‘You and your theories,’ sniffed the High Professor of Flight. ‘Unlike you and your colleagues in the School of Edge Cliff Studies, we in the School of Flight pride ourselves on dealing in facts, not fantasies. Chamber design, valve pressure, phraxthrust – in short, the determining factors that have enabled the glorious Third Age of Flight …’
Cassix held up the chart imploringly to the high professor. ‘Last time, the descenders reached the beginning of the great fluted decline. Here …’ He stabbed at the parchment with a long bony finger. ‘And this time, they were to follow the central column further into the lower depths, deeper than anyone has ever descended before. Who knows what this expedition might have discovered? If there is any chance at all of their survival, we must send a phraxship back to the Edge!’ Cassix’s eyes, beneath his bushy eyebrows, twinkled brightly. ‘Why, with the knowledge we’d recover, next time we could—’
‘Next time!’ The High Professor of Flight’s head jabbed forward like a pied heron spearing an oozefish. ‘Why, my dear Dean, that’s just what I’ve been trying to tell you … There won’t be a next time!’
• CHAPTER TEN •
‘Spare a hive-talent or two, sir?’
Togtuft the archivist glanced down at the creature crouching on the grimy scrap of cloth spread out on the cobblestones that marked his begging patch. He was an emaciated black-eared goblin, toothless and sunken-eyed, his ragged clothes clinging to his body with the help of countless lengths of knotted string and rope. Beside him lay an upturned cap. A filthy bandage was wrapped around his left foot, which jutted out before him.
Togtuft hesitated. Life in the great city of Hive was becoming harsher by the day.
The beggar looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. ‘I can’t work, sir. Blackrot,’ he added, nodding to the bandaged foot. ‘I’ve got nowhere to live and I ’ent eaten for a week. Just a hiver or two would make all the difference …’ He rattled off the words he’d said a thousand times before, his voice frayed and whiny.
‘Come on,’ Togtuft’s colleague, Klug, told him gruffly. ‘This thing’s heavy.’
But Togtuft ignored him. The smell around the beggar was making the old archivist’s eyes water. A swarm of blackbottles and tilderflies buzzed round the injured foot, crawling in and out of the folds of the filthy gauze. Togtuft looked at it closely. He’d heard a lot about the beggars – that none of them were genuine; that they all had mansions in Hightown; that they were lazy feckless individuals who simply refused to work, even faking injuries to elicit sympathy and loose change from their betters. Why, only the night before, in the bridge refectory, he’d heard a rumour that beggars would bandage a scrap of rotting tildermeat or oozefish to their feet to trick passers-by into thinking they had blackrot …
‘Togtuft,’ said Klug impatiently. ‘Come on.’
Togtuft sighed. Even if it was a deception, he thought, how desperate would someone have to be before they started strapping rotten fish to their feet for the sake of a couple of hive-talents? He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few coins and tossed them into the empty cap.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the black-ear, grinning toothlessly. ‘Earth and Sky be with you.’
Togtuft felt his ears redden with embarrassment. He smiled awkwardly, and turned away. Klug had walked on, and Togtuft quickened his pace to catch up with him.
Klug Junkers was a mottled goblin, tall, rangy and loose-limbed, from a prosperous family in Back Ridge, one of the oldest parts of Hive. Togtuft Hegg, in contrast, was a long-hair from Hightown whose family, despite appearances, had always had to watch every talent. The pair of them had first met when they’d joined the Sumpwood Bridge Academy as archivists – and had been firm friends ever since.
‘You’re too soft,’ Klug grunted, glancing round as his friend drew level. His mottled face was bright red and taut with exertion as he struggled on, the heavy blackwood box clamped to his chest.
‘Here, let me take it for a bit,’ said Togtuft.
Klug stopped and passed the box over. Togtuft gripped it tightly, and the pair of them continued down the greasy cobbled street.
They had just emerged from a workshop on the outskirts of Low Town, Hive’s bustling hub of industry and commerce, where foundries and breweries rubbed shoulders with shops of every description, from ironmongers to herbalists, and the narrow streets thronged with artisans, tradesfolk and factory workers.
