by Anthony Ryan
• • •
Lizanne spent the next few hours sketching in her room. She had traded a quarter of her soap with one of the second-floor ladies for a pencil stub and parchment. The pencil was too thick for this kind of work and the parchment rough, but she had little alternative. Scorazin was not well-supplied with stationery and she didn’t want to arouse the Electress’s attention by seeking out better tools. One of the traits she had inherited from her father was a facility for drawing, a skill honed by Exceptional Initiatives, who set great value in the ability to render detail from memory. Even so, she knew her sketch lacked the precision or the artistry of the original and had to trust it retained enough detail to serve as a recognisable facsimile. Once satisfied she rolled the parchment into a tight scroll and concealed it within a pocket she had sewn into the armpit of her overalls.
Nightfall in Scorazin brought a depth of darkness rarely seen in other cities. The lack of street-lights and the constant, moon-obscuring pall of smoke made for a depth of shadow she would normally have welcomed, had she any Green to enhance her vision. So it was with a considerable degree of care that she crawled from her window and out onto the roof-top, body flattened to the tiles and ears straining for unseen hazards. She lay still for a long time, hearing only the rumble of snoring whores and the faint regular grunts of Anatol and Melina’s shared intimacy. Satisfied, she crept to the edge of the roof above the inn’s north-facing wall and began her descent. She had chosen this wall for its sparsity of plaster, the bare brickwork affording a wealth of handholds, though finding them in the dark was a protracted business.
On reaching the street below she crouched and waited once more. The night-time streets of Scorazin had a legendary reputation for danger and even the most capable and well-armed folk tended to stay indoors. At night the streets belonged to the Creepers, the lowest rung on the prison city’s ladder. These were the mad or deformed souls the Emperor had seen fit to send here, those denied a place in the gangs due to their appearance or erratic behaviour. Melina said even the mud-slingers and midden-pickers shunned them. There’s many a place to hide in here, she said. Those that don’t starve find ways of getting by, come out at night to scavenge what they can, and they aren’t picky about where their meat comes from.
Lizanne made her way towards the sulphur pit, keeping to the darkest shadows and moving in a low crouch. She had her knife strapped to her ankle in case of emergencies but found it a scant comfort. Tonight she felt the absence of product more keenly than ever. In the event she only saw one Creeper during the journey. She had been about to vault a low wall at the corner of Breakers’ Avenue when a soft, scraping sound made her freeze. She sank as low as she could as the sound grew louder, one hand resting on the hilt of her knife as she concentrated on keeping her breathing as shallow as possible. Instinct in times of danger was to hold one’s breath but that had been trained out of her long ago. Lack of air caused the heart to race and sapped muscles of strength that might be needed in the event of discovery.
The scraping sound stopped on the other side of the wall, replaced by a series of harsh inhalations as someone sniffed the air. Lizanne was grateful she had resisted the temptation to indulge in a thorough wash with her precious scented soap for the sniffing soon faded and the scraping sound resumed. A few seconds later she saw a tall, stooped shadow emerge from the corner of the wall, moving away along Cable Lane. The silhouette was rendered indistinct by a cloak or other covering, but Lizanne could tell it was dragging something behind it. She waited a full minute after the shadow had merged with the surrounding gloom before vaulting the wall and continuing her progress to the pit.
The gloom faded as she neared the pit. The hot spring gave off a luminescence that added a yellow tinge to the billowing steam, the light reflected back onto the pit by the smoke banks above. There were some Furies about, cudgel-bearing guards set to ward off any intrusion or seizure by a rival gang. Lizanne was grateful to find them a lazy and amateurish lot, wandering the edge of the pit in groups of three or four with large gaps in their patrol pattern. It took less than an hour for Lizanne to establish their routine and slipping through the cordon proved almost laughably easy. Navigating the scaffolding with all its creaking infirmity was more precarious, she was obliged to hang from the edge of a platform when the squeal of a protesting joint drew a curious shout from one of the shafts. Luckily, the disturbed miner was either too tired or addled by mercury dust to investigate further and the rest of her journey to Tinkerer’s refuge was free of interruptions.
