City of Dreams and Nightmare (22 page)

“Heck of a mess back here,” Kat commented, looking over the acolyte’s shoulder.

“Where’s my shirt?” he suddenly thought to ask.

“Got a bit ripped,” Kat replied.

“How badly?”

“Terminally.”

“We’ll find you something to wear before you leave,” the Thaistess assured him.

The acolyte completed her task and, after a nod from the priestess, left.

Kat stared down at the inert machine on the pallet, it’s feet curled in as if to mimic a spider in death.

“What exactly is that thing?”

Tom noticed that she wasn’t getting too close. Not that he could blame her.

“One of the Maker’s creations,” the priestess said, “although this one seems more machine than his usual half-way house. They’re all over the under-City. How he’s managed to create so many is a mystery. He must have been producing them for months, years even, in preparation.”

“In preparation for what?” Tom asked.

“That’s what we’re trying to work out. As I say, they’ve spread throughout the City Below in recent days, and now they’ve begun to make their move, targeting street-nicks, latching onto them briefly and leaving something behind, taking control in some way.”

Tom frowned. That wasn’t how it had felt to him. “It wasn’t all that ‘brief’ with me,” was all he muttered.

“True,” the Thaistess conceded. “You fought it. My best guess is that your resistance held it there, enabling you to kill it.”

“What do they do, exactly?” Kat asked, still staring warily at the thing on the pallet.

“As far as we understand, they inject a seed which invades the victim’s mind, crushes a person’s will and finally takes over.”

“No,” Tom interrupted. “No, that’s not quite right. It’s not as straightforward as that.” He paused, recalling the awful sensation and searching for the right words to express what he had endured. “It tries to change you, not take over,” he said at length, realising how inadequate a description that was. “It’s not like having someone force you to do something against your will, it’s more as if they arrange things so that you really want to do what they’re after, so that you run straight out and do it gladly. You’re still you, but it’s a different you, one who wants and believes in different things.” The words petered to a stop and he looked up, helplessly. “I’m sorry, that’s the best way I can describe it.”

“No, that’s excellent,” Mildra assured him. “This is the first time anyone’s broken the thrall, the first time we’ve been able to hear what the experience is actually like. You did more than that though, you managed to destroy whatever was put inside you and then killed the spider that left it there, which is astonishing.”

Tom felt frustrated. “But I’ve no idea how!”

The Thaistess smiled kindly. “I know, but it still represents enormous progress. Before this all we’ve had to work with is observations, from which we assumed the process involved subjugation of will, but judging by what you’re saying, it’s more subtle than that: subversion rather than suppression. Tell me, do you think everyone who goes through this process is aware of what’s being done to them?”

“Can’t really say. I only know that I definitely was.”

The woman nodded. “And you’re hardly typical, so we would be unwise to use your reaction as a guide.”

Tom had heard enough of this nonsense. “What do you mean ‘not typical’? I’m just a street-nick, no different from any other.” He hadn’t intended to shout.

“Yeah, right.” It was Kat rather than the priestess who responded. “Every breckin’ street-nick I know can fool a demon hound into believing there’s nothing there just by wishing it and then kill one of the Maker’s creatures while he sleeps.”

The girl blushed, presumably because of the swear word, having remembered where she was and in whose company. She offered a quick, “Excuse me, Thaistess,” to the priestess.

“Kat’s right, Tom,” the woman said gently. “What you can do is extraordinary, and in your heart of hearts you know that better than anyone.”

Tom shook his head, refusing to think of himself as being at all different from anyone else, but suddenly he couldn’t meet the woman’s eyes, so instead stared at the floor when mumbling, “I’m just a street-nick; that’s all.”

He looked up at Kat, who was biting her bottom lip in a way he remembered her doing once before when thinking about something. “Listen,” she said to him, “I’ve been talking with Mildra and I’m not sure it’s safe for you to go any further. If the Maker is targeting street-nicks with these things, perhaps you should stay here for now.”

“No,” he said quickly. Once he was back with the Blue Claw he could slip into the background again and simply be another member of the gang. Nobody there saw him as anything special.

Kat’s smile struck Tom as a little patronising. “Keen to see that Jezmina of yours again, are you?”

Jezmina? He suddenly realised he hadn’t spared her a thought all day. “No, that’s not it, but I’ve got to get back to the Claw. It’s where I belong.”

