by Peter Newman
The growling sounds again but further away this time. As quickly as the creature arrived, it has gone.
Fear washes away in a tide of relief, followed quickly by a crushing sense of fatigue.
On hands and knees, Vesper crawls across the room and pulls herself onto the chair. The kid follows, settling onto her lap.
‘We can’t stay here long,’ she tells him, stroking the top of his head. ‘Duet needs us.’
Vesper lets the chair take the weight from her heels and her head. Her eyes feel heavy but she dares not let them close. As she fights to stay awake a new wonder presents itself. From this angle, Vesper can see sky-ships hanging from the ceiling. A fleet in miniature, suspended in the air, slowly rotating. Every detail is perfectly captured and, unlike everything else, their surfaces are free of dust, glinting, winking as they turn.
She recognises one of the models, matching it to memories of sky-ships soaring about the Shining City. But most of them are unfamiliar, older designs no longer used, or rarer ones, lost in battle or left to rust.
The kid licks the sweat from Vesper’s hands before falling asleep. ‘You poor thing. You can have a few minutes, just to make sure that creature really has gone but that’s all.’ She blinks slowly, her eyes reluctant to open again. ‘Just a few minutes,’ she murmurs.
A moaning wakes her. A distant, hollow noise, evoking a sense of size and misery.
Sitting up, the first thing Vesper notices is the waning light. A brief blink has become a long sleep, her treacherous body stealing back lost slumber. Questions haunt her. How much time has passed? Does Duet still live? How did this happen? Ashamed, she turfs the kid from her lap and climbs out of the chair. It seems reluctant to let her leave. After a short struggle, she hops down and crosses to the door. The sensor above the doorway dimmed years ago and the mechanisms that moved it have stopped forever.
She places her hands against the smooth surface and starts to push it sideways. Both girl and door grunt and groan as it slides slowly into its housing.
On the other side is a much smaller room, covered in empty containers. Vesper crunches over them to get to the window.
Now the moaning is easier to hear. Vesper shudders but goes to look anyway. The kid joins her, stretching up on hind legs, front hooves on the sill.
They see the courtyard in all its horrific detail and it becomes apparent why the bodies still twitch. A torso, bereft of legs, head rotting, eyeless, is dragged across the square by two tentacles growing from its back. Bits of string are tangled with its trailing innards and these in turn collect more treasures: a torn bag, a small chain that glints and a branch covered in leaves, green and thick.
Entranced, the kid’s eyes follow its slow progress, a long string of saliva dangling from his chin.
But it is not the source of the moaning. Vesper has to look up to see that. A half-alive giant lurks behind a nearby tower. Even a tiny section of its silhouette inspires terror. Hooked legs sprout like horns from its moonlike face, a mane of limbs, shaking, sorrowful.
Vesper ducks out of sight, fighting down the vomit. She sits low, letting the wall press cold into her back and murmurs to herself. ‘Can’t do it.’ She wants to help her friend. She wants to be a hero like her father. ‘I can’t do it.’ Fear crowds out thought and she covers her face.
The kid cannot bear it any longer. He springs up, scattering containers, to wobble on the window’s edge.
Vesper looks up to see hooves flying, gone. Her arm stretches for where the kid was, the gesture as wasted as her shout: ‘Wait!’
The girl peers out to see the kid scampering across the square. For the moment, the giant has not noticed him.
Hissed pleas to come back are ignored. Getting desperate, she pulls herself half out of the window and raises her voice in a feeble shout: ‘Please stop!’
The kid glances back, tongue lolling.
‘Yes, that’s it. Come back.’
The kid looks again at the torso and its tail of leaves. There is no contest.
Vesper watches, locked with fear as the kid leans down to bite.
Tentacles pull the torso clear of snapping jaws and the kid comes up with nothing. He hops in surprise and goes after the torso again.
The giant’s head turns towards him.
Unable to bear it any longer, Vesper jumps down into the square and runs after the kid. She keeps low, back hunched like an old man, head down. She is no less visible for it.
