City of Dreams and Nightmare (14 page)

Although there was no wind here worth the name, it would have been easy to believe otherwise as he plunged downward, displaced air streaming past him, caressing and even pulling at hair, face and shoulders. He had the weapon drawn in plenty of time to redeploy his cape, converting an undirected plummet into a controlled stoop, which brought him directly behind the fleeing street-nick.

The only thing trickier than taking something out of your belt while flying was discharging a weapon on the wing. Recoil could be a nightmare and more than one Guard, Tylus included, had been sent into an uncontrollable spin during training. Tylus had been one of the lucky ones, managing to escape without any broken bones. Even so, the lesson had been a painfully bruising one. A few of his colleagues had been less fortunate and one had even broken a collarbone, which prevented him from ever flying again despite the best attentions of expert healers.

This was the first time Tylus had attempted such a manoeuvre in anger, but he didn’t hesitate, firing the gun as soon as he was in a suitable position. Recoil jarred his shoulder and elbow as compressed air squirted the net outward, but he was ready for it and held his glide.

The net shot out, the weighted front corners easily overtaking the boy as the net deployed before falling to the ground, bringing the street-nick down in the process.

Tylus landed and approached the entangled boy, who tried to pull away with obvious desperation, almost dragging the net with him.

“Please, don’t kill me,” the boy pleaded.

“Kill you? Why would I want to do that?”

Richardson arrived, gasping for breath and face flushed.

“Dunno, but you killed Des.”

“I never killed anyone,” Tylus assured him.

“Well someone sure did.”

“Not me. I may have bloodied your nose and knocked your big friend down, but that was all.” Richardson was staring at him querulously, but he shook his head, hoping the young officer would correctly interpret this as “not now”. “If I was here to kill you I’d have done so by now rather than going to all the trouble of bringing you down alive, wouldn’t I?”

“Suppose so,” the lad said, a little grudgingly. He still eyed the Kite Guard with open suspicion. “What do you want, then?”

Having recovered his breath, Richardson now stepped in, which had been the plan before they arrived. “My friend ’ere wants some information, which we think you can ’elp with.” The guardsman’s accent slipped dramatically when he addressed the nick, matching the boy’s, and Tylus wondered fleetingly whether this was deliberate or a subconscious reversion.

“Information? That’s all?” The fear drained from his eyes as the Kite Guard watched, to be replaced by a sly, calculating look. “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

“Get me out of this net, then, and maybe we can talk business.”

Tylus nodded to Richardson and said to the nick, “All right, but remember, if you try to make a run for it, I’ll simply hunt you down again.”

They helped disentangle the street-nick from the net. He stood up, brushed himself down and faced Tylus, Richardson hovering behind the skittish boy to block any attempt to escape.

“I’m listenin’,” the lad told them. Tylus had to suppress a smile. Moments before this kid had been a quivering wreck, now he was all cock and strut.

“Street-nick went up-City late yesterday, either a Scorpion or with passage arranged through you lot,” Richardson said. “We want to know who it was and where we can find ’im.”

Tylus watched the lad’s face; the eyes gave him away. He knew something, the Kite Guard was sure of it.

The nick shrugged and addressed the Kite Guard, evidently realising who was in charge here. “I might know somethin’ about that.”

“Either you do or you don’t. Which is it?” Richardson snapped.

“He knows all right,” Tylus said.

“Like I say, I might be able to tell you what you want to know but if I can, it’ll come at a price.”

Expecting as much, Tylus had brought a full purse of coin, carried with him from the City Above. He just hoped that the senior arkademic would endorse his expense claim once this was all over.

“How much?”

“I don’t want your breckin’ money, cloud scraper!”

“Then what do you want?” Tylus asked, feeling suddenly tired and frustrated and wondering what in the world else he could possibly offer the nick.

