Dishonored--The Veiled Terror

by Adam Christopher

  Then Alba happened.

  Reports were sketchy, the truth impossible to verify, but Billie managed to piece something together.

  The city, in southern Morley, had been struck by a rift, one so large that it had, literally, torn the city in two. And it was enough to set off a powder keg, disturbing the delicate balance of power between that country’s joint rulers, the Queen and the King. A civil war had broken out, lasting exactly three days before a ceasefire was called, the opposing wife and husband having apparently settled their differences. But by then, most of Alba had been reduced to rubble, the casualties numbering in the thousands.

  That was late last year. Billie hadn’t seen the city herself since then, although she had traveled to northern Morley, attempting to map at least part of the Tyvian rift as it stretched eastwards across the Isles. And she had found it, the giant wall having progressed several miles south of its previous latitude.

  It was only a matter of time before it swept down across the whole world, destroying everything in its path.

  To be fair, the authorities had taken notice after Alba. The Empress had mobilized her battalions at Whitecliff, although Billie had encountered only a few troops on her travels, guarding some of the larger rifts that had sprung up over Gristol, often cooperating with local militias and town guards.

  But really, they were powerless to do anything, and they knew it.

  Which was precisely why Billie had come back to Dunwall. She had seen the effects of the Void rifts with her own eyes. She knew the dangers. But, despite her knowledge, this wasn’t a problem she could solve. If she wanted to save the world, she needed to get help. She needed Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles, seasoned adventurer, and dedicated friend.

  Except Emily wasn’t in the city. No sooner had she arrived in Dunwall than Billie made her way to the Tower, her free entry and audience with the Empress guaranteed. Time was of the essence, and she had much to discuss with her old friend.

  The Tower guard admitted her without delay. The Imperial court received her immediately. Only it was a court without an Empress. Billie discovered, to her dismay, that Emily and her father, the Royal Protector Corvo Attano, had left on an official journey north, a diplomatic mission to Wei-Ghon. They were not due back for weeks.

  Billie left Dunwall Tower reciting favorite curse words learned from several different languages.

  For the next few weeks, Billie had tried to make contact with Emily, but Wei-Ghon was at the northernmost edge of the Empire, and communication was slow and difficult. In the meantime, her headaches grew, along with her appetite for Green Lady, until eventually Billie realized there was only one other place in the world she could possibly go to for help.

  The Academy of Natural Philosophy.

  5

  ACADEMY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, OXBLOOD WAY, DUNWALL

  4th Day, Month of Wind, 1853

  The Academy of Natural Philosophy stood proudly at the edge of Dunwall, resplendent with perpendicular columns and Gothic arches. In the center of the Academy square stood the famous bronze statue of its founder, Erasmus Kulik, and it was here Billie paused to suck the last residue of Green Lady from her teeth before clearing her throat and heading up the sweeping scallop-shaped stone stairs that led inside. She adjusted the eyepatch over the Sliver. She didn’t want it, or her arm, to distract the attention of the people she was going to meet.

  Hoping to meet. That she could get into the building was a given—while the Academy was restricted to members and pupils, Billie’s long association with the institute’s most famous son, Anton Sokolov, guaranteed her access. But while getting in the door was one thing, meeting the academicians was another matter entirely. Even if she secured an audience, she wasn’t exactly sure how prepared they would be to listen. It was the Academy, after all, which had put so much effort into dismissing the ever-increasing reports of the Void rifts as harmless meteorological phenomena.

  On her way over from Mandragora Street, Billie hadn’t seen any sign of the strange man in the tatty velvet cloak. Perhaps more than ever, the city was full of all kinds of people, the strange and the desperate alike. The man had most likely just been a vagrant, one lucky enough to have acquired the castoff robe of a high-class citizen, and had either been following her out of moonstruck curiosity, or had just been heading in the same direction.

  Billie put the matter out of her mind as she pushed open the great doors of the Academy and stepped into its hallowed halls.

