by C J Timms
‘I’m sorry Titus,’ Gale said. ‘This is my fault. I should have left you in Canute’s tower.’
‘But Gale, the Lighthouse has so much character.’ Titus grinned then winced at the pain. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to, I was raised in a respectful church in Canu’Cairns….but these guys are complete Canutjobs. Gotta follow the code…’ he mumbled.
A faint light had started to shine on Titus’s markings. With a clunk, his nose snapped back into place. His lacerations were slowly coming together.
‘Help me get him up the stairs,’ Gale said to Swan. They took him on their shoulders and lifted the keg on legs that was Titus Mangrove. Hauling him upstairs, they paused at the entrance to his room. Titus’s room was a collection of Rambo posters, Bon Jovi cover art and a mini armoury. They laid Titus on the bed. A book on the nightstand caught Gale’s eye.
A dog eared children's book, well worn, titled ‘The Knight and the Sorcerer’. A knight in shining armour fought a dark looking wizard on the cover. They left Titus in his bed and returned to the common room.
Swan punched the wall. ‘We’ve got to smash that little shit Cullen. He needs to pay for this.’
‘Should we go to the Chancellor?’ Gale asked.
‘They won’t believe us.’ Yip said. ‘Our word against the elites of House Laurels or the pious monks of Canute. Hell, they may even expel us if it goes bad. Noone likes the snitch.’
Gale touched ‘Lifting Great Weight’ in his pocket. He took it out and spun it on the table, then opened it up to the current chapter. He had underlined the following ‘The most effective workout recruits multiple muscle groups. Recruit as many allies as you can.’
Gale looked up at Swan and Yip. ‘We’re the smallest pack on campus. The Canutejobs wouldn’t have dared tried this on House Solvent or even House Baxter. House Laurels has plenty more meatheads that Alisdair can convince to come after us. We can’t be grouped up all the time. They’ll pick us off us off one by one.’
Swan took a seat at the table. ‘I can start throwing up some basic defences for this place, magical wards, projectile weapons, maybe an anti-grav net.’ She drummed her fingers on the table.
‘I’d like to see what you can come up with Swan, but we need to do more than defend. We can’t touch Alisdair and House Laurels, he’s the bloody police chief’s son. He probably wants us to have a swing. But maybe Cullen…’ Gale said. He looked down at Ironchurch’s self-help textbook again and flicked back a few chapters. ‘Functional training is important, but glamour muscle plays its own role.’ Gale said.
‘What?’ Swan asked
‘We need to show that if someone messes with us, they will be annihilated,’ Gale said.
‘Our best defence is a rabid offence. We need to send a message.’ Yip said.
‘Yes, let's give them a show’.
Gale stared up at the flagpole. ‘Do you think we went too far?’
Yip cocked his head and sighted down his rangefinder. ‘No, the height is precisely high enough to be seen by the maximal number of students.’
‘I think he was talking about what we did to Cullen.’ Swan said.
‘Oh.’ Yip said, ‘Well, the flowers were certainly hard to get. I suppose you didn’t have to give him a wedgie though Swan.’
Swan stared upwards, arms crossed. ‘You saw Titus.’
Yip nodded, agreeing with her for once. ‘That I did.’
A growing crowd of first years had congregated in the central courtyard. One of the first year Canuteian monks took a step forward, and Swan summoned the Slagblade. The monk stepped backwards into the crowd.
‘Where’d you get the giant Lighthouse flag though?’ Swan asked.
‘Found it in some old crates down in the basement. Crates were labelled ‘Addison’.’
‘MASTER KNOTT!’ said Professor Giltynan. Giltynan stormed over, his jowls wobbled, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Get your arse to my office now. The rest of you get back to class, and for Reef’s sake someone get Cullen down from there.’
Giltynan threw him in a locked room and left him to stew. Gale grinned, it had been worth it.
Later that night, the door to his locked room opened. Giltynan’s head jerked to the side for Gale to follow. He led Gale down the corridor to an office that was spartan, a desk and chairs, a single shelf with two daggers mounted on it. A painting hung behind the desk showing a blazing bonfire, another to the side showed a tidal wave. Two torches, guttering low, lit the bare grey room. It was not empty. Two policemen held a third man with a hood over his head and bound.
