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

by Lucas Bale

  Shepherd nodded. ‘Even if we can convince them we don’t know what’s in the crates, they’ll still see us as a threat. This isn’t going to go easy.’

  Natasha glanced over at him, trying to read his expression. He was calmer now, more focused. He’d been angry when she’d opened the crates, sure, but he’d quickly gotten past it. At least now they knew what they were dealing with. He’d run black contracts before, and they all came with risks. She told herself this one was wasn’t any different. Told herself she’d had her fair share too. But she could feel her own body tensing, her muscles flexing tightly. The itch on her neck had spread down her back, and she was sweating all the time. The shiver in her hands had become so bad she had to hide them under the table. She needed a hit—and it wasn’t coming any time soon.

  Huge hangar doors opened in front of them, and blue light flooded out. ‘We need to level the field a little,’ Shepherd said to her. ‘The preacher and I will go out to meet them. You stay in the ship. If it goes bad, take Soteria and their guns out of here, but keep in comms range. It might just give us something to bargain with.’

  Natasha nodded her agreement. It made sense to her.

  Shepherd brought Soteria in to land. The landing platform was empty, but the blast doors out to the conduit system were open.

  ‘Time to go, preacher,’ Shepherd said. He took his pistol out of its holster, checked it, and replaced it again.

  Natasha watched from the bridge as Shepherd and the preacher stood out in front of the freighter’s nose where she could see them. From the darkness of the tunnel to the conduit system, six figures emerged. Four men, two women. All dressed in long coats.

  She regarded them for a matter of seconds before she realised who they were. The realisation made her flinch. She tried to loosen her suddenly rigid body, then began the pre-flight routine to get Soteria warmed up.

  One of the men strolled, almost casually, in a way she recognised. She had hiked with him for hours in the arid, crimson desert back on Jieshou, then followed him through a maze of underground tunnels to the freighter that had taken her to The Labour of Pronos. Skoryk’s man: the vermin who had come to her in her room and delivered Skoryk’s message. The rest of them were Skoryk’s people from the shanties on Jieshou. His Irregulars.

  Bashar was running weapons to Skoryk’s guerrillas.

  She glanced down at Shepherd and the preacher. The smuggler must have heard something familiar in the click of the engines or the mechanical warm-up procedures, because he turned to look at the cockpit. His hand went to the pistol at his thigh, but the approaching figures were already pulling out the rifles that had been secreted within the folds of their coats.

  Natasha hadn’t made it halfway through the processes of getting Soteria ready to fly when she caught a faint sound behind her. She turned quickly, her pistol levering out towards the blast doors to the cockpit.

  Too late.

  A man stood there. She didn’t recognise him, but he was wearing the same long coat as the others and some kind of armoured vest. His sallow face wore a stony expression. In front of him stood Jordi. The man’s arm was hooked across the boy’s throat, and a pistol was pressed against his temple.

  ‘Now, where were you going?’ the man said.

  She was about to sneer something at him—some bitter riposte that would make her feel better—but she swallowed her words. What more was there left to say? She considered pulling the trigger anyway—putting the man down and taking a chance with the spasm of his finger on his own pistol as he died.

  Perhaps he understood her hesitation, read her thoughts in her expression, because he canted his head further behind the boy’s and said: ‘Put the pistol down and come this way.’

  Jordi’s eyes were wide with fear. He was trying to fight it, desperate not to reveal his terror, but inevitably failing. He’s a good kid, she thought. He’s doing his best, but he’s not built for this. He doesn’t deserve any of it.

  ‘I can kill the boy and still get a shot off at you,’ the man said. She knew he believed it. His voice was even, because he was perfectly calm. He held the pistol lightly in his hand as though he was completely comfortable with it.

  Natasha set the pistol down on the steel grating, then backed away, loosening her muscles. The knife was at her belt, but what could she do with it?

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t fuck around,’ he said. ‘I said to come this way.’

