Eventually, the guards ushered them along the avenue past lumbering cargo servitors and crowds of curious Escher who whispered in hallways as they passed. The avenue twisted and branched crazily, but they clearly took the main route throughout. D’onne realised the whole zone they were passing through was formed as part of the Escher defences in this area. The twisting avenue would disorientate attackers while its many branches made them easy to outmanoeuvre. Doubtlessly the walls also had concealed loopholes and firing slits hidden in the stonework.
They ended their journey heading up a steep switchback ramp into some sort of communications centre that was hidden behind armoured shutters. A great pillar covered in pict screens of all sizes dominated the centre of the chamber. Maybe twenty techs were working feverishly around the pillar, making and breaking connections at its base or riding platforms to get up by the flickering panels. Servitors in the shadows quietly murmured, returning datum streams from slack lips. A raised deck to one side held a holo-globe surrounded by three women, its ruddy cast making them look like witches around a cauldron. They were the only ones paying attention when D’onne and Hanno were escorted in. Judging by their posture and dress, D’onne surmised that they were obviously ranking house members. But were they to be intermediaries or judges?
As they approached, D’onne picked up on little signs, a head turn here, a lip movement there, that all three women were speaking and listening to unseen others. Intermediaries then. It was quite possible they were just meat puppets.
“Nobledam Ulanti, welcome. Forgive the arrangements but we are at a busy time here in House Escher.” It was a formal address, polite but enquiring. The words were well measured so it seemed likely that they were the woman’s own, for now at least.
However busy they were, “the arrangements” spoke volumes about how they felt about her. They wanted to know more and right now, whatever was going on, they didn’t want any political powder kegs hanging around in their halls to screw it up for them. D’onne wondered how many other senior house members were listening in. Hundreds probably.
“We understand you have requested sanctuary, nobledam, a law that has not been invoked here for centuries.”
The woman paused as if listening, but it was probably to let that notion settle in for effect. She continued.
“We feel compelled to ask of you what it is you need sanctuary from, and why you feel it cannot be given to you by your own house, one that is ranked among the most powerful of the pureblood noble families.”
They could well guess what would make her seek protection outside her own family and what it portended, but they wanted it spelled out. Fine.
“My story is no easy one to tell, especially in haste. I seek sanctuary from Patriarch Sylvanus, from my father. He…”
Even a lifetime of comportment training hadn’t prepared her for this. She felt Hanno’s eyes boring into her, and the cool, appraising looks of the Escher were like a dash of ice water to her cluttered mind. The pause stretched out longer as everyone waited for her to continue. Gathering herself, she tried to start again.
“I am the twelfth daughter of the Patriarch Sylvanus, head of the Noble Household of Ulanti. Until age six I was brought up in the bosom of my family, among my sisters and with my mother. That all changed when one of my sisters died. No, that’s not right. One of my sisters was murdered.
“We in the Spire are taught from birth that the family will be your first loyalty, now and always, and the family’s honour is your next. I was still very young when I saw that revealed as a lie. One of my own sisters pushed another to her death with the encouragement and approval of a third. Everything I thought I knew came apart at the seams that night.
“I was placed in a narrow tower on the flank of the Spire, an ancient marvel of the lost arts with tutelage engines and exercise regulators, and machine spirits of great age and nobility. At first I believed I was there for my protection but as the weeks passed I came to understand that I had committed some sort of crime against my family. No one came to visit me and the tower would not permit me to leave. I was imprisoned.
“Time became hard to gauge but I think it was a year before I had my first visitor. The spirits had taught me and kept me company so I was happy enough, in my own terribly young way, but for the aching gap in my heart left by the absence of my family. But I began every day honestly believing things would change for the better and that my mother or my sisters would come visiting. So I was not surprised when the spirits told me to prepare myself for a visitor, just excited.
