by Col Buchanan
‘What? Who?’
‘The spy that was just caught in the city.’
His mouth gasped like a beached fish, and so Ash slapped him again with a snap of the cloth, bringing tears of confusion to his eyes.
Ash threw all the intent he could into it.
‘The spy. Where is he?’
‘In the hands of the Committee! That’s all I know.’
‘Have they interrogated him yet?’
‘Yes, yes. He’s already confessed to being an agent of the Mannian Empire. He’s due to be executed as a spy.’
‘Where is he?’
‘What? On the Sky Bridge of course. Leg Pashak. The next one west of here. But you’ll want to avoid that district right now. Some riots have broken out. Very serious.’
‘Riots?’
The man raised a clenched fist, as though it was supposed to mean something to Ash.
‘This leg. Leg Pashak. You know it?’
‘Of course, it’s where I work.’
‘Describe the layout.’
‘You want to know the layout of where I work?’
Another stinging slap to the face. His pale cheeks had flushed a bright scarlet.
‘Tell me.’
Lowering his head, the minder started to recite from memory what he could recall. Ash listened attentively, surprised in fact by the ease of it all, by the power he had managed to project into his voice that seemed to grip the fellow so entirely. He’d forgotten how much he disliked using his voice in this way, the bitter taste of forced compliance. Yet he carried on with it, nudging with questions in the right direction until he had assembled a reasonable picture in his mind of a route to Meer’s location: a maximum-security cell block belonging to something called the Committee, employers of this young Anwi.
‘Good man. Now turn around.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Turn around.’
‘Have you lost your mind, Guallo? Who do you think you are?’
Ash grabbed one wrist and then the other, and while the man blinked, stunned at what he was doing, he tied them tightly together with the pillowcase, in the process glimpsing a timepiece strapped to his arm. He took a moment to inspect it more closely, seeing a tiny dial of symbols slowly rotating around a centre.
‘I’m just about to lose my temper here, you hear me?’
‘I hear you.’
For all his height the minder weighed little more than Ash did, and with his hands bound he led him easily back inside and across to the bathroom. ‘What are you doing?’ the Anwi demanded when he saw Ash removing the belt from his trousers.
‘Hitching you up,’ he answered, then looped the belt around the man’s hands and fastened the end to a hooked light fitting in the ceiling, so that the Anwi dangled there on the tips of his toes.
He inspected his work with professional calm.
‘Try to escape,’ he commanded of the man.
A desperate glance below the sweaty pit of his arm, eyes wild.
‘Escape!’
The Anwi grunted and swung about for a few moments, tugging at his bonds, and when everything held fast he gasped and flung out a foot instead, hopping around in a complete circle for somewhere to perch it on, managing to catch the lip of the steel bathtub.
Should have seen that, Ash thought with a sigh, and he bent and grabbed the curled lip of the bath and began heaving it across the floor, its feet squealing against the tiles and the sound of it echoing off the high ceiling until it seemed loud enough to wake the entire hotel. Only when he had finally dragged it far enough to stop did he realize that the young minder was shouting out for help.
Quickly he stopped him by ramming a yellow fruit into his gaping mouth, then used another pillowcase as a gag to keep it in place.
Ash nodded once to the man hanging there trembling and staring back at him, then closed the door on his confused expression. On his way to the balcony he snatched up the remaining fruits in the bowl and stuffed them into his pockets. Then he plucked up his sword and breathing mask.
Down below in the gardens of the Guallo’s Rest he spotted the dark shadow of a guard dog sniffing around some bushes. Ash tilted his head to one side for long moments, and heard a crunch of feet along one of its pathways, the slow and steady tread of a night watchman.
Find a better way out. Try the other side.
And so he glanced upwards, inspecting the balconies and higher storeys above him, plotting the easiest route to climb. He paused for a moment in his deliberations when he saw the constellation of Ninshi’s Hood hanging up there in the night sky, a familiar sight in this other-worldly city.
He had until dawn, perhaps, before his guide was discovered and the alarm raised. It would have to be enough time.
A soft exhalation escaped him as he lightly hopped onto the balustrade. Ash looped his sword over his back then began to scramble upwards, hands and feet reaching for easy holds in the stone facade of the building as he climbed past the balconies of other rooms, alive once more in his element.
With a final heave he vanished over the edge of the roof of the hotel, leaving in his wake a blazing star which his foot had obscured only a moment before.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Dark Vapours
Despite the bitter cold, people were partying tonight in the districts built around the northern rim of the city, and Ash found himself walking along bright and busy streets filled with life and noise and drunken revellers, sucking the chill air through his breathing mask just as everyone else did.
By now he’d seen enough Anwi of his own shorter stature to know that he did not stand out in a crowd. He kept the hood of his burnoose over his head, though it was as much for warmth as anything else, for in the brilliantly lit streets his face was visible enough within the folds of cloth, and it hardly seemed to matter. There were plenty of other faces in the streets as dark-skinned as his own, and it was a surprising relief to walk along thoroughfares like any other person, without drawing the usual stares from passers-by, as had happened in Lucksore and in so many other places before that.
