by Ian Whates
He gritted his teeth and leaned on the hilt of his sword, pushing it further home. The smoke increased and the dog started to convulse and twitch. Abruptly, it stopped; all movement ceasing as if somebody had flicked a switch. To all intents and purposes, the construct appeared dead, but it hadn't released the vice-like grip on his wrist. The inanimate body dragged his arm downward. Gingerly, Dewar withdrew his blade from its innards. There appeared to be fresh blood on it, and he wondered again what dark arts the dog master used to animate these hybrid creatures.
He eased the blade into the construct's mouth and twisted, to slowly prise the jaws apart. The pressure eased bit by bit, until he was finally able to pull his wrist free.
He reclaimed the discarded kairuken, reloaded and holstered it. Ideally, he would have liked to bind his injured leg as well, but the only things available to serve as bandages were his own clothes, and they were so filthy that tearing strips off of them would be just asking for an infection, so he let it be and walked on, limping slightly as the pain bit home.
A hound sprinted from a side alley, too quick to be stopped with the kairuken, so he used the sword. The encounter left him with a gashed arm to add to the bleeding leg. He did, however, have time to bring the weapon to bear and shoot down a small wall-climbing construct similar to the one which accompanied him to the Maker's lair. Another disc lost, leaving him with just three. He reloaded and continued.
Two more hounds charged towards him as he actually reached his destination. They approached in the strange, slightly disjointed fashion of these hybrid creatures - mimicking the gait of a true dog but not with total accuracy. Rather than fire and risk losing another disc, he sprinted for the door, praying that his leg would hold and taking the steps three at a time before pushing his way inside.
He wedged the door shut against the hounds' scrabbling claws, using items hastily grabbed from the heap of discarded junk which the dog master seemed to delight in keeping. No point in trying to be quiet or mask his presence; the man knew he was here. Despite his injured leg and gashed arm, this all seemed a little too easy. He had anticipated having to wade through an army of crazed dog-machine hybrids rather than simply fighting a few skirmishes. Surely the dog master had enough warning to summon greater protection than this. He added more pieces of metal and wood to his brace, recalling how the door split into two sections and therefore ensuring that both were obstructed.
The place was as oppressively hot as he remembered, and the draping tubes and pipes just as numerous and ludicrous. Were they a symptom of general sloppiness or simply an affectation? He suspected the latter. A loud thump came from behind him, a sound which reverberated, presumably as one of the hounds threw its weight against the door, but his makeshift brace held. Ducking beneath trailing pipes, he made his way deeper into the room, treading warily even though he knew the dog master was alert to his presence. He was sweating - a reaction to coming into such a hot environment after his exertions - but his breathing was steady and the grip on his weapons sure.
It was unsettling, the lack of any challenge and he felt certain this had to be a trap. Nonetheless, he could see little choice but to keep going. The dog master sat at his workstation, back to Dewar, peering at his screens. The assassin did not hesitate, but raised his kairuken. Only to have something smash painfully into his hand and send the weapon spinning away before he could fire. He tried to raise his short sword but the object that had struck him, which seemed a solid ball of metal, was unfurling and wrapping itself around him. He looked to his left, to see the misshapen, wide-mouthed face of a dog hidden among all the discarded bric-a-brac, like some beast camouflaged in the undergrowth. The device had its mouth gaping open and from it stretched a long, flexible metal tongue, which was what had cannoned into his hand and now held him trapped, both arms pinned to his side.
The dog master spun around in his chair, laughing heartily. "Dewar!" he exclaimed. "How delightful to see you again. I knew that if I offered you a blatant opportunity you couldn't resist. You see, that's your problem, old friend. You might be devious, skilled and resourceful, but strip all that away and beneath lies the intellect of a lobotomised gnat."
The assassin tested his bonds, attempting to stretch his arms and pull them tighter to his body, to create the space to slip one free. But the effort was in vain. The steel band tightened instantly to compensate, so that when he relaxed it cut painfully into his arms. "You set me up!"
"Of course. You shouldn't have kicked my pet."
Since he had just done a great deal more than simply kick one of the constructs, dismembering half a dozen of them, he wondered what this madman had in store for him now.
"It struck me as fitting to send you off on a pointless errand and then see you killed at the very instant of realisation, but I knew if that failed you'd come straight back to me; and here you are, caught like a fly in a spider's web." The dog master giggled, then sprang to his feet and stalked over to peer into Dewar's face at close quarters.
"It seems my little street-nicks might have failed. The Blade, you see." Dewar absorbed that: the Blade? "Who would have thought our lords and masters still take enough notice of what goes on down here to react so quickly, to commit the Blade once more? But no matter, order will be restored, the villain found dead, though sadly not with the body of a notorious assassin conveniently on hand, and I can continue on my merry way."
Dewar had to keep the dog master talking, had to make sure the man didn't glance back at his screens. "You think so? Even after they find the mangled remains of one of your little pets by the body?"
"Already removed. There's nothing to connect me to the awful events of recent days."
One of the screens showed somebody moving stealthily up behind the oblivious dog master. The view was from the device holding him, Dewar realised. The creature gave a bass grumble, presumably as much warning as it could manage without letting its captor go.
