Roil

by Trent Jamieson

  “He’s not going to wake up,” Margaret said, pacing the cabin like a caged beast.

  Kara Jade, after a few choice words concerning Margaret’s piloting skills, kept her eyes and her concentration on the controls.

  Somewhere along the way, David fell asleep to nightmares of iron ships launching fire and screaming gulls being torn out of the air by hordes of Hideous Garment Flutes.

  In the middle of the night someone shook him awake. David blinked, grateful to have escaped such dreams.

  Kara smiled almost shyly at him.

  “What’s wrong?” He rubbed at his eyes.

  “Quick,” she said, pulling him up. “Quick or you’ll miss it.”

  “What are you doing? Are we under attack?” He let her drag him to a currently translucent section of the gondola.

  “Look,” she said, jabbing a thumb down at a wide break in the clouds.

  Lights were scattered thickly on the ground beneath, a winding band of brilliance at least three miles wide, though from up here it looked scarcely broader than his wrist.

  “What is it?” he asked. Then his voice caught in his throat: all that beautiful light.

  At last he managed: “It’s Mirrlees, it’s home.”

  Kara nodded. “Much prettier from on high, isn’t it? They say they modelled it on the stars in the sky, the spiralling arms of galaxies. Doesn’t look much like stars to me, but what do I know? I thought you might want a glimpse of your city.”

  Homesickness swelled inside him, everything he had forced deep burst free. Tears ran down his face.

  “Here,” Kara said, gently, handing him a bottle. “Have a belt of that.”

  “What is it?” David asked.

  “Drift rum, the good stuff. It’s our only export.”

  He took a swig from the bottle and gasped as it burned its way down his throat. Belt was right!

  “You export that?” He managed at last.

  Kara gave him a look of mild amusement. “It grows on you, trust me.”

  David nodded; his eyes still fixed on the city beneath them. Half a dozen Aerokin circled far below – military class, troop carriers – but even they could not spoil the vision.

  Every time you see something you love, and you think it’s for the last time, it becomes perfect, painfully and utterly flawless. He stared and stared at that glittering perfection, at the crowded streets and the white scar of the stopbanks, and the great bulk of Downing Bridge until the clouds closed over again and there was no hint of the city ever having existed at all.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Kara looked almost embarrassed.

  “Seriously, nothing to thank me for,” she said staring down at her boots. “Just part of the service and all that. Now I better get back out there and check the ropes.”

  “Be careful,” David said, staring at the side of her head, the hair there still sticky with blood.

  Kara Jade’s left hand went up to the wound, almost touching it. She swung the hand away dismissively. “Take more than that to stop me looking after my Dawn.”

  She slipped on a mask and went out into the night.

  Margaret lay on one of the sleeping benches; legs curled up, watching David and Kara Jade, a slither of jealousy playing in her belly. She thought about her own city and the last time she had seen it. Images surged back of Chapman and its swift collapse. She had no desire to view another city from above unless it was Tate, whole and unaffected by the Roil.

  Sometimes when Margaret slept she dreamt she was flying, hurtling over Tate, suspended on the wire way, wheels whistling, the wind racing around her. She would wake to a foreign place and a sadness that would almost destroy her: until the rage returned.

  Not tonight.

  She had laid her guns and swords out on the bed before her. Two of the pistols were faulty and she doubted they would fire again. The chemical combiners were low in another pair. She couldn’t see when she might have the opportunity to recharge them or repair the others; Kara Jade’s tools had proven inadequate to the task. Her rifle too was running a low charge. David was right; she had been reckless with her ammunition in Chapman.

  It struck her then that weaponry was all she had left of Tate, as though that was all that Tate had ever been.

  Such bitter tools had ensured her survival, even as they had failed to shield her from pain. When the guns were exhausted, shells and chemicals spent, only memories would remain. However, the Roil had transformed those as well. She could not close her eyes without seeing fire, the body of the Sweeper shattered and ruined on the ground outside her parents’ house, the fourth cannon exploding, its blazing demise the penultimate breath of a wounded city.

