City of Dust

by Michelle Kenney

  ‘The new night watch moved in a couple of days before I got back from Arafel. The Rhinolophus ferrumequinum?’

  I grimaced, recalling the vampiric bats that had swarmed Max, Pan and me.

  ‘I was careful, but the guards arrived so swiftly,’ she went on. ‘I knew of the new biotechnological work installing monitoring software into animal retinas, just not that Cassius was trialling it.’

  I frowned. So that confirmed how he knew of our arrival anyway.

  ‘I had no time to leave a note to warn you about the bats. And by the time the guards arrived, I knew Cassius was intending to take the Book. So, I ripped out the page of Thomas’s research that I believe is linked to the oldest secret of the Voynich.

  ‘Look, my conscience isn’t clear, I know that. I … I took the Book knowing it would make you listen. That it would bring you to Pantheon before it was too late. But … that page … Cassius should never own it.’

  I shot a look at Eli who was lip-reading earnestly, looking perplexed. He still didn’t know about the Book of Arafel containing Thomas’s research, but I didn’t want to stop Aelia. Not now she was finally opening up.

  ‘I’ve suspected there was much more to the Voynich than Octavia knew for quite a while.’ She stared down at her restless hands. ‘She revered it as a medieval genetic blueprint for mythical creatures. But Cassius and Thomas had access to the Voynich archives way before the Great War. They were scientists employed to study the Voynich together. They kept aspects of their research secret from Octavia, who was only a junior scientist at the time.

  ‘It was only when I was studying the few pages of Thomas’s research I kept in the cave, that I first found the reference to an older legend. It was buried within the dense cryptic text, and so vague I didn’t give it credit for a long while. So, when I finally got a glimpse inside your village book …’

  ‘I knew it!’ Eli signed furiously, derailing Aelia instantly.

  I caught hold of one of his hands, and pulled it down, trying not to let my frustration show. I shot a look at Aelia anxiously. Had the moment gone already?

  ‘The Book of Arafel is my responsibility, and I’ve already let Grandpa down enough. Please … no one else can know,’ I signed with effort.

  First Aelia and August, next Max, and now Eli. The circle was widening, and I wasn’t supposed to have told anyone. But something in my exhausted face must have persuaded him I was deadly serious. He gripped me back and nodded, just once, but with Eli that was all that was ever needed.

  ‘We’re like opposite sides of the same person anyway.’ He winked, signing with his free hand. ‘Fire and water, storm and calm …’

  I pulled a face.

  ‘Does Max know?’ he added, his face darkening.

  I nodded hesitantly.

  ‘He guessed,’ I added guiltily, ‘but no one else can. Right now, our priorities are rescuing Lake, retrieving the Book and putting a stop to Cassius once and for all. Somehow. Life in Arafel won’t ever be the same, until we do.’

  Come what may nature finds a way. The wisdom hung in the heavy air, or I might have whispered the words.

  I looked back at Aelia. She seemed a million miles away now, and I needed to finish. I needed to know how an older legend buried within the text of the Voynich could relate to a torn picture of a classical chimera.

  And why I felt the biggest jigsaw piece of all was still out there, just out of reach.

  ‘Just what is it that makes you so special? … With the price Cassius has placed on your head … well, you’ve become a little legendary.’

  The mysteries danced through my head, taunting me. What was missing?

  ‘Pan?’ Eli interjected, interrupting my thoughts.

  I shook my head, biting my lip.

  ‘He traded his life for a chance of saving Lake,’ I added in a hollow voice, staring across the floor at Faro playing pick-up sticks with a boy with tiny blue, pulsing gills.

  The colour reminded me of my veins. Twisted and blue. The same colour as my thoughts.

  ‘August?’ Eli asked next, his voice oddly strained.

  I shot a look at my sensitive twin. He was staring at me, visible pain in his gentle eyes, and in that moment I glimpsed the answer to the question that had been eluding me for so long. My heart swelled.

  How long had he known? How could I have not seen this before? And where did it leave us? Twins. Bound by love for each other – and divided by love for another?

  For a moment neither of us said anything, but I could tell he knew I’d read it. The truth. And the hopelessness. Right there and then. And that he cared for my acceptance more than anything in the world.

