by Gavin Smith
The reflection of the moon was like a spear of light in the dark water pointing towards her. Cliodna surfaced in that light. Britha recognised this for what it was, a trick designed to awe the watcher. Is this all I mean to you now? Britha wondered. Another mortal to be made to feel small?
Cliodna remained in the water. Her song was fading. The dark pools of her eyes no longer looked welcoming and soulful to Britha; now they just drove home how different the selkie was from her and her people.
‘Listen to me, ban draoi,’ Cliodna said as if she was addressing any one of the dryw. ‘You cannot fight this. If you love your people well then you will take them far inland and hide from this. Stay there for twelve nights and then seek passage to another land. Head east over the sea and do not stop; there is much land there.’
The words made sense. Britha even liked what they said. They were good counsel. It was the way they were delivered. As if they were strangers.
‘Cliodna, what is this? What do you know? Who are these people? Are they the Lochlannach?’
‘The Lochlannach is as good a name as any. They are led by a man called Bress. They are not of your world and they wield magic that you cannot fight.’
‘What do they want?’ Britha asked.
‘A moonstruck world. They harvest pain,’ Cliodna all but hissed at her. Britha could make no sense of her words.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘This is not for the likes of you to understand. Run and hide or live like death. That is your choice.’
‘My people will not run, you know that,’ Britha said. They had not seen what Nechtan, Talorcan and she had seen.
‘I know only what you have told me,’ Cliodna said impatiently.
Is that it? Britha wondered. Is it because I would not take you to my people? I thought that was what you wanted. It was not shame that kept the secret; it was wanting a life in which I did not have to be the ban draoi, where I could be what’s left of the child that was, she thought but kept her peace.
‘You must make them understand or they . . . you all will be less than slaves.’
Britha knew that there was more to this than simple survival. Even if they fled to another land where their weakness was not known, they would know. They would have murdered what they were. Life is not worth living crawling on your belly.
‘What words do you have for me if we fight?’
‘You cannot.’
‘But if we do?’ Now there was anger in Britha’s voice.
Cliodna’s face softened. It was the first time Britha had seen the woman she knew. ‘The leader, Bress, but your weapons . . . It is not easy to harm him, nearly impossible to kill him. To your people he may as well be a god.’
‘Tell me how to kill him,’ Britha said. Even in the darkness, even with how strange Cliodna had become to her, Britha could see the other woman’s sadness.
She had not realised that their voices had stopped being whispers some time ago. Britha had time to look up. Her confused mind thought for a moment he was flying. After all, no man in that much armour and carrying a shield would jump off a twenty-foot cliff.
Cliodna disappeared as two casting spears hit the water where she had been moments before.
Britha just had time to roll to the side as the sentry landed where she had been crouched by the water. He kicked her in the side and sent her flying into the rocks. Ignoring the pain, she reached for her sickle as he drew his sword.
Without a spear or Nechtan or Talorcan to help, she did not see this fight going well. The sentry advanced on her, in the moonlight and shadows, his blade already looking red.
Cliodna exploded out of the water, wrapping herself around the man, a spitting, hissing frenzy. Off balance, he toppled into the sea. There was thrashing, then it went still. Britha could see dark clouds in the water. Sickle at the ready, she leaned forward.
Cliodna exploded out of the water again, grabbing Britha around the neck. She was covered in blood, her expression feral, the skin somehow swept back around her mouth. Britha saw the rows of needle-like, red-stained teeth and smelled the meat on her breath.
‘You want to die? The weapon you want to kill Bress with, bathe it in your blood.’ And she was gone. Again.
6
Now
It took fourteen hours to hitch from London to Portsmouth. Beth had taken the train into King’s Cross and been delayed there by some kind of nearby terrorist incident. She had decided to hitch to save some of the small amount of money her dad had given her.