Maggrin’s glass-grinding workshop was a thin timber-framed building, sandwiched between a glue factory and an abattoir, and shored up at the front with stout girders of roughly hewn ironwood. The sign – Maggrin: Master Glass-Grinder – was rusting and chipped. Yet every Sumpwood Bridge academic worth his salt knew that behind the dilapidated exterior lay a workshop run by the most gifted craftsman in all of Hive. Maggrin’s eyeglasses, it was said, were so good that he could make a cavern mole see. That was why, when the ancient light magnifier had finally proved unusable, Klug and Togtuft had pooled their meagre savings to have Maggrin repair it.
Raising enough money hadn’t been easy. After all, an archivist’s stipend was barely enough to keep body and spirit together. Their robes were threadbare, their funnel hats battered and crushed – and many was the time that, by the end of the month and with not a single talent between them, the pair had gone hungry. But when it had come to having the light magnifier repaired, neither Togtuft nor Klug had given it a second thought. They’d given paid lessons, they’d sold all but the most vital rock-callipers in their small laboratory, they’d cut down on their already spartan meals …
But it had been worth it. Now, at last, they would be able to examine properly the sliver of cliff rock they’d received from their friend – a mottled goblin in the School of Edge Cliff Studies in the far-off city of Great Glade. Of course, if the High Archivist ever got to hear of it, Klug and Togtuft would be in deep trouble. The old underbiter, like many Hive academics, had no time for Edge Cliff Studies.
‘Construction! Invention! Restoration!’ his croaky voice would boom out across the refectory. ‘Just as the mighty achievements of the great Vox Verlix have taught us!’
And it was true, the Sumpwood Bridge Academy had trained generations of architects, engineers and inventors who had transformed the city of Hive from a collection of tree ridge villages into the second of the three great cities of the Edge. But such practical disciplines held no interest for Klug and Togtuft. No, what excited them were the tales they heard from their friend in the Great Glade – tales of the intrepid descenders and their expeditions, deep down into the abyss below the Edge.
‘So, how much did you give him?’ Klug asked, glancing back at the beggar.
‘Couple of hivers,’ said Togtuft, his voice straining with the effort of holding on to the heavy blackwood box. ‘Not much.’
‘Enough to keep us in barleybread for a week.’
Togtuft sighed. ‘At the end of the day, I’ve got more than him,’ he said.
Klug laughed. ‘Not now you haven’t. I’m telling you, Togtuft, you’re too soft.’ He clapped his friend on the shoulder – and immediately wished he hadn’t. ‘Whoa there!’ he cried, lunging for the box as the long-hair stumbled forward on the uneven cobbles.
‘Careful,’ said Togtuft, righting himself. ‘After what we paid Maggrin to mend this, I don’t want to go dropping it on the journey home!’
They turned a corner, and headed down a steep narrow alley lined with ramshackle stalls. A stiff breeze, wet with fine rain, blew into their faces. It set the rows of pots and cauldrons hanging from hooks to their left clanking and jangling, and wafted the juicy aromas of frying hammelhorn sausages and glimmer onions from the braziers at the far end of the alley. A one-armed hammerhead, squatting on a fetid cushion between a lamp seller and a spice merchant, clamoured for loose change as they passed.
Togtuft sighed. ‘It’s getting worse,’ he said.
‘Yes, and it’s going to get even worse before it gets better,’ said Klug, nodding griml
y. ‘Especially with the long-hair clans of Hightown calling the shots …’ He smiled at his long-hair friend. ‘No offence intended, Togtuft.’
‘None taken,’ he said. Togtuft was all too aware that it was members of his own clan who were responsible for the deteriorating situation in Hive.
‘They’ve used up Hive’s stormphrax in weapons and left the phraxfleet to gather dust,’ said Klug, shaking his head. ‘Little wonder trade is suffering and the streets are full of beggars …’
‘War is all long-hairs understand,’ said Togtuft ruefully. He shook his head. ‘I can understand why Great Glade’s cut off stormphrax supplies to the city. It might be treason to say so, but I reckon I’d do the same if I was a Great Glade phraxmerchant who wasn’t getting paid …’
Klug laughed. ‘There’s about as much chance of you being a phraxmerchant as there is of me being the general of the “Battleaxe Legion”!’
