The Abyss Beyond Dreams (35 page)

‘I have a friend . . .’

He was slightly worried at the way her shell tightened, allowing no shade of emotion to show. Whatever she felt, she wasn’t prepared to share. ‘Go on.’

‘Had a friend, I suppose. We were young, and we came to Varlan together. Usual stupid story: we thought a life here was rich and exciting. Which it is when you’re young. Then I
learned it wasn’t, not really. It took a while for me to realize that. It took the First Officer to make me see it.’

‘Aothori?’ he asked in surprise. ‘You know him?’

‘My friend did. A landowner from the south took her to the palace one night. She didn’t want to go, but she had problems in her life.’

‘Problems?’ Slvasta queried; he didn’t like to, it was obvious that talking about this was tough for her.

‘Narnik,’ she said resentfully. ‘What else? So she wasn’t in a position to say no. When she got there, Aothori enjoyed how vulnerable she was. Thankfully he gets bored
quickly, which was probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to her. Too long with him, and . . . well. You’ve heard the rumours about him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They’re all true, and that’s not the half of it. He’s evil, Slvasta. Really, truly, evil. If they ever cut him open, I wouldn’t be surprised if he bled
blue.’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘Oh Giu, yes. I want him gone. Dead even. It’s the Captaincy that allows people like him to do whatever they want, to ruin lives. They rule the world for their own pleasure and
profit, and it’s wrong. The day they and all their kind are brought down will be the happiest day of my life. So now you know – that’s what drives me.’

‘You’re not alone there. And your friend? The one who knew the First Officer? What of her?’

‘Gone away somewhere,’ she said with a sad sigh. ‘I suppose you have to know at some time.’

‘Know what?’ he asked in sympathy, thinking he could guess what was about to be said.

‘It wasn’t just my friend who used to do narnik.’

‘We all did,’ he said, a little too cheerily.

‘No, Slvasta, I had a real problem. It just took over. But I’ve been clean for a couple of years now. I’m never going back to that, not ever. It’s a dark place, and you
don’t see it, not from the inside. And before you know it, the dark closes in and covers you. It’s like being buried alive, and the only way out is another wad. That’s when you
think you can see the light again. But it’s not light, not really. It’s just the narnik lifting you, fooling you.’

He reached over the table and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry. But you’re clean now? That’s good.’

‘Yes. It was Coulan; he found me. He helped me see how bad I was. He helped me kick it. There’s not many people manage that, not when they’re as far gone as I was. But he knew
what to do, how to help me. It was amazing, building up my self-esteem again. I owe him a lot. Everything, actually. He was so sweet, so generous. He didn’t have to do it, to help a stranger,
but he did because that’s the kind of person he is.’

Just for a moment Slvasta could sense some of her memories, a few hazy images rich with emotion. He was proud of the way he kept hold of her hand. ‘You and him, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s over. It has been for a long time. He’s with Javier now.’

‘We’ve all got a past in that respect,’ he assured her.

‘I know. But I’m still friends with him. Slvasta, I really hope that doesn’t bother you. It’s not in my nature to turn my back on someone who was so important to me.
Without him . . . I don’t know where I’d be now. Dead, possibly, or just another house girl down at the bad end of Gamstak district.’

‘But you’re neither of these things. And I’m very grateful to him for that.’

‘Really?’ Her hand tightened on his.

‘Yes. Whatever you’ve been through, it made you what you are today. And that’s a very special person, Bethaneve. One I’m pleased I know.’

‘You’re so sweet. I can’t believe you do the job you do.’ She leaned over and kissed him. They’d kissed before – pleasant end-of-the-evening kisses when
teekay strokes became playfully naughty – but not like this, not with this hunger. His shell immediately tightened round his thoughts, preventing anyone’s ex-sight from sensing them
directly. Nothing he could do about the other café customers’ eyesight, though.

They moved apart, sharing the same knowing smile. It gave Slvasta real hope for the future for the first time since Ingmar’s death.

It was the following Thursday when the news reached Varlan. It must have come in by special messenger to the palace some time during the night, the kind of news the Captain and
his Council kept quiet about until the official gazettes could print clever sanitized reports that minimized the level of damage.