  The Roil’s true horror was not in the monsters that populated it (they were just beasts after all) but what the Roil had done to Tate; what she dreaded it had done to her parents.

  As terrible as it was, she wished her mother and father dead, for if they were not....

  She looked over at David.

  Make this a good memory, David. Hold on to it as tightly as you can. They may be the last good memories you ever have.

  “David,” Cadell’s voice was weak, yet urgent. “Wake up.”

  David blinked. How long had the Old Man been calling him?

  He was beginning to doubt he would get any rest that night. He toyed with the idea of pretending to be asleep. Such a selfish thought shocked him; after all the Old Man had saved all their lives.

  David rolled from the bunk, looked over at Margaret. She was asleep and Kara Jade seemed lost in conversation with the Dawn. He stumbled to Cadell’s bunk.

  Cadell was even worse than before. His right eye had shut completely and raised black veins ran down the right side of his face. A yellow fluid wept from his left eye leaving a crust down Cadell’s cheek. He was dying, David could tell that, he had seen enough of death to recognise it.

  Dying or not, Cadell managed a smile, lifted a hand and motioned for David to come closer.

  “I want you to have this.” Cadell pressed the Ring of Engineers into David’s palm. “Just for a little while. I’ll take it back when I can. You know their real name don’t you?”

  David nodded. “Orbis Ingenium.”

  Cadell patted David’s hand. “Yes, the ring ingenious, it’s a map and a key, but it’s also a machine. Its workings are very intricate – universes of clockwork folded in on themselves. Look after it for me.”

  David tried to give the Orbis back. He didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve it. “I can’t take the ring. It’s yours. You know what to do with it. Without you it’s only a fancy piece of jewellery.”

  “And now it’s yours.” Cadell said, gently but forcefully. “When you reach Hardacre, Buchan and Whig will help you. Indeed they may well be happier that it is you not me that they will need. I think there’s a chance the Roil can be stopped. I’ve wielded the cold for a long time and always feared it. Perhaps, once you’re done, there will be an end to that fear.” Cadell coughed. He wiped at his lips with a handkerchief. It came back thick with blood. He looked at it a little startled. “Well, I never, even the minnows would have a hard time repairing that. I’m sorry, I’m talking in circles, I’m so terribly tired, David. And I have no wish to argue with you. Look after it for me. Put it on. Please indulge an Old Man.”

  “Why me?” David asked.

  “I’d like to say that it was your destiny, that you, the son of a Master Engineer, were born to this. But the universe doesn’t work that way. The universe doesn’t care what happens. But I do, we do, that’s what makes us special and terrible all at once. You’ve seen the Roil, you know it to your core. And you’re all I’ve got. You have to do this if Shale is to have any hope at all. There’s no one else. My brothers in war would stop you were they not in their cages. They would strip the flesh from your bones.” He lifted himself up with a groan. “And there is another reason,” his voice lowered, “I don’t trust Margaret and you shouldn’t either. She fled her city, and she m
ight flee this, too. You’re the best choice, the only choice, and she can help you without a doubt, but rely on her only as much as necessary, and no more. Now, please, put on the ring.”

  David, hesitated a moment more, then slid the ring over the middle finger of his left hand. The ring stopped at his knuckle, then the metal warmed and loosened and passed over it.

  “Look,” Cadell said. “A perfect fit. Fancy that. It might feel odd for a day or two, the ring lowers your core temperature, the minnows that generate its power do that: can’t have you being susceptible to Witmoths. The change will probably manifest itself as a head cold but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it and the benefits are many. I’ll get to those in a minute.” He lowered himself back onto the bed with the painful slowness of a man only just acquainted with his antiquity. “There is so much to be done. You are heading away from the Roil but there are other enemies, David. I wish I could help you.”

  “But you already have,” David said. “You’ve kept the Carnival at bay. You’ve saved my life over and over again.”

