City Of Ruin

by Mark Charan Newton

  ‘Sorry we inconvenienced you . . .’ Randur offered bitterly. ‘Spot of bother with the business of trying not to die—’

  ‘You talk too much, Earthlander.’

  ‘There’s no point in trying to silence him,’ Eir muttered.

  Randur grunted. ‘Look, very nice of you to help us out, uh, Artemisia? But . . . any chance of an explanation?’

  ‘I do the questioning around here, Randur Estevu – if that is still the name you go by.’

  ‘How do you know my name? And how did you know they were from the Jamur family?’ He nodded towards the sisters.

  ‘I often wonder,’ Artemisia replied, ‘how it is you people know so little. I employ a network of sub-agents and lower-rank emissaries from your world – even from Villjamur – although they know not who they ultimately serve.’ She pointed them to the spot in the clearing where she had first appeared, and turned her face skyward.

  Randur stepped alongside, and followed her line of sight. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  Suddenly something flickered into being up there, a hulking dark shape immediately beneath the clouds. The three humans were soon staring, dumbstruck. How could anything so big just hover there without falling?

  Eir finally broke the silence, as she spluttered, ‘What . . . what is that?’

  ‘Exmachina,’ Artemisia growled. ‘A home, of sorts, for the present moment.’

  Eir turned to Randur, to see if he knew what Artemisia was talking about, then shrugged. Rika seemed to be completely in awe of this female giant, which was strange, since she was seldom disconcerted by anything.

  Randur studied further the freakish object in the sky. It had the appearance of a small moon, assuming an inverse colour to the sky beyond. As it approached it took on the form of some fat longship, incomprehensibly large, extending widely across the sky. A floating island. Its presence was intimidating and he was becoming genuinely frightened.

  Still some distance away, something unravelled down from it to eventually reach the ground by Artemisia’s feet. Then another rope followed.

  Suddenly the big woman twisted round: there’d been a disturbance in the distance that provoked her. Her head became perfectly still, and she held a big hand out to request silence. Faintly, somewhere, Randur thought he could hear the sound of a pipe. He reached down to pick up a sabre discarded in the recent combat.

  Artemisia frowned at him. ‘That won’t do you much good.’

  ‘You anticipating much of a threat?’

  ‘One could say that, Randur Estevu. There have been certain forces tracking me ever since I’ve stepped into this blasted world. How they have managed it, I do not know.’

  What is she on about, stepping into this world? Randur wondered, sure he could now see something flicker between a couple of tree trunks. He tensed. ‘What’s after you?’

  ‘Satyr,’ Artemisia whispered. ‘Do not move for your own safety.’ She edged over to the rim of the clearing. There, in the shadows, stood a bearded man that appeared to have animal legs. Two horns extruded from his skull, and his angular features displayed signs of laughter.

  Artemisia unsheathed one of those massive blades and stepped after it, but in an instant it had escaped back through the foliage, bursting into the deep forest beyond.

  She returned to the hanging rope, and there was a sudden urgency to her manner. ‘A minor inconvenience, but it worries me. It isn’t after you, it is after me, so we must evacuate immediately. You must hold on to this.’ She indicated the rope. ‘The fibre will adhere to your skin, so you will not slip off.’

  ‘What, you don’t expect us to go up there, do you? Wind’s strong enough to blow your arse off, I bet. Surely there’s another way of getting to . . . wherever the hell you want us to go? Can’t you suggest something else?’

  Artemisia glared at him, eyes burning. Her body was still smeared with the blood of a hundred men. ‘Why?’ she grunted. ‘Do you even have a choice?’

  ‘Good point, that.’ Randur shrugged.

  There wasn’t much else going for them, really. They’d narrowly escaped being carted back to Villjamur: a depressing enough fact. Now this killer had fallen from the skies only to slap soldiers about the forest clearing, and now she had established herself as the one giving the orders. Eir nestled alongside Randur as he took hold of the rope, his heart thumping. When he gripped it, there was a faint glow as his skin touched the fibres, some weird adhesive power making itself evident. She followed his lead, locking her hands in place, and the rope also writhed to fix a loop around their feet. I don’t want to do this . . . we’ve no idea what’s up there.

