Black Dawn

by Peter J Evans

  Her eye, the one that he could see under the wrappings, was wide. "You're sure of yourself, stranger."

  "I am. There's much that Makeblise doesn't know about me, about my friends. The surprises could put an end to him."

  "He's not an easy man to surprise."

  "I've seen worse. Far, far worse."

  Her gaze dropped. "Stranger, I don't know if I can help you. He'll kill me if he finds out-"

  "Finds out you've been spying on him?"

  Her hand flew to her mouth, dislodging part of the linen. Scar tissue gleamed beneath, until Harrow reached up and gently replaced it. "How else, my lady, did you know I was an offworlder? That news could never have reached you in time."

  "I'm dead," she breathed.

  "You call this living?"

  She shook her head, despairingly. "I don't know..."

  "Verney, when this is done, things for you will change more than you can possibly imagine. I swear it, as long as you let me help you. Will you?"

  "I need time-"

  "There is none. How long does it normally take you to mix a potion?"

  There was something in her voice that was almost a smile when she spoke next. "I've never had a young gentleman to assist me before," she said.

  He grinned back. "You have now."

  "This," she told him, back in the sanctum, "is the primary locator. If anything from the wilds comes into the city, it causes a spike in this line. If I write these figures down, and then feed them into that machine there, they give me a direction and a distance. I can plot that on the big map."

  "But those carrying it would be moving."

  "Aye. I have to make multiple plots, as fast as I can, and relay that information back to Makeblise until the heretics are caught, or the spike fades away. It doesn't last long."

  "What does it key on?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "What is it about the devices Daedalus brings in that the machine can sniff out?" He frowned at the screen, trying to make sense of its readings, but there were no labels against any of the gauges. "Electrical power?"

  "I don't know, stranger. No one does."

  Harrow ran a hand back through his hair. "There must be detectors on the roof of this building, maybe in the watchtowers... Makeblise would keep them hidden, because he'd be accused of using the very witchcraft he's trying to destroy."

  "He wouldn't see it like that," muttered Verney wryly.

  "Fanatics never do." Harrow put his head around the screen, studying where the cables were patched into it. It was hard to trace them at first, because they had been bunched together and threaded through an iron staple bolted to the benchtop, but after a few moments spent gingerly teasing them apart Harrow was able to determine where at least some of them led.

  He discarded those that led back to the batteries, and those that went up to disappear through holes in the plaster wall. Two, however, led along the bench to a portable data-engine set up a few metres away.

  The screen connected to that, though, was dark. "Sneck it."

  Verney tilted her head quizzically at the curse. "What does that mean?"

  "You know, I really haven't the faintest idea but I've got a friend who says it all the time." He began checking the connections, but quickly gave up on them. "I need to see what this device is doing, but the screen is a wreck. See this scorching?"

  She nodded sadly. "I remember when that happened, stranger."

  "Ah." Harrow decided not to pursue the subject. Somebody had paid for that piece of equipment failure, and paid dearly. "I'll need to try and connect another. I take it there are no more like this?"

  "No."

  "Right." He looked around and then smiled to himself as he saw the datapad. "That machine there. What do you use that for?"

  "I don't even know if it works, stranger. Makeblise brought it in last daysummer."

  Harrow leaned over to grab the slate, and turned it over in his hands. It was an old design, but rugged. Something that had been armoured for heavy industrial use, perhaps even military and it stood to reason that the data-engines around him and this slate dated from the same time and place. There should be no reason why they wouldn't be compatible. "Verney, I'll need some tools, anything you can give me."

  A few minutes stripping the broken screen gave Harrow an interface socket to play with, and some spare leads from Verney's stock of random junk made a connection between the data-engine and the datapad. It took about half an hour, all told, and wasn't without its complications - the first lead Verney gave him simply crumbled to dust in his fingers, and the next two were riddled with short-circuits - but after some cursing and scratched fingertips, plus a battery disconnected from the rack and manually jacked into the slate, Harrow had a partially working system.

  The slate's screen flickered painfully as he tried to read it, and there was no colour, but it gave him an insight into what the primary locator was up to. "It's a rad monitor."

  "A what?"

  "Radiation, of a very specific type." Harrow put his hands behind his head and stretched. Working on the machines had cricked his neck. "Tell me, Verney, has Makeblise ever picked up Daedalus people who didn't have devices in their possession?"

  "I think so, yes."

  He nodded to himself. "It's not the devices you're picking up, it's time-radiation from the wilds - the craters where the old cities used to be. Particles called chronoplasts."

  Verney was looking at him as if he was mad. "Stranger, what riddles are these? How can time cause radiation?"

  He blinked at her. How could he explain Brite Red's time-weapon to her? As far as she was concerned, the Eye of God had rained down tears of destruction on the other cities, and scoured Igantia as a warning. The idea that a time-travelling war machine, crewed by the brain of a dead madwoman, had sent those cities into the distant past as materials for its own construction was no less insane.

  However the craters, ringed with rubble from the vanished cities, were livid with chronoplasts, the elemental particles given off only by objects travelling in time. The very ground must have been seething with them, the raw power of the time-weapon so huge that it was emitting particles to this day.