  “I only needed to because of where I had taken you. And, as for the Carnival, just why do you think I kept you supplied with the drug, David?”

  David looked at him uncomprehending. “To spare me the pain of withdrawal?”

  Cadell laughed. “Were it that simple. You’ve suspended your grief with Carnival, you have always kept it at arms length: not just the loss of your father, but that of your mother, too. When you finally pay that price, the cost will be high. I could not have you pay that now. I did not want you to die. I needed you sane, I needed you shielded as much as possible from edged truths that would otherwise cut you.”

  “I’m all right,” David said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “But I have been far too cruel. When the Carnival leaves you, then you will truly understand.”

  “I understand now,” David said.

  “David, right now you only think you do. Though it will come to you, and for that I am really sorry.” Cadell laughed. “Sorry! Everything about me is apology. Carnival’s absence may well be the making of you. That tune you whistled, on the train so long ago. You know it is old?”

  David thought of his childhood, the memories that tune evoked and the pressures of them that the Carnival held in check. “Yes, my mother used to hum it. It’s almost all I can remember of her. I think it was popular when she was child.”

  Cadell shook his head. “It is far older than that. I remember it from my childhood. It is called The Synergist’s Treason and now I understand that treason far better than I ought. It pains me to hear it, and yet I’d like to hear it again.”

  David hummed the tune a while – his head buzzing – and Cadell seemed to relax a little. “Much better. Much much better when it isn’t whistled.” He groaned, and shifted in his bed. “I’m tired,” he whispered. “The sort of weariness only Old Men and rocks can know. Too much time. Too much damn time, and now it’s running out. You’d think that could bring some urgency to the flesh. Perhaps it has.”

  He sat up with a violence unexpected and grabbed David’s wrist. What came afterwards, David regretted for the rest of his life. Cadell flipped David’s arm around and bit down, tearing at the flesh of David’s hand, something slid beneath his skin, something swift and cold. David howled.

  Blood sprayed, as David tore his hand free.

  “David?” Margaret’s voice seemed a long way away. “David?”

  “Sorry, David.” Cadell’s lips were bloody, but there was an awful tenderness in his gaze. “Sorry that I couldn’t take you all the way to Hardacre. And sorry for this final gift, I’ll deserve your hate.”

  David’s eyes rolled up in his head.

  Chapter 51

  It can be said of the wars that followed, none of them would have occurred but for Stade’s plans. The Roil’s growth was certain, but the way it was met, the choices made, could have been very different.

  None are more culpable than Stade. And yet, perhaps things may have been so much worse. Though it is hard to imagine outcomes more dreadful, nor lives lost greater.

  Stade was a villain, but he was a villain of his time. And so history has judged him. After all, it was an age of monsters, a role that Stade embraced with gusto.

  Deighton Histories – Two Hundred Mad Men and Seventy Three Mad Women

  Medicine looked at the iron thing, well what remained of it. He put aside the field glasses, rubbed at his gritty, aching eyes, and called ahead to Agatha and the driver.

  The Grendel slowed to a walking pace as it approached the wreck.

  Agatha signalled to the engineer and the Grendel stopped. She dropped from the train while it was still moving and strode towards the wreckage. Smoke billowed from it, though it was a smoke unlike any Medicine had ever seen. It did not dissipate, but hung low, following the sun.

  “Keep your distance,” Medicine said.

  Early this morning they had heard (and felt) it strike the ground. And now, just a few hours from the Narung Mountains, here it was.

  The vehicle was as large as the Grendel, though designed for flight instead. Medicine for the life of him could not see how it might fly. Yet, obviously it had flown before ending up here. Out of its element it looked ridiculous, some poor joke in shattered metal.

  As Agatha neared the ship, the smoke coiled up, away from the sun towards the woman. Medicine watched its stealthy movement. He shouted at Agatha to get away, that the smoke was shifting towards her, and the woman blanched. She turned on her heel, slipping something into her mouth, and ran from the crater.

  “Stay away from that ship,” she commanded. “And everyone take your Chill.”

