Roil

by Trent Jamieson

  Looking like a Drifter did not appeal to her, but it meant that she did not stand out too much. No more than the usual Drifter, and they loved to stand out.

  They reached the Tower of Engineers, by way of nearly every back alley and side-street in the city. The heat of the day had seeped into everything, and by the time they found a hiding space with a clear view of the tower both were hot and tired.

  Margaret had already seen enough to know they had no chance of ever getting any closer to the tower. But, despite the heat and the relative danger, it had felt good to be doing something.

  “I don’t like this,” David said. A gun cracked in the distance and he jumped, eyes growing terribly wide. Any other time and she would have found it amusing.

  “Nothing to worry about. You’re with me.”

  “A woman with something of a death wish, possibly wanted by every Verger in the city. Yes, the sort of person a man definitely wanted by every Verger in the city should be paired with. I couldn’t be safer, nor could you.”

  “Well, you let yourself get talked into this.” She pointed behind him.

  “What?” David asked.

  “That way lies the Roslyn Dawn. You are certainly welcome to strike out for it alone.”

  The air was thick with dust, as well as what Margaret suspected were Roil spores. She could taste them in the back of her throat: an irritating dryness.

  The sky above though was clear and blue.

  There was a lot of activity, some of it responsible for the dust, carriages carted coolants for the cannon to the walls. Regular cannon were dragged from the nearby barrack grounds, scarring the road with their passage. So much industry, but it lacked the discipline of Tate. Margaret could see it from here, just as clearly as she could see doubt and fear in the face of every soldier.

  She remembered Mcmahon and the guns stacked in their piles, yards high, all those dust-caked bones for the Quarg Hounds and the Endyms to play with. The North had not been wrong when they called it the Grand Defeat.

  Margaret saw how it continued to haunt these people. She did not blame them, Mcmahon haunted her as well. She had seen the Roil in all its strength. Night was coming to this city no matter how many cannon they set upon its walls.

  Without warning, David grabbed her shoulder and Margaret jumped. She had to stop herself from spinning and punching him in the throat.

  Hah! And she had thought David was jumpy.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  David’s hand dropped, and he gave her that hurt look again. She wondered if he’d developed that as an addict, a forced sort of helplessness. “What is it?”

  “The Verger,” he whispered. “Tope, he’s over there.”

  Margaret squinted out into the light, one hand shading her eyes.

  “I can see him,” she said, keeping her voice low. She did not like what she saw. “Let’s get out of here, now. You’re right, David, Cadell can look after himself.”

  “Back to the Field of Flight?” David asked.

  “Yes, but not directly. If anyone is following us I want to make it difficult.”

  “If we head towards the wall, we can swing around to the Field. At least I think...” David pulled out the map he had bought, almost losing it to the wind, as he folded it to the relevant section. Margaret nearly knocked it out of his hand, in her city someone checking a map would have stood out, an aberration, here though, even on the edge of the abyss, tourists abounded. In fact at least three other people on the street were looking at maps, and no one was looking at them.

  David pinched a little map powder under his nose, and his eyelids fluttered, he traced a section of the map with a finger, seeing it far more clearly than her. ‘Ah, yes. All we have to do is walk a small part of the wall, look, here, near the sea, and come back on the field from the north. There’s a pub along the way, three in fact, we could–”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said. “But we’ve no time for you to score your precious drug. Don’t look at me like that, David. I have been warned, and you really were talked into coming easily.”

  “You don’t even–”

  Margaret snorted at him.

  David puffed himself up indignantly. Margaret clenched her jaw to stifle a laugh. “Look, I’m not taking, anymore. Not since… since you saw me last,” David said. “I don’t even think about it. And if I was going to, now would be... but I’m not.”

  She let the lie hang there. David frowned.

  “Can we save this for later,” he said. “Believe me or don’t, but we have to get going. We’ve stayed here too long as it is.”

  “I’m no fool,” Margaret said, already making her way down the street.

  David stood behind her for a moment, she could feel his eyes on her, but she didn’t clarify what she meant by that, or turn to see if he understood her. David may be an addict, but he wasn’t stupid.

  Chapman was a noisy city, but it possessed a very different quality of noise to Tate. There were no hums and tintinnabulations for one. Radio signals still worked here, as did the phone lines. In Tate, the cannon were always firing, the coolers always running, generators always thrumming or rumbling from outer wall to the peak of the cooling vents. Tate had been a clockwork city all right, with a thousand bells and whistles, when one machine stopped another was already starting up.

  This deliquescent thunder was a different thing altogether.

  Margaret leant against Chapman’s eastern wall, on its southernmost corner, her fingers brushed against stone that was warm, not frozen, and alive to the movement of the crashing waters below. She glared out at the sea. It shone in the sunlight; she had never seen so much water in all her life. She breathed deep, enjoying the briny challenge of the wind. Here the air felt alive – not stale and cloying or bitter with gasoline and coolant – and the horizon was so distant that the world actually seemed to dip away into endlessness. Gulls cried in the sky above her.

