Ruin's Wake

by Patrick Edwards

  ‘You know as well as I do that information is only as good as those who interpret it. People want stability and I am the best man for that task. I’ve known for years what needed to change.’

  ‘You don’t trust people to make their own decisions?’

  ‘I don’t, and neither should you. When have they ever been capable, or even willing? What they really want, in their heart of hearts, is a comforting story. Order.’

  ‘You sound as bad as her.’

  Brennev’s confident façade cracked a little as he flushed. ‘What the hell do you know? You’ve not seen the years I’ve spent fighting them, being patient, building our strength. You cut and ran before it got hard, like the coward you always were.’

  Cale felt pressure behind his eyes, a black rage. ‘Aime died.’

  ‘All the better. If you couldn’t take one single death, you didn’t have the stones for it.’

  ‘I loved her.’

  ‘You think I didn’t?’

  There it was. Cale had known, of course, from the way he’d looked at her. Aime had dismissed it as an infatuation, but it had soured things between the three of them. Even now, years later, it rankled. ‘I didn’t come here to stop your murderous coup,’ Cale said, trying to hold the anger back. ‘Fool yourself into believing you’ll be a better tyrant than the last one if you want, but let me do this.’

  ‘No, I won’t indulge your idiocy. This place is a symbol; it’s why I brought her here, showed her death, let people know how deep the change is going to be.’ Brennev nodded at the Seeker’s corpse. ‘Their god was never a god, but they won’t believe it until his monuments are gone.’ Brennev reached into a pocket and drew out a small grey box with a flashing light at one end and a single black switch under a guard cage. ‘I’ve had the foundations set with deep-penetration charges.’

  ‘You’ll kill your men outside.’

  ‘They’ll be back behind cover by the time I throw the switch. Then we get to see the old world fall. You could be there with us.’

  Cale felt uncounted tons of stone and steel above his head bearing down. The horror of the edifice toppling was palpable. ‘When this place goes over, it’ll level half the central district.’

  ‘We’ll rebuild.’

  Cale watched the lights winking at him from the plinth in the middle of the room. The markings were alien: angular, neat, a message in a language long dead. Just the touch of his hand was all it would take.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Brennev. ‘My finger won’t have far to travel. I’ll take us both if I have to.’

  The threat was unusual, surprising. Why the escalation if he was so confident he’d won? Cale looked closely at Brennev’s scarred face and saw the shadow of fear there.

  ‘You don’t think it’s a myth,’ he said. ‘You think it’ll work. You think it’ll make your revolution meaningless, and that frightens you.’

  Brennev was silent, but his blazing eyes told Cale he was right.

  ‘You won’t do it,’ he continued. ‘You’ve put too much into this already, too much time and preparation, to go out like this.’

  ‘How well you know me, old friend.’

  Something smashed into Cale’s leg. The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the vaulted chamber. He went down screaming as bone grated on bone.

  ‘You’re right, I do have too much invested. That makes you an idiot for believing I wouldn’t do absolutely anything to see it through.’ Brennev wore a look of disgust as he walked over. ‘You think I’d not hurt you because we ran together in the old days? Because we shared rakk at the same table, ate the same stale bread? That time has gone, Cale. It might as well never have existed.’

  Cale gritted his teeth and tried to sit up but the pain in his leg was all-consuming.

  Brennev crouched down next to him, smoke still wafting from the pistol’s barrel. ‘An order I gave got the woman I loved killed. I’d order that strike again, as many times as it was necessary, if it got me what I needed. And I truly loved her.’

  Cale tried to crawl towards the dais. So close, if only he could pull himself over the hard stone floor, up the few steps… Agony flared in his leg and he flopped back, his jaw locked in a silent scream.

  ‘You won’t be missed,’ said Brennev. He pressed the pistol against Cale’s forehead, his mouth a stark line.

  Cale shut his eyes, Aime’s face so clear it felt real – flesh and blood instead of cold stone.

  It was all right, she said. He reached for her.

  There was a grunt and a thud and the sound of something large hitting the floor. Then a snap and a throaty howl of pain.

