Storm Thief (11 page)

Some distance south of where Rail and Moa listened to the siren of the Null Spire, Finch had switched from hunter to hunted, and he wasn't happy about it.

He crouched in the rafters of a recently evacuated attic, a place of bare boards with a few pieces of rickety furniture lying about. The rain pattered on the roof, inches above his head. He held in one hand a long, serrated knife. His eyes were fixed on the hatch in the floor nearby, beyond which he could hear the sounds of movement. He was cornered, deserted by the other thieves who had run in different directions. Maybe they had been caught, maybe they had escaped. It didn't matter to him. All that mattered was that he got out of here. But his pursuers had corralled him expertly, driving him up and up until he had nowhere else to go.

He ran his tongue lightly over the tips of his sharp brown teeth. This would never have happened if it had been simple soldiers that they were dealing with. What were the Secret Police doing here?

He had thought it an easy game to catch Rail and Moa. Dragging that third person with them, a being of freakish size, they left a trail an amateur could follow. Whenever he was uncertain as to which direction they had gone, people remembered the stranger and set him on the right track again.

It should have been simple enough to find them. But now this. In following them to the gates of a Revenant district, he had somehow stumbled into a nest of Secret Police. One of his clumsier cronies had been spotted, and the men had given chase. But these were not fools that could be evaded with a few quick turns down the alleyways. The Secret Police were well-trained and dangerous, and try as he might he couldn't seem to shake them.

So here he was. Trapped. He knew they would search the attic, but at the moment they were not sure where he was. He guessed that there were only two of them down there. Two he might be able to handle, if he could take them on one at a time.

He listened. Clad all in black and with his straggly, thin blond hair hidden beneath a cowl, he was all but invisible in the shadows of the rafters. The men below didn't speak, but his ears were sharp and he could hear their careful tread as they walked room to room.

His pulse was barely up. He knew that being caught meant the end for him. Simply running from the Secret Police was enough to get him executed. The Protectorate didn't look kindly on those who chose not to cooperate with them. But even when the stakes were this high, it didn't excite him much. Fear wasn't something that he was particularly familiar with. He simply didn't care enough to be afraid, even when his own life was at stake. He had never been scared of dying.

He waited for that hatch to open, and as he waited he thought of Rail and Moa. With a wry twist of his lips he realized that he had underestimated them. Twice now they had got away from him. After their frankly impossible escape from their den, Finch had to ask himself: were they much better than he had given them credit for? Or was there more to the artefact they carried?

Anya-Jacana had confided in him about the artefact she had sent Rail and Moa to steal. He was always her favourite, her pet killer, even if he wasn't as loyal to her as he pretended. He stayed at her side because it was a good deal, but he had none of the fondness for her that she had for him. Perhaps she sensed that. Perhaps that was why she sent Rail and Moa instead of him, her right-hand boy. The Fade-Science artefact represented a fabulous amount of money, and maybe she had thought that letting Finch get his hands on it was just a little too dangerous.

But in the end, it was Rail and Moa who had cheated her. He was forced to respect them for that. She had hoped they would not recognize its true value, because the Thieves' Code demanded she would have to give them a cut. Even Anya-Jacana had rules to obey. But she had underestimated them as well.

The thief-mistress hadn't thought what the artefact might actually
do
, only what she could sell it for. As far as she knew, it was just an extremely valuable trinket. But Finch had got to wondering now.

He heard the footsteps halt at the bottom of the hatch. Then the soft creaking of someone ascending the stairs. He flexed his fingers around the grip of his knife.

Only two of them. He could do this.

 

Lysander Bane stood in the rain, lit on one side by the white arclights shining from the top of the wall, and looked into the darkness. Around him, his men were questioning the soldiers on duty. The soldiers shuffled nervously and answered as best they could. They were meek and cowed. They knew about the Secret Police; or at least, they knew what Bane
allowed
them to know. The siren of the Null Spire was disconcerting them further, and their gazes flicked to the sky in expectation of the coming storm.

