Gears of the City (47 page)

Arjun

I
n the morning
Arjun met Maury’s men, out in the cattleyard. There were thirteen of them. If what Maury said was true—a doubtful proposition—the Night Watch was a city-wide movement. This little mob was Maury’s fragment of power.

A misty rain blew in through the cracks in the concrete and corrugated iron. The men—they were all men—were a mostly thuggish-looking bunch. The youngest was a greasy teen; the oldest grey and wrinkled. They’d slept in the cold on the floor of the cattle pens, and they ached and stumbled and swore. They smelled stale. They wore expressions of despair, fear, anger, low cunning.

Arjun offered his hand to them and they looked at him like he was a snake. They asked Maury, “Who the fuck is this? Why’s he coming with us?”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Maury said. “And do as you’re told.” The men armed themselves, drank cold coffee, discussed plans and grudges and the movements of their enemies, who seemed to be more or less everyone and everything. Even more than they hated the Mountain, or the rival cult they called the Lamplighters, or the new and strange Gods, they hated the people who were rebuilding Fosdyke. They seemed to regard other people’s hope as a kind of personal affront. Light only brought down the bombers—
wasn’t that fucking
obvious?
They were the bleakest and most bitter nihilists Arjun had ever met.

“You’re in the Night Watch now, son,” Maury said; and he shoved a rifle into Arjun’s hands. “These are your people.”

The men of the Night Watch nursed their resentments all afternoon—with a brief break for target practice. In the evening they moved out across the muddy fields and waste-grounds of the stockyards. “Used to belong to the Blackbridge Combine, all this,” Maury said conversationally. “Big agricultural concern. You won’t have heard of them. Gone now. Fosdyke’s looking to take this over for farmland. Not going to happen, if we’ve got anything to say about it.” He waved at his men, at their rifles, at the great cresting waves of barbed wire with which they’d fenced the fields. Escaped cattle and the monstrous engineered horses of the last days roamed the wastes, bony, immense, remembering long-buried instincts of herd and territory, caught on the wires, drowned in ditches, lowing and shaking their heads like things of the primordial plains. “We’ll get you back to Fosdyke. Stick close. We’ve got a bit of business first.”

“But …”

“Nest of Lamplighters. I told you about them, right? Now you’ll see. You’ll see what has to be done.”

Arjun watched for the first opportunity to slip away. The Inspector was mad and dangerous, his Watch were depraved. No doubt the Lamplighters were just as bad. Arjun had seen enough mad little cults like this—they sprang up in the wake of every one of the countless disasters that had hit the city. He had no intention of joining one.

They went north, then northeast, through ruined streets, through living streets. “Where are we going?” Arjun asked, and they hushed him. In places where people were still living, the men of the Night Watch split up into twos and threes, pretending not to know each other, keeping their heads down and their weapons under their coats. They smashed the odd lamp, they broke the odd window—less like a military force, more like a vague migration of thugs through the streets at closing time.

The battle was joined before Arjun even knew it was coming. Who was shooting? He realized too late that it was his own loathsome comrades. He noticed too late the blazing lights in the
windows of the factory at the end of the street—the torches burning golden and crimson, the bolts of bright cloth fluttering from the sills and draped from the wire of the fence, the cables hanging lanterns from the chimney like festival trees. Lighting the city’s darkness. Recklessly burning through the last of the city’s stockpiled oil. Were these the people Maury’s men called the Lamplighters?

The Night Watch, enraged, fanned out around the fence, crouching in the shadows, darting across the factory’s lot, firing wildly at the windows.

Maury held a small staff revolver and gestured with it, left and right, forward—
quick, go on, while they’re still too drunk and stupid to know what’s happening to ‘em.
He hung back outside the factory gates with a couple of his men.

With the dull muzzle of his gun he beckoned Arjun to stand by him. “Look at these bastards,” he hissed, pointing at the glowing factory. “If that doesn’t bring down the bloody wrath of the Mountain what will? What’s wrong with them?”

From inside the factory—what was it to them? A church? A festival-hall? A work of art? The plan of a new city?—the Lamplighters returned fire. Wine bottles filled with oil and burning rags arced over the empty lot. When they smashed they unleashed crests of red flame; they spilled a poisonous lime-green luster; they roared gold across the night. They left glittering volatile slicks. A man of the Night Watch danced like a dervish over the flagstones, burning, spinning, and stooping, fire transfiguring him, making him immense, a dozen feet tall, his shape diffusing into light.