The kid chews happily, branch hanging from his mouth, still tangled with dirty string and stringy flesh. When tentacles pull again, the torso moves and the kid moves with them. Hooves slide on stone, then find purchase. The kid pulls back.
A few hard inches are won before the tentacles continue on their way, mindless, taking torso and treasures and hanger-on with them.
Frowning, the kid pulls back.
Vesper arrives. She grabs the branch and snaps it, leaving one half in the kid’s mouth and the other still attached. Then she frowns and looks at the body again. Up close, the horror is less convincing. The eyeless face is more waxlike than lifelike and the tentacles make clicking sounds, regular, their inner working more the turning of wheels than the swirling of essence.
She glances over her shoulder to look at the sword. It still sleeps, unmoved by the theatrics.
While Vesper thinks, the kid chews.
Another moan brings her attention to the giant. It faces them now, shaking its head in anger. Vesper reaches around to touch the sword at her back. Nothing. Not even a slight quiver. She stands up and pulls out the scope. With magnification, she makes out wires attaching the head to the side of the building.
The moaning gets louder, the head shakes more violent. The mane of legs rattles like a nest of snakes. Then one falls off, landing with a hollow clunk.
Vesper smiles and walks towards it.
Still chewing, the kid trots after her.
The fallen leg is a prosthetic, wrapped in cloth, red dye unnecessarily bright. Vesper nudges it with her foot to be sure.
‘Hello?’ she calls out. ‘Is anyone there?’ The giant roars, the kid jumps, fearful. Vesper sighs. ‘You can come out. I’m not going to hurt you.’
There is no response from the giant.
She raises the scope to her eye again and traces the wires from the back of giant’s head to an opening high in the tower. It is a simple matter to skirt the base of the building until she finds a door. Unlike the one before it opens easily.
A chute runs from the floor up through the ceiling. An oval has been cut from one side, allowing access. Vesper approaches it. Whatever arcane forces that used to propel people up and down have been replaced by a dirty ladder.
‘Stay here,’ she says to the kid, giving him a last pat on the head before ascending.
Dark eyes track the girl until she is out of sight. Then, the kid sits and gets down to the serious business of eating.
The climb is long enough for worries to surface. Vesper climbs on anyway, not sure what else to do.
Five floors later, and Vesper steps out of the chute into a circular room. In a previous life, it served as a viewing platform, augmented eyes transmitting images via necrotic pipes. The walls that Vesper sees are blank, save for the rows of sockets, dried up, like a score of wizened earholes.
The wires from the giant’s head come in through a window, gathering together in a complicated knot at the back of a machine. The front of it is full of levers, and on top, a pair of brassy megaphones sit, one inside the other, humming softly.
By the machine stands a girl, not much off Vesper’s height, dressed in baggy clothes with rolled-up sleeves and metal pins in her trousers. Dark hair falls uneven over a purple face.
On Vesper’s back, the sword shifts in its sleep. She takes out the gun. ‘Don’t move.’
The half-breed shrinks back against the wall.
‘Now, you’d better tell me …’ she begins but pauses as she notices the way the other girl’s hands shake. ‘…
You’d better tell me who …’ It strikes her how young the girl looks. How scared. She puts the gun back in her pocket. ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.’
The half-breed doesn’t meet her eye. ‘True like?’
‘Yes. I’m Vesper.’
‘Runty.’
‘What, is that your name?’
The half-breed puffs out her chest. ‘Yeah.’
Vesper stifles a laugh. ‘Are you alone here?’
‘No. There’s loads of us. And if you did anything to me, they’d come get you.’
‘Okay.’
‘And do bad things, lots of times.’
‘Look, I’m not going to hurt you. I have a friend who is badly injured. Do you know anyone who could help her?’
Runty nods, very serious. ‘You need to see Neer. She knows things. She’s a fixer.’
‘Is she close?’
‘She’s in the Don’t Go, where all the maggots and buzzers are.’