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’ he whispered.

  Eir regarded him coolly. ‘We don’t have to automatically fear everything we don’t understand.’

  ‘Empress, you shall—’

  ‘Come with you, yes, of course.’ Rika stepped forward with compliance, took hold of the second rope, and placed an arm around Artemisia’s back, hooking her hand on to the base of her armour.

  Eir gave Randur a glance to say, What’s that all about?

  ‘Perhaps she reckons she’s some sort of goddess,’ he whispered, not entirely sure that wasn’t the case. The only thing she’d ever shown much interest in was her periodic Jorsalir mutterings. It was ironic how she’d always moan – Oh can’t you function without all this killing? – and here she was, happily cuddling up to a seven-foot death machine.

  Within seconds they were being hauled upwards.

  Drifting far above the tree canopy, they watched it grow smaller, the clearing in the forest below them chequered white with snow and red with blood. Winds assaulted them, as the full panorama was revealed.

  The latest bank of clouds had rolled away, heading across the island to the south, so a rare glimpse of hazy sunlight covered the forested landscape, showing them peaks and ridges, and towering plateaus streaked on their flanks with run-off.

  Vertigo soon kicked in, and Randur felt queasy, yet his fingers would not budge from the rope. They were in fact utterly safe, but such reassurance only seemed to work on an intellectual level. Eir handled their ascent calmly, which was annoying. ‘Are you OK?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Of course. What a wonderful view!’ she replied. ‘Your island is a beautiful place, Randur.’

  Behind him, Artemisia and Rika swung in close embrace, the blood from the warrior-woman now staining Rika’s outer garments. The material flapped in the breeze, along with Rika’s hair, but she herself remained still, her gaze focusing on Artemisia.

  Something shot down from above, a streak of darkness so fast he hardly spotted it. Artemisia called out something in an incomprehensible, guttural language. Whatever it was darted up again, and began to fly around them in wide circles. It had a small furry body, with a paler face and veinous webbed wings.

  ‘Eir, is that . . . erm, a monkey with wings?’

  After a moment’s observation she replied, ‘I’ve only ever seen one in a book . . . a monkey that is. But it certainly looks like one.’

  The creature swooped up behind them, then away again, so that Randur could not get a proper look. And then he was distracted by the sight immediately overhead. ‘Oh hell, never mind it, Eir.’

  They were heading for the same hulking shape they’d seen from the ground: an immense structure, on whose underside clustered dozens more of the flying creatures. It was a ship of some kind, rather like a floating island thousands of paces wide, and of similar length. Its underside was jagged, with hunks of wood and metal jutting out, and the closer they got, the more he thought he could see through certain sections, to a light glowing within. Randur gaped in awe, as their ropes carried them directly towards the centre of the massive ship.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Doctor Voland was delighted with quality of the latest harvest. Soldiers provided good meat, and with so many flooding the city, another few of them dead would make little difference.

  Nanzi had done him proud, and deserved to rest for a bit long
er. It was her day off, and he would cook for her when she awoke. The routine of working at the Inquisition by day and her evenings stalking the street tired her out. Sometimes she would stay asleep for a whole day.

  So, that meant four bodies from two nights ago, and a further couple from last night – and he had not even finished with the previous batch yet. It was a grand number to work on, and would fetch a pretty price on the streets.

  There was meat enough here to feed dozens and dozens of families, and in hard times, even the most obscure cuts would be consumed. Here, in the dim lighting of his abattoir, he had one body laid out on a workbench while the other three were suspended from thick hooks pierced through their necks. Skin was easier to peel off once the body had been rapidly boiled. It came off just like that and, once the obvious externals had been removed, the human body looked much like that of any other creature. Voland begun removing some of the internal organs, storing them on a metal tray to one side.

