The Book of Transformations (17 page)

Shalev had given them hope . . .

Caveside was a different place now and it had all happened quite suddenly. Two months ago the enormous but overlooked sector of the city was practically a slum, an enclosed shanty suburb that housed the majority of the population. There was resentment against topsiders, deep unrest and petty crime had flourished.

But now? Now Shalev was manufacturing miracles.

First came her remarkable cultist-engineered seeds. Barren zones of land, on which nothing could ever grow, were suddenly able to support tight patches of crops. Tolerant plants could now thrive with little light or water, and what were back gardens only in name became allotments. Food bloomed in the darkness.

Poorer smiths began to manufacture things for Shalev in exchange for food, and weapons: clubs, daggers and maces spread amongst the Caveside dwellers. But whereas once these would have been used on one another, now Shalev brought them together as a group. Connections were made externally and, somehow, surreal though it seemed, crops were being exported
out
from under the city to rural collectives, in exchange for their support. A barter economy, one without money, grew quickly – out of nothing – and Brude didn’t quite know what to make of it all. But what he did know was this: Granby’s Gemstones was on Shalev’s hit list. That such a place could continue to exist was a symbol of the extravagance of the upper city, which flaunted such wealth at a time where thousands of refugees were dying right on Villjamur’s doorstep. It was a shocking, garish display of crass commercialism, Shalev had said. Or rather, that’s what people reported that Shalev had said, because the level of secrecy was immense for newcomers to their circles. Given the brutal determination of the military in this city to hunt her down, that was certainly understandable.

And all of this was why Brude and Liel were going to filch its jewels.

A couple of muscled lads were a whistle-call away, waiting with blades in case any of the city guard strolled by, but the added security didn’t fully reassure him. Brude and Liel flitted into the shadows as a priestess tottered across the ice to a nearby Jorsalir church, her skirts hitched up so the hem wouldn’t get wet. Once she had passed, the two men scurried along the perimeter of the open square, to the small alleyway alongside the jewellers.

Liel stood languidly, a blade clutched in his tiny fist. Brude searched in his own overcoat for the device passed along to him from Shalev.

Where is the damn thing, I hope I haven’t left the bugger in the caves. A-ha!

He whipped the object out with a conjuror’s flourish. It was a small tool that utilized some form of magic to cut through glass. Brude was adroit in urban techniques, having spent years educating himself in the ways of the thief, but this was something entirely new to his repertoire. He tilted the device, a long rectangular strip of brass, this way and that in the moonlight, discerning the correct side, then pressed it against the grainy glass for several seconds. He moved it along, held it for several seconds, moved it along, and so on, until he had drawn a barely visible circle about an arm-span across on the surface of the glass. Once the ends of the lines connected, he waited. The line suddenly glowed purple, flared brightly and, with a snap, the circled patch of glass fell in one piece into the darkness of the shop, whereupon it shattered. Liel and Brude quickly scanned the area in case anyone heard.

Liel tugged at Brude’s sleeve, and the thuggish man turned to follow his gaze.

‘Brude! Up there, Brude. Top of those walls, I swear I saw something.’

‘There ain’t a thing there, runt,’ Brude grunted. ‘Now come on.’ He heaved his boot up onto the windowsill, cleared the broken glass, then peered inside. In the near-darkness, he could see the glimmer of gemstones in their cabinets.

The wealth here is . . . staggering. Oh my . . . emeralds and rubies . . . Praise Bohr, it’s a fucking miracle all right.
And a few were his for the taking, as payment, so long as he distributed the rest to the collective.

‘Brude,’ Liel whimpered, ‘you really should look at this. I ain’t kidding.’

‘Fucksake, what is it?’ Brude demanded, turning back.

Liel wafted his arm. ‘Up there, on them roofs. Few hundred yards away, a fraction left of the Astronomer’s Glass Tower.’

