by Jane Abbott
Unlike the Tower, the compound wasn’t purpose-built. It’d been adapted from some old water system; a vast network of chambers and channels, all of them big enough that a man didn’t have to stoop, some tunnels wide enough that four could walk abreast, thin pipes snaking up through rock and dirt the only connection to the world above. For me, though, the biggest surprise was that there’d once been enough water to justify its existence in the first place.
‘You wouldn’t know it, but it used to rain more here in a single year than most other places in the country,’ Taggart told me, early on, when I’d asked. I didn’t ask too many questions, but that one had seemed safe enough. ‘They reckoned in the winter months, on a clear day, you’d see snow on those mountains.’ I’d heard of snow, but hearing’s not the same as seeing.
We’d concluded our business in the armoury, but I was in no hurry to leave and he seemed in no rush to get rid of me. He’d piled a new cache of knives and other blades on the counter between us and he was sorting through them, sharpening the good ones on the stone, putting the rest aside for repair or repurposing. The rasp of metal soothed like a steady snore.
‘I’m surprised no one knows it’s here,’ I said. I certainly hadn’t. Not before joining the Watch.
He shot me a look. ‘People know, lad. The ones who had to live in it, and who’re still around. But there are some things they’d rather forget. And it’s better they do.’
‘How many were you?’ I asked, keen to keep him talking. Taggart wasn’t much of a one for conversation. Not then, and even less now.
‘Coupla hundred maybe. Enough supplies though. And goats, stinking up the place like a shithole. Couldn’t fuckin’ move without tripping over one of ’em.’
‘Good thing someone thought of it,’ I replied. Goats gave us more than just meat and milk and cheese.
‘Says the one who wasn’t there,’ Taggart muttered. ‘Far as I’m concerned now, the only good goat’s a dead one.’ He stopped his scraping and rubbed his bristled chin. ‘Coulda been worse, though. Same one who did that was responsible for the grain, too. Had a whole hoard of seeds, different kinds. But only one of ’em took. Those Godders reckon it was some kinda miracle. It wasn’t. Just plain dumb luck.’
I thought about that, about how a single action by one person had ended up feeding so many. Maybe not miraculous, but not too dumb either.
‘So what happened to him, then? Your goat and grain man?’
He bent to the stone again and it took him a while to answer; when he did, his tone was even shorter than usual. ‘Weren’t no man, Jem. A woman. Willow, her name was.’
The past tense was a giveaway, and I let it go. Watching him finish with the knife, I waited until he’d selected another before asking, ‘How long did you have to stay down here?’
Taggart shrugged. ‘Long enough. Too fuckin’ long. Best thing we ever did was put out the call while we still could. Gathered the rest of you in. Never would’ve made it otherwise. Course, those calls brought others too.’ He paused, and shook his head. ‘Dark times, lad.’
Yeah, dark times. Before my time.
‘And Garrick –?’ I ventured. But I’d pushed too far.
The knife stabbed the worn wood of the bench and, just like that, Taggart was done with the talk. ‘You wanna know Garrick’s story, you ask him.’
I never had. Like I said, I wasn’t that stupid. Nor had I been given the chance to ask why it was the Watch, and not the Guard, who’d claimed the compound. Maybe Garrick had felt he had every right, given its history and the role the Watch had played protecting the Citadel from the enemy without. Or maybe, since we’d been reduced to hunting the enemy within, it was simply a case of needing to keep us hidden. But one thing was certain: the place was far larger than we needed.
Now, cleaned of all its goat shit and man shit and dead and diseased, the two biggest chambers with their huge arched supports – old watermarks striped the walls beneath more recent stains of blood and sweat, some of them mine – were used as training grounds, while the third housed Taggart’s armoury. All three, grouped around Garrick’s rooms, pretty much divided the compound into two sections. On one side were the raws, thirty or so recruits who had their own mess hall and their own quarters: two long, narrow, cot-lined chambers, where they shared wet dreams and stale air. When they weren’t working as sentries, or running Garrick’s errands, they spent their time learning the ropes and waited to take our places. They never had to wait too long.