The lad looked at him, as if searching his face for something. Then, decision evidently made, he lifted finger and thumb to his mouth and produced a piercing whistle. Within seconds, the other two street-nicks who had been with the boy when they first arrived stepped out of the shadows and came to stand with their friend. How these two had kept up with the chase, Tylus could only guess: perhaps the lad’s flight had not been as random as it seemed. The three exchanged glances, before the one they’d caught said, “We want you to take us in.”

“What?” Tylus looked at Richardson, wondering whether this was some code he wasn’t a party to, but the guardsman looked as dismayed by the request as he was.

“You ’eard me. We want to be thrown in the clink, all three of us. That’s the price for your information. Take it or leave it.”

The body of a man had washed up on the silt which bordered a kink in the Thair’s course. It lay prone and was slightly bloated by days spent in the water. The face was visible in profile, head half buried in the mud. The eyeball had been eaten. A pair of blood herons had discovered the corpse, their black and aubergine plumage rippling in the late afternoon light like a film of oil on water. They moved around with dainty fussiness on stilt-like legs, though there was nothing subtle or fastidious in the wounds their darting beaks made in the body’s flesh. The deep slashes left by their probing bills as they tore off strips of meat joined the lesser bite marks and nips where small fish and crabs had already taken their share. Something moved beneath the mud, causing one of the herons to spread its wings and use them to half flap, half hop into the air. The bird came down astride the corpse, where it bent its head and continued to feed.

Close to the man’s body stood one of the many pumping substations that littered the banks of the Thair; giant sutures stitching the water to the land. Resembling stretched bubbles built of layered metal, these structures squatted at intervals along the river’s edge in both directions as far as the eye could see. “Water fleas” the locals called them, both because of their appearance and because of the manner in which they leached substance from the river. Though in truth their layered form was more akin to that of a woodlouse than any flea.

Inside this particular bubble, and so hidden from prying eyes, something stirred; something which had no right to be there. The something had a designated name: Insint; neither man nor machine, but considerably more than both and less than either.

Insint had no liking for this place, but needs must. Accessing the substation had been easy, slipping in from the depths of the river. Of course, doing so had meant disrupting the station’s normal functions, but his own systems were now patched into the station’s, masking the damage. The city would not even be aware that this facility had gone offline until long after Insint was gone.

There could be no doubt now that the boy had failed, returning to the under-City empty handed. Insint would have known were it otherwise.

The Stain had been Insint’s home ever since he slunk there at the end of the Ten Year War. From that polluted wasteland he had watched and waited, biding his time and only moving when the circumstances were right. The boy, with his burgeoning abilities, had been the stimulus, the thing he had been waiting for. Yet with this apparent failure priorities shifted. The boy could be a valuable tool, to Insint and to others. As such, he was far too dangerous to let live.

Demon hounds were formidable beasts but stubborn; it had taken years to subvert a pack to his will. Six in total he had claimed. Yet two were now dead; the work of years undone in moments. Still he risked the remaining four in pursuit of the boy, but they too had failed. He felt the moment when the boy used his power, doubtless to fool the hounds, and now the pack had lost the scent.

The authorities tended to keep their heads down when demon hounds were on the prowl, knowing they wouldn’t stay long, but if the dogs hung around residential areas for too long, even the guards would feel obliged to react. Formidable though the demon hounds were, the watch had the means to capture or harm them once they were sufficiently galvanised to deploy such resources. He didn’t want to risk losing any more of the pack. So, reluctantly, Insint recalled his hounds, sending them back to their home in the Stain.

The demon hounds’ failure was a blow, but he had other resources. Part organic, part machine, Insint’s body was encased within a metal exoskeleton, his back protected by an ovoid, beetle-like shell. This carapace boasted a series of small bulges, arranged in three neat lines along its length. Here and there a bulge was missing, a shallow oval depression marking where one may once have been. With a thought, a dozen of these bulges detached themselves, leaving behind more depressions. The detached drones floated away from his shell like rising bubbles and proceeded to circle around the cramped interior of the substation. After the few seconds needed to orientate themselves, they exited via a ventilation grill and were gone.

Insint was content. He sat, and waited. He was good at waiting.

