“Sssh,” she said, “good cat, nice cat.”
The house’s threads entangled her. She wasn’t letting any more magic reach the cat, but it was building inside her and she could feel the same hellish heat as when she’d tried to pull on the cnida. Some of it was breaking through the wall she’d built up: cracks in the dam. She pulled her hand away from the cat: though nothing was holding it there, it was as if her arm was made of lead. She stood, and wrenched her other hand off the mattress.
The connection shattered, and she fell to her knees. She was almost spent.
Almost.
Treacherous little word—very nearly but also not quite. The cat rubbed against her, purring. Strange creatures, cats: they’d run away from kitchen implements, but stare calmly at a passing train. You would never know how close it had just come to death. She ran a tentative hand through its fur, and didn’t feel the threads catch. They twitched and seem to seek out her heat, but she had them under control.
She hadn’t given the cat a name, because she’d been afraid of the connection. She’d always kept herself at arms’ length from the world, because she’d been afraid that her touch would break it: that she was too different to fit, that she was poison. It was strange then, that—now that she could actually break it—she felt less scared. She had control, and that was the difference. Not perfect control, but better than she’d ever had. Though the wind would have its way, she still set the course. The cat purred, and she ran her hand through its fur. Its beat-up ginger fur reminded her of fea the cat from the book, who stole the golden peanut—Fea, an old-kingdom word for red.
“Fea,” she said. “Red the Cat.”
Red turned his head towards her.
“Mrow?” he said. His threads seemed to hum, like the strings of a harp waiting to be played. She took one thread—just one—and spun it around her finger. A trickle of energy moved along it, but she halted it and turned it back around. For a moment it seemed to hang at the end of her finger and then it flipped back onto itself and went back to Red. She realised that one of her own threads was twined with it. A small amount of herself was moving down it, though not enough to make her feel weak. She was calm now, and she saw that calm written on her threads. It touched the cat, and she saw it spread. Calm. Red rolled onto his back, and purred.
She took her hand off Red, and put it on the floor. The house’s threads immediately sprung up and wrapped around her hand. They held the same impossible fire, but it didn’t burn her. Focus. Calm. It caught, and spread down into the house. Calm. Some part of her wanted to merge with it fully: to take all the energy at once. It was the same thing that made her panic: the realisation of how very much there was. How much skyline, how much ocean, how much could go wrong. Across the coin from fear was hunger. It was the same voice she tried to numb with drugs: the thing that processed everything at once, then shut down screaming at the weight of it all. Focus, calm. The threads around her hand went loose, and she pulled away slowly. They let her go.
“Mrrrrp?” said Red. He’d rolled back onto his feet, and was rubbing against her side. She picked him up, and went over to the window. The warmth from him helped her to feel calm. She scratched the top of his head, and played with his threads: calm, calm, happy. To her surprise, the emotions looped around and came back to her: they hit the cat, spread, and kept on spreading up her arms and into her chest. She smiled. She stared out at the city, coming to life in the morning light.
“Nice cat,” she said.
She’d become a cop because she wanted to do right. Instead she’d done paperwork, and turned her head while her colleagues did wrong. She’d taken people in and never seen them again, and been proud. Just assumed that, because she’d filled out the right forms, they were going to the right places. She’d been a good cop because she did what she was told and never asked why. Somehow, it had to come home for her to see it properly: the cruelty and—on the opposite side of the same coin—the indifference. When ‘everybody knows’ a certain part of town needs a heavier hand, then the hand became a fist and everybody acted surprised when shit got broken. It was her city, and her home, and she couldn’t keep being the same person if she wanted to help it. Her agitation went down the threads, and Red’s tail began to whip back and forth. She shushed him and ran her hand over the top of his head, pressing his ears flat against his skull.
Hainak was so alive that it hurt. A million souls fighting just to stay alive. They’d built walls around that life and built systems to keep it in line, but it kept finding new ways to spill out: to live loudly in the quiet places. She didn’t need to read the threads to know they were there, and that they mattered to her. She’d become a cop to do right, but right by who? Not her beautiful city—some higher ideal that existed in stories but fell apart when it hit the street.
She put Red down, and opened the window for him. He didn’t want to leave: she could sense it. She thought home at him but it didn’t change anything: he lay curled up on the bed. Home not here she thought, but Red didn’t move. She sighed, picked him up, then hoisted him out onto the window box. He miaowed in protest, then jumped across onto a nearby rooftop and sat there looking expectantly at her. She poked her head out after him.
“I’m not going t—”
Something changed in the threads of the house. They whipped towards something outside, and she followed them. The figure outside glowed blowtorch-hot. It was human in shape, but seemed impossibly condensed. She’d heard gunpowder got like that, when they packed it up for transport: that one spark in a firework factory was enough to cause catastrophe, because each barrel was enough to level the building. It was reaching out to the house, and then she heard a familiar voice.
“Constable Hok,” said Mr Źao. “I know you’re in there.”
