Tale of 2 Cities: Unseen Consequences
How do you start a war? Without thinking about it.
The story so far…
Lilian, Jem and Kinley are tangled up in something much larger than themselves: an enchanted city, trapped in a time-bubble with a demon at the heart of it. Lilian is dealing with the fallout of arrested soldiers from her city, with the help of a local ally: Lord Aridius. Jem and Kinley are trying to evade capture - and learning more about the city’s history at the same time thanks to the remains of Jem’s great grand-uncle (a foul-mouthed skull). Immortality comes at a terrible price, but the cost of time itself may be higher still.
You can read the last post here, or start from the beginning with The City On The Other Side. There are links at the bottom of each post that will jump you straight to the next chapter.
As an experiment this week, I have also read this episode aloud. Let me know if you like it.
Lilian ran up the hill, panting. She could feel Aridius’ eyes on her backside and she gave her hips an extra shake. As they reached the top, they ran into the same block of City soldiers she had seen from the courthouse. They look a little more ruffled now, with sweat stains and blood on their uniforms. Something swore from the middle of the group and her heart sank. Was it Jem, Kinley or one of Afizere’s men?
Aridius dropped his hands on her shoulders and swivelled her to one side, before raising his voice.
“Captain Sextus, what happened?”
The captain scowled, showing reluctance. “Some resistance, milord. I will submit a full report tomorrow, but I want to get this criminal locked away before nightfall.”
Aridius narrowed his lips in a grim little smile, as joyful as a skinning knife.
“I am the City Shield this week, Captain, responsible for the wellbeing of all its inhabitants. Did you catch all the renegades? What happened to the ones you did not?”
Sextus rolled back his shoulders, revealing a tear in his uniform; the blue deepening to a blotted indigo where the blood flowed through. “No, we did not, Sir Shield. They were trained soldiers who were somehow prepared for us. I lost two men, plus the original informers and withdrew before we lost more. They ran away but we captured this prisoner.” He drew back and Lilian sighed in relief. It was Sergeant Jere, sweaty, sullen and bleeding copiously from a broken nose. He stared at Lilian with pleading eyes, but he did not call out to her.
Aridius scrutinized the silent exchange between the pair, then gave Sextus a small nod. “Carry on, Captain,” he said at last. “I am sorry for the loss of your soldiers. Give me their names and I will see that the City compensates their families. Have their corpses gone to their lineage caves?”
“Vero, as soon as their hearts stopped. Well, ours did. The outsiders crawled off, may the eels eat them.”
“Morior Invictus”, Aridius replied with an air of formality.
“Morior Invictus,” Sextus replied, touching his left breast with two fingers. The rest of the soldiers mimicked his actions, a mix of despair and defiance on their faces. Aridius stood aside and the group moved off, half-escorting and half-dragging Jere in his chains.
“Let’s move on,” Aridius commanded Lilian. Without waiting for her assent, he started walking rapidly up the hill, towards the soldier’s hideout and the scene of the fight.
“What was that?” Lilian asked, trotting to keep up with him. “That saying?”
Aridius grunted. “The City Guard motto. Death before defeat. You can’t serve without first spending a day and a night in the lineage caves, to understand what that means. No man goes willingly to their ancestors in shame.”
Lilian winced as the image rose in her mind of half-rotted corpses, whispering endlessly in the dark to their fresh descendants. Who needed demonic torment, when faced with the disappointment of dead?
*
Jem was thinking something similar. Her great-great grand-uncle had an extensive vocabulary and the energy to use it, despite threats from her and Kinley to use him as a football. After a hissed argument, they were tucked up in an underground nook off the subterranean passageway that might have once been used for wine storage, but now was a home to rats. Kinley was stolidly eating his way through their food provisions.
“Are you sure about this?” she grumbled up at the skull, planted overhead.
“Ita vero. If the swiving arse-rags are in the tunnels, they will come down this way. It’s the only way back to their little horde. They can’t use the streets.”
“Bone-boy’s gotta point,” Kinley said, wiping his lips on his sleeve. “Afizere’s squad is bein’ hunted by Aeon’s soldiers an’ it’s gonna be dark soon. Empty streets means they’ll stand out.”
“Nice to see someone has their brains intact,” the skull sneered. “Also, use my name. Cassius, or Avus to you, niece. Show a little respect, if you can sit long enough to remember.”
