City of Dust

by Michelle Kenney

  And then, a flash of inspiration.

  ‘The old Norman guardhouse. Are there rooms there? Dungeons?’ I asked swiftly.

  August frowned. ‘Yes, I think so, but you have to remember I came here a long time ago.’

  It was enough.

  We flew down the stairs, across the manicured grass and towards the old gatehouse built by William the Conqueror – or so the cracked plaque propped up beside the portcullis claimed.

  It was so at odds with the rest of the satellite research centre, with its imperfect structure and old-world red stone. And I hesitated only briefly before ducking through the open doorway on the right-hand side of the portcullis. The room was dark, and I tried to ignore the stench of guano as our footsteps crunched over the shaly stone floor.

  ‘Unus?’ I ventured after a beat, figuring our odds would only be improved if my unique cyclopean friend also knew we were here.

  There was no immediate answer, only a soft, distinctive clunking noise somewhere beneath the floor. I frowned, trying to identify it. August pulled an object from his pocket, and tapped it against the damp wall. Much to my surprise it flickered into life giving us enough light to search the space. I nodded. The science of the future had its moments. Then I spied thick black grill bars sunk into the stone floor.

  ‘Unus?’ I called cautiously, stepping forward.

  Again, there was a strange clunking. Chains? Plus something else. A sloshing noise. Water. I grabbed August’s light and held it over the grill, only to nearly drop it inside when a single large eye blinked back up at me.

  ‘Unus!’ My choking relief ricocheted around the dank mouldy walls as I absorbed his weakened state.

  He was neck-deep in black water, chained and gagged.

  A furious sob caught in my throat, as I gazed down at my bewildered giant friend. I had no doubt it had taken a small army to take him down, and that he’d done everything he could to defend those he loved.

  ‘For the love of Nero …’ August’s loss of words said it all.

  We each took one edge of the iron grill, and pulled with all our strength. It must have taken four men to lift it into place but somehow our exhausted muscles managed to inch it out of its resting place and onto the stone floor. It dropped with a huge clatter, but I didn’t care.

  ‘And now I get to rescue you back,’ I whispered, before jumping into the black water.

  The sudden freezing water slammed every muscle of my body, squeezing it like a million tiny vices, but I had years of pulling myself through Arafel’s tunnel on my side, and I kicked back until my head broke through the surface.

  ‘Unus!’ I gasped. ‘It’s Tal.’

  His freezing body had been wound tightly with thick chains, and a sodden cloth was bound around his huge pudgy face; although it didn’t stop his belly from rumbling weakly as August and I dived to find the end of the heavy metal. Thankfully the chain was only weighted, and as August detached the huge anchor, I wrested the tight bandage from around his mouth. At first, he was so cold and quiet, I thought we were too late. And then I remembered.

  ‘A cyclopean artery is particularly thick, meaning his heart rate can drop far lower than ours.’

  Aelia had brought Unus back from the brink of death before. I had to hope his physiology was enough to save him without her skills this time.

  ‘Unus, Unus?’ I whispered into his cold face.

  ‘He’s free, move his arms,’ August whispered.

  Taking one thick trunk arm each, we began to move his limbs in a circular motion, until finally he blinked, and swung his huge milky head towards me.

  ‘Tal … find … Unus?’ he mumbled through blue lips.

  ‘Yes,’ I panted, ‘sometimes the damsel rescues the cyclopean knight. But you have to help, because this water is freezing my brain!’

  Minutes later we were all lying out on the cold stone, trying to regain our breath after a united Herculean effort to heave Unus out onto the gatehouse floor.

  ‘We have to keep moving.’ I shivered. ‘Before Cassius’s guard arrives.’

  August nodded and somehow, between us, we got Unus on his feet. The soft warmth of the sunshine breathed new life into our near-frozen limbs, and slowly our strength returned as we made our way back across the green towards the satellite centre.

  Unus lumbered painfully, his exposure to the cold taking longer to wear off, but by the time we reached the centre he looked much more my old friend.

