Gears of the City (32 page)

“I don’t know.” He wasn’t inclined to explain anything for free; he still wanted Brace-Bel’s help. Besides, he didn’t know the answer.

“What kind of place
is
our city?”

“I don’t know, Brace-Bel. This is how things are.” There were theories out there, among the travelers, among Arjun’s peers—but those men were all mad.

“What kind of thing is the Mountain, to be at the heart of all this?”

“I don’t know, Brace-Bel.”

There were theories—in the laboratories in Zubiri they spoke of the Mountain as a
singularity
, a weight around which the possibilities of the city revolved. In the bloody war shrines of the Red Moon they said that the Mountain was the home of the cruel Gods of the city, the one unconquerable place in the world, the ultimate challenge. In Huiringa, and Slew, and on Crabbe’s Lake, they said that the city was built by the Gods, that it blazed and sparked with their energies, and the Mountain was the black cold slag-heap of the wastes the great work left behind—but Crabbe’s Lake and Slew and Huiringa were Ages of heavy industry, and that was just how they saw the world. In Pyx they thought the Mountain was the graveyard where Gods went to die.

In the bars where the madmen and seers who’d Broken Through gathered, the rumor was that it was a kind of machine—
the maker and unmaker of the city. The engine of time and possibility. The prison, the fountain of Gods. The most coveted weapon in the world. St. Loup sometimes said it was a palace, and smiled his handsome smile over the prospect of its harems and its women. Abra-Melin and Ashmole believed it was a kind of vast alchemical crucible. One by one those madmen got greedy, went looking for the way up, and never came back …

Arjun had heard a hundred theories. He didn’t know what to believe. He had no head for science or theory. They didn’t seem worth discussing with Brace-Bel.

“How do you do it?” Brace-Bel said. “How do you know where you’re going?”

“I don’t know, exactly. There’s an art to it.”

“I remember how I followed Shay through these secret paths. To follow
again
, helpless and lost—it would offend my dignity if I had any left. You begin to remind me of him, Arjun.”

Arjun stopped short in the street. He turned to Brace-Bel, and nearly hit him. A horrible comparison! There was a smug light in Brace-Bel’s eyes; he had meant to provoke.

Arjun breathed deeply. He calmed himself. “When we’re done, Brace-Bel, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I’ll show you whatever you want.”

“But for now you must keep secrets, make demands?”

“For now I need you.”

Arjun’s nerves were fraying. Events in the Low sisters’ city were proceeding without him. He might arrive only to find that their Time was done, their history already written. Something was wrong with their world. Some awful mean-spirited pressure weighed down on it, stifling all hopeful possibilities. Who ruled their city?

He went north, and the Mountain loomed closer and closer, cold and bitter, and his mood darkened.

Maury

Maury went down into the depths of the Museum—again. He couldn’t sleep. His back ached dreadfully—all day he’d been out there in the Square, come sun, come rain, overseeing the destruction. Jangling his keys. His hand was stiff from swinging that
bloody hammer. Was it night outside? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been sleeping right for days. His head buzzed with grey panic. The Museum was full of empty spaces, the rooms were yawning voids full of spinning dust, the walls bore the ghost-marks of the paintings that had been torn down and burned. Not long now. Not much longer. Soon there would be nothing left, and he wouldn’t be able to stall the death of the Beast any longer. It would die, and he would never know what it had been, what secrets it hid. He felt close to panic.

Down into the basements and the red-brick corridor; the swaying glow of his lantern illuminated scenes of devastation, emptiness—when the Know-Nothings dragged things out, they weren’t gentle or careful. The flagstones were littered with fragments: broken glass, torn-off doorknobs, stone fingers snapped off statues, stone hands in gestures of benediction. Dials, gears, levers, antennae …

There were voices coming from the Beast’s room.

Fucking hell. Was
that
the creature’s voice? Was that what it sounded like? That hissing, scraping sound—like knives clashing together. Like jammed gears. Like bones breaking. That
echo …

He stopped still in the corridor. He leaned against the wall. His heart beat madly. That voice—nothing human could speak in that voice.

What was it saying? He couldn’t make out the words.

There was a second voice—a woman’s voice.

He crept closer.

It was Ivy Low. What was she doing there?