  ***

  The entrance hall of the Academy was designed to impress, Billie reflected as she moved through the cavernous stone space, the vaulted ceiling soaring three, four stories high over her head. The chamber was roughly elliptical, with a massive staircase directly opposite, splitting at a gallery on the first level before sweeping up on the left and right. On the sides of the hall, narrower, but no less impressive, staircases headed straight up, disappearing into darkened corridors.

  The center of the hall was dominated by an enormous skeleton, suspended by wire from the ceiling—the bones of a leviathan, one of the giant deep dwellers. The beast’s remains were truly gargantuan—although still dwarfed by the dimensions of the hall—the thing larger than a set of heavy rail cars, and hanging high enough that students and academicians could walk clean underneath it. Indeed, as Billie moved toward the rear of the hall, a trio of natural philosophers trotted down the stairs on the left, their long black academic gowns trailing, and crossed beneath the whale bones, before heading up to the stairs on the right. They were in hushed conversation, leather-bound journals tucked firmly under their arms, and they paid Billie no heed.

  The grand staircase was flanked by two glass-fronted offices. One was unmanned; behind the counter of the other sat a rotund man in a pale gray gown, his attention entirely focused on a heavy book balanced on a wooden reading frame in front of him. He wore tiny round glasses with thin gold wire frames.

  Billie thought she might as well start with him. As she got closer, she saw more clutter on his desk—a typewriter, a stack of desk files, and a brass plaque that proclaimed his position as the Head Porter.

  Billie had no idea what that meant, but she took the fact that he was sitting in what seemed to be the Academy reception to be an indication he would know who she needed to speak to. But when she got to the counter, the little man didn’t even look up from his book. Billie sighed, stood tall, and tapped on the glass.

  “Yes?” He still didn’t look up. In fact, even as he spoke, he licked a finger and turned a page of his book.

  “I need to speak to the…” Billie faltered. Who did she need to speak to? The only natural philosopher she had actually known was Sokolov himself, and he was long gone. What had his position been at the Academy? The… head? Principal? Master? Billie realized she had no idea of how the Academy was organized. She needed someone in authority, but she wasn’t sure asking for the “boss” was going to get her very far.

  Sensing her hesitation, the Porter looked up from his book, then peeled off his wire-rimmed glasses, which had been so tight they left bright red marks on his face. He leaned up a little from the counter, his eyes flicked up and down Billie’s body with clear disapproval.

  “Are you a student, Miss…?”

  “No, I am—”

  The Porter sat back down and returned his attention to his book. “If you wish to apply for tutorship, the office of the registrar does not open until the fourth day of the Month of Harvest.” Without looking away from the page, the Porter half-turned his body and began blindly shuffling through some of the papers by his elbow. “If you would care to—”

  “Listen,” said Billie, “I need to speak to someone in charge here.”

  The Porter either wasn’t listening or was deliberately ignoring her; Billie suspected a little of both. He wasn’t a particularly old man, at least not physically, but Billie wondered how the sheltered life within the Academy might age a person’s mind.

  “—complete an interview request for
m, stating your particulars and your fields of interest, then it may be possible to apply for an application to be invited to attend a pre-screening interview sometime next year and—”

  “Hey!”

  The Porter jumped in his seat, his glasses dropping off his face. He looked at her through his window with his jaw slack and his mouth in an O of surprise.

  “Well, really, miss! I’ll have to ask you to—”

  Billie slammed her magical hand against the glass. As the Porter watched, a thin rime of frost began to form on the glass around her fingers, and the sleeve of her coat dropped, revealing the twisting, floating shards of Void stone that formed her arm.

  So much for not attracting attention.

  “My name,” she said, slowly, carefully, “is Billie Lurk, and I need to talk to somebody in charge. Right. Now.”

  The Porter stared at her, his jaw flapping, before he practically fell off his stool and rushed off, nodding and muttering to himself.

