by Anthony Ryan
“At least we’ll have a surplus of Red to sell when this is over,” Lizanne muttered, looking over the accountancy manager’s reports in her office.
“But no Black,” Arberus noted. “Greens, Reds and Blues only, so far.”
“A detail that hasn’t escaped me,” she replied, recalling Clay’s shared memories of Ethelynne Drystone and her tamed Black. Also, the mosaics from the temple the Longrifles had found in the jungle had all conveyed an impression of the original Arradsians enjoying some form of worshipful symbiosis with the Blacks. “It may be they want no part in this conflict,” she wondered aloud.
“Want?” Arberus’s soot-blackened brows gave an amused twitch.
“They aren’t mindless,” she told him. “That much at least we’ve learned from this debacle, if nothing else.” She cast a critical gaze over his besmirched overalls and unwashed visage. “You need a bath.”
“Don’t we all?” He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary, provoking a not-altogether-unwelcome pang of intriguing discomfort. No, she told herself, clasping her hands together and averting her gaze. I can no longer afford any indulgence.
“You know we can’t last here,” he said after the silence had stretched for a time. “Not long enough for the Protectorate Fleet to arrive, and that assumes their arrival will in fact bring deliverance and not just more victims for the drakes’ spite. As you said, they aren’t mindless and it’s evident that they learn from every encounter.”
Her thoughts returned to the ships in the harbour, as they often had in recent days. Enough room for two-thirds, and what hope of reaching Feros would they have in any case? If only they were all blood-burners . . .
She straightened, frowning as something began to gel in her mind, something rich in desperation, but this situation demanded extreme solutions.
“That’s a look I’ve come to trust,” Arberus said, smiling again as she rose from the desk.
“I believe your command has received another Thumper,” she told him. “Please deploy it on the roof as you see fit and train your countrymen in its use. I shall be at the manufactory.”
—
“Is it possible?”
Jermayah met her gaze, brows knitting together in an expression that mingled annoyance with consideration. After a long and uncomfortable moment he went to a crate of papers in the corner of the manufactory that served as his makeshift office. She had afforded him the official title of Senior Ordnance Manager but to everyone who laboured here he remained simply Mr. Tollermine. The lack of formality didn’t appear to undermine the authority and respect he enjoyed, however, and there were few who would question the fact that their survival owed much to his ingenuity.
“A patented Ironship Mark II plasmothermic engine,” he said, extracting a large scroll from the crate and spreading it out on his desk to reveal a complex but familiar blueprint. “Twice as efficient as the Mark I and less complex than the Mark III. Plus, with a few alterations, we should be able to source all the materials from existing stocks. However, every one of these in existence has been fashioned in a Syndicate manufactory under expert supervision. Of all the artisans gathered here, I could name no more than a dozen with the skills to begin constructing one from scratch, much less finishing it.”
“But you could,” she said. “I’ve seen you build devices of far greater complexity with no other hands to help you. And we need much more than one.”
He grunted and returned his gaze to the intricate white lines of the diagram. “How many more?”
“Only one-quarter of the ships in the harbour are blood-burners. For this to work, they all need to be converted. You will have the ships’ engineers to help, of course.”
“So, you intend for us to flee?”
“I intend for us to live.”
He sagged, resting his elbows on the blueprint and lowering his face into his hands with a groan of such fatigue she found herself reaching out to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. He started at that, straightening to stare at her as if she might be a stranger wearing a familiar face. “You all right?” he asked.
She smothered a laugh and removed her hand. “Quite all right, thank you.”
“Saying we could do it,” he began after another prolonged study of the blueprint, “and I’m not saying we can, but if so, how are we going to power so many blood-burners? This siege has taken an awful toll on the Blood-blessed already.”
“Don’t concern yourself with that,” she told him. “The matter is in hand.”
