Context (61 page)

A yell, a clatter.

And a scream, high-pitched as a
woman—suddenly cut off.

Followed by a cold and heavy
silence.

No
logotrope designer ...

Tom stepped out of his cell, and
into Chaos.

Dressed
in ordinary clothes, long dark cape across his shoulders, he walked through the
refectory, among rows of writhing monks who tore at their skin, their eyes,
each other.

Saw the Abbot face down in a bowl
of clear broth. Ignored him.

‘Help us, brother!’

A splintering sound.

Goodbye, my Brothers.

Passed into the Outer Court where
two guardian-monks stood in an agony of indecision: whether to remain at their
posts, or investigate the yells from inside.

But then one of them collapsed
writhing, foaming at the mouth—halberd clattering to the flagstones—and there
was no decision to be made. The other monk ran.

For the Way.

Tom was no logotrope designer...

Retrieving the fallen guardian’s
control-bracelet, he caused the great bronze door to swing open.

... but sabotage is easier than
design.

And stepped through, into
freedom.

Inside
the darkened, empty tavern Tom sat alone—sipping indigoberry daistral Master
Lochlen had served himself—while Lochlen made arrangements out of sight. Low
voices, words indistinguishable, drifted back from the rear chambers.

‘It’s hardly your fault,’ said
Lochlen, returning.

He spun a floating seat the wrong
way round and sat down, forearms draped over the back.

‘What do you mean?’

‘A man with your background ...
Zentropes. Sweet Fate. It’s surprising the treatment didn’t kill you. Bad
enough for someone who’s never had ‘trope infusions at all.’

‘I don’t—’ Tom closed his eyes,
opened them. ‘Are they dead?’

‘The monks? From what I hear’—Lochlen
glanced towards the tavern’s rear—‘they’ll mostly recover.’

Mostly.

For the Way...

Tom shook his head.

‘I’ll help, my Lord.’ Lochlen
made a recognition-mudra, a flickering gesture like a conjuror’s sleight of
hand. ‘For Freedom’s sake.’

Surely the old ways of LudusVitae
had been forgotten.

But there was a dark enemy within
the world—he must remember that—and perhaps the movement, the alliances, still
had their part to play.

‘... and Kraiv,’ Lochlen was
saying, ‘have been travelling for several days. But with a few judicious
shortcuts, and a bit of luck’—with an ironic smile—‘you’ll catch them up, my
Lord.’

‘Call me Tom.’

The
next night he found himself inside a sealed, darkened cargo bubble—in the
middle of a two-hundred-bubble train—floating along a black canal.

Bonded, their contents—theoretically—inspected
and officially guaranteed, the bubbles floated through two checkpoints in as
many days without being opened.

Tom passed the time in isometric
exercise, used the gel-block sanitation with distaste, ate sparingly from the
food satchel Lochlen had given him.

And let his thoughts slowly
coalesce from the zentrope trance he had been trapped in for far too long.

On
the fourth night he drifted through another border, after which the tunnel
walls grew opalescent. Some ten hours later, at the start of morningshift, the
bubbles slowed.

It was his cue to disembark.

Up ahead, beneath armed guard,
stevedores were marshalling clawdrones, lifting cargo out. But there was a
subtle green mark upon the bank nearby, before a narrow exit; Tom climbed
swiftly ashore, spun into the darkened gap, waited for a shout or a burst of graser
fire.

Nothing.

He followed the dark horizontal
shaft, ducked through an opening at its far end, and came out into the middle
of a group of men, dressed in heavy workers’ surcoats stained with black grease
and worse.

They were chatting, and appeared
to take no notice of the stranger who suddenly stood in their midst. But Tom
was holding out a sigil which Lochlen had provided, and he was under no doubt
of their reaction had he failed to produce it.

No energy weapons were visible,
but each man bore heavy steel tools, and had the strength to use them.

‘This way,’ someone muttered, and
they began to walk.

Tom
stood at the top of a ramp which led down onto a wide platform, beneath a
square-edged archway decorated with dull gold. People were milling down there,
trying to get through; but membrane had been stretched across the archway’s
width, leaving just a narrow portal at the centre, through which mirrormasked
soldiers let people pass after checking authorization.

The tunnel beyond was hundreds of
metres wide; in it, a multitude of floating vehicles—lev-platforms, some
levanquins, half a dozen stub-winged flyers—massed in readiness, preparing to
take the escaping refugees.

Tom’s contacts, the heavyset men,
had provided him with a travel-tag, fastened a fake ID-stud in his ear, and
left him here.

Still, Tom could not see how so
few soldiers could control such a large crowd, liable to panic. Obviously,
there were rumours of the Blight’s spreading this way, and any freedman of
means would try to—

Chaos.

On either side, scarcely visible,
a slender monographite pillar rose. Each supported a small, transparent
platform; and on each one stood a Jack.

Tom’s skin crawled. He could not
imagine a threat so great that
two
Jacks were required.

Don’t worry...
Not wanting to call attention to
himself.

In their dark sleeveless
uniforms, the Jacks looked small from here. But their senses could detect Tom’s
fear pheromones, listen to his sub vocal mutterings as if he were talking aloud
...and could pick out any individual, even from this crowd of thousands.

A Jack had been hunting for the
Pilot, when Tom was young...