  Cale opened his eyes and saw a wild tangle of limbs. Derrin was on top of Brennev, a fury of punches and kicks, howling as he pummelled the older man. The detonator had skittered away over the floor; the pistol dangled from where the trigger guard had snapped Brennev’s finger.

  Derrin had rage and surprise but Brennev had weight and experience. With a mighty heave he flipped Derrin over and dropped his bulk down, pinning his chest. With one hand he clamped down on the skinny throat and, wincing, shook the gun free, sending it bouncing just out of reach. Brennev swore and shifted to grab it.

  Cale summoned up all his will to block out the agony and managed to swing out his bad leg, knocking the gun into a dark corner. A burst of fresh pain made his eyes water, his clenched jaw unable to stop a moan escaping.

  In the split second that Brennev’s weight was off him, Derrin managed to jab upwards with something in his hand. There was a wet sound, like meat being hacked, and the older man’s eyes went wide. His hand rose to his chest as if swatting away an insect, did it again. There was something jutting from him: the splintered chair leg. Blood soaked it, ran along its length and dripped in dark blobs onto the floor.

  Derrin heaved again, and this time Brennev had no fight left in him. He rolled onto his back. The youth scraped himself backwards to rest against the dais, his breath shallow and rapid.

  Brennev’s eyes found Cale. There was panic there, then hatred, then amusement. He let go of the shard that had pierced his chest and rooted around in a pocket. When he realised he didn’t have the detonator the look of triumph became despair. There was a second when Cale thought he might cry like a child.

  ‘It’ll never work,’ Brennev rasped. ‘They’ll tear it all down…’ He gave up, pain squeezing his eyes shut.

  Cale watched him go pale, the life emptying in trickles now. The red pool that spread from him shimmered like crystal in the candlelight.

  Brennev looked up again. Every ounce of his remaining strength went into keeping his eyes open. ‘She…’

  ‘Just stop,’ said Cale. His leg was a riot of pain.

  ‘She… came to me… once…’ He coughed. Then he was still.

  They just sat there for a while, the thick silence only punctured by breath. Finally, Derrin twisted to look at the lit symbols. ‘Will you do it?’ Other than the wound to his face, he seemed unharmed. He seemed somehow older, calmer.

  Cale was silent.

  ‘He really hated you.’

  ‘We were friends a long time ago.’

  Derrin considered this. ‘He was goading you. What he said at the end.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, not meaning it. I always knew, he thought. I forgave her.

  ‘I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.’

  Cale nodded, still gazing at Brennev’s lifeless face. Then, with a grunt of pain, he shuffled close to the dais. The emblems glowed at him, inviting. Did he even have the right to do this? Did anyone? Maybe they were correct, Fulvia, Brennev: knowing the truth was more than most could cope with.

  Better a painful choice than none at all, said something like Bowden’s voice.

  He slapped his palms down on the controls. Immediately, the colours morphed, moving to encompass his hands, drawing a glowing outline around them that shifted, rainbow-like. He felt warmth, a gentle tickling. A sound built, coming from deep in the bones of the ground. He felt the col
ossal energies wake and stretch, imagined them finding their old pathways, lifting upwards, ever upwards towards a peak far above his head. Vibration rose until the room around them shook, the crystal coffin ringing on the floor like the chiming of a thousand tiny bells.

  At the corner of his vision, he saw it. Just an imprint of a ghost of a reflection, growing ever brighter as the seconds ticked away. The wire-frame of an infinite torus spread around him.

  Derrin gasped as he saw it. Then he laughed, the sound musical. ‘Oh, my,’ he said, full of wonder.

  For an instant, the world went white.

  * * *

  He left Derrin in the trance state, knowing he had to experience it to understand what was happening to him. The boy was propped against the dais which now glowed a warm magenta, pulsing like a heartbeat. His pale face was bathed in wonder, his lips moving in silence.