Kinley stuck out his arm to stop Jem from lunging forward. He’d placed Cassius on the outside ledge above the door as the skull would be unremarked in the dark. Despite the empty eye-sockets, Cassius had better night sight than either Jem or himself.
“Have a munch, lass” he ordered Jem. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here an’ we might as well eat.”
Jem glowered at him, before she started going through her backpack, her elbows akimbo in protest.
“We need a trail-plan,” Kinley went on quietly, ignoring her outrage. “We’ve gotta a lot of enemies an’ no exit. I don’t wanna kill the machine, get the girl an’ be executed. It’s not the sorta retirement I had in mind.”
Jem scoffed. “Like you’re retired,” she said with her mouth full. “Anyone else would have kept quiet that night I tried to cross the bridge in Alinakard. You challenged us - and you went to Lilian afterwards. You can’t stay away from trouble.”
Kinley fidgeted and kept quiet.
Jem watched him for a moment, bright-eyed. “Do you like her?” she asked at last. “Lilian?”
Kinley gave her a half-smile. “She’s got more pluck an’ gile than half ma old rangers,” he said honestly. “But if yer asking I would court her, the answer’s no. I gave ma heart away a long time ago an’ it’s buried with ma wife.”
He watched Jem blink, a look of pity passing over her face like a storm cloud.
“My commiserations on your loss,” she said, her voice a shade higher and her accent more marked than usual.
Kinley waved away her embarrassment. “S’done an’ gone. I had the treasure of her company back then an’ the pleasure of her rem’brance right now. It’s enough to keep me goin’.”
“But not enough to live,” Cassius broke in unexpectedly. “And a ghost in the head is no match for plump flesh in the hand.” He grunted obscenely and Jem half-expected Kinley to knock the skull from its perch.
Instead, the tracker bared his teeth. “Deflectin’ again, Cassius? I might almost think you were human.”
The skull hissed at him.
“Killing the machine stops the time loop, so that’s our exit plan,” Jem said, returning to the matter in hand. “The problem is surviving it. Uncle, you said your father trapped the demon with all the magic in the city. Can we use that against the machine?”
Cassius was quiet for a minute and when he spoke, he sounded oddly subdued. Even hopeful.
“Yes, there is a way. My father placed a puzzle cube in the fight court that was the key to the Tower and the time machine. He did so to prevent our pack of nobles from using Gowan’s work for their ends. He locked the doors, tamed the demon and used it as a guardian that no one could bribe or control.”
“But you are all trapped in here with it!” Jem exclaimed, rocking forward onto her knees.
“Yes. But when you have power-hungry maniacs in the Consulate, any alternative is better. They wanted to rule time itself.” The skull gave a short, mocking laugh. “They were the demon’s first meal.”
Kinley twisted around and pulled out a water flask. “Lilian was right, then,” he observed. “The damned court was a riddle an’ a trap.”
“Yes,” Cassius agreed. “A trap for the power-hungry. My father wanted the cube to go to someone wise enough to dismantle the machine instead of using it for conquest. He thought it would take a year or two. Not millennia. The City turned it into a bloody shrine!”
“Why didn’t you do it?” Jem asked directly. She plucked the water bottle from Kinley’s fingers and drank.
“Madness,” the skull said succinctly. “All of Gowen’s descendants have a touch of his genius and it gets worse around his creations. We can’t trust ourselves.”
“I saw it and stayed sane,” she retorted.
“Ah’m not sure about that,” Kinley said. “Sane people don’t blow the bloody doors off with thermite explosions.”
“You blew up the doors?” the skull asked. “I thought you broke in with the cube and destroyed the Tower. What happened?”
“She melted down the doors so we could escape,” Kinley said with a shrug.
“Just the main doors? Anyone can enter? Anyone can access the machine?”
“Yeah.”
“You pair of brainless clouts!” the skull shouted, his voice echoing down the tunnel. “You’ve done the very thing our family tried to prevent!”
“It’s not that bad…” Jem demurred. Her voice trailed off at the look on Kinley’s face.
“It is,” the tracker said soberly. “I’ve seen people die for less. Reckon we may have started something here, especially with Afizere’s squad stashing weapons from home.”
“Ita est,” Cassius replied. “It will be war.”
One of my favorite ongoing serials. Part of the enjoyment is not knowing when the end is coming. I mean that genuinely, it adds to the suspense of every part.
Also, the mini-recaps at the beginning of each part are incredibly useful when a week passes between reads. I'd probably remember where we were a few paragraphs in, but the short summary is a nice "Previously on..." to skip the confusion.