On the other side was the Watch proper. We were only ever twenty strong – easier to keep track of us that way and more than enough to get the job done – and we each had our own cramped quarters, any light provided by a wall lamp that was nothing more than a bit of Sea sponge stuck into a container of camel fat. Every now and then, if there was any spare, they’d fill them with kerosene or a small measure of old oil, which glowed brighter but smoked blacker than the fat, the fumes giving everyone a headache. Furniture was sparse: a cot, a chair and table, a couple of waste pots that were placed outside the door each morning for collection by the raws, and a tiny cupboard. But the rooms afforded us some privacy at least. As far as extra privileges went, there weren’t many; the food wasn’t any better but there was more of it, plus we earned the full one-vat wage, had use of the whorehouse, and were given unrestricted access to the Citadel when we weren’t elsewhere. It was rare for a raw to be given permission to leave the compound for anything other than a closely supervised dose of dust and sun; if they were, it was unlikely to be for a good reason.
I spent a day in my quarters writing up my last assignment before reading through the next. Our reports were important, almost as important as the jobs themselves, ensuring we accounted accurately for every kill. There were plenty of stories of Watchmen who’d tried to cheat their way to freedom, taking tags they shouldn’t in a bid to hasten their scores. As far as I knew, none of them had made it out. As tedious as it was, recording all the whos, whys, wheres and hows of a job kept everything legitimate as well as keeping us alive. Because if, by some miracle, Garrick missed any discrepancies, you could be sure the Tower wouldn’t. And no explanation meant no tag of our own.
Despite its size, the folder detailing my next job didn’t contain much in the way of surprises. Even so, I read it a few times, trying to see what had the Council so worried, but coming up blank. Whatever their reason, as far as I could tell the job appeared no different to any other, and certainly not serious enough to warrant two Watchmen. One thing you could rely on was a Diss’s predictability. Taggart had once told me that the only thing in our favour was their reluctance – or maybe their inability – to band together. If they did that, he said, we wouldn’t stand a chance. So why didn’t they? I’d asked, and he’d given one of his hard little shrugs. ‘Coz those settlements make it too hard for ’em, lad. Distance is their enemy, and our fuckin’ saving grace.’
And maybe he was right about that. The Citadel sat pretty much in the middle of the high plain of the peninsula, big enough but still overfull. The three settlements served a multitude of purposes but their main reason for flourishing was because people were always being encouraged to move out of the centre and lessen the strain. And for most it was a good week’s walk from any one of them back to the Citadel, twice as far again from one settlement to another. The first had been established early on, up in the northwest corner, wedged tight and high between the base of the mountains and the inlet, behind the small garrison that still guarded the old pass. The place had since swelled to rival the later and bigger settlements: the township and farms of the eastern Hills where I’d soon be heading, and the stinking shambolic jumble of shacks that lined the wind-battered western cliffs where I’d just been – a shithole of a place that was home to birders and fishermen, as well as the odd Diss or two.
But more important than the settlements, and for an entirely different reason, was the Port. Nestled into the crumbling cliffs of the eastern coastline, midway between the Hills and th
e wasteland, and with only a single guarded pass in and out, it provided sanctuary to no one except a hundred or so Guards and the crews of idiots who volunteered to man the Catchers and risk their lives riding the Sea beneath the rain.
