‘Any preference on where?’ Syn said when they’d topped the clouds. Ras beat down on them with its full force, the empty dome of sky enormous around them.
‘North,’ Cale replied. ‘Take us north.’
Buried
Around an hour after they’d taken off the big man with the mismatched eyes undid her restraints, allowing her to stretch the cramp from her arms and legs. She thanked him, receiving a sad smile in return.
How must it feel to lose a child? she thought as she watched him move away. The life in her was an unknown, all but intangible save for occasional twitches and the evidence of her changing body, but already it was hers: a separate identity that would nevertheless always feel like an extension of her own self. Just thinking about the loss of that was a gulf of terror that reeked of madness. And to have it happen after the life had been born, grown, taken steps, then carved its own place in the world! It made her jaw tighten. She thought of her own mother’s face all the times she had been sick or hurt, the quiet horror held at bay behind a narrow smile meant to reassure. She pitied the big man, for all that he was the reason she was trapped in this horrible, noisy machine.
She was glad the other one had left her alone, the one with the neticks. She’d not noticed him moving behind her until she’d felt the vice grip of his hand and the cool metal block of the gun pressed to the back of her head. It had happened so fast – the light of the hangar flicking to the cool dark of the machine’s interior; Nebn’s face had been soaked in terror and anger as he’d watched her go. She’d known only that she had to keep calm, to stop him from trying something stupid.
After terror had come a lull, a quiet that lapsed into boredom. No one appeared to mean her harm now – the thin one was busy flying the machine and the big man looked embarrassed to have her there. The older woman with the haughty eyes sat straight-backed in her chair, looking like she was running through a conversation in her own head. The injured young man with the bright red hair was awake now, his head drooping but his eyes open. There was something hard about him, something jagged she couldn’t put her finger on – perhaps the pain from his wound was still bad. The bandages around his midriff looked dry, but from what she’d heard he’d been very badly injured.
The cockpit hatch wheezed open and the big man – Cale – stepped through. Something in his quiet movements drew the eye, a subtle aura of authority. Older, shaggy-haired and bearded; tall and heavy of frame but gentle in his movements. His hands were thick and rough but deft – her father had had hands like that. They were hands that had worked, or she was no farmer’s daughter.
Kelbee caught his eye but he looked away, guilt evident in his face. He took the seat next to the professor and leaned in close to speak to her above the roar of the flyer. Whatever he said, it made her shake her head.
‘We can’t go there. It’s dangerous,’ she said, her voice just audible over the din.
‘This is important,’ she heard Cale say. ‘After, you can go wherever you want. Aspedair, even. The flyer is fuelled.’
Aspedair! That was where Nebn had said they would go, once Brennev agreed to help them. Tani called it the ‘Free City’, the one place where the Hegemony didn’t hold total sway. She’d heard it mentioned before when her father had spent the day soused in rakk and bitterness. Corrupt, vile, a running sore that kept evil in the world, he’d called it. The ones who lived there were damned. But that was long ago and not since she’d gone to the capital had anyone mentioned it in anything other than a furtive whisper. She’d put it aside with the rest of her childhood as the ramblings of a broken old man.
There were no Factors there, they said, no pass cards. Every home had its own screen and car and power was available all day, every day. An exaggeration, surely, she’d thought, but then Nebn had shown her pictures of wide avenues and green parks. No checkpoints. Another one showed fliers like this one on a bank of landing pads, disgorging people with smiles on their faces. At the time the fliers had been a marvel, but what struck her most were the looks on the faces of those men, women and children – easy smiles, open expressions, not a trace of the guardedness that she knew so well. What sort of place could build machines and people like that?
But alone? Could she survive there without him? How could she even begin to make her way back to him?
‘You’ve read my journals,’ the professor was saying. ‘You know what that thing can do. It’s mad. Centuries of neglect, centuries. It’s hungry for us, and I’m not being metaphorical. I won’t go near it. Neither should you.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that. I have to see where my son died.’
Kelbee watched his big fingers laced in his lap. He was twice the professor’s size, could have picked her up and snapped her, but instead of using his bulk he seemed to shrink, like all the energy had been drawn from him. His eyes pleaded.
‘Let me see him one last time,’ he said.
The big man and the woman half his size shared a long look. The air thickened. Then, a subtle nod of the head from her; his shoulders relaxed.
She tried to sleep, resting her head against the bulkhead. The vibration was an odd lull, the roar wrapping her like a blanket. A while later, she felt the flyer bank as it changed course. Where was this place they were going? What was this thing the professor wanted them to keep away from, that could make even her iron stare waver with remembered fear? North, cold, snow that she’d heard of but never seen. Iron earth, a jacket of ice over the world where no one lived, where many had died.
Sleep, growled the metal beast around her, speaking through the throb of metal against her skin.
When she woke the engines had changed pitch and the deck under her was slanted ever so slightly downwards. She was famished and thirsty. Cale had returned to the cockpit, the others asleep in their chairs – the red-headed boy was hanging forwards in his harness, a thin line of drool coming from his mouth. Another change in tone, then the flyer levelled out. Kelbee wished, not for the first time, that there were windows.
