City of Light & Shadow (7 page)

  They hadn't even entered the Stain yet and already their effectiveness was compromised.

  "The Blade will take responsibility for Arkademic Haq's safety, so she won't be a burden to you or your men," Thomas continued, as if reading Kat's mind.

  Better than nothing, she supposed, but that would still mean restricting the party's most formidable element – the Blade. She shook her head in annoyance at her own fretting. No point in looking for problems before they arose. After all, not so long ago she'd been an outcast with only her wits to call upon. Now she had Tattooed Men, Kite Guards – assuming they ever showed up –
and
the Blade at her back. Whichever way you looked at it, that was progress, and whatever awaited them in the Stain had better watch out.

  Right on cue, Tylus and his men came sailing over the rooftops to land in front of her, all neat and pretty and oh so smug.

  "About time you got here," she snapped.

  The Kite Guards weren't really late, merely the last to arrive, but she was itching to let off steam at somebody and, besides, it didn't hurt to give that captain of theirs a slap in the ego first thing. With any luck he might keep his mind on his men and not let it wander in her direction too often. True, she might have welcomed his attention another day, but not on this one. Today she wanted everyone involved to be sharp and focused. No way was she about to let the Thief escape her again.

  Tylus and the arkademic fell into conversation immediately and were clearly old friends. Kat found herself studying the other woman, looking for faults, almost as if she were a rival in some way; which was ridiculous. Kat made no claim on the Kite Guard captain, nor would she wish to. Even so… the woman was solidly built, stocky even, and her face was plain, pleasant at best. No competition at all.

  Kat's impatience was building towards boiling point. Unless someone was prepared to take responsibility they could end up standing around chatting like this all day.

  "M'gruth, Ox, Half-hand," she called out to her three lieutenants, "look lively."

  Ox, named for his massive shoulders, wrestled with his harness. Physically the strongest of all the Tattooed Men, it had fallen to him to carry the most portable of the "Big Weapons" from the group's armoury. They'd also brought with them some flechette guns, distributed between the men, but Ox carried the real artillery. He was also considerably more intelligent than his hulking frame might suggest, which was why Kat had chosen him to lead one of the squads as well. She was confident he could handle both jobs.

  Tylus and the arkademic were still in a world of their own.

  For all she cared they could stay there and skip into the Stain holding hands, as long as they moved their asses in that direction sooner rather than later. "When you two have finished catching up, shall we get going – unless you've got some reason to hang around, Kite Guard?"

  "None at all," Tylus assured her.

  "Then let's get this over with."

  The Blade had yet to speak – she had no idea whether they
could
speak – but as the Tattooed Men and Kite Guards started forward, so did they, coming across to escort the arkademic, who looked a lost and tiny figure in their midst.

  There was no stirring music or grand speech to send them on their way as she'd feared the cloud scrapers might arrange – unless whatever Thomas had been prattling on about to Tylus counted as such. Kat was grateful for that. They were here to do a job, not perform in a parade.

  She studied their destination. A deceptively placid landscape of rugged mounds and low hillocks. No crumbling walls – the Stain had never been built on – and the area didn't look particularly big. The far wall of the vast cavern that housed the City Below loomed large, foreshortening the view and creating the illusion that this visible area of the Stain was little more than a broad strip of wasteland, skirting the under-City and separating it from the rock face. Kat knew it to be broader than that. She knew too that there was more to the Stain than met the eye. On the far side of this apparently solid wall of rock lay another cavern, a darker part of the Stain beyond the reach of the sun globes, a chamber accessible via a couple of fissures that formed short passageways in the base of the wall. She just hoped their quarry resided on this side.

  There was evidence of an attempt to contain and isolate the Stain, to shut it away, just beyond the point where the derelict houses ran out. A line of concrete posts as tall as the Blade stretched in both directions. Here and there lengths of wire-mesh fence still linked one post to the next, but even these tended to be sagging and holed. For the most part, the fencing had been pulled down and trampled on long ago. It clearly hadn't been repaired in decades, and, to judge by the Stain creatures Kat had encountered, could never have been more than a token gesture in the first place, a symbolic barrier rather than a physical one. What a waste of effort.

