Storm Thief

by Chris Wooding

  Moa could hear the excitement in his voice. He was already thinking of the kind of moves they could pull off with the artefact at their command, how they could walk through any barrier like phantoms. They could become the most legendary thieves in the city.

  “You take it,” she said suddenly. They had drawn back around the corner now, further into the darkness and out of view of the guards at the gate. Her eyes glittered as she spoke. “You can use it.”

  She meant the artefact, and Rail knew it. Vago had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t feel inclined to question. If they thought they could walk through walls, then that was fine with him.

  “I’m not touching that thing!” Rail said, with a little laugh. He was afraid of the colours it made. “Besides, we agreed. You look after it, I’ll look after you.”

  Moa subsided. She didn’t want to be the one to let him down, but she wasn’t at all sure that the artefact would work again. She lay back against the wall and sighed. “Is this really a good idea, Rail? Do you think we can make it across a district full of Revenants?” The fact that she was questioning him at all showed how worried she was.

  “I’ve got it covered,” he said. “There’s a secret way, by the canal. It’s not too far in. It’s a tunnel that leads beneath the district and out the north side, just near where you told me Kilatas lies. Assuming the route to Kilatas is still the same after all this time.”

  Moa gave up. He had it all figured out.

  “After you,” she said.

  Between the mist and the broken arclight a little way from the gate, it was easy to sneak close to the great metal wall surrounding Territory West 190. The guards who patrolled along the top had their attention on the Revenant side, and paid little mind to the uninfected district at their backs, with its deserted buildings that hunkered in close. The two thieves and their strange companion slipped into the patch of shadow left by the broken arclight, and none of the guards saw a thing.

  The surface of the wall was freezing and dewed with water from the air. They pressed themselves against it. The guards trod along a walkway many feet above, their footsteps sounding over the gentle hum of the plasma wire. They expected no trouble. The wall was so high that those patrolling overhead would need to lean over to see where the thieves hid in the shadows.

  Moa slipped the artefact from her dungarees and held it in her hand. Vago peered at it with mild curiosity. They waited until the guards had passed, and then Moa slipped it on, so that the rings rested at the base of her fingers and the amber disc lay against her palm. Strangely, it fit her perfectly now, whereas before it had been too tight. She hesitated. Had her fingers got thinner? No, that was impossible. Then had the rings expanded?

  There was an instant when nothing happened, and she felt her heart sink. Then the colours came, drifting out of the disc and wrapping around her hand and forearm, a glove of soft light.

  Vago watched, fascinated now, the purple and blue and green reflecting in the black orb of his mechanical eye.

  She gave Rail a look as if to say: here goes. Then she put her hand to the wall.

  The colours spread eagerly from her hand into the metal, and in moments there was a tunnel there, blurred at the edges and fuzzed with veils of gentle vapour. On the far side they could just see the empty buildings of the Revenant district.

  Though the colours that swirled in the gap made him uneasy, Rail knew he couldn’t back out now. He had to let Moa believe that he was fearless. So he went in, and through, and it was as simple as that. Vago came next, creeping warily with his wings folded close under his cloak. At any moment he expected the gap to disappear and leave him trapped in an iron tomb like a fly in amber. Moa went last, holding her left hand in the air like a talisman.

  She stepped out of the gap, and the colours sucked back into the artefact. She slid it off her hand and the light died away. The wall had closed behind them, and left them on the other side.

  “I frecking love that thing,” Rail murmured, and she could hear the grin in his voice and couldn’t help grinning too.

  They made their way along the inside of the wall, towards the gate. There were no guards on this side, but they were still forced to be silent out of fear of those that patrolled steadily above them. Now they were on the Revenant side, the dark streets and empty buildings took on a new menace. The place could be swarming with ghosts, and neither Rail nor Moa would see them until they were snatched up and their bodies possessed. Rail felt his skin crawl at the thought. He glanced at Vago, and hoped the golem had been telling the truth when he said that he could see the invisible Revenants.

  But he only planned to be defenceless for a few minutes, and Revenants knew better than to come near the walls where they would be shot at.

  After a few dozen yards, they halted. Rail estimated that the guardhouse lay on the other side of the wall now. They waited until the soldiers above were heading away from them. Rail could feel the tension beginning to mount in the muscles of his shoulders. Any moment he expected to hear the alarm being raised, to hear the shouts of the soldiers. But their gaze was turned outwards, towards the nearby buildings, and they didn’t lean over and look down.

  He gave Moa the all-clear, and she put on the artefact and used it again. For a third time it worked perfectly, opening a door through the barrier. Rail’s guess had been good. On the other side was a gloomy room, with benches and a small stove and a fire burning in the grate. The guardhouse.

  “Stay here,” Rail murmured. “Keep this tunnel open. I’ll need a way out.”

  And with that he was gone, leaving Moa to wonder in terror if she even could keep the tunnel open. What if the artefact ran out of power? What if it could only make doors for a certain amount of time? What did they really know about it?

  Rail hadn’t considered any of that. It was a way in to the guardhouse, and that was all he cared about.

