“Izlak,” said Moleg. “The others are the ruling Grajul and their Pekyr underlings.”
The Izlak were the most numerous, being similar to the dog-like Gomedrans, only shorter, scrawnier. The Sedlu were squat, brawny humanoids, while the Pekyr were tall and wiry with oddly small heads. Most of the Pekyr worked as guards and enforcers for the ruling houses of the Grajul, the fourth and most recent of the settler species.
Kref stared down at the motionless Ongian. “We gotta take care of him,” he said in deep, gravelly tones. Then he caught Dervla giving him a wordless look, and added, “… without hurting him, obviously.”
“Whatever you do,” Dervla said, “you’ll first have to cope with the fact that the little fellow is starting to come round.”
Sure enough, the scrawny Izlak was stirring on the bunk. Ancil snapped his fingers. “I’ve got sleepgas capsules in my kit … and I’ve got a plan!”
“As long as it doesn’t involve betting,” Dervla said, “I’ll give it a listen.”
It turned out to be not a bad plan. The sleepgas capsule was thankfully effective, putting the Ongian back under almost at the very moment that his eyes started to open. Ancil’s plan to then keep him safe and out of sight just needed a little fine-tuning. Like sneaking him into the next-door building and leaving him bundled up in a blanket inside a storage closet, rather than carrying him into a wharfside bar and abandoning him at a table in the darkest corner. When Ancil and Moleg finally appeared at the slummy, triangular jetty down near the base of the dorm-block they’d called home for four days, it was nearly an hour since Pyke’s call. And although Moleg had alerted their transport contact back then as well, thus far the airboat was a no-show, which had Moleg frowning as he came over to Dervla. She was not best pleased.
“Derv, I’m really sorry,” he said. “The boatman promised me …”
“I hope you have a backup plan,” she said. “Otherwise this job is going to turn into a full-scale fail.”
“I did speak to another boatman,” Moleg said. “He was charging more than Narok but wouldn’t guarantee the kind of readiness that we need. I can see if I can get him to come along, but we’d still have to chase down the other to get our equipment—”
Dervla felt as if there were some countervailing force trying to stymie their efforts, a feeling she’d had ever since arriving on Ong. But she blanked out these thoughts while pulling the handset from an inner pocket.
“Make the call,” she said.
But before Moleg could punch in the local codes, Ancil caught their attention.
“Hang on—there’s a boat coming!” he said, pointing down.
Dervla and Moleg went to the rail and peered over. An ungainly looking airboat with a raised stern and brightly coloured awning had emerged from beneath the adjacent building and was ascending to the jetty.
“That’s Narok,” Moleg said, waving down at a figure standing in the prow, who waved back.
“I hope he has a good excuse,” said Dervla.
The airboat looked as if it had been built over a century ago, had a rough working life before being buried in a sand dune, got dug up years later and pressed back into service without much of a cleanup. Not a square inch of its hull and superstructure seemed free from scratches, abrasions, dents or riveted patches. The humming repulsors, two at the prow, two at the stern, were probably the vessel’s newest important components—they were mounted in curved recesses clearly designed for much larger, older units, yet still they managed to look beaten up and scavenged.
Its captain, Narok, was a squat, block-headed Sedlu garbed in a thick-woven, high-collared coat that Dervla was sure had to be far too warm for this weather. Once the craft was level with the jetty he flung out a gangway and urgently waved them aboard. Moments later, the gangway was hauled back in and the airboat was descending, guided by Narok as he conversed rapidly with Moleg. As the Ongian spoke, Moleg nodded then glanced at Dervla and beckoned her over.
“Narok tells me that he had to get here by a roundabout route due to the Whipguards making surprise checks at the main undercity boatway junctions. Rumour has it that an offworld gang of crims recently landed near the city, intent on plundering the ancient tombs of Vesh.” Moleg glanced back at the boat’s captain. “Narok knows it can’t be us since we’ve been here several days, but he is understandably jittery.”
“Do what you can to keep him relaxed,” Dervla said. “Tell him a joke if you have to … mind you, I’ve no idea what makes an Ongian laugh so maybe scratch that one.”
