“Need to listen out for the caretaker doing his rounds.” She pressed an ear to the door as they all tried to stay quiet. Then she nodded. “Can hear him heading away.”
She took a short-bladed knife from her bodice and began scraping away the mortar from around one particular brick set next to the door frame at waist level. The mortar was unusually soft, as if it wasn’t really bonded in at all. Pyke smiled in appreciation as she carefully levered the brick out, exposing a dark hole. She then slipped her arm in up to the elbow, fumbled for a moment until there was a muffled knock, like a rock falling on a paving stone. She reached in further, face grimacing with concentration, then Pyke heard the latch slide free and the door suddenly opened, just a crack. The others gave thumbs-up signs and Tiselio offered a mock curtsey.
Quickly, quietly, they moved into the back court which, while narrow, was as long as the warehouse was broad. An arched brick tunnel led off to one side, behind two outbuildings. Once the secret bricks had been replaced, Tiselio led them along the tunnel to a rusted and lockless iron gate then down mossy winding steps. By now candle stubs had been lit, shedding enough light to see the dankness and slimy growths patching the walls. At the foot of the stairs was another door which Tiselio glared at, kicked and cursed.
“Has the lock been changed?”
“Changed the lock, changed the door, too!” she said.
Pyke squinted at the door in the flickering light. It seemed very solid. “We could both try kicking it in …”
Tiselio Flett snorted and extracted a couple of pins from her hair. They glinted in the candlelight as she crouched down and got to work on the lock. Watching her, Pyke was again struck by how naturalistic and autonomous the non-player characters were in the Legacy’s simulation. For all that they were following scripted behaviour models, it was difficult not to think of them as real people.
“You’re a woman of considerable talents,” he said. “Why did you become a seamstress?”
“I actually find stitchwork more of a challenge,” she said. “And the result is something beautiful made by my hands … can you bring that candle in closer? Thank you.”
“Retired,” Pyke said. “But still keeping your skills sharp … ah, nice, well done!”
Tiselio got to her feet, returning the pins to her hair. The door to the aquasluice stood open.
“No more breaking and entering,” she said. “Now I teach others to break and enter.”
“And your brother?”
“Hidalio was the best,” she said, smile fading. “But he was too trusting. Let’s go.”
The aquasluice was basically a brick-lined conduit tall enough to walk along at a stoop, with a large circular pipe running along one side. The pipe had thick glass windows at regular intervals, which revealed that there was no water passing along it, for all that the cramped passage was damp and fetid. When Pyke mentioned this Tiselio chuckled knowingly.
“Piped fresh water is a luxury to be paid for,” she said. “When the warehouse was closed down, someone remembered to shut off the water.”
“A city full of poor people usually turns out to have plenty of ruthless merchants,” Vrass said.
Tiselio gave the Gomedran an amused look. “Pretty rebellious talk for a boxhouse guard.”
Vrass laughed. “We can probably assume that I am now an ex-boxhouse employee.”
“How far till we’re inside the main building?” said Pyke.
“We’re practically underneath it now,” said Tiselio. “This branch ends in an outbuilding where the main supply junction is. But—the engineer who built these conduits was petrified of drowning, so the story goes, and he had emergency exits installed, purely for his own use. They were supposed to have been bricked up or filled in, but someone else’s negligence is our good fortune.”
Following Tiselio along the aquasluice, they slowed when she came to a halt at an odd recess in the brickwork. She ran her fingers along the edges of the recess then kicked the base of it and shoved the centre. Pyke had heard the hollow thud then laughed when the secret door shifted inwards about half an inch before she pushed it sideways. Candlelight revealed steep iron steps.
“Craftily made,” Pyke said. “Leads up to the sub-basement, you said?”
“Yes—the Inox & Throm building has two large basements for storing all their wagon parts, and several sub-basements for holding ballastings.” Tiselio gave a sly smile. “A nice quiet corner of the least used section of the building. A good place to start from, wouldn’t you say?”
