Roil

by Trent Jamieson

  The river froze.

  Great rough pillars of ice swung into the sky, striking the ships as they came over the hill.

  Their iron hulls darkened, then crumbled, and the ships corkscrewed, spewing smoke. The three ships became three fireballs. Shards of shrapnel flew towards him, and the river lifted like a great hand, and slapped them down as though they were nothing more irritating than flies.

  David was struck, across the forearm, a deep gash.

  He watched his blood spill. How much blood could he lose? The wound began to close and he marvelled at that.

  You must be so proud. The Engine said, and David wasn’t sure who he was talking to.

  I’m alive, Margaret and Kara are alive, that is all.

  Disapproval, ponderous and deep crashed down upon him. And the door is opened. You’ve lessons to learn, the sort that drown you. The sort that snatch you from yourself. I do not think you will like it.

  The Engine pulled away from David. The water warmed, marginally, and the ice melted, releasing him. David staggered to the shore, water steaming from his body. He dropped to the icy ground, grass shattering with the impact. What am I? What am I?

  He drew his knees to his chest, teeth chattering, body shaking, and wept.

  “What was that? What was that?” Kara Jade demanded.

  Margaret wanted to slap her. “We need to get to David.”

  “I know, and we will. Give me time. Give the Dawn time.”

  The Roslyn Dawn descended, arcing back towards the hill. The three ships (her mother’s ships) little more than craters now, blazed beneath her, and near the fires and the river lay David.

  Margaret still wasn’t sure what she had seen, but she knew what it meant.

  Cadell had passed his power onto David. Without him, she had no way of entering Tearwin Meet. David must go to the Engine, whether he wanted to or not. She looked down at him, curled in a ball, body convulsing, and felt a moment of such pity that she almost lifted her rifle and shot him in the head.

  The moment passed, of course.

  “Sorry, David,” she whispered. She raised her voice. “Hurry, Kara, he’s freezing down there.”

  MIRRLEES-ON-WEEP

  298 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL EDGE

  Stade opened the door, holding his key before him, wary despite its protection. The thing within the room lifted its head and regarded him with eyes full of hunger. “He’s given his curse to a boy,” it said. “A boy holds the world in his drug-addled palm.”

  “I know,” Stade said, and he did. But two hours before the Old Men had begun screaming, demanding release. He had not denied them that. After all, the city was being evacuated. The end of days was upon them all. Not even the Old Men and their curse could add to that chaos.

  “You’re the last. The rest are out in the city, reinvigorating themselves.”

  The Old Man snarled. “Do not be so delicate. They are feeding. It’s come to this. Cadell’s betrayed us, his freedom was enough bitterness to us, but this, this is well beyond his purview.”

  “You know what must be done.”

  The Old Man nodded. “We will have our carnage, and there will be blood. We have held our hungers, held the curse of the Engine, in check for an age.” Ropes of saliva spilled from its lips. Stade could see the Old Man’s heart racing in the raw cage of its chest. He clenched his hand so tightly around the key that it cut him: he hardly felt it.

  “Just kill the boy.”

  The Old Man raised an eyebrow. “Do not think to instruct me. The boy will be put down, because he is an aberration. We cannot let one such as him live.” Then it stood, its face inches from his own, and Stade hadn’t even seen it move from the room to him. Stade’s spine spasmed painfully, he nearly soiled himself, but he did not turn aside from its gaze. “Be thankful you possess the key, Mr Stade. Or I would devour you now.”

  It raced from the basement, Stade watched after it. Only when it was gone did he allow himself to shake. He coughed, dropped to his knees and tears spilled down his face.

  Unmanned. I am unmanned, what a mess I’ve made of it all.

  He’d let them all go – the heart and mind of the city. It was only right that they should devour Mirrlees, he stared a while at the eight empty rooms and listened to the silence.

  David, he thought. When they find you, if you’re not drugged out of your mind, you’ll wish you’d never run from my Vergers. You’ll curse Cadell and your father’s name with your dying breath. Please forgive me.