  ‘Tal… come for … Unus?’ he repeated unevenly, as though he still couldn’t quite believe we’d found him.

  I reached up to hug him, the reality of nearly losing him suddenly threatening to swamp me.

  ‘It’s what friends do for each other,’ I whispered. ‘They stand their ground, even when they’re not feeling heroic. And they play the game, despite the stakes … despite the crowd clamouring for blood.’

  He nodded once, his great eye misting with understanding. He’d nearly given his life fighting for us in the Flavium, he’d rescued me from Cassius as well as the Minotaurus – and protected me through the tunnels beneath Pantheon countless times. The truth was, he was more a hero, in spite of his genetics, than anyone else I knew and, right now, I needed him. The embrace he returned broke nearly every bone in my body, but it said more than all the words in the world.

  Then the three of us stood before the main entrance, the light summer breeze jarring with the task ahead. From here it was easy to see the entire western side of the building had been entirely destroyed in the blaze. I thought of the small, unassuming girl with serpent eyes. She was such an enigma and, if the omen were to be believed, a real threat to the natural world. Yet somehow, I found myself hoping she’d made it.

  The wind whistled through the facility eerily, as we retraced our steps back to the burned-out wing. There was still no sign of Jas and when we reached the tank room I averted my gaze from the charred bodies; there was always a choice and mine was to believe a resourceful snow leopard, who’d found her way over the North Mountains, would also escape Cassius’s monster hound.

  And then it was time. August shouldered Eli’s slumped body while I took Aelia. Once detached from the ventilation systems, their pulses seemed to fade until there was scarcely anything to distinguish them from those we would carry to Arafel’s peace hut. But I still refused to believe this was over.

  The price was just too high.

  And if Bellerophon was surprised at the listless bodies he was forced to carry the short distance to the river, he didn’t show it. We took the most direct route and reached the snaking glass water within fifteen minutes.

  ‘How?’ I turned to Unus breathlessly. ‘How do we call them?’

  He understood, of course. There was only a moment’s silence, and then the air vibrated with the same ancient call I remembered from when he carried me through Isca Pantheon’s tunnels. And it seemed as though the birds themselves stopped to listen. I watched the river like a hawk, but everything was still and devoid of life. Nothing stirred.

  ‘But we just fell and they helped us?’ I rounded on August, my chest shrinking with pain.

  This had to work; it couldn’t not work.

  He shook his head once, his expression raw and broken.

  ‘Oceanids are loyal only to those they choose,’ August muttered. ‘There are no rules. Except if they don’t come to us, we can only let them find them …’ he added, staring down at his sister’s limp body.

  My heart strained as though it was being squeezed by Unus’s fist, but there was a blue tinge around Eli’s mouth and Aelia’s skin had taken on a waxen sheen. There was no more time left.

  So, we stood there, watching their lifeless bodies sink into the chasm of water, and I whispered a prayer, not to the heavens above but to the ovoid eyes and webbed hands living within the black. It was a prayer carried by the most fragile of wings. And as the day finally started to fade behind the grey ruins of Isca, we knew we were the only ones left.

  ***

&nbs
p; The sunshine thinned as our small party crossed the trail of a Nemean lion in the North Mountains; a Roman gladiator of the Equite Order, a ponderous swaying Cyclops and a silent feral girl with only one thought driving her leather-clad feet forward.

  The winter of a thousand fires had arrived, and she was burning.

  Glossary of Terms

  Armamentarium: Roman gladiatorial weapon store beneath the Colosseum.

  Basiliscus (basilisk): mythological ‘king of serpents’, a giant reptilian creature famous for its ability to kill with a single glance (another version has rooster-like qualities). Both versions are mortal enemies of the weasel.

  Bellerophon: mythological son of a mortal, hero and slayer of monsters (before the days of Heracles) whose greatest feat was killing the chimera.

  Boudica: Queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60 or 61, and died shortly after its failure, having supposedly poisoned herself. She is considered a British folk hero.