  The room that he entered was evidently where the soldiers came to rest and smoke and eat, but there was no one here now. It was stiflingly warm after the chill of the night, despite the cool air that drifted through a small slitted window. Rail felt a thrill at the realization that he was back on the other side of the wall. Such an impenetrable barrier, and he had passed through it twice like it was nothing. Plans were forming in his mind. He was thinking of the kinds of places that the Fade-Science artefact could get them access to, the kinds of rewards they would hold.

  Later, he thought. Keep your mind on the job.

  The guardhouse was small, and all the guards were outside. A single doorway led to a tiny box room which served as a junction. He picked another door and opened it, finding a similarly tiny room beyond. Here, mounted on the walls, were gun racks and small equipment lockers. He raided them with expert swiftness, finding two glimmer visors and an aether cannon amid assorted worthless knick-knacks and uniforms. The visors and the cannon he took, and headed back to Moa. He was tempted to stay and steal what he could, but he knew that they were treading a fine line and that their luck would not hold for ever.

  He was right. It didn’t. He hurried back into the room with the stove, and had just appeared at the other end of the tunnel Moa was holding open when he heard a shout from above, and the sound of an aether cannon firing. Moa looked up, her face a picture of horror. Vago scooped her up and pulled her out of the way a moment before a bolt of aether sizzled through the air.

  Moa was no longer touching the wall. She wasn’t holding the tunnel open any more. The coloured vapours that swirled in the gap flooded away, returning to the device in Moa’s hand. When they were gone the wall would be solid metal once again.

  Rail had only an instant to act, and instinct decided it for him. He ran into the tunnel and dived through the gap. There was a moment of utter and total fear as it seemed as if the air was thickening around him, crushing him. But then he was through, and he hit the ground in a heap, his loot cradled in his arms. T
he concrete of the street jolted painfully against the power pack between his shoulder blades. Behind him, the tunnel had closed. He dreaded to think what would have happened if he had been a fraction slower.

  Someone overhead was shouting for them to stop, but they weren’t that stupid. If they were caught now, they would be taken away like Moa’s mother, like all the ghetto folk. It would be quicker just to let the soldiers shoot them.

  Moa was calling his name. She was halfway across the street towards the buildings on the other side, where the golem had dragged her. She had stopped and was reaching back for him. He scrambled to his feet, gathering up the visors and the weapon, and ran. An aether cannon screeched. Rail felt the air singe as it flew wide of him. Then another soldier fired, this time at Vago. He dodged, tripped on the hem of his cloak, and went down in a thrashing heap.

  “Go!” Rail shouted at Moa, his respirator blunting the desperate edge of his voice. Hesitation showed on her face for a moment, and then she fled towards the buildings. Rail ran past Vago, who was struggling with his cloak. He was far more concerned with his own welfare than the golem’s.

  Another cannon fired and missed, but now Vago stood up and tore his cloak away, his wings outspread. There was a curse of disbelief from one of the soldiers, and the sheer sight of him made them hold their fire. That time was enough for Rail and Moa to disappear into the alleyways between the buildings.

  Vago bared his fangs at the soldiers, snarling like an animal, and then ran on all fours after Rail and Moa, into the Revenant district.

  It was several hours later when they came across the first of the Taken.

  It had begun to rain by then, a freezing downpour that had gathered in off the sea to wash the city clean. The streets ticked and hissed and spattered, heavy with echoes of emptiness. Moa’s nerves had been steadily shredded as she jumped at imagined footsteps and half-seen movements that turned out to be tricks of the weather.

  Rail had wanted to take shelter until the sky cleared, for Moa’s sake. Her constitution was frail and being out in the rain would likely make her ill. She would not hear of it. They had to travel under cover of night to have any hope of getting through the district, and the rain would help remove their trail. It couldn’t have come at a better time, and they would be fools not to take advantage.

  So they had crept along the deserted thoroughfares, slinking from shadow to shadow, only the pale lines of their glimmer visors showing in the darkness. Vago scouted ahead as they went. He found he was surprisingly good at it. He instinctively picked spots where he could spy out their route without being seen himself. He moved without sound and used cover like an expert.

  “Look at him. He looks like he’s at home here,” Moa commented at one point.

  Rail scowled. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  It was Vago that warned them before they walked into a plaza full of Taken, and Vago who led them to a place where they could observe the enemy. They took some stairs to a roofed stone walkway, high up on one side of the square. There they hid, and looked down on what was below.

  The Taken were at work in the rain. Moa and Rail watched, fascinated and afraid, as the quiet figures moved unhurriedly to and fro across the plaza. Had they not been wearing visors, they would have seen only men and women and children, completely unremarkable except for their almost supernatural calm. They went about their business without ever saying a word, their eyes glazed. Like sleepwalkers.

  But with the visors on, it was possible to see them for what they really were. They seethed aether. Greenish-yellow energy, fine as vapour, wisped from their bodies or trailed behind them as they moved. Their eyes and mouths and nostrils were like tiny torches, blazing with blinding energy. It was as if their bodies were merely shells to contain the spectral glow. When they moved their heads, fizzing particles of aether detached from them and floated away, slowly fading into nothingness.

