A Shroud of Night and Tears (Beyond the Wall Book 3)

by Lucas Bale

  ‘I know the threat better than you.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you do. I don’t need to know the details of what you’re doing—’

  ‘I won’t tell you,’ Weaver said. The reality of it, the door through which they were about to step, struck him at that moment. Speaking it aloud made it real to him in a way it hadn’t been before. A key turning in a lock. He watched the citizens move along the walkway in front of them, unaware of what was coming. He closed his eyes. ‘But there is equipment we need. I’m told you can get it.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Then here is a list.’ Weaver opened his eyes and handed Elias his own slip of paper. As Elias scanned it, his eyes widened. He looked up and met Weaver’s stare. ‘Can you get it all?’ Weaver asked.

  Elias nodded slowly. ‘Yes. It might take a little time.’

  Weaver nodded. ‘I have work to do before that, so you have time. There’s something else.’

  ‘More than this?’ Elias said, rolling his eyes slightly.

  ‘A privateer ship attacked Jieshou. I want to know the name of the ship, its port, and the name of the person running its company.’

  If Elias had been surprised by the contents of the list, he seemed unable to contain his consternation at this last. ‘To do what exactly?’ he said. ‘Is it perhaps your intention to arrest them?’

  Weaver smiled grimly. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t intend to arrest them.’ He turned to Elias and loomed over him. ‘This will remain between us, Elias. If I ever have to repeat this conversation with you, it will go very differently.’

  Yet Elias was unmoved, and for a moment, Weaver admired him for it. He’s not afraid of me any longer.

  ‘Are we back to threats now?’ Elias said, smiling. ‘You don’t have the resources you once did.’

  Weaver nodded and watched one of the cameras pivot in place, scanning the walkway. Elias followed his gaze. ‘You’re right, of course,’ Weaver said. ‘But we both have something to lose. You should remember that.’

  C H A P T E R 38

  ALL AROUND Jordi the great city seethed. A dizzying cityscape of smooth, curved stone the colour of sand, adorned with ornate carvings and intricate galleries that first circled each and then connected with others. Sculptures of creatures Jordi had never seen perched on their spires. Brightly coloured banners hung from towers that curved like pine cones. Shimmering hues of lustrous gold and green bled from the sky, and beside him, a wide green and blue river caught that brilliant light and sang.

  It was warm, far warmer than Herse or the strange, desolate planet they had just come from, and Jordi began to sweat. He removed his jacket and draped it over his arm. The air carried a not-quite-familiar smell, the brine of the sea, that still seemed strangely alien. You would have liked this place, Ish, he thought. But you were always braver than me. More willing to see and do what I couldn’t. I think you would have run along the streets without stopping. He felt a lump gather in his throat and swallowed hard, embarrassed by his weakness.

  Men and women dressed in loose robes of pale colours, wrapped around their bodies and gathered in coils on their heads, pushed past him along streets that were mostly sand and gravel. Children played with sticks, chasing a ragged ball along the dusty stone. Huddled by the side of the street sat cadaverous men and woman with skin like old leather, parched by the sun. Pockmarked faces pitted with blisters of pus, trembling hands that beckoned him; weeping milky eyes that stared past him and onwards forever.

  Neither the smuggler nor the preacher seemed concerned by this chaos, Jordi noted. The pale woman with a wolf’s red eyes seemed uncomfortable and tense everywhere, and this place was no different. Jordi had been grateful to be rid of the claustrophobic confines of the smuggling compartments in which he had stowed away for nearly two days. He had been forward-thinking enough to pack water and food, even a luminant, in a small duffel, so the ride had been boring but not too unpleasant for him to manage.

  Shepherd stared down at him. ‘Herse is all you’ve ever known, boy, isn’t it?’

  Jordi nodded quickly.

  Shepherd frowned. ‘Stay close to me. Anyone speaks to you, ignore them. And don’t run off. I don’t want to have to come looking for you.’

