said Anaksi.

“My best guess would be that the Commission looks over everything before it goes out,” said Perry. “Some of that is to ensure journalistic standards, but the other part is to help control the narrative. So if you read about a massacre by the Yuuksen —”

“It might not have happened,” said Anaksi.

“Well,” said Perry. “Probably people did die, if they’re claiming that many dead, but the numbers might be inflated, or the cause of death might not be quite right, or something like that.”

“You know nothing about this city,” said Anaksi. “And you think they’re lying?”

“I’m questioning the source,” said Perry. “Are you not questioning the source? Do you just believe this thing you read because it’s in the paper?”

“Lies get found out,” said Anaksi. “Lying isn’t just wrong, it’s foolish, Yuuksen and Commission alike believe this.”

“Nope,” said Perry. “I don’t think that’s true. I mean, I think it’s true when you live in a small tribe, and most of the things you could possibly lie about are things that another person could verify, and when you have reputation at stake. But here? In this city we’re going to? There’s every incentive to lie, and verification is extremely difficult, and when you lie using a newspaper, how is someone who knows the truth going to get their version of events out?”

“I can’t tell if you’re making sense or not,” said Anaksi. She looked at the newspaper he was now holding. “But the point remains that there was a massacre, and people will see me, and think of their compatriots who were killed.”

“They think of themselves as a collective then?” asked Perry. “There’s some national identity of some kind, even though the Commission isn’t a nation?”

Anaksi sighed. “There is so, so much you don’t know.”

“Very true,” said Perry. “But we have another few hours, or more if we’re unlucky, and so long as I haven’t wiped you out yet, I’d like to keep going.”

Anaksi talked as the train went on, telling Perry everything that he might need to know about Charlonion, at least so far as she understood it. When Perry probed, it became clear that she had some serious gaps in her knowledge, but from what he’d been told and pieced together, she’d been born in the Flux and at some point had gotten an extensive education by someone who subscribed to the Fourth Phalanx way of thinking, before going back out into the Flux again and attempting reintegration.

Charlonion was a huge city, but it didn’t have a huge population, only a large one, and as a consequence, there were lots of parts of it that were completely empty and abandoned. In those abandoned places, it was afflicted by the Flux, which meant that buildings would shift and warp and disappear. And that, in turn, meant that they could be harvested from, with work crews coming in to take down doors and windows and rip up floorboards, all of which was apparently common — and the ransacked buildings would be back the next day, influenced into existence by, presumably, the bulk of city around them. It was renewable, in its own creepy way.

People came to Charlonion from another world, but they came through not quite right, a little bit addled, and with inconsistent stories about what that world was like. They arrived at August Station and were processed into the city, never on anything approaching a schedule, and usually they were confused about where they were or why. The only way back was on one of those irregular trains, and because of the Addling, it wasn’t quite clear what happened to those who left. There were maps of the other side, and an understanding of who and what was there, but it was all reconstruction, efforts made with a bit of guesswork.

But Charlonion had been around basically forever, and the Commission not too much less time than that, so the vast bulk of the population of the city were people who had been born there, under the current regime.

So far as Perry understood it, there was the Commission, which was pseudo-corporate nationalist governance of not just Charlonion but (in theory) the whole of the Dusklands, and there were major companies that operated at the pleasure of the Commission, but who also swayed it. Alongside them were nobility of various stripes, which here meant someone who managed to hold onto money for so long that this was the principal thing their family did. Some of them were actual nobility, in the sense that they claimed to be titled, but those titles seemed to be largely worthless, claims on pieces of the Duskland they couldn’t enforce.

And at the other end of the class spectrum, there were people who always wondered where their next meal was coming from, and who worked in factories that were liable to take their legs or fingers, which would swiftly be replaced with animal parts by back-alley doctors. Perry had no sense of what most of these people actually did, aside from those who spent their time stripping houses from the empty parts of the city. There were factories they worked in, but Perry had no sense of what those were like.

