by Ian Whates
Jeradine buildings differed from those of humans in a very specific manner, Tom realised as he frantically looked about: no windows. Did they prefer the dark? He was used to seeing shacks and hovels that were too crude to include windows, but these were proper buildings and still they had none. Tom shied away from squatting in one of the doorways, imaging a green-scaled hand emerging to drag him within, so instead took refuge in a gap between two of the buildings, sinking to his haunches and bringing his mantra into focus: You cannot see me...
The odd pair drew closer and their conversation became audible. The actual words passed Tom by as he concentrated on not being seen, but the tone of the flathead's voice snagged his attention anyway. There was a flat, unnatural quality to it; every syllable stretched and stilted. Tom stared at the Jeradine despite himself, and saw that in addition to the loose, smock-like tunic the flatheads seemed to favour, this one sported a particularly ugly form of jewellery: a large grey crystalline ornament, an angular, sculpted box which pressed against its throat, held there by a neck band.
Then he realised that the creature's mouth was not actually opening as it spoke. Rather, the voice seemed to emerge from the peculiar neckwear.
Even as Tom stared at the Jeradine, the creature turned its head and stared at him. Not through him, as Tom was used to when reciting his mantra, but directly at him. This was the second time in recent hours that his litany had let him down. Had it stopped working? He refused to entertain that possibility and concentrated on reciting all the harder.
You can't see me...
The pair moved on. Perhaps he'd imagined it; perhaps the flathead hadn't seen him at all and it was only tiredness and nerves that made him think otherwise. He was just beginning to convince himself of this when a shadow fell across the mouth of the alley.
He looked up, to see the Jeradine with the neck-box staring down at him.
"Don't worry, the guardsman has left. I didn't alert him to your presence," that cold, flat voice said. "Assuming it was the watchman from whom you were hiding." There was something unnatural about a voice speaking without a mouth opening to utter it.
Tom looked around frantically, but there was a solid wall behind him. The creature stood blocking his only escape route.
"Nor should you fear that your fascinating ability to hide has deserted you. It still works, just not on Jeradine. We see differently from you humans."
Despite his fear, that piece of information reassured Tom and was certainly worth remembering.
"I won't harm you, boy. Haven't I proved that by not handing you in to the guardsman when I had the chance?"
Despite his lingering fear, Tom's curiosity came to the fore again. "You can speak...that box?"
"A translator, yes. A useful gadget, although it requires considerable skill to operate. They work by interpreting movement of the throat rather than by responding to actual sound. Most of my people don't bother mastering them, but then most have no need to communicate with humans."
"But you do."
"Obviously. My name is Ty-gen. You humans fascinate me, so I interact with your species often. You look tired, and hungry."
Tom was both.
"I can help. Come."
The flathead extended a surprisingly human-looking hand - once you saw past the pale green pallor and the subtle hint of scales.
Tom stared at the hand, uncertain. Some instinct was telling him to trust this strange, talking flathead, yet he couldn't think of a logical reason why he should. After the briefest hesitation, he gripped the proffered hand, which was cool but not as rough as he'd feared, and allowed the Jeradine to help him to his feet.
A series of elevators - the clockwork lifts - took Tylus most of the way down to the City Below but after the third such device he'd had enough. He was deeply suspicious of the elevators, ever since a cousin who was fascinated by all things mechanical had insisted on showing him the inner workings of one. All Tylus had seen was a vast array of chains and huge inter-connecting cogs. He had no idea how it all came together to actually do something constructive, nor any desire to find out. His lasting impression of the experience was that anything that complicated was bound to break down now and again. Knowing his luck, it would do so when he was on-board.
He wouldn't have minded if the wretched things were even comfortable. The elevator system was convenient, yes, but certainly not ideal. His greatest misgivings lay in the cramped nature of the compartments, which seemed to grow subtly smaller and more confining as the journey progressed. Then there were the changeovers. Due to the city's vast scale, no single elevator was capable of taking you from top to bottom in one unbroken journey. At least, no public one; it was rumoured that the Masters had such a conveyance, but that was only a rumour.
Mind you, perhaps the changeovers were Tylus's own private little irritation, since so few people ever had cause to travel the entire length of the city. Any who did were forced to travel in stages, changing from one clockwork box to another. In theory, the elevators were supposed to connect, so that you stepped out of one, crossed over a corridor and instantly entered the next, ready to continue your journey. Reality rarely seemed to live up to this theory and, in Tylus's experience, transition was never that seamless.
The clockwork lifts were dispersed throughout the city, but few of the systems went all the way down to the City Below due to lack of demand, or so it was claimed. Tylus had needed to walk some distance before reaching a system that did. In the event, he needn't have bothered, since the final anticipated changeover proved one too many. Not only was the connecting elevator completely out of synch and still several minutes away, but there was a sizeable queue already waiting for it. So sizeable that Tylus doubted whether there would even be room for him on this next one, which meant waiting for the car to complete its descent to the bottom so that its tandemmed twin could return to the changeover platform. The lift system worked that way, with two cars working opposite each other - one going down as its partner rose, each stopping at every intervening Row whether anyone wanted them to or not. This made journeys frustratingly slow, as Tylus was coming to realise.