"What is it, my pet?" the dog master asked.
The dark figure moved swiftly but stealthily, while Dewar concentrated on keeping his eyes fixed unerringly on his captor, making sure he didn't focus beyond the man's shoulder even for an instant.
The rumbling growl came again, and this time the dog master looked set to turn around, but too late, the girl was upon him, clasping him from behind, a knife to his neck.
"This is for Rayul, you crazy brecker." Kat pressed the sharp edge of her blade home, drawing it swiftly and viciously across to open up the madman's throat.
Blood fountained as she pushed the corpse away from her. Now Dewar moved, turning swiftly so that more of the false-hound's tongue wrapped around him, which brought him closer to the squat, ugly beast. He then kicked it, aiming for the eye but narrowly missing. The thing started to retract its tongue, which gave the assassin enough leeway to free his sword arm. He instantly hacked at the length of steel band stretching between his body and the construct's mouth, the keen edge of his blade severing it, allowing him to shrug off the remaining bonds.
The hound instantly turned around and disappeared into the mass of junk and wires and cables behind it. Dewar saw no sense in pursuit, instead turning to the girl, who was busy wiping her blade clean of blood on the dead man's clothing.
"Nicely done," he said.
She looked up. "There's nothing nice about any of this. You were right though," the girl added. "I took to the roofs and he never saw me coming."
At Dewar's suggestion, Kat had approached separately, though the roofs had been her own embellishment. "Good," he said. "He was expecting me, and, seeing what he expected, didn't look any further."
"Lucky for you, seeing as how you got yourself all tied up."
"That was the general plan. It's called diversion."
"If you say so." She straightened, sheathed her sword and pushed past him.
"Where are you off to?"
"Anywhere that's cooler than this breckin' place."
The assassin looked around, recovered his kairuken, and
followed her. The scrabbling at the door had stopped, he noted. Did that indicate the hounds outside somehow knew their master was dead, or...?
With Kat still several paces away from it, the door exploded - shards and splinters flying everywhere. Towering black shapes stepped swiftly through the resultant entranceway, stooping in order to do so.
"Oh, Thaiss!" Kat exclaimed. "Not again."
Consciousness brought with it a wonderful sense of well-being, though this evaporated almost immediately, as Tom opened his eyes. The Thaistess' face looming large brought everything back with a jolt.
She stepped back, allowing him to sit up. The prime master and Ty-gen were close at hand, the former smiling broadly.
"Did it work?"
"Yes, Tom, it worked. Spectacularly so. The Maker's devices have keeled over all across the City Below and the street-nicks have stopped rioting. Most of them at any rate; a few seem to have acquired a bit of a taste for it, but the guards can deal with them.
"Thank you, Tom, for all you've done."
He just shook his head, still feeling a fraud, that all this attention was undeserved.
Ty-gen came over and thanked him as well, which made him feel even more awkward.
Ty-gen then said, "Goodbye, Tom. I must go."
So soon? "If you see Kat..." Tom said, and then stopped, wondering what he could possibly ask the Jeradine to say for him.
"I'll remember you to her," Ty-gen assured him.
He nodded, realising that, inadequate though this might be, it was as much as he could hope for.
SEVENTEEN
Magnus was not worried, not yet. He knew that the process of elevation from the assembly to the council was a ponderous affair with no set timetable as such. It was just that he would have expected to have heard something by now. The preliminaries had been correctly adhered to: his formal nomination by the assembly, which he had accepted with suitable modesty, but that had all been more than a week ago. The next step had to come from the Masters, who were expected to formally ratify the assembly's recommendation and acknowledge him as official candidate. Once they had done so, he would be summoned for an initial interview to assess his suitability, with all the Masters in attendance, even the near-senile Crispus, whose imminent retirement left open the vacancy which Magnus was destined to fill.
So the ball was now firmly in the council's court. Of course, in theory they could refuse to accept his nomination and insist the assembly put forward an alternative candidate, but that had never happened, at least not in the past few hundred years. The only recorded instance of such a decision had become a dark and infamous period in the city's history. It had resulted in a schism within the assembly and even between the assembly and the Council of Masters, a situation which came perilously close to civil war.
That it could ever happen again was unthinkable. However, the longer the current silence continued, the more anxious Magnus became and the more likely people were to wonder. In truth, while the current delay was irritating it was hardly unprecedented, but if this were to go on much longer, whispered doubts would inevitably surface among his fellow assembly members. Magnus had already overheard one remark in the commons recalling that Crispus himself had been accepted by the council the day after he was nominated, though he was unable to identify who made the comment.
As a particularly tedious session of mundane business drew to a close, Magnus found that he could not even remember the subject discussed during the previous hour.