So what’s the plan? he asked himself casually as he strolled along the pavement, and right away the answer came to him. He didn’t have a plan. He had no idea how he was going to free Meer.
You’re just going to stroll up to the Sky Bridge and see how it goes, is that it?
But what choice did he have?
A noisy tram rumbled past on rails set into the road, drawing him out from his reflections, people staring out with the breathing masks still on their faces. Everywhere he looked he could see vibrantly coloured images on prominent display: faces with dazzling smiles adorning the sides of buildings or store fronts, next to foreign words and pictures of things that made no sense to him. Advertisements, he realized, like the ones that had taken over every surface of distant Q’os.
So much of this city reminded him of the imperial capital of Q’os, in fact. Was there a connection, he wondered? Indeed, was there a reason the people here had shortened end fingers just like the priests of Mann?
If Ash turned his head he could see his mirrored reflection accompanying him along the street, flashing across store fronts of glass lit brightly from within; a hooded form with a sword slung beneath his burnoose, passing displays of fine jewellery and diamonds, suits and dresses, wines and foods, paper masks and statues, exotics, ground-cars and all sorts of miscellanea he did not remotely recognize. In one instance, which stopped him dead in his tracks, he spotted what looked like a range of phalluses and orifices hanging there in a pulsing red light, though as he stared he grew uncertain, for some of them seemed encrusted with smooth diamonds and gleaming surfaces of gold.
Jewels glittered all around him in the streets too, worn upon the silk dresses and suits of the passers-by. From the upper balconies of tavernas the more hardy talked in loud self-importance, while inside steamy cafes people chatted at tables, dressed in fashions of clothing and hair wilder than any seen even in Q’os. Large feathers seemed to sprout eve
rywhere, perhaps inspired by the Alhazii. White gloves on long-fingered hands. Cosmetics on every face he looked upon, men and women alike.
Time after time though it was the women who made him stare hard. They were goddesses here in this city in the clouds, glorious in their perfections, perched next to men often twice their age or older, erect and as long-necked as delicate flowers. Whenever they caught his eye he felt the thrill of it pulsing through him like the occasional rushes of the Milk, and their faces lingered in his mind like spectral-graphs in colour, their painted lips and powdered complexions, their mysterious glassy stares.
Again in the streets the disparity in ages was apparent. It was the young who were serving tables and manning counters or decorating the arms of their patrons, while it was mostly the old who cavorted around and acted as though they owned it all.
He moved on, slowly gaining a sense of this city, threading a way towards his destination.
Above the glow of the district and almost over his head, one leg of the Sky Bridge soared in a dizzying arch towards the central hub, sparkling with that weird violet light which also flickered across the heavy netting covering them all. Along the underside of the great arch the windows were burning with lights like a river of stars, obscured by plumes of steam and oily smoke that poured steadily from a multitude of vents.
More smoke was rising to the south of the district above the rooftops. Ash thought he heard a chorus of gunfire coming from that direction, but no one in the streets responded to it in any way.
Nearby, though, a window was suddenly crashing to the ground, and at last heads were turning to look about them with interest. Ash stepped sideways into a doorway, where he could safely observe.
He glimpsed figures running across the street ahead. People wearing suits and dresses like everyone else but with masks covering their faces, leering monkey masks.
Another broken window crashed to the ground in big pieces as one of the group ran past with a hammer in their hand. A woman screamed in horror. Men shouted out in anger. But the figures danced through them, hopping and swinging their arms in a caricature of monkeys, and they screeched at the people in the street before disappearing down an alley.
Ash was almost tempted to follow after them out of curiosity, but he was close to the base of the Sky Bridge limb now. The wide thoroughfare he was following seemed to be leading him right to it. So he carried onwards, and he saw that ahead lay a huge open plaza with the base of the white leg rising up from its centre, starkly lit by floodlights. Glass doors were embedded in its nearest side, from which people were coming and going, guards stationed outside them much like the guards outside his hotel.
More immediate than that though were the double lines of guards stretched right across the end of the thoroughfare, stopping everyone trying to enter the plaza to inspect some kind of identification before allowing them through.
Ash turned away from the scene into a gloomy side street, looking for another way to get closer. He entered a darker district behind the noisy thoroughfare, with less people around, less activity and groundcars. Large blocks of housing rose over poorly lit store fronts, most of them closed and shuttered by metal grilles. The windows of the dwellings above were mostly dark or lit by a brownish light that waxed and waned and never seemed to settle. He heard a baby crying. A man shouting. The faint drums of music. Further along people were hanging out of the windows overhead, watching out for something.
He could hear a roar of voices from somewhere nearby. A battle raging in the streets.
A riot!
Excited now, Ash trod over the rubbish in the gutters and headed uphill towards the soaring limb of the Sky Bridge, keeping the sounds of trouble to his left and looking eagerly along every side street that he passed. Figures ran by him without regard, either away or towards the clamour. The roar of voices was much louder now, creating a strange kinetic energy in the air.
Ash frowned as he saw another double line of guards blocking off the end of this street too, not far from the open plaza and the base of the leg. It would seem the entire plaza was surrounded, then.