  The preacher rested a hand on Shepherd’s arm, and the smuggler looked up. The street had settled, the noise abated. Voices shrank to whispers. The children stopped playing and their ball rolled away into a shaded alleyway. Jordi followed their gaze, suddenly unsettled. When he saw them, he understood why the atmosphere of the place had changed.

  Four Peacekeepers had turned onto the street. Jordi recognised them instantly, and it felt like a punch in his gut. Their armoured suits and weapons were not black as they had been on Herse, but were the colour of sand and dappled with darker browns. Their faces were still hidden by the same nightmarish helmets.

  ‘Stay calm,’ the preacher whispered. ‘They can’t be here for us.’

  ‘I’m calm,’ Shepherd responded, but Jordi saw that his face was drawn.

  Jordi backed away slightly, as they all did, until he felt a wall at his back. He balled his hands into fists to prevent them from shaking. He wanted to look away, to bleed their attention away from him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off them. Tears stung his eyes, and he found abruptly that he couldn’t breathe. He wanted to run.

  Then he felt a hand prise open his own and slide into it, felt the warmth of it press against his skin. He looked in surprise at the woman beside him—Shepherd had called her Natasha. She smiled tightly at him and squeezed his hand. ‘Just look at me,’ she said. ‘Don’t look at them.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he tried to say, but the words came out choked. His lips were dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  The crowds in the street parted as the Peacekeepers advanced. A heavy silence hung in the air, and Jordi could taste its bitterness. As the Peacekeepers came closer, Natasha’s hand tightened in his, and he could feel the edge of her own tension leach into his knuckles.

  She turned and reached for his face, eased it towards hers. He looked at her then, realising he hadn’t had much of a chance before that moment. The haloes around the irises of her eyes were a vivid red—not bloodshot or diseased as he had seen back on Herse, but a single rim of stark crimson that faded as it bled into the whites. She hardly blinked as she stared back at him, and he wondered how old she was. Older than him, certainly, but not by much. Into her third decade, but no more. Yet the shadows hanging over her face made her seem much older.

  Her thumb stroked his cheek, and he felt something kick in his stomach. His eyes flicked down to the tattoo on her neck, and then to her breasts. Embarrassed, he looked back up quickly. There was something at the edges of her mouth that might have been a smile.

  She looked away—a small, half glance over her shoulder.

  ‘They’re gone,’ Shepherd said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jordi said to her, embarrassed and flushed as she dropped her hand away from his face. He saw her shoulders relax, and she let out a long breath. ‘I don’t know why I lost it.’

  ‘How old are you?’ she asked, looking him up and down.

  ‘Sixteen,’ he lied.

  She smiled. She had caught the lie, he guessed, but she nodded anyway. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for,’ she said. ‘You did fine.’ She turned to the preacher. ‘Where now? We need to get off these damn streets.’

  ‘This way,’ the preacher said.

  They followed him along an alley covered by dusty stone arches. The city had eased out its breath and was bustling again. More beggars reached for Jordi as they hurried through the shadowy passages, but he shrank from them. Here, in the damp among these wretches and away from the sea, the smell was of mustard and the mould of stale bread.

  The preacher stopped at a heavy wooden door and rapped quickly against it. It was a while before it opened, and Jordi glanced upwards as he heard a faint scraping above him. Attached to the stone was a small hessian scrap of c
loth, thick with dust. It shuddered slightly, and Jordi realised the scraping noise came from it.

  He edged closer to the door and saw a tiny device, perhaps a camera, poking out from beneath it. From the street it was invisible, covered by hessian made to look like stone. The beggars watched them from their perches.

  The door opened a fraction, and a face the colour and texture of unworked wood peered from the darkness beyond. There was a hushed conversation between the preacher and the man before the door opened any further, and then the man ushered them inside.

  He led them along a cool, narrow stone corridor, where rugs in bright colours hung from the walls. When he reached a door at the end, he knocked lightly and opened it. He entered, and they followed .

  The room beyond was high-ceilinged, with more garish rugs hanging from the walls. There was only a single window, veiled by a thin curtain of hessian that allowed in a muted wash of yellowish-green light. There were round tables and chairs in the middle, and small booths around the outside. At one of the tables sat a thickish bald man with skin like honey. He wore his black beard in braids. In front of him was a single bottle of a smoky, olive liquid, next to a small glass that was almost empty.

