City Of Ruin (48 page)

‘Good,’ Artemisia finished. ‘It is settled. Let us rest for tonight. You have, I feel, witnessed enough for the moment. Please, absorb what I have said. I will get a couple of the Hanuman to guide you two to some comfortable quarters. In the meantime, Jamur Rika, I invite you to my bedchambers to discuss the future.’ It was said so matter-of-factly, but Randur couldn’t help but think she had designs on Rika in some way, although he hoped she was sensible enough not to be swayed by such attentions.

‘Yes,’ Rika said, ‘it would be an honour.’

‘Rika!’ Eir exclaimed.

‘Easy.’ Randur held her arm, and whispered a reminder of just how many soldiers Artemisia had killed.

‘Eir, I will be perfectly fine,’ Rika said.

Artemisia and Rika strolled away from them, leaving Eir seething. Randur held her but she shrugged him off.

He raised his hands in despair and muttered, ‘She’s a grown lass.

Dammit, she’s older than you, and Empress, and can do what she wants.’

‘Not now!’ Eir snapped.

Two Hanuman fluttered down to his feet and began screeching something, and with little hands they waved emphatically for them to follow.

*

Through the night and through the walls, the groans of a woman filtered in gently. Eir lay there awake, trying to discern if it was Rika’s voice. A candle flickered in the bedchamber, casting a warm light across its wood panelling. There was a constant dull hum somewhere below.

‘Get to sleep,’ Randur mumbled into the pillow.

‘It’s her,’ Eir said. ‘She’s doing
something
to her. It sounds like they’re having . . . you know. Sex.’

‘Least someone’s enjoying themselves.’

She slapped his back and he grunted. ‘Not Rika. She’s never done anything like that. And, anyway, Artemisia isn’t even human. It’s wrong, and it sounds as if Rika’s in pain. What if she’s torturing her?’

Nothing was to be heard for a moment. Then Rika’s voice penetrated the night like a muted banshee, then a moan that was sensual and deep. Eir made to get up but Randur placed a restraining arm across her, then leaned nearer, squinting in the candlelight. ‘Eir, it doesn’t sound like torture. If it’s sex, then yeah, I’m surprised too, but I’m sure Rika knows what she’s doing. The fact that Rika is not yet dead suggests that Artemisia doesn’t hate the lass. And if they’ve developed some form of bond – then I reckon that it bodes well for all of us. Look at us – we were betrayed by that arsehole Munio. We were about to be dragged off and at some point executed, and then this . . . whatever she is, fell out of the sky and saved us. She needs us alive – or at least Rika. So as long as we’re on her side, we’re safe.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘I’m always right.’

‘What about Munio?’

‘Well, nearly always.’

She softened at the sight of his face. He was trying to smile, but by now she’d learnt to see beyond his bravado. She turned over and attempted to sleep, but the noises her sister was making continued to disturb her.

Dozing off, Randur wondered, too,
What is Artemisia doing to her?

*

Morning, and red sunrays spilled across the ship’s deck. A wind buffeted them, and the massive ship groaned under the elemental forces, yet the vessel maintained its stability. Hanuman drifted around the ship, a flock of oversized gulls silhouetted against the sun. Randur really wanted one for a pet, he decided. They seemed pretty nifty, couldn’t do any harm, so he would ask Artemisia for one, at some point.

‘Where’re the others?’ he asked.

Eir hadn’t slept well at all, and had kept him awake for half the night. She was now leaning against the railing, peering down across the cloud-base.

Joining her, he still couldn’t believe what they were standing on – a city-ship that apparently floated along, using sources of energy he couldn’t get his head around. The texture of the clouds looked unusual from this angle, the inverse ripples carpeting the distance. Only by seeing all this did he realize just how far he’d come since he had first left Folke for Villjamur.

‘I don’t know,’ she yawned.

The ship was easier to see at this hour, and he was astounded by how extensively moss and lichen blanketed the deck. The platform itself seemed so long that Randur could barely see the end of it.

