“What about Tallimastus?”
“Forget about him! Do not trust him,” shouted Res Iapetus. Squirming limbs were covering him over, drawing him back into the heart of the Drowned King. “He will destroy you. Do not trust any of them.”
“He is a god.”
“He is not a god, none of them were,” gasped Res. Only his face was visible now. He shouted quickly, desperate to get out his message. “Those we worshipped are pretenders. They were the Y Dvar, the children of the One. They abandoned their path. This is what I discovered; all of them, the wild, the collared sneaks who live among us, the gods—they are the same. I was going to drive them all away, because they have fallen.”
Res gagged as corpse fluid poured into his mouth. Writhing cadavers smothered him. They slid over Aarin’s feet in their rush to rejoin the composite body.
“Listen to me! Listen!” choked Res. “Do not trust the Children of the Five, do not trust any of them or the creatures they made! Do not trust the Tyn Y Dvar!” He screamed then, a sound cut off as his face disappeared under a drowned sailor’s fish-white, sagging skin.
“The Tyn Y Dvar?” said Aarin. “The Tyn?”
But Res Iapetus was gone, drawn back into the heart of the Drowned King. Drunkenly, the king sat. His gestalt body grew steadier as more dead bodies flowed into it, bringing it back to unlife.
The air bubble wobbled, and shrank.
Aarin did not know what to do. Iapetus was trapped. Tallimastus may or may not have been trustworthy. If he did bring Vols back, should he release the god?
Another thought struck him. If Vols was dead, what of his brother, Trassan?
He looked up. The air bubble was shrinking further. The Drowned King was groaning. There was no escape from this place.
He was being manipulated. Triesko, Seutreneause, Tallimastus, and now the Goddriver. He wouldn’t have it. He would not have it at all.
His face set with anger, he hefted the sword of the Dead God.
“Heed me, oh dead,” he said, beginning the cantrip that would open the way to the afterlife. He had spoken it a thousand times, only never for himself. “Hearken to me, gather to me, release your earthly cares, so that I might send you on.”
A green light wavered in front of him. He continued his chant. The souls of the drowned nearest him rose from their bodies with grateful sighs. “Go into the light, go into eternity. Begone from this world of pain and hollowness, and into a new place, where reward awaits the just, and the wicked might be redeemed.”
The light strengthened. Aarin gripped the sword and shield of Tallimastus tightly. The drowned around the air bubble collapsed, their ghosts drawn toward the rift. Aarin’s power was magnified. The rift was wider than it had ever been. He saw through it, clearly, to a land of green mists and twisted buildings. So strong was its power it pulled at his soul.
Aarin took a deep breath his body did not need. With a shout of defiance, he ran at the gates of the dead, and hurled himself through.
Against all the laws he had ever known, Aarin vanished from this world. A moment later, the rift collapsed. The air pocket erupted upwards in a boiling storm of bubbles.
The Drowned King clambered to his feet.
Under the wrathful gaze of their rotting monarch, the dead regrouped, and recommenced their march.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The House of Arms
THERE WERE A couple of days in an empty warehouse for the children. The Renian Donati promised he would return to them soon, explaining that he had preparations to make, and entrusted them to the watch of a stern, uncommunicative pair of goodwives who scowled at any noise, but otherwise left the children alone.
In the warehouse they were served hot food. For most of them it was the first meal they had had in days. There were beds to sleep in, and clean water to drink. The conditions were not much better than at the Lemio mill, but for Lavinia it was a heaven compared to the street.
Lavinia knew few of her new comrades. They had come to Golden Lane from all over the city. There was only one other girl from the Lemio factory among the thirty children in the warehouse. The workers from the Lemio mill had run everywhere after they were dumped. One boy she had seen dead in the street, naked from the waist down. Others had vanished, probably to similar fates.
