Excerpt: Paper Lily

All considered, the rest of the meal passed in relative calm. After all, there they sat: a criminal, the two federal agents who had been dispatched to arrest her and destroy her entire endeavor, and the former husband of one of those agents. One of the agents had discovered that the criminal was a survivor of one of the nation's worst debacles, and someone had tried to kill them. Yet they had all sat around the small table in the private dining room, sipping soup and eating crusty bread, and after Javiera's overdramatic comment about “breaking the system,” little more of import had been said.

They took their emptied dishes back to the chow line and left them in the pile for the washers. Before they left the dining hall, Javiera stepped aside and spoke a few words in the ear of a strapping woman in greased-streaked gray coveralls and a stiff-brimmed mechanic's cap. Ofeibea eyed the door, but then she caught Diamond Griggs's laughably intense gaze on her and abandoned whatever half-formed idea she had of escape. To where, exactly, could she escape, at any rate. Pig's Eye Landing was Javeria's territory, every bit as much as Ames had been Cat's and St. Louis Tallulah's; once outside the settlement's boundaries, Ofeibea would be as lost as a day-old calf. Perhaps this was all Javeria had meant by saying she did not recommend that Ofeibea and Fred try to leave. Then again, considering the great delight the woman seemed to take in tormenting practically everyone around her, perhaps it was not.

Light was fading fast around them as they walked back to #8, but Javiera did not hurry. Indeed, her pace turned more leisurely with every lengthening of the shadows. Nor was she alone: the fall of darkness was wreaking a profound change in Victory.

Around them, the pathways began to throng with people, far more than Ofeibea would have expected in a community where everyone worked so hard all day. Their clothes were no longer the dull, practical stuff of the workplaces and dining hall, but rather the ruffled collars and brass-buckled vests she'd spied through the windows of Chicago's finest clothiers. Parasoled ladies strolled arm-in-arm with bowler-hatted men. They looked like urbanites en route to opening night at the opera. A few even wore elaborate, almost sinister hand-fashioned masks, though their purpose entirely escaped Ofeibea, as even those so disguised were greeted at every turn by fellow citizens who did not for an instant mistake their identities. In the green, Ofeibea saw now that strands of the tiniest imaginable biolights had begun to flicker on in the trees. Music drifted from open doorways and windows, in the dormitories, in the workshops, even in the Infirmary. Everyone seemed to be listening to something different, but the resulting sound, which should have been an ear-numbing cacophony, instead wove a sound tapestry of melodies half-buried and rhythms more felt than heard, painting a seductive picture that made pulses quicken and hips sway.

“There is the tiniest part of me,” Javiera said, and even her voice sounded more open, more frank, and yet more mysterious, “that supposes I ought to thank you both. Had your agencies acted appropriately in response to the crises presented them by Kasha-Katuwe, I do not know that the amazing entity that Reliance has become would exist.”

“You seem most insistent that Miss Worrow and I should carry the millstone for Kasha-Katuwe.” From the ice in his voice, Victory's transformation clearly had not charmed Fred. “And yet you yourself, if I am not mistaken, hail from Mexican Tejas, and in 1865 you would have been, what – eight? Nine? What millstone do you accept for those atrocities?”

Ofeibea swallowed back a gasp at the baldness of Fred's accusation. Javiera's broad face pinched. “We all make choices, Mr. Murphy.” All trace of openness in her voice had frozen. “As soon as the fires in Guadalajara were extinguished, my parents – at great personal risk – smuggled our entire family out of Tejas, rather than live even another month under the dictates of a regime that could commit such brutal acts. I may retain my accent and a certain sense of fashion, I pledge to Tejas no allegiance. You and Miss Worrow chose the employ of the agencies in question, despite this black mark on their souls.”

Ofeibea barely refrained from rolling her eye. She was sick unto death of the “You chose” argument. “Would you prefer that we had not so chosen – that no one had so chosen – and the agencies simply collapsed?”

“Miss Worrow,” Javiera said, “that is precisely what I would prefer.”

From the corner of her loupe-eye, Ofeibea saw Fred lick his lips. She could see the dilation of his pupils and the slight sheen of sweat against his upper lip. Javiera's words were anarchist's talk; by law he could arrest her on the spot. And with their cover thoroughly blown, he no longer needed to maintain even the merest pretense of information-gathering. She watched him look around, gauging the situation around him. Utterly surrounded by Reliance settlers and within the easiest of ranges of the two pistols slung from Javiera's belt, the wager was a bad one. His pupils contracted again, and the muscles in his shoulders slumped.

Freed of watching her companion for signs of vigilantism, Ofeibea's mind was freed to turn to its own whirling thoughts. In particular, why had she not been equally eager to slap Javiera in irons? After all, expressing a desire for the complete collapse of government entities – one of them her own employer – went far beyond even the most drastic of grid-sapping. And yet the sensation that had flooded Ofeibea at Javeria's words was not anger or triumph. It was – well, she could not put a name to it, not just now, but it sent a tingle down the entire length of her spine and made her toes tap more enthusiastically than all the strange music of Victory combined.

Before she had time to sort out all of these strange sensations, they reached #8. Something about the way the lights that illuminated the facade had been positioned transformed the drab building into the stateliest of palaces, and the people who streamed in and out of its doors now resembled the great artists, scientists, and patrons of the Renaissance. Many smiled and nodded to Javiera, but none accosted her. She walked her streets as regally and as unmolested as any ancient queen.

Their unlikely band – Javiera in the front, Fred and Ofeibea together in the middle, Diamond Griggs forming a useless afterthought in the rear – ascended once more the stairs to Fred's quarters. Ofeibea had assumed that he had been assigned the same guardianship as she had, but now she saw that two chairs flanked the end of his hall, one bearing a striking dark-skinned woman and the other a slightly built but pugilistically-nosed man in a tweed cap. If Fred had been aware of their presence during the preceding day, as Ofeibea had, or if he even registered their purpose here now, he gave no indication. His cold reserve made Ofeibea shudder; an explosion was coming, and she hoped to be well out of its way when it arrived. They walked him to his door, and he opened it without a glance at them, as though no longer caring if Javiera tried anything while his back was turned.

“Good night, Fred,” Ofeibea called.

He paused but did not turn. “Good night, Ofeibea.” He disappeared inside and shut the door behind him.

“My goodness,” Diamond Griggs tsked wryly, “how impertinent.”

Javiera stared at him. “Have you truly nothing better to do than to follow me around making a nuisance of yourself?”

He shrugged. “No one to swindle, no one to bed. I can't think of a single thing.”

Javiera swept past him up the hall. “Diamond, you are rapidly running out of both usefulness and amusement value.”

Snickering, Ofeibea followed Javiera and left Diamond standing, slack-jawed in the middle of the hall.

When they arrived at Ofeibea's own hall, she was startled to see that it, too, now boasted two guards: the ginger-haired man who had greeted her before, as well as the woman in the coveralls to whom Javiera had spoken after dinner. She looked at Javiera in surprise.

Javiera gave a pained sigh. “Earlier, it was only important to keep you from escaping. The poisoned water makes it necessary that we now protect you, as well. Believe me, I don't like it, either.”

“No doubt for very different reasons,” Ofeibea said.

Javiera eyed her. “You are exactly as Diamond describes you,” she said.

Now it was Diamond Griggs's turn to laugh, and the piggy sound bounced around inside Ofeibea's mind until she could barely hear anything else. She punched his shoulder with her metal hand and stalked towards her door.