I found work with a printer, slapping together a broadsheet of gossip and betting columns once a week so that those who filled the countless diners had something to read over their kippers and tea. I soon abandoned the cheap lodgings I had found on my first day, and moved into a small apartment as far from the company of others as necessity allowed. A little store filled with books rescued from travellers took what money I did not spend on food and alcohol. I drew heavy curtains across my windows, placed an overstuffed armchair before the tiny hearth, and settled in to destroy myself in splendid isolation. I might have imagined the others doing likewise, in their corners of the City.
Even so, none of us could abandon our frail fellowship completely. We met at the end of each week, at a little tavern near the Westwater canals, to toast our luck and recount our adventures. In half a year, none of us missed a meeting.
Then Agnar failed to show up. He and Little Bear had become good friends during their months of shared labour. The short-arse was worried. Agnar talked constantly of our meetings out in the woodlands. He would not miss one unless something was seriously wrong.
We trooped after Little Bear to the Vikinger’s apartments, a red-roofed block of buildings overlooking the gate he exited each Firstday morning to take up his work. His door was locked, and warped so that it would not give easily to our shoulders. When we finally broke through, the wood split like a rotten log. Little Bear broke a piece off, and held it up.
‘Sodden,’ he said. I stared at it as the others brushed past. Little Bear dropped it, and pushed through our companions to take his place at the front.
The apartment was empty. Everything was awash and stinking with fetid, still water. We sloshed from one room to the next, exclaiming in our turn, but there was little to see. Agnar was a simple man, and had kept few items he could not carry. A pallet, furs to sleep on, some food in the cupboards. All despoiled, all rotten. Of the man himself, nothing. We retreated to our bar, to speculate, and those who cared wished him well. Someone took his place on the gang, and we returned to our normal routines.
Then Jean-Paul disappeared. Then Little Bear. And each time, we ran down to their residencies, to find them empty and soaking, drenched in inches of brackish water. I began to keep away from fountains and canals, scurried straight from my home to work and back again, and kept the fire built as high as I dared at all times. I had no other plans, no chance of escape. Anguilar was the end point of all flight. We were cornered here.
We were down to five, and all of us afraid. Now when we met it was in silence. Each of us stayed for a single draught, no more, before sneaking back to our homes with heads down, avoiding the shadows as best we could. Sleep was rare, and whatever sense of companionship we once shared melted away like the water we discovered in each missing companion’s home. It was not until blue-skinned Det vanished that we overcame our fatalism, and finally stirred into some semblance of action.
It was Fastny who decided. She sent runners to each of us, summoned us to the tavern and broke news of Det’s disappearance.
‘How did you know?’ I asked. ‘We never see each other...’
She stared at me, and I cursed myself for an idiot. I had seen the looks she shared with Det across the seven deserts. I had seen them leave together, the very moment we were ensconced within the city walls. How naive had I been, to think it would stop once we settled into new lives? I nodded an apology, and sat. We waited while she ordered drinks, and though I loathed beer, I did not request a change when it arrived. Fastny drained her flagon, slammed it on the table, and gestured for another.
‘What then?’ I ventured, after her second draught had gone the way of the first. She eyed my barely-touched drink and stretched her neck to loosen the muscles.
‘We hunt.’
‘What?’ I locked stares with our remaining comrades. ‘How? Who?’
‘Does it matter? Someone is killing us.’
‘Killing Det.’ She had shown no such need for action when our other three companions had been taken. But I was a fool for saying it aloud. She leaned back and loosened the cape that hung over her slight frame. I saw her belt, and the knives she had fastened there. She had not worn them since we arrived in Anguilar. She could have sliced me into sandwich meat right then, and nobody would have blinked. Instead, she pinned me with her slate-tinted eyes.
‘What would you have us do?’
I stared at the silvered blades. It must have taken the better part of a day to sharpen them. I pictured her, alone in her rooms, bent over a stone, scraping each blade again and again, a hundred times per edge, honing them until they reflected light as thinly as her eyes. I blinked, and looked away. She snorted.