She hadn’t sensed him before, but she hadn’t sensed it in Źu either: he’d hidden it until the moment when he lost control. As he tied himself into the threads of the house, she felt a flash of something: a memory that wasn’t her own—
—two brothers playing in the sand while their mother brings in a basket of seaweed—
—huts at the mouth of a river that she recognised-yet-didn’t—
—father was a spearfisher with kind eyes who sang them the old songs—
—a fire that came from the sky, and cracked the earth, mother grabbing the boys and diving beneath the water and realising too late that the ocean was boiling—
—wings unfolding, and kind eyes, and the softness of falling onto feathers—
—two brothers, a thousand years and a thousand years—
—as they travelled the ocean, and slew the grey wyrm, and left new cities in their wake—
—as they chased the crows all the way to the roof of the world—
—as the crane went mad and they went mad with her—
—as they sharpened their knives and teeth—
—and never forgot their mother—
—and love—
—and rage as the earth erupted and his brother’s light went out forever—
—and fear, for their was work to do, and a home to protect—
—and rage, rage, rage at the girl who ended a brotherhood of an aeon—
“Connnstable,” he said. He dragged the word out, like he was chewing on it with his sharp, long teeth. The house spasmed, and a root shot out and wrapped around her ankle. She kicked her left foot free, and the tendrils around her right foot pierced into her ankle and began to drink. They split skin, tore between muscle, forced apart bone as they expanded and grew. A convulsion wracked her body, and all her withdrawal hit her at once: she realised that the magic had been keeping the worst of it away, and now the magic was being torn out of her. Blood ran down her forehead into her eye, and she realised she was bleeding from the exact point where she’d been shot.
“I’m going to empty you, Constable,” said the voice, “Won’t tha
t be nice? All that energy, all that movement: don’t they shake you? I’m going to take them away and I’m going to weave them together and get my brother back. I’m going to take your soul and use it to tear a hole in the heavens. I know you’ve been empty before: I can see your little thoughts, see what you did when your father died. I know where you got your scars, connnnnstable. I’m going to finish the job.”
The door creaked open. He stepped inside, and closed it calmly behind him. He looked ordinary, and that was the worst part. He’d been wearing soldier’s leathers, but she swore she’d seen him on patrol, or in the mess hall, or handing out infractions. She could’ve helped him fill out paperwork or helped him keep an eye on an unruly drunk while waiting for the wagon. His smile was wide and rigid: all teeth. As she watched, they grew and sharpened. Not orderly fangs like a cat, but irregular knifelike spurs like an anglerfish, pushed forward, interlocking in an ugly mess of bone in front of his mouth. It wasn’t that hard to make dental implants, but they were biotech—no Lion operative would have access. Stop assessing the goddam tech, we’re dying. We’re dying. You don’t want to die. You never wanted to die: you only thought you did. Now run girl, run.
He was coming closer, and she couldn’t move. Her whole body ached, and she could feel the life fleeing from it. Pain came in waves. Blood coated half her face, and her vision blurred.
RUN.
A jolt ran through her. She didn’t know where it came from. It lasted only a second, but she tore her feet from the floor—tearing flesh and muscle, cracking bone—turned on her heels, shrieking through the pain, and hurled herself out the window. It was only half-open from when she’d let Red out: she slammed into the frame, twisted in the air, landed awkwardly on the next-door roof and felt something in her arm shatter. Fea yowled and jumped out of the way. She tried to stand, but the pain tore at every muscle and joint.
RUN.
She tried to pull threads from the neighbour’s house, but it was long-abandoned and hadn’t eaten in months—there was enough there to stop the bleeding, but not much more. She ran her sense along the house’s root system. There was hunger there: it had been empty for a long time. There was a tea shop below, but the apartment’s owner was an old man who lived alone, and the house was built for a family. In its hunger, it had reached a tendril out, and linked up with her own house. She could still feel Źao inside her room, and he was trying to find a way to get to her. Bone spurs grew out of his arms now, and pierced through his uniform.
And, coming up the stairs from behind Źao, an ordinary little human light. It was her turn to think it now: Run, run you idiot. Whoever you are, run. It wasn’t listening—it was getting faster. Źao sensed it too. Something hit the door with a bang, and it flew open: light spilling into the house, throwing Źao’s shadow over the window box. He spun and thrust his arm towards the door. With a tearing of flesh, a bone spur ripped its way out of his forearm and hurtled through the air.
It hit nothing.
She could feel her own heart thudding against her ribs, and she could taste her own blood. She didn’t know how much power she had left, but she sensed that if she pushed it, she’d come apart at the seams. She couldn’t save the person about to come through, but she needed to try. She reached out through the house, and found the teapot. Leaves in the bottom, basically dead, but still with a tiny spark. She grabbed it, and pushed. They grew so quickly that the teapot jumped into the air and clattered against the wall. Źao turned, only for an instant—
—and Wajet came through the door shooting. Big heavy revolver, Lion shit. She could sense Źao’s shock. He reached out to take control of the gun, but it wasn’t Hainak tech and he couldn’t turn steel. The first two shots took him in the chest, soaking the window box in blood. The third took him right between the eyes. The back of his skull detonated with a sick wet crack. For a moment, she couldn’t understand what she was seeing: his head was the wrong shape—all bone splinters and weeping grey matter. In that curious moment of non-comprehension, she knew it was congee. He had congee inside his head, and it was spilling everywhere. How could he be so clumsy? He lurched back, and fell back across the window frame, almost as if he were leaning out to enjoy the sun. She laughed: she couldn’t help it. It was such a silly thing, to see the congee man having a lovely day. Then his neck rolled back with a series of concussive cracks and his brains spilled out the window, across the window box, down the wall, and the reality of things reasserted itself.