The girl exchanged a look with the Thaistess and then shrugged. “All right, if that’s what you want.”

“You don’t have to come, though.” He suddenly resented Kat for talking about him behind his back. “I can make my own way from here and you can head straight for the Jeradine quarter.”

“What, and pass up the opportunity to get my hands on the finest khybul sculpture I’ve ever seen? No chance. You’re stuck with me, k– Tom.” This time her smile seemed genuine and there was a familiar twinkle in her eye.

Despite himself, he smiled too.

“The offer to remain here was a genuine one,” the Thaistess said. “Are you certain?”

He nodded.

“Very well.” Another clash of cymbals brought the acolyte back and Mildra dispatched her to fetch some clothes. The Thaistess then examined Tom’s back. “I have a little healing ability. I could help, if you will let me.”

He’d come this far; though still not wholly convinced, he nodded.

Her hands were soft and gentle, with a warmth that seemed to radiate from them, gradually spreading throughout his back, touching and then engulfing each of the four wounds and sending a shiver of pleasure up his spine in the process. He closed his eyes and could easily have drifted back to sleep, it was so soothing. He was almost disappointed when he felt her palms lift away.

“Better?”

He flexed his shoulders gingerly and was surprised at how much the pain had lessened. “Yes, thank you. It now only hurts when I move.”

The woman laughed, evidently surprised and perhaps even pleased that he had spoken to her in such a relaxed manner.

“Completely sealed up,” Kat confirmed on giving the wounds a quick inspection.

The acolyte returned at that moment and Tom stared in horror at what she brought across to him.

“An acolyte’s robe?”

“This is a temple of Thaiss, Tom, not a clothing store,” Mildra said. “We don’t exactly keep an extensive wardrobe here. It was this or a priestess’s green, and I thought you’d prefer the grey.”

Tom took the robe reluctantly and glared across at Kat, who was doing her best not to laugh.

“Don’t you dare,” he warned her darkly.

The Thaistess, Mildra, watched the two youths walk away, Kat with a nonchalant wave and even Tom looked back and smiled. There was a part of her that wanted to call them back, to persuade Tom to remain in the safety of the temple after all, but she didn’t. Once they had disappeared around a corner she turned and walked back into the temple. As she did so, a man stepped from the shadows. “Well, that was certainly interesting.”

The Thaistess nodded. “Wasn’t it just? These abominations are even worse than we suspected.”

“And considerably more subtle. It still intrigues me that the Maker is only going after the street-nicks.”

“The gangs have their fingers in every pie worth talking about down here: import, export, retail, the black market, even passage between the Cities Below and Above. If you wanted to quietly seize control of all that goes on in the under-City, the street-nicks would not be a bad place to start.”

“True.”

“Do you think Tom and Kat were specifically targeted this time or just caught up in the general sweep of things?”

“No, I think on this occasion it was simply part of what we’re seeing everywhere – the plan to subvert all the street-nicks. Tom’s ability to resist has been a revelation.”

“Could it be an indication that he’s growing into himself, starting to realise his potential?”

“Possibly,” the man conceded. “I just wish we’d known about him before all this began.”

“How could we? Before this, his use of power had been minor; no more than that of a healer or any of the other limited practitioners scattered around the under-City.”

“I realise that.” He gave a wry smile, which brought unexpected warmth to his craggy, age-weary face. “Even I’m allowed to wish on occasion, aren’t I?”

The woman smiled in turn and nodded in response.

“Thank you for calling me, Mildra. I was afraid we might never find this pair again after all the mischief the Maker’s been causing. I regret my visit here has to be so brief, but I really must return up-City before I’m missed.”

“Of course.” She tried to keep the bitterness from her voice but was not entirely successful. Sharp as he was, the prime master caught it.

“What’s the matter?”

She considered lying, passing it off as tiredness, but both her faith and her conscience demanded that she remain true to herself. “This just strikes me as wrong. You sitting up there in the Heights, safe, and me here in my temple, likewise, while death roams the streets and we send two innocent youths back out there, knowing what awaits them.”

“I know, and I wish it could be otherwise, but Tom is the catalyst. I can’t simply whisk him out of harm’s way, not yet. We have to discover the full extent of what’s going on here, and Tom is the only means we have of doing that.”

“The only bait, you mean. And what of the girl, is she expendable? And the street-nicks who are getting killed hourly are acceptable losses, I take it.”