  She hesitated, trying to think. He was holding all the cards. She knew it. He knew it.

  ‘Let’s go, doll,’ he said. ‘Final warning.’

  She nodded and walked towards him. He backed way to the side of the bridge. Jordi coughed and flinched as the man tightened his grip. She slipped past him, through the doors, watching him all the while.

  Outside, she felt the dust and rock beneath her boots and glanced back at the man. He had released Jordi now, and her pistol was tucked into his belt. With his own pistol, he could cover them both. The rest of Skoryk’s crew, her young walking partner from Jieshou included, were standing in front of them, rifles resting easily in their hands.

  ‘You have somewhere to be, tunnel freak?’ Skoryk’s man asked, giving her a thin smile. He looked her straight in the face and didn’t appear at all surprised to see her. She didn’t answer, so he did that for her. ‘I was looking forward to seeing you again.’

  ‘I can’t say the same,’ she said, and spat into the dirt.

  ‘Always so pleasant,’ Shepherd muttered. ‘They’re the ones with the guns. You see that, right?’

  ‘They’re Skoryk’s men.’

  Shepherd couldn’t conceal his momentary surprise or his sudden realisation. ‘Wonderful. Skoryk and Bashar. Why am I surprised?’

  ‘This doesn’t need to be difficult,’ the preacher said. ‘Your shipment is inside. Take it and be on your way.’

  Skoryk’s man smiled. ‘The shipment isn’t what we came for,’ he said coolly. He pointed to Soteria. ‘She’s what we came for.’

  C H A P T E R 44

  THEY CAME for Elias in the blaze of the afternoon’s heat. Nothing more than a subtle shift in the fabric of the city around him; at first too fleeting to notice, then too swift to allow a response. Neither Caesteri nor Peacekeepers, but something very different. Silent, ruthless, precise. Seneshal. It wasn’t as though he been careless; they had simply been better.

  They trapped him in a quiet conveyance, filtering into it like silent grey ghosts. An arm around his throat, another around his mouth. His own arms pinned to his sides and his legs swept from beneath him. A seamless proficiency that he could do nothing to stop. The needle went into his neck before he could struggle. Then there was only darkness.

  When he awoke, he saw the puppeteer sitting in the centre of a small room, at a single table flooded with sharp, white light. Elias sat in a second chair, across from him. Otherwise the room was empty. They had taken him in the bright of day and there had been no hesitation. They had chosen the least exposed place to do it. They had been watching him, following him—and he hadn’t seen it. They couldn’t have succeeded without some complex tetrabit assistance—surveillance systems he was unaware of, tracers, something new.

  The ease of it terrified him.

  ‘Things have changed, Elias,’ the puppeteer said coldly. ‘This great city is not what it was. We won’t wait any longer. Soon I will be forced to take action, and you won’t like it when I do.’ The puppeteer was dangerous, Elias had once thought, because his face betrayed no sign of what he might do next. It was always still, like a lake where there was no wind. Even his eyes were dead. Yet when he spoke this time, Elias saw something new there. An edge he had not seen before.

  ‘I’m doing what I can,’ Elias replied.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘If I’m caught, your information dries up. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I have superiors too, Elias. I have people demanding answers. First an attack on a gunship and Peacekeepers in the br
ight of the suns. Then these fliers. This symbol is being painted all over the canton. Too many are beginning to support these insurgents.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t make me push you harder, Elias.’

  ‘I’m not involved in any of this.’

  ‘But you can find out who is. And what link your master has to it.’

  ‘If you think he is involved, why don’t you simply arrest him?’ Of course they couldn’t, Elias knew. Arresting a Consul at all would be a political scandal the Quorum would want to avoid, but doing so without proof would cause an uproar. The Seneshal would want to remove the Consul quietly—bring him in and show him that there was no respectable way out for him.