The block cleared; Yat didn’t realise how totally he’d cut her off from the weave, but the energy flowed back into her. The bones in her shoulder clicked painfully back into place, and she cried out as a carpal spasm wrenched her hand into a claw. In the window, Źao’s body slumped out of sight. Wajet stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. He holstered his gun, then walked to the window—no casual saunter now: a quick, efficient march.
“Constable Hok-Yat,” he said.
“Sergeant,” she said. She brought her hand lazily up to her forehead, and gave a weak salute. Bile burned her throat, and she retched once, twice. She tried to stand up, but the muscles in her legs responded with spasms of pain, and she collapsed onto the roof. She pushed her chest back in through the window frame, tried to reach into the house, then gave up and lay stiff, halfway into the house.
“Sergeant,” she said, “it’s something a-m, and all’s not well.”
He sighed. “Come inside,” he said, “we’ve got shit to do.”
Fea rubbed against her legs. She nodded weakly at Wajet, and tried not to faint.
Sen had been to war. He’d been a young man during the revolution: seen brother strike down brother, seen cavalry charging into protestors, seen folk go house-to-house to burn anybody who spoke the wrong words. He’d seen a lot of ugly things. They tended to be spontaneous: sudden fire in the brain that made somebody haul off and do evil and try to justify it to themselves in the morning. This was evil of an entirely different colour.
At first, he’d thought the station was abandoned. There was nobody in the foyer, waiting for their shift to end. There were no signs of disturbance, nor flight. It was exactly the same foyer, just … empty. Pushing aside the wrong-ness, he pushed deeper into the guts of the station and that’s when he saw them.
Motherfucking bin chickens.
Dozens of them, wandering the halls, shepherding the officers towards the main conference room. He was taken gently-but-firmly by the arm and guided along with the rest of the officers. The room was packed. Somebody had taken the table out, and placed a lectern at the front. Trezet stood at it, adjusting the little tinker’s horn they’d installed. He’d never been good with tech. He tapped it, then blew on it.
The last week of the dry season was hell, and everybody knew it: the humidity building and building until walking down the street took the same effort as swimming. People went mad in that week: killed their families, killed themselves. It was invisible, but inescapable: the crushing pressure of storms to come. Sen felt it acutely in that room: potential, packed tight, ready to rupture. Light in the eyes of the officers, resolve on Trezet’s jaw. This wasn’t sudden evil: it was meticulous, calculated evil. Every man in the room knew what was coming, and was resolved to say yes. The specifics didn’t matter: Trezet would speak about order, and about how he hated to use force, and about the defence of the city. He’d speak about his friends in the priesthood and their concerns, and then the scythe would whirl out and not stop until somebody stopped it or it ran out of things to reap.
Motherfucking cops.
Many of them had been on the wrong side of the revolution, and everybody agreed to forget about it because they did their jobs and didn’t bother the wrong class of person. There were men in the office who wore traitors’ colours, who openly flouted the law, but it was okay, because they were cops, but Gods forbid they found you walking home after curfew. Gods forbid you didn’t have enough cash in hand to pay a b
ribe, or didn’t look like you had enough cash in hand to matter. Everybody broke the law: it was just a matter of choosing which folks you wanted to hurt over it.
Most of the officers in the room weren’t bad sorts. He couldn’t see Varazzo, for one. They were the middle-of-the-road guys, the smilers, the ones who looked after their kids. There were just enough of the other sort of officer to matter, almost as though it weren’t an accident. You put a nice smiley middle-of-the-road lad next to a screaming madman and he’d smile and nod and say “hmm yes” to each scream and never even think to, you know, stop it.
“Some of you,” said Trezet, “will be aware of the unfolding situation. For those that aren’t, there has been another major incident, which is currently unresolved. The city has been placed under martial law; we are following orders from the army moving forward. I will not ask any of you to stay tonight, but those who leave will not be asked to return in the morning. Our city has been rotting from the inside, and we let it happen. We let criminals flaunt the law. In their bars, in their enclaves—”
—in their manicured streets, in their gardens, in their proprietary houses—
“—in alleyways and brothels—”
—in churches and banks—
“—right beneath our very noses.”
—right over our heads.
Sen knew what came next. He knew there wouldn’t be many who’d refuse, and those folks would have themselves a very bad night. They hadn’t quite warmed themselves up to evil yet, and Sen wasn’t sticking around to let it happen. An army of loose cannons, each one thinking he needed to kill for the good of the city. Sen nudged the priest beside him.
“I gotta take a piss,” he said, then pushed past and slipped out through the door. His bin chicken paused, then moved to follow him. New convert, most likely: still hadn’t picked up the bulletproof righteous authority of a proper clergyman. That was good, that was usable. Sen shot him a withering look.
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