Giltynan took a seat and gestured for Gale to sit. Gale kept his eyes on the prisoner and slid into his chair.
‘You must be thirsty, have a drink.’ Professor Giltynan said and slid a glass across the table. Gale took the cup but didn’t drink. Giltynan just stared at him across steepled fingers.
Gilytnan placed a box on the table in between them. The box was blank white. A faint shimmer came from the edges of the box, light being sucked into it. Gale felt his Deep Script retreat within him. Retreat? When the frak had that ever happened.
‘Do you know what this is Gale?’ Giltynan asked.
Gale shook his head. ‘A recording device?’
Giltynan chuckled and touched the device, a trace of blue danced across the blank white. ‘Well…anyway, you seem to have caused quite a stir in your last class.’
‘Oh I see, was the teacher able to testify to that was he?’ Gale said.
Professor Giltynan frowned at him. ‘No, Mr Perkins seems to have been indisposed at the time of the incident. Said he was out at the bathroom. Then he asked for a bit of time off. No-one in the class seemed inclined to say much either?’ Giltynan cocked an eyebrow.
‘Well gee Professor I can’t see how I’d be of much help then.’ Gale said earnestly.
Professor Giltynan just held his stare for a minute. Gale’s eyes flicked to the police and the bound man, then downwards to the box. A hint of blue danced across an otherwise blank white surface again. Like a mist…or fog.
‘Sometimes Master Knott I miss the good old days.’ Giltynan gestured to the painting behind him. In the painting, a black-robed figure lit a pyre. A creature that was half man, half fathomless, was tied to a cross above the flames. It was titled ‘The Inquisition’.
‘We rooted out heretics and spies. The Inquisition hunted down the witches and burnt them at the stake. Now we are reduced to…paperwork.’
Gale was distracted trying to see the details on Giltynan’s tie. Today they were tiny smiley faces.
‘The Inquisition put so many Deep users on trial. Perhaps that is why you are so rare today. We gave you all sorts of names, trenchwalkers, deepborn, bloodthinners. Whatever the name, they all burned just fine.
You are the first Deep student to attend the University in decades. You understand that, don’t you? You are the first chance your type has had in a long time to demonstrate you aren’t all traitors, puppets of Corrosyv. Keep this up, and you’ll be out on your arse.’
Gale continued his earnest mask, Giltynan was no different than Greg at Bondi Big Burgers. The box flickered again. Gale’s mask cracked a little.
‘Well gee whiz Professor I sure will do my darnedest.’
Giltynan gaze bored into Gale. Gale stared back with his best dumb grin. Giltynan was sensing the Vibe, he realised. Could he tell if someone was lying? Or was that what that box was for? Gale’s eyes flicked back to the box, and it seemed to pull at him, at his inner core.
Giltynan gestured to the police who removed the hood from the prisoner and ungagged the man. He was a Nordic-looking bloke, barely older than Gale with blond hair and blue eyes.
‘Please, don't do this.’ The prisoner said.
Giltynan held up a hand, silencing him. ‘You see Gale, Ake here didn’t do his darndest. He came from a small town in Norway and found his way to the University there. Earth applicants are a bit more common up that way. It seems Ake failed his first-year exams. Not competent i
n controlling his Script.
So they sent him to me.’
Ake shuddered. Giltynan picked up the white box, and blue fog rolled off it.
‘You see Gale, I have a particular talent, a handy talent in my old line of work. A talent for rewriting memory.’
Giltynan got up from the desk and slowly walked around it. He stopped halfway between Gale and Ake, weighing the box in his hand. Then he turned towards Ake. ‘All of the universities send their Earth dropouts to see me. Because I’m the best, there is…or maybe I’m the only one who can stomach the work. To do what is needed for the greater good.’
Giltynan held out the box towards Ake and stepped forwards. The case lowered towards Ake’s head. In a last fit, Ake thrashed in his chair knocking one of the police down. He grappled with the second policeman. Giltynan slammed the box on Ake’s head.