A few of the children in the warehouse were spirited sorts, but none of them attempted escape. They didn’t seem to have much in common, except that they were healthy, and there was a good proportion of pretty girls and handsome boys among them. She reassured herself that in people like them, prettiness was a mark of health. Not one was under the age of ten. All of them were strong.
If Donati’s master required workers, then he had chosen well.
Mostly they slept and devoured what food was given. Lavinia continued to eat long past the point of satiation, anticipating no more to come. After they rose in the morning they carried their bedding around wherever they went. One of the goodwives tried to explain their blankets would not be taken from them, but the children trusted no one. Still, she was unmolested. No one tried to steal her food. No one argued. They talked very little, but sat in fearful, individual worlds.
The second morning, Donati returned full of smiles. He distributed sweet treats among the children.
“My apologies, young ones,” he said. “My last day was full of form filling and rubber stamping. I am sorry you have no new clothes, but you shall have them today. Now the bureaucracy, that is all done with. I may now take you from this place to your new home. Come on! Avanati!”
He smiled as the children gathered up their bedding. “Leave it. There is no need young ones, all will be provided at Morthrocksey.”
Only two of them dropped their blankets. The others clutched theirs defiantly. Donati chuckled. “Very well! It matters not. Goodfellow Morthrock’s largesse is great. He can afford for you to keep these, but there will be more, and better! Come! Come!”
Men dragged back wheeled doors. The children spilled out into the street, where once again dray wagons waited for them. When they clambered aboard it was with a little less wariness than before.
Donati climbed up last, and sat by Lavinia.
They rode through ranks of blank, windowless warehouses. Commercial dray trucks rumbled past them, piled high with goods hidden under tarpaulins. Iron rails were embedded in the centre of the road, and down this chugged a small glimmer engine pulling a modest train of eight wagons loaded with crushed stone.
The wagon turned up a wider street. Three train lines came in from the opposite direction, running alongside the carriageway. Ahead were several, large buildings, walled off from the rest of the district. Giant chimneys spewed glittering smoke into the sky. Men and women in worker’s overalls and caps went in and out of the gates. A steam whistle blew hard enough for Lavinia to hear. Otherwise the scene was to her eerily muffled, the other sounds that undoubtedly made up an industrial din hardly perceptible.
“See ahead the Morthrocksey Mill, that which we call the House of Arms!” Donati proclaimed. “It has recently become the greatest armaments factory anywhere in the Kingdoms. All this you see here, it belongs to my master Goodfellow Demion and his wife Goodlady Katriona.” He was proud of all these things that were owned by other people. “They are very wealthy, and very successful, and they wish to spread his good fortune to the likes of you, poor deprived children. You are lucky.”
They approached the mill’s high brick perimeter. Lavinia wondered why the wall needed iron spikes along it, if the mill were such a grand place to live.
“The South Gate,” Donati explained, as happily as if he owned it himself.
The buildings behind the south gate were of new, fresh brick, still pale from their baking. Mortar stood out in crisp white lines. Everything was red brick or grey stone. Sharp angles dominated. Not one green thing grew there. The sky was low, brown with smog that spat flurries of lightning caused by glimmer pollution.
The dray wagon passed under the buildin
gs’ shadow a hundred feet before they reached the factory wall. The buildings were so huge they barred the sun from the city.
The warehouses lining either side of the way stopped. Wide roads ran right round the factory. Beyond them on the left were ranks of tidy terrace houses, on the right a vast rail yard.
The wagon’s wheels bumped over rails, and it went under an ornately curled cast iron arch which had a huge glimmer lantern at its centre, burning in the middle of the day. Below it the factory’s name was picked out in gold lettering wrought in the most fashionable of fonts.
A portico fit for a palace fronted the factory offices. Huge columns held aloft a brick pediment moulded with images of industry and progress. The frieze continued around the portico, and off down the factory’s sides.
The entrance to the offices was equally grand, with main doors of twenty feet tall, spiked bronze, the sort of thing found on a fortress or barracks rather than a mill. Fittingly, they were guarded by a pair of uniformed men carrying shining ironlocks.