“I continue to be impressed.”
She nodded, started up the stairs, got to the third step and stopped. Unhurriedly she half turned and glanced back at Pyke and Vrass with an odd look in her face. Right away Pyke knew something was very, very wrong.
“You okay?”
Still on the third step, she turned fully round and looked down at them both with an unsettling smile.
“Never better, Captain,” she said. “The players are playing, the twists are turning, and the plan is unfolding on schedule.”
Vrass was suddenly anxious. “Captain, I think it’s …”
“The Legacy, yes, I know.” Pyke felt a crawling fear in his gut but wasn’t about to lose his cool in front of this dark presence. “So—this a social call or is it business?”
“A bit of both. It amuses me from time to time to bestow upon my apprentices both the pleasure of my company and certain fragments of wisdom to aid them in their trials.”
The Legacy, alien AI and overseer of the Granah simulation, author of this narrative puzzle they were compelled to undertake, composer of what was in the end a prison. As it talked, Tiselio’s voice deepened and gained additional tonal layers, basso and strangled whisper. When the Legacy spoke, it spoke like a nightmare.
“Well, we are right in the middle of something,” said Pyke. “But I’m sure we can do a workaround after we take a break, just for you.”
Unhurriedly, the Legacy came back down the steps to get nearer to the both of them. With Tiselio’s face, it gave a smiling sneer.
“Well, that is most obliging of you.”
Turning to Vrass it uttered a bestial snarl that made him back away, while at the same time grabbing Pyke’s upper arm in an abnormally strong grip.
In an instant Pyke was no longer in an underground tunnel but in a high and breezy place, overlooking the entirety of Granah. He staggered sideways, fetched up against a cold stone buttress, trying to regain his sense of balance as he contemplated the edge of the roof just a couple of feet away.
“Quite a piece of work, don’t you think?”
The Legacy, still in possession of Tiselio Flett’s form, was standing near the edge, one foot resting on the low coping wall, one arm leaning on the raised thigh. The Legacy was gazing out at the city and glancing sideways at Pyke.
“Pretty outstanding detail,” Pyke said, trying to relax, straightening away from the buttress. “Must’ve taken you a long time to get it right …”
“You can’t pump me for information,” the Legacy said. “I only tell you what I want you to know. As for this, I had nothing to do with the basic structures—all I attended to was, well, everything else. Over the considerable stretches of time available to me, I was able to mine for a great wealth of data, both within and without the boundaries of our crystal world.” The Legacy moved back from the coping wall and strolled off along a narrow walkway around the top of this building, whatever it was.
“This way,” it said, then commenced a visual tour of the Imperial city.
Ahead, in the direction they were walking, was the south-eastern quarter of Granah. It spread across rising ground that sloped towards the broad promontory on which the Imperial fortress and palace were built. Smooth-dressed walls with elaborate ramparts ringed the palace, and within the walls a series of seven colossal towers also stood guard, each provided with numerous levels where war machines sat ready to send forth a deluge of missiles down onto the heads of any invader foolish eno
ugh to take on the might of Granah.
“But that’s not likely to happen,” said the Legacy. “The northern kingdoms are weak and divided, and the Eastern Autarch has his own factional problems. But then you look at those defences, and keep in mind the size of the empire’s armies and their state of readiness. Is it all simple paranoia or do the Emperor and his closest advisers know something that no one else suspects?”
The Legacy had led him to a wider section of the roof and looking back he could see how the converging peaks of the roof structures leaned in towards a single slender tower.
“Is there a story behind the story?” the Legacy went on. “Is there a game behind the game?”
That caught his attention—hadn’t the drone Rensik said something very similar back on the Isle of Candles? Pyke wanted to unleash every shred of scorn and mocking hate he possessed upon this toxic data-vermin but that might have unintended consequences. Stick to the hail-fellow-well-met bollocks, he thought. Noisy but safe.
“Ah, so you’ve been having a gab with my ould pal Rensik!” he said, plastering on a fake grin. “How is the rusty old box o’ bolts doing, anyway?”