“He knows that we’re planning to steal something expensive from the Grajul,” Moleg said. “It gives him considerable satisfaction to know this.”
“Nice,” she said. “A bit o’ sympathy for high-end thievery, that’s what I like to hear!”
Soon they were gliding through what the locals called Cellartown, the mazy, shadowy underside of Cawl-Vesh. It was like an inverted city—well, a slummy, rickety, handbuilt city full of noises, smells and music, and the people who were making them. The web of immense cables that supported the city in its entirety was visible here and there, in the gaps between all the pendant and appended frameworks, shacks, shanties and sheds which had been augmented over time, like the encrusted hull of some great ship. Of course, new arrivals built extensions or rebuilt what was there, adding curious arches, balconies, walkways and any number of camouflaged features. Cellartown as a result was riddled with wynds, alleys, secret wharfs and concealed conduits.
While striving to avoid patrols of Whipguards, the boatman Narok treated them to a brief sidetrip along one of the conduits. Gliding down one alley, the boat ascended to an odd recess beneath an overhang crammed with pipes and power ducts; ahead, the alley cornered to the right but Narok maintained speed and direction towards a brick wall. At the last moment a section of grubby brickwork slid aside and Narok guided them through, without any fuss. Ancil and Kref muttered and chortled at one another as the airboat floated on into a darkened, lamplit passageway. They passed by a small market where baggy-sleeved locals pored over trays of odd produce beneath hanging lanterns; next to that was a cluster of little workshops, each a glowing islet of tools with a lens-wearing artisan at its heart. One looked up as the boat drifted peacefully by, and purely by chance his gaze met Dervla’s—he gave an embarrassed smile and ducked his head. Another artisan looked up, only he offered a challenging glower which made Dervla chuckle quietly and turn away.
Then, just ahead, a short stretch of the passageway floor parted, admitting a flood of amber evening light into the claustrophobic darkness. Narok slowed his craft and smoothly descended through the opening, re-entering Cellartown in all its scruffy, dusk-tinged splendour. Dervla found herself flashing on some old pix she once saw on some history feed or other, views from an old Earth city called Venice, a coastal city where manually propelled boats travelled around a network of canals. Except that instead of dark and murky waters, vertigo-inducing emptiness gaped beneath the airboat, more than half a kilometre of hot dusty air between the underbelly of Cawl-Vesh and the rocky sands of the canyon floor, supposedly infested with swarms of feralised bots.
Peering over the side, Dervla studied the canyon, the blue-green outcrops of stone, the patches and stretches of shining pure gold sands, and the curtain of deep shadow cast right across it all by the setting sun. A beautiful vista which also managed to look barren and lifeless.
Then Moleg was by her side. “We’re almost there—Narok says just a minute or two before we reach the shaft entrance.”
The airboat was rising again, ascending a high, narrow alley as if heading for one of the balcony jetties jutting out here and there. But they soared steadily past them. Dervla knew from Van Graes’ locationer, and the sketchy maps Moleg had managed to source, that by now they had to be very near to the under-sub-basement of the Tower of the Jul-Tegach. The Jul-Tegach were one of Cawl-Vesh’s ruling Grajul families, one forced by financial troubles to commercialise some of its assets, including entire
levels of its dynastic seat. Several floors were currently lying conveniently empty, including one which, by virtue of its extravagant design, projected outward in such a way that its east side sat quite close to the outer wall of the adjacent building, the Grand Halls of Council, the municipal governing heart of the city. Two levels of chambers and galleries in the west wing of the Great Halls had been given over to a museum, the Exquisite Parade of Mysteries, the lower level of which all but jostled against the extravagantly appointed eighth floor next door.
“Have you checked the gear?” Dervla asked.
“Everything we requested is there,” Moleg said. “And all the packs are loaded correctly.”
Dervla smiled. There was a tone in his voice which implied that some repacking had taken place. She glanced up as the airboat passed by one of the huge cables that kept Cawl-Vesh suspended over that canyon. Details resolved out of the shadows above, grimy pipes, weld-lines joining heavy plating, protruding support spars onto which metal hawsers had been bolted, hawsers that were holding up entire sections of Cellartown. There was a metallic scrape, then rusty creaks as a large pair of doors swung open to reveal a dimly lit vertical shaft.
