Thunderer (51 page)

“I see it,” Jack said. “Behind that boy.
Riding
him. Gods, it’s so fucking ugly. It’s so fucking
sick
.”

“Yes.” Arjun grabbed Jack’s shoulder. “That’s it. Love of the Voice, that’s it. That’s the Typhon itself, inside that one.
Now
.”

Jack linked his arm with Arjun’s, and ran forward, right at the monster. Arjun stumbled to keep up, but was quickly off his feet, falling; then it didn’t matter, because they were both off their feet, hurtling just over the surface of the muddy towpath.

Jack threw his knife at the monster, with impossible silvery speed. It struck the monster in its stolen head, shearing away a part of its jaw. The thing did not flinch.

Then Jack, carrying Arjun, passed over its head, climbing into the sky, away from it, west and over the squat flat warehouses of Barbary, over the chimney pots and slumping roofs of Shutlow, and all of the sleeping city fell away beneath them as they came out over the Heath and across it. And howling, the monster came after them.

The Typhon, too, could be fast, like a flood. It climbed the walls of the warehouses like a spider—like mold, like rot, like a crack running suddenly through a window. It hurtled from rooftop to rooftop. Where it landed, the tiles cracked and ceilings fell in. It took huge, loping leaps over the Heath, cracking and blighting the earth under its feet. Its stride shattered its puppet’s ankles to dust, but it didn’t slow. Its wake was dark.

Bearing Arjun with him, Jack went west over the meadows, and then over the Widow’s Bower. When the Typhon reached the trees, it threw itself up into them and ran across the treetops, reaching up for Jack with its long arms, made longer by tendrils of darkness. A rain of broken branches and blighted leaves fell to earth beneath it.

The Cere House stood at the west end of the Heath, behind the Bower. Jack angled down, and they landed in an open courtyard in the House’s inner precincts. Arjun turned, to see the creature howling across the rooftops behind them; there were no stars visible behind it. It threw itself to the ground at the other end of the courtyard, and came running.

That was the most dangerous moment; in the House’s tunnels, they would have to go on foot. They would be in its grasp if it caught up to them. But there was no choice. Jack ran through the stone doors into the tunnels, pulling Arjun with him. If any of the House’s nightwatchmen had been there, they would have seen only a bright streak crossing their vision, followed a second later by a rush of darkness that would have been the last thing they would ever see.

Into the tunnels, and left, and then right, under cool stone, the flood at their heels.

Right again, then left, Arjun directed them, according to the signs he had remembered.

Down a flight of deep stairs, and through the vaults. Up a narrow shaft, ignoring the long ladder, Jack streaking up the passage under his own power, the monster throwing itself from side to side of the walls, shattering its fingers on the bricks.

They crossed the crumbling graveyard, where Arjun had passed before and the sound of crickets had opened the way onwards. They were under the open sky again, but it was no longer the same city. Through the trail in the grass, then out over the beautiful strange place that was so much like their own Laud Heath.

T
hat was where the Typhon scrabbled its body up on top of a white bandstand that crumbled and stained underneath its feet, then hurled itself into the night sky at Jack, and caught his heel with its ruined hand, and pulled him to the earth.

They had not been high in the air, and the fall did not kill them. But Jack landed hard, winded, and the thing was instantly on top of him. Jack wrenched his neck away so that he wouldn’t have to look it in the eyes, and tried to crawl out from under it, but it sat on top of him, and put the bloody, bony mess of its hand over his mouth, and pulled his head back, and stared at him, so that he felt himself being devoured.

J
ack moaned distantly and went silent; shuddered and went still. The thing twisted slowly and patiently at Jack’s limbs until they seemed ready to snap. Arjun staggered to his feet and ran to them, screaming incoherently, and fired his gun. The bullet tore across the thing’s back, spraying blood, but without effect.

Desperately, he began to sing. His voice cracked with fear and he emitted a high wavering note. There was very little of the Voice in it, but still it seemed more than the monster could bear—it let go of Jack and
snarled,
a noise like a ship running aground. It leaped up off Jack and loped for Arjun.

Arjun broke into a run, but he knew he couldn’t outrun it. He despaired the second he felt hands grabbing his arm, but then he was lifted into the air, and he looked around to see that Jack held him up out of the flood.

A
fter that, they stayed higher in the air, the thing following raveningly beneath them. They made sure not to lose it as they crossed through all the secret ways Arjun pointed out for them, until they came through a plain door into a grey room that was empty except for the scratchy music-machine.