‘Good morning.’

The face was hers, Rika’s, but the voice was utterly different. Her clothing had changed also. Dressed like a man, in khaki breeches, a black shirt and boots, she looked like an assassin more than an empress. She strode purposefully towards them, Artemisia some distance behind. Everything about Rika’s posture and her manner told Randur that this was someone reinvented, but he was surprised to see it happen so quickly, so thoroughly. Was that a blade hanging from her belt? Leather straps ran diagonally across her shoulder, and he stole a glance to see if there was a sword nestling behind, but there was nothing. Why was she dressed like this? What had happened to this formerly passive woman?

The transformation disarmed him.

Eir moved nearer to her sister and seemed uncertain how to begin. ‘What happened last night? We heard—?’

‘I was absolutely fine,’ Rika replied sternly.

‘You look different.’

‘I am different.’

Eir sighed and shifted back by Randur’s side. He placed a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged him away. Rika regarded them both as if they were merely a part of the ship.

Artemisia reached them, unchanged, as if she never could be any different. Her skin looked lighter now, but the ridges of muscle in her arms were still clearly defined.

‘We’re heading for Villiren immediately,’ Rika declared.

‘Still to see the commander?’ Randur asked.

‘Yes. Artemisia has offered to aid us in combat, so while I’m there I’ll persuade the Night Guard to give me their allegiance. Once they’re made aware of the situation, we’re certain they will comply. From there we can build a platform to seize back the Imperial throne from Urtica – by force, if we must. That man will suffer for what he’s done to us.’

Seize it by force
, Randur thought.
Make him suffer. These surely aren’t her own words?

‘The allegiance of the Night Guard lies with the Empire,’ Eir observed. ‘Not you, personally.’

‘Then their allegiance will change.’

Randur was impressed with Rika’s tone, her firmness. Her manner suggested things might be done with a little more zest at last.

‘And just what
can
Artemisia do?’ Eir turned to face the pale-blue woman. Randur wished she wouldn’t behave so petulantly in front of the killer, not that Artemisia seemed to care much.

‘I will turn whatever fighting there is in favour of the defenders,’ Artemisia said. ‘My presence alone will probably cause quite a stir. I believe, also, that I can set the
Exmachina
on course to disable the gateways through which they’ve infiltrated. I might lose the ship temporarily, but I can salvage enough equipment for me to return home.’

‘Why didn’t you just stop them coming through earlier?’ Eir said.

‘It is not a permanent solution. My disabling of the gates will not last that long. The Akhaioí will open them within . . . weeks perhaps. The technology they use is sophisticated enough. It’s rather like drilling a borehole through existence.’

Randur didn’t understand the concepts or the philosophy, and being made to feel ignorant merely angered him. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘We go to Villiren – if it’s still there and we’re not too late – and join a war in which we’ll most likely perish.’

‘Worry not. Rika will come to no harm under my guidance.’ Artemisia placed a hand on Rika’s shoulder. ‘And we will aid the Jamur dynasty, as part of our deal.’

Eir looked disgusted. ‘What did this thing do to you?’

‘
She
did nothing,’ Rika replied coolly.

‘Last night – I heard you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, sister.’

‘Look, I think we’re all wondering, did she fuck you last night?’ Randur interrupted. Everyone turned to glower at him, and he could sense their collective rage. He held his hands up, apologetically, knowing that he had been a tad too blunt.

Artemisia towered in front of him, then pushed her way past. A dozen Hanuman spiralled above their heads, and she communicated to them in that guttural language. Then she turned to regard the group of humans, but only Randur was paying her any attention. Eir and Rika stood gazing at each other, the fracture between them painfully clear.

Artemisia announced, ‘We leave immediately.’

They scoured the streets house by house after nightfall, the Bloods, searching for vacant properties or rented accommodation where a Night Guard soldier and a cultist woman might have taken shelter, and all the while a snowstorm was gusting bitterly around them, never settling.