“Don’t judge me, Mildra. I do that often enough to myself. You know that if I could I would avoid every single death, but I have to look at the bigger picture.”

The woman sighed. “Yes, I do understand. But why is it always the little people who seem to get hurt whenever anyone concentrates on the bigger picture?”

“This lad, Tom, is hardly one of the ‘little people’, Mildra, despite his diminutive size.”

“I know, I know.” She felt suddenly weary and the sense of guilt at letting Kat and Tom step back into the streets remained, despite the fact that she knew the reasons. “And yet, he’s so innocent, so oblivious of his inheritance.”

“Which is one of the things that makes him so valuable.”

“But despite this value, you insist on sending him into danger.”

“I have no choice. As you pointed out yourself, these things of the Maker’s are more dangerous than ever suspected. There’s more going on here than we know and we daren’t make our move until we’re certain of all our enemies. In the meantime, I know I can count on you and your sisters to keep an eye on this lad for me.”

The woman nodded. “The goddess will watch over him.”

“Thank you. And help will be on hand should it be needed.” Dark shadows moved behind the man. Towering black forms which shone in the dull light.

The woman’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief. “You’ve brought them here, to the goddess’s temple?”

The prime master smiled. “Where else? They have to be kept out of sight for now. Can you imagine how quickly panic would spread through the streets were people to learn that the Blade have returned to the City Below?”

TWELVE

Tylus took stock of his restless troops – Richardson plus a dozen other officers of the watch, pulled away from their usual duties with no warning. A few of them had puncheons at the ready while others gripped thick, black iron chains; all of them had earplugs in place. They looked ready, despite the odd muttering of discontent.

The other units should be in place by now and there was no point in delaying things. He composed himself and gave Richardson the nod. The young officer scampered forward and attached the two devices to the wall, one either side of the door that was their designated entry point.

Now it was just a question of waiting; it shouldn’t be long.

Tylus continued to feel a sense of destiny, that the gods were in some sense smiling on him and everything was going his way. Johnson had been immediately receptive to the idea of this raid, especially when the Kite Guard told him that it might have some bearing on the ongoing problems the watch were facing with the street-nicks and the inter-gang killings. In all honesty, he had no idea whether or not that was true, but he knew that raising the possibility wouldn’t harm his cause. The sergeant who had first spoken to him upon his arrival at the station didn’t offer so much as a word of protest when Captain Johnson strode up with Tylus by his side and asked him to assemble all available officers. The sergeant’s name proved to be Able, which struck Tylus as wholly appropriate based upon what he had seen of the man to date.

Able was now around the other side of the building, with another squad of men, similar in size to Tylus’s, while Richardson had taken the front with his own slightly larger group. The visiting Kite Guard had been trusted with the banshees, devices which the station’s weapons master handed across with a respect that bordered on reverence.

“Freshly charged,” he warned Tylus, “so be careful how you handle them.”

Tylus took the oval, fist-sized devices gingerly. They were flat on one side and dome-shaped on the other, the dome being grooved to provide convenient finger holds. He had never encountered banshees before, though he was not about to admit as much and so immediately designated responsibility to Richardson. The young officer seemed to accept this as an honour, a misconception which Tylus was more than happy to encourage. One more boost to the young man’s growing self-esteem.

Tylus fiddled with his own earplugs, making sure for the umpteenth time that they were firmly in place. Once deployed, these banshee devices were supposed to trigger fairly quickly.

Even with the earplugs and even though the devices were aimed into the building, there could be no missing the instant the banshees went off. A high pitched shriek filled the air. The Kite Guard and his men immediately leapt into action, rushing to the door. Six of the guards carried between them a thumper – a giant version of the puncheon. They positioned this unwieldy contraption level with the door’s lock and catch and then fired. It acted as a battering ram, punching a hole in the door where the lock had been. No longer secured, the door was then easily kicked open, allowing the men of the watch to pour in.

Tylus felt confident that this raid on their headquarters would take the Blue Claw completely by surprise. It had been organised quickly and actioned immediately, leaving little opportunity for a warning to have reached the street-nicks, no matter how good their sources within the watch might be.

The sound from the banshees, which had been clearly audible outside, became deafening once they stepped into the building. And that was with earplugs. Tylus pitied anyone without them. He and his men moved forward swiftly, seeing Johnson’s team off to their left, coming in through the front door.