The thing was not far behind. Jack ran to the room’s high window, and leaped, pulling Arjun after him. They landed lightly on the grey road far below. The monster, a second later, landed heavily. There was not much left of its puppet anymore.

It pursued them down the empty road. They turned left, then left again, and stopped. The thing roared after them, then stopped, too.

In the middle of a flat circle of concrete, ringed by pointless grey roads, sat Lemuel. He was bound to a plain chair. Blood was just starting to seep through a bandage around his stomach. His face was pale and sick, but raging, and he spat when he saw Arjun.

“You cheating, dishonorable little bastard! How dare you? This won’t hold me. You’ll pay…” He fell silent when he saw the monster enter the courtyard behind his captors.

It pulled up short, and sniffed, and moaned. All its attention was captured by the man in the chair.

When Arjun had planned this, and when he and Jack had bound Lemuel’s wound, tied his hands, and carried him across the worlds and lashed him there as bait, he had thought he would have to make a speech; he had imagined himself saying,
Look, great Typhon:
this
man, not me, is the one who stole you and tormented you.
This
is the one who poisoned you, who made you
—this
is the one you hate. Take him and be revenged.

But there was no need. The thing
knew.
It forgot about Arjun at once, and advanced on Lemuel.

Lemuel roared with incoherent rage and fear as the broken body approached, surrounded by a cloud of darkness and cold; no, rather, Arjun thought, the cloud approached, pulling the little body along. He thought how stupid the monster was; how crude and narrow its appetites were. It had done so much harm, and it was such a pathetic thing.

As the cloud touched Lemuel’s screaming face, his neck twisting away as far as his bonds would allow, Arjun was shocked out of his thoughts. It would not be satisfied with its meal; it would never be satisfied. They had to go, at once, while the monster was busy. Too busy, Arjun hoped, to follow them back.

They flew back down the street while the Typhon was distracted, working its revenge on Lemuel. They did not look, and tried not to listen. It worked slowly; they had plenty of time to get away from it.

In the room where they had entered the empty place, Arjun broke the music-machine. He didn’t think it would make a difference—he didn’t think the creature would be able to follow the route back without his lead—but he wanted to be sure.

In silence they went back across all the many cities.

B
ack in Lemuel’s office, Jack said, “I’d sooner have killed it. It’s been the cause of a lot of evil. It should die.”

“It can’t die. It’s a god, still, as well as a monster. But it can do no more harm where we left it. It’s alone there. I think I feel sorry for it. It suffers.”

“It should suffer.”

“Perhaps.”

There was nothing much else to say. Arjun looked at Jack’s face, which was pained and drawn, and asked, “Did it hurt you?” Jack shook his head, and forced a smile. They walked out onto the Heath together, and parted with a stiff handshake. They both smiled. Then Jack took off into the air.

N
amdi limped to the factory’s door
when he saw Jack approach. “Where did you go? Where’ve you been?” Then he saw the look of exhaustion on Jack’s face. “Are you all right?”

Jack looked around. They were alone: the others—those who had survived this far—must have been asleep. Good; he was not ready to talk to them all, yet. He put his arm around Namdi’s shoulder, and led him away into the street.

“Namdi, it’s over. I mean, well, first, the white robes are over. The power that was in them, their god-monster—it’s gone. They’re just children again. They’ll be forgotten soon. But, Namdi, we’re over, too.”

“It’s not over till no prison stands, you said.”

“That was…I could say that, because the Bird gave me its power. I had power to spare for you all. But it’s done now. The monster
touched
me. Before we trapped it. It made me
look
into it. It
hurts
. Namdi, I can feel the power in me leaking away. It won’t last much longer. We have time for one more escape. We have to look to ourselves now. I can take you all with me. Wake them: we have to work fast.”

T
here were fifteen of them in the factory. Another dozen back at the boathouse. That was the remaining strength of the Thunderers. Jack grieved deeply for Fiss, and all the other dead, and Aiden and all the others who had walked away. Now that his war was done, he had time to grieve.

They went up onto the roofs one last time, under Jack’s wings, and they ran north in great light steps. Around dawn, they tacked east. Jack went ahead and above them, looking for their prey. They saw it in the evening, after combing gods only knew how many miles of the city’s sky: the
Thunderer,
among the ruined towers of Stross End. “
Take
it,” Jack said.

They rose in his wake to crest over the warship’s side. The effort tore at his heart, but he laughed to see them rise.

The
Thunderer
’s crew were ragged, thin. Soldiers reduced to bandits. Had they thought that they would one day restore the Countess’s power? Or were they just hiding, running, trying to survive for themselves? It was too late for them, in any case.