  When the Daedalans took items in from the wilds, they were carrying a source of chronoplasts along with them. It didn't matter if they held working technology or not. Stones from those craters would get them picked up by the Endura as readily as plasma weapons.

  Neither he, nor Godolkin nor Durham Red had been to the wilds on this world but they had walked on the surface of Sirion, and other worlds ravaged by Brite Red. They would have emitted chronoplasts too, for a while.

  A soft, scratchy chiming broke into his thought. "Verney?"

  "A source," she gasped, darting over to the locator. Sure enough, a spike had appeared on the gauges, crawling slowly along graduated bars, "and it's moving."

  "Should you tell Makeblise?"

  "I will but..." She frowned, what he could see of her forehead creasing and then moved over to the map table. "This is strange. I've seen this spike before. It's some kind of error, it has to be."

  "Why?"

  "It's not coming into the city. It's already here and the size of it..."

  "Here, let me help." Harrow had more information about the sanctum's machines than Verney could ever have learned alone. As soon as he checked the screens, he knew that this was no glitch. Impossibly, a massive source of chronoplasts was moving through the city. "I don't understand. It should have dissipated by now. Verney, you said you'd seen this before?"

  "Aye, but I didn't tell Makeblise. I thought it was a fault in the machine, a sign that something in it had gone wrong. If another one went..."

  "It's all right. I understand." Harrow didn't move, just kept studying the chronoplast trace. "When have you seen this?"

  "Two nightwinters back, was the first time. Then earlier this diurn, just before you arrived."

  Harrow straightened up. "Verney, I think we need to plot this. Show me how."
r />   She nodded, her linen wraps rustling, and moved over to the map table. Harrow stayed at the screen for a moment, transfixed.

  If the chronoplast waves coming off that moving object were as large as he thought, maybe it was powerful in other ways too. Powerful enough to initiate a fusion reaction in a starship core, for instance and very probably, powerful enough to be very dangerous indeed.

  10. SPARK GAP

  According to Trewpeny, Red and Godolkin had been followed ever since they had seen their poster nailed up at the church door. "About six different people, I think. They stopped the marshals getting you once, too."

  "Bullshit."

  "God's truth, my lady. One of Roder's men saw you in Parson Street, but he got involved in a scuffle, if you know what I mean, and by the time he got away you'd gone."

  Trewpeny had been leading them through the city for about twenty minutes. Godolkin had urged caution, but Red had brushed his worries away. As far as she was concerned, the time for caution was long gone.

  He still wasn't happy about it, though. Red could see that his frown was deeper than normal. "Are you still moping?"

  "I am not 'moping', Blasphemy. I merely regard this as yet another futile exercise, and quite possibly a path to disaster."

  "Oh come on. What's the worst that could happen?" She couldn't help but check over her shoulder as she said it: words like that had been known to haunt her in the past. Even though the streets they walked were largely deserted, and she could see no one nearby, she lowered her voice anyway. "Look, if this guy's legit, we've found the people who can best help us get Fury off the ground and if anyone knows about where the Endura keep prisoners and what happens to them, it'll be Daedalus."

  "What if we are walking into a trap?"

  "Then we fight our way out. I'll get to bite a few people, and you can bust some heads, which wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? You've been itching to really deck somebody since we got here. I can tell."

  "My lady?" Trewpeny had noticed that they had dropped back during the conversation, and had stopped to let them catch up. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." Red shivered, and tugged her robe tighter. "Let's just get a move on. I'm freezing my arse off here."

  It was getting colder, there was no doubt about that. Red had thought that she was getting used to the nightwinter temperature, but for some reason the air in these dingy lanes and back-alleys was even more frigid than in the lower city.

  She wasn't the only one suffering. Trewpeny was wincing as he walked, holding his fur jacket closed with his gloved hands, his tall cap tugged down hard over his ears. Even Godolkin seemed to be feeling the cold, which was unheard-of for him. There was just something about the location that sucked all the heat out of the air.

  As for exactly where that location was, Red had no idea. Trewpeny's short cuts had left her quite disorientated. "How long now?"

  "Not far."

  Red had to admit that following Trewpeny down any number of shadowy alleys was probably one of her madder ideas, but she was out of better ones. In her defence, the boy did look reasonably harmless. His injury, whatever that might have been, made him seem even less of a threat, although that was no real indication of anything. There was every chance this was a set-up, of one form or another.

  If she and Godolkin really had been followed since the town centre, then Anton Trewpeny had friends who were very good at not being seen. That might have been because they were used to avoiding the Endura. Or the whole thing could have been an elaborate lie, and she was wading right into a trap. There was simply no way of knowing.

  Eventually, she kept telling herself, there came a time when the only thing to do was to take a leap of faith.

  It wasn't until they reached the gate that Red realised where she was and why it was so cold.

  They had been following Trewpeny down a narrow lane, very close to the edge of the city. To Red it looked as though the wall here was skewed, out of true with the rest of Igantia's square grid pattern. That, she told herself later, should really have given her a clue, but she was very cold, and very hungry. Her mind kept slipping away from where she actually was in the city, and instead came repeatedly to rest on warm fires, and the taste of hot blood in her throat.