A loose middle class floated between these two ends, people with trades, about which Anaksi knew little. Perry had tried to poke and prod — what was a tailor like? — but there weren’t too many good answers. There were different kinds of stability, those with their own homes, which they would have a Commission deed to, or their own stores with perhaps a handful of employees, if they didn’t run the whole thing as a family business.

Perry had thought that he was well-prepared for the city, but as soon as he saw it, he realized just how shallow his understanding had really gone.

For one thing, there were a number of buildings that were absolutely massive. He was fairly sure that the first skyscrapers didn’t appear until after the Wild West was over, and on closer inspection, these weren’t skyscrapers, at least not as he understood them. They were, instead, massive cathedrals and monuments defining the skyline, not steel-framed behemoths but buildings that had instead been made with carefully laid stone. It made him feel small, somehow, though obviously he’d seen bigger buildings back on Earth. On Markat, the largest buildings had been the golden domes, and these were larger than those. Thinking back, Perry wasn’t sure that he’d seen a single building of this size in … well, it had to be since Earth 2, and not even then, because he’d spent most of his time in the Mojave or at Richter’s place away from the big cities.

The train came in at an angle, allowing a full view of the city. There were high walls around it, much more crude than the ornate buildings within, a combination of tarred timbers and limestone blocks at the base, with periodic metal reinforcement and walkways where figures could be seen partoling, along with regular towers that probably had supplies and places to sleep. Building it was apparently a massive undertaking, one that had been completed decades ago, not just to keep out the Yuuks, but everyone else as well. It was apparently less well-manned than it had once been, given that the Yuuks posed less of a threat than they once had, but there were plenty of things that might have come out from the Flux.

Perry thought about Grabler’s Gulch, and how poorly defended it was by comparison, but even a palisade would take a lot of timber and time, and with the rapid expansion, would have created problems for the people living there.

The train slid in through a heavily fortified gate and switched tracks a few times before slotting into its platform, one of a dozen. The station had a single high roof that arched over all the platforms, and it was bustling with people. Shops were arranged at the exits to the platforms, and also at the backside of the station. The whole place smelled terrible, of course, with grease and cigar smoke being the dominant smell, but also an undercurrent of sewage and sweat.

“Alright,” said Perry as the rest of the passengers disembarked. “It’s time for you to tell me more of what you know about Queenie.”

“It’s time for us to find a place to stay,” said Anaksi. “Night is approaching and we don’t want to be out on the streets at night. You have enough money for a hotel room?”

“Will they allow us to stay in the same room together?” asked Perry.

“Not if they think we’re unwed,” said Anaksi. “It’s improper enough for us to be sitting on the train without a chaperone for me, but as Yuuksen, people can’t think any less of me.”

“How do we pretend to be married?” asked Perry.

“What?” asked Anaksi. “What does that even mean?”

“I mean, are there rituals?” asked Perry. “Do we need wedding rings? Something like that?”

“Rings?” asked Anaksi.

“Something you would wear on your finger to show that you’re married,” said Perry. He tried to think about whether he’d seen one, but he wasn’t sure that it would actually have stuck out to him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Anaksi. “People do wear rings.”

“But we should be able to go up to the front desk and say that we’re married?” asked Perry.

“Or just get two rooms,” said Anaksi. “It would make it easier for you to hide things from me.”

“True,” said Perry. He considered for a moment. “You’d prefer that?”

“It’s your money,” she said. “I’m wearing clothes that you bought. You have me at your mercy, we’re both aware of this.”

Perry had not, until that moment, really been consciously aware of it. He’d been aware that he could defend himself against her, and kill her if he had to, but that was different. “Here,” he said, taking the gold coins from his pocket. He took half, and gave the other half to Anaksi. “Enough for a train ride home, or in the region of home. Enough that you can maybe get some other clothes, cheap stuff, at least. I have more gold that needs to be converted at the assay office, I can give you more later.”