  ‘Stability is critical to any society, Elias,’ the puppeteer said. ‘No society can function unless its citizens understand their place in it. We all have a duty to ensure the future of our species. I want you to see the truth of your life, Elias. To understand what it is we face. Humanity’s existence has been threatened from within more often than you have been told. If we publicised everything we knew, citizens would live their lives in constant fear. It has always been better that way, but now you need to understand.’

  Elias didn’t respond. He didn’t know what he could say.

  The puppeteer smiled thinly. ‘Seventeen citizens died in the attack on the gunship. All lower caste, just like you, Elias. Three of them were women.’

  ‘I am not involved.’

  ‘Innocent people, Elias. On their way back to their domiciles. Hard-working, diligent people, serving the Republic. Their safety is our priority. Do you approve of these attacks? Would you let them continue? Would you put the lives of people like those who died in further jeopardy? Do you understand how close we are to chaos? How dangerous that is for our survival? Look around you. The universe is infinite and dark, and we are small. We will do whatever it takes to protect the Republic.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We cannot allow the cowards who perpetrate this insurgency to remain free.’

  ‘How is it you intend to find them?’

  ‘We will ask, Elias. And those we ask will tell us what we want to know. We are not the aggressors. Our policies are based on the peaceful security of those we protect. The citizens who have pledged their fealty to the Republic. We will protect those who understand how important it is that mankind survives, and who will do anything to achieve that. We may do things you find difficult to understand, but I assure you, our actions are defensive ones. We cannot afford to be less ruthless in our methods than those in opposition to us. We cannot avoid evil simply because our ultimate goal is benevolence. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elias said quietly.

  ‘You know what we will do to you and your father, should you fail?’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I would take no pleasure in it, of course. But it would be necessary.’

  ‘I’m doing everything I can.’ Did he see the lie? Elias thought. Does he know?

  ‘It is time to take more radical steps, Elias. We have watched you for some time. We know you are capable.’

  Elias didn’t respond. He couldn’t look at the puppeteer. He wondered then if he looked too furtive, rather than subservient. Before he could consider this further, the puppeteer retrieved something from the floor beside him. A thin steel box.

  ‘I have something for you,’ the puppeteer said. ‘Something to remind you of what is at stake.’ The movement behind Elias was so sudden, so unexpected, that there was no time to react. The two men had been waiting there for this moment, Elias realised, but Elias had not seen them. The chair made it difficult for him to move—and that, too, had been the puppeteer’s intention. They seized him; he struggled; but they were too strong. They forced his arms behind his back and he felt restraints slip around them and tighten.

  The puppeteer retrieved a device from inside the box: a syringe, but with a needle that was thick and long. ‘Do you know what is in here?’ he asked. ‘It’s a device that attaches to your implant. It is coded with certain physiological data you might find interesting.’

  He handed the syringe to one of the men behind Elias while the other held him and prevented him from struggling. Elias felt a sharp, bitter pain as the needle burrowed into his skin, and then a dull ache as whatever was inside found his implant.

  The puppeteer took a module from inside his coat and laid it on the table. ‘Each implant is designed to record a great deal of physiological information about its subject. Nutrition, health, and emotional state are only part of what we are able to measure. For example, the encoding and processing of harmful stimuli by the body’s nociceptors can also be measured. But we don’t only measure that data. We store it—and replicate it.’ He looked Elias in the eye. ‘The unit now attached to your implant has but one, single data set. It comes from your father’s implant, and it represents a specific moment in time.’

  The puppeteer activated a module, and a holographic image hovered above the table. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Watch. And feel.’

  As the image coalesced, Elias saw his father sitting in a chair much the same as the one he was sitting in, in a room no different. Abruptly the old stale smell of sweat and oil filled the room. Elias flushed hot, and moisture prickled on his skin. His heart quickened and his breath grew ragged.

  As the image played out, his own fear fused with something new and alien inside him. It unfurled within him, crawling over his skin and burning through his chest.