  And, feeling old and cruel and deadly, because he was all those things, he returned to his office and worked at the one thing he knew. The logistics involved in saving the population of a city. It had to be worth the cost.

  When the knock came for him to board his airship, he wasn’t ready. It, like everything else these days, had arrived far sooner than anticipated. He gathered what few notebooks remained and walked with his Vergers to the rooftop dock.

  Captain Jones waited for him by the ramp to the gondola. He was obviously unable to hide his irritation, his face red, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, perhaps so he couldn’t strike Stade in the mouth. The Mayor liked him at once.

  “Everything’s aboard, sir,” the captain said.

  “Everything except me.” He grinned darkly. “You’re Drift-born aren’t you, Captain Jones?”

  “Drift-born and raised, sir.” He couldn’t hide the scowl.

  “Good.”

  “If you’re ready, I’d like to take her up.” The captain gestured to the south, clenching his teeth. “Bad wind’s blowing, gales and the like, and storms too. It doesn’t do to be tethered to what’s coming.”

  We’re all tethered to what is coming, Stade thought. He smiled and walked aboard his ship.

  Chapter 53

  No one knows of the exact human cost of that sudden retreat from Mirrlees, nor of those “persuaded” to stay behind. But it was high.

  Still the city had been lost since the day the rain began to fall. A dead thing lumbering with no realization that its heart no longer beat, that it was instead tumbling towards the burial ground.

  Carver and Davies – Cities of the Fallen

  MIRRLEES-ON-WEEP

  173 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

  He rapped his gnarled knuckles on the wooden door.

  Once, and again.

  Bells tolled in the distance. Another levee had fallen, crashing down a few miles away, and people were dying. Death crowded the air and wherever he sensed death there were usually folk like him. He saw what they saw, and the Roil made sense of it for him, placed it in context. Mirrlees drowned, the streets transformed with every downpour becoming labyrinth and quagmire combined.

  Finding his home had been a torturous affair, everything all muddied up the way it was. His thoughts too, had become labyrinthine, and far too crowded, it was hard to focus on the smaller things – the personal.

  It was hard, but not impossible.

  It just took time.

  “Where are they?” He whispered to himself. “Where’s my wife? My children?”

  He was reaching to knock on the door again when it opened, bright light pouring out, stinging his eyes, forcing him back a step. He had been a long time in the dark.

  “What do you want?” A harsh voice demanded and then his wife cried out, dropping the iron poker she had gripped so tightly, recognising him at last. “Theodore! Come in, my darling. Out of the rain,” she said, and made to throw her arms around him.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Not until we’re inside.”

  He peered up and down the street.

  Not far away, a cat batted at a dead thing floating in a puddle. A Verger whistled in the distance and a carriage clattered by, smoke from the driver’s pipe staining the wet air for a moment like a passing dream.

  “I thought you lost,” she said leading him inside. All he could see was her mouth; he did so wish to kiss her again.

  “I was, yes I was... for a little while. But I found you.” He
frowned. “I found you at last.”

  “And the Council? I heard rumours...”

  He grinned at her, and it must have been something of his old grin, for she returned it, her shoulders relaxing. He smelt liquor on her lips and that disturbed him.

  “Do not worry about the Council. They’re not worth worrying about anymore.” He looked beyond her down the hall. “Where are the children?”

  “In bed,” she said. “It’s late.”

  “Wake them,” he said. “I want to see and speak with you all.”

  His wife looked at him oddly, her fingers lifted to her mouth as though to stall a question. She hurried off to do as he asked.

  It was cold in here; he clapped his hands to bring a little heat to them. When that failed, he ran them over a nearby lamp. His skin crackled, but it did the trick.

  Outside, the cursed rain fell heavier, but it would not fall forever. That was something of which he was certain, it had already stopped twice that day for longer than an hour at a time. He could wait. He had grown to be quite a patient man.