‘Will you show me?’
‘As long as you swear.’
‘Swear what?’
‘That you won’t make her angry.’
*
Past broken villages and gutted towers, Samael marches. He keeps a steady pace, unfazed by night and day. Legs no longer tire, muscles obey without question. He finds it hard recalling the meaning of rest. With little of the physical to distract him, and only a bleak landscape to entertain, thoughts turn inward, chasing each other, repetitive.
He wonders why he is competing for the Usurper’s throne. He cares little for power, cares little for anything. Standing atop his steel hill and watching the Breach gave him a kind of peace. Not happiness but better than anything else. Now, the Yearning has taken that from him, forced him to search for the Malice.
But the Malice scares him. He turns the thought over in his mind. I am not afraid of death but I am afraid of the sword. Why?
He cannot fathom the answer, leaving the question to circle, recasting itself with each pass, increasingly irritating.
And if he does fear the Malice, if he does not even want to be part of the Fallen Palace’s madness, why do what the Man-shape suggests? The truth is simple: pride. As much as he does not want to rule, the idea of an infernal doing so irks him. They are not worthy. He cannot imagine bending the knee to any of them.
In the dirt ahead, a mangy Dogspawn sniffs for scraps. He ignores it.
It is tempting to stand aside and allow the Yearning to take them all. It would be simpler that way. Let there be an end to it, finally.
And yet …
A part of him is not satisfied by that. A part of him imagines the infernals having to bow to him, painting intricate pictures of their rage. How they would hate being subservient to a half-breed. Yes, even more than he would enjoy watching them die, he would enjoy their suffering.
The Dogspawn growls at him as he gets closer, a halfway threat, as if the beast still deliberates whether to attack.
The animal looks thin, desperate but not mad. Somewhere nearby it must have a Handler. He surveys the environment, seeing little. Flatlands stretching to mountains in the east and the horizon in the west. Few hiding places.
He approaches the Dogspawn, noting its mismatched eyes are both unclouded, though the human one droops half closed. A wave of revulsion strikes then and he has the sudden urge to destroy. He raises his sword above his head, moving into range.
Unbidden, a memory rises. So clear it eclipses the present.
He sits on a boat in a tranquil bay. Sunslight dances on the waves, hypnotic. Red and gold and blue and green, a shifting mosaic of beauty. If such things were still possible, he would weep. Around him are other boats, a motley collection of jury-rigged rafts and ships with well-worn repairs. One drifts close, a small sky-ship no longer good for flight, its pilot chatting happily with an alert looking dog on the prow. He remembers how happy the two appeared, how lonely his own boat was in comparison.
When the memory fades, he finds the world terribly grey in its absence.
During the reminiscence, time has passed. Though his sword arm remains up, ready to attack, the Dogspawn has moved off, something small wriggling in its jaws.
On impulse, he diverts to follow it.
They travel surprisingly far. Most Handlers and Dogspawn keep close together, unable to cope if their bond is stretched too thin. Eventually, they come across a set of dips in the ground, giant hoof-prints left long ago. In one of them lies a woman’s body, caked in sweat. Shockingly young and painfully thin, with livid red skin covered in irregular grey spots. Her skin is naturally red but the spots are a recent addition, parasites determined to suck her dry.
But she is not dead, not quite. As they get closer the woman contorts, twisting, painful, as if trying to wring her infection out.
The Dogspawn approaches, lowering its head by her side. It opens its mouth and a small beetle drops out, legs waving in the air, broken. Next to it are other insects and scraps of meat, a pile of offerings unnoticed and unappreciated.
Bitemarks decorate the exposed skin on her feet and shoulder. In a few places, the flying leeches still gorge, their veins swelling beneath translucent shells.
The Dogspawn nips at them, tossing them away but it is too late, the Handler is nearly gone, her convulsions easing, her face smoothing out. The Dogspawn sits by her side and whines softly.
Soon, she will die, and soon after the Dogspawn will go wild. A grim future full of madness and death.