They turned the corner into a crowded alley.
‘Spare a bit of change to help a wounded battle veteran …’
‘Couple of hivers for a slice of scuttle pie and a mug of bristleweed tea …’
‘Eight hungry mouths to feed …’
As they reached the end of the alley, there were more and more of the beggars. Klug and Togtuft had to pass between dozens of them lining the narrow street, each one, it seemed, more miserable and bedraggled than the last.
‘For the love of Earth and Sky,’ came the cracked voice of a toothless cloddertrog matron, her one arm reaching out pleadingly. ‘Spare me something, kind sirs – anything …’
Togtuft stumbled past her, the heavy blackwood box clutched to his chest. This time it was Klug who paused. He reached into his pocket.
‘Open Sky protect your spirit till the very last day,’ she muttered a moment later, tucking the coins away beneath the folds of her tattered shawl.
Togtuft glanced round at his friend, a single eyebrow raised. Klug scowled.
‘All right! All right!’ he said. ‘So I won’t eat tomorrow.’
They emerged onto a wide road which ran alongside the river. The massive Sumpwood Bridge, with its elegant, gravity-defying arch of struts and girders straddling the mighty gorge, stood to their left. Klug took back the blackwood box, and the pair of them headed towards it.
As they left Low Town behind them, the beggars thinned in number. Anyone caught asking for change in the bridge district risked a savage beating by the legion guards. Yet those who were out and about – barefoot, heads lowered, dressed in patched jerkins and worn breeches, frayed skirts, tattered shawls and threadbare topcoats – looked no better off.
‘Worse and worse,’ Togtuft breathed.
Marching towards them was a contingent of guards from the Battleaxe Legion, thirty in all, gleaming phraxmuskets on their shoulders. They were resplendent in burnished helmets, heavy topcoats, bleached double-buttoned waistcoats and white breeches. As they passed, their long-hair corporal suspiciously eyed the two archivists and the box they carried from beneath the rim of his polished copperwood helmet.
‘Just keep walking,’ whispered Togtuft to his friend out of the corner of his mouth. ‘And don’t look at him.’
The guards passed by, their leathery feet slapping rhythmically on the cobbles.
‘Good riddance!’ muttered Klug, looking over his shoulder after them.
They turned right at a market stall where a lugtroll matron was selling sapjuice, pastries and small wooden trinkets, passed between the gatehouse towers and onto the Sumpwood Bridge itself. Their footsteps sounded bell-like and hollow on the buoyant wood, and a soft keening whistle filled their ears as the breeze passed through the crisscross of carved girders and bracebeams. After the hard cobblestones beneath their feet, it was suddenly as though they were walking on air.
Arched like a vast rainbow, the Sumpwood Bridge was a mighty feat of engineering. Many claimed that it was second only to the ancient Great Mire Road, built by the legendary Vox Verlix during the Second Age of Flight. The bridge had been constructed almost two hundred years earlier when fourthling archivists – stumbling across designs for an immense blackwood bridge that once spanned the sewer library of Old Undertown – had decided to use that same design for a bridge that would cross the gorge and link the two main city ridges, east and west.
With its ornate ‘rolling’ balustrades and elegant towers, the Sumpwood Bridge was the most impressive construction in all of Hive – and one that, in happier times, passengers on board the visiting skytaverns had flocked to see. Lining the bridge on both sides were artfully designed long galleries, raised on stilts and jutting out over the river below. These housed the schools belonging to the Sumpwood Bridge Academy, the centre of learning in Hive. Dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the improvement of their city, each one bustled with architects, engineers and inventors.
Though dwarfed by the size of the Great Glade colleges and academies, the Hive schools had had successes of their own. It was a Hive scholar who first perfected the double rudder that prevented single-pilot phraxcraft from turning turvey. And another who invented a device for detecting the presence of phraxdust in the air.
‘Who’s that?’ said Togtuft.
The pair of them paused and looked at the figure standing on the steps of the School of Restoration. At first glance, with his torn muddy clothes and hangdog expression, he could have been another beggar. But there was something about his upright bearing that singled him out as someone who had not yet given up hope.
