Albright climbed out of the car. She stomped on one of the metal pieces, and it made a low, hollow sound.
“This must be the place,” she announced. “Not sure how a fountain is a sprinkler, but this is the only central location that focuses on water.”
More cars arrived after them, carrying Charlie and a load of policemen. Not far behind came another officer with the pair from the Amuletory. Baxter led Charlie to the covered truck; both were flushed, as if they’d been running.
“We’ve located the operating system,” Baxter wheezed.
“Then you know how to get it working?” said Laura.
“We do,” said Charlie. He didn’t look like he wanted to go on, but with two policemen staring him down he couldn’t stay quiet. “The system will pump water from our canal system. There are five operation points we’ll have to monitor, but even if they’re old they seem in good condition. There shouldn’t be a problem with the water source. Your problem is the distribution method. See the star design? The metal is covering up holes to the interior. The fountain itself is held up by the piping, which goes through the points of the star. Water goes through and into the fountain bowl. That’s when any cleverness in the design dies out. The water overflows the bowl and spills wherever it wants. Technically it should go through the holes, but it could just as easily just go on the tile. There’s no pressure, no direction. What gets through the holes just falls through the middle of the interior.”
“Once it’s kin, it’ll move the way we need it,” said Laura.
“Take however many men you need to get the system running—we have to get started as soon as possible,” said Albright.
Charlie pursed his lips but stepped back. He spoke quietly to Baxter, who relayed these orders to the surrounding officers. Albright got back into the truck and reversed up to the fountain. One tire dipped down onto a metal slab with a banging sound, but the cover held.
Laura and Okane unloaded the Gin and crystal. They kept the strains wrapped in blankets to keep people from seeing what they were. The last thing they needed was someone getting greedy and stealing Gin, or alerting someone who would. Besides, how many people here would recognize Clae? That was one conversation Laura wanted to avoid at all costs. She carried in the Amicae Gin, stooped to place it gently in the water. It was deep enough to cover the rock completely and soak into the blanket. As she drew away again, she felt a prickling feeling.
Laura.
She froze. The water near her knees sloshed faster for no reason, and something strange, something heavy, descended on her with an almost physical weight.
“Gin,” she whispered.
The sensation wavered. Pleased.
Laura. See you. See you. What this?
It wasn’t words so much as feeling. Images and fragmented emotion flickered through her mind: the shop, humming, water, wrong water, a missing hand a missing friend but that was all right because she was a friend too, wasn’t she? Gold fog. It pulled back, prodded more gently.
What this? What this?
Laura hesitated. She pulled the blanket back, ran her hand over the stone, and thought as hard as she could about the situation: about Clae’s death, about the infestation below them, about her plan. The Gin seemed to mull over this, but its presence withdrew. Laura waited for some kind of response, but nothing happened.
“Laura, I think ---’re right.” On the other side of the fountain, Okane had leaned in to inspect the side of the basin. “There are indents. I think our Sweeper amulets are supposed to fit here.”
“Really?” She sloshed over to get a better look. “How many?”
“Five, seven … looks like sixteen spots.”
“We don’t have enough Gin amulets to fill that.”
Okane glanced at the group outside the fountain. “Hopefully we have enough from the Amuletory to make up for it.”
Albright got the truck out of the way, and police moved in to inspect the metal covers. Unlike Pit covers, they’d been bolted down permanently. Efforts to pry them up ended in failure until someone had the bright idea to call in robots again. Laura still wasn’t fond of these things. She slouched in the fountain as the robots trundled in and ripped the covers up out of the ground. Five triangular holes were left in their wake, leading down into darkness. The cleaning bots carted off the scrap metal.
With them out of the way, Freda Ashford came up. She crossed the point of the star as if it were a thick tightrope and set her bag on the edge of the fountain.
“Amulets, as requested,” she declared, sounding bored. “I don’t know what you want them for, since it’s not like you use amulets anyway. Where’s Mr. Sinclair?”
Currently wrapped up in the checkered blanket next to Laura’s left foot, but she wasn’t about to advertise that. Of all people who could know about him, Freda was the absolute last on the list. Laura shifted, putting herself between Freda and the checkered shape.
“He’ll be here soon enough,” she lied.
“He better be. He’s the only good thing there is about Sweepers.”
Laura bit her tongue and said nothing. Marshall followed shortly after with another bag, which he deposited with Freda’s.
“We’ve got more amulets in the car if you need them,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re planning to do exactly, but if there’s any way we can help, we’ll do it.”
Freda rolled her eyes and scanned the area for signs of Clae again.
“I think all we need are the amulets,” Okane mumbled, keeping his head down. “Thank ---, though.”
“Are they full amulets?” Laura pulled a flower-shaped brooch out of the bag to inspect.
“We brought up all the ones ready to sell. They won’t run out on you anytime soon.”
“Glad to hear it.” Laura looked back at Okane. “What do we do with them, again? I’m guessing they’ll need more direction than ‘mix and burn.’”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Okane took amulets out of the bags and distributed them in the pool, muttering orders to them that Laura couldn’t quite catch. She watched his progress, noting where all the amulets landed. There must’ve been forty amulets plunked into the water.