  ‘Come in and sit,’ the man said.

  ‘Bashar,’ the preacher said. ‘Does sun warm you or burn you?’

  The man smiled, baring his yellow teeth, and took the preacher’s outstretched hand. He put his second hand on the preacher’s elbow. ‘Admittedly it grows hot, my friend. And you?’

  ‘I’m well enough, considering the circumstances.’

  ‘Do you wish to eat?’ Bashar beckoned to plates of food laid on a table nearby. Flies buzzed and crawled all over them.

  ‘No, thank you, Sefi. We’re fine. We have work to do.’

  Jordi leaned towards Natasha as they took their seats around the large wooden table and whispered, ‘Why did the preacher ask about the sun?’

  ‘It’s a Samarkandian greeting,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘The sun is always hot here, even in the lake township. The hotter it is said to be, the harder life is.’

  Bashar emptied the contents of the glass into his mouth, and his face pinched. He licked his lips and placed the glass back down on the table. ‘The patrols have increased,’ he complained, drumming his long fingers on the wood. ‘Two of my organisation were arrested yesterday.’ He shrugged, then poured some more of the olive liquid into the glass. Jordi noticed flecks of sand on the table.

  ‘How much do they know?’ the preacher asked.

  ‘Not much,’ Bashar said, almost nonchalantly. ‘But they will come for me soon.’

  ‘When?’

  Bashar waved a hand. His dark eyes glinted in the low light. ‘A week, perhaps.’

  ‘Then you need to leave.’

  Bashar nodded. ‘We are moving down to the lake. That should buy us some time. We have allies down there. The Peacekeepers don’t like the floating township—it’s impossible to deploy from their gunships, so they can only patrol on foot. And they’ve never been comfortable with the sway of the walkways, so they visit there only infrequently.’

  ‘But they will still come there. Someone there will tell them.’

  ‘Yes, but it will give us some time.’

  ‘Do you have what we need?’

  Bashar smiled lazily. ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was more difficult to obtain than I thought.’

  ‘Now is not the time to re-negotiate our deal, Bashar.’

  ‘Even if I have no use for coin in the months and years to come, it improves my life right now.’ He drank again from the small glass. ‘And I know you need what I have.’ The curtains twitched, and Jordi saw two men ease into the room, pistols in their hands. He edged against Natasha. When she looked at him, he directed her angry stare towards the men. She tensed and reached towards her belt.

  ‘You’re making a mistake, Bashar,’ the preacher warned. ‘The Bazaar is as much a part of this as we are.’

  ‘The Bazaar no longer sees things the way we do, preacher,’ Bashar said. His face grew dark. The smile was gone. ‘Some of these people will have very short, very hard lives from here on in. I must cater to them too.’

  The preacher’s expression didn’t change. He stared long at Bashar, unmoving, then spoke quietly. ‘Give me your terms then.’

  ‘As we agreed, with a similar amount in addition.’

  ‘We don’t have that much with us.’

  ‘Then we have a difficulty.’ Bashar turned his gaze to Jordi. His eyes crawled over him, and Jordi felt the man’s stare bore inside him, leaving him frozen. ‘Of course, you might consider leaving the boy. He is not so young anymore, but still I see something in his eyes that certain clients of mine would like.’

  Jordi flinched. He tried to stand, and he thought about running, but Natasha stopped him. Time stretched. The room was silent except for the flies buzzing over plates full of food.

  Shepherd shook his head. ‘That isn’t going to happen, Bashar.’

  Bashar laughed, the honey skin on his face rippling. ‘Does he belong to you, freighter-tramp? Why shouldn’t we ask him? What about it, boy? Would you like to service an older woman? Feel her wetness on your little virgin cock? You’d be fed well, housed safely away. Treated like a favourite, if you perform. Is that so bad?’

  Jordi said nothing, and fought the anxiety balling in his stomach. He tried to set his face so Bashar wouldn’t see his fear, but he could feel sweat prickling across it.