  Billie relaxed. So far, so good.

  She hoped, anyway.

  6

  ACADEMY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, OXBLOOD WAY, DUNWALL

  4th Day, Month of Wind, 1853

  Billie didn’t have to wait long. The Porter returned within a few minutes, trailing two academicians, who strode with some purpose into the hall. After some awkward introductions—yes, she really had been a friend of Anton Sokolov; yes, she really did expect that to count for something; yes, she really did have important news to share; yes, she really did need their help—she was led into the Academy’s council chamber.

  Three hours later, she was still there. And in that time, she could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  The high ceiling was set with stained glass, which cast a rainbow of colors across the octagonal chamber. Billie stood at one of the sides of a huge eight-sided oak table that filled the room. Around the table sat seven natural philosophers, each wearing a heavier academic gown in charcoal gray, with black banding on the sleeves. Three men, four women, experts in their fields, the most senior and most respected natural philosophers in the whole of the Isles—and all highly annoyed at having been pulled from their research or teaching duties by this strange interloper, all resentful of the intrusion and the favor owed to Billie, thanks to her connection with their most illustrious member, Sokolov.

  She shifted on her feet, feeling the heat rise in her face as the seven cowards before her unwittingly stoked her temper. They looked at her like she was nothing more than one of their specimens to study. That was probably the whole point—the table had eight sides but only seven chairs. Whoever was summoned to appear before the council was supposed to feel uncomfortable. But Billie had been in far worse situations than having to stand for three hours. She could stand there for another three or another thirty if it meant getting the help she needed.

  Except she knew she wouldn’t. As it turned out, getting into the Academy was the easy part. Getting information, answers, anything at all out of the Academy council was another matter altogether.

  Simply put, these shits didn’t believe a word she said.

  Billie ground her molars as the members of the council muttered to each other, shaking their heads. The Head of the Academy, Professor Finch, stared at her with naked contempt from his ornate chair opposite. Clean-shaven and hollow-cheeked, with long gray hair swept back, he scowled at Billie, but his eyes did occasionally dart around the table as he listened to the debate.

  Right about now, she was ready to leap across that same table and choke the life out of the old man.

  “But there is no evidence of any instability whatsoever,” said a young woman—Professor Burton—immediately on Billie’s left, interrupting her murderous thoughts. Burton had cropped blonde hair and was at least two decades younger than most of the other members of the council. Whatever her position was, it was clearly important, the way the silence fell on the table as all eyes turned to her as she spoke up.

  “Go on,” said Finch. He leaned on the table with one elbow and stroked his chin as he watched her.

  “As the council knows,” said Burton, “this Academy has natural philosophers in the field all over the Empire. There are geological survey teams in Tyvia, geographers in Morley. There are historians combing through every Abbey chapterhouse in Gristol, and forensic folklorists cataloguing everything that survives from the burned archives of the Sisters of the Oracular Order in Baleton.” She paused, and turned in her chair to look up at Billie. “With all due respect, Miss Lurk—” she said the name with a scowl; Billie turned her ire on the woman and wondered just how long it took for someone to die when burned at the stake “—we have had no reports from any of our staff of these ‘Void rifts,’ as you describe them, nor is there any sign that anything untoward is happening, whether in cities like Dunwall or Karnaca, or at the edges of the Empire, as you claim.”

  Billie felt the muscles in her body tense. She folded her arms tightly, trying to hold in her frustration.

  “I told you what I saw in Tyvia,” she said, focusing on the words, willing herself to remain calm even though she was repeating information she had given several times already. “The northern tundra had been torn apart by a rift. The whole continent was cut in half. Northern Morley is the same.”

  One of the others at the table—a fossil by the name of Cromer, entirely hairless except for a perfectly square patch of beard on his chin—shrugged.

  “A natural phenomenon, my dear lady,” he said, not actually looking at Billie but at somewhere over her shoulder. “The Tyvian glaciers are famous for their unusual effects upon the local weather.”