He looked at the queue, considered invoking the authority of his uniform to force a way to the front, and decided that he really could not be bothered. Why earn the resentment of everyone there only to be crammed cheek-by-jowl with them on a descent into hell? Better to walk.
Decision made, he headed for the nearest stairwell. A young girl, no more than three or four, stared at him as he passed and pulled at her mother's arm.
"Look, Mum, funny guardsman."
Her mother quickly clasped her by the arm and said, "Shush, dear," before offering Tylus an embarrassed smile. "Sorry, she's never seen a Kite Guard before."
After that, Tylus walked with chin a little higher and back a little straighter, reminded that even this far from his own districts the reputation of the Kite Guard preceded him. At least no one had yet asked why an officer of the Kite Guard was bothering with the lifts at all instead of simply flying down the outside of the city to wherever he wished to go. Explaining the treacherous nature of wind currents as they met and swirled around the walls to the uninitiated was not a prospect he relished. Any thoughts he might have entertained of attempting something as reckless as that had been well and truly dismissed following his embarrassment the previous night.
He took his time descending through the city's lower levels, falling into the steady, unhurried gait he used when walking the beat, dallying a while in the Shopping Rows - it was an age since he had ventured this far into the city's lower reaches - but otherwise simply enjoying the unfamiliar surroundings.
Immediately beneath the Shopping Rows lay the market, which was the wellspring for much of Thaiburley's food trade. Here fresh produce of every sort was bartered and sold, to be distributed throughout the Rows, where it would be cleaned, peeled, diced and sliced, processed, prepared, cooked, stored, combined and consumed in a thousand different fashions.
This wa
s a new experience for Tylus, who had never ventured beneath the Shopping Rows before. Against his expectations, he found the place invigorating and exciting, with its constant hustle and bustle. Everywhere was movement, as broad carts laden with pallets of vegetables and others stacked precariously with cages of clucking fowl muscled their way through the streets, while trays of ice were rushed into the fish halls and lumbering oxen pulled heavier carts still. Prospective buyers were everywhere, wanting to peer beneath every cloth and into every container. A cacophony of sound surrounded him, as yells of "Mind yer backs!" and "Comin' through!" mingled with those of the traders hawking their wares.
And the smells; oh, the smells. The richness of freshly roasted coffee assailed his nostrils one moment, the pungency of exotic spices the next. There was the ripe smell of animal dung to one side, the sweetness of ripened fruit to the other, as he strolled beside barrows laden with melons and brightly coloured citrus. He took time to wander through one of the fish halls, its oddly tilted floor damp with melted ice - tilted so that melt-water, blood, gore and scales could be readily washed away at the day's end. The tang of the sea and of fish flesh was everywhere.
He remained vigilant, however, despite the distracting environment; conscious of how close he was to the City Below, which now lay immediately beneath his feet. Recent experience had shown him all too clearly what to expect from those who lived there.
Having sated his curiosity, Tylus eventually made his way to the designated stairwell. The market represented, in effect, the ground level of Thaiburley, flowing out beyond its walls and spreading into the meadow beyond; although even this was a deceptively simplistic assertion, since the city was built against and indeed into a great buttress of rock, a veritable mountain that both supported and helped shape the City of Dreams. The stairwell that Tylus now took was accessed via an arched doorway on the inside of the city's walls. As he approached, a mother emerged, shooing two scrawny children before her. There seemed a furtiveness about them, though perhaps not. Perhaps the young Kite Guard's perceptions were merely coloured by his knowledge of where they had come from and where he was about to go.
The stairs began immediately beyond the archway, descending in a long curve, the way lit by a series of flickering torches. Almost at once there was a noticeable change in the texture of the passageway, as the stairs carried him beneath the city walls and into the very rock they were built upon. He passed nobody else on the descent and, used to stepping from one floor to another within the city itself, was unprepared for the experience of an enclosed passageway. It felt as if he was making his lonely way into the depths of some mythical hell.
Was it his imagination, or could he smell something unpleasant as well? Was this what hell smelt like?
His relief when the tunnel ended was considerable. It had only lasted for a couple of minutes, but discomfort had made it seem far longer. The stairs now clung to a rock face in order to reach the floor of a vast cavern, and he caught the first view of his destination. A panorama of human habitation stretched before him - far more than he had ever envisaged. In its way, the view was quite awe-inspiring. One thing, unfortunately, had not changed with his emergence from the passageway: the smell. With growing horror, Tylus realised that the City Below stank.
He knew the way to the nearest Watch station, having checked the route before setting out. Nevertheless, Tylus soon discovered that seeing something on a schematic and being physically in the place were two entirely different things. He half hoped the relevant duty officer might have arranged an escort to guide him, since he'd contacted them about his arrival and wasn't that much later than anticipated, but apparently not. The only people immediately by the stairway were a group of street-nicks who eyed him with smirks on their faces and whispered comments behind shielding hands.
He did his best to look assured and imposing as he strode past them.