‘No idea. I thought not.’ She turned to the others. ‘And what of you? Mellik? Thomas?’
Our companions shrugged. Thomas was already drunk, despite the half-full tankard in front of him.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Who wants to live forever?’ He laughed, a burp that was as much sob as glee. His burn scar glowed angry in the tavern’s light. Mellik was a shadow in a hood, his thick body permanently covered by a shapeless thawb that gave no indication of what lay beneath. In all our time together I had never seen his face, and when he picked up his glass, he did so with a hand covered in a kidskin glove. Now he inclined his head so that I had the feeling he was contemplating his chest.
‘I have often felt I was wrong to leave.’ It was the most I’d heard him speak since we met. Fastny nodded, and turned back to me.
‘Well?’
‘Okay,’ I said, and drained the rest of my disgusting beer. ‘Whatever the hell it is, we hunt it.’
We left in pairs. Mellik turned towards the wharf at the estuary’s mouth, his thick arm across Thomas’ shoulder to keep the blubbering Englishman upright. Fastny grabbed my wrist and began to drag me in the opposite direction, down towards the tunnels and under-bridges of the back canals. I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it. Several things occurred to me: Det had lived near the canals; Fastny was armed where I was not, and in no mood to argue with me; and it had been a long time since I had felt a woman’s skin against mine, even superficially. I liked the contact more than I should. She ran me down through alleyways each worse lit than the one which preceded it, until we crouched beneath the arch of an abandoned warehouse door and stared across a canal so brackish it was impossible to concentrate on her hard, wiry body against my stomach for the smell of it. She nudged me in the ribs, hard enough to make me blow out a breath, and pointed to a darkened window on the third floor of the building opposite.
‘Det’s rooms,’ she whispered.
I stared across the canal. I should have felt something, I suppose. Det had been a colleague, if only for the ride here and the occasional drink. I had shared his fellowship, and his money, easily enough. But all I felt was cold, and afraid, and Fastny’s desire to grub about in the detritus of her dead lover’s rooms did not seem so important to me anymore.
‘Let’s go.’ A low stone bridge crested the canal a dozen metres from us. She set off towards it in a crouch. I watched her slip into the darkness. She reached the foot of the bridge, and twisted her head this way and that, scouting the shadows for any hint of approaching menace. When she realised I had not budged from my corner she hissed, and waved at me in impatience.
‘Come on!’
I shook my head and she pulled at her cape, revealing her sharpened knives. I swallowed, and took one small step away from my shelter, then another. Fastny turned away.
She was halfway across when the water below her began to thrash about like a cat caught in a blanket. I had taken no more than a dozen steps in her direction, but at the sight of it I threw myself behind a nearby archway, my cloak pulled up to cover all but my eyes. Fastny stopped, and leaned over the side of the bridge. Whatever she saw caused her to spin on her heels and race for the nearby bank. She never made it. The water below her bucked, and heaved. With a sound like a waterfall in reverse, it roared upwards, rising in
a column a dozen feet high and half as wide, whipping from side to side like a snake writhing to a charmer’s flute. The top of the column opened and closed as if it were a mouth, gasping for air. As it spun past Fastny it seemed to sense her. The open mouth considered her for a moment, then closed in an instant and shot forward towards her. Fastny sprang away from its charge, loosened one of her knives and flung it without breaking step. It sped into the heart of the column and disappeared. A moment later, it whizzed past her shoulder, hitting the wall in front of her and bouncing off with a loud retort. She was no more than a foot from the end of the bridge when the water struck her in the back. It lifted her two feet off the ground and slammed her against the wall faster than I could follow, before pulling back and driving into her again as she fell.