“Making valuable contributions to our ongoing grand project,” the Legacy said. “You know, I had thought that your machine friend might be a source of difficulty and disruption but it has turned out to be quite the asset. I’ll need to acquire more of these Construct drones, when the time is right …”
So, Pyke thought, the message is—“forget about getting any help from your mechanical pal, sucker. He works for me now!”
“If you’re happy with how it’s all going,” Pyke said, “why pull me—well, us—out when we were getting close to some vital clues?”
“There’s a saying I’ve heard used by various sentient races down the centuries,” the Legacy said. “The Human version goes, ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’ So—even though I’ve designed this simulation down to the most minute detail and planned and cross-planned to allow for a river of cause-chains and effect waves, I still like to shake up the ceremony, kick the board, jam an axe-handle into the gears!”
Using Tiselio Flett’s face, it grinned wildly as it explained its motives. It occurred to Pyke that despite all the body-jacking, jumping in and out of various victims, the Legacy still didn’t really understand how facial expressions were supposed to work.
“Does that mean you’re the enemy of your own plan … or something?” he said.
“Of my plan’s predictability,” the Legacy said.
Pyke made a dubious face. “Predictable to you, maybe.”
The Legacy laughed, a high staccato overlaid with that deep synthetic echo—it was a hideous sound.
“In actual fact, the multiplexity of the simulation’s narrative weave leads to recombinations that surprise even me.” It looked round and pointed to a cluster of mansions and villas on a hill north of the city square. “There’s the Blue Mound, home to the empire’s rich, privileged and powerful—oddly, not all of those three qualities coincide. The richest man in Granah is a sad widower with no offspring and no immediate family relatives. Three of the empire’s most illustrious families are also three of its most debt-ridden noble families—their debts combined almost rival that of the crown. Creditors and usurers gather round them like carrion eaters, except that those noble families are like corpses that never quite die.”
The outstretched pointing hand swept to a section of dark roofs over by the eastern wall. “The Jirtha livestock yards, named for the tributary that still runs under the roads and pens, carrying manure and offal down to join with the Worroth.” The pointing finger swung all the way round to the west, where the crenelated walls of the garrison dominated the streets surrounding it. “The mighty garrison of Granah!—in whose shadow the delightful fleshpots of Redlamp Town ply their lecherous trade.” The Legacy nodded approvingly. “All roads lead through there, sooner or later …”
“The last thing I took you for was a tourist guide,” Pyke said. “Consider my mind broadened and my existence, such as it is, enriched. Now, can I get back to the story? Which you went to so much trouble to provide for us?”
The Legacy’s eyes widened happily. “Indeed, it is past time for this interlude to draw to a close. Your absence introduces new variables, such that it truly saddens me to have to tell you that one of your companions may soon find themselves in dire peril, caught in tragic peril …”
“Okay, fine—send us back to those tunnels and we’ll sort out this poison plot.”
“Send you back to the tunnels?” The Legacy’s smile was infuriating. “Now where is the challenge in that?”
Gritting teeth, and clenching fists hidden in coat pockets, Pyke gazed at the ground for a moment rather than look at that demented look in Tiselio’s eyes. Shaking his head he began to laugh, the rueful, bitter laugh of someone who sees the outlines of the trap. The Legacy was laughing, too, a sound that sawed on the senses.
“I get it,” he said. “It’s like we’re getting dumped at the edge of town but we have to find our way back to the company compound …”
Still the Legacy laughed on, the chortle of someone enjoying their own joke immensely.
“Well, you see, I could either just slip away and leave the pair of you to get back in the game, or I could just whisk Tiselio back to her shop in an eyeblink. Guess which one it’s going to be?”
Pyke drew breath to answer but he was suddenly alone on the rooftop.
“Stinking, gouging ratbag!” he shouted.
The only reply was the chill winds sighing around the rooftop stonework of this unknown building.