“Not far to go, eh, Derv?” said Ancil.
“Are you an optimist or a masochist?” she said. “We still have to carry the gear up two floors.”
“S’all right, boss,” said Kref. “Ans’ll volunteer me then say a bunch of tricky words to get me to laugh, and then I’ll feel okay about carrying everyone’s stuff!”
“Now, now,” she said. “We all need to remember the big damn burden that Ancil’s carrying—it can’t be easy getting in and out of doors with that huge bloody ego of his.”
Ancil nodded at the sniggering that came his way. “Mockery and disrespect, eh?—for this I gave up concert nanosurgery!”
Their louder laughter was muffled as the shadowy shaft swallowed the airboat.
CHAPTER TWO
The Permanent Sub-Proctor, the city of Cawl-Vesh
Five floors above the museum known as the Exquisite Parade of Mysteries, Cawl-Vesh’s most powerful civil servant—the Permanent Sub-Proctor to the Office of Despatch—was overseeing the demotion of one government minister and the promotion of another to the resultant vacancy. Like all the city’s civil servants and security guards, he was a Pekyr, tall, lanky and narrow-featured and clothed in dark blue robe-like vestments, the customary attire for administration officials. The only detail which set him apart from the lower grades was the high, silver-trimmed collar—and the glowing command slate he held in his long, delicate fingers. The line of lowly attendants carrying boxes and containers from chamber to elevator spared him only the briefest of nervous glances, each inwardly praying that they wouldn’t be the one to trip or drop or break anything. The shame would be terrible—only perfect conduct was permissible and customary when it came to city council matters.
Hurmphal Klasmer looked up from his command slate for a moment, features calm and composed and not betraying the weary annoyance which seeped beneath. Miscreants were wandering the alleys and underchannels of Cawl-Vesh yet here he was, required by the customs of his office to shepherd this changeover through to its conclusion in person. Every few moments the command slate would register a dataspark from the under-warder who was scanning each container as it was brought to the goods elevator, thereby interrupting Klasmer’s scrutiny of the reports coming from his spies out in the city. Not that the reports themselves were of the greatest calibre. He had only been told of the presence of the first gang of offworlders yesterday, three days after they arrived, and his informant had utterly failed to track down their whereabouts until a bare two hours ago, only for him to discover that they had decamped with all their belongings earlier today.
That, however, had been overshadowed by news of the arrival of a second gang of newcomers who disembarked from an armed combat shuttle lacking any identifying markings. A hastily taken picture showed six bipeds in light body armour, their faces veiled by head wraps. Of course, Cawl-Vesh was not a complete stranger to out-system visitors, due to its proximity to the great desert of Tolygria, and transport links to the other three cities that hugged the periphery of that colossal wasteland. Most were treasure hunters of one kind or another, usually following some thin trail of clues hinting at the location of crash sites of lost vessels from a hundred millennia ago, or in possession of maps leading through the desert to vaults full of staggering wealth. In truth, Ong had over just the last twenty millennia been the capital of one short-lived empire, the Chavoshan Embrace, and an even briefer tyranny of marauders and pirates, the Fajazi Kleptarchy. The former built a profusion of tombs, sepulchres, crypts and catacombs as final resting places for family and favoured servants: the latter used the most durable of them as repositories to store the valuables that they looted from ships, bases and border colonies across a wide area. Factional infighting and deadly vendettas brought about the breakdown and disintegration of both, and the sands of Ong swept out to bury the evidence of their reigns.
Or almost all evidence. Cawl-Vesh was positioned right over a canyon full of tomb complexes, the former necropolis of Vesh, a legendary Chavoshan city now scoured from a nearby plateau. All those ruins and tombs had been only cursorily explored, a hazardous proposition given the unpredictability of the machine swarms around this area. But it was very likely that a great many caches and troves remained undiscovered, making the canyon of Vesh highly attractive to looters. Like these gangs of offworlders who, Klasmer speculated, might even be conspiring together—it was just a supreme irritation that there were no clues to where the first gang had gone.