“So imagine my shock when the lock opened to reveal not my mother or my sisters but my father, Patriarch Sylvanus, in all his finery. He berated me for my slipshod appearance and stalked around the tower for an hour, criticising me for living like an animal and being a disgrace to the family. Every time I tried to speak he angrily commanded me to silence. When I started to cry he flew into a towering rage, shouting that weakness and petty blackmail wouldn’t gain me the family’s forgiveness. When I wouldn’t stop crying he almost struck me. Instead he turned and left, stopping at the lock just long enough to express his own disappointment in me, all sadness now that his rage had blown over.
“At the last he bent down to me and whispered as if he were afraid that others would hear (and the tower would, it remembered every word that was said inside it). “You must try harder, D’onne, for all our sakes.” And with that he was gone.
“Imagine the child separated from its family who hears those words—how hard does it try? With every iota of its being, with every ounce of the raw, young energy beating in its innocent heart.
“My father did not visit again for a month, but every day I scrubbed and cleansed and preened and prepared in case he might come. When he did visit again I was devastated by his criticism of my appearance once more. But this time I did not cry, and I noticed his displeasure seemed less as he stalked about the tower. He saw I had tried harder.
“This time as he left he said nothing, but as the lock slid shut I saw him give the tiniest nod. It was a token of approval I cherished to ridiculous lengths in the weeks to come.
“Sylvanus’ visits were sporadic after that. Sometimes I would see him every week, at other times he would be gone for half a year. In the times between, I applied myself remorselessly to becoming a true daughter of the noble house of Ulanti. I learned how to please him, how to sense every subtle nuance of his likes and dislikes. I danced and sang for his pleasure, apparelled myself suitably for ail occasions. I studied the thousand generations of our family history so I might discourse with him on something dear to his heart.
“He would stay longer if I did well, and reward me with gestures of approval and, sometimes, affection. I became the boldest of thieves, stealing a small smile or a happy nod from him with my antics, eluding his towering rages and cynical traps with my wits and cunning. I came to understand this was what he wanted from me, to be bold and clever, to be a true daughter of Ulanti, able to both please men and bend them to my will.
“As I came to womanhood he completed my training as I came to understand it with arts of etiquette and romance, the techniques of wooing and being wooed, being hunter and prey… Our relationship changed through that time as I became increasingly wilful and challenging, I think, to him. I gained the impression that he only valued my opinion when it mirrored his own. He decided the time had come and announced that I was to be married off to another house.”
As she spoke, Donna noticed the pict screens on the pillar were blinking out one by one. There seemed to be some agitation among the techs surrounding it. The Escher facing her remained serene. She mentally shrugged and carried on.
“I’m told the competition among my suitors was fierce. There were many duels and the bride price I commanded was astronomical. House Ko’iron emerged as the victors, and their eldest son was to be married to the youngest daughter of Ulanti.”
“Wait please, nobledam,” one of the Escher said. All three of them wore that distra
cted look again. Over at the pillar the pict screens were coming back on again one by one.
Each screen showed a new scene of violence: a transporter wrecked and broken open, its cargo strewn across the slabway; a rioting mob hurling themselves at a line of enforcers; a compound being invaded by masked gunmen; a warehouse in flames; explosions blossoming along an overpass. The comm chamber they stood in trembled slightly from distant shocks in sympathy.
“Each screen shows Escher territory,” one of the Escher women said at last. “Incidents of violence have increased four-hundred per cent in the last twenty minutes. If our estimates bear out it’ll be a thousand-fold within the hour.”
Donna felt her mouth go dry.
“We can safely assume none of these incidents can be traced to House Ulanti, but that they all originate there. Soon the other houses will join in to take advantage of our weakness and house war may follow.
“You cannot stay here,” Tessera had told her.
7: DOWNTOWN
“Burn the filthy mutants!”
Sermons of the Arch Zealot
“How the hell did you find me?”
It was Donna’s first question after Avignon had hauled her up out of the monster’s lair like a fish on a line. Tessera had just looked superior and all knowing at the time so she didn’t hear the story properly until she wheedled it out of Tola later. Not that it ever took much wheedling to get Tola talking; it was shutting her up that was the real trick.