  Kat stepped between two vacant posts, leading the group into the one place in all Thaiburley with a reputation even darker than the Pits'.

 

Tylus was a few steps behind Kat as she crossed into the Stain, each of them followed by their respective groups in twin columns. Issie brought up the rear, flanked by her towering honour guard.

  "We need to head a little to the right," the arkademic called out. "Yes, that's it," as they adjusted their course accordingly.

  When he first entered the City Below, Tylus had been struck by the pervading smell of stale sweat and decay. He'd quickly acclimatised and had barely spared the odour a thought since, but the Stain revived those memories. For the first time since his arrival he was aware of that off-sour rankness again. He gazed at the territory ahead with a mix of unease and distaste.

  For centuries the Stain had been used as the dumping ground for the waste of a city of millions. It might have been left fallow in recent generations, allowing mosses and grass and spiky thorned plants to flourish, lending the place a semblance of wilderness, but the Kite Guard knew that this thin veneer of nature merely disguised the discarded detritus beneath his feet. He was conscious of the ground feeling spongy and soft, in marked contrast to the rest of the City Below, and he tried hard not to think about what he was now walking on.

  "Sergeant," he said as way of distraction. "I want two men aloft on a patrol loop, scouting either side of the column as well as ahead and behind, not straying too far but maintaining reasonable distance between them." He'd never seen anything flying over the Stain but it was best to be careful. He'd prefer the men offered two targets rather than one.

  "Sir!"

  Oddly enough the sun globes, which provided the City Below with an approximation of sunlight and an imitation of the outside world's day night cycle, didn't extend over the Stain. The final pair of vast solar bubbles embedded in the cavern's ceiling lined up more or less above the demarcation of buildings and wasteland, almost as if the city's original designers had never intended this deepest pocket of the cavern to be populated. Having studied the schematics, Tylus knew that the under-City's chamber extended beyond the limits of the rest of Thaiburley. Perhaps that was the reason. Perhaps whatever had been responsible for installing the sun globes was so slavishly loyal to the dimensions of the City Above that it stopped once those limits were reached. Not that it mattered. The globes' influence was such that most of the Stain was bathed in as much light as the rest of this subterranean world. Only in the furthest reaches, close to the wall, did twilight's gloom hold sway.

  He glanced up to see two of his officers climbing into the air to take station above the group. They established a slow elliptical circuit, complying with his instructions to the letter by ensuring they were at opposite ends, one in front, one behind, one passing to the group's left as the other approached on the right.

  Tylus felt an unexpected chill. He'd always thought there was something inspirational about watching Kite Guards in flight, that they were magnificent and regal, but this time the sight struck him as unaccountably sinister. As he watched the two officers dutifully continuing their circuits, he was reminded of carrion birds circling above their prey. Not an image he cared to dwell on and not, he trusted, an omen of what lay ahead.

 

The rat moved another tentative step forward, its nose twitching, eyes darting this way and that. The rodent was cautious, perhaps sensing something wasn't quite right, though not yet disturbed enough to actually flee. Scorke held his breath and stayed completely motionless, willing the little bundle of flesh and fur to come just a little bit closer.

  
That's it, you little brecker, only another couple of steps…

  At last the cautious critter seemed to decide that the quicker it was through here the better; it suddenly scampered forward to where the hunter waited. Scorke unleashed his attack, striking with a speed that defied the eye, whipping his segmented prehensile tail down and skewering the rat with its barbed tip. The unfortunate rodent gave an alarmed squeak and struggled for an instant, the body apparently not realising it was already dead. Then the venom went to work and all movement ceased.

  Scorke brought the still-warm corpse to his mouth, human lips and teeth manoeuvring and then lifting it from the metal spike of his tail until he could throw his head back and swallow, feeding the organic components of his body. No more than a morsel, perhaps, but rats were plentiful in the Stain and this was merely the first of the day.