Now, if memory served him right, the quickest way to the station was straight ahead, and then to turn right. He just hoped he could remember where to turn. A broad avenue led away from the steps. To his left stretched a long, low building, empty pallets stacked casually outside half-open doors; a warehouse by the look of it. A scrawny dog stretched out beside the pallets, watching him without raising its head. Beyond was a seemingly endless mess of cobbled-together shacks, apparently built out of whatever people could lay their hands on - scraps of wood, corrugated metal sheeting, boxes, cloth, wire, rope and goodness knew what else. As buildings went, these were sorry excuses. None of them looked capable of standing up to a strong sneeze.
A small girl ran up to him, as if to beg, but was called back by a barked command from a stoop-shouldered woman who presumably was her mother. She offered the Kite Guard a quick apology and then dragged the child back behind a curtain that masked the doorway she'd emerged from, scolding her all the way.
"What have I told you 'bout razzers?" he heard as they disappeared from sight.
Tylus was so distracted by this cameo that he failed to notice the street-nicks until they were all around him. Were these the same ones who had been hanging around the stairwell? Two of them were, certainly - he recognised them - but he thought that they had also been joined by others.
One bumped into his left shoulder in passing; apparently an accident, as if he had been pushed by one of his fellows, but Tylus doubted it. Alert for some trick, he wasn't at all surprised to feel a feather-light touch on the right side of his belt, but even so was too slow. By the time he spun around, the offending hand was gone, taking his puncheon with it.
The youth skipped a few backward steps, now in front of the Kite Guard and flanked by the rest of the small gang, five in all.
"Give that back to me."
"Come and take it, razzer."
Boxing lessons may have been abandoned with the other accoutrements of youth, but Tylus still made a point of sparring regularly. Confronted with a situation like this, he immediately braced himself and raised his fists in familiar boxer's stance, rising onto the balls of his feet in the process.
The youth holding the puncheon threw his head back and laughed, which was the signal for the whole group to snigger and jeer. Then, after tucking the club into his belt, the street-nick raised his fists in mockery of the Kite Guard's posture. But it was just a mockery and no real defence at all.
Tylus danced forward, two quick steps, much to the further mirth of the onlookers. But it brought him within reach of his tormentor. He led with his left: one, two quick jabs to the face and then a third, which became the opening blow in a left-right combination. It was the right that packed the real punch. The Kite Guard doubted whether any of these grubbers had seen a real boxer before. Certainly the lad he was facing had no idea how to defend himself against one.
The street-nick collapsed backwards, to sit on the ground with blood streaming from his nose and a bewildered look on his face.
Tylus was still determined to reclaim the puncheon and knew he had to press his advantage before the rest of the gang recovered enough wit to attack him. Besides, he couldn't resist - the lad's chin was just too inviting. A quick step to readjust his balance and the Kite Guard lashed out with his foot, feeling satisfaction as the blow connected, knocking the street-nick onto his back, where he lay unmoving.
This might not have been in any boxing manual, but the kick had certainly proved effective enough.
The puncheon rolled loose. As Tylus bent down to pick it up, the largest of the street-nicks let out a bellow of rage and charged him. He swivelled and fired the puncheon. The club shot out, smashing into the lad's forehead. At such close range and with the attacker's own momentum adding to the force, the effect was devastating. The street-nick keeled over like a felled tree.
The puncheon snapped back into its casing and Tylus held it before him, brandishing it in the direction of first one of the two remaining street-nicks and then the other. Two...? He could have sworn there were five in the original group, but no matter; perhaps one had already seen e
nough and run off.
"Which of you grubbers is next?" he asked with practiced menace.
The pair looked quickly at each other and then back at him. He sensed it was in the balance, that they were undecided whether to attack or run. He took a step forward to help them make up their minds, thrusting the puncheon towards the nearest with renewed intent. That settled it. They both turned and fled.
Tylus felt elated. His first encounter with the dreaded street gangs of the City Below and he had survived. No, more than survived, he had triumphed!
He twirled his puncheon and holstered it with a flourish before sauntering off down the road.
The Kite Guard never saw the bowman. He had dismissed the fifth member of the gang far too readily. Fortunately for him, there were other eyes watching the confrontation; eyes that noted the point where one of the gang slipped away into the shadows.
The youth lifted his crossbow and took aim at the razzer's back. From this range, he couldn't miss.
Then came a tap on his shoulder, causing him to jerk around.
"Sorry, but I can't let you do that," Dewar said quietly.
He knew full well how he must appear to the street-nick - an unremarkable, slightly balding man of average height, no more threatening than any clerk or shopkeeper. He could almost see the shock at being disturbed drain from the youth's eyes, an unconscious relaxing on seeing the unassuming source of this disturbance. Other emotions would soon follow, with anger the most likely. At that instant of maximum relaxation, before the kid could regroup, Dewar struck; both hands moved with lightning quickness, one to the back of the shoulder, the other to the opposite side of the face. Then he pulled them towards each other, like some staggered clap with palms that were never destined to meet. The street-nick was already looking around, over his shoulder. All Dewar did was turn head and neck even further that way - far further than nature had ever intended.