Deceleration tugged her towards the back of the cabin. There was a bump, barely noticeable. The din wound down, lower and lower, leaving an emptiness behind that was filled by the ticks and clicks of the cooling hull. Cale appeared at the cockpit door, followed soon after by the mercenary with the mechanical limbs. Kelbee shrank away from him; he saw her flinch and grinned like a larg.
‘No reason to fear me, girl. No profit in hurting you now.’
Cale hit the switch by the ramp and pistons huffed. A blast of icy air gusted in, chilling her instantly, sucking the life out of the cabin. White flakes drifted in and danced around before disappearing. Snow, this was what snow was.
Outside was washed-out whiteness. Professor Song pointed out that there’d been a storm recently, making it hard to see ten paces in front while white crystals blotted the air.
‘We have to get inside,’ she told them. She sounded tense, and it was something more than just the cold.
Cale nodded, took the red-haired youth under the arm and guided him towards the only shape visible – a dark dome sticking out against the blizzard.
As they got closer, Kelbee saw it was one end of a low curved structure whose walls had been buried in frozen snow. The wind seemed to find every hole and rip in her jacket, winding in against her skin and sapping all the energy from her. She felt her fingers go numb as she watched the mercenary, Syn, dig great gouts of snow with his netick arms, limbs flashing like blood against the white. He uncovered a thick metal door; the professor told him where to find the emergency mechanism and he pumped the handle once, twice as Kelbee felt her head start to swim and her skin prickle. She wondered if the snow would be comfortable if she were to lie down – just for a minute – then the door slid back into its housing and they all bustled inside. Syn held out a pink hand to help her in; she hesitated, but his eyes had no malice in them and the promise of shelter was too seductive, so she took it. It hurt to move her fingers.
The outer door was sealed a
nd the professor pulled some heavy jackets from a storage locker and handed them out. Kelbee’s smelled of smoke and old cheese but she wasted no time in putting it on, glad for the thick fur that lined the inside. Wrapped tight, life came back into her limbs, the fug leaving her brain as she watched them pry open the inner door. It was barely warmer inside but at least they were out of the wind; a few minutes longer out there and she might have accepted the snow’s offer and drifted off. The professor gestured at Syn to follow, muttering something about power. The rest of them waited at the large circular table that dominated the room, drained by just a brief exposure to the life-sapping cold. The wind howled, and in its voice was only oblivion.
The fabric covering of the table had turned brittle with the cold; Kelbee’s seat crackled as it took her weight. Faint light from the strip windows washed the room of colour. It appeared to be a communal area or mess hall – off to one side was a hatch that might lead to a kitchen and there were stacks of notes and equipment piled on the other smaller tables that dotted the space, spilling on to the floor. Her foot bumped against something and she looked down to find a cracked mug, stained around the rim. The place had been abandoned in a hurry, objects left as if the previous inhabitants had meant to pick them up again in just a moment or two. The cold had stolen all smells away.
The light strips around the edge of the room flickered on, the glow dulled by a fine frosting of ice. With a shudder and a cough, a vent in the centre of the ceiling began to blow a stream of air – cold at first, then warming. She felt it tickle her cheeks. All of them huddled closer; Kelbee pulled off her gloves and was surprised when the heat made her skin feel like fire.
‘Take it slowly,’ said the professor, returning. ‘It’ll be a while before your body warms. Food will help.’ She disappeared into the room behind the hatch and returned a while later with steaming mugs of some kind of soup, the ruddy surface pocked with unidentifiable lumps that tasted like fish but were the wrong texture. Regardless, Kelbee took it and wolfed it down, almost burning the back of her throat. Soon after, warmth spread through her, bringing life back to her bones.
How long would they stay in this awful place? She smelled the abandoned muskiness of the air now and wanted to be away from it. Somewhere, Nebn would be frantic with worry for her, but she didn’t feel afraid – nowhere was the gut-churning sense of dread that was so familiar to her. She searched for the reason: after all, the mercenary had kidnapped her, held her at gunpoint. It wasn’t just that they weren’t threatening her; they were barely paying her any attention at all. She wasn’t anyone’s prisoner.
Cale rose from the table. ‘Where is he?’ he asked.
Professor Song looked down at the floor. ‘I didn’t have much time. I buried him in the snow.’
‘Where?’ he said, his voice hollow.
She nodded. ‘It’s a little way away. I’ll take you.’
They left together, the door slamming shut behind them. A short while later, she returned alone, her hood spiked with ice, breathless.
Kelbee saw Derrin stretch out on his bench. His ribs rose and fell as if he were sobbing in silence. His face was twisted, looking more like anguish than physical pain. She thought about going to him, to give words of comfort.
What would you say? You don’t know a thing about him, or what he’s been through.
Some pain was private – she knew this all too well. She went over to the kitchen where she hoped there would be more food.
There was, and in quantity. The place had preserved stock fit for several months, all packed in crates. Kelbee found an old boiler pot and began heating up some tinned pulses and rice, the smell of the food spreading and making her mouth water. There was something comforting about the familiarity of preparing a meal, even here. A part of her examined the space where fear should have been, still uncomfortable with its absence.