—
The assembled girls stood in five neat rows in the Academy gymnasium, the youngest in the front and the oldest at the rear, the same arrangement adopted at every daily assembly. There were fifty-three of them, somewhat fewer than the usual complement but hardly unexpected given the indiscriminate nature of both Corvantine artillery and drake fire. With the sudden departure of Madame Bondersil, management of the establishment had fallen to one Juliza Kandles, a matronly woman of middling years who had previously been Mistress of Languages. Lizanne remembered her as a kindly sort, less severe in her disciplinary practises than the other teachers, and Lizanne therefore entertained serious doubts the woman would have the stomach for what was coming.
“They are children,” Mistress Juliza breathed, eyes widening after Lizanne finished relating her instructions.
“And they will soon be dead children if we cannot contrive a means of escape,” Lizanne told her. “Every precaution will be taken regarding their security . . .”
“What happened to you out there, Lizanne?” the woman asked, eyes wide in mystified dismay. “Was the world so terrible it turned you into this?”
“The world is the world,” Lizanne replied with a weary sigh. “And now it is at our door.” She nodded to Tekela, who came forward to hand the woman a folder. “Each student has been allocated a ship,” Lizanne explained. “You’ll find the list enclosed along with a basic guide to the workings of the thermoplasmic engine. It’s not very complicated but I feel the girls should gain some appreciation for its workings before embarkation.”
Mistress Juliza stared at the folder as if she had been handed a ticking bomb. “Madame would never have countenanced this,” she stated, voice hoarse as she met Lizanne’s eyes.
“Madame would have sold every girl here to a whore-house if it furthered her aims,” Lizanne replied, her patience finally worn through. “A complement of riflemen from the Maritime Protectorate is waiting outside to convey the girls to the docks in readiness. I’ll give you a half-hour to explain the situation and say your good-byes.”
—
They were granted a day’s respite, the skies remaining clear of Reds and the pock-marked, corpse-strewn wasteland outside the walls free of any charging Greens. Lizanne used the time to acquaint the city’s various factions with her design. Now that half the manufactory’s efforts had been given over to construction of blood-burning engines there was no prospect of maintaining secrecy in any case. Also, the hard choices they had to make demanded full and frank discussion.
“One in three,” the lead representative for the Blinds said in a soft, contemplative murmur. He had named himself as Cralmoor, a hulking Islander bearing the elaborate facial tattoos typical of his people, although their pleasing aesthetics were spoilt somewhat by the recently healed scars and misaligned bones that spoke of a savage beating. Reports from Exceptional Initiatives revealed the man as a famed and respected prize-fighter now risen in the slum’s ever-shifting hierarchy by virtue of the demise of the King of Blades and Whores.
“Children and mothers will be granted a place by right,” Lizanne told him. She had been obliged to meet Cralmoor atop a drinking den named the Colonials Rest where a collection of Blinds folk had charge of a battery of Thumpers and Growlers. They were a decidedly mixed lot, varying greatly in age and ethnicity and featuring more women in their ranks than in other
districts. They also exhibited considerably less respect in the face of corporate authority.
“Managers’ bitches and their whelps, no doubt,” sneered a woman standing at Cralmoor’s side, a thin-faced but buxom figure clad in a heavily besmirched, low-cut dress. Despite the pressures of recent days, she had somehow contrived to maintain her mask of paint; white foundation, ruby red lips and purple eye-shadow combining to convey a clownish appearance at odds with her otherwise fiercely suspicious demeanour.
“All children and all mothers,” Lizanne assured her. “Regardless of prior station or company allegiance.” She smiled, shifting her attention back to Cralmoor. “I will require a list of such persons within your . . . dominion.”
“What about everyone else?” he asked, unblinking fighter’s eyes steady and making her wish she had agreed to Arberus’s suggestion he bring his Corvantines along as an escort.
“To be chosen by lot,” she said, proud of the fact that she hadn’t allowed her smile to falter. “Also, a number of volunteers will remain as a rear-guard. Myself included.” She had used this tactic at her previous meetings that morning, finding it worked well with the Contractor families from Colonial Town, but made little impression on the representatives of the middle manager’s district.
