“Violence doesn’t settle everything,” Mouth grunted. “Sometimes violence just postpones a conversation that’s bound to happen sooner or later. But that can be useful in itself, to some people.”
Bianca had barely slapped anyone in her life, and Mouth was the first person she’d ever met who’d killed people as part of her job. At times, Bianca seemed to crave reassurance: that she could do this, that fighting and maybe killing would come naturally, that it would pay off. Other times, she almost seemed to wish Mouth would say, You’re not cut out for this, leave this to the professionals. To justify Bianca’s qualms, or make a space for her anxiety about whether her grief over Sophie would give her enough strength.
Sometimes at the oatmeal place, Bianca would quiz Mouth about her skills. How many people had she killed? Could she fight in close quarters? What weapons did she have particular experience with? Those questions always came with an appraising stare, like Mouth was a piece of merchandise that might be overpriced.
Now, in the wide driveway near the rows of abattoirs, Mouth tried to remember what the Citizens had said about self-defense when they’d trained every child to hold a weapon. Bianca seemed lost in thought.
At last Mouth said, “Part of how they make you obey is by making obedience seem peaceful, while resistance is violent. But really, either choice is about violence, one way or another.”
“That almost sounds like a quote from Mayhew.” Bianca laughed, then covered her mouth because they were out in the open, where any number of government spies could be lurking behind these walls, along with the muffled drone of cutting machines.
The longer Mouth stayed in Xiosphant, the further off-center everything drove her. They had foods that you could only eat right after the shutters opened, and other foods you ate right before they closed. People would raise a glass before the blue-and-red smoke filled the sky, because they expected it. When Bianca talked about the workers’ rebellion that happened during her great-grandparents’ time, she couldn’t help saying it took place during the Third Age of Plenty.
And right now, Mouth was hustling to George’s roofing plant, because the klaxons said the city was getting ready to pull up all the shutters. You could smell the starchy aroma of everyone’s pre-sleep meal, and the soapy fumes of last-chance laundry. The sky remained pale, and calm, thanks to those mountains cutting off the worst of the weather systems, but people rushed as if they were about to get hailed on. A look of good-natured anxiety on everyone’s face. You could almost hear them mutter, “Oh dear, this is very bad, well, it’s okay, but it’s very bad, must get indoors, if only I had a little more time, oh dear.”
Everyone in Xiosphant was weirdly polite, just as long as you pretended all their made-up stuff was real.
George was in a good mood, because he’d been able to unload some of the textiles they’d brought from Argelo, and had done some wizardry to get them a “basket of currencies” in return.
“Is that like money?” Reynold snorted.
Mouth had to help the other Couriers to carry the crates of silk and muslin across town. They couldn’t use the sled because it drew too much attention, and they had to move these crates before the shutters closed. George came along, since he knew all the teeny alleyways that cut between the big boulevards and the crisscrossing avenues. The main obstacle in these shortcuts: heaps of garbage that smelled like the poisonous swamps out past Argelo, where they made vodka out of the sap of this one carnivorous plant. (Swamp vodka tasted better if you didn’t know where it came from.)
Six of them carried crates on their shoulders, nearly tripping over rubbish every few steps, and Mouth heard Alyssa cursing as she stepped in puddles. Their route took them closer and closer to the night.
The final bell sounded, meaning they were too damn late.
“Here it is.” George pointed at a stone staircase, at the end of a narrow alley.
By the time they hoisted the crates up the uneven stairs into the garment factory, the shutters were going up all over town, with a sound like Xiosphant was grinding its teeth.
“We’ll have to stay here until the shutters drop again,” Omar said before they even had a chance to look around the garment factory. Looms, rows and rows of sewing machines with rusty pedals, vats of dyes and ammonia. The place smelled even worse than the alleys, or the sub-basements where Mouth had snuck into political meetings. No place to lie down, and only those benches to sit on. The factory manager apologized in a few grunts as he handed over the “basket of currencies” in a bag made of cheap canvas, then locked himself in his office with the single cot.
“I can tell I’m not going to be able to sleep here,” Mouth said.
“Better get some shut-eye if you can. It’s also illegal to sleep when the shutters are open,” Alyssa said, settling onto one of those benches in front of a sewing machine.
“That’s not true.” Yulya gaped, speaking in broken Xiosphanti. “Is it true?”
“Actually,” said George, “the penalties are almost as bad for sleeping during shutters-down as for being out and about during shutters-up. You’re supposed to be contributing to society when everyone’s awake, so we’re all united. They’ve put people to death for being repeat offenders: sleeping at the wrong time more than once.”
“Sleep when you’re sleepy, play when you want,” Mouth said, without even thinking.
George leapt to his feet and looked around, like they were all about to be arrested. “Where did you hear that?”
Everyone stared at Mouth. Alyssa raised one eyebrow. Omar’s eyes narrowed. The Resourceful Couriers had an informal rule against getting involved in local politics, for obvious reasons, and Mouth had sort of forgotten.
“I dunno.” Mouth tilted her head. “I was drinking somewhere and there were these students. I thought it was a funny thing to say.”
“It’s a dangerous ideology,” George said, “aimed at cutting my throat. Cutting all our throats. Wrecking our whole society. People don’t realize how much we’re all just hanging on by our fingernails. This planet really doesn’t want us here.”
“I don’t know.” Alyssa decided to rescue Mouth from an awkward moment. “Maybe people in this town could stand to loosen up just a tad, you know? I’ve been in synagogues in Argelo that were more laid-back.”
“I know you people have been to other places, where they deal with this hostile environment differently,” George said. “But we have almost a million people in Xiosphant, and everyone has food and shelter, pretty much.” He turned back to Mouth. “That phrase you quoted was part of a whole manifesto about living in harmony with nature, which on this planet is antithetical to human life.”
Mouth was starting to understand what that guy had meant when he said people were the most trapped by the walls they helped to build. But she just nodded at George and pretended to fall asleep.
Once the shutters came down again, Mouth would pretend to be awake.
SOPHIE
The memorial to the Second Argelan War looks even uglier up close: the seams in the lumpy black underside, the ochre streaks where it’s rusting away.
The sculptor tried to create the impression of waves and froth below the little section of boat, but they were working with an ungainly metal that couldn’t hold any fine details. I always heard that parts of this sculpture were made of melted-down artillery, but either way the result came out crude, like something your somnambulist hands might shape in the throes of a bad dream. Above the slice of deck, a faceless man in a heavy uniform stands holding a weapon on one shoulder, ready to fire some projectile.