Ake screamed, Script rolled off him and was sucked into the nexus of the box. Blue Penumbra rolled around him. Giltynan’s eyes went bright blue. Ake’s eyes went bright blue. Ake's muscles went rigid, and then the eyes went grey. Ake was silent.
Ake looked faded, drained of life, his eyes glazed. Giltynan jerked his head to the policemen, and they pulled a stumbling Ake away.
Giltynan walked over to Gale, flipping the box in his hand. He laid it down just to the right of Gale’s arm. Gale didn’t flinch. Giltynan walked back round to his chair and took a seat.
‘We call it grafting. New memories to replace the old and I get to choose what memories. See Ake pissed me off, so his backstory for the last year is living on the streets, of suffering, of beatings. The trauma you see helps the mind want to forget. People want to remember the good times, but we all try to forget the bad.
Now I have questions for you, and I want you to think really hard about the answer.’ Giltynan pulled a poster from his jacket and laid it on the table. A police sketching of a red armoured knight stared back at Gale, its helmet showing a fanged faceplate.
‘Someone is attacking people in Reefside, leaving them near dead, their blood drained. The victims are afflicted with some sort of blood curse. It can’t be healed by magic. They don’t die, they just cling to life by their fingernails. I fought in the war Gale and even there, in the depths of Addison's madness, I didn’t see corruption like this.
This person is using an old legend of the Deep to mask their identity. A story about a knight born in the red tides of a naval battle. A knight brought forth from the crashing crimson foam of the waves. A creature of insatiable hunger, a creature that lives for war, a beast that stalks humanity like prey.
The Blughada, the Blood Knight.’
The sketching stared out at Gale. The artist had captured the knight's hunger. Giltynan watched him like a hawk.
‘The police haven’t been able to track them, they have a few eye witness sketches, but they’re useless. They do, however, keep finding the same thing at each attack, Deep Script.
I looked into when you first arrived in Ionhome Gale, elementary to track using Ironchurch’s pay sheets. It’s curious. These attacks started right after you came.’
Should have got paid cash in hand, Gale thought. Gale looked down at the Blood Knight’s image. He honestly had no idea about who it might be so Giltynan could watch his Vibe all day. The only person he knew that possessed Deep magic was Blush, and she had saved his life from a pack of fathomless. Not that that would matter to Giltynan. No way he was letting Giltynan know about her Deep abilities. He needed her to graduate, to become a fracturesmith, to track down the truth about his family. To avoid being grafted. Blush was the only Deep user he’d met in Ionhome.
Well, apart from Ash.
Ash was his oldest friend though, if he couldn’t trust her who could he trust. Gale picked his words carefully as Giltynan stared at him in the Vibe.
‘There’s no one I suspect Professor. I would have gone after the reward for rent money otherwise.’
Giltynan looked very long and hard at Gale.
‘Did you know Master Knott that it is said that all of the world's oceans were once freshwater and that the coming of the fathomless contaminated them bringing forth salt into the world. Only Canute kept inland waters safe from their contamination.’
He turned and stood, looking at an old painting. In the painting, Canute led an army on a beach against legions of horrors that emerged from the ocean. The title below read ‘The battle of Westminster’.
‘The fathomless were forced back into the depths by Canute but their spies, their spies still walked among us, taking our form. Here’s the truth Gale, the Inquisition knows that the dregs of humanity would work with the Deep to bring the Worldflood. The Inquisition is here to stop man’s downfall, prevent our temptation.
And we are losing.’
‘If I might argue a point Professor,’ Gale said, ‘Peace starts with talking.’
‘There is no bargaining with the Deep. It is a raw force of destruction. You might as well negotiate with an avalanche. You are many things Gale Knott, but you are not a champion, you are not a diplomat, not a warrior and you do not belong here. Just accept….what, you are not.’
Gale looked straight at Giltynan, moved his arm over the white box, took the glass of water and drank it. In a mighty act of rebellion, he smacked his lips. Then Gale stood to leave. He passed the painting and imprinted a hydrolens copy. Gale passed the doorway, and Giltynan fired one final parting shot
‘As punishment for attacking another student, you will be sent to the Salt mines for a day.’