Five stories of large windows surrounded the portico. An open-sided spire speared the sky from the centre of the main roof, housing a large bell below its golden onion dome.
The children did not enter this way, but were driven around the side of the office building. This was a big square block of a thing, joined at the back to the featureless brick walls of a sort more commonly associated with the industrial buildings of the era. The second building was new, of just two stories, its roof a saw-tooth of alternating glass and slate faces angled to catch the sun. A river ran in a square, brick channel along the street there, disappearing into a culvert under the factory. Further along its length were young trees in pots, and places where the bricks had been pulled up and plants allowed to grow. It was the only vegetation Lavinia saw. At the far end of the street, was a second, even larger gateway. Close by it a number of buildings had been burned out, and were surrounded by scaffolding and screens that did not manage to hide the scorched brickwork.
They drew up beside a metal door painted black. Donati leaped down. From within came the pounding of machines.
“Come!” He spread his arms wide and faced his charges, smiling all the while. The doors opened, and the rumble of manufacture became very loud. “Come down, come see! Come and look at the future! Welcome to the greatest factory in the world!” He said. He stopped by the open door. The factory floor spread out behind him. Beneath iron beams holding up the roof, long axles span belts that ran hundreds of machines. These were arranged in specialised rows, as per the doctrine of Thortha Bannda of Irruz. Men, women and children in identical uniforms worked on guns, each making a single part or assembling sections before putting the weapon onto trolleys to be wheeled further down the chain for the next stage to be completed. “At Morthrocksey we make many things, from pans to pipes, but guns are our speciality.”
The concrete floor was freshly painted. The machines were new under their coatings of black oil. The belts that drove them were unscuffed, and all the axles shone under generous dollops of fresh, yellow grease. The glass of the roof let in the sun. All was light. It was a world away from the broken down Lemio mill.
Donati summed it up, when he said, “This, my little friends, is the epitome of modern manufacturing writ large.” He had to shout over the noise. Lavinia’s growing lip-reading skills gave her an advantage. Now it was her new friends’ turn to strain to hear.
“This is one of the most important places in all of Ruthnia,” said Donati. “You are about to embark on a lifetime of worthwhile work.” He held up his hand. “Who among you boys here wants to be a soldier?”
Several of the boys put up their hands. Soldiering pay was poor, but regular, and at least the troops were fed.
“I am not surprised!” Donati shouted. “You will serve your nation, yes?” He bent down conspiratorially and rested his hands on his knees to speak at the smallest boy’s level. “Let me tell you, you can serve Karsa here! You will be more important than any soldier. A soldier without his gun is nothing. You will give him power, because you will make his gun! From here, weapons are sold to every army in the Hundred Kingdoms. This factory is so crucial to the honour of our realms that it is, in a way, an army of the Kingdoms, as much as any on the field of battle or aboard ships fighting the Ocerzerkiyans on the ocean waves. You, my friends, are its latest recruits. How do you feel about that?”
The children looked back at him with hollow eyes. Lavinia had a desperate urge to run out of the factory. Being around the machines threatened to send her into a panic. The lure of food and shelter kept her where she was.
“That enthusiastic, eh? Well, does anyone want to leave?” He put his hands on his hips and looked at them all. “Think before you do. Look around. Many of the children you see here...” He searched about. “...like him.” He pointed at a boy at a lathe. He was gaunt, but not starving. He held a chisel in his hand. Curls of wood drew themselves off a block of wood at the blade’s touch, and a gun stock took shape quickly under his guidance. “He was going to die, now he has a job. He has shelter and food, and education. Now,” he said, clapping his hands together, “I ask again. Does anyone want to leave?”
Nobody moved.
“Bravo!” he said. “Then come this way!”