  ‘We aren’t going to sell you the boy, Bashar,’ Shepherd said. Jordi heard the tightness in his voice.

  ‘Then we have nothing to discuss.’

  ‘We can offer you something else.’

  ‘What might that be?’

  ‘You need something taken to the Core,’ Shepherd said. ‘People like you always do. We’ll deliver it.’

  ‘How do I know you’ll do it?’ Bashar asked. ‘How do I know you won’t up and drop my cargo into the dark the moment you leave?’

  ‘You have any other way to get it there? Anyone else willing to get black goods into the Core right now? Give it to me, and you might make your contract. Otherwise it stays here and you lose coin. If I don’t deliver it, we lose an ally, and it seems to me, with a war coming, allies are worth more and more every passing day. And of course, we both know you have another insurance—you have our markings. You could call that in any time you like. And if I’m carrying a cargo of yours, that will come back to you. That keeps us both honest.’

  Bashar seemed to consider this. Jordi tried to stifle his trembling. Eventually, Bashar nodded to the men by the curtain. They backed away, disappearing through it.

  ‘My man will go with you to your ship. It will take him a little while to set the new markings and convert your navigational systems. In that time, my cargo will arrive. It will be placed in your hold and you will not touch it. I will not tell you what it is. You will be given co-ordinates where you will be met and my cargo collected.’

  ‘I don’t want to know what it is.’

  ‘You will ensure it arrives with my contact. If it does not, need it be said that your markings, and the images now being taken of every single one of you, as well as everything I personally know about you, will all find its way into the hands of the Magistratus?’

  ‘No,’ Shepherd said. ‘I understand completely.’

  Outside in the alley, Shepherd turned to the preacher, facing him so he was right up close. His hands were balled into fists. Around them, the current residents of the alley minded their own business. ‘Your secrets are going to get us killed, preacher,’ he said.

  ‘It’s better you don’t know everything.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us, because if I knew you were dealing with someone like him, I wouldn’t have even breached the tunnel,’ Shepherd said.

  ‘We can’t do this without people like him.’

  ‘Well, we just got canned. Whatever he gives us, if we
’re found with it, if the scanners in the Core pick it up, we’re finished.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  Shepherd turned to Jordi, who recoiled from the fury in the smuggler’s eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he growled. ‘You see the shit we’re in now?’

  ‘Shouting at the boy isn’t going to get us anywhere,’ Natasha warned. ‘It isn’t his fault. A man like Bashar, I’ve seen them before. He would’ve pulled this stunt whether the boy was here or not. Let’s just get on with it. This isn’t the first black cargo you’ve taken to the Core, so don’t pretend it is.’

  Shepherd turned away sharply, shaking his head, and slammed a fist against the wall. ‘Stay here and wait for Bashar’s man,’ he said quietly over his shoulder without looking at them. ‘Then come back to the ship. I’ll meet you there. When the cargo arrives, the boy can show them where to put it. Looks like he knows that well enough now.’

  And without another word, he left them.

  C H A P T E R 39

  THEY COULDN’T meet out in the open, both knew that. Indeed, Weaver had warned Skoryk against even coming to the Core until he had laid out a series of protections first—a way to get Skoryk away from the pipeline into Theia undetected, and then keep him that way. During three decades in the service of the Republic, in the Core and on Theia in particular, Weaver had learned of places where they could meet and not be seen. Poorer cantons similar to Marmara, where their movements would melt into the fabric of a more disordered citizenry.

  He scouted those places before even wiring Skoryk. He arrived early and left late from each one of them over the course of a week, not wanting to focus attention on any one in particular, in case the Seneshal were somehow already watching him. The process was as much about tempting out his own pursuers, if they knew he was here, as it was about laying the groundwork for his and Skoryk’s operation. But he saw no tails during his preparations, none of the identifying markers of some direct surveillance. Of course, they might have simply been waiting for him to make his move. If anyone had begun to question his allegiance, if they got close enough, the masking of the implant would make them sure of it.