The Windup Girl

36

The crowd around Emiko grows. People jostle her. There’s nowhere to run. She’s in the open, waiting to be discovered.

Her first urge is to slash her way free, to fight for survival, even though there is no hope of escaping the crowd before she overheats. I will not die like an animal. I will fight them. They will bleed.

She forces down that increasing panic. Tries to think. More people squeeze around her, trying to get close to the posted sheet. She is trapped among them, but no one has noticed her yet. As long as she doesn’t move…

The press of the crowd is almost an advantage. She can barely shake, let alone display the stutter-stop motions that would betray her.

Slowly. Carefully.

Emiko allows herself to lean against the people, to push slowly through them, head down, pretending to be a woman sobbing, shaking with grief at a blow against the palace. She stares at her feet, finding her way through the crowd, pressing carefully through until she reaches the outer edge. People huddle in groups, crying, sitting on the ground, staring around the street, stunned. Emiko feels a certain pity for them. Remembers watching Gendo-sama board his dirigible after he told her that he had done her a kindness, even as he abandoned her to the streets of Krung Thep.

Focus, she tells herself angrily. She needs to get away. Needs to reach the alley where people will not notice her. Wait for darkness.

Your description is everywhere: on methane posts, on the street, being trampled by the crowds. You have nowhere to go. She stifles the thought. The alley is enough. The alley, first. Then a new plan. She keeps her eyes on the ground. Clutches herself and mimes at sobbing. Shuffles for the alley. Slowly. Slowly.

“You! Get over here!”

Emiko freezes. Forces herself to look up slowly. A man beckons her, angry. She starts to speak, to protest, but someone behind her speaks instead.

“You have something to say to me, heeya?”

A young man pushes past her, wearing a yellow headband and carrying a fistful of leaflets.

“What’s that you’ve got there, boy?”

Others begin to drift over to watch the argument. The two start shouting at one another, posturing as they each try to establish dominance. Others start to take sides. To shout encouragement. Emboldened, the older slaps the younger and tries to tear off his yellow headband. “You’re not for the Queen. You’re a traitor!” He strips the flyers from the young man’s hand and throws them onto the ground. Stamps on them. “Get out of here! Take heeya Pracha’s lies with you.” As leaflets blow through the crowd, Emiko catches a glimpse of Akkarat’s face, drawn in caricature, smiling as he tries to eat the Grand Palace.

The younger one scrambles after his leaflets. “They’re not lies! Akkarat seeks to tear down the Queen. It’s obvious!”

People in the crowd jeer at him. But others shout encouragement. The boy turns away from the man, speaks to the crowd. “Akkarat is hungry for power. He always wants—”

The man kicks him in the ass. The boy whirls, enraged, and attacks. Emiko sucks in her breath. The boy is a fighter. Muay thai for certain. His elbow smashes into the man’s head. The man collapses. The boy stands over him, screaming epithets, but his voice is drowned out by the crowd shouting and then others surge forward, enveloping him in a clot of fists. His screams fill the street.

Emiko turns and slips through the growing fight, no longer careful of her movements. People jostle her, rushing to aid or defend, and she shoves through as quickly as she can. In this moment, she is nothing to any of these people. She stumbles out of the riot and into the alley’s shadows.

The fight is spreading down the street. Emiko hunts for garbage to cover herself. Behind her, glass shatters. Someone is screaming. She huddles beside a shattered WeatherAll crate, pulling refuse around her, durian rinds, the ripped hemp of a basket, discarded banana leaves, anything to give her cover. She freezes and hunkers low as rioters pelt down the alley, shouting. Everywhere she looks, she sees faces twisted with rage.