  “What is it?” Medicine demanded on her.

  “They’re called Witmoths. I’d been briefed on them a few days before we left. They’re dangerous, mind altering,” she said. “This thing came from the Roil.”

  “Mind altering?” Medicine asked, wondering why he hadn’t been briefed on this as well.

  “Let’s just say it changes one’s allegiances. If this came from the Roil then we can expect more of them. It doesn’t do anything by halves.” She handed him a small lozenge. “This is a kind of prophylactic. It’s horrid but it works.”

  He slipped it into his mouth and grimaced as it stung his teeth. Medicine’s mind returned to the night in the compound, the sound of thunder in the sky. Every time he looked at the iron ship it made him uneasy. Wherever it had come from, Roil city or Mirrlees research station, he was certain that it did not bode well for them. Very little did.

  Such thoughts were quickly forgotten when they came upon a blasted battleground.

  Many thousands of Cuttlefolk corpses lay across the plain. The earth itself was blackened and ruined. An airship, this one of a more familiar design, lay in fragments, its ribs rising out of the earth like the burnt bones of a titan.

  The air was thick with the choking reek of ash and burning Cuttleflesh. The Cuttlefolk had been beaten here and decisively. What kind of weaponry did the Underground possess that could so blithely defeat such an army?

  “Something new.” Agatha mused. “And something powerful. At least we don’t need to warn our colleagues in the mountains about the Cuttlefolk. Let us hope they know we’re coming. I would hate to think of them deciding we were the enemy.”

  She called to her troops to raise all the white flags they could and to lower the train’s guns.

  “Better to look unthreatening,” she said. Medicine agreed with her, though he couldn’t imagine the Grendel being anything else.

  Medicine wasn’t sure what the people of the Underground thought about their fast approaching train, but they did not fire upon it as they crossed those last few miles. Regardless, tension built amongst all those aboard it.

  The Grendel reached the end of the line, stopping at a heavy set of gates before which were signs of further struggle, craters and a pile of Cuttlemen dead, though nothing to rival the destruction to the south. The gates opened slo
wly to admit the train. Ice-cold water washed over them, the train chilled. For the moths, Medicine thought. How long has this been going on?

  The Grendel pulled at last into the Underground, tracks running all the way into the compound, buried in the mountain. And there was the Yawn, waiting on a parallel line. The mystery of the missing train solved, though another mystery had replaced it. Why hadn’t Stade known of its whereabouts?

  They piled off the train and were met by hundreds of armed guards.

  The place is a fortress, Medicine thought. He saw no salvation for humanity here. Just war. Men and women, armed with odd weaponry, lined the walls that bounded the caverns proper. Huge cannon too guarded the wall and two tall structures of dull iron and gleaming glass that looked like crooked necked lanterns.

  Perhaps to light the underground at night, he thought.

  Medicine walked warily at the fore with Agatha.

  A man met them at the platform. “Welcome,” he said. “My name is Grappel, we were expecting you.” He gestured at the Grendel. “Though not for some days, and certainly not aboard this. You’ve proven yourself... resourceful.”

  Agatha frowned. “I do not know you,” she said. “Where is Sam?”

  “There has been some restructuring,” Grappel said. “After we restored contact with Mirrlees, Sam Asquin was moved to another area. It seemed he was a little slow in reacting to the problems we have been having in completing work on time.” Grappel smiled. “The addition of your thousands will aid us considerably.”

  “We were going to warn you of the Cuttlefolk,” Agatha said. “But it looks as though you didn’t need it.”

  Grappel laughed. “We dealt with them quite efficiently, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You did,” Medicine said. “But how?”

  “New technology. While Mirrlees rots, we have been nothing but industrious here. The cannon above are coolant launchers, but those lanterns are prototypes, they launch nothing more than light, expressed as heat energy, though in an extremely concentrated form. I doubt it would do much against the Roil in the long term: the spores would find the heat quite invigorating, but the Cuttlefolk, they’re a different prospect altogether.”