  I gazed up into his gentle grey-blue eyes, at my thoughtful twin who had always stood back and waited. And finally, it all made so much sense. How hard had the last year been for him – silently watching me, reading my thoughts, guessing at the tangled web I was weaving with Max and being unable to say what he was feeling? Somehow his pain made August’s fall from grace doubly hard.

  I placed my hand over his and squeezed, feeling new strength flush my veins. What did it matter anyway? August might as well be dead! I’d spent twelve months holding on to something that didn’t exist. I’d isolated myself, hurt my best friend, tuned out my twin’s feelings and all for what? A genetically modified man who professed himself to be a Knight of the Old Order? A Roman Equite who’d sworn allegiance to a set of ancient principles that might as well be ash too!

  The kiss outside the Flavium rose like a taunt from the depths of my mind, despite my attempts to bury it. I knew who he really was now, and yet my twisted mind kept torturing me with that one defining moment when anything had seemed possible.

  ‘You’re the most obstinate, self-opinionated, frustrating little feral cat.’

  We hadn’t made any promises, but how could he forget the promises he’d made to Pantheon? A promise to change it all, and bring about a society that valued Outsider ideals. And freedom. My chest ached, and I longed for solitude so I could give in to the throb that had nothing to do with my injury. But there was no chance of that. And no time.

  Eli was still staring at me. Still waiting. And so I did the only thing I could do, and smiled. And he smiled back. A real smile that said all the words. And that stretched all the way back to when we were children, locked inside our twin fortress. We were OK.

  Which left Max. My eyes wandered back to the table where he was still engrossed in his crossbow. His skin glowed in the lantern light, but I could see the faint discolouration of bruises, and two new bloodstained bandages around his left forearm. Our exit from Ludi Pantheonares had obviously been rough, and he’d had my back, as always. But this was a Max I didn’t recognize, withdrawn and guarded. What had I done?

  ‘You’re flushing again.’ Aelia frowned, pressing her hand against my forehead.

  ‘I thought you were getting an infection a couple of days ago,’ she continued, ‘but it was just a scare. No need to develop anything new though, please? I don’t have access to Tullius’s surgery, and a sterilized bone will only do so much!’

  I nodded. She was back in full doctor mode. Had the moment gone? I drew a breath. I had to find out.

  ‘The Voynich’s older legend?’ I urged.

  She frowned. ‘Well, you don’t have a fever, which is good.’

  She was stalling. But I wasn’t giving up – not now.

  I fumbled inside my leather rations bag lying beside me, and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. It was already yellowed with age and my screwing it up in a hurry hadn’t helped its appearance.

  Eli stared curiously as I smoothed out Thomas’s annotated diagram on my tatty threadbare blanket, and turned it around to face her.

  And then I saw it. I stared intently.

  Was it a trick of the light? A smudge? Something to do with lack of sleep and an incapacitated state?

  I stole a look at Aelia. Had she noticed too? Did it mean anything?

  Despite her exhaustion, s
he was drawn to the page, and I could understand why. Even to my untrained eye, the chimera drawing was clearly something different. Thomas’s research had been full of the Voynich’s nonsense wording and drawings, but this page was denser than the rest, as though he’d spent a significant amount of time on it. And there was a detail in the pencil sketch that now jarred like hail on a summer’s day.

  Was this one of the reasons Thomas had originally run to the forest? Because he’d discovered coding for an ancient legend buried within the text of the Voynich? One that would eclipse the rest?

  I only knew what I’d read in Arafel’s library: that the mythological chimera was supposed to be a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature. And Thomas’s rough sketch had all the classical description from Homer’s Iliad – the front half of a lion, the tail of a snake, a goat’s body – snorting out a terrifying flame of bright fire. But it wasn’t any of those features that held my gaze. It was something tiny, detailed, and instantly recognizable.

  ‘Yes,’ Aelia breathed softly, relieved she didn’t need any words.

  I scrutinized the page again, willing it to be a trick of my imagination. A fever-fuelled hallucination even. The writing was all upside down, the REQ as faint and scrawled as before. But the more I stared, the clearer the detail became.