“We are to be afforded no more respect than the worst scum of this city?” one had demanded, a deep-voiced woman with iron-grey hair and an impeccably tailored, and unstained, business dress. “We who have laboured to make it great?”
“But do scant labour in its defence,” Lizanne had replied, wearied by their petty complaints and assumed privilege. The world falls to ruin around them and still they cling to status and wealth as if they retain the slightest meaning. In the Blinds, however, the issue was one of trust rather than status.
The clown-faced woman gave a dubious cackle in response to Lizanne’s statement, but her mirth soon evaporated at a glare from Cralmoor. “Gotta ask you to forgive Molly Pins her over-sharp tongue, Miss Blood,” he said. “Her experience of company folk ain’t been altogether good. In that, we got a lot in common.”
“It’s perfectly all right, sir,” Lizanne replied, noting that Miss Pins’s expression remained sullen rather than contrite. “And please know I fully understand your reluctance to trust my word. All I can say is that, given our current difficulties, trust is not just a luxury, but a necessity.”
Cralmoor and the woman exchanged glances before retreating a short distance to confer with a cluster of similarly suspicious and mismatched souls. The discussion was brief, if heated. One man became particularly agitated, a stocky fellow of Dalcian heritage who hissed at Cralmoor as he gesticulated towards the docks, Lizanne finding little difficulty in lip-reading his argument: “To the Travail with this Corporate bitch. I say we take the ships and go.”
Cralmoor listened to the Dalcian in silence, stroking his chin and nodding in apparent consideration, then reached out a cobra-swift hand to clamp his fingers around the fellow’s neck. He lifted the Dalcian off his feet single-handed then carried him to the edge of the roof, opening his hand to deposit the dissenter into the alley below. The pealing screams that ascended as Cralmoor strode back to Lizanne spoke of at least one broken limb.
“You’ll have your list by the end of the day,” the Islander told her. “And you can add my name to your rear-guard.”
“My thanks, sir,” she replied. “There is one other matter requiring discussion.” She hesitated at his raised eyebrow but ploughed on. “If there are any unregistered Blood-blessed within this district, I would ask that they make themselves known. They will be sorely needed when the time comes.”
“I’ll see to it.” He gave a polite incline of his head and gestured towards the ladder to the street below. It seemed her period of welcome had come to an end. She nodded and made for the ladder, pausing as her gaze alighted on a slender figure on a neighbouring roof-top. It was a girl, perhaps a couple of years older than Tekela with the dark complexion of Old Colonial stock. Her face was faintly familiar but it was the way she moved that made Lizanne pause. The girl was evidently part of a Growler crew from the bandoliers of ammunition criss-crossing her chest. She was attempting to teach a dance step to a younger comrade, a Dalcian girl barely twelve years old by Lizanne’s reckoning. The older girl smiled as they swayed back and forth, but it was a sad smile and somehow Lizanne doubted she had laughed at all recently. Suddenly the girl spun away from her pupil, performing a series of flawless pirouettes, dark hair flying as she twirled before coming to a rigid halt, posed with arms raised in statuesque perfection. She smiled once more as her comrades clapped, bowing in theatrical gratitude.
“Something else, Miss Blood?”
Lizanne turned to see Molly Pins standing close by, her suspicious squint only marginally less fierce than before. “You been made welcome and all, but it’s best not to linger.”
“That girl,” Lizanne said, pointing to the neighbouring roof-top. “You know her?”
Molly glanced at the girl and gave a short nod. “Sure, used to belong to Keyvine, though only for a day or so till his head took off and left the rest of him behind.”
“Her name?”
The woman’s squint narrowed a little but it seemed she couldn’t find reason to ignore the question and Lizanne whispered along with the name she spoke, “Joya. Her name’s Joya.”