Jack led the charge over the
Thunderer
’s deck, pulling a saber from the waist of the first soldier to run at him, and cutting him down. He missed his knife, lost back at the canal.

Arlandes came at him. There was no mistaking him; among the redcoats there was only one in ragged black. A true swordsman; his stance was perfect. But he was no match for the Bird’s speed, and Jack killed him quickly. Jack let the man lunge with his saber twice, past his left ear and past his right, while he studied his red exhausted eyes. The man swung down and across, jerked his blade back and snapped it forward; Jack was never there. The saber went wild and loose, as if the man had realized that control and skill would never save him, as if he was trusting wildly to luck. Jack suddenly felt sick at himself; he felt that he was playing a cruel and demeaning game with the man. He stepped forward—the saber’s blade falling toward him slow and steady as sunset—and drove his own blade up into Arlandes’ ribs. It was what the man deserved, for what he had done to Stross End, for the way he had made that beautiful ship into a weapon of tyranny, but it was also, Jack thought, a kindness, if the stories were true. He looked in the Captain’s bloodied eyes for signs of relief, but saw only fear, and then nothing. Jack saluted him anyway. It was a gesture he had stolen from the music-hall stage, but there was no mockery in it. The Captain had been a kind of legend, though he’d gone sour long ago, and Jack respected that. He turned to see how the others were doing.

It didn’t last long. Most of the warship’s few remaining crewmen ran when they saw Arlandes fall. They threw the ropes over the side and slid down, with reckless speed, to escape onto the rooftops. Jack let them go. Only a few stayed to fight.

When they were done, Jack reached into his jacket and took out the notes Holbach had written for him. Among the crabbed lines of handwriting were a great many dauntingly complex diagrams of the ship’s helm. Namdi read them over Jack’s shoulder, and they tried to work out how to control it.

“It’s like the bastard child of an altar and about a dozen spinning-wheels,” Namdi said. “Fuck are we supposed to do with this?”

“We’ll work it out. We have time.”

T
here was a complex art to steering the
Thunderer
. It would be a long time before they could make it turn sharply, swoop and dive, the way Arlandes had been able to. Holbach’s notes were not very clear, which Jack supposed was forgivable, under the circumstances. Still, they figured out enough to rise above all the towers, and point it west, and go forward, and
out.

Jack leaned over the side and watched the city change below him. As they traveled, he felt the last of the power leak out of him. He was sorry to feel it go, but not heartbroken. There had been enough left in him for the last escape.

Perhaps, too, the monster’s touch had set the rot into his lungs, but he did not think so. He was tired, terribly tired, but not dying, he thought; and if he was, even that was all right, so long as there was still a little time.

They could have gone north, but he feared the Mountain. They could have gone south, and been out over the Bay quickly, and across the sea, but he
knew
it was possible to leave the city that way. He wanted to see how far it went to the west and the east. He needed to know that it had limits. He wanted to see the city walls, and break out past them.

The
Thunderer
could go higher than he had ever been able to. From so far above, the city
flowed
. He was amazed that he had never seen it before. “Look, there!” he said, and the Thunderers crowded around him to watch a god that was a shimmering golden wind work its way across the city, shaping the curve of the streets in its path, until it turned toward the Mountain, and climbed the slopes, and vanished.

Evening turned into night, the city below becoming darkness flecked with fire; then there was a soft dawn. They were in parts of the city Jack had never known. He recalled how his own power had faltered and failed as he traveled further from the Bay, and prayed that the
Thunderer
would not fall from the sky. Praise Be, it didn’t. The sun eventually drew down in the west. They sailed on into the red sky.

They saw the western wall from leagues away. It was unthinkably tall, taller than any tower. Almost a mountain in itself. A great glossy line of black scored across the world. There were terrible many-legged gargoyles on top of it, which, as they got closer, resolved themselves into complex mighty guns. If they chose to fire on the ship, it would be defenseless.

All the Thunderers craned over the prow to see what they would see. None of them suggested turning back.

They crossed the wall without incident. It was very thick, and it took a long time to go past. In the shadow of the guns, Jack saw crude thatch huts up on the wall’s wide summit, and ragged, stooping primitives, who threw themselves prostrate at the sight of the great ship. He waved to them.

Then they were past everything, and a limitless plain of waving wheat, golden-red in the sunset, stretched out before them. There were little farmhouses down there. It was beautiful. Free space, to begin again. Jack looked back at the city; it looked like broken shackles, cast on the floor behind him. He turned again forward, and smiled.