From out of the sea of fog and above the crenellated sector walls, a figure could be seen gliding from rooftop to rooftop, tiptoeing across the moonlit tiles – then, seemingly, it ran through the air over a gap of at least twenty yards, its arms and legs flailing, only to push itself off another set of roof tiles with the daintiest of touches.

Fluidly, it manoeuvred itself towards them.

‘Hmm . . .’ Brude placed his finger and thumb in his mouth and, very loudly, gave two sharp whistles. A moment later, boots were clattering on the cobbles: the back-up was arriving. ‘Tell them what’s going on, I’ll get some gems, then we fuck off quickly. Right?’

Liel nodded tentatively, his eyes still fixed on the approach of this rooftop newcomer.

Brude glanced at their comrades, three blond thugs standing furtively next to Liel, both kitted out in tight military-style clothing and both brandishing swords. Brude nodded to them, and they whispered back, ‘Evening, brothers.’

As Liel opened his mouth to explain the situation, and Brude poked his head back into the shop, a voice called out from across the street:

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, chaps.’ He was well-spoken, whoever he was, silhouetted against the moonlit glare on the wet cobbles, with his hands on his hips. A tail swished back and forth, and for a moment Brude assumed it was an Inquisition rumel. Brude pulled his attention away from the jewellers and, standing alongside his comrades, peered through the fog that had now made itself present at street level.

‘The fuck are you, telling us what to do?’ Brude called back. ‘You Inquisition or something?’

All he could see at first was that the silhouette started walking towards them. Was this the same one as the figure previously spotted on the rooftops? He couldn’t have dropped here that quickly. He must have approached from a different part of the city.

‘I’m one of the Villjamur Knights,’ the stranger replied.

‘What does that mean?’ Brude replied.

‘It means’ – another voice now, bass and firm – ‘that we’re here to stop you from clearing out this shop.’ A figure came from the side street to Granby’s, a hulking mass of an individual.

Bloody hell
, Brude thought,
what muscles . . .

Brude realized that their exits were cut off on two sides and they would be required to fight their way out. Then a third figure came from over the nearest rooftop, gliding to the ground like a garuda – but there were no wings here, the figure merely moved through air as if able to bend it to its will.

And a moment later, noting the long hair and feminine grace, Brude realized this figure was a woman.
What the hell is a woman doing here?
he thought.

The smaller of the approaching men moved into a solid patch of moonlight and Liel gasped. Brude cuffed the younger man’s ear for showing fear. ‘Idiot,’ he whispered, but the runt had a point in being afraid. The stranger was . . .
animalistic
, though not unlike a rumel. His nose was flared and broad and black, and his face showed signs of . . . fur. There was something remarkably feline about him. From his fingers extended thick claws. He stood tall, and walked with an alien grace. And he seemed to stand there, bathing in their shock.

‘You think you three freaks can handle the four of us?’ Brude heckled, drawing a large dagger.

Two of the thugs sprinted with their swords brandished, heading towards the hulk in the alleyway, and they vanished into the street-level fog. Waiting in the darkness, Brude heard their shuddering screams, the sounds of blood pooling slickly on stone, their swords clattering to the ground.

The remaining thug gawked at Brude, who signalled for him to move. The man dashed ahead towards the cat-like figure, who sidestepped him, raking his claws down his back. The man moved back with a scream, clutching his ribs with his free hand. He turned, striking his blade this way and that, slicing nothing but air as the figure repeatedly moved out of range with acrobatic speed. The blond thug lunged to and fro, tiring quickly, then the cat thing struck him: he swiped his clawed hands across the man’s face and throat, and in an instant the thug collapsed pathetically, clutching at his wounds.

The final figure – the woman – moved towards Liel and Brude. With her dark hair tied back, and relaxed pose, this plain and willowy girl appeared fairly harmless. Brude decided he would act, and he moved towards her, brandishing his dagger. As he made the first swipe she seemed to move backwards, stepping up onto the air itself, and pulling away from him at a curious angle. She stepped across him – in mid air – and he found himself chasing her legs, trying to slice at her heels.

