Roil (3 page)

The Bridge was lost long ago, or won. Mirkton after all allowed such freedoms within the dark that no other suburb provided.

If Mirrlees was the beacon of the North, then Mirkton was its shadow. Life was cheap there, but still it was life.

Until the spiders came.

MIRRLEES – DOWNING BRIDGE

He’d been a fool to come here.

Mirkton crowded the gloom beneath the bridge. Its rough shanties were stacked precariously on and over each other, bound up in Aerokin-ropes, supported by rude poles, the shells of old carriages, whatever was solid and might bear weight. They sat in heaps that made them look more like midden piles than houses: gas lanterns and stolen electrics gleamed in the dark. David was surprised by just how many people lived in this small city beneath the bridge. And every eye seemed focused on him. He realised that he stood out here perhaps more than anywhere, and in Mirkton he had more than Vergers to fear.

The place stank of the river and rot, and too many people pressed too close together, a raw smell that lingered and stung the back of the throat. The dark sang with the noises of the enclosing Downing Bridge; groaning metal; the dim thunder of the run-off from the rain; and the chatter of Mirkton’s markets, of deals being made. People lived their lives down here, and to a large extent had dragged the world that they had sought to escape from with them. David could see that there was commerce of a sort; he just didn’t understand how it worked.

He found himself a quiet safe place, down a stinking, rubbish strewn alley where he could gather his thoughts. But every thought brought him closer to utter paralysis. There was nowhere he could go, no plan or direction that could provide him with more than a few hours life. Maybe he would have been better off just letting the Vergers take him. There’d be no worrying now.

Carnival’s pangs struck him again, a body-wide shaking that dropped him to his knees. He vomited loudly. Sobbed when he was done, a frail sound, the sort of weakness you didn’t want to project here.

He stopped almost at once, covering his mouth with his hands. But someone had heard him.

Heavy footfalls drew near, kicking their way through debris.

Quiet, safe place no longer, if it had ever been.

“You,” someone shouted in the dark. “I’ve need of your clean skin. I’ve a hungry piece of meat for you.”

A man, a good foot taller than David, two feet broader, at least, shuffled closer, his cock in his hand. “See how hungry it is.”

David backed away. Not far, rough, sweating bricks pushed against his spine.
Dead end, kind of appropriate
, he thought.

David clenched his hands into fists. “Come no closer,” he yelled.

“Oh, I’ll be coming closer, fancy boy.” The man grinned. “See it?” the man said. “Now feel it.”

David kicked at his groin, and the man caught his foot, throwing David off balance. David landed on his back, and choked as more vomit crowded his throat. “Now, let’s see what we can do with you, eh.”

He bent down, slapping David’s hands away. “Let me se–.” The man’s eyes rolled up in his head. He groaned, and fell, crushing David in a hot and stinking embrace.

The body lifted, an inch or two, and David stared into lifeless eyes. “Ah, he’s a heavy bastard,” someone muttered. The body dropped. “You know, the least you could do is help me get him off you.”

David pushed. The body rolled away, a knife in its back. A Verger’s knife. David looked into a boy’s face far younger than his own, but harder, even though he was smiling. “Ain’t no Verger, by the way. May tell you how I came by that knife one day, if you make it.” He reached out a hand and David grabbed it, scrambling to his feet. “You’re not going to last long down here, without help.”

“I’m not going to last long anywhere,” David said.

The boy crouched down and extracted the knife from the dead man’s spine. “Well, you’ve got a chance now, the name’s Lassiter.”

“David.”

“Well, David, you can come with me. I’ve a bolthole, away from all this noise. You’re welcome to share it.”

“And why would you do that?”

“Because two’s better than one here. Someone to watch your back. You wander through Mirkton alone and unknowing and ... You want to be someone’s meat puppet, David?”

David shook his head.

“Then step to it. I’ve no desire for death tonight.” He kicked the corpse. “One kill’s enough, don’t you think?”

Lassiter led him away from the dim bulk of Mirkton and into the darker regions, where shanties lay broken and empty, and their boots crunched on glass, and kicked up a dust made of bone and death and desertion. Lassiter flashed a grin. “Here we’re alone, some parts of Mirkton even the scum avoid.”

Soon the paths they took were criss-crossed in gossamer threads.

David brushed past a web, and something stung his arm. He cursed, shaking out his hand to free it of the web, and was stung again. David slapped his palm down over the bite; whatever had bitten him smeared beneath his fingers.

