Fray (The Ruin Saga Book 3) (6 page)

Then the man with the dark streaks under his eyes laughed, cutting through Norman to the cold in his chest, which shivered like a well-trained pet. “Friends, welcome,” the man cried. He turned to Billy and gave a small, ironic bow. “Madam.”

Billy stared at him with eyes like shards of ice. “Don’t play games,” she said.

He regarded her a moment, still half-bent. His eyes flicked away from Billy to the rest of them. A hint of amusement lurked behind his wolfish gaze. “She’s a card, isn’t she?”

None of them replied.

“Billy?” Norman said without taking his gaze away from their host.

“This is the Panda Man,” she said.

The man’s lip curled a tad, a chink in his polished exterior.

Norman frowned, this time looking at Billy. She shrugged in reply, running her fingers under her own eyes to signify the streaks.

Behind Norman, Richard laughed, the high unstable twitter of a man who accepts what he sees on the express understanding that he stands at insanity’s door.

The stranger cleared his throat. “My name is Fol, of Highcourt,” he said. “I come at the behest of some rather powerful characters.”

Norman sensed the others stiffen. Lucian’s hand locked around his upper arm. Hammers being cocked back flashed on the edge of audibility. Norman turned his head a little, shook it minutely, and after a pause the hand fell away. “Just wait, let’s hear him out,” he muttered.

The man waited politely, then straightened and gestured to the fireside where enough chairs for them—exactly the right number—sat arranged around a partner’s desk. How anybody could have lumbered the great slab of mahogany down through the tunnel was anybody’s guess. Emblazoned upon it, cast-iron and ancient, was the seal of a swinging pendulum.

Fol, of Highcourt, waggled his eyebrows. “Please, won’t you join me for a little chinwag? I think some answers are long overdue.”

New Canterbury lay in shadow. High above, pigeons wheeled in flocks belittling anything the city’s inhabitants had ever seen—since the day of the End when the skies had been thick with every winged being. Circling the city in undulating formation, the birds were joined by yet more from all directions. Throbbing and wheeling, the flock cast dancing shadows down onto one of the last standing cities of the Old World. Below, many of its people watched, mesmerised, from their rooftop hides; others kept their eyes resolutely on the ground, their faces drawn into masks of doom.

Sarah Strong spied them all, perched atop her house’s roof, curled like a gargoyle with one hand clutching the open window frame.

A distant remnant of her old self, from before all this—the gawky librarian who had laid down for everything and hid from the world behind her books—gibed,
You must look like Quasimodo, hunched up here. Who the hell do you think you are? They look to you? You’re nobody. You can’t do this.

She silenced the voice with a shrug of her shoulders as though shaking off a fly. “Shut up,” she muttered under her breath and returned to scanning the city.

The cathedral with all its myriad intricate spires stood to her right, a paragon of Old World might, buzzing with half the city’s populace. Anybody who couldn’t fight had by now either barricaded themselves into their homes like shivering gophers, or they had fled to their place of worship.

Elder Agatha had taken in hundreds who had seldom visited a pew all their lives. She had defied all expectations by emerging from the depths of dementia. Nobody had expected to see her alert again after Christmas when the famine had hit its peak. But the surge of people crawling through her doors had rallied her.

Sarah thanked her for that, even if her guts twisted at its necessity. Those who had gone north to find help had done so over a week ago. Too long.

The birds had circled overhead for the past few days, and a definite sense of finality had come with them. They all knew something was coming—and that their only real hope was to throw everything they had at whatever appeared in their midst. Nobody was stupid enough to suggest they could win. But if even some of them were going to survive this, they had to fight.

“Bastards,” she muttered, watching yet more able-bodied people retreat from the pigeons into the cathedral.

Two voices warred behind her eyes:

A few days ago you would have been down there with them.

But I’m not. I’m here. I’m making a stand.

Not everyone can fight. Not everybody wants to.

There’s no room for that in this world. We fight or we die.

Some prefer death.

Then that’s exactly what they’ll get.

She pulled her gaze away from the cathedral and turned to the street to her left. Some semblance of relief came to her as she watched a group of militia heave on a rope looped around a pulley, lifting a motor car into the air. A few beefy men guided the floating chassis out over a barricade already two cars deep. Across the entire northern edge of the portion of the city they occupied, other pockets of militia completed similar blockades.

My militia
, she reminded herself.

It caught her off-kilter: that she, of all people, could have mustered a guerrilla army in a matter of weeks. It was absurd, and for a moment that very fact sliced a chunk off her confidence, leaving a small hole through which doubt came rushing in like the tide.

What if I’m the wrong one? What if I’m just giving them false hope?

A small, younger voice from much deeper down:
What if I can’t be brave when the time comes?

She waited for that other, calloused voice to reply. None came.

She forced herself not to chew her lip.

“They moved fast.”

Sarah whirled whip-like, drawing her pistol from her belt and training it upon the newcomer. It was clumsy and unpolished—she hadn’t so much as held a gun a few weeks ago—but all the intent was there; every mote of willpower trained upon pulling that trigger.

Heather’s long equine features had contorted into a blank-faced stare. Her hands rose up slowly, her fingers waggling. “Don’t shoot, sheriff, it’s just the deputy.”

Sarah lowered the gun slowly. “You don’t want to be my deputy,” she said.