EIGHT

When they started seeing lamplighters patrolling the streets and going about their allotted task, even Kat had to acknowledge that it was getting late and they would never reach Blue Claw territory before nightfall.

She looked at him quizzically: “Do you want to go on?”

Tom was tempted to act braver than he actually felt and give some nonchalant, affirmative reply like, “Of course,” but instead asked, “How much further?”

The girl chewed her bottom lip and grimaced briefly in concentration. She wasn’t pretty, Tom thought, not in any conventional sense – her nose was too big for a start and her chin a little too sharp – but even so, there was something about her.

“Well, we had to detour to avoid the Blood Herons, and then went even further off course getting away from the demon hounds, so I reckon…” The grimace slid gently into a coy grin. “I reckon we’re just about as far away as when we set out.”

Tom snorted with laughter, her grin widened and suddenly they were both laughing.

“Some guide you’ve turned out to be.”

“Hey, we’re still alive, aren’t we?”

Which was a fair point; and she hadn’t called him
kid
in hours. He drew a deep breath, the laughter subsiding. “Do you know somewhere around here we could hole up for the night?”

“I think so. If that’s Brewers Lane up ahead, then yes.”

Apparently it was, though there were no signs to declare it as such. But Kat seemed confident enough.

She led him down the street, nodding a greeting to a pair of lamplighters who were busy with their cart and their oil and their long tapers, the obvious glow from the latter’s lit ends providing clear evidence that the sunglobes were dimming. A woman of indeterminate age hurried past, clutching her shawl, without giving them a second glance. Her focused determination was symptomatic of the time of day, as people hurried to complete their respective tasks and get off the streets. Darkness would not stop the taverns or the whores or the street-nicks from plying a lucrative trade, but people would hesitate about venturing out alone. Those who did were either brave or foolish. At least, those whose intentions were even remotely innocent.

Kat turned to the right, heading down a side street and then left down a narrower one. They crossed a small square with a stone fountain in the middle: a long spindle skirted by a shallow bowl with a pool of water beneath. The water was stagnant and the fountain looked as if it hadn’t worked in ages. A pair of dun-brown songbirds had been drinking from the pool but flew off at the pair’s approach, twittering their disapproval. Birds were not common in the City Below but a few inevitably found their way in along the course of the Thair and stayed. These two had done well to avoid the cook pot and the skewer.

Kat moved on, crossing the cracked pavement of the small square and into the tired-looking streets beyond. The fountain was barely out of sight before the girl indicated they had arrived. This was not the Runs, not a collection of rag-tag hovels tossed together like so much flotsam herded by the tide, but nor was it the sort of area that anyone in their right mind would opt to live in, given a choice.

The place she took him to was a small boarded-up room. The second floor of a two-storey house that barely qualified as having one. It stank of damp and mould, but at least it meant they were off the streets for the night.

To reach it, they took to the roofs again, Kat leading the way via a lower building – a single-storey tenement, a compartmented block of box-standard living spaces. That building was connected to this one. She used her knife to prise some of the boards away from the entrance. They lifted easily, suggesting to Tom that this was a bolthole that had been used often, by Kat and presumably others. He was surprised to see that the boards were cosmetic, that a door stood behind them, and one in considerably better condition than might have been expected. Kat reached up through the gap she’d made and unlatched the door, pushing it open. They both then squeezed through, leaving most of the boards in position.

“What is this place?” Tom wondered aloud.

“It’s a safe house.”

“Who’s it safe for?”

“Us, I hope, for tonight at least.”

The very words “safe house” suggested to Tom secrets shared. He felt an irrational rush of pleasure, gratified that Kat had brought him here, as if in doing so she were granting him a privileged glimpse into her personal world, though in truth he very much doubted she saw it in quite those terms.

The room boasted a single window which, like the door, was boarded over. The bats which roosted around the roof of the cavern housing the City Below would become active soon and nobody willingly left them easy access to sleeping areas. The bats included bloodsuckers. For now though, while it was still light, Kat kept the door open.

