The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam

by Tom Fletcher

  Eyes did not live in the House of a Thousand Hollows but in a rambling wooden shack built on soil rich with humus that, according to Eyes, had once itself been wooden buildings. The shack was one of several nestled against a long, high wall enclosing a flat square space – probably the top floor of a huge building that had somehow lost its roof. The space was vibrant with plant life and smelled of earth and wild garlic. The soil at the far side of the expanse was always damp; rainwater drained towards it, then stayed there. Alan had told Eyes that this place wouldn’t last forever, that it would eventually collapse, but Eyes would have none of it.

  The place was maybe an hour’s travel from the House. The kitchen table was piled high with rhubarb. Alan had come over for some of Eyes’ peppermint tea, but so far Eyes was withholding.

  ‘I didn’t raise you for this,’ Eyes said.

  Alan didn’t say anything.

  ‘What is it, then? What’s the excuse this time? What grand and terrible pain are you trying to kill?’

  ‘It’s about Billy.’

  Now Eyes stayed his tongue. For a moment. Then he flung his shaking hands into the air. ‘Billy,’ he said. ‘Well, there’s not much to say to that. I know it’s hard, Alan, but—’

  ‘Actually I don’t need your advice, Eyes,’ Alan said. ‘No “Everybody’s got it hard in the Discard” crap. No homilies. No platitudes. I’m only here for some tea, something to clean me out, and then I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘And then what? You’ll do it all again tonight?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a plan. Things are going to change.’

  Eyes sat down. ‘Tell me about Billy. What happened?’

  ‘He’s being bullied – but then, that’s what happens in there, isn’t it? That’s how it operates. It’s so normal that nobody sees it, but the place runs on bullying and fear. In no time at all they’ll be Bleeding him, and then he’ll be manning his Station until he’s an old husk, and then they’ll put him in the gardens to die.’

  ‘But you knew that already.’

  ‘Yes, Eyes, I knew that already. Thank you for your sensitivity; it is much appreciated.’ Alan started chewing at a fingernail and then he said, ‘Also, fucking Tromo’s wanting more and more before he’ll let me see him. He wants these new mushrooms – a kind Daunt had little of, and what she did have, I … I lost.’

  ‘Nothing else he wants?’

  ‘Nothing that he’s told me about.’

  ‘Why not just kill him?’

  ‘You really are old-guard, Eyes, you know that?’

  ‘I’m not. You’re just soft.’

  ‘If I kill him there’ll just be another Arbitrator takes his place, and this one’ll be a paragon of virtue who I won’t be able to bribe at all.’

  ‘Then why not threaten to kill him? Blackmail, like?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe.’ Alan thought about it. ‘But the whole reason they exiled me in the first place was for my activities and the reason the little wretches pick on Billy is that I got kicked out for making trouble. If Tromo were to talk … if I were to make more trouble … No, I don’t want to risk the Management hurting Billy. Or Marion.’

  ‘So what, then?’

  ‘I’m not going to need your help, Eyes.’

  ‘You don’t know how much of my help you need, Alan. That’s always been the case. Now talk.’

  ‘Don’t try to talk me out of anything.’

  ‘Talk. And I’ll brew up.’

  ‘I need to go to Dok.’

  Eyes laughed as he hung the kettle over the fire, but Alan just shrugged.

  ‘You mean it,’ Eyes said.

  ‘Yeah, I mean it.’

  ‘And you think you don’t need my help.’

  ‘You’re not coming with me.’

  ‘I’ll decide for my own damn self if I’m coming or not.’

  ‘Eyes …’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Eyes held up his shaking hands. ‘I know. But I can still hold a knife. I can still fight. And I can still move sharp enough. It’s just the shaking now and again.’

  ‘What about your ointment, though?’ Ever since Eyes had had his eyelids ripped off in the dungeons below the Pyramid, he’d had to treat the wounds with a special cream that both prevented infection and solidified into a mask that kept his eyes moist while sleeping. Before the torture, his name had been Guy.

  ‘If I were to come – and it’s a big if, still – I’d just ask Loon to make up a big batch for me. No problem. The woman’s a genius.’

  ‘Will it keep?’