Fastny was hard. A more civilised man would have lain where he was flung. But somehow she found her feet and took three uncertain steps towards me before the water struck her a second time. It drove her into the stones once more, and dragged her a dozen feet along the ragged bricks to drop her, bloodied and unconscious, at my feet. Then the river reared back, and through the fingers that covered my eyes I could see shapes within the column, bipedal forms linked to each other by a slender thread of silver. I could feel their anger, and their hatred, tainting the water like blood. The pillar coiled about itself. The figures within danced together in a slow voodoo embrace, preparing to crash down upon Fastny one final time and tow her into the canal forever. The water cleared, just for a moment. I saw Det hanging halfway up its length, the silver thread coiled tightly about his neck, and behind him, Mellik, and Thomas, and our other companions in turn. Without thinking, I threw myself from my hiding place and covered Fastny with my cloak.
‘No!’ I buried my head in her sodden hair. ‘Please!’
I could feel the water pause, release its pent up energies, lose some of its raw anger. I peeked at it through the strands of Fastny’s hair. It swung from side to side, dipping over us and pulling back is if watching us to see what we would do. At last it contracted, sank down into itself and leaned slowly over us. Drips rained down on my upturned face. I slid off Fastny and fell back against the wall. The column followed me, and as I raised my hands in a worthless attempt to ward it off, it slowly opened its mouth and covered my head with its own.
And just like that I was alone in the universe. Cold and unwanted, my body crushed by pressures beyond my understanding, my lungs distended and unable to expand. Blood pooled in my head, swelling my brain until it pushed against every inch of my skull. I opened my mouth to scream, but there was no breath within me. The chains that circled my wrists and ankles were tangled about me, dragging me down, down...
A sharp pain in my leg forced my eyes open. A dark, bloated face hung three inches away from me. Tiny creatures flitted around it. They darted in then pulled away, tiny streamers of flesh hanging from their mouths. I stared at the dead man, and saw his eyes widen in recognition. He mouthed a single word, as fish nipped in to tear at his lips and tongue. I knew in that moment where this monster had been born, and what its purpose was.
Then I did scream, jerking backwards, out of the water’s clinging embrace. I struck the bricks behind me, and immediately fell to my side, clutching my head. The column broke apart, falling to the cobbles in a formless deluge, soaking Fastny and me where we lay. I blinked, wiped a trembling hand across my face, and risked a glance at where it had been. But it was gone, and if there had been bodies within its swirling mass, they were no longer there to torment me. Only the grey sky remained, bound by the muddy green bricks of the canal buildings.
The pain in my leg intensified. I focused upon it, saw three inches of blade sticking out of my thigh, the hilt of Fastny’s dagger pointing proudly towards its owner. My gaze slid towards her, her arm dangling over my legs, fingers almost brushing my groin. She dragged her head up, rested it next to her knife.
‘It was the only thing I could think of,’ she croaked, and smiled. I goggled at her.
‘I... I... you... ouch,’ I managed, before it all became too hard, and I fainted.
* * *
I woke to the sound of fire, and a suffocating warmth that threatened to stifle my breath before I could spend it. I was naked, and encased in fur. For the briefest of moments I had the panicked thought that I was under attack by a bear, or wolves. Then I came fully to my senses, and relaxed. I was in a room, on a low bed, that was all. The pelts that surrounded me were blankets, and the fire was contained within a hearth. I had been undressed, and washed, and for long seconds I simply lay, luxuriating in the feel of fur against my freshened skin. Then I realised what had happened, and reared upright in alarm.
Fastny sat at a small table in the corner, lit only by the flames in the grate. She had combed out her hair, and it lay in golden waves down the back of a simple cotton shift. She was sharpening her knives against a whetstone—long, slow, deliberate strikes of the blades. In the flickering light she looked ethereal, half-there, like a ghost sent to warn me of dangers I could not remember. I coughed in confusion, and she glanced up from her task.
‘You’re awake.’
‘I...’ I looked around the room. It was dark, so I could not make everything out, but what I could see—the tapestry above the bed, the table and the chair upon which Fastny sat, the grate and surrounds—were well appointed. I blinked at her, beautiful in the firelight, and stifled a gasp.
‘What happened?’
‘You were unconscious.’ She laid a blade down, picked up the next, began to work it against the stone. ‘I brought you back here and cleaned us both up.’