“Spider,” Lassiter said. “Keep away from the webs. There’s a lot of them down here. Closer you get to the levee, and under the main part of the bridge. Mirkton was much bigger a couple of years back, but the spiders drove them out of the deeper parts. Some say that’s the Council’s doing, I don’t know about that, but it’s interesting that when the Vergers stopped patrolling this place the spiders started to swell in numbers. There’s still refuge to be found in a few of the spider territories if you know what you’re doing.” Lassiter puffed up his chest. “And I know what I’m doing.”

Another spider bit him. David snarled and squashed it definitively with his thumb. “Are you sure this place is safe?”

Lassiter laughed. “Nowhere’s safe down here, but it’s safer than most.”

They passed down long abandoned streets lined with dipping treacherous looking houses, their walls mould-black or furred with web, and finally reached Lassiter’s bolthole. There was some light here, a small electric lantern, the power taken, Lassiter told him, directly from the levee itself.

There were also a couple of paper-thin mattresses, and a few books stacked neatly in a corner, mostly pulp adventures:
The Night Council
,
The Ragged Poet
. David picked one up, a
Night Council
title. On the cover, Travis the Grave was fighting an Endym, its wing blades bloody. David stared at the lurid cover like it was a picture of home.

“Got to get your mind off all this crap sometimes,” Lassiter said.

“This was a good one,” David said.

“Yeah, that Travis the Grave is crazy. No-one takes on an Endym that way,” Lassiter said, as though he had considered the tactical elements of a one on one fight with an Endym and worked out the best way. David almost thought to mock him, then realised that he had done the same thing many a time, as a boy, not too long ago, before the Carnival gripped him. It saddened him in an unfamiliar way to think of that boy – where was he now?

Dead as his father, and his mother.

“You hungry?” Lassiter asked and hurled David a bruised apple before he could reply. Lassiter grinned a proud and clever grin, as though this feat matched any conquest over an Endym. Perhaps it did. “Nicked ’em a week ago, valuable as gold, what with all this rain.”

David was starving. He wolfed the soft and floury fruit down. Lassiter tossed him another. David ate it more slowly. When he was done, while hardly full, he found himself wearier than he could have believed possible.

“Oh, and you might want this.” Lassiter slid a small package into his hand.

David almost wept.

“It isn’t much, but it’ll see you through the night.”

David didn’t ask how he knew, he just slipped the three dark pills into his mouth and dry swallowed them.

He yawned. Too early for the drug to take effect, but knowing that it would was enough to calm him. True calm would follow.

“You’re tired.” Lassiter said. “We’re safe enough here, won’t let nothing hurt you. You rest up, and we’ll talk properly when you wake. World’s changed for you, David. You’ve a lot of work to be done: if you’re going to live.”

David wondered just how Lassiter could know all this about him. Some of it was obvious, he guessed. After all, here he was in the darkest of the dark of Mirkton. Few came here because they wanted to.

He had questions to ask, yes. But not now. He’d run too far that night, and he was bone weary.

Answers for the morning.

And if Lassiter slit his throat in his sleep, well, at least he would be sleeping.

He knew there were worse ways to go.

The
Dolorous Grey
’
s
shrill whistle echoed down the streets. The sound tightened the muscles in John Cadell’s neck. He should have been anywhere but here, standing in the dimly lit vestibule of what was somewhat contentiously considered a safe house.

Surely, the last twenty-four hours had put paid to the concept. No place was safe for members of the Confluent Party, or their allies. Ha, there wasn’t a Confluent Party any more, just a list of corpses. And he was responsible. They’d died protecting him. That thought was enough to set the earth spinning. He yearned just a little for his old cage.

“All of them are dead?” Cadell was almost certain they were being watched. Well, let them come. Right then he would have happily broken a few Verger skulls and indulged his less than savoury hungers.

Medicine Paul nodded. His hands shook. Those hands, a perpetual reminder of what Stade was capable of. After all, Stade had ordered the severing of his index fingers ten years ago and ruined Paul’s career. He’d been a fine surgeon. Ultimately such punishment had merely strengthened Paul’s resolve. Stade had gotten that one wrong.

A burst of wind rattled the windows to the rear of the house. Medicine jumped. “All of them,
except
David.”

“Milde’s son? Where is he?”

“Beneath the bridge. I’ve a man with him.”

Cadell snorted. “Lassiter is hardly a man, he’s younger than David, scarce a tuft of hair on his chin. What is he, the last of your agents? The Council has its Vergers and we have boys and Old Men.”

“We’ve got you,” Medicine said.

“And you’ll jeopardise all of it for his son?”

“Warwick’s boy.”

“Hasn’t he suffered enough? He’s an addict for all that he’s barely a man. We’ve no use for him.”

Medicine glared at him. “You know enough of addictions, one would think, to feel some sympathy.”

Cadell nodded. Yes he did, though his were cruel and far bleaker than anything the boy was acquainted with. “You mock me and my purpose with this request, and you do nothing but ill to the boy. The son hates me, and with good reason. What happened with his uncle...”