But when Slvasta walked into Rose’s Croissant Café, he knew something was wrong. Even the regulars were giving him disapproving stares, and the unguarded thoughts his uniform
kindled in some were downright hostile.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked Rose when she came over to take his order.

‘You pay them no heed, captain,’ she said, her voice growing loud enough to carry across the café. ‘Everybody here knows you’re from the Cham regiment, and they do
all right by their county. You’re not like those others.’

‘Other what?’

‘You might want to look at the
Hilltop Eye
.’

When she’d taken his order, Slvasta used his teekay to pluck the
Hilltop Eye
from the rack beside the door. The pamphlet was easy enough to find; the rack was stuffed full of them
that morning. It slid through the air above the heads of everyone sitting at their table.

He was slightly surprised to see it was a new one; normally the pamphlet was printed every month or so, and the last one had come out barely five days ago. Also, this was just a single sheet.
‘NEST UNCOVERED’ was printed in bold across the top. With a growing sense of dismay he read down the report. Wurzen, the southernmost town in Rakwesh province, had discovered a nest.
All the Fallers had been killed by sheriffs and regimental reservists from the town. No thanks to the authorities.

The nest had taken over the Lanichie family, some local landowners who had a grand townhouse. How long they’d managed to carry off the charade was unknown. Rumours had been rife for years
– true, Slvasta knew, he’d seen classified reports of suspicions from the Wurzen sheriff’s office – but one of the Lanichie daughters was married to the Captain’s
district governor; the county regiment’s commander was a cousin. The family employed hundreds of people in its estates, and half the businesses in the county depended on its patronage.
Official reports into the disappeared, and qualms about the increasingly reclusive occupants of the townhouse with its strangely persistent fuzzing, had been quashed for years.

Two days ago, at one o’clock in the morning, a drunk group of sailors had waylaid a covered cart trundling quietly through the town. It had a brewery logo on the side, and they were hoping
to help themselves to some barrels. What they found was two eggs. The Faller who drove it made a desperate dash for the Lanichie townhouse, with the rapidly sobering sailors in hot pursuit.

A ’pathed alarm surged through the town, and a mob emerged. Every mod-animal in Wurzen went wild, attacking the entire human population.

‘I knew it!’ Slvasta exclaimed out loud as he read that part.

But fear and anger had taken hold now, and the mods were swiftly killed by teekay assault, physical battery and pistol shot. Sheriffs and reservists, who had weapons, led the charge against the
townhouse. What they found inside, after they killed the Fallers, was what everyone imagined Uracus itself would be like. Human bones, gnawed clean, filled every room. Initial estimates were that
over three hundred people had been eaten.

The Wurzen nest was an atrocity on a scale nobody had even conceived of before. And it had all been brushed aside and kept quiet because the Lanichie family was of good stature –
landowners, aristocracy, rich. The ruling class. Those rulers had allowed it to happen because they’d never dream of questioning their own.

Other houses and the town Council offices were fired as the mob sought revenge, a physical outlet for their horror and fury. Landowners, merchants, anyone living in a large house, government
officials – they were chased out of their homes, out of the town, beaten, robbed, brutalized. The Captain’s district governor was supposed to have been lynched with help from his own
sheriffs . . .

The mob still ruled in Wurzen,
Hilltop Eye
claimed, and the discontent was spreading to the surrounding towns and villages, where the families of the disappeared were taking up arms in
search of vengeance.

‘Great Giu,’ Slvasta muttered. His dismay was tempered by a grim satisfaction.
The regiments will have to change now
.

He dropped a few copper coins on the table and left. As he walked down Walton Boulevard, he grew aware of the unusually light amount of traffic for the time of day. At the same time, his
ex-sight was gathering up the emotional atmosphere starting to engulf Varlan. That was the thing with ’path whispers. Given the right spark of gossip, they could spread across the city in a
matter of minutes.
Hilltop Eye
wasn’t a spark, it was an eruption; shocked ’path conversations between families and friends overlapped, multiplied to streak along streets and
canals at the speed of thought.