The Night Watch kicked down the door and went inside.

Maury took a couple of vague and pointless shots at the windows. The two Watchmen standing beside him kneeled and fired, reloading with grim efficiency. He elbowed Arjun in the ribs and said, “Go on, son, we gave you a gun.”

“This is mad,” Arjun said. The fires reflected in Maury’s eyes made him look like a devil. The two men of the Watch who knelt beside him looked back angrily at Arjun. The night sky above was rendered grey and milky by the haze of firelight; in it Arjun saw a flock of distant black specks, slowly approaching.

He lifted the rifle to his shoulder. Another bottle exploded not far from him and he nearly dropped the weapon on his foot. Maury was shouting orders. On the roof of the factory, two men struggled
barehanded, silhouetted against the grey sky, and it was impossible to tell who was who. One of the cables snapped and the lanterns fell. They burst like fireworks. Behind the factory the bombers approached.

Arjun gave up fumbling with the rifle. Instead he turned it and slammed the stock into the back of the nearest Watchman’s neck. The other, turning, got it in the face. Swinging the rifle, Arjun hit Maury hard in the stomach so that he fell gasping on all fours.

Arjun dropped the rifle and ran.

He headed down the street, away from the factory. The street was a row of concrete warehouses on either side, and it offered no hiding places. Behind him he heard running feet, shouting and swearing—the Watchmen had recovered quickly.

He heard three shots, in quick succession.

He heard Maury calling, “Wait! Arjun! Stop!”

He dared to turn around for a moment.

The two Watchmen lay dead on the street. Panting, Maury came running up behind, his revolver still in his hand. “Arjun! Stop! Take me with you!” He fell to his knees and gasped for breath.

It was a weakness in Arjun’s character that he was too easily moved to pity. He was well aware of it. He’d been in fear of his life too often; he was painfully conscious of his own life as a fragile and contingent thing. Maury was mad, of course; but who wasn’t? That was the sort of person Arjun had chosen to live among. He helped Maury stand. “Are you all right, Inspector?” Maury gasped and clutched Arjun’s shoulder with his one hand. Arjun felt that familiar involuntary surge of pity. “Come on, Inspector. Quickly.”

They staggered together into the shadows, and away. The battle at the factory burned itself out—everything went dark. A few men came hunting down the street—were they Night Watch or Lamplighters? Who’d won? It didn’t matter. The bombers passed overhead, three of them together in a slow solemn formation. Their distant drone filled the night like the sound of crickets. They passed harmlessly over the smoldering factory—a few miles south they dropped their bombs over a dark and unoffending patch of city. They didn’t seem to care what was happening below.

Brace-Bel

Brace-Bel was no fool. He took it for granted that St. Loup and Turnbull had not set him loose out of kindness or mercy, that they had not gone to the trouble of sending him back to that Age without an ulterior motive. Nothing they did was unselfish. He had spent long enough at Court to know their type. He assumed they were watching him, waiting to see what he would do next, where he would go. Shay had had scrying and spying devices that one could hide on a man’s person without his knowledge, and maybe Turnbull did, too—Brace-Bel scrubbed fastidiously and changed his clothes frequently, but he could not be sure he was not, what would the word be,
marked.
Perhaps, like Shay, St. Loup could watch him through the eyes of rats or snakes or birds. Perhaps their agents were mingling among his troops. Sometimes he thought he saw their faces on street corners or at windows or in his nightmares. No matter. He was used to being watched. Censors, jailors, spies; his audience, his readers, his admirers. He would put on a show for them!

The headquarters of the Lamplighters moved from place to place—usually to avoid enemies, once or twice because the Lamplighters had accidentally drunkenly burned the building down. When Brace-Bel received the news of the loss of the Elton Street Brewery, their headquarters was in a mansion on Meadow-grass Hill. They had painted most of the mansion red, and hung the dining-room walls with lanterns and brightly colored trophies. Brace-Bel was pacing around and around the dining-room table, studying his maps of the city. “I should thrash you,” he told the messenger, brandishing his new cane. “But I won’t, because you are a very handsome young man.”