Okane patted his hands against his pants once he was done. “---’ll want to get out of the water. It’s going to get hot.”
“You’re staying in?”
“I need to get the strains active. It should only take a minute.”
Laura climbed out onto the star. She felt discontent with the gaping holes on either side—they were easily wider than she was tall—but there was enough surface area for her to move easily. It helped that Marshall and Freda had moved back to help with the pumps. On the downside, that time in the fountain meant the bottom of the long coat soaked up water, so Laura felt like she was dragging a weight.
Okane rolled up his sleeves and waded through the pool. He went to the Amicae Gin first, lifting the blanket just enough to touch the stone. Laura half expected something to happen, but despite its “conversation” earlier, the stone didn’t act any different, and Okane moved on. In his wake the stone glowed and the water around it became tainted gold. He did this with the other Gin, then the Sinclairs. He hesitated over Clae, and only held contact with Anselm long enough to activate before wading quickly away. By the time he hopped out, the water barely looked like water anymore. He stomped on the ground to shake off any droplets he could.
Before their eyes, steam began to rise from the water’s surface. The liquid seemed to be moving clockwise.
“Have you got it ready?” Albright called.
“It’s going! I don’t know exactly what it’s doing, but it’s doing something!” Laura shouted back.
“Get those pumps going! We need more water up here!” Albright ordered.
Movement flickered along the edge of the square, and gurgling sounded beneath their feet. The movement of water was interrupted near the bottommost fountain bowl as a fresh supply bubbled up. The movement of the rest of t
he water grew faster. The steam thickened, creating a fog over the fountain, but Laura could still see the water as it began to froth.
It was only a matter of time before liquid spilled over the side. It started sloppily, just splashing over and falling without a sound. As water began to overflow freely, another gurgle went bubbling through and the pseudo-kin turned deeper gold. Where it slipped over the side it caught the light like Gin, flashing shimmering white.
Before anyone could get their hopes up, there was a low rumble from below them. The ground trembled. Laura caught sight of movement down one of the holes, and the breath froze in her lungs. The infestations were moving, glinting reddish even in the light from the kin water; they were spiraling straight up, toward the fountain.
“Run!” she cried, dashing off of the star. Okane gave a yelp of his own as he sensed the incoming monsters, and fled just as fast.
They were barely off the patterned tile when the infestations hit, slamming into the bottom of the star and flooding around it. Slimy black forms careened through the holes and around the fountain. The black mass formed hands again and tried to grab hold of the fountain, but a single touch prompted the release of black smoke and a series of high-pitched squeals. Unable to grasp that, they wound around the spokes of the star pattern and began to pull. They were trying to destroy it, to stop the kin from being completed and used. Laura pulled out one Egg but didn’t arm it. Suddenly she was horrified. What if she broke the support with the explosion? If that star fell, Clae and the Gin would be lost for good.
A curse behind her made her whirl around. Collins stood there, face twisted in a grimace. He turned back to look at (presumably) one of the pumps and shouted, “Chief! The monster’s trying to bring it down!”
“Fight it off!” came a strained, distant reply.
Laura didn’t know exactly where Albright was but added her own voice to the shouting. “Our equipment might bring it down anyway!”
A few moments of silence passed, and then: “The east door! Get them down there!”
“The what?”
“The east door,” Collins repeated, standing still for a second before lurching into action. “Come on, this way!”
“But what is the east door?” Laura demanded, even as she and Okane jogged behind him.
“It’s a door to the interior,” he explained, climbing into his police car and starting it up. “It’ll take you around the inside wall and down to the Second Quarter level, then you can distract the monsters long enough for that fountain to work right.”
Okane stopped short, horrified. “We’re going back in there?”
Collins paused to stare at him with guilt and apprehension. Laura sucked in a deep breath and grabbed Okane’s hand. He jumped and looked at her.
“We can do this,” she said firmly. Even if she didn’t really believe it, she tried to pretend she did. “Come on. We said we were going to do more. Right?”
He could see right through that act, but while he shook, she gripped his hand a little tighter and he gave a jerky nod.
“Look, I’m sorry we have to send you down there, but you’re all we’ve got,” Collins pleaded from the car, trying to get them to hurry up but trying to be polite about it.
“I know,” Laura said as she and Okane climbed into the car. They hadn’t even sat down before it started moving.
Soon the squealing of the infestation at the fountain fell behind them. As the car sped across the pavement, whipping around corners and charging down streets with a mechanic whirring to rival the squeal in pitch, the passengers slid around in the back. Laura wished there were something to keep her in place, because she was afraid she’d fall out. Automobiles shouldn’t go this fast, but Collins was a speed demon. They got to the wall in what must have been record time; the car skidded to a stop near it. It went several feet even after he’d hit the brakes. Laura almost fell out of her seat and onto the floor.
“There!” Collins leaned out to point at a door in the wall, also made of metal but much smaller than the usual doors to the interior. No gears at the top. There was a lock on it, and Laura’s heart plummeted at the sight. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Without even turning off the car, Collins jumped out and ran for the door. As she ran after him, Laura checked her equipment. She hadn’t discarded anything over the past few hours, so she was still as prepared as she could be—that gave her a little more courage. Collins fiddled with the lock, creating a clacking sound, but soon there was a louder click and he drew back, lock in hand.