  ‘She’ll find a way. But so: if not me, then who’re you planning on taking with you?’

  ‘I do have other friends, y’know.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. You’ve always got friends, Alan – it’s just that none of them last very long. So who?’

  ‘Spider Kurt, if he’ll come.’

  ‘What? You, me and Spider? The band? Are we just going on tour?’

  ‘He’s tough, though. You know he’s tough.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s tough. Who else?’

  ‘A transient called Churr. It was her idea. I think she’s tough too.’

  ‘All transients are tough.’

  ‘And Churr knows a Mapmaker.’

  ‘Hell.’ Eyes found two mismatched glasses, both chipped, and spooned a tiny bit of sugar into each. Alan noticed, and suddenly felt so grateful to the old man that he nearly welled up. But that was probably just the hangover. ‘A Mapmaker, eh?’ Eyes continued. ‘That’s probably too tough.’

  ‘You ever met one?’

  ‘Not close up, no, and I’ve never really planned on it.’ He ran a hand over his head. ‘Probably not a bad idea though, all things considered. Dok, eh?’

  ‘Dok. Yeah.’ Dangling from a hook in the ceiling was a net full of small muslin bundles. Alan watched Eyes root through it, bringing each bundle to his nose and sniffing it until he eventually found two that smelled right. These he dumped into a small brown teapot. The kettle started to whistle.

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You get the mushrooms, you deliver them – all easier said than done, naturally – and then they don’t kill Billy. Then what?’

  ‘Then nothing. That’s it.’

  Eyes frowned. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that can’t be it. You’ve got an in, and you’ve got an … an opportunity. We’re talking about the bloody Pyramid here: the monsters who killed your good old mother and father, and they were good, too, your mam and da. They’d see this for the gift it is.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘And the taxes! The raids! The kidnappings, lad!’

  Alan shook his head. ‘Rumours,’ he said.

  ‘You know it’s not damned rumours.’

  ‘I lived inside that thing for years,’ Alan said. ‘I would know if they were spiriting folks away up into it.’

  ‘It’s big enough for all sorts to be going on in there without you knowing.’

  Alan shook his head, but Eyes was right. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘look, I’m not interested in any of that. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn’t. You and me, we’re angry with them for different reasons. I’m angry at what they did to Marion, what they might still be doing for all I know, and what they’re doing to Billy. This isn’t your fight.’ He reached for his glass of steaming tea. ‘This isn’t political,’ he said.

  ‘You know the taxes are real. Taxes! That’s too grand a word for it. It’s just theft. You know the raids are real.’

  Alan closed his eyes and drew the fragrant steam up through his nose. ‘That used to be my fight,’ he said, ‘when I was in there. That was my fight, and Marion and Billy paid the consequences. I’m not going to keep kicking that dog, Eyes. I just want my family to be safe.’

  ‘As long as that Pyramid gets away with doing what it does, no family is safe.’ Eyes was gripping the back of a spindly wooden chair, his knuckles turning white.

  ‘Maybe I have to make it explicit,’ Alan said, his voice hardening. ‘If I have
to choose between trying and failing to take down the Pyramid for the sake of the whole damned Discard, thereby putting my family at greater risk, or trying and possibly succeeding to keep just Billy and Marion safe, then I will choose the latter. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand that you’re abandoning your principles,’ Eyes said, turning away.

  ‘I’m abandoning your principles,’ Alan said, ‘and it’s a decision that I’m comfortable with.’ He finished his tea. Usually they shared a whole pot, but not today. ‘This hasn’t been the pleasant, amiable chat I was hoping for. I apologise.’ He stood up.

  ‘No,’ Eyes said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry, lad.’ He let go of the chair. His hands shook wildly. ‘I’m just – when it comes to that bloody thing, that bloody Pyramid, I can’t think straight. It’s just – it’s like I hear the word and a door opens inside me and all these monsters come out and they take me over.’

  ‘It’s because of what they did to you,’ Alan said.

  ‘It’s part of what they did to me,’ Eyes said, and fell into silence. Alan couldn’t remember the older man ever looking so sad and wretched. He went over and embraced him.

  ‘I will help you if I can,’ Eyes said, just before Alan left.