With her arms extended, she kicked him in the face and he spun backwards, slipping on a patch of ice to collapse on the ground. Pain shot through his entire body, and his jaw thronged from the impact. The woman lowered herself to the ground and effortlessly kicked away his blade.

Brude lay there dazed, wondering if he was going insane. The other man – the cat thing – was present, standing alongside the woman, both now looking down on him. Brude could clearly see the cat thing’s short, grey-striped fur, and the bizarre vertical pupils, which were set in an otherwise slender human face. Each of them wore a thick, fitted black suit, with some sort of symbol in the centre of the chest – an upright silver cross, set within a circle, dividing it into quarters.

‘This fellow absolutely stinks,’ the cat thing muttered.

‘Really?’ the woman replied, looking down on Brude. ‘I can’t smell a thing.’

‘Yes, well, it seems there are a few disadvantages to these so-called powers that no one told me about. You could do with putting on a little less perfume yourself.’

‘Why thanks. I’ll keep your precious nose in mind when I’m getting ready.’

The big man spoke: ‘You would’ve thought he can smell the shit that comes out of his mouth.’

Liel was shoved forward onto his knees alongside Brude. The snivelling man was absolutely petrified, with tears in his eyes, but was otherwise unharmed – he had probably surrendered at the earliest opportunity. His hands were held behind him by the brutish man, who spoke. ‘We take this one and drop him with Investigator Fulcrom for questioning. This other fucker, we let go.’

‘Why would you let him go?’ the cat-man asked. ‘We’ve just caught him.’

‘Because, you fool, we want people to know what we’re capable of doing.’ The brute snapped back Liel’s arms with a crack and a scream, and the runt began to cry again. The muscled man pulled out some rope from a thick belt, and bound his broken arms together.

He knelt down, bringing his broad stubbled chin, wide nose and dark eyes ever closer. He clutched Brude’s throat in one fist.

‘I’m called Vuldon, and we three represent a new entity. We’re called the Villjamur Knights. You might want to make it perfectly clear to your comrades, or whatever the fuck you call yourselves, that we are going to hunt you down one by one until the city up here is safer. You
will
comply with the Emperor’s laws.’

Brude squirmed a nod, desperately, and meekly pawed at Vuldon’s fist.

‘All right, that’s enough, Vuldon,’ the woman said.

He didn’t let go.

‘Vuldon,’ the woman urged, ‘don’t kill him. Come on, let’s go.’

Vuldon eventually released his grasp. Air rushed in. Brude spluttered and heaved, turning on his sides to grip at the wet cobbles.

A moment later, once he had composed himself, he realized that the so-called Villjamur Knights had gone, taking Liel with them.

Brude was left wounded, in the company of corpses.

*

Vuldon shoved the man into a cell, which was more like a cage, and the scrawny fellow curled himself up into a ball, hugging his knees, shivering. The room was constructed from a dreary red brick, the ceiling curved and dripping with moisture from somewhere. There was a bucket in the corner.

‘Go easy on him,’ Lan cautioned, but such requests seemed to be futile. As she lit a coloured lantern to one side, she met Tane’s gaze, but he was coy about confronting their concern over Vuldon’s potential. Vuldon seemed to have rediscovered old ways.

Vuldon stepped inside the cell and stood for a moment with his legs apart, his fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly. With the side of his boot, he gave a gentle kick to the skinny figure, who turned onto his back, groaning.

‘What’s your name?’ Vuldon demanded.

‘Liel . . .’ the thief spluttered. ‘Please don’t hurt me. I never wanted to be there.’

‘What was your purpose tonight – simple theft?’

‘We was just going to take a few jewels, yeah, nothin’ else, I swear.’

‘Who for?’

‘Just us, just to buy a bit of bread, nothing else.’

‘Liar,’ Vuldon said, and threw a lightning-quick punch to Liel’s stomach, forcing a gasping scream from the man’s mouth.

Lan flinched. Tane couldn’t even watch.

‘Now, who were you working for?’ Vuldon demanded.