  This is what she had lost. This is what had been stolen from her.

  It had been an easy task to evade the Verger, if he’d even been hunting them in the first place. Two streets from the wall and he was gone, and afterwards their pace had become more leisurely, as though this were just a simple morning’s walk along the wall.

  Mounted against battlements next to her was an ice cannon, a much inferior design to her parents’ and poorly constructed. The welding was sloppy, the mounting plate already cracked in places. She examined it sadly, for all that it was not like the cannon of Tate; it reminded her of her home. Her eyes blurred with tears.

  This cannon and its two-dozen siblings lined up along the wall would do little to stop what was coming, like the ocean’s waves the Roil was relentless and would not be denied.

  She considered what she had seen yesterday. The resources of the Roil must be immense if it could build such a massive army and heat sinks in just the few days since she had left the Interface.

  An intelligence was guiding it and the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that it was her mother.

  She had always been the logistics specialist, the one who could manage Tate as a whole.

  “Mother,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

  “It’s building isn’t it?” David said, standing by her side eyes fixed on the Roil.

  So you’re talking to me again, she thought.

  “At least it looks as though Cadell has swayed the Council a little,” she said. “Something has obviously been put into effect. Look at the defences. Have you ever seen so many guards on the Southern Wall? And I’ve counted seven new cannon.”

  “I still don’t know why people stay here. It’s crazy,” David said.

  Margaret pointed back over the city. “This is their home. No one wants to leave their homes, their lives, people just don’t uproot that easily. That explains everything, the Festival, even the queues to get into the city. The North of Shale has always been about Mirrlees and Chapman and, to a lesser extent, Hardacre, even I know that. And
while all three places survive they can imagine nothing is really wrong, and from what Cadell has told me your government has encouraged that. But soon it will be much harder. Soon and much, much too late.”

  Margaret looked about her. As she saw it, it was already too late.

  David glanced at his watch. “They’re about to launch the Festival. We have to get back. We have stayed here too long as it is.”

  Margaret nodded, though she stared a little longer at the sea and the docks where seagulls massed in crying squalls around ships just in from the morning’s catch. From what she had heard it was a dangerous job, though the Roil did not extend too far from the coast, the areas of the sea over which it stretched seemed just as transformed as the land. And on those edges storms whipped up with a ferocity unseen on the land.

  Increasingly ships set out and never came back. Discounting those that had chosen to flee north, there were still so many unreturned. The last few months had been dire indeed. However, the fisher folk were not unfamiliar with tragedy. The sea was both cruel and kind to those who made a living from it. People still had to put food on the table, world’s end nigh or not.

  A cry rang out along the wall, and then sirens started their baleful lament.

  “David,” she said, but he was already staring south at the horror rising there.

  The Roil moved on the city, no slow and steady advance but a billowing rush. And out of it streamed, faster still, a swirling screaming mass of Flutes and Endym.

  Of course, Margaret was not the only one who saw the Roil’s approach. All along the wall, bells rang out and ice cannon whined, charging up. I could be home, she thought. Maybe this time I don’t run.

  And then, from the centre of the city, came a wild trumpeting and cheering. Ten thousand coloured balloons shot up into the sky. The Festival of Float had begun.

  “Festival and war,” Margaret said yanking her guns free of their holsters. “The Roil has developed a wonderful sense of timing.” A cold certainty gripped her, she sighted along her pistols at the monstrous dark. “What do you say, David. Are you ready to die?”

  CHAPMAN

  DISTANCE FROM ROIL NEGLIBLE

  David gripped her arm. “You can’t stay and fight. We’ve got to get to the Roslyn Dawn,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do here but be swallowed by the dark.”

  Margaret’s gaze switched from him to Roil and back, and David was surprised by the sadness in her face, the battle being fought there. Finally, she slammed her guns back into their holsters.

  The cannon stopped their whining and began booming out into the curtain and the air. Roilings shrieked and the ground shook, but whether the latter was from the cannonade or the Roil, David could not tell.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Now.”

  Soldiers crashed past them, their faces fixed as they ran towards the Southern Wall. They numbered in their thousands, all armed with ice guns. Behind them followed dozens of horse-drawn tanks, the letters lN stamped on their sides. Liquid Nitrogen. The air rang out to the sounds of ferocious industry, yet David saw no point in it.

  Too little and too late.

  The question was not whether this force could halt the Roil, but if they could slow it at all.

  David wished them well. He felt as though he was deserting them, but he was not trained to fight. He had to get to Hardacre and he had no doubt that if he and Margaret lingered too long they would be left behind.

  Then he saw Mr Tope, and Mr Tope saw him.

  Chapter 46

  The Festival of Float; four hundred years of tradition, celebrating the cessation of hostilities between the metropolises of the ground and the city of the sky, and the beginning of a period of growth that had extended until the reappearance of the Roil. Some say that this growth itself was the progenitor of the Roil. Certainly there was an increase in production of carbon and methane gasses, and records do suggest a steady upturn in mean temperature over this period. But the data is uncertain.