  We were staring at coding Cassius desperately needed to reinvent one of the oldest myths known to mankind. It was perfect, if terrifying, trading material. I thought of the screens full of flickering coding, Rajid’s insistence we saw the chimera laboratory, and finally, Lake’s disappearance.

  And I still couldn’t drag my eyes from the tiny detail that Thomas’s swift pencil strokes had recorded as a clue. Just what was this myth capable of that Thomas had hidden it behind a classical sketch of a chimera?

  Beads of cold sweat broke out across my forehead. By now Cassius had to realize Aelia had torn out the specific page he was looking for, and that it had slipped out of his grasp when we escaped Livia in Ludi Pantheonares.

  I sat bolt upright, ignoring the bite in my chest. It could only be a matter of hours until his ugly menagerie tracked us all down. We were holding the blueprint to an ancient chimera in our hands, and the tiny detail in the drawing left me in no doubt he was close. It was all so terrifyingly clear. The real reason he was hunting us.

  ‘We have to make a plan,’ I panted painfully. ‘Cassius is coming.’

  Chapter 18

  Everyone was asleep. A fragile starlight danced across the silent bells, but my head was too full of Thomas’s drawing to appreciate anything.

  I’d managed to swallow some pigeon stew, which was infinitely more appetizing than the rat’s tail Atticus had insisted on chewing. And while my chest still throbbed, the sharp twists of pain were lessening.

  We’d also agreed a homeward plan of sorts. At daybreak, the entire party was to try for the north of the Dead City and a circuitous route back to Arafel, taking a large detour around Scorpion Plain. Atticus offered to go ahead, to scout out a path, but Eli was adamant we stayed together now. He said our strength was diluted the moment we split the party, and I could tell he didn’t trust Atticus, not completely.

  The decision to try for Arafel as soon as possible was unanimous. Even Atticus conceded, or perhaps it was the thought of the alternative – of remaining behind in an empty tower with only the vultures and rats for company.

  And what may happen afterwards.

  No one was under any illusion that Cassius wouldn’t pursue us. And no one stated the obvious, although it was staring all of us all squarely in the face – we were sitting ducks where we were. Max said little except to stress we should move as soon as we could. It was clear he thought we stood a much better chance on the ground now, using the broken buildings as we would the trees at home. And despite my fragility, I agreed with him.

  Eli had evacuated the young Prolets to the tower before we arrived, and it was tempting to believe the stone walls could offer protection; but the truth was we were completely isolated, and no amount of high walls would protect against Cassius’s flying armoury. Aelia protested I needed a couple of days’ bed rest at least, but it was obvious we didn’t have the luxury of time, and I wouldn’t hear of anybody remaining with me while the others went ahead.

  I felt strong, I said. I lied.

  Slowly, I scanned the dimly lit bell tower. Atticus was sitting paring arrows with a penknife, though his attempt to look tough was softened by Faro, curled in to him fast asleep.

  I stared at his swarthy face and dark eyes. There was no doubt his youth and pluckiness had got the Prolets this far. They owed him their survival, but he was also stubborn, which made him unpredictable – and a little dangerous. I shook off my suspicion as best I could. He seemed to be stewing, but I knew his mood was probably more to do with Lake’s disappearance, than Max’s confiscation of his rusty weapons. He and Lake had been close, no matter how much he tried to protest his independence from everyone around him.

  Lake. Her double-lidded eyes spun into focus and a barrage of conflicting thoughts crowded my head.

  I craned my neck to look across the floor. Everyone was asleep or resting, and Aelia had ordered bed rest for as long as we were in the tower. Max had barely spoken two words to me since I’d come round, and Eli was acting as though every movement might be my last. It all added up to a feeling of claustrophobia I couldn’t handle. And I had an overwhelming urge to see my anti-hero cyclopean friend who’d saved my life more times than I could count.

  Slipping my legs out from beneath my blanket, I pushed myself up and cursed as a rush of blood made the cavern slip sideways. I shot a hand out to grip the cool stone wall, and slowly the room stabilized again.