He appeared as she crouched before the grate, knowing the combination lock was beyond her and pondering the best way to attract his attention. He stared down at her through the bars in silence for several seconds before asking in a faint, uninflected whisper, “Are you here to kill me?”
She shook her head, finding her professional curiosity too piqued to resist a question of her own. “Did you hear me?”
“I sleep only two hours per night and have very keen hearing. I believe it to be a necessary survival trait in this environment.”
Lizanne nodded and rose from her crouch, raising and opening both hands before slowly reaching into her overalls and extracting the scroll. “I believe this will be familiar to you.”
Tinkerer took the sketch and unfurled it, his gaze taking in the bulbous, propeller-driven contraption in a single, expressionless glance. He replied without hesitation, but for the first time Lizanne detected some colour to the tone, a slight quaver that told her the skills of this very special man did not extend to lying. “You are wrong. I have never seen this before.”
Lizanne moved closer to the grate, managing to keep the smile of satisfaction from her lips. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He met her gaze, face blank but eyes suddenly very bright. “I have explored all possibilities. There is no means of escaping this city.”
“Oh but there is, for me and any I choose to take with me. And I’ll happily find a place for you”—she reached through the bars and tapped a finger to the sketch—“and him.”
CHAPTER 21
Clay
He was never fully aware of how long it took for the platform to descend. It could have been an hour or a few minutes, such was the pitch of his initial terror. When the first flush of panic began to abate his underlying terror actually rose in pitch. Despite all he had seen he knew that whatever awaited them below was far beyond his knowledge. For all its maddening confusion, the vision born of the White’s blood had at least engendered a sense of certainty, an unwavering determination to bring himself to the intersection between past and future. Now he was just one of three very small souls snared in the innards of a vast mystery.
The terror finally subsided when the platform began to slow and it occurred to Clay that they weren’t in fact about to die. Loriabeth’s distress took longer to fade. She kept clutching to him, jaw clamped tight to prevent a cry escaping her lips. Clay could only hold her and cast the beam of his lantern about. The light revealed a series of symbols carved into the wall of the shaft, at first sliding past at too great a speed to make out but becoming discernible as their descent continued to slow. Clay detected a pattern in the symbols, their curving lines becoming less complex the deeper they went. Numbers, he realised. Counting down. His mind kept flicking back to the sight of the plinth and the beads of his sweat on the crystal. Loriabeth touched it and it just glowed, he recalled. One touch of my sweat and it took us down.
Lieutenant Sigoral had the stock of his repeating carbine jammed firmly into his shoulder, fingers twitching on the trigger-guard. From the wild cast to the man’s eyes Clay judged his panic had been only marginally more controlled than his own.
“Can’t see anything to shoot at,” Clay said. “Can you?”
The Corvantine’s gaze jerked towards him and he flushed in momentary anger before straightening and lowering the carbine. “Did you do this?” he asked.
&nb
sp; “Not on purpose.”
The vast grinding of huge gears reverberated through the shaft once again and the platform gave a brief shudder before coming to a halt. For ten full seconds no one said anything as they stared in turn at the plinth, the carved symbol on the wall and the dimly illuminated shaft above. Clay fancied he could hear a faint voice calling somewhere and pictured Hilemore standing at the edge of the empty shaft shouting desperately into the gloom.
“We’re alive, Captain!” he bellowed, tilting his head back to project his voice as high as he could. He had no notion if Hilemore heard him for the only answer was silence.
“We should touch it,” Sigoral told Clay, pointing to the plinth. “Perhaps it’ll take us back up.”
“Or farther down,” Loriabeth said.
“No.” Clay pointed at the symbol on the wall. It was the simplest marking he had seen yet, a single unembellished form resembling a stretched tear-drop. “I think we’re at the bottom.”
