Nieve (17 page)

Lias smiled gamely, or tried to. The presence of so many bodies gave him the jitters. She wasn't overly thrilled herself, but they were safe for the time being. Someone, or several someones, already alerted by Warlock, might be waiting to nab them when the elevator arrived at its underground destination.

Lower lower
lower
level . . . it finally bumped to a stop and the doors slid open.

They heard voices, but some distance away.

Nieve peeked out and saw two figures dressed in black, one tall and the other very short, walking briskly along a corridor, heading in their direction. The tall one was speaking curtly and at length to the other, neither paying much attention to what lay ahead.

“Quick,” said Nieve.

About a dozen gurneys were assembled in the hall, empty ones with sheets tossed onto them in crumpled piles. They slipped out of the elevator and wedged themselves behind one at the very back. Nieve tugged at the corner of a sheet that was hanging down, pulling it over them for better cover. With any luck the men would pass them by or take the elevator up.

They did neither, coming instead to an abrupt stop in front of the empty gurneys.

Peeking out at them, Nieve saw that the short one was a deiler, the features on his murky face oddly twisted and misaligned, nose pulled one way, mouth and eyes the other. The other deilers she'd seen were by no means beauties, but their faces weren't contorted like this. It made him easily recognizable. He was the one who had stared at her, cold-eyed, from the back seat of the ambulance during Mayor Mary's abduction. The tall man, she recognized as well. It was that administrator, the man in the black suit who had been arguing with Julie in Malcolm's room. Seeing him again, it occurred to Nieve that she should have taken a look at the bodies while riding in the elevator. Mary herself might have been among them, or Frances, or Malcolm! A frightening thought, but still, she needed to know.

“Can't be done, Murdeth,” the deiler was saying, his voice low and gravelly. “The factories aren't ready yet. Twisden's too distracted.”

“I'll speak with that hag he's to marry. What's her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Have her brought down. This can't go on, the warehouses are full to bursting. See here, Lirk, another batch
has
arrived, as I predicted.” Murdeth indicated the gurneys in the open elevator, then frowned. “Where's the porter who's supposed to be managing this material?”

Lirk opened his twisted mouth to answer, but snapped it shut as a second elevator rattled to a stop. When the door slid open, Warlock jumped out. The deilers who were with him hung back, much less eager to leave the elevator once they saw who was standing outside.

“Ah, a dogsbody,” said Murdeth. “Not as useful as a real dog and not half as smart, but you'll do in a pinch.”

“That girl, did she–?” Warlock blurted.

“No idea.
Would
you like a pinch?” Murdeth rubbed his long forefinger and thumb together in a cooly menacing way that made Lirk wince.

“I'm looking for–”

“Trouble?”

“Yes, she's . . . I mean,
no
, I'm–”

“Enough dithering!” The nasty smile on Murdeth's thin lips vanished. “One more escaped patient isn't going to be the end of us. We'll catch her, we'll catch them all. What might be the end of us, end of
you
more specifically, is if we displease the Impress. We don't want to give her a headache, do we? I suggest you get this elevator unloaded and the cargo moved down to my office for sorting,
pronto.
” He turned on his heel and marched away. “Lirk, come with me.”

Lirk gave a nod to the other deilers and moved away, although he took his time in catching up with Murdeth.

“You heard the sawbones,” Warlock growled. “Get to work!” He sauntered casually back into the elevator, but his lips were tightly pursed and his face a blotchy red.

When the door closed, the deilers laughed, a seething snicker that sounded like someone shaking sand in a box.

While they were unloading the elevator and wheeling the gurneys away, Nieve nudged Lias and pointed in the opposite direction. With all the deilers headed toward Murdeth's office, they could make a break for it and find a better place to hide until things quieted down.

This plan might have worked if several deilers hadn't remained behind in order to push the empty gurneys back onto the elevator. Impossible to sneak away without getting caught. The thought of all those sharp little teeth made Nieve uneasy. Another blasting would help, but fierce-eye only worked sometimes, usually when she was furious. At the moment she was more nervous than anything. But she was also determined.

She nudged Lias again and pointed to the gurney itself. He returned an appalled look, but reluctantly nodded. Waiting for a moment when the backs of the deilers were turned, both crept quietly up, each onto one of the gurneys, then quickly covered themselves with the sheets, while leaving them rumpled enough for the gurneys to appear unoccupied.

If
this
plan had worked, they soon might have found themselves back upstairs, possibly in an unguarded storeroom.

But . . . by the time the deilers got to the last two gurneys, one said, “Huh, bulky these.” He gave one of the sheets a thump with his tough little hand. It was all Nieve could do not to grunt from the hit. “What's this? Some
glaik
'
s
forgotten to dump the body. This one, too.” Lias got a sharp rap on the head.

“Lirk?”

“'Spect so.”

“Better take'em down,” another rasped. “Don't want Lirk gettin' another
pinch
, eh.”

As the gurneys rumbled along, Nieve lay absolutely still, playing dead, a game she really
really
didn't want to play.

–Twenty–
Last Office

W
hen they wheeled Nieve into Murdeth's office, a chill slipped over her like an extra sheet, one that offered no comfort whatsoever. The room was super-cold, refrigerator cold, and she feared she might start shivering and give herself away. Unless the thought that she was entering a morgue didn't unnerve her first.

“Over here.” The deiler who was pushing her gurney kept his voice low. “With this bunch.”