  Cale felt the presence in his head now, sitting quiet, ready to be used. He knew he only had to close his eyes and push, and he would be connected. His curiosity got the better of him – and in an instant he was there, inside the data corpus, the pain forgotten.

  Instead of letting himself drift like last time, he tried to focus on a thought – sculpture. He fell towards the grid, seeing its complexity open for him. When he found the miniature torus he wanted he brushed it, seeing a flitter of images and words, centuries of knowledge ready for him to absorb; lifelike projections of tools and famous works he could reach out and touch, sense texture and weight, though he knew it was nothing more than a ghost-image.

  The data corpus felt warm, and he imagined Kelbee smiling. Was it her joy he felt? He pulled back to a great height with a thought, surveying the grid landscape. It had been empty before, a dizzying vista, but now it was dancing with motes of light that flitted from node to node, tens of thousands of them. Curious, he brought himself close to one of them and reached out – then pulled back, shocked. It was another mind.

  His wonder grew as he realised each dancing pinprick of light was a person, each one experiencing the data corpus at the same time. He tried to focus on Derrin’s face, experimenting. Almost instantly, he found himself elsewhere, another light bobbing in front of him. More confidently, he reached out again and touched it, holding the contact. He could feel the surprise, curiosity, wonder. He recognised it.

  Can you hear me? he asked.

  I can. I never want to leave.

  Just for a little while, he responded, knowing he would also like to lose himself here.

  There was acknowledgement, then the mote that was Derrin vanished.

  This is so much more than just information, Cale thought, the scale of the realisation hitting him. I could speak to any of these people, from anywhere, instantly. No barriers, no restrictions, just unbound communication. It made him feel dizzy.

  With extreme reluctance, he pulled himself back from the corpus and opened his eyes. The afterimage of the torus grid glowed on his retinas for a second before it faded.

  Reality was a dank, gloomy tomb. His leg was throbbing dangerously and the air smelled of death. He wanted to go back, to lose himself away from this, but knew he couldn’t yet.

  Derrin was there with a ripped length of cloth that he fashioned into a tourniquet; when it was pulled tight, Cale mashed his teeth against the pain. The pump of blood slowed to a trickle and the throb subsided to a pulse. Derrin helped him up, took his arm over his shoulder to take the weight off his bad leg. They hobbled past the iron turnstile, then up the spiral ramp towards the ground level. Neither spoke. Cale had to pause once, twice, breathing deep to try to numb the electric-sharp pain from his leg. Derrin helped him, walking slowly, patient at every step.

  At the top, they stopped again. Cale was exhausted, but both understood each other’s need to gird themselves before they walked out into the daylight, and whatever waited for them there.

  Cale sat on a bench. The marble slab was cool and smooth under his palms.

  ‘Take a moment,’ said Derrin.

  Cale nodded in thanks. Above the hush of the great room there was a low throbbing coming from the walls. The Tower felt like a living thing, the pulse gentle and lulling.

  ‘Why didn’t you shoot me?’ he asked. ‘Back in the north.’

  Derrin considered this as he gazed up at the ceiling. ‘I wondered if it was cowardice, but then…’ He met Cale’s gaze and smiled. ‘If the man you killed was in fact my father – if that wasn’t just another convenient lie – then I didn’t know him. I never even saw a picture, just a name and a story. I was angry, because that’s what they taught me to be. But you were real, and you were kind to me. You’re a good man, Cale. Either that or I’m just a very bad agent.’

  Cale rubbed his thigh, massaging the life back into it. The Tower’s shattered entrance was a bright portal, beckoning him. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  Derrin nodded and helped him up.

  Outside the Tower a deep hush reigned. At first Cale thought it was abandoned – perhaps Brennev had managed to send an evacuation message. Then he saw people, still forms lying on the ground, others seated. At the bottom of the wide steps they found the platoon of soldiers who’d been on guard. They looked bloodied, bruised by the explosion that had sent them flying, but their faces were rapt as they swam through their new, expanded universe, living the corpus for the first time, each moment a new individual revelation.