The city’s cab drivers, those masters of urban gossip and innuendo, understood all too well what the growing mood spelt, and turned to head back to their stables. Their absence added to
the expanding feeling of anxiety; ire towards authority was building fast. Once or twice, Slvasta sensed individuals urging people to take their frustrations out on the government – fast
sharp ’path voices that swirled for a few seconds amid the mental clamour, only to vanish again after a few seconds, untraceable even to the best psychic detective. But each little burst of
encouragement was absorbed and disseminated, adding to the citymind gestalt.

Keturah was in the Regimental Council offices, radiating worry – a state shared by just about all the staff. Thelonious hadn’t come in yet. Slvasta sat behind his desk, not knowing
what to do. The ’path babble filling the aether outside precluded any work. Everybody, it seemed, was waiting for
something
to happen. He told Keturah she could go home if she
wanted, but she said, no, she’d ride it out, although she did want to go home early.

At nine o’clock, Arnice stuck his head round the door. ‘This is getting a bit beastly,’ he said.

‘I told you we should be taking those reports of the disappeared more seriously. And did you read about the mods attacking humans in Wurzen? I wonder what Major Rennart makes of
that?’

‘Oh, come now, be gallant in your victory.’

‘I don’t think anyone has won anything here. Three hundred people!’

‘Humm. Don’t tell anyone, but it was probably closer to four hundred. The Captain’s police chief, Trevene, was saying the Lanichie family probably Fell five years
ago.’

‘
Five years?
Hey, wait a minute, how do you know what the police chief is saying?’

Arnice winked. ‘Trevene is my sister-in-law’s uncle.’

‘Did he know?’

‘No, of course not. The idiot governor was too stupid to question anything.’

‘Bloody typical.’

‘Quite. Anyway, I’m off to change into my combat uniform.’

‘What? Why?’

Arnice pointed at the window. ‘You need to stretch your ex-sight. There’s a nasty little bunch of peasants congregating in Bromwell Park, fizzing with anti-Captain thoughts –
as if he knew what was happening in Wurzen. We’re worried they’ll march on the National Council chamber, or worse, the palace. So the Meor regiment will deploy across Walton Boulevard
and, shall we say,
discourage
them.’

‘Ah.’ Slvasta frowned. ‘Can they get here in time? Your men are all barracked on the south side of the Colbal.’

‘Not as of three o’clock this morning when the news reached us. They’re in various forward deployment bunkers, including the one under this building.’

‘We have a deployment bunker here?’

‘Oh, yes. But don’t spread the news around.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t worry. The chaps train for civil disobedience suppression. We’ll crack a few heads, chuck some of the would-be revolutionaries in jail, and the rest will slink off back
to their hovels and drink themselves stupid all night. And if the worst comes to the worst, well, we’ve got all the guns, haven’t we?’

Slvasta didn’t trust himself to answer; it was difficult enough to keep his shell solid. He’d never known regiments were used to keep order, let alone trained for it. But then the
Meor was always regarded as an elite regiment, directed by the National Council. And . . . guns? Fired at civilians?

‘You can take me out for a drink tomorrow evening,’ Arnice said cheerfully as he left. ‘I haven’t seen you properly for ages. I want to know all about her – whoever
she is. This girl you’re spending all your time with and ignoring your best friend in the city: your loyal friend, your drinking friend, the friend who showed you round right from the start,
your friend who managed to get you laid a lot, the one friend who—’

Slvasta smiled sheepishly. ‘Bethaneve. Her name is Bethaneve.’

‘Lovely. And I’ve got some news, too. Tomorrow.’ A final wave, and he scurried out.

*

The mob was over a thousand strong as it finally spilt out of Bromwell Park. Shared ex-sights allowed the whole city to watch as they started to make their way along Walton
Boulevard. Jeering and chanting, they launched half-hearted teekay attacks at statues of historical dignitaries. The surprisingly large number of the protestors encouraged more hesitant people to
join and make their opinion known to the arseholes in charge. A steady stream of fresh supporters swarmed in, bolstering the scale and determination of those leading the push up Walton Boulevard.
Government buildings along the road were now locked and sealed. Teekay punches from the sneering crowd slammed into the windows. Blizzards of shattered glass began to rain down onto the broad
pavements.