Initially there were no nicks to be found at all, but as they moved further into the house they found their first group, including a girl – a pretty young thing – sunk to her knees with her hands clapped to her ears. Beside her an older nick lay curled up on the floor and a couple of others were slumped in the open doorway to an adjacent room. The hands-to-ears posture seemed universal, which was hardly a surprise.

Through the open doorway, Tylus caught a glimpse of total chaos. Street-nicks and furniture were strewn everywhere. He stepped into the room and made way for the watch officers, who streamed in behind him and started clamping leg irons on the incapacitated youths. There was a little blood in evidence, and surely the banshees could not be responsible for that, nor for the injuries apparent in many of the nicks – cuts, bruises, and at least one who appeared to have a broken leg. It looked as if their arrival might have interrupted a fight.

Was this further evidence of the gang violence the watch had been battling against of late? Had another gang attacked the Blue Claw here, in their very strong-hold, or was it some internal dispute? As he looked around at the carnage, the banshees finally ran down, their grating screech trailing away to a whimper and then to merciful silence. With considerable relief, he removed his earplugs.

At last Tylus felt able to think clearly again, and it was time to start trying to make sense of all this. The oldest person he had seen so far was the man out in the hallway. He realised that maturity didn’t necessarily equate to leadership, but why would anyone of that age stick around with a gang of street-nicks unless they had some level of authority? It seemed to Tylus as good a place to start as any. He stepped around fractured furniture, bemused guardsmen and dazed-looking youths, and made his way back into the hall.

The man had begun to sit up, if gingerly, feeling his ribs. Blood marked his face from a cut on the forehead. Altogether, he reminded Tylus of a boxer who had gone too many rounds with an opponent far better than him. Then the man looked up at the Kite Guard and Tylus felt the stirrings of recognition. Where had he seen that face before? He tried to see through the blood and the bruises, picture him unblemished and less dishevelled. Very ordinary looking and yet those eyes.

Then he had it.

“You’re the senior arkademic’s servant,” he blurted out, hardly able to believe as much despite his own words. “What in Thaiss’s name are you doing here?”

The man pointed to his ears, frowned and said, “Can’t hear you.”

Tylus repeated himself, upping the volume. This time the meaning seemed to get through, because the other responded, “Not servant, aide. My name’s Dewar and the senior arkademic sent me down here to back you up.” The man spoke over-loudly at first, presumably due to the ringing in his ears. Tylus sympathised. His own hearing was still troubled by the ghost of that screeching claxon and he could only imagine what it must be like for someone who hadn’t benefitted from any protection. Dewar seemed to realise his error and moderated his tone when he continued. “I thought we might make better progress working independently, and came here following a tip-off. Captured the gang’s leader and learned that the boy, Tom, hadn’t returned yet, so decided to hang around.” He was obviously having some difficulty speaking; quite apart from the problems he must still have been having with hearing, his top lip was split and swollen.

“You were involved in the fight here, I take it?”

“Yes. Things didn’t quite go as planned and half the gang jumped me. I ended up fighting for my life and was in the process of trying to escape when you lot turned up and deafened us all.”

Tylus felt an odd mix of anger, disappointment and wounded pride. The thought that the senior arkademic had sent someone else down here shook his newly acquired self-belief, leaching away the momentum of his perceived destiny. Didn’t Magnus trust him to get the job done? Then he caught himself, refusing to be disheartened. He would use this to his advantage, more determined to succeed than ever, if only to prove to Magnus and everyone else that he could. There still remained the question of why this Dewar had failed to declare himself immediately on arriving in the under-City. This woolly nonsense about wanting to work independently struck him as a hastily concocted excuse rather than a sound reason.

Despite his doubts and his wounded pride, Tylus still waved away the guardsman who approached Dewar with the ubiquitous leg irons. After all, no matter what his presence implied, this was unquestionably the senior arkademic’s man. Tylus had seen that much with his own eyes.

“Well, Kite Officer, and who have we here?” Captain Johnson had come across to join them. Tylus made the introductions and could see doubts similar to his own play across the captain’s face.

Before he could frame any suitable response, he was interrupted by Sergeant Able. “Sir, there’s something here you ought to see.”

Whatever it was had clearly made the sergeant anxious and he didn’t strike Tylus as the sort of man to disturb easily, so he decided to follow them as Able led the captain back into the main room. Dewar tagged along behind.