  ‘I’m arranging a meeting at the Cavern Tavern,’ Alan said. ‘Seven o’clock tonight. You don’t have to come, but if you do, you’ll be welcome. Thank you for the tea.’

  8

  Spider Kurt

  Spider Kurt was bent over the soft, shining flesh of an ageing woman, bamboo in hand. From the end of the bamboo protruded a long, red-tipped needle of bone. The woman shuddered as Spider pressed it into her naked back. He’d split his greying beard into two and then tied the two ends into his long hair so that it didn’t tickle her. Through the open window came the distant sound of a deep, insistent drum beat and an accompanying chant.

  The wooden floorboards of the long room were almost red beneath layers and layers of varnish. The white walls were just about covered with a mosaic of framed tattoo designs – skulls, flowers, devils, sirens, the planets, snakes, pyramids, crystals. The designs had a certain geometric aspect in common and were mostly made in red and black, but the frames were all different colours and shapes and sizes, some flamboyant and some basic. Various tattooists were at work, the studio quiet but for the music coming in from outside. Each had a workstation with a bed, a stool, their tools and inks, and a display of their own artwork. On each of the beds a customer sat or lay, flesh exposed to the needles. Some of them appeared to be asleep. The room was warm.

  The tattooists did not look up as Alan entered, or as he walked past them. There were six: four men and two women, and their concentration was total. The room was hot and three of the men were stripped to the waist, their bodies bright with intricate ink: flowers blooming, hot-air balloons crashing, mare-toads wearing crowns. The room smelled of antiseptic ointment and all of the surfaces were scrupulously clean. Spider always said that it was the cleanest place in the House. Jones wore a tight black blouse and short black trousers. Her hair was jet-black and cut severely straight across her forehead. She had black triangles tattooed on each cheek and a small silver stud in her nose. She primarily did planets and toads – she’d given Alan his last-but-one piece, a frowning yellow moon, top hat askew, on the back of his left hand.

  He thought about stopping to speak with her as he passed her station, but she didn’t look up and so he hurried on.

  Spider’s customer was getting a large beetle and mandala across her upper back. The beetle was splayed out as if pinned – Spider had rendered it in almost scientific detail. He was beginning work on the mandala now, a symmetrical pattern that echoed shapes from the beetle. The woman was grimacing, Alan saw, fingers clutching at the soft leather of the bed. She was more elderly than he’d realised. She had long white hair and not many teeth.

  ‘Very nice,’ Alan said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Spider said. His voice was quiet and deep. ‘Take me the rest of the day, though. Come back tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want a tattoo. Not today, anyway.’

  ‘This’ll still take me all day.’

  ‘I only want five minutes, Spider.’

  ‘Well then. We’re due a break once I’ve finished these lines.’

  ‘Well then. I’ll wait.’

  ‘That okay, Lucy?’ Spider asked the customer.

  ‘Sure, okay by me,’ she said. ‘Getting tough down here.’

  ‘You’re a dream sitter,’ Spider said. ‘The spine hurts like hell.’

  Spider Kurt, tattooist, used combinations of bamboo sticks and bone needle combs to make his art. The combs were complex, delicate arrangements used for long straight lines and shading; the bamboo sticks were handles for the combs. People who paid could commission designs, specifying figures and styles, but he would also tattoo people who couldn’t pay, on the condition that the design was entirely of his creation. These were swirling, abstract affairs that could take days to complete, often inked under the influence of vast quantities of strong mushroom tea; the whole experience was more like some kind of meditative episode for both Kurt and the tattooee than a standard sitting. Alan watched him finish the lines of one half of the beetle mandala. His deep red shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, revealing a thick mass of black chest hair that his beard usually merged with. Visible today were a couple of thick gold chains. Above his big hooked nose, his brown eyes narrowed as he focused. The top of his head was bald, but the hair he did have was long. His fingers were hard and heavy with gold rings. What was it with older men and gold rings? Kurt was seated, but when he stood he was tall and almost spookily thin.

  At a signal from Spider, Lucy sat up. She swung her legs so that her back remained to the two men and walked over to the window, where she stretched.

  ‘What do you want?’ Spider asked.