LAVINIA’S TURN IN the washhouse could not come quickly enough. She enviously watched her companions go into the three small rooms grubby and ragged and emerge scrubbed pink and clad in new factory uniforms. When the maid gently touched her shoulder to get her attention and led her inside, Lavinia found a small room covered floor to ceiling in neat white tiles, with a slit window at the top to let in the light. A motto picked out in small black tesserae within blue borders was the sole ornament.
Cleanliness is virtue, it read.
Austere in decoration though it was, to her amazement there was not only a washbasin in the room, but also an unexpected luxury–most of the space was taken up by a deep ceramic bath set partially into the floor. The dirty water within spoiled the effect, but she had been about to climb into it anyway when the factory girl shook her head.
“No, goodmiss,” was all she said, before letting out the stopper.
Black grit and scummy water flowed away, the sins of another soaked off and dispensed with. An absolution by soap, she thought. The bath was rinsed for her, and fresh water drawn from the copper taps set high over the tub.
“Take as long as you need,” the maid said, and retired. At the side she left a clean towel neatly folded with a cake of soap on top.
The water was hot when Lavinia got in, almost painfully so, but she lowered herself into it with a sigh of pleasure. She scrubbed and scrubbed but there was always more dirt. The cleaner she got the dirtier she felt, her hair in particular was driving her mad. It was caked with filth that came out in endless crumbs, and now, halfway between clean and filthy, it began to itch. The soap wore away to a wafer, the water grew cold. She felt like she would never be clean until, miraculously, she was.
She lay back in the grey water. Her clothes lay in a stinking pile nearby. Now she was cleansed, the reek coming off her dress, shawl and bonnet disgusted her. The thought of putting them back on made her ill. She wanted to see them burned. The thought of not getting a uniform like everyone else agitated her.
It was quiet in the room, enough that the infernal ringing in her ears was all too audible. She had the sudden urge to scratch at them, to enlarge the holes and ram her hands into them, as if scrubbing them out would rid her of her deafness like it too were dirt.
A knock came at the door, very loud. She supposed she missed the first attempt. Slipping into the water up to her shoulders, she crossed her hands over her chest, covering her youthful breasts.
“Yes?” she said.
She expected the factory girl. She flushed when Donati walked in, a fresh uniform dress over his arm, and a linen bag in his hand.
“Hello, hello, my goodlady,” he said with easy charm. “Here are you new clothes.” He laid the dr
ess over a bar projecting from the wall. “Here is your new underwear, a toilet kit, socks, rags for your monthlies and a belt of rope for the same...” he grinned with affected bashfulness. “All the things a young lady needs.”
The ringing in her ears outcompeted the higher registers of his voice, so she watched his lips.
“Thank you,” she said.
“This and more will be provided you here at the House of Arms, goodlady,” he said, bowing with a little flourish.
She stared at him. “It is a demon’s bargain,” she said.
Donati sighed and hitched up his sword belt. “You are no fool, my dear. It is a deal with its downsides, but that does not make it a worse deal than what you had,” he said reasonably. “Here you will at least not die. Let us be honest. What Goodman Morthrock is doing for you is kindness, but what I am doing is not solely down to that.”
“I did not think so,” she said. She wanted to get out of the bath and into her clothes. She did not like being alone with him.
“Owing to certain agitation among the factory owners of Karsa, there is a surfeit of labour in the city at the moment. It is something of a crisis, you might say. My master’s wife is the cause of this upheaval. She is kind, but no fool. She is offered money by the council of this district to take young people like you off the streets. I do this work for them. In return, I can pay you very little, because so many of you are looking for work. That makes me look good to them. We all win.” He shrugged. “Life is cruel, but laws never acknowledged before are suddenly being enforced, and new ones even more stringent will probably come. Then, you might well be able to name your own price for your time and your labour. But who knows how long the new laws will take to be passed? Until that day comes, I have the use of a large, virtually free pool of labour. The essence of business is disruption, mio chicina, the goodfellow said so to me. He says many wise things to me, though I think his wife told them to him. I take it to heart. I get cheap labour. The Morthrocks get to salve their conscience. We all make money.”
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