  There was a noise nearby, then a scream. A man woke from his trance, swatting the air in front of him as if swarmed by insects. He clutched his head, shaking it, a long moan drawn from his lips like a wounded animal.

  ‘Not everyone’s enjoying themselves,’ said a voice nearby. ‘I see you managed to mostly not die.’ Ardal Syn rose from under the sheet of metal that had hidden him, his face covered in dark soot. One arm had been shattered by gunfire and hung limp by his side, the pink outer coating shredded and exposing the ruined mechanism. He gave Derrin a withering look. ‘Any more plans to stab us in the back I should know about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Syn.’

  ‘I’ve got my eye on you for ever, you little shit.’

  Cale waved his hand, heading off the argument. ‘My leg’s bad.’

  ‘Tourniquet should do it for now, though you need to see a medico. Gangrene’s a bitch. No point asking if you succeeded.’ He indicated the silence around them. ‘Just woke from my own trip. Felt… busier than before. Most seem to be taking to it. Others…’ He nodded in the direction of the moaning man, who’d curled into a ball on the floor. ‘It might take some time.’

  ‘You saw them, the others? Inside the corpus?’ Cale asked as Syn knelt to tie a strip of cloth around his leg. He winced as the band was drawn tight.

  ‘I saw them. Almost felt like I could talk to them, if I wanted.’

  ‘You can.’

  Syn considered this. ‘That sounds… useful.’

  Derrin picked up the rifle of a nearby soldier and handed it to Cale. ‘Here, lean on this.’

  ‘What now, buck?’

  Cale shook his head. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘You have the tools,’ said Kelbee, her voice inside their heads as clear as if she’d been standing next to them.

  The three of them swapped a look, confirming they’d all heard it.

  ‘Now,’ she continued. ‘You just need to decide how to use them.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ Cale asked.

  ‘You’ll work it out.’ There was a smile in the voice. ‘Together.’

  Renewal

  A breeze rustled the row of trees at the bottom of the steep garden, rushing through the branches and causing the small flock of roosting lycas to cling on with their talons and spread their wings, riding the dip and rise. The wind carried the faint susurration of leaf on leaf up the garden along with the musty perfume of sap.

  Kelbee stretched out and felt the wind stir the small hairs of her arms, breathing in the odour of bruised leaves and the faint sweetness of the last remaining blossoms. She closed
her eyes, feeling the warmth on her face and through her eyelids. As an experiment, she opened them and stared full-on into the glare for a full minute. There was no pain, and when she looked away there was no ghost-spot following her around wherever she looked. Despite this, it was as bright and hot as on any high Bask day. She took her hat from the floor by her wicker chair and stood, stretching her back. She ran a hand over her flat stomach.

  This was perhaps the hardest part to accept. Being a mother.

  The garden and the house were perched on the side of a small hill. The lawn was trimmed and neat, the flowerbeds a riot of disorganised yellows and reds and purples. Three tall trees marked the end of the garden, bursting with leaves, their trunks gnarled and wide and perfect for climbing. Beyond that boundary, the land was empty.

  No, not entirely empty.

  There was an attempt at topography there: a range of small hills marched along on the other side of the valley – without texture and featureless, as green as a leaf – and between them ran a thin ribbon of bright matte blue. The sky overhead was dotted with white clouds, but they did not move and, on closer examination, lacked depth. Beyond the garden was a child’s drawing of a landscape, a flat, primary-colour sketch.

  She’d help fill it out in time.

  One day there would be a small village at the bottom of the hill, with a narrow but well-paved path leading up to the house. There would be long grass and wildseed on the hills, meadows with rocks and birds and animals. The river would babble, blue and green and black over pebbles, and silver tarns would dart out from overhung banks, seeking insects and tiny invisible currents.

  Soon. It was all so new.

  And there was so much else to do first.

  Kelbee walked up the steps to the porch and pulled open the screen door. It was old and warped but the mesh on the outside was in good repair. There, just a third of the way up, was the notch where she’d knocked her head as a girl. She still had the mark. Curious that of all the parts of her childhood home, this battered old door was the only detail to exist here.