He recalled listening to an interminable dispute between two delegations of bakers, one claiming restriction of trade by the larger, more influential faction, and before that an agreement to send a group of arkademics to help with the repair of a section of wall damaged by a lightning strike during a recent severe storm, but after that: nothing. He had spent a fair while admiring the room's vaulted ceiling - the assembly hall extended for a whole four Rows - with its network of chiselled, inter-linking supports which resembled long bones and gave the impression that the entire place was situated in the belly of some skeletal leviathan. More time frittered away as he gazed out of the long, arched windows, making shapes from scudding clouds - the hall was built against the city's outer wall so benefited from natural light. Yet his mind kept returning to the Masters' silence, the prime master's cunning and the boy who had witnessed his guilt. What had a street-nick been doing in the Heights in the first place? Had he been placed there deliberately to spy on Magnus? If so, it seemed a strange choice; a street-nick in the Residences was hardly inconspicuous. And then there was the matter of the lad's successful resistance to his will. Perhaps, if he were the agent of another, an arkademic or a Master, that might explain how the lad defied him, but no; it hadn't felt like outside interference. The nick had broken free by his own efforts, Magnus was sure of it.
Dewar should have returned by now. The task was a simple one after all.
Something was wrong; he could feel it in his gut and had learned to trust such instincts. It was nothing specific, no clear signal that events had turned against him, yet somewhere in his head an alarm was ringing. The prime master was the consummate political animal, renowned as such, and Magnus knew that he had been deftly outmanoeuvred. With a smile and impeccable logic, the man had placed an agent inside his home and an armed guard upon his person, and all Magnus had been able to do was thank him for these restrictions each time. Intolerable. At least the guards were barred from the assembly hall itself and so stood vigil outside the door, awaiting his departure.
The final petitioner left, marking a welcome end to this week's open session. Another day over and still no word from the council.
Just as the convener's gavel sounded three times, officially closing the day's business, the doors to the assembly hall burst open. A pair of council guards marched in. At first, absurdly, Magnus thought they must be two guards assigned to him, but behind the first pair came two more and after them, yet more. Twin columns of white and purple caped guards filed into the hall, splitting as they entered, one line turning left and the other right, so that they swiftly lined the back wall.
At first, a stunned silence fell over the assembly, but it lasted for only a few heartbeats. Some members remained in their seats even then, clearly shocked by such an intrusion, but an increasing majority leapt to their feet, demanding explanation and voicing their protest.
The presence of council guards in the commons had been highly irregular; for them to be here, in the assembly hall itself, was unprecedented. The place was in uproar. It seemed as if everyone was attempting to speak at once and above it all, the convener's gavel beat out a sombre rhythm as the man called ineffectually for order.
And still the guards marched in.
Nobody noticed a side door partially open and a single assembly member slip out. At least, Magnus hoped that nobody had seen him. There was nothing to suggest that the guards were there for him but coincidence was a fickle ally, and he somehow doubted that any of his colleagues would have done anything to merit such attention.
Only a fool failed to allow for disaster and Magnus was no fool. He had contingencies in place and, provided he acted swiftly enough, was confident that he could escape from the city altogether before anyone could stop him. Not an ideal end to his ambitions, but better this than a prison cell.
Then, as he hurried down deserted corridors, he sensed a presence ahead. Somebody was there, not yet in sight. Were they waiting for him, was this some sort of ambush? But no, there was just the one person and besides, how could anyone have known he would come this way?
Magnus prepared himself in any case, focusing his mind, marshalling lethal energies ready to do his bidding. He knew his capabilities and felt confident he could deal with whoever it might be in the unlikely event that the lurker ahead was anything to do with him. At his approach, the figure stepped out; a tall, athletically-built man who effectively blocked his path. Magnus slowed, trying to see the face, which was still in shadow. Despite this, there was something
disturbingly familiar about the man, his body shape and posture.
Finally, just as recognition dawned, a familiar voice said, "Hello, Magnus."
"You!" Unable to believe his eyes, the arkademic could only stand and stare at the very last person he expected to see, and one of the few who knew him well enough to know what escape route he might choose.
Tom wondered where the prime master was taking him. After Ty-gen left, the man explained that it was time for them to depart as well, that there was something he wished to show him. This came as a surprise to Tom, who had imagined he would simply be allowed to go his own way again now that he'd done his bit, but the prime master clearly had other plans.
Tom couldn't even begin to understand how they left the temple. He walked with the prime master, listening to the man talk, and suddenly they were somewhere else. Somewhere warmer and darker, where the very air smelt different. Yet the prime master said nothing, just continued speaking in the same casual manner.
Tom had assumed they would be heading for the Heights, where the Masters lived, which were said to be the most beautiful and elegant Rows in all Thaiburley. But if so, the place was a disappointment - oppressively dark and dingy, not bright and airy as he'd imagined. In fact, this put him in mind of...
"Well, if it isn't our flying street-nick!" boomed a familiar voice.
"Red!" The big man loomed out of the shadows, a huge grin on his face. So he was back in the Swarbs' Row as he'd almost begun to suspect.
"Didn't expect to see you back 'ere so soon, little un."
That made two of them. Tom found himself smiling at the sight of someone whose generosity had made him an instant friend. He didn't even mind being called "little un", not by Red; after all, compared to him he was.
Tom's pleasure at seeing Red was tempered by a growing suspicion. He glanced from the swarb to the prime master, wondering at the connection between the two.