  Chimera: mythological monstrous fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal, usually a lion, goat and snake. Homer’s brief description in the Iliad is the earliest surviving literary reference: ‘a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire.’

  Beyond mythology, the term ‘chimera’ is used in scientific research to explain an animal that contains more than one set of genetic coding. This is a clear nod to the Greek monster, in that the monster itself is a combination of three different ‘normal’ animals.

  Hominum chimera: Hominum (Latin for human), Hominum chimera: human chimera, a fictional concept, though real human chimeras can occur when a person’s body contains two different sets of DNA; for example, the result of a bone transplant or when a fraternal twin embryo dies and the other embryo absorbs its twin’s DNA.

  Citizen MMMDCCXCVIII: Citizen 3798, Commander General Augustus Aquila’s Citizen Number.

  Civitas: In the history of Rome, the Civitas was the social body of the cives or citizens, united by law. It is the law that bound them together, giving them responsibilities on the one hand, and rights of citizenship on the other. The Civitas was not just the collective body of all the citizens, it was also the contract binding them all together, because each of them was a civis.

  Clymene, Asia and Electra (Oceanids): mythological sea nymphs who were three of the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys. Clymene, Asia and Electra were closely associated with the Titan gods.

  Draco: from Latin for dragon. A mythical creature depicted as a large horned serpent or a winged, fire-breathing reptile with magical or spiritual qualities.

  Et in Arcadia Ego: Even in Arcadia, here I am. Arcadia was a rural region of Ancient Greece, whose inhabitants, chiefly shepherds and farmers, were seen as living a quiet, idyllic life away from the hustle and bustle of nearby Athens. The Latin motto et in Arcadia ego, ‘even in Arcadia, here I am,’ comes from the title of a painting by the French Baroque artist Nicholas Poussin (1594–1665), which depicted four Arcadian shepherds attending the tomb of a local man. Precisely what Poussin meant the title to imply is hotly debated, but it’s often interpreted as a reminder that no matter how good someone else’s life appears to be compared to your own, we all eventually suffer the same fate – the ‘I’ in question is Death.

  Flavium Arch L11: The Flavium’s (Colosseum’s) huge crowd capacity made it essential that the venue could be filled or evacuated quickly. The architects adopted solutions very similar to those used in modern stadiums to deal with the same problem. The amphitheatre was ringed by eighty entrances at ground level, seventy-six of which were used by ordinary spectators. Each entrance and exit was numbered, as was each staircase.

  Hypogeum: The area beneath the Colosseum was called the Hypogeum (meaning underground). The Hypogeum consisted of a two-level subterranean network of tunnels and thirty-two animal pens. It had eighty vertical shafts that provided instant access to the arena for animals and scenery. There were thirty-six trapdoors in the arena, allowing for elaborate special effects. The atmosphere and smell beneath the Colosseum must have been terrible. The Hypogeum would have had little natural light, so lamps would have burned continuously. The heat in the Hypogeum must have been almost unbearable. The stench of animals, the excrement, blood and death would have filled every part of the Hypogeum – both above and beneath the Colosseum must have been ‘hell on earth’.

  Livia: Livia Drusilla, Empress of Rome (58 BC–AD 29) Long-lived, influential matriarchal figure in the early years of the Roman principate. Held up as an example of womanly virtue and simplicity. She may have also been a murderer, and has been described as treacherous, avaricious, and power-hungry. Wife of the first Roman Emperor Augustus, mother of the second Tiberius and deified by her grandson, the Emperor Claudius.

  Ludere!: from Latin meaning Play!

  Ludi Apollinares: solemn games (ludi) held annually by the ancient Romans in honour of the god Apollo. The tradition goes that at the first celebration, the Romans were suddenly invaded by the enemy, and obliged to take to their arms. A cloud of darts and arrows fell upon their enemies, and the Romans then returned victorious to their sports.

  Ludi Pantheonares: fictional version of Ludi Apollinares (above).

