Terminal World (25 page)

‘Until you decide we’re spies after all,’ Quillon said, passing her the medical bag.

‘We’re not savages,’ Curtana said. ‘Many of our clients go on to become useful, productive citizens of Swarm.’

‘Unlike those men you had shot back there.’

Curtana opened her mouth to speak, and for a moment he thought she was going to defend herself, pointing out that she had not ordered an execution. ‘They resisted disarmament,’ she said, voicing what could only have been a supposition, since she had not spoken to the other officer since ordering him to disarm and release the Skullboys. ‘What you need to understand - and understand fast - is that you’re not in Spearpoint now. We’ve always made our own law out here, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.’

Curtana left, closing the door on them. It was heavy, with a small grilled window in the top half. Quillon had no doubt that this compartment was routinely used for prisoner storage. The walls might be thin enough to let in the cold, but they were likely strong enough to contain unarmed men. Not that he had the least intention of trying to escape anyway.

The airship loitered long enough for the other members of the landing party to return, and then they were aloft, the engines no longer fighting against the envelope, but providing forward momentum instead. The metal walls vibrated, the angle of the floor tilting as the craft nosed steeply into the sky.

‘At least you knew about Swarm,’ he said to Meroka.

‘I wasn’t planning on coming into range of it. Fray likes to keep track of its movements, as far as he’s able. Normally it stays much further west. He’d have known if it was this close to Spearpoint before we left.’ Quillon noticed that she was holding the Testament, the small black book he had leafed through in Horsetown, while Meroka was out of the room.

‘What is Swarm, exactly?’

‘You’ll see soon enough, if that’s where they’re taking us.’

‘At least it’s a form of civilisation.’

‘They aren’t going to open their arms to us, Cutter. Maybe to the woman and the girl, seeing as they obviously aren’t from Spearpoint. But you and me?’ She paused, staring at him intently. ‘You’ve got weird fucking eyes, anyone ever tell you that?’

Quillon turned to look at Kalis and Nimcha again. They were huddling into each other, the shaven-headed mother with her arms around the straggle-haired daughter, still barefoot, still clothed in little more than rags.

‘Might I examine your daughter?’ he asked Kalis.

The woman tugged the girl closer to her, flashing warning eyes at Quillon.

He raised a hand gently. ‘We all know what happened back there, Kalis.’

‘Do we?’ Meroka asked.

‘When the vorg was about to kill Meroka, you said something to Nimcha. It sounded very much like “do it” to me. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. What could you have been asking her to do? After all, she’s just a girl. She had nothing on her she could have used. But even when you said it, I felt something.’ He glanced at the grilled window, making sure they were not being observed. He doubted that eavesdropping was a possibility; the noise of the airship was much too loud for that. ‘It wasn’t a zone shift, or even a tremor,’ Quillon continued, ‘but it felt as if something was trying to happen.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Meroka asked, her tone insistent. Quillon rose from his bench. He steadied himself with one hand against the perforated strut spanning the ceiling. Before she could flinch away, he stroked the other hand across Kalis’s mark.

‘I was right about this, wasn’t I?’ he asked her. ‘It’s self-inflicted. You made this mark yourself, or got someone to do it for you, to make people think you were the tectomancer. It’s a good effort, I’ll give you that, and it was obviously enough to convince the Skullboys. But it’s not a true birthmark. It’s a tattoo, and it wasn’t done long ago.’

‘You don’t know anything,’ Kalis said.

‘And all that business since we met, that way you have of talking - the stilted, mad-woman things you keep coming out with? You’re not mad at all. Or at least no madder than anyone would be if they’d been locked up, with a high likelihood of either being fed to the vorgs or burned alive. That would push anyone over the edge, if they were already insane to begin with. But you weren’t. You were wise and resourceful enough to know that there was only one way to protect your daughter. You had to divert attention from her. You had to become the tectomancer, so no one would think it was Nimcha.’

‘You feeling all right?’ Meroka asked. ‘Maybe you should have taken some of those meds, before they took that bag away.’

‘I’m fine, thank you.’ He smiled tightly. ‘A little bruised around the edges, but otherwise in adequate command of my faculties. Might I look at Nimcha, Kalis? I promise no one else will learn of this. You’ve nothing to lose, since I’m already certain of the truth.’