The whining continues long after her breathing stops.
Another impulse comes, unexpected, and Samael’s hands are reaching down to the woman’s still warm corpse. Knowledge guides them, secret arts taken from the Uncivil by his creator and buried deep in his unconscious.
Realising what he is about to do, he hesitates, then takes off a gauntlet and pushes open her eyelids. Her left eye is bloodshot blue and human. Her right a rich brown, canine. He plucks her right with deft fingers, extracting it carefully. His own half-breed eyes see the tether of essence running silver grey from the soft orb to the skull of the Dogspawn.
He pulls off his helmet.
He places the eyeball in the palm of his gauntlet, leaving his other hand free to operate.
There is another hesitation but he finds he wants this enough to continue and reaches up towards his face …
It is as if another’s will takes him through the procedure. There is pain, brief, and half the world goes dark.
He takes the eyeball sitting in his palm and raises it to the hole.
The physical actions are mere mechanics, the manipulation of essence and inner surgeries immensely complex.
The Dogspawn howls.
Samael remains silent throughout.
When it is done, he replaces his helmet.
New senses flood his own, smells and fears. Hunger has long been irrelevant to him but he finds the return of the sensation refreshing.
‘Eat,’ he says, pointing to the pile of leavings, and the Dogspawn does.
It is a sad looking creature. Underfed. Reddish fur shaggy and covered in scars from past battles. One ear has been chewed away, the other stands straight and alert.
When it has finished eating it sits and looks at him.
He gropes through the dark sea of his mind, wondering what he should do. The Dogspawn is excited and afraid, he knows this. Haltingly, he touches its head, scratching behind the good ear.
A heavy tail begins to thump on the ground.
And then a sliver of memory comes back and his cracked lips curve into a smile. He kneels down so that he is face to face with the creature. ‘I am Samael, your new master. From now on, I will call you Scout.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
The building is small, fin shaped, and barely large enough to house a toilet. Bird shit runs in frozen streaks down its sloping side. A flapping curtain covers the front, struggling against metal clips.
Runty chews at what’s left of a thumbnail. ‘She’s in there.’
‘Good. Do we go in?’
‘She’ll come out.’
Vesper glances up at the fading light. ‘We need her to come out soon.’
‘Neer comes when she comes.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. You got earmould?’
‘Do you mean she’ll be here in a few minutes, or hours or days?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s not good enough. I have to see her now.’
The girl takes a step back. ‘Go on then.’
‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
She shakes her head. ‘Me? Go in the Don’t Go? Never!’
Vesper takes off one of the clips and lifts the curtain. Behind it is a large circular chute, angling down into the dark. Air wafts up, damp and sweet. ‘Is this safe?’
‘Yeah, we drop stuff down there all the time.’
‘And you think she’ll help?’
Runty shrugs. ‘Probs. If she wants. Just don’t make her angry.’
Vesper climbs into the chute and sits down, patting her thighs. The kid scampers over and joins her. She throws the clip back to Runty. ‘How do I get back out again?’
‘Climb out. She does.’
She sets the Navpack to torch setting and shines it down the hole. It continues at the same angle as far as the light extends, undamaged. She ties the Navpack to the side of her boot to illuminate the way down, nodding to herself. ‘Okay …’ She presses her hands and feet against the chute’s insides, inching forward. Gravity notices and starts to pull, testing young muscles.
Further down they go, slow and careful.
With a sense of casual inevitability, the kid slides off her lap, dropping into the space between her open legs, accelerating.
Vesper reacts quickly, catching the kid with her feet. They hang there for a moment, all of their weight on Vesper’s arms. Sweaty palms struggle to grip, squeaking against the smooth sides of the chute.
She has time for three different exclamations before she falls.
The chute is cut from several pieces of metal, fused together. Vesper feels the joins thrumming against her back, like a finger flicking, flicking, flicking.
From side to side they bounce, separating, one rolling, the other spinning. Hooves clatter in the dark, animal noises are made.