  They were dismantling a building. Though they used no tools but their hands, the structure came apart easily, as if it were made of bread and not bricks and metal. Slowly, and with little apparent effort, they were pulling it down bit by bit.

  On the far side of the square was an empty pedestal, where a statue had once stood. There was enough left to identify what it had once been. Like all other statues in Orokos, it was a likeness of the Patrician, the head of the Protectorate who ruled the city from the top of the Null Spire. Everyone was familiar with his image. He was broad-shouldered and tall, dressed in a long uniform coat that buttoned from neck to ankle. Rail had always thought it looked uncomfortably like a surgeon’s smock.

  But most unsettling was the face, or rather the lack of it. For the Patrician had no face at all, only a black oval of emptiness. His skull was clad in a tight-fitting black headpiece, like that of a wetsuit, and his face showed only an abyss. It was made of some material that threw back no reflection. Instead, it seemed to swallow the light. It was a face to inspire fear and awe, for the Patrician was cold and merciless as the void. He would stop at nothing to bring order to the chaos of their world.

  Moa had grown up with stories of the past, when there had been a thing called the Democracy, where leaders were elected and laws passed by a council of many. Her parents loved those kind of stories, and Kittiwake had talked of them endlessly. But they told of a time long before she had been born and they seemed like myths.

  Then the Protectorate had arisen. It was one of many political parties that had existed back then. Its message was simple: the Democracy wasn’t strong enough to contain the Revenants. A firm hand was needed to bring safety to the people of Orokos and destroy the ghosts once and for all.

  The people were tired of being afraid, tired of the constant war against the Revenants that had been raging ever since anyone could remember, ever since the Fade and maybe long before. And so the Protectorate had taken power. They built walls, many walls to separate the districts and keep the Revenants contained. Everyone felt safer. They put soldiers on the streets, and the panopticon showed everyone how brave they were in cleaning out infested districts and reclaiming areas of the city long abandoned. The citizens cheered.

  Then one day the Patrician outlawed all the other parties, because they were becoming obstructions to him. They were always complaining about rights and liberties, debating when they should have been doing something. By the time the Patrician declared himself sole ruler of Orokos, his support was overwhelming. It didn’t matter that they made no real headway at all, that the more soldiers they sent against the Revenants, the more Revenants appeared to fight them. What was important was that the people of the city felt stronger, they felt safer, they felt like they didn’t need to hide in fear any more. And so the reign of the Patrician became absolute, and there was nobody left to challenge him.

  “Well, the Taken got one thing right,” Rail murmured. “They tore down that dog-son frecker.”

  Moa made a soft noise of agreement. Like Rail, she hated the Patrician. After all, those walls that separated the districts did more than protect against Revenants; they protected the Protectorate too. Behind those walls they had set up ghettoes. They herded the poor and the sick and the rabble-rousers and the criminals all in there together. That way, there was more space to grow food for everyone else on Orokos, more space for training grounds for soldiers. Everyone was happier, everyone praised the Patrician for making their lives better. Everyone but the people who had paid for it, the people in the ghettoes, but nobody really cared about them.

  “Look,” Moa said quietly, watching the Taken below. “The rumours were true.”

  “It’s a Protectorate building,” Rail said. “They haven’t touched anything else.”

  Vago made a puzzled noise. Moa elaborated for him.

  “We’ve heard things about the Revenants. Everyone’s heard them, but nobody’s certain,” she said. “They take over a district and they . . . erase things. Protectorate things.
They take apart everything that the Protectorate build. They leave everything else alone. Like they’ve got some grudge against the Protectorate or something.”

  Rail joined in now. “Where I came from, they used to say that the reason Revenants possess the bodies of people is because Revenants can’t touch anything. But the Taken can. They can tear down what the Protectorate make.”

  “I heard it was because Revenants don’t last very long as ghosts, and they need a human body to live in,” Moa said, remembering a conversation from long ago. It was just one of several dozen theories about the Revenants, and she hadn’t given it much credit back then.

  “Yeah, I heard that too.” Rail turned back to Vago. “Anyway, when they’ve stripped a district of every trace of the Protectorate, they attack a neighbouring district. All at once. They pick one and overwhelm it. That’s how they work. They clean one place, and then move on to another. That’s why they don’t just spread everywhere. They’re doing the city piece by piece.”

  “I never knew that bit,” said Moa, her gaze roaming over the rain-lashed plaza below, the silent figures at their industry. “You’d think we’d . . . you’d think more people would know about all this.”

  “They keep it quiet,” Rail said.

  “The Protectorate?”

  “Of course the Protectorate. Would you want everyone to know? People used to say that they cause the Revenants somehow. That the only reason they appear is to get rid of the Protectorate.”

  “That’s stupid,” Moa said. “Revenants were around before the Protectorate were.”

  Rail shrugged. “That’s what they say.”

  For a time, there was silence between them, and only the loud and constant splatter and trickle of the downpour intruded on their thoughts.