Tom felt physically exhausted but, conversely, not tired, his mind still buzzing after all he had been through in the past day or so.

As they sat on the bare boards of the room’s floor, he asked idly, “How do you think it works, up-City?”

“How does what work?”

“Well, you know. Think about the levels verse.”

The girl snorted. “That thing? I barely remember it.”

“Fair enough, but even so, you know how each Row has its own name, its own type of people – Tanners’ Row, Bakers’ Row, that sort of thing.”

“I suppose.”

“Well, down here it’s as if we’ve got the whole city rolled into one. You want a loaf of bread you go to Baker Street, you want some new shoes you go to Cobblers Yard. How does it work up there with only one type of person in each Row?”

“Don’t suppose it does.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t suppose there is only one type of person on each Row. How could there be? What a Row’s called is probably what it’s best known for, what most of the people there do, but I reckon each Row must have its own Baker Street and Cobblers Yard. After all, you don’t have to be a tanner to live in Tanners Lane, that’s just what most folk there do.”

The idea came as something of a revelation for Tom. He had never considered such a possibility before. Of course the girl was right. How else could the city function, how else could people live?

“Anyway, doesn’t really matter much. We’ll never get up there to find out.”

“You reckon? I already have,” Tom said. The words were out before he could stop to consider the wisdom of voicing them.

“You have what?”

“Been up there.”

“Yeah, of course you have.” The girl chuckled, but stopped when Tom failed to join in. “You are kiddin’ me, right?”

“No, no I’m not.” He was committed now.

“When?”

“Last night. I went up the walls, all the way to the Heights, to the Residences, nearly to the roof.” And with that he proceeded to tell her. Once he started it all came tumbling out: Lyle, witnessing the murder, being caught by the Kite Guard, his fall from the walls, being saved by the Swarbs, everything. As he spoke he felt an enormous sense of relief to finally be talking about it. Somehow, putting what had happened into words made it more real, gave it a substance that mere memory alone had lacked. One corner of his mind heard his own words, listened to the tale and marvelled at it. That part of him felt strangely detached, as if these things had happened to somebody else and he was no more than an observer. He wondered how all these marvellous things could possibly involve him, a simple street-nick.

Finally the words ran out, the story told, and Tom felt emptied, not relieved as he had expected to be. Kat sat silent throughout, though whenever he glanced at her she was clearly caught up in the tale. What did she make of it, how would she react? For the most part he had stared at the crack of night peeking through the boarded window as he spoke, and now found himself afraid to look at the girl, until he heard her exhale a pent-up breath and say, “Breck. You really do mean all of that, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. “It sounds so incredible. Don’t see how anyone could have made that up. Thaiss!”

He sat there awkwardly, not knowing what more to say.

“Do you reckon this arkademic will come after you? I mean, you did see him knife someone.”

“Doubt it. Why bother? I’m nobody.”

“You’re probably right. I was just thinking…”

“What?”

“Well, they do say these arkademics can do some pretty strange things, and those demon hounds, they seemed to be after you; only got interested in me when I stuck a knife in one of them.”

That observation sat uncomfortably with Tom, since it mirrored a thought that had flickered through his own mind but which he preferred not to dwell on.

“One thing, though…” the girl went on.

“Yes?” He was so relieved by her apparent acceptance of the story that he would have told her just about anything.

“You didn’t say what it was you were sent up there to get. So come on, don’t hold out on me now, what were you supposed to bring back?”

“A demon’s egg.” He said it quietly; the thing he had been told not to admit to anyone.

“No breckin’ way. A demon’s egg? Why?”

“I don’t know.” It wasn’t a question he had stopped to ask or to wonder about

“And you went all the way up there for the sake of this girl, Jezmina?”

“No. Yes. Sort of. But…” But it wasn’t as simple as that, and she made it sound so ridiculous. Why had he ever mentioned Jezmina in the first place? He knew the answer, of course: an attempt to impress her in some way, to show that he wasn’t simply a kid. Why, what was she to him, this maverick street-nick? The next morning he’d be back home and she would vanish from his life entirely.