Anaksi took the money and put it into a pocket on the front of her dress. “Just like that?”

“I hate to tell you this, but I’m out of my depth here,” said Perry. “I need a guide, and you’re it. I want you to understand that we’re working on the same side, trying to find Queenie, and that when we’re done, I’ll do my best to help you on your way.”

“Out of your depth, aside from your ability to fight?” asked Anaksi.

“So far, I’ve been pretty sure I could kill everyone around me if I had to,” said Perry. “I could probably have stopped that entire attack on Grabler’s Gulch on my own, if Queenie wasn’t there. I could have killed those two Inspectors in about five seconds. But unfortunately, not everything can be solved by fighting.”

“‘Unfortunately’?” asked Anaksi.

“You know what I mean,” said Perry.

“You understand that what you’re asking is foolish, right?” asked Anaksi. “I spent seven years in Charlonion, some time ago, mostly in the house of a rich old woman. I’m a Yuuk. I have the wrong accent and the wrong skin. They’ll take one look at my face and you’ll be sunk.”

“But you can let me know who it’s okay to beat up and who might get me in trouble, if someone comes up and bothers me you can say ‘end this man’ or ‘we had better go with him’,” said Perry. “And tomorrow morning, you can tell me where we’re going, and what you expect us to find there.”

Anaksi nodded.

They were very nearly the last ones off the train, and got odd looks almost immediately, which Perry found somewhat baffling given the variety of people around them. The mechanical parts were more common here, and there were robots too, walking mechanical contraptions that were led around by people with leashes. A woman with lime green skin walked by, and few people gave her a second look. A man had vines growing up his face, which were sprouted on his left side to give him half a head of leaf hair, and he drew no attention.

Yet Anaksi was given a wide berth, and Perry caught a few faces changing in real time, going from bored to on guard, or sometimes twisting into disgust. The Yuuksen were really not liked in Charlonion, maybe because news of the recent massacre was circulating, or maybe just because they were an exterior threat.

No one called attention to the mark on his hand, which was good. He’d thought about trying to hide it in the gunny sack, pretending like he was rooting around in there, but that seemed like the kind of suspicious thing that hundreds of people had tried before. There were Inspectors, and they definitely saw the mark, but they didn’t stop him.

Perry had thought that Charlonion would be a lot like Teaguewater had been, a dirty city with lots of downtrodden people and little sense of hygiene, and he was right at least as far as that went, but Charlonion was achingly old in a way that Teaguewater had never been, and it showed in the crookedness of its streets and the mishmash of architecture — though some of that might have been the Flux, or magic, or something else entirely.

“Do you know where we could find a hotel?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Anaksi. She was sunken in on herself, keeping the brim of her hat low so that it was harder for people to see her face.

“Let’s start walking then,” said Perry. “Right by the train station is where I would expect one.”

Charlonion seemed to have a thing for spiked fences and barbed gates. The buildings felt looming and hostile, even those that seemed like they were trying to attract customers. The cobblestones were uneven, and every time they passed a drain that led down into the sewer system, it was like the city was belching fumes out at them. And where attempts had been made to make the city more inviting, they seemed to have horribly failed. There was a shop with green bricks with warm lighting inside, and it seemed incredibly sinister to Perry, ghoulish. A different shop had stark reds and deep blacks, and looked very much like the kind of place that Perry would expect to find vampires — if maybe not the variety of vampire that had stalked Teaguewater.

So it was unclean, aesthetically wretched, and decidedly unfriendly, but it still had a fair number of people in it, and there was a life to it that Perry hadn’t expected to be there from the outside. Granted, that life didn’t seem like one that Perry would have chosen, but it was still a life.

And there were horses shitting in the streets, so that was fun.