  A shadow flickered across his father’s stricken face, and Elias saw his eyes widen and his jaw slacken. Elias felt his father’s fear then, he realised—it was being chemically and physiologically insinuated into his own system—and it began to consume him. His body shook. He tried to struggle, just as, he could see, his father had done. The bright light glinted on something cold and hard, and his father’s eyes followed it, out of shot, towards his stomach. The fear intensified into something uncontrollable, an unstoppable swirling panic that tormented Elias.

  Then came the pain, an endless seething barrage, and Elias’s screams interlaced with his father’s, filling the room.

  Elias couldn’t say how long it continued like that—living the torture they had subjected his father to—but eventually they released him. He found himself, exhausted and barely conscious, in an alleyway between two tavara in Barents. He was too weak to move and unable to summon the will to do so. He lay there for so long, he wondered why no one had seen him and called for Peacekeepers.

  C H A P T E R 45

  SKORYK WAS already seated at the table when Weaver pushed through the door. His pistol lay on top of a sheaf of maps, unfolded and spread out. He looked up and nodded at Weaver, almost smiling.

  ‘You made your delivery?’ he asked.

  Weaver nodded. ‘You?’

  Skoryk picked up one of the leaflets and smiled. ‘Two hundred of these, thrown from a tavara.’ Skoryk scanned the page, and Weaver saw what might have been satisfaction in his expression. ‘The Quorum cannot protect you,’ Skoryk said, reading aloud the words on the leaflet. ‘It cares only for the wealthy. There are murderers walking freely among you in this city. Do we, the lower castes, feel safe? No, my friends, we do not. We have shown how easily those who assure us we are protected can themselves be attacked. There will be more demonstrations of the Quorum’s weakness unless representatives from the lower castes are permitted to have a voice. Too long the wealthy have ruled us. The time has come for change.’

  ‘You almost believe those words,’ Weaver said.

  His eyes fell on the symbol they had created—a circle with a diagonal line through the centre, then another perpendicular to the first, but which did not reach circle’s circumference. It meant nothing; it was but a simple focus for the public, a totem for their fear.

  Skoryk shook his head, but did not look at Weaver. ‘It’s nothing more than a distraction,’ he said quietly. ‘This was never my home. The politics of this place means nothing to me.’

  ‘We ha
ve another problem,’ Weaver said. ‘The gunship patrols have changed. They now appear to be random. It will be more difficult to track them. We may need to watch for a few days to see if there is a pattern.’

  ‘We can’t afford to wait,’ Skoryk said. ‘We have momentum. The Magistratus now know this is the start of an insurgency they can’t ignore. They’re afraid of us, and soon their tactics will change. We must press home our advantage.’

  ‘We need to be careful. We have time; we don’t need to rush. Preparations for the evacuation aren’t yet finished.’

  ‘Then we use that time to hurt them—to disorient them.’

  ‘We can’t attack blindly.’

  ‘So we choose another target. One we can predict.’

  ‘Which target?’

  ‘A tavara. A bomb in a lobby. It will put citizens in fear, and that fear will translate to anger. The Magistratus will have to act. It will force their hand. It is an obvious escalation, and it sends a message that we are committed.’

  Weaver shook his head. ‘As long as our targets are military, then the citizenry will never want to betray us. But the moment we attack civilians, we lose any support we might have gained. Not only will the Magistratus be looking for us, but the citizenry will as well. We must escalate, I agree, but we have to find some other way.’

  We are trying to protect humanity, Weaver thought. Not destroy it.

  ‘The Conduit.’ Skoryk said it slowly, deliberately. His eyes were on Weaver now.

  ‘No, Skoryk. I said—’

  ‘I know what you said,’ Skoryk replied quickly, cutting him off. ‘Look. There will be no risk. We only need to derail it. It would disrupt the entire system while they shut it down looking for more bombs.’

  This was his game all along, Weaver thought. Suggest a target I would refuse, then offer the one he truly wants, leaving me with no option. ‘The risk to innocent citizens is too great.’