A bored lorry driver picked her up. She struggled to keep up her end of the deal, providing enough conversation to keep him awake. It had looked so close on the map. She could not understand why it was taking so long. They got there in the early hours of the morning. Came in on the M275, drove onto Portsea Island past the rusting hulks of dead submarines and other military-looking vehicles.
The lorry driver was taking a load over to the continent and dropped her close to the ferry port. On the other side of the road was a high wall of grey concrete council flats. They reminded her of the prison she had just left. She turned and trudged towards the town centre, following the signs. Nothing moved. The town seemed as dead as the rusting hulks she had seen on the way in.
It was Hamad. Control had seeded the rats. There were too many eyes in the city. You were never more than two metres away from a grass. They had uploaded the images into his head and du Bois had got to see his old adversary, a man he once wished he had had the courage to call a friend, staggering through the more picturesque of London’s Roman sewers.
He thought back to when he had first met the Syrian Nizari. Du Bois laughed at his own naivety back then. He had actually been looking for the grail, fool that he was. He wanted to heal his sister’s mind. Hamad had been looking for the milk of Innana. Both of them had been wrong. Hamad had been closer to the truth.
The Hamad he had known had been calm, even tranquil; the Hamad he saw through a rodent’s eye looked mad. Du Bois wondered if the madness was guilt over his crime or something else, something ancient and corrupted whispering horrific truths into his godsware.
Du Bois now knew where Hamad was going. It made sense. He could hide there; after all, Hawksmoor had been a rogue and a turncoat before du Bois himself had caught up with him and put a stop to his geometry of violence, ironically with violence. This was after the architect had faked his death and been reborn. He hated the churches; each one was a death trap that knew him.
Beth awoke to judgemental glares from people waiting at the bus stop. She was achy and tired. You never got much sleep on the street; you had to be aware at some level in case someone tried to do something to you. She ignored the glares and the suggestions that she find a job and rolled up her sleeping bag.
She didn’t feel much cleaner after a trip to the toilets in a fast-food place, but it would have to do. A little bit more of her preciously dwindling money brought her a map and she found the address. Pretoria Road down in Southsea.
The walk gave her time to think about how much she was not looking forward to seeing Talia. The anger she thought would have died down after years inside came back stronger than ever, and she saw her sister’s face crumpling under her fist. She tried to suppress the anger. She could not let her temper go like that again. Lose control and she would be straight back inside. All those years of model behaviour would be worthless. She was not institutionalised, she thought fiercely. It did not matter how shit it was outside, she did not want to go back.
It was unlikely that Talia would want to leave whatever she was mixed up in and return to her dying father and a very still house. Beth did not even really know what she was doing. Maybe she could get Talia to write a letter pretending to care.
Du Bois did not so much park the Range Rover as just abandon it on the side of the road. He checked the accurised .45. He still had the magazine with the special loads in place. He chambered a round and then slid the weapon back into the hip holster, safety off. He hoped it wo
uld be enough, he did not fancy taking heavier artillery into a London church.
He glanced up at the pyramid spire, a reconstruction of the Tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and nothing at all to do with Christianity. The statuary – St George, the lion, the unicorn – all made him nervous. Still, at least it was not Spitalfields. He still saw the stream of blood pouring down the red-painted church when he slept sometimes. Even after he had tried to edit his memories.
How decadent Christianity has become, he thought as he headed up the stairs past the bacchanalian porticoes and pushed the door open. When it closed behind him he knew that it did not just lock, it sealed itself shut. The spite with which the tendrils of his blood-screen reaching out towards the building had been destroyed was amplified in the church itself. This building fundamentally did not like him. He wondered if the vicar, staff and any unfortunate visitors were already dead.
The .45 held in a two-handed grip, Du Bois advanced slowly, checking all around. The white of the Portland limestone seemed to jar with his presence here. Even if he had not understood the significance of the architecture he would have been able to see why people connected this with a pale reflection of heaven.