The hotel loudly proclaimed itself with a blood red sign that covered three floors. The sign was illuminated, and the hotel was electrified, which was loudly proclaimed by a second, smaller sign. Electricity was new to the Dusklands, within the last ten years, and it was poorly understood but speedily adopted. Wires ran above the streets, but only to specific places, like the hotels. Electrification had not yet come to the masses, it seemed.

For all that the sign had made a splash, the interior of the hotel was rundown, and there were clear places where the carpet was threadbare from the paths of guests. Dusty plants sat in the corner, most of them half-dead, and it was clear that rather than spend money on renovations, the work had gone into the lights. A big one was lighting up the lobby, with wires stapled to the ceiling rather than run through the walls.

Perry got them a single room, but one with two beds. The hotel clerk looks at Anaksi and frowned, but handed over the key all the same.

The hotel was six stories tall, and Perry had gotten a room on the upper floor, which was cheaper. He didn’t realize why it was cheaper until he realized that the hotel had no elevator in it, and those six stories would all need to be walked. This was no big problem for Perry, but it was clear that Anaksi wasn’t terribly pleased by it. By the time they reached the top floor, night had fallen, revealing a thin sliver of a moon, and Perry looked out at it for a moment after getting into their room. The view of the city under moonlight was poor, but Perry was surprised by just how dark and smoky it was.

“Alright, there’s a new moon every night,” said Perry. “People can’t predict them, but they have different effects, some of them bad, others less straightforwardly bad.”

“You’re asking about the moon?” asked Anaksi.

“You know I’m not from around here,” said Perry. “What do I need to know about this sliver of moon?”

“The Eshkee can predict the moons, more or less,” said Anaksi. “Not perfectly, but better than the Commission. It’s by feel, not by numbers.” Perry nodded in acknowledgement, though he wasn’t sure he believed it, and she continued. “You understand the Verdant Moon. There are six other named ones. Everything else … there are quirks, small changes, minor. Creatures in the night, sometimes. Were you planning to go out tonight?”

“I was,” said Perry. “I got us a room this high up for a reason. I want to scout the city out, get the lay of the land, see what lays in store for us. It would be very helpful if you could tell me what our target is before I do that.”

“We’re going to the Collegium,” said Anaksi. “There’s a scientist there that Queenie talked about. But I won’t give you her name.”

“Fine,” said Perry. “But this moon, it’s not one of the special ones?”

“Here in the city?” asked Anaksi. “No. But it will be dark, and darkness brings bad things with it. A higher chance of bats. Nothing else.”

“I’m deciding to trust you,” said Perry. “And there’s something that I’ve been keeping from you, which is this.”

He opened up the shelf space, which had more light inside it than the single dinky incandescent bulb in the hotel room. Anaksi stared at it.

“It’s a storage area,” said Perry. “I can pull things from it, put them in here, and hide you there, if we need to do that. There’s preserved food and fresh, clean water.”

“And clothes,” said Anaksi, looking into the space. She picked at what she was wearing. “These clothes?”

“Yes,” said Perry.

“No wonder,” said Anaksi. “And this is what the Commission might take you apart over?”

“It’s one of the things,” said Perry. “Now, I’m going to put on my armor, I’d like you to start filling out my notebook. Anything that we haven’t already covered. Things that you would have to be an idiot or a foreigner to not know about.”

“Are you … addled?” asked Anaksi.

“No,” said Perry. “Or yes, if that helps you make sense of it. But I want to know what the moons do, and how the religion works, and tiptoeing around is a piss poor way of learning all this stuff. I’m talking stuff that everyone knows, that’s what I want, the simple sociological basics.”

“You didn’t want to share anything with me earlier,” said Anaksi. “What changed when we came into the city?”

“I saw the way people were looking at you,” said Perry. “And, you know, fuck ‘em.”

Anaksi smiled at him, and took the notebook that he pulled from his gunny sack.

Perry closed the shelf space and went to March.

“Time for some recon,” said Perry. “I hope you weren’t getting too used to sitting in the shelf space.”

“Perish the thought, sir,” said Marchand.