“Being from the Fifth Quarter isn’t completely useless.”
He’d picked it open.
“Thank god,” Laura laughed.
He pulled the door open and stood aside, looking at them expectantly. “Good luck down there.”
The door opened to a small boxy area a foot and a half wide; to the left, the stairs began. The steps were cast in shadow, going steeply down without so much as a railing.
“This goes down to the Second level?”
“It probably takes a while to walk there. You might want to hurry.”
Laura took the first step onto the stairs. With no light ahead, she pulled out an Egg and shook it. Its glow showed blank cramped walls and stairs curving gently into what looked like an abyss. She hated the dark but didn’t say anything about it—Collins was right, they didn’t have time—and started walking. She went as fast as she could while still feeling safe. Okane stepped lightly behind her. The Egg light traveled over the walls, revealing some wear and tear but otherwise nothing new. After a few minutes she heard metal groaning, a rattling and shifting as the infestations moved. She hadn’t heard a crash yet. The star must still be intact.
Finally the light alerted them to a change. Instead of smooth hard wall, the ceiling and left side changed to metallic latticework, the side of one of the familiar caged-in stairs of the interior. With more visibility, Laura could squint and see the infestations. They wound in a twisted black pillar through the middle of the interior, hooked on the star at the top and squirming and shrieking. More pseudo-kin spilled over the mass and they wriggled away from it. The liquid wasn’t burning them, but it was enough repellent that they hadn’t pulled it down yet. Laura jogged down the stairs, faster now because if she could see them, they could probably sense her. The landing came up, now in view, but a whooshing sound came from below and Okane started to shout.
“Go, go, go!”
Laura hurled herself at the landing, skipping stairs and stumbling onto flat ground. She didn’t see the infestations until they’d hit. Five different limbs speared through the walkway, hard enough that the grating smashed apart. The closest point had come through barely a foot from Laura. It splattered into the wall and spread up like a crashing wave, looping to cover the ceiling of the latticed stairway. Here it changed direction, transforming from liquid to solid again and wrenching the latticework in its wake. Laura dodged just in time. The infestation split again, drilling five new points into the structure where she’d been, and the lattice came on its back like a spiny hide. Okane managed to evade it, and they both ducked as it flicked; the broken lattice soared just over their heads and crashed into the wall. They bumped shoulders as they straightened.
“We go for the big pillar, right?” Laura breathed.
“We need to draw its attention, but with this one after us I don’t know how easy that’ll be. --- want to split up, or—”
“No, they’d pick us off easily then.”
“True enough.”
After only a moment’s hesitation they charged across the walkway. The infestation made a piercing sound like laughter and gave chase. More spears shot through the path in front of them, so they had to evade while smoke rose through the grating to curl around their feet. As she ran, Laura replaced the Egg, pulled a length of wire from her bag, tied a knot at the end of it, and threaded Bijou along it. She dropped that end as they reached a branching path and veered right, unraveling the wire as they moved close
r to the main problem. The infestation screeched on their heels. Tendrils of black wove through the railing on either side. More hands grew to slide down onto the bridge and grasp the grating. They morphed into jagged teeth, misplaced fingers, caught on the metal and pulled. A low groan rose as the metal warped beneath them.
“Okane! Hang on!” Laura stopped short. Okane halted a few steps ahead of her as she flicked the end of the wire in her grip.
The monster gurgled with glee. Its darkness wrapped to encircle them, dripping all over the bridge and forming a mess of teeth overhead. Okane backed up beside Laura. She could hear, again, snaps and crackles issuing from him as the monster descended. Still louder was the roar that erupted behind them.
The Bijou ignited one after the other down the laid line, ripping the monster away from its source. The first weapon was close, and the shower of light and sparks stung enough for Laura to drop the wire. The darkness around them melted, accompanied by an earsplitting wail.
“Laura! Are --- okay?”
“Fine!” she snapped, pulling on her goggles with smarting hands. “Come on!”
The two closest Bijou registered their amulets quickly and pursued them as the two ran again. Despite Laura’s fears that they would fall through the grating, these zigzagged on the metal to avoid the warped gaps. One rolled in front of Okane like a tiny vanguard while the second spat angrily at Laura’s feet. The multitude left behind popped, spun, and shrieked on their wire, which glowed red with heat and energy as they slid along it. Their sparks went right through the grating to shower infestations below. More smoke rose beneath them, and a shudder went through the main pillar.
Laura and Okane reached a middle walkway. They weren’t quite in the center, the pulsing “pillar” still a ways away, but this was as close as they were going to get.
“Can you hit it from here?” asked Laura, because she certainly couldn’t.
“I’m lucky. I can do it,” he replied, pulling out an Egg. He tapped it against his amulet and drew his arm back. He let it fly with a loud crack. His momentum almost sent him tumbling over the railing, but Laura caught him.
City of Broken Magic Page 39