  ‘I’m going to Dok and I need a fighter.’

  ‘None too shabby with a chair leg yourself, if I remember correctly.’

  ‘You’re too kind. But I’m no Spider Kurt.’

  ‘You’ve got a Mapmaker, I take it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Payment, then.’

  ‘A share in any profits from the New Dok Trading Company.’

  Spider smiled behind his beard. His eyes shone. ‘What about the Mushroom Queen? What about old Daunt?’

  ‘We’ll be rivals. Nothing to worry about. A bit of healthy competition is good for business.’

  ‘They shouldn’t call you Wild Alan. They should call you Mad Alan. Snakeshit Crazy Alan.’ He coughed. ‘Stupid Alan.’

  ‘Are you in or not?’

  ‘Of course I’m in. When do we leave?’

  ‘Can you meet us tonight in the Cavern Tavern? Seven o’clock?’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  9

  The House of a Thousand Hollows

  The House of a Thousand Hollows was a labyrinth, an old beehive, a crumbling ants’ nest. It was a warren of overflowing closets and empty attics, busy landings and dusty ballrooms, cobwebbed stairwells and torchlit chambers, forgotten hideaways and lively drinking halls. Corridors made their way through acres of abandoned rooms; they felt like tunnels winding through the earth itself. The House of a Thousand Hollows was a fat, round, stone tower that rose up out of the shadows and murk and kept growing; precarious extensions sprouted from its top, some of brick, the later ones of wood. They hung out over the dizzying drop below, threatening to fall. The House was already big enough to accommodate all those who wished to live there but, Alan reflected, people liked to have their space. Anybody moving into the House from outside might find the idea of sharing a corridor almost oppressive, and so they’d throw a quick shack up on the top. If there was one thing the Discard had plenty of, it was space. Everything else was a struggle. Unless you’d hitched yourself to the right caravan.

  There were two other Safe Houses in the Discard – Wha House, and the Hinning House– and all three were topside: big, strong
, easily defended buildings. Officially at least, they were in alliance, sharing knowledge and the obligation to support each other in the case of attack from bandits or gangs. Alan didn’t know if there had ever been such an attack; generally, Discarders did not have the commitment or discipline for such a thing. It would mean great risk for relatively little reward. It was far easier to obtain bugs or food or liquor just jumping down from some shadowed scaffold and slitting a throat.

  Anybody new to the House would get lost, and quickly, but Alan had lived there for four years now and he knew his way around most of it – the parts that mattered anyway: the pockets of inhabitation, the kitchens, the taverns. There were still floors where he’d never set foot, and passages he’d never taken. Nobody used the lower storeys for anything: across much of Gleam, the lower storeys had been given over to the swamp and the things that came up out of the swamp.

  As Alan continued down the corridor, the route lit by small, clean torches, his footsteps were muffled by the faded red carpet. He wasn’t far from the Cavern Tavern here, which in turn wasn’t far from the Sleepless Pavilion or Maggie’s own quarters, so the ways were kept in good repair and the torches were replaced regularly. The rooms he walked past were not all occupied, but those that were not were cleaned and left open to air, ready for the next transient, of whom there were many. As well as being a home to many, the House of a Thousand Hollows was a popular sanctuary for travellers: it was a safe haven in a dangerous place. It was food and drink. It was company and, thanks to Alan, it was music, at least for as long as he made Maggie her money.

  You couldn’t just live in the House. You had to offer something; you had to have something Maggie the Red could use. Bugs were good, of course, but Maggie’s web was large and complex, and even Alan didn’t know what she got from most of her subjects. Sometimes he worried that his role and his skills were too obvious to everybody else; the House’s previous singer, Kate of the Corner, had won her place by knocking her predecessor’s teeth out. She was a good performer – certainly the best around, by that point – so Maggie had been happy to have her, whatever her methods for dealing with the competition. But Kate of the Corner had had her belly sliced open by a desperate transient in a rooftop dive-bar after she’d won the last of his bugs in a game of cards. Alan had been at the table that night; he’d wiped the blood from his eyes in time to see the other players turn on the transient and then vacated the scene in a hurry, taking the news of Kate’s demise straight to Maggie.