  He supposed, if he was honest with himself, it did feel a little odd to be doing this to another human, but he had long since felt estranged from his kind. A loner, someone on the outside of society. He simply could not relate much to other people, and for the last decade he had barely conversed with anyone other than tradesmen he did business with. He felt disillusioned with the world, and no more so than here in Villiren. Money seemed to dictate everything, vices flourishing at the expense of any dignity. You didn’t need to look hard to find the people who suffered as a consequence, the homeless, the prostitutes, those performing the most menial jobs in appalling conditions, such as the miners in the surrounding pits. In Villiren, people seemed to barely exist at all, and they were all of them slaves to the Empire. It was just those shiny little metal coins that appeased them for the time being, enough to put some food in their mouths, beer in their guts, to stop them complaining too vehemently. And they were kept so far distant from the decision-making that affected them all.

  No, he could not stand much in this world, and could not relate to Jamur life – Urtican life, he reminded himself. He himself was as much a victim in all of this, being reduced to the status of some cog in the Empire’s system, churning out these cuts of meat to help others survive. People had to make a living, didn’t they? It was work that few others would have the stomach for. Besides, it kept the citizens from running out of food, kept prices from rising too high for the poor to survive. It was honourable work and benefited the world at large.

  The Phonoi sprang to life from nowhere. ‘Good morning, doctor!’ they whispered urgently as they formed striating mists.

  ‘Can we help you any more?’ one cooed.

  ‘Shall we unhook the next one?’

  ‘Are you feeling well, doctor?’

  Voland smiled at the little devils. ‘Grand, thanks. I’m still working on this one, but you could bring the next alongside if you’d like.’

  ‘Anything for you, doctor!’ The mists turned more cohesive, ghosting upwards into the murky light. A body seemed to slide upwards and unhook itself of its own accord, and the Phonoi drifted down to lay it carefully across the other side of the workbench. They suffused out of focus again, and left him to his business.

  *

  Malum was bleary-eyed but determined to focus on the day ahead. Loitering in a snowy side street next to the old slaughterhouse, the collar on his surtout turned up, he was delivering the monthly payment due to that lonely old freak, Doctor Voland. He wanted to give the personal touch, since there was always another gang looking to get in on the distribution – only last month he’d had to kneecap a man and a woman.

  He was shocked to see members of a rival gang, the Lord Cromis, waiting outside the back of the abattoir. This isn’t their patch, the cunts. They had come all the way from Jackknife Gata – a district that was a corpse, the other end of town. So why the fuck were they here? Voland was a good contract to have, and the Bloods consistently made a large profit with very little effort. Some said garuda, some even said hybrid-rumel, but where Voland was really getting the meat from, Malum didn’t know, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that the eccentric man delivered on time, at a reasonable price. In this city, people with such qualities were miraculous.

  JC and Duka were already waiting for him. Both men were well insulated in jumpers and gloves, and attached to their hips were their sheathed messer blades.

  ‘Thought you was bringing the money,’ JC slurred from under his mask, shifting from foot to foot to generate a little warmth.

  Malum patted his surtout, under which was concealed a small bag of Sota coins. ‘See the fuckers from the Cromis have shown their faces.’

  ‘They’ve been there a while.’ Duka wiped his exposed face as if to make himself more alert. He was clearly expecting a fight.

  There were three of them, from what he could see, skulking under the red-brick entrance to an abandoned store. No: there were three men huddled in the shadow, and another, a prodigious garuda, dressed in smart clothing, was leaning against the outside wall, wings tucked neatly behind it. Flecks of snow skimmed across the smouldering tip of its roll-up.

  Malum made sure his mask was secured properly. ‘We should just ignore them,’ he announced, but as soon as he spoke the four of them sauntered towards him. Led by the bird-figure, there was a pugnacious purpose to their stride.

  The garuda hand-signed something to a skinhead on one side of it, and the man spoke on its behalf. ‘We want a slice of this. We know what you’re up to, where you’re getting the meat from. The madam says we want in.’

  ‘What?’ Malum hadn’t expected the garuda to be female. ‘You want to join us?’