‘The truth of what?’ Meroka asked.

Kalis offered no resistance when he stroked his hand through the filthy mass of Nimcha’s hair, parting it just enough to see the scarlet mark showing through the skin. Meroka had left the bench and was looking over his shoulder.

‘It’s quite real,’ he said, glancing again at the grilled window. ‘This is pure pigmentation. I don’t think it’s tattoo, a scar or brand-mark. It could be a stain of some kind, but then it would have had to have been done when she was shaved, and yet it hasn’t faded in all the time it’s taken her hair to grow this long.’

‘We talked about this,’ Meroka said. ‘Whether or not tectomancers are real, she isn’t one.’

‘We’re talking about the daughter now.’

‘It’s still fake.’

‘It isn’t. Is it?’ Quillon asked Kalis. ‘You know perfectly well that it isn’t. She’s had this since she was born, hasn’t she? And you’ve always known how dangerous it was, how that mark alone could get her killed, regardless of any actual power that came with it. If the rumour got around that one of you had the mark, then at least you could deflect attention onto yourself. And if Nimcha’s powers really did manifest themselves, and drew attention to her, you’d be able to claim they originated with you.’

‘If you speak of this,’ Kalis said, ‘I will kill you.’

‘I’m not going to speak of it to anyone. But so far you haven’t managed to keep the secret very well, have you?’ Feeling he had spoken too harshly, he added, ‘Look, Kalis, I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through to protect your daughter this far. Even when you were in that cage, you didn’t let anyone know that she was the one they really wanted. That must have taken all the love a mother could give.’ Quillon shook his head. ‘No, I won’t speak of it. None of us will. Right, Meroka?’

‘Nothing to speak of,’ she said.

‘Good,’ Quillon said. ‘That makes everything a lot simpler. But I’m serious, Meroka - it has to stay our little secret. They can’t find out about her.’

‘They?’ Meroka asked.

‘Curtana and the rest of her crew,’ Quillon said. ‘The rest of Swarm, for that matter.’

Meroka looked sceptical. ‘It took you a couple of hours to figure out what she is. You think you’re going to be able to keep that from them for ever?’

‘We’ll just have to do our best, won’t we? When the surgeon comes he can’t be allowed to examine the girl too closely.’

‘I still don’t get it,’ Meroka said, looking at Kalis. ‘Why couldn’t you just act like a normal mother, instead of shaving your hair, marking your skin, putting on the witch act?’

‘She had no choice,’ Quillon said. ‘Someone out there must have had a shrewd idea one of them had the power. If Nimcha caused a local zone shift, that might have been enough to draw suspicion her way. What Kalis did may seem drastic to us, but she knew it was the best thing, the only thing, she could do for her daughter. It bought Nimcha time.’

‘Wake-up call, Quillon. They were captured by Skullboys. They were on their way to a burning.’

‘Nimcha might have been released, or at least spared execution.’

‘Happy endings all around.’

‘I’m not saying that. Just that from Kalis’s perspective, this was the lesser evil.’ Quillon picked dried blood from his upper lip. ‘I don’t think we should be judging her. We weren’t in her shoes.’ He paused, sifting through the jumbled memories of recent events. ‘And we know she’s real now, don’t we? Kalis - when you implored Nimcha to act, I felt something. The zone responded. It didn’t shift, but it certainly noticed. It was listening, and it tried to obey. It was as if she called out to it, but lacked the strength or focus to make it follow her will. Is that what happened?’

After a great silence Kalis said, ‘I hoped that you would not feel it, or remember what I said.’

‘You’re amongst friends. But we’ve got to know the truth, and all of it.’ Deciding the direct approach was best he added, ‘How long have you known about her?’

Kalis’s eyes darted between Quillon and Meroka, both of whom were still standing up. ‘Please,’ she said, nodding to indicate that they should return to their own bench.

‘Taking their sweet time with those blankets and clothes,’ Meroka growled.

‘She was one when the mark appeared,’ Kalis said. ‘It wasn’t long after she’d learned to speak. She had hair by then, but one day she fell and hurt her head. I had to clean the blood away, and that was when I saw the mark.’ She looked hard into his eyes, forcing him to imagine the shock of discovering her daughter’s nature. ‘It was then that I knew.’