“Cadell, everyone is dead. And it is precisely what happened with Sean... you could make amends.”

“Make amends! Make amends? This is no mere slight to be fixed with a kind word.” Cadell folded his arms. “I could refuse. Where I am going is dangerous. I’m dangerous.”

“You could take him to Uhlton.”

“My plans would have to go seriously awry before I ever did that. They hate me there.”

Medicine laughed, a little hysterically to Cadell’s mind. “You do have a way of making enemies.”

Cadell didn’t laugh with him. “I’ve already organised the Aerokin, the Mothers of the Air have agreed to my request, a miracle in itself. I could refuse what you ask of me. “

“But you won’t. You will pick him up from Lassiter and you will take him safely to Hardacre. You owe him and his family as much.”

Cadell had nothing to say to that, his hard eyes just stared at Medicine, and Cadell was surprised that Medicine held that awful gaze. “But you won’t refuse,” Medicine said.

And, Cadell knew he was right.

A city twice lost, and more than double the tragedy. Here what should have been a bulwark of civilization, a clarion-call to the Roil
’
s defeat, became nothing more than a sad footnote.

What might have been becomes instead the thunderous ruination of a world. It is the historian
’
s duty to avoid hyperbole, but it is hard not to use such language in this case.

Dark was the loss of Tate, but darker days were to follow for all.

Something dropped heavily to the ground behind them. Margaret was ready with her rifle, but she did not fire.

The Quarg Hound squatted on its four legs, its head high as her waist. It splashed furiously in the water, then with a whine, rolled over dead.

The streets were still too cold, but not for much longer. The firestorm intensified, leaping from roof to roof, devouring houses and coolant in a terrifying quiet flame. Nothing crackled, everything hissed thin as a dying man’s last breath. Another Quarg Hound fell, landing on a Sentinel. Saved by his armour the man stumbled and swung to face the beast. It was already dead, slain with a single shot from Margaret’s rifle.

Howard blinked. “You’ve been practising.” He raised his gun and fired behind her. Another Quarg Hound died. “Good with the blade, but never so good with the gun.”

A wave of heat rushed over them, coming from the centre of the city. The ground rippled, Margaret fell.

Howard reached down to help her up, his mouth moved and she read his lips as much as heard him. “You all right?” Debris crashed all around; fiery shards of metal punctured houses and set tarred roofs burning. A nearby coolant tank caught alight. She could smell flesh burning, people dying.

But Margaret hardly noticed. Willowhen blazed, fires swirling around the ruin of two of the four Cannon. Tate’s heartbeat had grown wild and empty. She imagined the men and women up there, working frantically, desperately, because without the Cannon the city was lost. Screams echoed down to her, and laughter, human, but wrong, as though the Roil had warped it.

There wasn’t much time left. But for those distant cries, everything had grown silent. All around the crowded street people paused and stared at each other, weapons in hand. Margaret could feel their fear, and see it in their eyes. But then they got to work, they clambered onto the Wall Secundus and brought rime blade and gun to bear on Quarg Hound or Endym.

Perhaps it was her presence, what she represented, but Howard’s reaction was different.

“Another one, they’ve taken out another one.” Howard’s voice cracked. “This is no time for argument. Go back now or you–”

The third cannon exploded, its muzzle collapsing into the streets of the inner city, buffeting them with stinging heat. Margaret’s ears rang. Ash fell everywhere, squalls of darkness, buffeted by heat and cold. The remaining cannon launched its icy shells futilely into the beast-crowded sky. Far above, black shapes jeered and cackled.

Howard seemed smaller, his shoulders slumped and his hands shook. Then it passed almost at once. They’d been at this battle all their lives. When he looked to Margaret, his face shone with the light of some new kind of resolve… or madness.

“Tate is lost. Betrayed, there can be no other reason for its swift fall.” His words came hard and fast, he grabbed her hands. “In those early years no one believed we stood a chance, but then your mother fell pregnant and we knew hope remained. Please remember that. You were, and have always been, a symbol of hope to us.”

And there it was, that which hurt her the most. The thing she was supposed to be.

Howard led her to the
Melody Amiss
and signalled that the gates be opened.

Sentinels stepped into the breach and fired their rifles. Howard’s words came fast; he did not look at her. “Drive through, quickly now, I have to shut the gate behind you.”

“Come with me.” She reached for him.

Howard shook his head, changing his hold on the rifle and pulling back, almost as though her touch was all it would take. “No, my family is here. Go, find yours.”

Margaret clambered back into the
Melody Amiss
, its engine idling, and drove through the gateway into chaos and flame.