  Nemean lion: a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived at Nemea. It was eventually killed by Heracles, but could not be killed with mortal weapons because its golden fur was impervious to attack. Its claws were also sharper than mortal claws, and could cut through any armour.

  Oceanids: see Clymene, Asia and Electra.

  Rune: letter of an ancient Germanic alphabet, related to the Roman alphabet.

  Silenus: (plural sileni) Greek woodland gods or spirits, closely connected to the satyrs. They were occasionally referred to as being half-man half-horse, instead of half-man half-goat. The sileni were portrayed as lechers and drunkards, bald-headed and pot-bellied, with thick lips and stub noses, and with the tails and ears of a horse. Playing the flute and lyre were their attributes. The sileni can often be found in the company of Dionysus.

  Spoliarium: where the dead bodies of gladiators were stripped of armour and weaponry.

  Vulpes: Aelia’s family name and a genus of the Canidae, which also includes wolves, jackals and other members of the dog family. The members of this genus are colloquially referred to as ‘true foxes’.

  Acknowledgements

  No book comes together without a dedicated team.

  So, for all the support throughout City of Dust’s journey, I’d like to extend my special thanks to:

  My amazing HQ Editors Hannah Smith & Nia Beynon, for their perceptive insights, talent for spotting plot holes and all round editing wizardry. Hannah, I will miss your incredible enthusiasm and Nia, I can’t wait to tackle Talia’s final explosive chapter together.

  The fabulous HQ Design team for yet another stunning cover. You guys rock!

  Chloe Seager (Northbank Talent Management), who continues to be just brilliant writing inspiration, as well as my agent-extraordinaire and much valued friend.

  Catherine Johnson (Author) & the Curtis Brown Creative Team, for the ongoing belief, support and words of wisdom.

  The lovely Dr Sarah Parkin, for providing valuable medical advice, and never once questioning my mention of a Minotaurus.

  My awesome writing group: The Scribblers, for the solidarity, retweets, and (virtual) hugs and doughnuts.

  And finally,

  my incredibly supportive parents, family and friends, who continue to put up with my rambling conversations, midnight marmite raids and gypsy-folk music crimes – and who never, ever, mention how late I am…

  I couldn’t do it without you.

  The final book in this fantastical trilogy is coming in 2019 …

  If you enjoyed City of Dust, why not read on for an extract from the first in


  Michelle Kenney’s fantastical trilogy, Book of Fire?

  Prologue

  In the old world, people foraged for food in bright cities the size of the forest, Grandpa said, and rode toxic boxes on wheels, instead of running with the sun.

  Embellished truth or plain fiction, Grandpa’s fireside myths were my favourite part of the day. And as my twin brother and I grew, the myths turned into stories from his own childhood, like the time he found a tattered advert for the Lifedome on a creeper-choked wall. When he pulled the foliage aside, it still bore the ripped, black lettering of its utopian dream.

  It was only when Eli and I turned sixteen that, in keeping with village tradition, we learned the real story of Arafel’s forefathers from the Council. We plagued Grandpa for the rest, and when he finally relented, there was something in his stark portrayal of our beginning that shadowed me, even on the brightest day.

  The Lifedome was supposed to be a landmark scientific experiment, he told us, a microcosm to investigate how Genetic Modification could serve the technological world. The goal was the Nobel Prize, but global funding meant the Government had to make extravagant promises. Prime Minister Johnstone went one step further, claiming the Lifedome would provide emergency shelter should the tension between the East and West ever erupt into another Great Holy War.

  That day arrived sooner than everyone expected, on 3rd November 2025.

  They claimed it was a rogue test missile, that it wasn’t intended to reach London, but the dust clouds enveloped most of the country, and their effect was cataclysmic. With cities in ruins and thousands of refugees left with nowhere to shelter, the Government’s Scientific Team had to throw open the Lifedome doors, and provide what shelter they could.

  Those who were still able took their families and fled towards the only safe haven in the West, clinging to its costly propaganda that it could withstand every bomb known to mankind. Others accepted a grateful ride from the Sweeper vehicles.