‘But there isn’t any evidence!’ Gale said, turning back.
‘Evidence is a luxury for those who aren’t at war,’ Giltynan said. ‘Be grateful it's not two. Few students survive two days in the Salt mines.
Oh and Gale, if they expel you…I’ll graft your memories myself.’ Giltynan held up the box and fog rolled off it, snaking towards him.
Gale turned and walked down the hallway, all the way back to the lighthouse. He walked up to his bedroom, locked the door.
Then he collapsed shuddering onto his bed. The broken body of the prisoner imprinted in his brain.
Gale - The salt mines
Salt is the source of all impurity. Mankind’s ancestors flopped, flailed and flumped their way out of the ocean onto the land to escape corruption. Not all of them succeeded.
The Lost book of King Canute.
Giltynan battered down their doors at the crack of dawn and kicked them down the stairs. Gale hadn't even had the chance to have his morning piss, and he was going to have to hold it, truly torture. Urms saw them off with an anaemic shrug of his shoulders. Swan was barely awake, Yip was fingering a crossbow, and Titus was drinking an ‘Up and Go’ milkshake.
Giltynan frogmarched them to a rickety airship the size of a shuttle bus. The four of them crammed in with the next shift for the Salt-mine. A worn-down crush of humanity, perennial shift workers, prisoners and Scaled. The smell punched you in the nose, an assault on the senses. Even in the crush, Giltynan maintained a space around him.
The airship rattled upwards over the island-turtle and drifted over the city of Ionhome. The golden palm that rose from the centre of the city shone in the early morning light. They went past Reefside and the Ironchurch. Past the slums of Tideline, shacks pushing up from the ocean into the city walls like a cresting timber wave. The morning air cut by the sounds of the Membranous Cathedral, the pipes ringing out a dirge, the hymn of salt water pumped into fresh. The cathedral was the city’s beating heart, filtering liver, kidneys and pissing bladder all in one.
‘You know they say the black cells are beneath it.’ Giltynan said. ‘Deep beneath the Cathedral, they keep the most dangerous criminals, the false texts, the old magics. Guarded by Charlemagne’s personal army, they call it the Heretic’s Rest.’
Gale didn’t respond. He kept thinking of the grafting he’d seen done last night. He’d underestimated Giltynan, and he needed to retake his measure. Speaking only gave away information, listening gained gr
ound.
‘The Inquisition used to chain the worst Deep Users there. The ones that didn’t deserve a quick pyre. Supposedly shut down but Charlemagne is a hard man, a real bastard.’ Giltynan said.
‘Yeah but he still holds the record for sculling a yard glass of beer at Westminster University,’ said one of the miners.
‘Yes, yes.’ Giltynan waved him off. ‘Back in my day I would have thrown you in the black cells, but lucky you, you just get the Salt Mines.’
The shuttle flew along the coast of Ionhome. They passed the Ultimate Frisbee stadium jutting out in the harbour. The ship weaved through the construction crews of the Titans, high above the beacon statues. Finally the reefwall itself rose in front of them in shining coral.
The ship drove straight through the light.
Gale felt something pull deep inside him, like undergoing a rapid descent in an aeroplane. An absence, an emptiness and into that emptiness something began to pour. He could taste the sea breeze, hear the crash of the waves.
He breathed deep and calmed himself.
Outside the reefwall the ship made a shaky descent towards a white rock pillar which thrust from the sea. The white rock lanced into the sky like a cancerous growth, metastasised from elsewhere in the multiverse. It rose as tall as the Golden Palm in Ionhome, higher than the university certainly. A massive open-cut mine descended into the rock. Slabs of scale, truck-sized, rose in a blooming pattern around the entrance. The pit went down into darkness. Groups of men hauled slabs of white and grey ore from the depths of the mine.
The airship clanked to a halt on a rusted steel platform. The platform shuddered under the weight as the crowd of men shuffled off the ship. Their movements were the well-practised meander of the shift worker, delaying the start of work till the last minute. No work without pay.
Giltynan shoved them out the door, onto the platform with the relentless sun, no shade in sight. The miners siphoned themselves off from the main crowd into their teams, distilling themselves into layer and type and profession.