He turned away and stepped towards a small park encircled by a waist-high wall and paved with stone. Trees lined the park within, each one girded in its entirety by a metal cage through which limbs continued to grow. Figures shifted next to a few fires smoking in metal barrels, men and women heavily clothed against the cold, talking and coughing, a few turning to watch him as he stopped and peered again along the street at the open plaza and the guards.
‘What’s that under your burnoose, a weapon?’ asked a voice next to one of the fires in rough Trade.
He saw a grimy bearded face behind a filthy breathing mask. Dark eyes shining brightly. Ash stepped into the park towards him.
‘Yes,’ he said matter-of-factly.
‘A sword?’
Ash nodded.
‘Can I see it?’
Why not. Ash opened his burnoose and swept the blade from its sheath and held it out before them, the curve of steel reflecting the dancing light of the fires. The man bent over it, fascinated by the rippling watermarks along its surface. Other figures turned to stare and mutter their surprise.
‘You can use it then, I take it?’
With a flourish Ash sheathed the blade once more.
‘What do you think?’
‘Hah, I reckon so,’ wheezed the fellow.
Ash looked up from beneath his hood, inclining his head in the direction of the riot. ‘Sounds like trouble.’
It was a woman who spoke up in reply from the glow of another fire. ‘They just went and sentenced a dozen more saboteurs to exile. Then beat into some resisters outside the prison for good measure. Now it’s all kicking off again.’
‘Drink?’
The bearded fellow wiped his mouth dry and held out a bottle, but Ash shook his head.
Close up he could see that the man was middle-aged like some of the others, though most of them were young. They all wore dirty breathing masks, and most had their heads bundled in cloth. At last he noticed the heaps of blankets stowed away around the nearest edge of the park. Sleeping rough.
‘A cold night to be out,’ he remarked as he warmed his hands above the flames.
‘I’ve known worse,’ came the fellow’s stoic reply.
‘Can’t wait for the rainy season myself,’ spoke the woman again, a grey-haired lady missing her front teeth. ‘Nothing like being wet all the time as well as cold.’
In reply another voice called out in their native tongue. They all laughed at what he said.
Ash gazed up at the arching limb of the Sky Bridge, its surface as white and seamless as bone. Impossible to climb, he suspected. He studied the netting stretching out from the leg, not liking the way the violet light flashed across it, reminded of the monkey he’d seen killed trying to climb the wall back in town. His prospects seemed little better on the ground. The guards strung across the end of the street looked like they were there to stay.
Wait and watch, as was the Rōshun way. Hope that something presented itself. Try to get inside and rescue Meer. Never mind that such a plan was recklessly desperate.
Shouts in the distance. A pair of figures emerged from a side street and hurried up the road, scarves tied over their faces. People shouted down from the upper windows and they shouted back at them, waving them out. A soft breeze caused the leaves to rustle in the trees. They looked like a joke to his eyes, those trees encased in their white-painted cages. And sickly too, unless whatever species they happened to be always looked more dead than alive.
‘You like trees or something?’
‘Just wondering why they all seem to be dying.’
‘Dying?’
‘Every tree I have seen in the city. The leaves are mottled brown or crinkling with leaf burn around the edges. It means they’re sick.’
‘Sick trees he says!’ laughed the woman from the other fire.
‘No, it’s true,’ said someone else breathlessly, a yo
unger spectacled man wrapped thickly in blankets. His skin was as black as Ash’s. ‘They are dying. Sure it’s even in the news now. Though they say it’s the bark beetles. Or the fungus. Or is it too long a dry season?’
The young fellow looked up at the Sky Bridge over their heads and tightened the blankets about himself with angry tugs, his eyes red-rimmed and morose above the dirty material of his breathing mask.
‘The fools would rather report the symptoms than the real cause. They’re pumping out more gases and pollutants than ever before is what it really amounts too, all those Elect trying to finish that Sky Bridge of theirs. But you’ll never hear how the poisonous air is making us retch, or how it’s so bad now that even the trees are weakening from it, so beetles and fungus and drought can finish them off. Not that anyone would listen.’
‘Barely look at them myself,’ admitted the bearded drinker, staring at the trees around him as though for the first time.
‘No, hardly anyone does, Chappa. And that’s why we’ll wake up one day and the trees will all be dead and the crops we eat will be dead and the water itself too toxic to drink. And that’ll be the end of us, unless they’ve somehow finished the Sky Bridge by then. In which case the Elect will save themselves – but only themselves. And all of this will be gone.’
Ash shivered at the young man’s words and the resigned certainty of his manner, sensing doom in this city of the lost.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Running with Street Dogs
Suddenly there were footsteps pounding along the side streets and the echoes of shouts coming closer. People were running into the road and spreading outwards, many of them looking over their shoulders.
Goggles and bright scarves covered most of their young faces. Lean street dogs sprinted and leaped amongst their numbers in reckless excitement. From the side streets behind them a few gunshots echoed out and scattered people into cover, chased by bouncing smoke grenades trailing a yellow mist. Quickly the reeking mist thinned the remaining crowds.