Some said that’d been our greatest achievement, more necessary than even the Citadel, but I was in no hurry to revisit the place. It had been constructed years ago, when the realisation dawned that steaming piss and bucketing seawater miles inland for boiling would never suffice to keep alive the hundreds – then thousands – who’d answered the call and found their way to the peninsula. But if the dream had been an ambitious one, the determination to see it realised had been greater still: the building of the boats, the endless gathering and hauling, splicing and soaking, bending and binding of long-dried wood, the slow melting of old bitumen and fat to caulk the boards and fill any holes; finding, then taming, the wild cove, shaping it into what it was now; rebuilding and refitting engines from scrap, reliable enough to get the boats out to Sea and back again; the collection and storage of every available drop of fuel to drive the ships, as well as to pump the water they’d fetched up the cliffside and out of the Port. They reckon more lives were lost in that time than had been during the last years of the raids, and the reward for that little sacrifice was four deep-hulled ungainly ships that brought in enough slightly brackish water to supplement whatever else was collected, and kept us all alive. Maybe the Disses thought they had good reason to protest all the hardline tactics, but it seemed to me that some people were real stupid to underestimate the Council’s resolve, and far too quick to forget some of the better ideas they’d had.
I studied the more accurate maps supplied by the Tower, relearning the lay of the land. The Hills were indeed a long way from the Citadel, but I’d been there a few times and knew the route. If I could be sure of working alone, I could get there in under a week, spend a month or so ferreting out the Disses, then another week to return, slower because I’d be bringing back Garrick’s little gift and would have to avoid the road. Unless he went with me, of course, in which case he could bloody well deal with his own spoils. Making a few notes of my own, I added them to the folder before breaking for a meal.
With more than half the Watch on assignment, the mess hall was fairly empty. And there was no sign of Reed, which didn’t bode well. The food was much the same as always: a piece of saltfish, some kind of coarse stalks boiled to mush, a single gull’s egg, two shrivelled olives with a small cube of cheese, a strip of fried kelp, oily and unappetising, and a single cup of water. On a good day they’d swap the water for camel milk – on a bad day, goat – but you needed something just to dilute all the salt. The few who were there sat apart, and none of us talked. We had nothing in common except our work, and our solitary existences prevented any friendships, which suited the boys upstairs. Twenty lethal men could do a lot of damage if they got it into their heads to chum it up and band together.
A plate clattered on the table and I looked up to see Garrick take the bench opposite. Shovelling food into his mouth, he chewed for all of five seconds before giving up and spitting a wad of ground fish across the table, just missing my plate.
‘Fuck! My boots taste better than this shit,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t know,’ I replied, staring at the mess. To my mind, food was food, but Garrick wasn’t there to eat. He wasn’t there to drink either, but that didn’t stop him from grabbing my cup and draining it. Arsehole.
‘You had a chance to read that report yet?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘And? What d’you think?’ He kept his voice low, guarding against curious ears.
‘The Tower’s overreacting. There’s nothing in there to confirm unusual numbers. Not even in the interrogation logs.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘So?’ It wasn’t a challenge; he would’ve read the report himself. But maybe he was hoping I’d noticed something he might’ve missed that he could take upstairs to appease the overlords.
‘So maybe there aren’t as many as the Tower thinks.’ There was another explanation, but I didn’t want to consider that. We all saw shadows before every assignment.
He nodded again, then asked, ‘What about the Guards?’
‘Two killed, barely a struggle, so two attackers striking together. Nothing unusual, and nothing to worry about. There’s no shortage of knives around, and from what I can make out their throats were hacked, not slit. Botched job. Amateurs. The two who were taken haven’t been found, but if there’s a hideout of some kind there’s no way a horde of people could trek in and out of it without one of our informants getting wind of it. My guess, it’s a small group of idiots who are just acting out. Tell the Council to relax. This is an easy job. I can handle it on my own.’
He gave a grunt. ‘Tell ’em yourself. They wanna see us both.’
I sat back, and met his stare. As far as I knew, no Watchman except Garrick had ever gone up to the Tower. And I could see he wasn’t too happy about the order either. ‘When?’ I asked.
‘Two nights. Make sure you’re packed and ready to go.’ Standing, he glanced at my shirt, still stuck to my chest in places, the stains now a dirty brown. ‘And for fuck’s sake, clean yourself up.’