  After a couple of minutes, I felt strong enough to rock my weight forward. Every bone in my body protested, but I gritted my teeth, and before long I was teetering on the balls of my leather-clad feet. It hurt more to walk flat-footed so, using the wall as a support, I tiptoed towards the dark stairwell leading from the room and started down the murky stone passageway.

  The steps were hewn into the rock in sections, and there were flickering lanterns placed at sporadic intervals. Their dancing light took me back to the dusk fireflies in Arafel, and I was suddenly beset with a wave of overwhelming homesickness.

  I knew it was weakness, but it was a weakness I couldn’t afford to have. Not now. I descended the eight separate flights as swiftly as my chest would allow, and exhaled audibly when I rounded onto the floor and spotted Unus’s bulky mass silhouetted in the passageway. He was seated on a blanket with only a lantern and wooden club for company, his head resting back against the wall and his one eye gazing out of a window, over the moonlit ruin.

  My heart lurched unevenly. He was always alone, whether through choice or design, and yet we all owed him so much. I owed him so much.

  ‘Unus?’ I muttered gently.

  He started and turned his head swiftly, his white face breaking into a delighted childlike grin when he spotted me.

  ‘Tal all fixed!’ he exclaimed, as I stepped into his pool of light. ‘Tal not fixed,’ he remonstrated as soon as I got close enough for him to scrutinize me. ‘Tal sit.’

  He shifted his bulk up the blanket that was keeping the ground chill at bay, leaving a cosy spot for me. I accepted with real gratitude, and slid down the wall, marvelling at how much more comfortable his huge muscular body was compared with the wooden door on which I’d been lying.

  For a few brief moments we sat like that, drawing comfort from each other’s proximity, and listening to the rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the overgrown ruin outside.

  ‘Tal torn,’ he pronounced after a minute.

  ‘Yes.’ I scowled, recalling the moment the steam-blowing Minotaurus had ripped into me, and I thought it was all over.

  ‘The Minotaurus…’

  ‘No, not Bull-man … Tal heart torn,’ he corrected.

  I nodded, lost for words. ‘How do you know?’ I whispered dully.


  ‘Unus watch, Unus know,’ he answered, patting my knee.

  His simple kindness stripped away any remaining layers, and I let my head roll against him, as I might have with Grandpa.

  ‘Unus, what happened … with August?’ I asked, my voice sounding hollow.

  His face wrinkled up like a giant sea-weathered shell, as he lowered his great eye to look at me.

  ‘He leave. Prolets die … Unus try stop. Livia put Unus … in Ludi. Lia say bring Tal … then Cassius listen.’

  He paused to draw breath; the effort of so many words costing him.

  ‘But … all too… late.’

  I stared. There was so much truth in what he said, but why would my presence make Cassius do anything? It was so much worse than I’d realized. August’s abandonment had reached so much deeper than throwing Isca Pantheon into chaos, and giving Cassius what he wanted. It had snuffed out the tiny flame of hope the Prolets had nursed, leaving them only with pain and a dull acceptance that their destiny was servitude or torture in the Flavium.

  I blinked rapidly, willing my burning eyes not to betray me. Not now. I’d wanted to believe everyone had got August so wrong, that there had been one terrible misunderstanding, but I trusted Unus more than I trusted anyone else in Isca Pantheon. And even he believed August had abandoned everything he stood for, and everyone else with it.

  ‘Sometimes heart see different … to eye,’ Unus offered, his inky eye sunk beneath the folds of a heavy frown.

  I nodded, still blinking. He was a creature of so few words, and yet those he chose were uncannily appropriate.

  ‘Yes.’ I nodded. ‘My grandpa always said the heart chooses what it wants to see. But for happiness, heart and head must agree.’

  He nodded. ‘Cyclops heart big, head small. Agree a lot.’

  I grinned up at him. He was like a giant hot brick and I was the warmest I’d felt since leaving Arafel.

  ‘Do you think they’re close, Unus?’ I asked staring out towards the ruined cathedral nave, feeling oddly calm.

  He patted my knee again.

  ‘Unus block tunnel … twice. Tunnel maze. Will take time … Oceanids help. They sing … Dogs and strix stupid. Go all ways.’