  “Father. Father.” His children cried, running around him, circling his legs and laughing. Times had been hard since he was last here. The world had grown rough around the edges; spoiled when it should be fine.

  “Come closer, my children, my lovely wife,” he said. “I’ve something to give you.”

  Closer they came, hesitation in their eyes, but they did not stop. Nor did he, and there was no uncertainty on his part. The corruption of doubt had long ago burnt away.

  He held them to him. Held his wife and children tight, as his body released its dark cargo. None of them could pull away: the urgency of his gift too complete.

  “There, there,” the stationmaster crooned above their screams. “There, there. We’re a family again.”

  Chapter 54

  With Mirrlees all but gone, the balance tipped, and what little remained of the world quaked with the terror of it. Everything was urgency, the radical constructions of a Mayor without a city, armies in flight, figuratively and literally, the Old Men wandering, moving North (see Mcdonald and Clader’s The Path of Blood). And always on the horizon, seen or unseen, the Roil grew, driven on by the Dreaming Cities at its heart.

  And what did the cities dream? That was the question unspoken.

  The answer was a threat as deep and as dark as the Roil itself.

  Adsett – The Crest of the Wave: Last Days of a Perilous Age.

  HARDACRE

  980 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

  David woke from another nightmare to limbs leaden and frigid as though he were dead. The dream was fading but his heart still pounded with the memory, and the terror that he might just fall into it again. He’d been doing that, falling from nightmare to nightmare, for a very long time.

  Cadell had been there, and seven other men, chasing him, howling out hungers as bottomless as any Quarg Hound’s.

  He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and realised that he was no longer on the Roslyn Dawn.

  We survived then, he thought.

  David realised he was alone, and didn’t know how to feel about that. A petulant spark burned within him: didn’t he deserve a bedside vigil? Was he of that little consequence?

  The bed in which he lay was solid and motionless, the room unfamiliar, and did not smell like wet dog.

  So, unless something else had gone terribly wrong, he was in Hardacre in the pub known as the Habitual Fool. He breathed deep. Yes, he could detect the faintest odour of beer. And somewhere, below his room, people spoke and smoked. He pulled the sheet from him and looked at his arm. His wound had healed, though at its heart was a small, dark slither of ice. He brushed a finger against it. He yelped and yanked his hand away. Touching it had felt… well, it had felt wrong.

  David slid his legs out over the bed, stood up and stretched. His muscles responded, but there was no heat in them. This cold should have had him shaking, and yet the shivers were gone from him.

  Cold now, all I ever will be is cold.

  A robe lay stretched across his bed and he pulled it on, but not before observing how skinny he was. Any thinner and he’d see his heart beating against his ribs. Wasting away. He was ravenous. He looked over at his shoes, hurried to them, and unlatched the heel. His powdered Carnival remained.

  He looked down at it intently, but it had been the habit of addiction, not the addiction itself, that called him to it. He realised that he didn’t crave the Carnival, didn’t even want it, beyond the slightest nagging thought that he really should finish it off anyway, otherwise it would be such a waste.

  He felt a deep disapproval at the back of his mind, but he ignored it. The Carnival was safe. He was safe. That was enough for now, surely.

  He walked to the bedroom window. Looked down onto an unfamiliar street, looked up at an unfamiliar sky. Yes, Hardacre. Someone was stumbling out of the pub below.

  David left his room. There was noise downstairs and he followed the sound to its source.

  Margaret and Buchan stood, heads almost together, talking. Margaret’s rime blades were sheathed to her belt, Buchan had one hand resting on the pearl handle of a gun. Margaret didn’t look happy, but she never looked happy. Mr Whig sat away from them, by a dining table, eating a sandwich, though he seemed to be watching them very closely. There were more sandwiches on a plate on the table. Food had never looked so good.

  “I’m starving,” David said.

  Every head in the room turned towards him. And every eye regarded him peculiarly. Buchan didn’t move his hand from his gun. Did they know what he was? He didn’t know what he was.