“Good enough,” said the other, docking Lias' gurney alongside hers. “Slabface won't know the difference.”

“Hush, don't want to be wearin'
your
face back to front, eh.”

The other gave a grunt, followed by one of those strange seething laughs, then they scuffled away.

Was she in a morgue? One quick look would settle the matter, but she didn't dare stir, not yet. For the moment, she concentrated on keeping absolutely still and warming herself up by imagining a blazing summer sun beating down. Whispering a word or two to Lias was also out. She'd have to play it by ear, figure out what to do once she had a better idea of what sort of fix they were in. In the meantime,
the sun,
blazing . . .

“Lirk, have you been fiddling with the temperature?” she heard Murdeth say. “It's gotten wretchedly hot in here.”

“Nay.”

A change in the temperature? It was freezing! The man was totally insensitive. She switched her attention to them. From the sound of their voices, Nieve judged that she was situated in the centre of a large room. It was a relief to discover that they weren't too near.

“Get these sorted then. Lumber at the far end, we'll have to stack them, no choice, and changelings by my desk, ready for realignment and shipping. Recognizable troublemakers off to Bone House, as usual. And Lirk, no funny business. I haven't lost my touch, you know.”

Lirk said nothing, and presumably got straight to work.

What exactly that work
was
, Nieve couldn't guess. Nothing she'd heard made sense (outside of Murdeth's threat, which was clear enough). But . . . lumber? Changelings?
Bone
House? All she could hear were swishing and rattling noises. If she didn't look she'd never find out – or find out too late.

Tentatively, she raised the sheet and peeked out. What she saw were bodies, also on gurneys, row after row of them, a staggering number. The room itself was cavernous, but it wasn't a morgue, not a hospital morgue, because it was too cluttered and dirty . . . and far too weird. Amid drifts of hair on the floor, entangled with butcher's string and skeins of dust, were stained piles of hospital gowns, balled-up paper bags, toppled rubber boots, drifting feathers, and loose hanks of fur. Inching the sheet up, she took in more of it. Archaic instruments dangled from the ceiling – heavy iron tools, lead bodysuits encrusted with spikes, axes, scythes, shackles, thumbscrews. The shelves on one wall were filled with skulls in a range of sizes, small to extra-large, and on another, as neatly arranged as preserves in a pantry, were jars crammed full of ears and fingers and teeth. Thick rusted chains and fat coils of rope were piled on the floor, and in one corner stood a cluster of wide-mouthed buckets, all filled to the brim with a greasy unidentifiable substance out of which spiraled coils of smoke.

A skinny rat poked its nose out from between one of these buckets, then fled under the nearest gurney in a swift, skittering motion.

The rat was the least alarming thing she'd seen so far. A real morgue would have been far less terrifying.

Murdeth stood beside a massive stone block at the far end of the room, his desk presumably, for on it rested a tall stack of paper, a pile of musty old books, a black rotary-dial telephone, and a stuffed crocodile. Beside the desk, sat the shopping cart full of babies that they had seen earlier. Nieve watched as he reached in and yanked one out roughly, as if he were grabbing a sack of potatoes. Holding the baby in one long-fingered hand, he began poking at it with the other. He twisted its nose, pinched its cheeks, tugged at its ears. He was treating it as if it were a machine that needed adjusting, or a hunk of unmolded plasticine.

Stop it!

Murdeth paused, then dropped the baby, as if it had given him an electric shock. It bounced off the desk and tumbled to the floor, where it landed on a pillowy mound of oily rags. He looked at his hands in surprise, then glared at the baby. Nudging it with the toe of his shoe, he sneered, “A
born
troublemaker.” He snapped his fingers at Lirk. “Get rid of it.”

As Lirk hurried over, Murdeth turned his back and snatched up the phone. Lirk tucked the baby under his arm and carried it off through an archway to another part of the room obscured to Nieve. When he returned, he resumed his duties, which involved pulling sheets off the bodies, giving them a quick once-over, then hauling them off and dumping them onto piles of other bodies of similar shape and size.

The spectacle was appalling enough without realizing that Lirk was working his way steadily toward them.

“Nieve.”

Lias, behind her, gave her gurney a tug. While she'd been surveying the room, he'd been silently – and invisibly – active.

“I'm using the fern seed again,” he whispered. “When Lirk's not looking, I'll move you closer to the door. Tell you when we're near enough to make a break for it.”

“A word with her, yes, and make it snappy, will you.” Murdeth had the phone's receiver clamped fast against his ear. “The situation here is intolerable, absolute stacks of them. The sooner they're fully processed the better. Human resources, I ask you, more trouble than they're worth! Additionally, I require another order of that serum from Wormius and Ashe, most of the so-called doctors in this institution don't know what . . . what?
What
was that you said?”

“Now,” said Lias.

Lirk was struggling with a tubby body four times his size, grunting as he wrestled it onto a pile of equally tubby ones.

Nieve let the sheet fall back over her face and lay rigid while Lias pulled the gurney toward the door, creeping along as he piloted them through the crowded room. She itched to make a run for it, although knew that the longer they remained undiscovered the better.

Murdeth slammed the receiver down and Lias immediately stopped.

“Lirk,” Murdeth growled. “Apparently that filthy little megrim is on the loose. I'd better notify the Impress. I want every new arrival here checked at once. You hear me,
right
now.
”