Malum had requested for his gang to embrace their more feral nature. His anger had connected with some deeper, weirder aspect of his vampyrism. They were masked and fuming and filled with purpose. They swaggered. They strutted and hollered out names to women heading home from the bars. They brandished hand-signals to intimidate the other gangs, who were hanging back in the shadows:
Come fight us, you cowards. Fuck the Dog Gata Devils.
There were stand-offs and mock scraps, name-callings and a sense of belonging. This was a subtle, directionless conflict.

Malum, wearing his surtout and mask and heavy gloves, flashed his blades in the eyes of the hesitant until they whimpered their responses to him.

‘No, we ain’t seen nothing.’

‘Please, we’re just two old sisters.’

‘Fuck you doin’ at this time of night? Oh, it’s you, Malum – I didn’t mean to be rude, I . . .’

He found out where all the slum landlords were located, those who had enjoyed licence from the portreeve to rip off the poor, who possessed no housing rights, and were without provision of firegrain for nights at a time. He beat them up because they were of little help to him, and maybe because they deserved it. One guy Malum decided he particularly despised was even chosen as a blood donor. In the man’s new-built Scarhouse mansion Malum’s gang gleefully ripped into him, punching their teeth into all his major veins and arteries. Malum took a glass from the man’s own drinks cabinet, filled it with fresh blood, before raising it in a toast to his victim’s good health.

*

Fifty gang members in all sifted through the likeliest streets anistricts. They kicked down doors, surprising couples who were rutting like animals; disturbed three old cultists who projected a net of energy into the doorway to block their entry; outraged a disgruntled rumel belonging to the Inquisition who was wearing some terrible-coloured breeches.

The first real clue he got was from a lonely fat tenement owner he caught entertaining himself with a porno golem – Malum vaguely wondered if it might have been supplied by himself: ‘Yeah, they was here, the floor below, about two nights ago, though mainly the woman ’cos the fella keeps slipping off back to the barracks, like. But they only stayed a night.’

‘Where’d they go?’

The man shrugged and meekly pulled the sheets across to try to hide the writhing pink golem as it fell off his bed, its overly made-up lips constantly mouthing coy surprise, touching its clay breasts. ‘I heard them mention a hotel two streets west, I think, but didn’t catch the name.’

*

They progressed with their usual clamour, retreating only froncounters with the routine patrols of soldiers, nor did they venturoo near the docks, where regiments were well established, thinkinrouble from the military men would cause too much distraction froheir simple purpose: to find and kill Beami and her lover. Was it al waste of time? Malum didn’t much care – he possessed all thoney and resources he needed.

Ten of his men were searching a neighbourhood a mile away from the Ancient Quarter when, on the back of a tip-off, they finally found them.

Malum waited and focused, then spotted her silhouette appear in a mid-floor window of one of the more expensive hotels in the city, one set in a complex of vast gothic towers stalled in mid-construction. Her familiar shape was distinct against the soft light of coloured lanterns, as her hands reached for her hair, and presently a man was working his way around her body. It all seemed so oddly intimate, so detached, and all the while he had been haunted by the memory of her face. He wanted to kill them, to prevent them having what he himself couldn’t give her. It was now a primeval competitive instinct, to prevent another man intruding on what he felt was his personal territory.

He sent one of his gang for reinforcements, waited a while, then he motioned for the rest of the boys to go in.

*

After bursting through the front door they ran through the receptioooms filled with trashy decor. Then they kicked ornaments aside aneaded up the stairs to reach the upper floors. Then, Malum glanceown the stairwell to see twenty more of his gang arrive.

Everyone inhabited the shadows. Beami was already waiting out in the long corridor, her lover standing behind, framed by the dim light coming through the open door. He was indeed a soldier in the Night Guard, this new man of hers, standing still with an arrow aimed towards them. He didn’t look much, at first, just younger, more slender, a lean face, and Malum didn’t know what to make of the fact that she had chosen to leave him for this guy.