  “David? You’re awake!” Mr Whig said, and the moment of disquiet passed.

  Margaret ran to him. “Lean on me,” she said. “You look like death warmed up.”

  “Don’t feel warmed up,” David said. Margaret actually shivered at his touch. He pulled away from her, pretending not to notice. What am I?

  Mr Whig handed him a sandwich.

  “We made it then?” David said, wolfing down first one sandwich then another, and he was still hungry. “Kara fulfilled her promise.”

  Margaret nodded. “Kara had to return to Drift. The Mothers of the Sky recalled her the day after we arrived. And, let me tell you, she wasn’t happy.”

  Buchan cleared his throat. “I can assure you, David, we are doing everything we can to negotiate her quick return. We need her ship.”

  “It’s not a ship,” David said, and that almost got a smirk from Margaret. “When did she go?”

  “It’s been four days,” Margaret said. “How much do you remember?”

  “Not much. No, I remember the iron ships. I... not much.”

  “It was chaotic after… well, after you did whatever it was you did. We landed in the ice and the snow, and even then it was melting. You started screaming. When we finally calmed you down you closed your eyes and stayed that way. I wasn’t sure if you were going to wake again.”

  “And the iron ships?”

  “You destroyed them all. I’ve never seen anything like it. The endothermic forces involved–”

  “It was the Engine,” David said, as though that was enough of an explanation. He looked out of the lower-floor window at the tree-lined streets and the blue sky, as much to marvel at it as to avoid Margaret’s enquiring stare. He grabbed some more sandwiches, devoured them in moments. “Have you gotten in touch with my Aunt Veronica?” He could do with some money, surely she would be able to offer him some help financially.

  Buchan shook his head. “Veronica’s not here, David. I’ve spoken to the councillors, but they’re being very tight lipped about it. There’s activity in the east, some sort of secret installation in the mountains. She’s part of it, but that’s all they can tell me.”

  David nodded his head, how like his family to be involved. The Mildes were always at the heart of the maelstrom.

  Buchan said some other things, but David hardly heard them.

  His thoughts were elsewhere, he cou
ld feel them coming. Their presence came so clearly to mind. Ah, so many things to feel, so much strange knowledge flowering within him, but their approach was the strongest.

  They were a long way away yet, but every moment bought them closer. When he closed his eyes he could see a long dark road, trees covered with moss. He could feel seven cold hungers, seven creatures intent on hunting him down and tearing him to shreds.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do. He wasn’t some hero from the pulps like Travis the Grave. He’d made it to Hardacre but he knew he couldn’t stay here long. Like the Engine had said, well, like he thought it had said: he’d opened doors. If he wanted to close them, and stop these Old Men, he would have to go to Tearwin Meet.

  The Old Men, all he had known of them until the last few weeks was as nursery rhymes and figures of mystery in Shadow Council tales. Cadell had discussed them in more detail, but it had rarely been specific, as though he was ashamed of his past. Now Cadell was dead.

  Beneath his hunger, he felt the familiar pull of Carnival. It hadn’t taken long to assert itself. Who was there to control it now Cadell was gone?

  David looked over at Margaret. She stared at him curiously, and there was a fierce challenge in that gaze, a silent demand that he give up every secret he possessed. Oh, he had so many of those now! But then again, so did she, starting with those iron ships. He looked away. He didn’t trust her, not really. Cadell’s blood stirred inside his veins, echoing the sentiment.

  And then, a new urgency gripped him: how could he have let it slip his mind?

  He had to deal with the corpse.

  “Where is Cadell? Where have you put him?”

  No one could look him in the eye. Buchan cleared his throat, but it was Margaret who spoke.

  “Oh, David, that’s the worst of it. Cadell’s body is missing.”

  About the author

  Trent Jamieson is an Australian Fantasy writer, and winner of two Aurealis Awards, whose Death Most Definite series is being published by Orbit and is already attracting rave notices.