‘The water!’
‘Gone.’ She examined the edge, then returned to sharpening it. ‘You talk in your sleep.’
Instantly I was on guard, aware of her skill with knives, and of my utter helplessness.
‘What did I say?’ I gathered the thick furs up around my midriff, as if they might provide some sort of protection. Fastny laid her work down, and came to sit on the edge of the bed. She leaned forward, and for the briefest moment I had a glimpse of skin down the top of her shift, before she reached out and pushed me back onto the bed. Something hard and cold sat against my chest. I glanced down, and saw a dagger, point aimed towards my throat.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘What?’ I struggled to rise, but she was stronger than me, and kept me pinned with a single arm. ‘You know,’ I said. ‘You were there.’
‘Not then.’ She shifted her weight, and the dagger slid half an inch upwards. ‘Before. Tell me how you came to Budapest.’
I stared at her, and was held by her eyes: unflinching, hard, with no trace of forgiveness in their depths. There was no doubt. I would tell her my story, or she would cut it out of me.
‘They made me a sailor,’ I began and, having started, it fell out of me without pause. How I had been a printer’s apprentice, and had travelled to Portsmouth for the reading of a will. How I had stopped to drink at the wrong tavern, and woken up with the boat already three days out from harbour and the service contract in the captain’s safe. I told her of six months at sea, swabbing the decks of a flea-infested privateer, running guns and cloth to Africa, then slaves to the Americas, and sugar back to England. And then, halfway across the Atlantic, with Navy sails closing in from sternward, how the chained captives had been brought up from below.
‘We needed speed,’ I told her. ‘If we were caught with slaves on board, well...’ I bent my neck, and made a motion with my fist above it—the Tyburn dance.
‘What happened?’ I felt the point of the dagger at my throat, and the irony of it made me chuckle.
‘I was on deck. The sun was at its highest. All the crew were above boards. I was upon the forecastle, repairing a split railing under the gaze of the first mate, a meaty bastard named Reeves. Half the complement was hanging over the port railing, watching the white sails growing larger. The others were dragging the screaming Africans up on to the deck, their cries drowned out by
the sailors’ curses and the thud of bludgeons on backs. Reeves turned to watch the spectacle, and behind him, so did I. They lined up: thirty skinny men, doused in their own piss and shit, shivering from the cold below and sicknesses borne of eating our slops, backs bowed by the weight of the metal collars around their necks and the chains that linked them. The sailors bullied them into two lines, each man an arm’s length from the others, facing the poop deck. Our Captain stood there, looking down upon them as he did everyone. He said nothing, gave no sign of what was to come, simply glanced at Reeves and nodded once. The big Mate stepped forward, grabbed the first man in the chain by his hair and kicked his legs out from under him. The slave fell. Reeves reached into his waistband, removed a knife, and brought his hand across his victim’s throat in a short, vicious chop. The whole ship paused. Even the wind died, as if the world itself was waiting to see what happened next. Then all hell broke loose.
‘The dying man shot forward, pulling his head from Reeves’s grasp. A gout of blood splattered against the wood. The other slaves on the chain began to scream, and pull against each other to escape. The sailors moved in, coshes in full swing. The Captain yelled for order. Reeves recaptured his man, hauled him across deck and threw him over the side without ceremony. The chain drew taut in an instant, dragging the line of captives after it. They fell like dominoes, scratching at the wood, at the legs of the sailors who kicked them on their way, at their own flesh, until one by one they slid inexorably over the edge and disappeared.
‘There were sharks in our wake. We could see the water churning, and the red stain for hundreds of feet behind us as we glided on. The white sails circled the spot for an hour or so, then retreated. We were poorer—that is, the Captain and his backers were poorer—than if we had landed at Port-au-Prince with our cargo intact. But they still had their profit from the first two legs of the journey, and there would be another run in which to recoup the losses, and another, and another. I added my vomit to the ocean, withstood a beating from Reeves for my lack of stomach, and went back to work.
The Canals Of Anguilar / Legacy Page 2