And now a pair of thick glass doors across the low-lit hallway parted and the tall figure of Assistant-Diligencer Retzam emerged, hands clasped behind his back as he approached Klasmer. Calmly, the Permanent Sub-Proctor wiped the report from his command slate and presented an air of benevolent superiority. Retzam drew near, paused and gave a respectful bow.
“Please forgive this intrusion, Permanent Sub-Proctor,” he said. “I am commanded by the Deputy Minister to convey a query.”
“A query, you say?” Klasmer made a small open-handed gesture. “Proceed.”
“Deputy Minister Stesseg wishes to know if the servials can now begin conveying his effects and documents up to his new office?”
Klasmer nodded gravely and adopted a ruminative countenance.
“Retzam, kindly inform the Deputy Minister that, with the minister dismissed, he is both technically and effectively in charge of the Directorate for Budget Scrutiny.”
Assistant-Diligencer Retzam brightened at this. “Thank you, Permanent Sub-Proctor—his Elevance will be greatly cheered to hear—”
“However, in terms of custom and tradition, a formal confirmation must be issued by a senior member of the government, in this case, the Arch-Minister for Probity and Oversight. I would advise Deputy Minister Stesseg to cultivate a statesmanlike patience for just a little while longer, hmm? The Arch-Minister’s confirmation should arrive before the end of the evening business.”
Or whenever the flow of boxed valuables comes to an end, Klasmer thought as Retzam nodded, bowed and left. Only then can I ascend to the next floor and tell the Arch-Minister to append his signature to the already drafted letter so it can then be carried down to the deputies’ floor and placed in Stesseg’s sweaty hands.
Yet the cavalcade of identical packaging continued unabated. For most government ministers, and senior members of the Seven Houses (which essentially amounted to the same thing), status and wealth brought with it the compulsion to acquire rare and even beautiful objects, such as those looted from the labyrinthine tombs of ancient Vesh. The official position of the council of Cawl-Vesh was that only the department of Historicalities was permitted to explore the tombs, and that the finest retrievals were to be put on display in the Exquisite Parade of Mysteries, the museum which occupied nearly two floors of this very building. Unofficially, a profitable and highly surreptitious bl
ack market in Veshen antiquities had gradually accreted around the ruling Grajul elites who also kept a tight control on the far more lucrative offworld market—which is why these bands of newcomers were a serious cause for concern.
Frowning, Permanent Sub-Proctor Klasmer tapped his command slate and the screen came back to life. His long, thin eyebrows rose slightly when he noticed a new report emblem blinking. Quickly he read it through—and his frown deepened. It seemed that the recently arrived gang of six offworlders had strolled into the plaza at the centre of Cawl-Vesh and rented an upper suite of chambers at a superior leasing hostel.
A hostel directly across the plaza from the Grand Halls of the Council of Cawl-Vesh. Apparently they were now gathered by the tall windows, laughing and drinking and gesturing at the very government offices where Klasmer was now seated. There was, he realised, the distinct possibility that matters could turn ugly.
Not for the first time in his long career at the peak of Cawl-Vesh politics, he was intensely glad that the council Whipguards took their orders from him.
CHAPTER THREE
Dervla, the planet Ong, the city of Cawl-Vesh
About four feet of cold, dead air, and a sheer ninety-foot drop, hung between the two buildings. A taut cable crossed the narrow gap. One end was clamped to the upper edge of a roughly square hole in the side of the Jul-Tegach Tower, where Dervla was perched; the other was claw-bolted into their destination, a shadowy ledge on the stone wall of the Grand Halls council building. Moleg and Ancil were crouched there, the former feeding a tiny jet of coolant into the deep groove that the latter was cutting around a big block of masonry. It was exacting work and more than once Moleg failed to keep the jet steady and on target, causing Ancil to retract the cutter beam for a moment before repositioning. But, rather than verbalising his frustration, Ancil carried on with the job, aware of Dervla’s unwavering gaze.
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