  “And in Mor—?”

  “May I suggest a further survey, Professor,” an elderly lady, Professor Reed, broke in, “to chart ice flow along the southern coast of Tyvia?”

  “A superlative suggestion, Professor!” This was Morozov, a man of similar age to Professor Burton, his face round and soft, his gown stretched out over his sizeable stomach. “We could also perhaps map the fish populations to the southwest of Wei-Ghon. I have long had a theory about the migration of the Serkonan river mullet during their spawning phase, whereby I believe they adapt to salt water and…”

  Billie took a step back slowly from the table as the seven leaders of the Academy—the greatest natural philosophers of the age—began to rigorously discuss the merits of mounting an ocean survey.

  It had been no good. She had made her case. She had described the Void rifts, only for them to be discounted as freak weather effects, seasonal changes, interesting astronomical and atmospheric phenomenon worthy only of mention before quickly discounting them as unimportant. She described how parts of Tyvia, Gristol, and Morley had been physically damaged by the rifts, how the rifts seemed to be moving, how eventually they would destroy everything in their path. This was dismissed as a fantasy, with more than a little suggestion that, despite her association with Anton Sokolov, Billie Lurk was to be politely entertained, but not trusted.

  And Alba. What about Alba?

  Nothing, was what. An internal matter for the Queen and King of Morley. Whatever short war had taken place there, it was nothing to do with the Void rifts and it most certainly was nothing to do with the Academy.

  When she tried to talk about the dreams and nightmares plaguing the Isles—twice—she was curtly interrupted and told not to discuss such arcane frippery within the walls of the Academy.

  Of course. She should have known. The finest minds in the entire Empire, uninterested in the workings of the world, willfully blind to the evidence she had presented. The Academy liked to think it stood apart somehow from the world it was dedicated to studying. So far, nothing of what she had presented directly affected them, so why would they care? How many of the seven seated around the table had been troubled by dreams and visions? Or did they all chew Green Lady like she did, dulling their senses, muting their dreams?

  Their ignorance was as blissful as it was—Billie had to admit—expected. This was why it was plan B,
why she had sought Emily’s help above all others. Here, standing in front of the Academy council, it was even more obvious that Billie wasn’t one of them. She was a scoundrel, a criminal, an assassin—a murderer. It was only Sokolov’s name that allowed her the audience. She was lucky they hadn’t called the City Watch to take her away.

  Billie wasn’t entirely sure that still wasn’t going to happen.

  Let them try.

  She looked around the table. Once again she was superfluous to requirements, the seven academicians now busy arguing about what size anchor their hypothetical survey ship should use.

  She’d had enough. Billie stepped up to the table.

  “Listen!” She slammed her black-shard fist onto the ancient woodwork, immediately feeling the blaze of power coursing through the magical limb. Beneath her stone-like hand, a sheen of frost once more spread out, forming tiny, wicked shards that stood up from the table. A second later the oak split, the crack traveling up the table toward Professor Finch. He watched, his eyes wide, and as the fissure reached the edge of the table in front of him he cried out and flung himself backward, upending the heavy chair and falling with a thud to the floor.

  The other natural philosophers froze in position, staring first at their incapacitated senior, then at their uninvited guest. Billie looked at each of them, her lip curling in a snarl.

  “You’re just all lucky I’m going to let you out of this room alive,” she said, her voice nothing more than a quiet whisper. As Finch’s hand, then face, appeared over the edge of the table, she hissed and opened her fist, dragging her Void-stone fingers across the table, the surface peeling off like the skin of a fruit. “I came here for help. I’ve seen things I don’t understand. Things I think are dangerous. The world is coming apart at the seams, and it’s not only affecting the land, and the sea, and the air, but the people too. The Abbey of the Everyman is gone, but I’ve seen what happened to the Overseers—those who survived. The rifts are destroying the world, while the dreams are destroying our minds.”