  It was getting hard to concentrate.

  Nevertheless, when they skirted past the base of a watchtower and made their way into the yard beyond, the sight jolted Red back to something near full alertness. At the end of the yard was a wide, double gateway, an opening clear through the city wall, set with lanterns and bordered by watchtowers.

  Past that was the river.

  A cold wind was coming off it, blowing up past the jetties and moorings, a frosty blast that scoured the surface of the river and whipped in through the gateway with a cargo of powdered ice. The entire surface of the water, for as far as Red could see, was frozen solid.

  No wonder the wall here wasn't true. It had been following the course of the river. Trewpeny had been taking them out onto the docks.

  There were a few people coming in through the gate, a few going out. Most were labourers, carrying heavy canvas bags laden with tools, and Red could hear the sounds of carpentry carried in by the wind. Everyone around her was clad in multiple layers of fabric, hidden in so many sets of clothes that they might not have even been human, and she'd never have known.

  One or two, she noted enviously, even carried caged fire-pans on chains, risking the clouds of sparks and smoke for the extra warmth they provided.

  Trewpeny stumbled back to her. She had stopped when she'd seen the river, the cold robbing her limbs of all strength. "Please, my lady. If you stay here you'll draw suspicion."

  "It won't matter," she muttered, drawing further into her robes. "I'll be an icicle by then anyway."

  "The safe-house will be warm, I promise you. We can rest there."

  She glared at him. "It had better be. Really, I mean it."

  "I know."

  He trotted away, and she followed him as best she could. Godolkin had paused at the gateway to wait for her, and she noticed that he was looking intently upriver. As she joined him, he pointed. "Look, Blasphemy."

  She followed his gaze, scrunching her face up against the gusts of airborne frost. It didn't take her long to see what he saw.

  There was a faint strip of light hugging the horizon, a line where the black of nightwinter was gradually turning to blue. "Dawn," she breathed.

  "The beginnings of it, yes." Godolkin turned away. "It will be many hours before there is appreciable light in the sky, and many more before the temperature begins to rise. It is time we were gone."

  "Yeah, I'm right with you." The light was beguiling, but she reluctantly put it at her back and began to follow Godolkin along the dockside.

  To her right, the city wall reared massively. To her left, jetties poked out into the frozen river, narrow strips of timber board dotted with piled crates, barrels and coils of rope. There were boats beside many of the jetties, with their masts folded flat and their decks covered by tarpaulin, and as she approached the first one Red wondered why it was so high in the water. It was only as she got to the vessel's prow that she saw it wasn't in the water at all, but had been hauled up onto a massive wooden ramp.

  That made sense. If any boat stayed in the water when nightwinter fell, the approaching ice would crush its hull.

  They went past four jetties, Trewpeny lurching along out in front and trying very hard to look as if he was supposed to be there. Red was just beginning to wonder if the boy had any destination at all in mind when he paused, and turned to beckon her on. "Here, my lady."

  She increased her pace, and joined him just as Godolkin did. "This is it? A warehouse?"

  "Aye. The safe-house is hidden within."

  Red tipped her head back to study the place. It was at least two storeys tall, but narrow. Apart from flickers of light that shone from between the boards of its shutters, nothing about it made her feel as if she would be warm there.


  In fact, there was something about the warehouse that she didn't like at all. She sniffed, and her stomach lurched.

  Trewpeny had a hand out, and was about to rap on the door. Red reached out and grabbed him. "Wait," she murmured.

  "My lady, we shouldn't stay out here. We'll draw suspicion."

  "This is already suspicious. Godolkin? Stay here, and keep him with you."

  "Blasphemy?"

  "You heard me. Don't let him inside."

  With that, and ignoring Trewpeny's protests, Red shoved the door open.

  It had been locked, but although the lock was a solidly-built construction of black iron it was still only set into wood. There was a harsh cracking sound as the timber gave way, and then the door swung inwards.

  Red stepped in, letting it close behind her. Trewpeny was right; it was warmer here. There was a fire lit somewhere. She could smell the smoke.

  The walls of the warehouse were lined with lanterns, and the yellow light they cast turned the interior into a forest of shadows. The floor ahead of her was three-quarters full of cargo, arranged into tall piles and secured with ropes and canvas covers. Like most warehouses she had seen, the stores had been set out in a pattern that made access to them easy, either on foot or by some means of transporting items too heavy to carry, but it also turned the warehouse into a labyrinth.

  If there was a better spot to fall foul of an ambush, Red couldn't have named one.

  She started forwards, very carefully, treading as lightly as she could. There was an enclosed area over to the far right corner of the warehouse, and a set of steps near that leading up to the next floor. Red crept towards them, but then stopped when she was halfway there. Something about the other corner, over to the left, was odd.

  It was too dark.

  Red padded over to it, threading her way between stacks of lumber and roped piles of barrels. It didn't take long to discover the source of the darkness; most of the lanterns in that corner were unlit.

  One flickered there, fitfully. Red edged closer, hardly daring to breathe.