  Why hold a festival in the dying days of a city?

  Why not? Consider this question rephrased. Why hold a festival featuring enough aircraft and Aerokin to evacuate a city entire, just as it faces its direst threat?

  Deighton Histories

  CHAPMAN FIELD OF FLIGHT

  ONE MILE FROM THE ROIL EDGE

  The Festival was over before it had even begun. The musicians lowered their instruments, gazing at each other uncertainly. The air stank of smoke and powder, and in the distance something crashed and shook the earth.

  Even as the multicoloured balloons rose, all sense of merriment was dead. Shadows streaked through the air, hissing and caterwauling, and pieces of balloon rained down upon the crowd, and much worse things: Hideous Garment Flutes.

  Even that was not enough for the crowd that filled the Field of Flight. They looked to each other questioningly, doubtfully. As though it had never crossed their minds that such a thing could happen on such a day. But it had, and the truth fell upon them with claw and maw.

  And then, all across the field, the captains called and their crews came out.

  “Into the ships,” Cadell yelled as he ran through the field towards the Roslyn Dawn. “There’s time yet for flight. Into the ships, if you want to live.”

  The Roil burned within him like a hot lance. Terrible pressures built in his temple and the ring on his finger tightened and cooled, his hand throbbing in time with it.

  Finally, the people stirred. Musicians jumped from their stages and the Drift folk started herding those nearby into their ships. Once the crowd started to get the idea the herding stopped and the pushing and pulling began.

  There’s not enough, Cadell thought. Not nearly enough ships and Aerokin, but more than enough people for a riot.

  He reached the Dawn, where Kara waited gripping one of Margaret’s rifles. “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Wasting my time,” he said, then looked around. “Where are the others?”

  Kara shrugged.

  “I don’t know, was half asleep when they left. I’ve been working on the Roslyn Dawn’s wounds, the bio-engines weren’t running as well as I liked.”

  Cadell cursed.

  “Tell her to prep her engines then, and they had better be working now,” Cadell growled, his face twisting savagely with rage and fear. “Idiots, the pair of them, if they do not come soon they’re on their own. We’ve no time, absolutely no time.”

  CHAPMAN

  ROIL EDGE

  The shock of recognition in Mr Tope’s face was no doubt mirrored in his own. Tope flashed a grin at him, then shouted back along the wall.

  David tugged at Margaret’s hand, she pulled away. “Stop doing that.”

  “Verger,” he said. “Coming along the wall. He’s seen us.”

  “Where?” Margaret said, then groaned. “Him again! Don’t we have enough trouble?”

  David glared at her, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. A little Carnival now would do just the trick.

  “In Tate we had no truck with Vergers, it was an antiquated and less than venerable tradition, and to hear what Stade did, mixing Cuttle and human blood. It’s monstrous.”

  “I’ve no argument with you, but can we walk and talk? We can’t go the way we’ve come.”

  The Verger drew closer, shoving soldiers out of his way. Men glared at him, affronted, until they realised what he was, then they pulled away, suddenly conscious of the knife in their midst.

  Margaret signalled for David to stop and glanced around her.

  “There,” she said, pointing at a nearby wire stretched taut from the wall down to the ground. She pulled the belt from her waist, and wrapped one end around her wrist.

  “Hold on,” she said, and when David hesitated she grabbed him to her.

  “What are you talking about?” David demanded. “What do you mean hold on?”

  “My, you’re bloody skin and bones aren’t you,” she breathed into his ear. “Just shut up and don’
t let go.”

  David struggled in her warm grip. Her breath crashed over his face. She smelt of cloves and something else. Roses, David thought, she smells of roses. How odd to focus on that scent right now.

  But that is what he did, which was, perhaps, a wise decision because Margaret stepped off the edge of the wall and into the air, taking David with her. They slid down the wire, the belt burning as it went, almost before David realised that was what Margaret had intended.

  He was still trying to protest when they hit the ground, and the impact drove the wind out of him. Why did people insist on throwing him off things?

  Margaret rolled to a crouch, standing slowly and buckling her belt back around her waist. She stretched her arms.

  “Lucky you’re rather slim for a boy,” she said.

  David reddened and was about to protest, when something gripped his ankle and squeezed.

  David looked down, a scream choked in his mouth. It was a hand, sprung up from the ground, black bone showing through etiolated leathery flesh. He kicked out and the hand flew away, trailing what looked like ash but was, perhaps, dry old blood, or even clumps of Witmoths.

  “Roiling,” he said, quietly, his voice pitched a little too high. He wiped at where the hand had grabbed him, then yelped and jumped when another one tried to do the same thing. “They’re coming up through the ground.”

  Margaret nodded and tossed him a rifle, she unsheathed one of her swords, its edges gleamed and steamed.

  “The charge is low,” she said. “Make every shot count. Oh, and suck on this.”

  She threw a small slab of something cold at him. He slid it into his mouth.

  “It’s called Chill, it will lower your temperature a little. Don’t know if it will make much difference, but...”