Picking up his plate, he tipped its contents onto mine. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached over and scooped up his discarded mouthful, dropping it on top of the pile and stirring it into the mix with a long finger. ‘Eat up, Jem. Something tells me you’re gunna need it.’
A week was the minimum break between assignments, though we could usually rely on two or more. I’d once spent almost three months unassigned – just enough time to stir a man crazy and by the time I was released again I’d have gladly killed anyone, Diss or otherwise. But two days gave me no time, so the morning after Garrick had come and messed with my meal, I headed down to the shore.
Each of the four districts had its own public baths – rows of old tubs and barrels made available for bathing or washing, screened off from passers-by. People were entitled to use it weekly, if they chose, queuing up until a tub was free before being ushered inside by a Guard and handed a single bucket of seawater. It was always a good idea to get there early coz those tubs filled real quick with brown sludge, and bathing in another man’s filth wasn’t exactly a cleansing experience. I’d been dragged to the baths plenty of times as a kid, made to stand naked while my grandmother scrubbed me down, but in plain view of everyone else, as well as the Guards who kept watch over proceedings, there was no privacy for a marked Watchman. And we had no facilities of our own to use; it was hard enough bringing in enough fresh water as well as carting out our waste without drawing attention. So we made use of the Sea when we could.
Of all the tunnels winding their way through the compound, only seven would actually get you out of the place; the rest had been blocked to become a maze where a man could easily lose his way. All of us had been dispatched on occasion to search for a new raw who hadn’t reported for duty; usually we found them cowering and blubbing at the end of some dark dead end, terrified not of having got lost but of Garrick’s resulting disparagement and wrath. And I reckon that showed they had more sense than most.
But as difficult as it was for us to get out, it was almost impossible for any intruders to find their way in. Four main tunnels, double barred with old sluice gates that could be rolled across if necessary and the heavily-boarded outer doors, led beyond the walls of the Citadel, each opening above ravines or basins that would’ve once held water but were now nothing more than dustbowls; the exit doors were hidden, close enough to each of the roads that star-pointed north, south, east and west from the Citadel but not so close that a casual observer could follow our comings and goings. Two vertical tunnels, up a couple of long iron ladders, would get you into the Citadel itself. All six exits were guarded day and night by shifts of sentries, everyone’s ins and outs recorded for Garrick to check at his leisure. The seventh was just a long circular climb to the top of the Tower, a lock
ed open-bar gate at its base and, reportedly, a sturdy iron-strapped door at the top, Garrick the only one with keys to both.
Taking the south tunnel and checking out with the sentries, I paused inside the small cavern to pull the cowl up over my nose and the hood down to shield my eyes, before squeezing through a narrow crevice in the face of granite. Even protected, and despite the early hour, I had to squint to adjust to the sudden brightness. But worse was the heat, hitting hard, like a fist in my stomach, driving out the air and almost bending me double, the dry choking my throat.
The trek was downhill, most of it steep. Preferring my own company, I avoided the road and picked a trail along the ridge of the deep gorge, clambering over the remains of the old weir wall and making my way down into the winding gully that’d been carved long ago by a river’s spill to the Sea. But even there in the dead dusty pit of the earth, its voice heightened to a raucous moan, the wind still found a way to blow and tease, a whore of a thing that’d sucked the world dry and now demanded double for the service.
The rising sun soon beat back any shade offered by the steep sides of the canyon, long shadows shrinking to nothing under its red baleful glare. The base of the old waterway was mostly ground grit and rock, my path hindered in a few places by tumbles of dislodged boulders and spills of sand. And every now and then, under the grit, beneath the tread of my boots, I’d feel the newer bedrock of bone, scattered and broken and long forgotten. Stopping only twice to drink, I made good time, arriving a few hours before midsun. The return journey would be harder and hotter but the exercise would do me good, readying muscles for the journey to the Hills.