The room contained several clumps of disconsolate street-nicks, each group of four or five linked together by a chain attached to the manacles which all of them wore. There were twenty or more in total; only two girls among them, he noted. Whereas the boys tended to become street-nicks, cast-out or orphaned girls usually ended up working in washrooms or taverns in one capacity or another, or so Tylus understood.

Able went to the nearest nick and turned him around so that his back faced them, then pulled down the neck of his shirt. A long metallic limb, resembling some sort of steel serpent, appeared to be attached to the back of the kid’s neck. Cutting away the shirt altogether revealed an outlandish and, to Tylus’s mind, revolting semi-organic device. It had four of the long tentacular legs and a small body dominated by a single eye.

“What is that thing?”

“No idea, sir, but see this?” He revealed another boy’s back. It bore four puncture wounds, fairly fresh by the look of them; one to the back of the neck, two to the shoulders and a fourth in the centre of the back, all in exactly the same positions as the hybrid mechanism was clinging to the first nick’s back.”

“They’ve all got them,” Able said.

“All of them?”

“Yes, sir.”

In fact, the only two free of such wounds were Dewar and the girl who had been with him in the hallway. All the other members of the Blue Claw bore the ominous marks.

Closer examination revealed that the creature could not be removed by simply pulling or prising it off; the thing appeared to have burrowed into the street-nick’s body with all four limbs.

Tylus stood and stared at it and felt a deep sense of outrage and revulsion. Neither Dewar nor the girl, Jezmina, could shed any light on the matter – both claimed never to have seen these things before – and the other street-nicks were refusing to talk at all.

A flushed Richardson hurried in to join them. “Sir, we’ve found this man Lyle, the Blue Claw’s leader, exactly where we were told to look.”

Dewar had supplied the information. The Kite Guard was still uneasy with the man’s presence, but felt obliged to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Did he have the wounds on his neck and back?” Able stepped in.

“No, sir, but…”

“Well bring him here then, lad.”

“We can’t, sir.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“We would, sir, but there doesn’t seem much point. Someone’s broken into the room he was held in and has stabbed him. He’s dead, sir.”

Dewar might have laughed if he weren’t still half deaf from the buzzing in his ears, not to mention recovering from being beaten up by a score of youths and then hit over the head by a girl who had been intent on seducing him not long before. After all, here he was being rescued from almost certain death or an even worse fate by the bumbling fool he was supposed to be using as a smokescreen. He could just imagine what his good friend the senior arkademic would make of that.

He hadn’t made up his mind what to do about Jezmina yet, although he was very interested to see that she didn’t have the marks apparently left by this bizarre semi-organic device and so couldn’t fall back on claiming that was the reason she had hit him. On the other hand, he understood Jezmina, perhaps better than he understood anyone else here. There was something comfortingly uncomplicated about the way she made a beeline for the main chance. Here was a beautiful young girl, sensual beyond her years, who knew full well the effect she had on men and adolescent boys alike and was fully prepared to use that influence whenever she could. Lyle led the Blue Claw, so she seduced him. Dewar seized control from Lyle so she adjusted her sights accordingly. Then, when it was clear that his influence had been broken and the gang had turned on him, so did she. Simple, straightforward and very direct self-interest; he admired her for that.

But, at the end of the day, she had hit him.

Jezmina could wait, though. It was the discovery of this abominable device that most occupied his attention. As soon as the watch sergeant revealed the thing he felt a shiver of recognition, remembering his experience in the back streets the previous night. There was no doubt in his mind that the creature he had clipped with his kairuken was related to this one. Had this been his intended fate? To have one of these grotesques straddling his back and burrowing into his neck and spine doing Thaiss knew what? He shuddered at the thought and stared at the thing with renewed distaste.

He sensed caution, even distrust, in the Kite Guard, and the watch captain didn’t seem too enamoured of him either. Neither of which bothered Dewar much – popularity he had never been concerned with – but if he wanted to avoid the leg irons he was going to have to keep them convinced that his presence here was at least semi-official. He told them where to find Lyle, which was really telling them nothing at all, since they were bound to search the building thoroughly in any case, and, in the same vein, said, “This isn’t all of the Blue Claw. There’s still one group who haven’t come back yet and possibly a few others.”

“How many are we missing in total?” Johnson wanted to know.

“About a dozen, maybe a few less.” Damn this split lip. It made his words sound like those of a semi-articulate simpleton. It also pulsed with dull heat, but that was nothing compared to the pain from his ribs.