Above the pulpit he saw the hilt of a black dagger rammed into one of the supporting pillars. Du Bois recognised the weapon. He was surprised and more than a little worried that even now the Brass City would let Nightmare out. The dagger was said to be far beyond insane. He did not like the violence it had done to the church either.
‘Old friend?’ Even with his screen being eaten, there were few people who could hide from du Bois. He spun towards the voice. Hamad had emerged from the nave and was leaning heavily against one of the pillars. He held the curved white-bladed dagger in his right hand. Gentle Sleep was a much more reasonable piece of ancient insanity to be let out, du Bois thought.
Hamad looked awful. Haggard, haunted, fatigue written painfully across his face in a way that should have been impossible for someone augmented like he was. His suit was soiled and stank from his trip through the sewers. His headscarf was long gone and the slits of his extra eyes were plainly visible on his forehead.
‘Hamad,’ du Bois said carefully. He tried to forget about the magnitude of Hamad’s crime but could not. The hopelessness, the destruction of more than two millennia of planning all washed over him. He could not even muster anger; he just wanted to sit down. It had all been too long. ‘Clever coming here where we cannot track you.’
‘I just wanted to be closer to God.’
Du Bois smiled despite himself.
‘Even though you know there is no God?’
‘I think that there is. I just don’t think it is what we want it to be.’ Du Bois said nothing. ‘Are you going to shoot me or ask me why?’ Hamad said when the silence became too much. Du Bois swallowed. He had not had time to really think about it. ‘Last I heard you were tracking down looted Sumerian artefacts in Iraq.’
Du Bois just stared at the Syrian. ‘Why doesn’t really cover it, does it?’ he finally said.
‘All things have a time.’
‘Humanity would have survived,’ du Bois said, unable to master the anger in his voice. Hamad started shaking his head before du Bois had finished.
‘No, not humanity, a perversion. Is it so bad to stay with the rest of us?’
‘So spite then. You cannot go so nobody will? You couldn’t even leave one bridge, even the cloning information, so something of humanity could live?’
‘It wouldn’t be living; it would be slavery and hell. The powerful people who out of selfishness made decisions that messed things up down here would have gained even more, perhaps total control. We will not allow you to remake humanity in their . . . in your image.’
‘Decisions always go to the powerful – that’s just the way of things,’ du Bois told the Syrian. He saw the guilt dissolve on Hamad’s features and for the first time anger appear.
‘No! That is an excuse. That was not what the Circle was set up for. The best minds working for the same purpose, and when their time had come they could be uploaded, so you could take them with you, the real treasure of humanity, and do you know what your powerful men did? They erased half of those minds. People who had sacrificed everything for your grand plan destroyed, made nothing with a thought for what? For more storage space.’
Du Bois tried to make his features impassive but the accusation felt like a blow.
‘You’re lying,’ he said. Hamad stared at him incredulously.
‘At this late hour? Why would I?’
‘Then you have been told a lie.’
‘Is it more likely that you, the perfect servant, have been lied to or that I have been lied to?’
‘So what now?’
‘I will not be going with you.’ It was said as matter of fact, calmly.
‘The souls?’
‘They are all gone. Burned in the fire.’ Hamad was a good liar, but du Bois had a lot of help reading the tells of the bluff.
‘Give me the souls, Hamad,’ du Bois told him. Hamad’s face hardened. ‘No.’
‘What difference does it make? We’re all fucking dead.’ Hamad said nothing. ‘What? You think the Brass City can protect them? And who will be the lords of your little utopia?’ Hamad still didn’t answer. ‘Hypocrite!’ du Bois spat. ‘A virtual prison is still a prison.’
‘It’s another world,’ Hamad said with the voice of a true believer. Du Bois knew this was not going to be solved with words.
‘Give me the souls or I swear I will tear them out of your head,’ he said evenly though he could not help but glance over at Nightmare sticking out of the limestone pillar. It was a matter hack, an ugly one at that. The ancient weapon was whispering its madness to the church. Or rather to the semi-conductor quantum dots that acted like programmable atoms in the smart matter that the limestone was impregnated with.
