Глава 13

*yawn* Never mind, let's get that next book burning.

Sometimes I wonder if the work I'm doing is just me satisfying myself, just trying to prove to myself I'm still one of the 'awake'.

What Ines said, really. It keeps me up at night and nothing else.

After all, Kazdel's not going to be overflowing with people who can use a printing press.

You need to get up to speed ASAP, boy. This isn't the classroom. I'm not obligated to teach you the ropes.

You <i>could</i> just run your butt back to the countryside. How many more months is your internship?

I—I'm very sorry, sir, I just... wanted to be scrupulous about my writing.

'Scrupulous'? I don't want a goddamn Catastrophology thesis, I want OUR circulation beating our union friends at Kawalerielki Sports, and I want them beaten hard, 24/7!

If you're the office workers passing by the newsstand, or the intercity net news subscribers, is an essay titled 'Victoria Makes Massive Strides in Catastrophology' going to pry your cash loose?

But—don't you think 'Sarkaz Destroy Victoria!' is a little... you know, for a headline...

You think our readers want the truth? Even the Central Journal's top-tier subscribers aren't asking for the 'truth'.

You need to spoonfeed them worry, fear, feelings of superiority, sliiiightly leading emotional appeals followed by hard verdicts, and THEN they'll want more.

THEN they'll pluck cash out of their pockets. THEN you'll guarantee your goddamn job.

Who is it? You know what time it is right n—

What?!

...How long ago did that—new courier truck leave with our plates?

Half an hour ago—is—is there some kind of breaking news from Victoria?

No, you idiot! Move, we're going to the printers now! They should still be on shift! We can still make it!

I'll give the chief editor a call! You write me a new lead article ASAP! Front page material!

On what?

My informant says Viviana—The Candle Knight, Nova Knightclub, long AWOL—she's formally announcing retirement TOMORROW!

Quick, we need to be the FIRST body in ALL OF KAZIMIERZ to report on this!

Oughta prove to the GCC just which Rose Paper editorial really matters most.

Then what about Victoria and The Shard...

Who cares, boy! A million things a day happen on Terra—

And we only need the most meaningful scoops out of them all, remember that.

Call a cab already!

O—Okay!

Come to mention, sir, there'd always been unlicensed devils around here running their own taxis...

Have you noticed them kind of vanish lately?

The history of Sarkaz is the history of war itself. It is a lamentable fact, one I am loyal to.

Yet still I attempt to prove to them that slaughter aside, there are events about us worth being remembered, reflected on.

Upon this land, those events that had the luck to be written of assiduously—those can be counted on one's fingers.

And yet, even if I record these past affairs...

This isn't what we agreed on!

No stock means no stock, Tona. What you see is what you get. All Originium explosives are sold out.

And the weapons I ordered? Are you expecting us to walk into that cave teeming with Originium slugs and giant gloompincers and Heaven knows what other monsters, and just—tackle them with our bare hands?

That's your problem to deal with, not mine. Listen here, you've been cruising the entire black market for the last three weeks and managed to get, what? Half a dozen weapons? Less.

What mercenary squad could possibly snatch everything up? Are they insane? Even Solar Valley Industries couldn't possibly buy this much—

...Was it a lord ameer?

So which sadsack lord ameer got ripped off this time? I want a hint. We'll divert around.

N—No, no lord ameer. They were such a mystery, I couldn't say...

(Whisper) It was probably... the pasha. And—not just one.

It might even be—

What the hell are you feeding me? Pashas on a shopping spree at the black market? And more than one?

That's impossible. They have their own channels, and... multiple, buying weapons in huge bulk? Do you know what that even entails?

All I've got is a blind guess.

They went through several layers of middlemen, and used some foreign firms to keep their hands extra clean. Every purchase happened to be some quantity that wouldn't raise suspicion, so if someone called coincidence, it might just pass.

But who, in Sargon, could ever monopolize all this so perfectly?

Hey, buddy.

Got my rides and supplies sorted?

Ayup. Four cars, rations, water, tents, all good to go.

Good. Here's the cash.

When the hell did 'Spacer' get that wealthy?

No, I hear he and his band of mercs are planning to ditch Sargon. They rustled up all the money they have to head someplace else.

Columbia, probably, or Victoria? Lot more devil mercs career changing than usual, I feel like.

What for? Don't all of 'Spacer's' relatives live in Sargon? Does he not care about his old baba with the broken leg?

Who knows. I've never been able to make heads or tails of how these devils think. Maybe they're just sick enough of desert and rainforest, they want to switch up their surroundings now.

...That'd be best-case.

It's been like this recently... things just getting weird levels of complicated, left and right. Makes no sense to me at all.

—Dammit, the only thing my grandpa ever had to figure out was which leporibeast shorthorn ran the slowest and made the best dinner for us. They didn't hit this many setbacks in their time, did they?

Could be us rural Sargon people just feel 'it' coming.

'It'?

Just like a shorthorn, once it gets intense, it'll knock you flat.

Even if I write of these, write of our dialects, and our recipes...

Of peasant wives' songs, of a chief courier's great drunken boasts; of romance in the trenches, of graffiti in the ruins...

These things, in the face of our suffering, pale beyond mention.

They are reduced even to an irony of sorts, seeming to inform my readers (if I even have any) that we'd be best served using violence to wrest them back.

That was never my intent. Even so, I... have no right to be serving you my verdict.

That Messenger should be here by now. Did some fanciful girl steal his heart on the way again?

I've had enough of his tardy excuses by now. Isn't there anyone who can drill into his head how much his job <i>matters?</i>

He won't be coming. Postal Messenger Arthur Morrison is dead.

Dead?!

Executed on grounds of treason.

T—Treason? Wh... Who in the land are you?

I'm doing my job—cooperate, and you'll make both our lives a lot easier. Tell me what you know about Arthur Morrison, please.

I—I hardly knew him, really, just that he was the only postal Messenger around who'd make the run to Londinium—my own daughter goes to university there—so him and I only exchanged the odd word.

He was a treasonist...? Was he taking Sarkaz help? My girl wrote to me how Londinium's been littered with them lately.

That wretch! I knew he was a scoundrel at the first moment! Trust him to gang up with the devils—he got what he deserved!

No.

Our comprehension is that Arthur Morrison served Ursus.

Ursus? B-But...

And you... were his coworker, Mr. Wesley Roett.

Wha—

Hah, hahah—sir, surely you must be joking! I'm a Feline born and bred—I've been planting potatoes here all my life—I couldn't speak you a word of Ursine!

There must be some misunderstanding here!

I know potatoes couldn't afford your daughter's tuition at the Victorian National University.

Eaaagh!

If you insist on being stubborn, I can free you of your other arm too.

Don't waste my time. No resistance of yours is meaningful.

...So, the rumors were true.

That Ursus was right! Londinium's been occupied! For the past month, I haven't gotten a single word from the place, not even the tiniest hearsay.

Those goddamned Sarkaz. They disgrace us, they murder us, they enslave us! And you, you self-professed protectors of Victoria, what have you done?

Don't you have anyone in Londinium? A dear friend, a father, a mother, a child?

Of course, of course, you're <i>bigger</i> than that! You get to pull them out safe, yes you do.

But us peasant class, no, we thought we could sent our children to great old Londinium, to the heart of Victoria, where surely they'd grow beyond our wildest expectations.

And now? Haha, hahah! They're laborers to the Sarkaz, slaves to them, in our own country's capital!

Those devils are turning Victoria's tempest on Victoria itself, and <i>you</i> people are just letting it happen!

You could never hope to grasp Victoria's motives with your shallow insight.

All you need to do is take me to your intel exchange.