He heard the monster’s voice saying something about its
cruel father
, about
laboratories
, about the
unstitching
, about
the Hollow Men.

He heard the woman ask it something about the Mountain.

He heard the word
Shay.
The monster pronounced it like a curse, and the woman laughed. Was it a name or a place?

The creature said:
Will you kill him? Do we have a deal?

Maury’s skin crawled with gooseflesh. All of Maury’s long and distinguished career … All those years tormenting scared, helpless little ghosts … He’d never been so close to anything so uncanny, so dreadful. It was
speaking.
The things it might tell him!

What are you?

How are you possible?

Who runs this city? All these years, who have I been working for?

The door was ajar. He threw it open.

Ivy turned to look at him. She sighed. “Inspector Maury.”

She sat on an upturned bucket next to the cage.

The thing in the cage was still and silent. It appeared to be asleep. The light of Maury’s lantern picked out its scars and stitches.

Suddenly Maury couldn’t think what to say. The creature looked like a dumb animal again—no more miraculous than a sleeping sow in a filthy pen.

He rounded on the woman. “What the fuck are you doing here? Who let you out of your cell?”

She didn’t flinch. She stood up and walked toward him, and he deflated a little further.

“Mr. Wantyard,” she said. “He’s a very kind man. He seems quite taken with me.”

“What? Wantyard?”

“Your boss, isn’t he?” She smiled. “I told him I wanted a bit of a walk, and here I am.”

She shivered. “It’s cold down here, and this thing’s boring. Come on, Maury, you can escort me back to my cell.”

On the way back upstairs Maury realized that she’d had no light of her own; she’d been talking to the thing in the dark.

“Good night, Inspector.” She stepped into the room that was supposed to be her cell. She sat by the window, in the moonlight. “Good
night
, Inspector.”

He had too many questions and he didn’t know how to begin. She scared him—that was the fact of the matter.
Tomorrow
, he told himself;
tomorrow, when it’s light, we’ll have a few fucking words, her and me.
He went in search of a stiff drink.

Ruth

Ruth walked Mrs. Rawley home after the meeting, through a cold rain, under the moonlight. The old widow was terribly fat, and she had a bad leg; she wheezed with every step over Carnyx Street’s wet cobbles. “You’re a good girl,” she said. “Very kind.” A factory over toward 120 vented steam and grit, and the sour smell of dust. “Streets aren’t safe these days.” There was a storm brewing over the
Mountain, and distant lightning nickered in the night. Rawley swigged whiskey from a hip-flask and cursed. The only thing she feared more than ghosts were the Know-Nothings who were supposed to protect against them; she was drunk, and lonely, and full of vague fears.

She slipped on a drift of wet leaves and nearly pulled Ruth down with her. She sat there cursing and laughing. Ruth sat cross-legged beside her. Her skirts quickly soaked with foul water, and she shivered.

“You’re a good girl, Ruth. Strange, mind.” Rawley sighed. “Forget about that thing. Nothing we can do about it now. Keep chasing after that sort ofthing and you’ll end up like your father.”

Ruth stiffened. Rawley shook her head, mumbling,
oh, sorry, sorry dear, I didn’t mean to say that, it’s the drink …

“I want to talk to the Black Masks, Mrs. Rawley.”

The old woman shut her mouth. A shrewd expression crossed her face. “What would I know about that?”

The Black Masks—like the Know-Nothings, they were everywhere in the city, from the slopes of the Mountain south to the unimaginable borders. Like the Know-Nothings, they had their badges, their rituals, their meeting places, their secrets and schemes. Like the Know-Nothings, they were something to do in the cold evenings. In ordinary times Ruth didn’t think much of any of them—they were all stupid boys.

Unlike the Know-Nothings, they operated from hiding, in masks, under false names.

They said they stood for the workers. They said they stood for freedom. Every so often they shot an executive, or kidnapped an executive’s wife. Sometimes they blew things up—factories, warehouses, Chapterhouses, executives’ motorcars. Their weapons were the suspiciously laden horse-drawn wagon, left inconspicuously beside Company buildings, stuffed with stolen dynamite and iron scrap; the letter bomb, wrapped in pamphlets; the sniper rifle.