‘The things that I have done this day, do you really think a threat will work?’ Hamad asked, sounding genuinely aggrieved.
Du Bois barely had time to register what it looked like as it burst from the matter of the pillar. Part gargoyle, part image of a malign desert spirit, part disjointed, strangely angled alien other, and all madness. Nightmare’s hilt stuck out of its head.
Hamad spun behind the pillar. Du Bois might have risked a shot but he couldn’t afford to waste a round. He swung round, bringing the gun to bear on the smart-matter monstrosity. He had misjudged its speed. He was too slow.
Nano-fibre-reinforced armour and flesh hardened but not nearly quickly enough. The impact alone felt like it had fractured, if not splintered, ribs. Limestone claws tore open a huge gash in his chest and sent him flying through the air.
Du Bois landed twenty feet away, the air forced out of him, spine hardening to survive the fall. His impact destroyed a pew and sent him sliding into more. The limestone gargoyle galloped towards him on all fours, running through pews, vestigial wings flapping on its back.
Du Bois sat up, shut down the nerve endings that were trying to disable him and forced his body to work. He brought the .45 to bear and got off one shot. The gargoyle slapped the gun out of his hands, breaking them both. Du Bois rolled to one side just in time to avoid a punch that pulverised the floor beneath where he had been.
He rolled to his feet, realising he was going in the opposite direction from his pistol. His body was healing but slowly, his own systems having to fight the little nano-scale surprises that were inhibiting his own nanites every time the gargoyle hit him. He ran from it, trying to gain time. However, the gargoyle was not limited by human physiology. It barrelled into him with all the building’s hatred for him.
Du Bois hit the wall and left a red smear on the white limestone as he slid down it.
As his systems were knitting the wounds caused by the impact back together, the gargoyle pounced, landing on du Bois’s prostrate face-down body. It could have finished him then, but the ghost of hate that lived in it wanted him to suffer. It flipped him over.
Du Bois’s features were repairing themselves. It looked like his face was being inflated. The tanto he had in his hand was forged from folded steel during the Sengoku period in Japan. Crafted by a master swordsmith, it was just about as fine a knife as you could find in the world. It would be of no use against the gargoyle. Du Bois used it to mutilate his rapidly healing left hand. As the gargoyle reached for him, he smeared his blood over its limestone flesh. If you want to win you have to sacrifice, he managed to think. He sent the signal to his blood.
The gargoyle’s misshapen jaws opened wide in a soundless howl as it picked him up. The tanto fell from numb fingers as du Bois was bashed against the wall. Only just managing to stay conscious, he grabbed the small punch dagger disguised as a belt buckle. He rammed that into the gargoyle’s stone flesh. The blade disintegrated into its constituent nanites, flooding the gargoyle’s animated limestone. Acting with his own blood and the first bullet he had fired, they replicated like a matter virus. The gargoyle started to crumble, but its free hand swung back to tear open du Bois’s skull. Somehow he managed to reach up and tear Nightmare out of the thing’s head.
As soon as he touched the hilt of the weapon he heard its whispering as the ancient and corrupt AI nearly overwhelmed his neuralware. He dropped the evil old curved dagger as the gargoyle turned black and continued crumbling, dropping him in turn.
A moment’s respite was just enough time for more healing. The white blade opened up his cheek. Immediately addled and blurry, he threw himself to the side, scrabbling for his tanto. He found the blade as his internal systems fought off the tiny ancient machines that offered sleep and a gentle, peaceful end.
On his feet, he managed to dodge more of Hamad’s slashes. If the Nizari had had both blades he would be dead by now. He could not afford to get cut again. The nanites made by the assemblers in the hilt of the ancient weapons carried a lethal neural toxin. Anything more than a mild gash from either knife would overwhelm du Bois’ own internal defences.