The report had come through a short while ago, and Bane had decided to attend to it personally. The soldiers had been forced to tell their superiors how three figures had somehow got into a heavily guarded district and made off with valuable Protectorate equipment, and the report had reached Bane's ears through his spies. He wasn't interested in punishing the soldiers. All he cared about was the description of the winged flesh-and-metal thing that they gave. The golem had been sighted again.

Now he had talked to the soldiers, he had admit he was puzzled. First, why were they even going into a Revenant district at all? Second, how did they manage to get over or under the wall? And third, how did they manage to steal from the guardhouse when the only way in was watched over by eight soldiers?

There was more to this than he knew. The golem had fallen in with some very interesting company, it seemed.

But perhaps this one has the answer,
he thought, as he saw a prisoner being led towards him at gunpoint.

The boy they brought to him was a vile-looking thing. His eyes were sunken and dark. His cowl had been pulled back and revealed a head of blond hair so thin and patchy that he looked like he was suffering from a terminal illness. What little of it hadn't fallen out was plastered to his pale skull by the rain. And his teeth! Rotted fangs. A ghetto boy.

Bane regarded Finch without the slightest hint of emotion. There were still fresh bloodstains on his clothes that the downpour hadn't washed away.

“Gelver's dead, Chief,” muttered the man with his gun on the prisoner.

“Your handiwork?” he asked the boy.

Finch grinned horribly.

“I'm impressed,” he said. “You realize, though, that we will have to execute you now?”

“You want me to beg?” Finch said sarcastically.

Now Bane really was impressed. He was extremely good at reading a person's reactions, to know when they were lying, or secretly afraid. He had a nose for guilt. It had made him a such a success in the Secret Police that he eventually ended up leading them. But this boy was absolutely unconcerned. He had the flat eyes of a killer without a conscience.

Suddenly Bane found himself thinking of a better use for Finch.

“No,” he said. “I want to make you a deal.”

The probability storm sank drowsily down on to Territory West 190, and upon the three fleeing figures that ran through the empty streets.

Probability storms bore little relation to natural storms. They were not loud and furious, but soft and gentle and insidiously deadly. The alarm of the Null Spire was joined by other cries as the storm gathered. Strange coos and distant wails echoed through the cloud-wracked night. They sounded like the voices of alien things, or ghosts of the dead. Some said they were the calls of the Storm Thief's minions, combing the city in search of targets for their master. Protectorate scientists had another theory. Something to do with friction and particles, with atmosphere and pressure. Most people didn't understand it, but they trusted the Protectorate. It was better than believing that the cries were souls taken by the Revenants, or that beings from foreign dimensions were peering hungrily into Orokos through the windows of possibility that the storms provided.

The rain still fell, but the undersides of the cloud were streaked with colours now. The black sky raced with gentle blues and purples, a hint of yellow, a phantom green. Channels of light swayed and switched fitfully, changing direction like a shoal of fish or a flock of birds. It was an aurora borealis that covered the great island-city. Where the isolated mountains of Orokos rose, their spired tips almost scraped the underbelly of the storm; where Rail and Moa and Vago hurried through Revenant-infested alleyways, the brick and metal of the district was painted in bruise shades. Even beneath their feet, where tunnels and sewers ran, where whole communities lived without sight of the sky, the storm could be felt. For there was no protection against its influence, no place to hide that was safer than any other. If the storm chose to change you, you were changed.

After a time, the colours began to slip from the clouds, peeling away and drifting down in veils, draping themselves across the city like the tentacles of a poisonous jellyfish. They passed over the streets, sometimes sweeping delicately through the tips of the highest towers, sometimes licking deep into the stony heart of the city, far into the earth. Nothing obstructed them. They passed through stone and metal and flesh with equal ease. And whatever they touched might be altered, or might remain as it was. In the heart of the storm, creatures like the Mozgas were born, lives were lost and saved, grief and joy mixed and mingled. The veils fell silently on to entire districts, dragged in tatters across the streets, or hung like underwater fingers of seaweed, waving with some ghostly motion. And as the spectral cries echoed across the rainy night, the Storm Thief went about his work.