One thing’s for sure, he thought, I can’t hang around here. That machine-bastard’s not coming back so I’d better find a way down to the streets then get back to Inox & Throm and pray I’m not too late.
The leaden grey of a slow dawn was gradually brightening over the city as its thousands of chimneys began sending smoke trails aloft. Pyke eventually found a narrow, plain door in a corner of the roof. It was almost hidden behind a square pillar which, with three others, supported a platform and a blackened iron framework in which sizeable fires had once burned, going by the charring. Beyond the door was a landing leading to a square spiral stairway descending to the bottom of the building’s central tower. Grey light leaked through square windows arranged in columns around otherwise sheer walls, also built in a square. The place felt like it had been empty for years—the steps were littered with curled dry leaves, spotted with bird droppings and adorned with the odd feather. And it had been a temple, going by the large metal symbols hanging on chains and ropes all the way down and anchored to crossbeams high above.
The symbols, wrought in iron mostly, were all roughly a yard across and were combinations of circle, triangle and hexagon. There were three main varieties, where each symbol was the outermost and contained the other two. Further down he started noticing dangling rope ends that looked burned and cut. It grew shadowy as he descended and it wasn’t until he was just a few flights from the bottom that he could make out a layer of fallen symbols lying around a huge stone altar directly beneath. He wondered what the priesthood of this temple had done to have been closed down, then suffer a bit of light arson.
All the windows on the ground floor were shuttered apart from one which hung in splintered pieces, but before he could climb up and exit the temple a bird flew in suddenly. Uttering rasping squawks, it flapped noisily around the centre, wheeling among the lowest of the hanging symbols and swooping down over the altar. Pyke’s immediate irritation was foreshortened by a curious familiarity, then his recollection of the mechanical bird that had stared at him from its cage as they’d carted Vrass through Haxy Nightmarket. And that noise it made while flapping did sound like a mechanical clattering interspersed with a tiny chorus of squeaks.
“Pyke!” it squawked. “Pyke! Found you at last!”
“Who the hell …” he muttered. Then realisation bloomed. “Rensik! Har-har, knew you’d defy
the odds somehow. Can’t keep a good Construct drone down …”
“Not exactly,” said the mechanical bird as it flew down to perch on the edge of the altar. “I’m Rensik’s residual, RK1.”
“Huh, I see.” Pyke wandered over and leaned on the altar with both elbows. “Where’s Rensik?”
“My progenitor, sad to report, remains engaged under the Legacy’s authority, in some unknown capacity.”
“So how did you get from the Isle of Candles to the great city of Granah? And where the kack have you been all this time?”
“My answer deals with both questions—I divided the monohub of my dataplex among the cascade-shells of yourself and the others just before the transfer to this simulation began.”
“A cascade-shell? What’s that?”
“A vague and inadequate description of your digital presence, your autonomous node,” said RK1. “The fractal complexity of your data structure—and that of the other three—is a magnitude of sophistication beyond my own, even beyond my progenitor. So there were plenty of crevices in which to conceal a segment of my own code. However, these portions of myself remained locked until your original personas were triggered by those statues—only after Vrass underwent his revival could my autocompile knit my parts together.”
Pyke nodded and sighed. “We’ve been pretty busy since then—in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I did notice, and I, too, have been busy,” said RK1, its beak clicking. “One benefit of having passed through by stealth is that the regulatory systems of the simulation don’t entirely see me—I’m not in the index so my clandestine activities go largely undetected.”
“Sounds like a handy trick to have.”
“I’ve already put it to good use.” The mechanical bird paused, blinked its beady eyes. “I’ve seen what lies outside the tiny pocket that contains the simulations.”
“Back on the Isle of Candles you said something about the crystal shard containing para-dimensional storage on a vast scale …”
“If anything I underestimated the potential capacity. I think I also said that its exterior physical properties derived from a dimensional lattice woven from space-time-space. However, there’s something else for you to consider—the crystal shard you’ve been carrying around is just one of three fragments of a single object.”
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