CHAPTER 39
Clay
It took longer to ascend to the mountain top than expected, Lutharon often gaining height only to lose it a few moments later as the wind changed. Clay could feel the air thinning about them, bringing a cutting chill that barely made purchase on his thoughts, filled as they were with near-feverish imaginings of Silverpin’s fate. Could be he killed her already, just pitched her out of the car on the way up. Or broke her neck when he stole it.
Added to that was the burn in his chest, the old heat stoked to a new intensity worse than anything felt in all his years in the Blinds. He only made it this far ’cause of me, he knew, realising he had forgotten one of the hardest lessons learnt in the Blinds: a true friend is like a ten-scrip note lying in the street; you might find one, but only when you ain’t looking.
Finally, after more than an hour of effort, Lutharon ascended above the narrow summit of the Nail, circling until the ledge came into view. At a pat to the neck from Ethelynne the drake shortened his wings, bringing them down in a descent so rapid it might have had Clay yelling in fear a short while before; now there was just the burn and the need to reach his goal.
He held tight to the spine in front of him, eyes fixed on the growing expanse of the ledge. He had agreed with Ethelynne before setting off that no chances would be taken with the treacherous astronomer. Lutharon was to incinerate him on sight or, failing that, he and Ethelynne would gulp down sufficient Black and Red on landing to see him cast down the mountain side in a screaming ball of flame. However, it appeared such designs were destined to be frustrated as he could see the cable-car halted below a pylon erected close to the cliff-edge, but no sign of either Scriberson or Silverpin.
He leapt clear of Lutharon’s back as the drake flared his wings, Stinger coming free of its holster as he landed in a crouch. The ledge was broad and unnaturally flat, the stone smoothed into a level surface with the kind of precision that only came from human hands. Or something inhuman with the same understanding, he thought.
“Over here!” Ethelynne called, her slight form shielded by Lutharon’s bulk. Both he and the Drake moved to find her standing at an opening in the rock-face where the ledge ended. It was clearly new from the rubble piled nearby and the wooden beams buttressing the entrance.
“Briteshore’s work,” Clay said, moving to her side and peering into the absolute gloom of the shaft. Ethelynne drank a sip from one of her vials and sent a pulse of Red-borne fire into the shaft, illuminating a long tunnel of damp, rough-hewn walls, stretching on for at least fifty feet before the fla
mes faded. “It appears they had been fairly industrious before deciding to leave,” she observed.
“Wait here a moment, ma’am.” He went to the cable-car, finding the supplies they had packed mostly intact, including the two barrels of explosive and, he was annoyed to find, Scriberson’s marvellous telescope already assembled and ready to be placed atop its tripod. It seemed the astronomer had fitted the tubes together before placing it in the car so there wouldn’t be any delay in viewing his precious alignment. Clay reached for it with a grunt of anger, ready to throw the damn thing into the void, then paused as something occurred to him. If it was all just a ruse, why would he bother to fix it up at all?
He searched the rest of the car’s contents until he found Scriberson’s pack, tearing it open and spilling out the contents. His notebook was amongst the sundry items, including a number of curios gathered on the way; a drake tooth, a mosaic tile from the temple, a Dalcian sovereign he had done well to keep hidden. Nothing, in fact, that spoke of a Corvantine agent intent on betrayal and murder. Clay opened the note-book, leafing through the pages of jottings and sketches. The astronomer wrote in Mandinorian but his penmanship was poor, Clay finding he could decipher only a portion of it and that was so filled with scholarly jargon he made little sense of it anyway. The sketches were a different matter, all clean, uncluttered lines set down with a clarity and precision that belied the scribbles framing them. Clay stopped leafing at a sketch near the end of the book, the most accomplished so far showing a young woman he knew well. She stood with a revolver on her hip and a quizzical aspect to her face as she smiled out at the viewer, an aspect Clay hadn’t seen in his cousin before but Scriberson evidently had.