Rail was trembling, and not from the chill of his soaked clothes or fear of the Revenants. He and Moa were pressed against a wall as Vago peered around the corner. Beyond was a street where shop fronts stood hollowed-out and abandoned, their signs swaying and creaking, battered by the downpour. Moa had noticed that Rail was shaking – of course she had noticed, she knew him to the bone – but she pretended that she hadn't. He didn't want comfort from her; it would make him feel weak. He was supposed to be the one that protected her. He was ashamed to be afraid of the storm.

But all Rail could think about was that terrifying time when he hadn't been able to draw breath, when he lay on the verge of dying because his lungs would not work the way they should. A storm had done that to him. And no matter how Moa persuaded him that probability storms brought good things as well as bad, he could never forget what had happened. He could never forget what had made him the way he was: the mask on his face, the power pack embedded between his shoulderblades. He had been a good-looking boy, and the storm had turned him ugly, obscured his features with the black metal muzzle of a respirator. He hated the storms, and he hated being at their mercy. He believed he could change anything he wanted with enough will and effort, but he still couldn't resist the touch of the Storm Thief.

“It's safe,” Vago murmured, and they ran. Around the corner, skirting close to the shop fronts, trying to stay in the shadows cast by the glow from the sky. The night was alive with noises of movement. There were Taken nearby; perhaps in the next street, perhaps waiting in the darkness of the empty shops. Rail and Moa were constantly looking about, wary of attack. He had the aether cannon affixed to his forearm, taking strength from the weapon. Their glimmer visors shone faintly in the night.

They came to the end of the street and the district fell away before them, opening out. At their feet was a wide set of metal steps that led down into a large square, set lower than they were. The square was surrounded by terraces with tall, shuttered windows and coiled-iron balconies. In the centre was a many-layered fountain, where water flooded over sculpted fish and whales and monstrous, half-mythical creatures of the sea. Ahead of them, they could see great ribbons of colour descending from the livid sky and touching the city, swaying slowly as they tracked across the distant buildings.

Conscious of being exposed, Vago darted into a sunken trench that ran across the front of the nearest building, a kind of ornamental moat. Rail and Moa followed. From their vantage point, they could see across the square. Nothing stirred.

“I think it's clear,” Moa murmured as she looked out. Then she felt Rail go rigid next to her, and she followed his eyes upward.

A thick streamer of gauzy blue slid into view above them, coming from behind, looming over the square. And dragging behind it, gliding through the buildings, was its coloured tail. Moa let out a cry and shut her eyes in terror, for it was too late to get out of the way. The streamer slid from the building behind, a vast swathe of turquoise, and passed through them.

The moment was too fast to really feel it. It was swift as an eyeblink, a dislocation, where everything seemed suddenly
wrong
and they were a fraction out of step with the pulse of the universe. Then, the aftermath: their nerves fizzing, an unpleasantly tinny sensation. They had been scoured through by chaos. The streamer was sweeping away down the steps towards the square.

Moa gasped. She hadn't realized she had been holding her breath. Then she was on Rail, grabbing him to make sure he was still there, searching his face and demanding: “Are you all right? Are you all right?”

But even he couldn't tell. Maybe one of them had just contracted a fatal disease. Maybe a cancer had been born in their stomachs. Maybe they had just gained the power to heal with a kiss. Maybe somebody's kidneys had turned to glass.

He sobbed once and hugged her, biting back the tears of fright. She felt something knot hard in her chest as she clutched him close. The two of them huddled together in the stone trench overlooking the square. One sob was all he gave, but that was enough. He almost never cried. He had been brought up to know that tears did no good. The fact that he was distressed enough to let Moa hold him – Moa, who trusted her whole life to chance and didn't fear the storms as he did – was an indication of how badly shocked and shaken he was.

Moa closed her eyes, felt his heart slow to match hers. She could have stayed like that a long time, if Vago hadn't said: “Something is happening.”