On the maps he marked his own forces with silverware, and his speculations as to the Adversary’s whereabouts with chunks of coal. Actually he was uncertain of the whereabouts of his own forces, as well. He wasn’t sure whether any of his orders were obeyed. The thing was out of his control. He was a better artist, he had to admit, than general.

“No matter,” he said. “If we lose one battle, or a hundred. We are fighting splendidly, beautifully. Better to burn in a last glorious flame than to, ah, urn.”

For the sake of morale he ordered a party, which turned as such things generally did into a sort of orgy, out on the lawns. They polished off the last of the mansion’s wine cellars and they burned most of the furniture in a gigantic bonfire, and they burned the hedge maze, too. In the shadows, in the firelight, among the dancers, was that St. Loup watching? Golden-haired, smiling, handsome, mocking ? The shifting wind drew down a curtain of black smoke and the face was gone. Was that plump little Turnbull sitting on a tree stump, taking notes? Surely not. Perhaps. Brace-Bel cupped the breast of someone’s widow in his hand and swigged stolen wine. Who was that bearded giant in black robes and skullcap, hefting that unlikely staff? Brace-Bel had seen him at the last party and didn’t know his name. All of his Lamplighters were freaks and misfits; it was hard to know who belonged and who didn’t. No matter. Nothing down here mattered.

Behind the fire, behind the smoke, behind burned trees and jagged ruins, loomed the Mountain; and that, too, was watching him.
Ivy
was watching him. He felt her eyes upon him. She had gone to the Mountain. She had been translated into divinity. She had gone where he was not brave enough, strong enough, daring enough to go. “For you, my dear,” he muttered. The woman in his arms smiled happily, misunderstanding. “This beautiful struggle, for you.” Could she see it, where she was? Was it enough? Was it enough to show what he was worth?

He had the last two casks of very expensive whiskey rolled out of the mansion’s cellars and thrown onto the fire. The explosion blew out the mansion’s windows.

Ruth

Ruth, alone in the Ruined Zone. A high wind whistled through the broken towers, the shattered windows, across the wastelands of rubble, down the unreal streets. Houses were reduced to facades. The world was moth-wing grey, streaked with red rust. There were wild dogs in the ruins, and sometimes they barked and howled. Birds roosted in the wreckage. Otherwise the Ruined Zone was silent. The devastation there had been too great—the shock of the War had killed the organism. The people who’d lived there had fled: north to Fosdyke, west to Fleet Wark, south to whatever was south.
Those few who remained hid in their holes and kept quiet. Stone and plaster and concrete and dust everywhere—walking in the Zone was like a dream of walking on the moon. The air was clear and smokeless and cold. Vast heaps of bricks and timbers like the bones of long-dead monsters blocked the streets. Ruth’s stolen rifle made a passable climbing-stick. She ascended the shifting slopes. Windowsills and buckled rusting fire escapes gave her handholds. At the peak she looked south across the Zone. It reminded her of things she’d only read about in books. Moonscape? Tundra? Mountain?

It was her fourth day in the great clear, cold silence of the Ruined Zone. The city was far behind her now. At first the silence had been oppressive, unsettling; she’d felt she was being watched. Now she was at home here. Last night she’d slept in a half-exposed cellar, like a wild thing in a cave. She was learning self-sufficiency. She drank from broken and leaking water pipes. Could she hunt the wild dogs, bring down a bird? In a few days she might have to try.

She got thin. Bone and sinew. When she caught her reflection in broken windows, muddy puddles, she looked like a feral child. She didn’t mind.

On the second day she’d chased off a pack of bandits with a single wild shot. On the third morning she’d stumbled into a ruin claimed by displaced and confused Thunderers, and had to flee for her life. In the evenings she’d watched the distant lights of Gods moving stately among the ruins. By day the skies were blue, unpolluted. At night the stars came out.

Slowly, shyly, as the days went by, she’d realized that she was happy. In a way. She felt guilty about it. She’d seen no shortage of terrible things—gnawed skeletons and the stain of human ash became routine. Part of her wanted to scream and sob at the outrage and cruelty of it; part of her wanted to stand on the peaks and yell for the sheer joy of breaking that silence, of being alive and free. The world that had ended was over, and there was no one here with time to mourn it. Every muscle in her body ached. She felt hungry but strong. That cold fierce freedom—was that how Ivy felt all the time? Was that what their father had felt when he’d finally broken free of the mediocrity of his life, when he’d left them all behind?