Surviving Arkadia

As the Citadel dropped away from the carcass of the city of Moonstone, I was too busy carrying Gertrude down the stairs of the clock-tower to enjoy the spectacle. I’d never been to the inside of the clock tower before so when I got to the bottom of the stairs I was in an unfamiliar part of the City Council Building. I reminded myself that I wasn’t lost. If I just kept going down I’d eventually find myself in a part of the building that I recognised.

As I walked I tried not to be angry about how out of the loop I felt. Clearly there had been a plan. It felt like everyone in the city had known what that plan was except me. Amris and Gertrude had certainly known and neither of them had taken the time to mention it.

I knew that, realistically, neither of them actually had the time to tell me anything. Everything had been happening at once. But still. A flyer would have been nice. Maybe some informational posters in public places. It’s not like it was my first day in the city. I should have known what the plan was. I wondered if Jethro had known or if he’d just been dragged along by the flow of the crowd.

Eventually I found my way to the Mayor’s quarters, mainly by following the sounds of shouting.

The shouting tailed off as I approached so I wasn’t able to tell what had precipitated it. I assumed that it was probably at least a little to do with the two Ostian soldiers that were lying dead on the floor. One had been run through with something long and pointy that was now nowhere to be seen. The other, judging by the grotesque angle of his head, had a broken neck. There were no other signs of a struggle.

Before I’d had a chance to fully take in the two corpses the Mayor greeted me with the words “Ah Petra, excellent. You’re on the Emergency Council. So is Gertrude when she wakes up. She is just asleep, isn’t she?” He had a green leather bound book open in front of him and he made notes in it as he spoke.

“I think so. She repaired the Dome after these arseholes,” I indicated the corpses, “and their friends, cracked it. Then she passed out. She seemed to be expecting it.”

“I should say so,” said the Mayor, “We normally send out crews of three just to do maintenance spells on the Domes. Source alone knows how long a solo repair will hold for.” He turned a page in his book and made more notes, muttering under his breath about emergency repair crews and rotas before looking back up at me. “Now there’s no remuneration for serving on the Emergency Council, on account of how money has no value during a crisis of this scope, but you will earn the gratitude of a grateful city and that is not to be sniffed at.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “The City’s been invaded. By a professional army.”

“Of Fascists,” said Amris.

“Probably of Fascists, certainly under Fascist control,” I said.

The Mayor chuckled. “Not for the first time,” he said.

“What?” Amris and I both said it in near unison.

“There are tides of violence in the history of Man,” said the Mayor. “When those tides are at their very highest someone will usually get it into their heads to take Moonstone. We can discuss this further, but first I must insist that you find somewhere for poor Gertrude. Petra shouldn’t stand around with a grown woman over her shoulder all day.”

I wondered if we should take her to her office. She did have a chaise and a sofa but then I thought better of it. “I should take her to the Outlander apartment on the top floor of the Archive,” I said.

“No, I should take her,” said Amris. “You’ve carried her long enough. You can help me get her settled.” I could hear a subtext to his words. He didn’t fully trust the Mayor and wanted to speak freely.

***

We laid Gertrude out on one of the beds in the Outlander apartment and then sat down together in the living room.

“So you’re an Outlander too,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Clearly,” said Amris. He sat on the edge of the sofa, toes tapping, body radiating nervous energy.

“You want to talk about it?” I said.

“If I wanted to talk about it I would have said something before now.”

“Did you kill one of the Ostian soldiers?”

“I killed both of them.”

“How does a Librarian solo two elite soldiers?”

“Broke the first one’s neck and used the spike he was holding to skewer the second one.”

That was a mental image I could have done without. “No, I mean how does a Librarian have the skills to kill two elite soldiers unaided?”

“I wasn’t always a Librarian.”

I expected him to elaborate but there was only silence. “But you don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about what you were before?” He said and I realised that I really didn’t.

Here was someone finally asking about my old life, someone who was equipped to understand the answer, and I felt a visceral repulsion for the very idea of telling him anything.

“Oh that’s weird,” I said. “I don’t have any reason not to talk about it but I really don’t want to. It’s like with the Fever. Something is keeping me from thinking about my old life too deeply and it really doesn’t want me to talk about it.”

“Oh!” said Amris, looking as if his lunch was on the way back up.

“You thought that you were choosing not to talk about it?” I said.

“I have my reasons not to talk. I thought it was something universal with Outlanders. Everyone from Earth that I’ve met was cagey about their past. Every account in the Outlander Archive either doesn’t mention their old life at all or it begins by talking about violence or military service.”

“So you served in the military,” I said.

“How could you tell?” said Amris.

“The way you fixed on people referencing military service. Like it was something familiar to you. Like you expected it. It’s like how disabled people are invisible to most people unless they become disabled themselves and then they suddenly realise how many disabled people were around them all along.”

“So you were disabled?”

“Obviously. I can’t see my past life experience being of much use. I’ve got no residual combat skills. I mainly know about pain management and mutual aid networks.”

Amris grinned. “Could be more useful than my skills now. We’re trying to keep a civilian population alive. We’re going to spend a lot more time feeding them and treating injuries than we will fighting.”

“You hope,” I said.

I had never seen a cat look haunted before but I can think of no other way to describe the look of dread and horror that flitted across his face as he contemplated what would happen if we had to fight a pitched battle inside a Citadel packed with people.

“We should be getting back,” said Amris after a long pause. “We shouldn’t leave the Mayor unsupervised for too long.”

“You really don’t trust him?” I said.

“I don’t trust any politician. He’s never seemed particularly bad, as politicians go, but I don’t believe that he didn’t see this coming. If he knew this was coming, why is it such a surprise to everyone else?”

“It does seem odd that Ostians would attack without sending at least a couple of sternly worded notes first,” I said.

“But those sorts of threats are bad for business. No-one wants to travel across half the continent, and pay for an overpriced hotel room, all for a three day shopping trip in a city that might be besieged at any moment.”

“I don’t want to say he kind of reminds me of the Mayor from Jaws…” I said.

“But you worry that he’s only one stripy jacket away from demanding that we reopen the beaches,” said Amris.

I found myself grinning. “Is it weird that I miss pop culture?”

“Only if that’s the only thing you miss,” he said. “But we can’t get into this just now.”

“Because we need to get back to the Mayor,” I said. “You don’t think one of us should stay to watch over Gertrude?”

“Nah. It takes at least eight hours to recover from overextending like that. Besides, there’s so much to do. The Safehold is filling up with people who need a lot more help from us than Gertrude will when she comes round.”