It turned out that Tola and Avignon had trailed Donna after she left Hagen’s Place in Glory Hole. Both of them knew Donna well enough to understand there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that she wouldn’t go to the warehouse to find out more. They had followed her until she climbed down to the third tier, at which point they had to go back and pay a toll-crank to get down since neither of them fancied emulating Donna’s high-wire routine.
They had arrived in time to see Donna caught cold by the bounty hunters at Strakan’s warehouse. When Donna made a break for it they strafed Kell’s sniper’s nest in the tower while she ran inside, which went a long way towards explaining why he hadn’t shot her in the back at the time—the little toad was pinned down by their fire.
Once Donna had disappeared inside, Tola and Avignon ran off and hid further around the tier. They had waited for a while and when Shallej and Kell came out empty-handed they had known that she had somehow escaped the warehouse. That’s when they hightailed it out of there to tell Tessera what was going on. Simple.
Of course that didn’t answer Donna’s question: how the hell had they found her beneath Dust Falls? She determined to get the rest of the story out of Tessera at the next rest stop. The gang were descending into the Abyss now, heading for Down Town, which suited Donna just fine. In truth, Donna was rather touched that Tessera had gone out of her way to find her in the first place, so she stuck with the gang out of old loyalties, secretly revelling in the chance to relax a little and stop watching her back.
They were moving through layer after layer of ancient hab-domes, access ways and waste pipes, working their way back along the well-worn paths of the Abyss. The deeper they went, the more crushed down the ruins of the old hive became, compacted beneath the weight of successive generations of demolition and construction. More often than not they followed fracture lines between the strata; an old transit rail might give a few hundred metres of useable passageway beneath its rails before giving way to a sagging plaza whose collapsed roof had left enough crawl spaces to reach a semi-intact street.
They paused at a crossroads of sorts. A cracked waste pipe breached the floor, coming in from one side and crossing their path. Tessera seemed uncertain about which way to take and Donna took the opportunity to talk to her away from the others.
To Donna’s eyes Tessera was looking old and tired. Her bleach-blonde hair showed grey at the roots and blackened gums marred the smile that she flashed at Donna. Tessera’s face was etched with pocks and scars from a lifetime of gang fights and hardship, but the gang leader’s eyes were bright and sharp, her narrow shoulders unbowed. She pre-empted Donna’s question before she had even opened her mouth.
“You want to know how we found you?”
Donna grinned back. Tessera was undoubtedly one of the smartest people she had ever met, inside the Spire or out of it. She could read people like books, which was no great skill in itself when you know the basics, but Tessera had a way of making you feel glad about it.
“I like to think I’m hard to track, elusive even, but recent events have made me seriously doubt that,” Donna replied. “In fact, I’m seriously starting to think I’m trailing a flashing sign that says ‘Donna is here’ in letters that you can see from Dust Falls to Two Tunnels.”
“It was easy to guess you would hit up Hanno for info.”
Ah. Yes, it was easy when Donna thought about it, except for one thing.
“You know I’ve got history with Hanno, but the bounty hunters don’t know about it—Hanno’s always been rather… circumspect about his relationship with me.”
“Of course he has, he’s chief watchman of one of the larger balls of dirt in the Underhive, and he can’t afford to have his name linked with Mad Donna too often—no matter how much he would like to.”
Donna nodded, that was obvious too, really, but it was nice to hear it from someone else. At least he didn’t hate her.
“How Kell and Shallej knew you’d be in Dust Falls I can’t say, but I’d hazard a guess that they knew where to find Relli and they knew that sooner or later you’d show up to have it out with him for dredging up your past.”
Tessera’s gaze weighed up Donna carefully. “That is what you intend, isn’t it? A confrontation of some sort.”
“You know me too well. Relli was singularly ill-advised to bring up my past.”