  The garuda squawked something unintelligible and straightened her coat. Malum noticed that it was made from paduasoy, and perfectly tailored to accommodate her wings. On closer inspection, those appendages appeared to be disabled in some way, looking ragged and ineffectual. The garuda shook hand signals to her henchmen.

  The skinhead said: ‘We request to relieve you of this contract.’

  Malum was filling with rage. ‘You dare to challenge me?’ he shouted. ‘Me! You have any idea who the fuck I am?’

  ‘Just the leader of a few men,’ the skinhead grunted, ‘is all you are.’

  Malum shook his knife loose from his sleeve, and JC and Duka followed suit, unsheathing their blades and standing to either side, making three against four. In these precious seconds he weighed things up in glances, in inferred movements.

  JC and Duka moved forward into a crouch, blades ready in one hand. The garuda loitered behind the opposing group, with barely an expression on its face. Malum slipped a smaller knife from his boot and whipped it over JC’s shoulder at the skinhead, while he wasn’t looking. It struck the man under his collarbone.

  While he was clutching it, stunned, JC rushed forward, but the wounded man moved in reflexively and stabbed him in the shoulder. Ignoring the pain, JC moved in, parried then sliced the man’s throat. Blood spurted across the snow as the man slumped, gasping, on his side.

  The rest was done with professionalism: a stand-off and then a slow circling. Malum knew that as your opposition moved, you had to be quicker, to pre-empt it. The men from the Cromis gang appeared very young, and inexperienced.

  JC recovered. He and Duka finished off their opponents in less than a minute, working similar moves: arms pulled forward, punches to the torso, then one to the neck, a blade in the back of the knee to ensure the opponent wouldn’t walk again. JC and Duka left the others alive, but barely able to speak.

  The reactions of the Lord Cromis men were inert and inexact. There were breathless moments when Malum thought the garuda herself would intervene, but she remained languid, and he waited for her to move.

  The garuda shook off her coat, cast it aside, stood up tall and spread her broken wings. Her brown plumage was speckled with white. Malum called his men aside, as was etiquette, and she descended upon him like he was her personal prey.

  As his fangs grew prominent, he
r talons ripped left then right across his surtout, golden coins falling softly on to the snow. Rage surged, something within him taking control. She leaped onto him, her wings juddering. He rolled aside then kicked her away. JC made to throw his knife, but Malum waved him off impatiently; he always had to prove his value. As she lay on her side, he stuck a boot into her back where the wings joined. Her painful screech rattled the chilly air.

  She lashed out with an arm, but he was too quick, lurched backwards, forwards and managed to bite into her. Another deafening screech and she shook her bitten arm free. Then, as she regained her footing, he slammed his boot into the side of her knee, buckling her askew on a broken leg. She lay on her back as he ripped his messer through her chest, blood pooling on the snow. Her thick beak opened, but there was only silence.

  She was still alive and still in pain, as he bit into her wounds and ripped chunks of offal from her chest cavity, unable to control the monster within him. The garuda shuddered and spasmed, then stilled. Finally, he stopped. A thick trail of gore dripped down his mouth as the intensity of the moment ebbed away.

  He climbed off her, collected his scattered coins and began to wipe the remains of the leader of the Lord Cromis gang from his face. As was the tribal way, he grabbed a lump of flesh from inside her and shook it at the two surviving men, who huddled against the wall, terrified. ‘See this, you fucks!’ Malum shouted. ‘Don’t interfere with us, understand?’ He flung the remnants at them and marched away to rejoin JC and Duka, who were both busy nursing their injuries.

  Malum ordered, ‘Give me a hand with this. And JC – sort out your fucking drinking. You’re slow. You’ll not always have me to cover your back.’

  The Bloods wrapped up the carcass in her own clothing. JC dragged it through the thick snow to the back door of the abattoir. Malum knocked several times.

  Voland answered eventually with a startled expression. ‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ he said, noting the bird-woman.

  Malum nodded in greeting. ‘Here’s another body. You want it?’