“All the more reason to try,” Sigoral said, moving to press a gloved hand to the crystal then stepping back. They waited. The platform didn’t move and the crystal continued to cast out its glow without a flicker.
“You try,” Sigoral said, gesturing to Clay with the butt of his carbine. From the hard insistence in his tone Clay decided this wasn’t a time to argue the point. In any case, if it responded to his sweat it stood to reason the crystal might well do so again at the touch of his skin. He moved to it and tapped his forefinger to the stone. This time it gave off a pulse of more intense light and the low musical note sounded again. But still the platform failed to move.
Loriabeth tried next, producing no reaction at all. “Guess we should just wait it out,” she said, peering upwards. “The captain’s sure to be fetching rope . . .”
They whirled at a new sound to the left. It was the grinding gears again, but on a smaller scale, hidden mechanicals locking and unlocking as a section of the passage wall slid aside to reveal a rectangle of greenish-blue light. Sigoral raised his carbine once more and Loriabeth drew both pistols in readiness, however, nothing appeared in the opening.
“I think we’re being invited in,” Clay said, moving forward.
“Stop!” Sigoral barked.
Clay turned to find the Corvantine regarding him with implacable resolve. He also saw that the barrel of Sigoral’s carbine was pointed at the centre of his chest. “I’ve no wish to cause you harm, Mr. Torcreek,” he stated. “But you are not stepping through that door. We will stay here and await rescue . . .”
He trailed off at the sound of Loriabeth drawing back the hammers on both revolvers. She stood with them levelled at her sides, both pointing at the Corvantine and ready to unleash a salvo that would probably cut him in half at such close range. “I’ll thank you to stop aiming a weapon at my cousin, sailor boy,” she said, all trace of her previous distress vanished now.
“It’s all right, cuz,” Clay said, moving between them, staring hard at her until she lowered her guns. He cast a hungry glance at the opening then shook his head. “He’s right. Once the captain fixes the ropes, we can get the others down here. I’ll feel a lot better about venturing inside with more guns.”
He turned to Sigoral, holding the man’s gaze until he lowered his carbine. “I’m a marine,” Sigoral told Loriabeth. “Not a sailor . . .”
His words died as a tremor shook the platform beneath their feet. Clay initially thought it was about to ascend, a conclusion dashed as the tremor continued, growing in violence with every passing second.
“Maybe we broke something,” Loriabeth said, arms spread as she sought to maintain her balance.
A loud booming crash echoed down from the shaft and Clay looked up to see a very large, jagged shape descending towards them, too fast to allow for the slightest hesitation. He turned and sprinted for the opening, pushing Loriabeth ahead of him. They stumbled into the light, Clay barely having time to take in the new surroundings, a broad rough stone floor surrounded by tall columns, before Sigoral barrelled into him, sending them both sprawling.
The opening slid closed behind them just as whatever had fallen from above slammed into the platform. The sound of the impact died as the opening closed, but the tremor continued for at least another minute, Clay casting a wary eye at the surrounding columns in the fearful expectation they might topple over onto them at any moment.
Finally, the tremor faded, leaving them gasping in relief.
“And now we’re trapped,” Sigoral said, getting to his feet. “Wonderful.”
“Ain’t sure trapped is the right word,” Clay said, getting to his feet and taking a good look at their surroundings for the first time.
They stood at the start of what appeared to be a concourse of some kind, the columns on either side forming an avenue that disappeared into a thick mass of trees some twenty feet away. Seeing the collage of light and shade that dappled the surface of the concourse, Clay looked up to see an interlocking canopy of tree-branches above. Through the gaps in the canopy he could see the pale blue of what he could only assume was sky. There was a faintly floral tinge to the atmosphere that put him in mind of the jungle, though the scent was decidedly more pleasant.