She turned her head to him, and caught him gazing intently at her. The golem looked away with a guilty speed, back to the square. She studied him a moment longer. There was something here that she should know, something in the way he reacted. But then she saw what Vago had been referring to, and she forgot everything else.

The streamer that had swept through them had passed on across the square, and was now melting into the buildings on the far side. In its path it had left three patches of brightness, shapes that dazzled without shining, like the after-image of the sun. It was as if a layer of the world had been scraped away, a worn patch in reality. Within, shapes thickened, becoming more and more defined. Rail pulled himself away from Moa, suddenly embarrassed to look at her. He stared at the shapes as they took form. He knew what they were long before they had fully solidified. He recognized them from pictures, the upside-down triangle of the manta-ray wings, the small head and mothlike body, the slender tentacles.

They were watching Revenants being born.

Moa had barely had time to recover from the touch of the storm. This sight, on top of everything else, was almost too much. She felt tears spring to her eyes behind her visor.

Beautiful
, she thought.
Beautiful
.

She had never observed a Revenant in its natural state before, for she had never had a glimmer visor with which to see them. Now that she did, she could understand why the followers of the Ghost Path saw fit to worship them. They were breathtaking. It would be easy to be mesmerized by these beings of sparkling energy as they moved with lazy elegance in the air. She watched as they coiled and looped around each other, flapping their wings, testing themselves like infants. Though they represented a fate worse than death to humans, Moa couldn't help being awed by them.

Even in a city that had been so cruel to her, so dark and cheerless, even here there was beauty to be found. Even their most feared enemies could be wonderful. She glanced at the seabird hanging round Vago's neck, and it awoke all kinds of dreams in her heart. If there was such magic in a hard, cold place like Orokos, what might the world outside hold for her? What if there really was another land, out there? A land where everything was different?

Maybe Rail didn't believe, but she did. After all, wasn't Orokos built on possibilities?

Rail hefted the cannon, all trace of his previous weakness forgotten. “I'm thinking we should take another way around.”

“Where are we going?” Vago asked.

“North. To the canal. I can find the way from there.”

“You're sure?”

“Course I'm sure. Come on.”

The three of them slipped away, out of the trench and back the way they had come. Moa followed unquestioningly, Vago with obvious misgivings. He didn't have Moa's blind faith in Rail, but he trusted her. She had been kind to him, defended him against the boy more than once. He didn't like the boy at all. She was a different matter.

Rail was oblivious: he was too busy looking out for signs of movement. He kept one eye on the sweeping veils of the probability storm in case they should threaten him with their dreadful touch again. His skin crawled with shame at the way he had humiliated himself in front of Moa. Even now he wasn't certain that he had escaped unscathed. Perhaps he had been rendered sterile and would not find out for years. The thought of what terrible things might have been done to them lay in his mind like dark threads of poison. He forced himself to think only about the immediate future. About escape.

He was beginning to regret taking them into a Revenant Territory at all. Maybe he had been hasty. Maybe he could have shaken off their pursuers some other way. Too late now. Too frecking late.

But what was worse was this: now they were in, he wasn't entirely sure how he was going to get them out. The secret route he knew was hearsay, passed on by another thief a long while ago. He had a good memory for rumour, storing little titbits of information away until the day when they might come in useful. But even if the secret route really existed at all – and Rail wasn't certain – then it might have moved by now.

There was a backup plan, of course. With the artefact Moa carried, they could slip out through the wall again. But the soldiers were on the alert now, and he didn't much rate their chances of making it there unseen. To get to where they were going, they would have to cross the whole district above ground, and that was desperately risky.

He wondered how Moa would feel if she knew how slipshod his plans were. It was far from the first time he had got them into something with no clear idea of how to get out of it. More than once he had been saved by chance. But the art was to make it all seem intentional, to always appear confident. He valued her trust more than anything, and she needed to believe he knew what he was doing.

And so he led them, never letting the doubt show. Through the rain and the unnatural storm, along narrow passageways, down steep steps.

They had almost made it to the canal when one of the Taken spotted them.