‘And you knew - just like that?’ Quillon asked.

‘Of course. There have always been children with the gift, for as long as the world is old.’

‘Some combination of inheritance factors,’ Quillon mused. ‘Out there, in the general population. But it’s only when they come together in the right combination that a child like Nimcha is born. How old was she when the power showed itself?’

Kalis thought for a moment. ‘Nearly three. She could read and write, like any child of that age. That was when it came through.’

‘As if it was waiting for certain brain structures to become sufficiently mature,’ Quillon said. ‘That’s what this is: not magic, not possession by demons. It’s just something buried deep in the blood, waiting for the right set of circumstances to emerge. Much like an inherited disease, although obviously more complicated - and much rarer - since it can’t depend on just a single inheritance factor.’

‘It is not a disease,’ Kalis said.

‘But it may still be something medicine can understand, and help her with if need be.’

‘She has no need of help.’

‘If the power threatened her life, would you still say that?’ Quillon asked.

‘It does not.’

‘The power brought hatred down on you, caused the two of you to end up in a cage.’

‘It saved us as well.’

‘Perhaps it might have, had she been able to command it more effectively. I felt something, certainly - I’m sure all of us did. But it wasn’t enough to stop the vorgs, or hurt the Skullboys. It’s an undeveloped talent, something that needs to be nurtured and shaped.’

‘You misunderstand,’ Kalis said darkly.

‘Evidently.’

‘She was weak and frightened when the vorgs came. The power is not always strong in her. Today it was weak, because of what she had already done.’

‘She’d used the power already tonight?’

‘Not tonight, city man. Yesterday. When the change came. When your city died. When you watched the angels fall.’ Kalis ran a hand through her daughter’s hair, dirty fingernails parting filthy, grease-knotted strands, exposing the vivid crimson emblem of the baubled star. ‘Nimcha brought the storm. Nimcha brought the end of your world.’

He opened his mouth to answer, but the best he could do was smile and shake his head.

‘Told you she was crazier than a bag of snakes,’ Meroka said.

A face appeared in the grilled window of the door. It was a man none of them had seen so far: grey-bearded, pale, with an aquiline nose and narrowed, hawkish eyes under heavy brows. He surveyed the four then worked the lock. He entered clutching a medical bag that was only a little less scuffed and careworn than Quillon’s. Behind him loomed another airman, burdened with blankets and clothes, and behind that man was a third, gripping a machine gun in shiny black gloves.

‘Apologies for my tardiness,’ said the bearded man. ‘My name is Gambeson; I have the honour ... the pleasure ... of being the surgeon on this mission.’ He wore a long leather coat, emblazoned across the chest and shoulders with what Quillon presumed to be various symbols of rank and distinguished service. The coat had been donned hastily, one of the buttons tucked through the wrong hole. Beneath it Quillon could see a white surgical smock, not unlike the one he wore during his normal duties at the Third District Morgue. ‘I’ve been instructed ... commanded ... to give each of you a thorough medical examination,’ Gambeson went on, ‘partly for your own sakes and partly for the security of Swarm.’

‘Because we might be carrying something?’ Quillon asked. His eyes kept being drawn to the white tunic, stained here and there with the ochre of dried blood.

‘Swarm, by its very nature, has to be cautious ... vigilant ... against infection. I’m given to understand that two of you are from Spearpoint?’

‘That would be Meroka and me,’ Quillon said. ‘We’re from Neon Heights.’

‘I’m afraid the internal details of Spearpoint mean very little to me.’ Gambeson’s hawk-like features were turned fully towards Quillon, the surgeon’s coppery eyes alert with observation. ‘I was told you’d been hurt, hit in the face?’

‘My nose may have been broken. Other than that there’s no lasting damage.’

‘And you know this for a fact?’ Gambeson asked.

‘Being a doctor as well, yes.’

‘I had my doubts ... suspicions. Rather an intriguing collection in that bag of yours, to start with. A veritable cornucopia of drugs and surgical instruments.’ The surgeon’s breath was warm and smelled faintly of leather. ‘I’m sure we’d have a great deal to talk about, Doctor ...’