They had no demands. If they had any particular goals, Ruth didn’t know what they were. They’d been around for decades, and they never seemed to accomplish anything much. She’d heard that they were spies and saboteurs for the Mountain; she’d heard that they had leaders down south, in a zone where the Combines held no sway. More likely, she thought, they had no real leaders at all.

Ruth thought of them as a kind of escape valve. When the grinding pressure of the city got too great, it was time for the lads to put on the Masks, and go start a fire; and the great machine kept rolling …

In ordinary circumstances, she thought they were useless at best, and maybe dangerous. But this was an emergency. For the first time in her life she was almost desperate and frustrated enough to put on the Mask herself.

Ruth knew, because Marta knew, because Rawley had blurted it out once, drunk and drowsy with medicine, that Rawley’s younger son, who worked by day shifting cargo at the Terminal, was a Masker.

“The Masks,” Ruth said. “If we’re going to get anything done, we need someone who’s not scared of a little—you know.”

Rawley shook her head. “Who says I know anything about the Masks?”

The Mountain loomed. A harsh rain was blowing down.

“Your son, Mrs. Rawley. Henry—I know.”

Mrs. Rawley was silent for a moment.

“This city isn’t right, Ruth,” she said. “It’s all broken.”

“I know.”

“It’s hard on families—
you
know that.”

“Tell Henry I need to talk to the Masks, Mrs. Rawley.”

“All right, Ruth. All right. You’re a good girl to care. Help me stand, will you?”

Arjun

In Cendylon Arjun met an old acquaintance. The waters below bloomed with rust-flowers; the iron bridges were twined with ivy and magnolia; the domes above them were copper-green and the torchlight golden; in the fragrant and lazy air the Mountain was the deep green of something sunk beneath tropical waters. As they passed by the flowered archway of the Traitors’ Garden, where spectators and tourists watched the condemned men hang and writhe in the embrace of strangling vines, a man stepped out of the gloating crowd and called, “Arjun!”

It was St. Loup. Arjun recognized the man at once, and tensed.

“Ready your weapons, Brace-Bel,” Arjun whispered. Then he smiled and shook St. Loup’s hand.

St. Loup’s smile, as always, was dazzling. At the moment it seemed he wore long and snakeskin-colored robes, like the locals. When he could be bothered to use it, St. Loup had a gift for looking as if he belonged. His glasses were round, gold-rimmed, and bright; his long blond hair, oiled and elegant. He was a little older than he’d been when Arjun saw him last—there were the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes, a certain hardening of the skin.

“How long has it been, Arjun? Since the Hotel? Since the
Annihilatori
Were you there at that Coven in … ? May I ask who your friend is? Is he new to our peculiar brotherhood? Shall we have a drink? Oh come on.”

In a half-lit underground bar they drank pungent aniseed liqueur out of tiny brass cups. Not the bar St. Loup first suggested—Arjun insisted on choosing the spot. St. Loup was charming but he was not above the use of poison.

“How goes the search for your God?”

“Not well, St. Loup. And your own search … ?”

“Sad, sad; no happy news.”

St. Loup—who was he? Who had he been before he’d Broken Through to the City Beyond? It was impossible to be sure and it hardly mattered. At various times he had told Arjun that in his former life he’d been a prince, or a university instructor, or a prisoner in a mental institution; once he’d claimed to have lived in a part of the city full of tall buildings and motorcars and television advertisements, and worked in investment banking. One day he’d walked through a crowded department store and stepped between two bright mirrors, and in each mirror, over the heads of the surging and squabbling crowd he’d seen the face of the most beautiful woman in the world, walking away, left and right, and into a maze of gold-lit reflections. And he’d followed; and he’d followed her ever since, and never found her. Sometimes he said that she was a Queen, and she must be on her throne, on the Mountain, in the perfect golden light of the upper air; sometimes he said that she was too beautiful to be allowed to walk the streets freely, and that she must be held a prisoner in the harems of the Mountain’s rulers, and it was his desperate dream to steal her away …

Was any of that true? Probably not. St. Loup never seemed much of a romantic. At other times he’d claimed to be searching for the secret of eternal youth, or for money. Once—with the air of a man confessing to a shameful secret—he’d told Arjun that he’d been lying on the dirty bed of an anonymous hotel and dying by his own hand of an overdose of pain medications, when the old man Shay had come to sit by his bedside, and had made him an offer …