“Too late for that now, isn’t it?”

“It’s not too late to go down there.” She nodded to the cathedral.

Heather spread herself into the window frame, bracing her hands upon the sill and leaning out. Her face darkened. “You think I’d do that? Back out on you now?”

“I wouldn’t blame you.”

“Bollocks, you wouldn’t. Those people are just sticking their heads in the sand.”

“Maybe, but I know you wouldn’t be one of them. Agatha’s doing good work down there. Those people need… something to keep them together. They look to you.”

“I haven’t worked the clinic in days.”

“Doesn’t matter. People trust doctor’s orders.” She looked to Heather’s drawn, exhausted face, and with some effort, laid a hand on her arm. “You could help them through this.”

Heather snorted. “While the bullets fly and everybody else dies for me? No thanks.”

Sarah caught her retort between her teeth, just:
You’re not the right person for this. War’s no place for a healer.

Look who’s bloody talking!
she thought.

A fit of giggles rolled through her, unstoppable and gut-busting. It took all her willpower to stifle it, but still a snort escaped her nostrils.

She felt Heather’s eyes on her and kept her gaze resolutely on the barricade forming below. Still she could feel the pressure of that stare. She sighed and smiled—her cheeks stretched and complained at the contortion. It had been a long time since her last smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

The ghost of an appreciative glint flashed behind Heather’s eyes. “Ew, girly gushing.”

They settled into companionable silence for a while. Inevitably, their gazes fell upon the pigeons wheeling overhead. There was no ignoring them nor the undulating patterns, the eerie strictness with which the flock adhered to the city’s border. Like a bullseye.

Here be lambs, ripe for the slaughter.

“They’re coming, aren’t they?” Heather said.

Sarah didn’t reply for a while. She felt sure the image of those flocks would be forever burned into her retinas.

Wrenching her gaze away, she turned to the treeline at the city’s edge. A moment of terror bolted through her when she saw leagues of figures racing across the fields towards them. But it was just the shadow of the birds upon the crop-heads.

She drew a long sigh. “Funny, isn’t it? I think we all feel it.”

They were out there, somewhere. Marching.

A hand wandered into her peripheral vision. She resisted at first, tightening her jaw—knowing she had to stay strong until the end—but of its own volition, her hand wandered down to Heather’s and gripped it. Coupled like that, they hung there in the window and watched the city prepare for its last stand.

“We’ll be fine.” Her own words fell flat on her ears, but she said them nonetheless.

“How can you say that?”

“Because. They’re still out there, and they’re coming back.”

Robert and the others. She felt them in her gut just as strongly as she felt the marching footsteps of their would-be destroyers.

The radio message from the north might have come through. If they found the Scots’ ambassadors, perhaps they’ll bring back help. Perhaps we could put up a real fight. And maybe, maybe, we can win.

Maybe.

Either way, Robert
was
out there. And he
was
coming back. Whether it was in paradise or amidst blasted rubble, they were having their damn honeymoon.

Heather gave her hand an extra squeeze as though sensing the internal struggle, and Sarah gave one in return. They returned to watching the city, and this time Sarah ignored the birds, focusing instead on the militia’s efforts. There was no chance they would ever really be prepared, but they were making progress.

And that was something.

Her gaze wandered back over the fields, and this time she saw only the pigeons’ shadows. She didn’t see the people wandering across the field until the clouds shifted and a sunbeam poured momentarily down upon the land, lifting the shadows clear. There were people everywhere, walking through the young crops towards the city.

Sarah tensed, on the verge of launching herself through the window to sound the alarm. Heather gripped her hard, keeping her in place. “No, wait. Look!”

Sarah looked again more carefully, taking in the slow plodding pace of those in the fields, strung out in a long ant trail, wandering, uncoordinated. She hadn’t seen them because they moved so slowly, and they were so scattered. Scattered but plentiful: dozens, maybe hundreds. There was nothing hostile about them, nothing predatory.

Instead, their approach spoke of the dull death march of cats who crawl to a place of comfort before they lie down to die.

They were heading for Alexander’s house.

“Are you sure about him?” Norman muttered to Billy as they sat before the desk.

He kept his gaze fixed on the pale-faced man, sensing the others keeping their hands on the butts of their pistols. One false move, and they’d blow him away.

That would be bad. Suspect or not, Norman knew the man was important—probably their only chance of getting back home in time.

“No,” Billy said, not without a hint of venom, “but he’s not one of them.”

“Them?”

“The Bad Men. He’s on our side.”

What side would that be?

“Uh huh.” He paused, no more comforted, hovering an inch above his seat. He flinched when Billy’s fingers alighted on his hand. “Trust me,” she whispered.

Norman blinked. He didn’t know this girl, had met her perhaps three hours before.

I do know her. I’ve seen her. And through her, I’ve seen other things.

He suppressed a vague shudder and turned his eyes once more on the pale man. “Fine, we’re sitting,” he said.

The man, himself seated behind the desk, kicked his heels up onto the mahogany top. Mercurial, hard to read, his features shifted ceaselessly between extremes of sorrow and mischievous delight. He ran a hand through his hair, which didn’t yield an inch. The jagged spikes were no feature of styling but instead almost part of his skull; a jagged tear where some protuberance had been torn away—