Klug frowned. ‘Isn’t that a Great Glade topcoat he’s wearing?’
Togtuft shrugged. They walked across to him.
‘Can we help you?’ asked Togtuft.
‘Depends,’ came the gruff reply. ‘I’m looking for Togtuft Hegg and Klug Junkers, two archivists of the School of Restoration.’
‘And you are?’ said Klug, easing the heavy box down onto the bottom step.
‘I,’ he said, pulling himself up to his full height, ‘am Cirrus Gladehawk – until recently, captain of the phraxship, Archemax.’
• CHAPTER ELEVEN •
‘The city lights of my beloved Riverrise look beautiful tonight. The air is perfumed with darkelm oil,’ Golderayce One-Eye thought.
Who are these descenders that take it upon themselves to violate the eternal night beneath the Edge cliff?
He climbed from his hanging sumpwood chair and crossed the chamber to the far window, his lampstick tapping lightly on the floor as he went. The tiny flitterwaif gripping onto his arm flapped his wings for balance, and settled back to sleep.
‘A night breeze blows softly. The great city of Riverrise hums gently in the lamp glow,’ he thought. I must be vigilant. On my guard. Darkness is friend to waifkind and we must protect it.
The copperwaif opened the shutters of the window of the keep, high above the city. Once, the waifs of the Nightwoods had openly sent their thoughts out into the never-ending darkness and listened intently for the distant replies. Now, in the great city that had grown up beneath the Riverrise spring, the waifs guarded their true thoughts with a mask of outer thoughts. After all, you could never be sure who was listening.
He breathed in deeply. The tangy scent of the burning darkelm oil lamps that blazed constantly from the top of every building, every bridge, every viaduct and road filled his nostrils. It reminded him, as it always did, of everything he had achieved. After all, who would have thought that he – a humble copperwaif, Golderayce One-Eye – might have brought light to the darkness? Yet that was what he’d done. Literally. He had founded Riverrise, and now he ruled over it with an iron fist.
But he had to watch his back constantly, for there were many of his own kind who would use any perceived weakness to try and depose him. After all, it had happened before. The nagging pains in his left shoulder and right knee, where waif darts had struck him, bore testimony to the fact that he was never safe. And as for his eye!
He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it at the s
ightless left eye. That, though, was another story …
He prodded the flitterwaif, who promptly woke up and stretched its wings. Its glowing red eyes scanned the darkness, before it leaped from his wrist and flapped out of the window into the night. Golderayce waited. His old bones ached, his back hurt and he felt so very, very tired.
‘Beautiful night. Twinkling lamps. Peaceful city,’ he mused. What do you expect? You’re more than three hundred years old. Of course you’re tired, you stupid old creature … Golderayce thought bitterly to himself.
His copper-tinged ears twitched as he heard the flutter of tiny wings. The flitterwaif was returning. He held out a gnarled fist as the tiny creature reappeared from the darkness, a large white moth in its mouth, and landed on his arm.
‘All clear!’ the flitterwaif’s whispered thought sounded in its master’s head. ‘The keep is safe, Master. No assassins …’ It broke off to eat the dusty moth, devouring first one papery wing, then the other, before cramming the plump body into its mouth.
Reassured, Golderayce stuck his head out of the window. To his right, he saw two of the custodians on guard duty at the gates of the keep, their long phraxpipes at the ready to prevent anyone reaching the sacred waters of the Riverrise lake, guarding the path to the Garden of Life – for the life-giving waters were his and his alone.
The keep and the custodians ensured that only Golderayce, the Custodian General of the Riverrise spring, had access to it. Those in the city below knew that any who trespassed would meet a swift and certain death at the hands of the mindreading guards. This was the source of Golderayce’s power, and had been ever since he’d blocked Kobold’s Steps with the imposing keep.
Below him, the roof lamps of the city shone like stars against the backdrop of darkness, separate constellations twinkling down in the warehouse district, across the viaduct and in the crowded alleys of Kobold’s Mount. He opened his mind to the babble of the city – the sounds of the countless thousand voices that, as a rule, he would keep at bay – and sighed. Everything was as it should be, and yet …
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 7