“What in the Travail is this, Clay?” Loriabeth demanded, her face riven with a mixture of wonder and fear.
“Not exactly certain what I was expecting to find down here, cuz,” he replied. “But it surely wasn’t this.”
“It looks like the Imperial Swath,” Sigoral said, eyes roaming the trees with deep suspicion.
“The what?” Loriabeth asked.
“The Emperor’s private forest north of Corvus,” the marine replied. “Three thousand square miles where only those of divine blood are allowed to hunt. I had the honour of escorting the Emperor’s cousin on a boar-hunt once.” He paused, peering through at the deep arboreal maze. “He was a very poor shot, truth be told.”
They stood staring at the view for some time, Clay once again suffering the sensation of being dwarfed by discovery. He moved to one of the columns, finding it overgrown with a thick web of creeping foliage. Pushing the leaves aside, he saw the stone beneath to be rich in carved script, the symbols all reminiscent of those in the shaft and the city beneath the mountain. There was also a faint visual echo of the hieroglyphs he had seen in the ruins on the shore of Krystaline Lake. Miss Ethelynne could read them, he remembered, fingers playing over the swirling script. Wonder if she could’ve read this too.
“Look,” Sigoral said, drawing Clay’s gaze from the column. The Corvantine was pointing at something in the forest canopy above the now-closed doorway. Peering closer, Clay saw that the door was housed in the base of a very substantial structure. It possessed familiar architecture he had last seen bathed in the red glow of molten rock, all hard angles and interlocking blocks of stone that contrasted with the chaotic web of foliage that surrounded it.
“Military logic,” Sigoral said, “dictates one should seek a vantage point when confronted with unfamiliar terrain . . .”
He trailed off as a high-pitched cry echoed through the forest. It lasted only a second, and was some ways off by Clay’s reckoning, but both he and Loriabeth had no difficulty in identifying the source.
“What was that?” Sigoral asked, seeing them exchange tense glances before drawing their weapons.
“Green,” Loriabeth said, eyes bright as she scanned the trees. They waited, peering into the myriad shadows of the forest, which seemed to have grown suddenly deeper. After several long minutes in which the Green cry failed to come again, Loriabeth holstered her guns and moved to the vine-covered stone fringing the door. “Sailor boy’s right,” she said, taking hold of a vine and starting to climb. “We need a good look-see at this place.”
Clay hurried to follow as she nimbly ascended into the canopy. He struggled to keep her in sight as he clambered up the web of vines and into the trees. The
branches were thick and became more twisted and difficult to navigate the closer they were to the structure. Clay could see numerous cracks in the stone where invading vegetation had gained purchase over what must have been many years’ growth. It was hard to discern the true shape of the structure, but he gained a sense of sloping walls. Also, he could see no sign of any windows or other points of access.
He saw that Loriabeth had paused in her climb, having ascended above the canopy to perch on a narrow branch as she gazed all around.
“What you got, cuz?” Clay called to her.
Loriabeth left a long pause before replying, her voice rich in both amazement and despair, “You’d best see for yourself.”
Clay clambered to her side and stopped, frozen by the scale and impossibility of what he saw. It took some time to fully comprehend it, and even then the sight was as baffling as it was spectacular. The forest stretched away on either side for several miles and to their front it continued on for about ten miles or so before giving way to what looked like a bare plain. Beyond that the landscape was too misted to make out any clear detail but he was sure he could make out the faint shimmer of water through the haze.
Looking left and right, he saw that the forest took on a gradual but definite curve where it met a vast featureless wall. It was dark, like the surface of the spire and Clay assumed it must be made of the same material. Turning completely around he found himself blinking in mystification at what appeared to be a great monolith rising from the trees. After further investigation he saw that it rose from the top of a tree-covered structure. The shaft that brought us here, he realised. As his gaze tracked upwards he expected to see the shaft meet a ceiling of some kind but the huge monolith faded from sight, occluded by a blue haze that grew thicker with altitude.