“It’s been an effective way of getting your attention.”
“You mean you’re not the only one who knows me well enough to know which buttons to press?”
“You were always a clever one, D’onne. So who could it be?”
“There’re only two people I know of in the Underhive who know me that well: one is Hanno, the other is you.”
Donna’s tone was challenging, but Tessera didn’t even favour her with a response. She just smiled and waited while Donna’s brain threw up all the million and one reasons why Tessera or Hanno wouldn’t want to make trouble for her.
“So that’s not it. Someone from the Spire then?”
“And you already knew that; you just didn’t want it to be true so you ignored it and ran.”
Donna shot Tessera a rueful look, feeling very young and uncertain again. Oddly, it was a feeling she cherished in a way. Tessera was right, of course. She’d bolted at the first implication that spyrers were involved and subconsciously headed for the deepest, darkest corner of the Underhive she knew of. She was running straight for whatever was waiting for her down there, like an animal being driven into a trap.
“I think there was a noble after me at Cliff Wall but I lost him.”
Tessera raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“I’m not sure. I only saw him at a distance and I thought it was another bounty hunter at the time. But thinking back, there was just something about the way he acted with the hired help that only a noble would expert to get away with down here. Hell, it was an obvious Hive City group when I think about it—too many people and not enough combatants.” She paused, remembering the sleek chrome shape of the enforcer hound slinking out of the shadows. “And plenty of fancy Uphive tech.”
“A noble showing up on your trail is hard to put down to coincidence,” Tessera remarked.
“Sometimes you can’t bury yourself deep enough, the past comes back and gets you anywhere. Hell, I never even got out of Hive Primus so I shouldn’t be at all surprised when my noble kin come looking for me.” Donna had meant to sound determined yet carefree, but her voice came out flat and emotionless instead, barely covering her bitter resignation.
Tessera’s voice was calm and reassuring in the gloom. “It’ll be all right, Donna. You’re quite capable of looking after yourself as I well know, and now you’ve got a posse of mean-ass bitches to back you up. You’re not alone in this any more.”
Donna lifted her living eye to glare at Tessera. “I didn’t ask you to come. You don’t normally set foot beyond Two Tunnels, so why have you dragged your girls halfway across the Underhive to find me? What’s your stake in this, Tessera?”
“Now what you’re really asking is why did I drag you all the way down here in the first place. Both questions have the same answer.”
“Which is?”
“If you haven’t figured it out by now, talk to one of the juves, they can put you straight.”
Donna laughed. Tessera had always given her the same response when she asked some particularly dumb-witted question, ever since she had come down to start a life as the Underhive’s oldest juve. Tessera had deflected her question, but that was good enough for now. Maybe she would just ask one of the juves.
“You said Kell and Shallej were in Dust Falls? But Kell said Shallej had gone to Two Tunnels.”
“He must have lied. I saw Shallej with my own eyes. He was heading down the Abyss with a big gang of Delaque when we arrived at Dust Falls. I stopped just long enough to talk with Hanno and then came looking for you.”
“That makes sense. I heard the Delaque talking about having orders from Bak. He must have sent some of those gangers into the sewers looking for me. But where the hell did he go?”
Tessera shrugged and rolled her eyes downward. She was right again of course. There was only one place to go at the bottom of the Abyss. The same place Relli had his manse.
Down Town.
The chaotic depths of the Underhive gave way to collapsed and compacted ruins at Hive Bottom. This was where the hive’s ancient foundation layer began, a region long since abandoned and forgotten by Hive City’s inhabitants. Hundreds of metres thick, it’s a domain of stagnant darkness where poisoned fumes rise from the putrid sump at the Hive Bottom to choke the labyrinth of crude crawl holes and ruinous caverns around it. But Hive Bottom was far from lifeless. Things dwelt in the darkness, spawned in the toxic waste of millennia, ruined creatures hiding from even the lights of the Underhive but still breeding and multiplying in the shadows.
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