  The rodents were most common closer to the river, but Scorke didn't go near the water. That was where the Bumpy Beetle lived – his name for a creature much like himself, part organic and part machine, but bigger and far more powerful. Scorke was afraid of the Beetle and gave the river a wide berth. There were rats enough elsewhere.

  Scorke knew he wasn't bright, that much of his human brain had been beyond salvaging, but it all worked well enough. He was still alive, wasn't he? And he was wise enough to know that people were his biggest threat. His type had been hidden away from the first day they were made because people wouldn't understand, they'd consider the marriage of human parts with those of animals and machine to be an abomination, fit only to be condemned and destroyed on sight. The Maker had drilled that knowledge into them again and again, but the Maker wasn't there to look after him anymore. The man's death had left Scorke facing some stark choices. He wanted to live, but knew he wouldn't be permitted to do so in the streets. So he had fled to the Stain, neither knowing nor caring what became of his fellows.

  The Stain was different. The Stain felt like home. The very ground welcomed him. Layer upon layer of compacted rotting detritus covered the hard rock floor, allowing his long sinuous body to slip through and between. He could move unseen, burrowing beneath the surface, and had become an accomplished rat catcher, lying in ambush by their runs and their trails. But rats brought only limited sustenance and now his keen senses detected something far more rewarding: people. People had come into the Stain. Not the streets, not their world, but his, where he could be the hunter and they the prey.

  He moved closer to investigate. The primary instincts of hunger and caution warred within him, but still he slid forward. A large group, strung out. They had with them creatures like him but not like him. Towering blocks of darkness, powerful and fearsome. Almost, he fled, but greed whispered to him, tempted him, overriding caution. Greed's seductive voice argued that it wouldn't hurt to stay near, to watch and await his moment, just as he did with the rats.

  Opportunity presented itself when the puff bladders struck. A seed dart punctured one of the soft-skinned people, focussing the attention of everyone there. Scorke seized his chance, singling out a large specimen at the rear of the group and moving in for the kill, hoping to make off with his prize before anyone even knew he was there.

 

"Get down!" Kat flung herself at Tylus, catching him off-guard and hitting with enough force to knock him from his feet despite her smaller frame. She landed painfully, her midriff and thigh slamming into his hip and knee, though she wasn't paying much attention to either at the time. Her gaze focused on the patch of bramble where she'd spotted movement, just in time to see what looked to be a bloated and diseased fruit tear open. Grey-brown mottled flesh parted in tattered fronds and a single long, thin object spat out with explosive force, targeted close to where she'd been standing.

  One of the Kite Guards cried out as the missile slammed into him. He collapsed, clutching at his stomach. Blood covered his hands as he tried to pull out the sickly yellow dart protruding from the wound. It was an elongated ovoid, slender throughout but tapering and evidently pointed at either end.

  Kat rolled off, bringing her feet beneath her and half rising into a crouch, twin blades already in her hands.

  Tylus struggled to his knees. "Thaiss!" she heard him mutter. "Is that thing a
seed
?"

  The Blade reacted quicker than anyone, two of them advancing on the unholy bloom. The one nearest to Kat raised his right arm and pointed. An ebony spear which must have been part of his forearm shot forward, punching into the fruit or whatever it was and shattering it into a score of flying fragments. The impact elicited a high-pitched shriek, though whether the result of agony or merely escaping air she couldn't be sure.

  More of the bulbous fruit were visible now, a whole nest of the things camouflaged among the low growth.

  The second member of the Blade now lifted his arm, squirting a stream of liquid at the patch. Wherever the liquid struck it burned, raising a cloud of fumes as the puffed-up uglies popped and wheezed and withered. One managed a parting shot, and a second pus-coloured dart shot out, heading directly towards the Blade. It struck his unyielding hide and dropped to the ground. Instead of lying passive, the thing writhed around like some unwholesome maggot, the twin pointed ends wriggling back and forth as if searching for prey. The Blade pointed a finger and a stream of acid descended to consume the persistent seed.