Yet it did matter.

“Hmm…”

“Mostly I went because I wanted to. If I refused, then someone else would have gone instead, and I didn’t want anyone else seeing what was up there before I did.”

“And you were asked first because of the way you can hide, right?”

“Yes.”

“So everyone knows about that.”

“No, not really, not in the way you mean.” He wanted her to understand how much it had meant, revealing his secret to her. “I’m good at not being found – by the other lads, by the razzers, by everybody – that’s all they know. I’ve never shown anyone why before.”

“What, not even Jezmina?”

“No!” He said it hotly, defensively, then realised she was teasing him and repeated in a quieter voice, “Nobody.”

Hal tipped back both his flagon and his head, swallowing another mouthful of ale. It was a quick, deep quaff and his gaze returned instantly to the man sitting opposite him: a bland-faced fellow with short brown hair – receding slightly, but still a long way from being bald. Very ordinary to look at, yet he seemed to have done all the things that Hal had dreamed of doing but doubtless never would. At first the bargeman hadn’t known whether to believe the fellow or not, but the more the man talked, the more credible he sounded. Hal didn’t want to miss a word of this.

Hal had been raised on tales of Thaiburley and ensnared by the mystique that surrounded the City of Dreams from an early age. As a boy he determined to journey there when he grew up, imagining himself a great explorer, crossing mountains with pack and sword strapped across his back and staff in hand, facing death a dozen times before finally cresting the peak of a high hill to gaze in wonder on the towering edifice that was Thaiburley, its highest reaches wreathed in cloud. As he matured, life dumped the baggage of responsibility at his feet. The reality of providing for his mother and four younger siblings after his father was killed reduced the dream to wistful yearning. His father took an arrow fighting off a raid on the village livestock. The wound became infected and Hal watched this strong man, the rock of his young life, wither away before his eyes. He knew then that life had trapped him, had deliberately cheated him.

Yet throughout those terrible days he never completely forgot his dreams, and when the opportunity arose to work on one of the great river barges Hal leapt at the chance, knowing that this was one of the multitude of vessels which supplied distant Thaiburley.

Within days of his gaining a berth, they set out for the city of his dreams. He would never forget that first clear view of Thaiburley as they rounded a bend and cleared a stand of trees. The towering city walls were just as magnificent and awe-inspiring as imagination had painted them. The closer the city grew, the more its sheer scale became apparent, with Hal’s joy and amazement growing apace. He couldn’t believe that very soon he would be passing beneath the walls of the city that had been the focus of his childhood desires.

Hal’s anticipation during that ponderous approach was matched only by his disappointment at what he actually found within Thaiburley itself. The squalor, the stench and the sheer meanness of life in the City Below was overwhelming. It hit home the moment the barge cleared the walls and he caught his first glimpse, and smell, of fabled Thaiburley’s underbelly. And when he discovered how unlikely it was that he would ever be permitted to see elsewhere in the great city, the anticlimax was complete. He felt deflated and cheated. Yet again life had tantalised him with dreams only to snatch them away.

Hal took out his frustration and anger on a whore he picked up at a bar that first night, punishing her for this latest – this greatest – disappointment; the sting of his palms and sharp pain of his fists as they struck her flesh brought short-lived relief. He felt ashamed and horrified afterwards as he hurriedly pulled on his clothes and left the sobbing girl, who refused to look at him and held a blanket around herself for the illusion of protection it provided, but he was also strangely exhilarated. As time passed, the horror faded and the memory of the exhilaration remained. On his second visit to Thaiburley he did much the same, though with a different girl from a different bar. This time, the resultant shame was a mere ghost of regret, easily buried beneath the rush of arousal and excitement, the sense of power the beating lent him.

Now, on the second night of his third visit, he was finally able to few a little of his dreams, if only by proxy. This newfound friend claimed to be well travelled throughout the city and had already described enough wonders to keep Hal hanging on his every word. The bargeman was more than happy to stand the fellow a drink or two in exchange for hearing such things.