Why do I just feel numb?
She realised that it wasn’t just being abducted that had made her like this. She’d not felt anything for a while; even when they’d made it out of the tunnels and Nebn had told her they were clear of the capital, there had been no rush of joy, just a numbness. In the days that followed, no highs, no lows.
Not since you watched him die.
The professor joined her and set about checking the supplies. Kelbee filled some metal bowls and handed one to her. They ate in silence, relishing even the simple taste of the food. It was quiet, and she felt time stretch between them. She wondered where Cale was, thought about asking, but felt she couldn’t break the stillness. It was their vigil; an unspoken agreement to respect one man’s pain, even from afar.
From the other room, they heard the door open and close – looking through the hatch, she saw Syn had gone.
Kelbee brought Derrin some food and helped him to eat. The youth was getting stronger, though his face looked waxen. Every time he tried to speak it was as if his throat constricted, making him turn away with embarrassment. She left him to eat the rest alone.
A little while later Syn returned, shimmering with a layer of frost and hauling an unconscious Cale over his shoulder. The broad face under the russet beard was blue, his eye sockets like pits. The big man moaned in his sleep as they dried him, then wrapped him in blankets.
‘Did he… Was he trying to…’ Kelbee couldn’t say the words. She saw the skin at the tips of his fingers had begun to darken. She rubbed them, then wrapped them in a towel she’d warmed by the vent.
‘Didn’t do anything, I think,’ answered Syn, his voice grave. ‘The fight just went out of him.’
Kelbee sat by Cale, making sure he was warm. After a while his colour came back but he didn’t wake.
Derrin gulped, choking back a sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
She assumed he’d been talking to Cale.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated. Something in his voice made her look at him. Derrin was staring, unblinking, at the door. Something about his posture set her teeth on edge.
Syn began to say something but was cut off as the inner lock slid open with a sigh-scrape. The soldiers wore heavy black cloaks over thick armour plate. Their faces were covered by the dark visors of their helmets. It only took moments for a dozen of them to rush the room, taking up positions around the edge, their snub weapons levelled.
Last to enter was a tall figure in a fur hood. It stopped and surveyed the room, back straight and looking for all the world like it owned everything and everyone around it. Then a gloved hand threw the hood back and the strip lights bounced off a smooth bald head.
‘Fuck,’ said Syn.
‘Quite,’ replied Fulvia arc Borunmer, Venerated Guide, with acid in her smile.
Unification
The nightmare had been the same as before, a sodden plain that was all the battlefields he’d ever known mashed together, the enemy just a flitting of shades in the distance, the whine-crack of their bullets drumming all around and somewhere else, sometimes three steps behind, sometimes kilometres distant, the pulse of artillery like another heart in his chest. But it was cold – usually he felt the heat of the fires, the plasma burns pock-marking the ground – and his hands crumbled even as he held them up to his face, flaking away in swirls of soot that was burned bread in a blackened oven in a broken little cottage from too long ago.
He opened his eyes to shadows against a bright glow. As his eyes focused, he saw he was in a huge room awash with floodlights. The floor was dull, matte, and felt like steel, textured with tiny indentations. The cold was all around him still, swirling in the air, stealing the breath from his lungs.
The cold that had almost taken him.
After Sulara had left him he’d found the frozen body under layers of drift. Had it been the Death, or even the late Sleep, he would never have been able to dig down to him, but after several frantic minutes of scooping the numbing snow away he found Bowden’s face staring up at him. His hands burned at first, then became little more than numb shovels as he uncovered him from head to toe. His sk
in was alabaster, even the horrific line of burn running up from his chin to his scalp frozen and preserved.
He’d tried to lift him, to cradle him like he’d done when he was a child, but the cold had made the flesh stiff; instead he curled up next to him, no longer caring about the wind. He didn’t remember what had happened after that.
‘He’s awake,’ said a voice he didn’t recognise.
‘Sit him up,’ said another that he did. He must be still asleep. She could not be here.
Then she was, and in front of him. Her face looked older close up, skin creased around the corners of her acid eyes that were bright and alert, the bones of the face angular like a frame. Her voice was a contradiction, a basso rumble.
‘So. You’re the one,’ she said. ‘I’d have just had you arrested and tortured until you gave up your old comrades. But then we found out about this place.’
He held her gaze for a moment, then saw past her shoulder. As the haze of cold death rolled away his vision opened up, revealing the room to him. It was spherical, pierced by a tapered pillar running down the middle. To his left and right were Sulara, Kelbee, Syn – all of them sitting with their hands and feet unbound on a metal deck just off the sloping floor of the chamber.
This must be the place, he thought, from the journals. The torus chamber. The soldiers must have brought them here from the base up above.
This was the place that had killed his son.
He’d expected to feel a presence, a menace, something, anything that he could rail against, but it was empty. Empty and very old.
The soldiers were elite, their blank visors reflecting the floodlights and their rifles steady. Cale saw himself mirrored, saw the hollow pools of his eyes and wondered when he’d grown so old.
‘You’ve done fine work, young man,’ the Guide continued. ‘It couldn’t have been easy. You’ll be rewarded for your service.’
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