“Rik, Rik,” Holly said. “Who, pray tell, is Rik?”
“You don’t know?” Rimes gave her a surprised look. “Rik Greivous?”
“The filmmaker?” Holly exclaimed. “Excuse me, no. My husband was friends with Rik Greivous? I’m sure he would’ve told me that.” She glared at Barton, and for someone so big he managed a great feat of shrinking into the bed. “Ludicrous. You’re telling me this boys’ adventuring club included one of the great film auteurs of our time?”
“I’m sorry,” Barton said.
“Who’s Rik Greivous?” Grace asked.
Pax wasn’t sure who Greivous was either, but recalled what Barton had told her before: “He disappeared?”
“Mysteriously!” Holly said. “He was a genius loner, famously avoided social contact, but my husband somehow got to be friends with him? Possibly the most interesting detail of your life and you kept it from me?”
Her voice was rising, so Pax tried to intervene: “I’d say the more interesting detail was getting drugged up to fight monsters.”
“He kept that from me, too!”
“What choice did I have!” Barton answered loudly. It was only getting worse. “It wasn’t a damned public meeting group, we needed to keep our work quiet!”
“Oh, your work now, is it. Your secret career!”
“Besides,” Barton growled, with the sense that this next barb was going to be particularly fierce, “you met him.”
Holly froze and Pax cringed. This same scene had been played out a thousand times in her youth. Sarcastic sniping leading to defensive shouts, to screams and the eventual slamming of doors. An occasional smashed plate. People who spent too much time together to know that was the problem.
Holly stared daggers at Barton until he explained.
“Grace’s third birthday. You shook hands. He left a gift. You spent most of the day bitching with Fiona Antwerp that I hadn’t trimmed the hedge.”
She put a hand to her mouth. “That shady young man?”
“And I would’ve brought him round again, but he disappeared,” Barton said, his voice wavering with upset. “He had his own projects, he left us for them. Then he was gone altogether. We were left guessing like everyone else.”
Holly’s mouth was open like she realised her husband wasn’t too happy, either.
Rimes brightly ignored the tension to say, “His house burnt down, you know?”
“You think it was something to do with the Sunken City?” Pax asked.
“Oh no,” Rimes said. “Rik had urges I don’t think most people could understand. Artistic ones, I mean. He gave up on us before he went missing.”
“Months before,” Barton said. “Said he couldn’t do it any more, there was something else up. The general theory is suicide, isn’t it?”
“But they never found...” Holly started, clearly aware of this legend of Rik Greivous, but hesitating as she acknowledged it was personal, now.
The Sunken City had left Pax with her uneasy feeling; perhaps Rik hadn’t been able to live with the memory of its horrors. She said, “Did he touch anything down there?”
“No,” Barton said. “He observed. Recorded things, rather than get his hands dirty.”
“What if the Ministry –”
“It was nothing to do with the Sunken City,” Barton growled, the memory clearly a painful one. Wondering if it was worth coming back to later, Pax let it drop rather than risk angering him. He was sure, for whatever reason, that Rik had followed a different path.
“The videos were really starting to come along,” Rimes said, and flipped a switch. The projector whirred, a flickering bulb lit up the wall and the image stuttered into grainy life. “Rik was trying to combine the cameras with glo when he left...”
She trailed off as the image focused. The camera barely picked out the shapes from the shadows. Pax and Holly shifted closer together and Grace scooted up next to Barton as the outline of a tunnel became apparent, highlighted by a couple of dancing torches.
“There’s no audio,” Rimes whispered, as the whir of the machine and the tick of the spinning reel had already made clear. “We attempted that separately.”
There were two people in the image, big silhouettes in front of the bobbing lights. The image jumped unsteadily, picking out a wall, then the shape of the tunnel again, the two men moving ahead. One of them dropped back and turned towards the camera, his torch lighting his face. His rounded but sturdy physique was unmistakable. Younger Darren Barton smiled awkwardly, for the camera, then continued down the tunnel.
The man in front waved a hand above his head. The cameraman bobbed, hurrying to catch up. The image steadied again with three shapes ahead. Barton and the leader, surely Apothel, panning across a wider space. Beyond them was a third figure, a man bigger than them.
No, not a man.
It was humanoid, but there was something wrong with it. A bump, something extra. As the camera got closer and the focus shifted, Barton and Apothel moved to flank it, spreading their arms. The third figure moved and the bump stretched over its shoulder. An extra limb, rising like a scorpion’s tail.
“What on earth,” Holly uttered.
“A glogockle?” Pax recalled the pictures from Apothel’s Miscellany.
It suddenly lumbered towards Apothel. As all three figures moved rapidly, the image became a mess of blurred shapes.
The camera spun suddenly, and everyone but Barton jumped at the hint of a tooth or claw flashing across. The image spiralled, then stopped, facing a wall lit by the camera’s torch. A shadow danced across the wall then was gone. A moment later, it went black.
The doctor gave a light laugh. “They used to enjoy watching that one.”
“What on earth,” Holly said again.
“What was that?” Grace asked, fascinated.
“Glogockle,” Barton confirmed. “And that’s as good as the footage got.”
Pax shook her head. What were these fools doing? Videoing fights with demons and chuckling over them while swigging beers? “Anything recording the Blue Angel’s messages? Or at least the locations?”
“Nothing useful,” Barton said. “But you might like the chapel. You got that one?”
Rimes nodded, already feeding another reel into the projector.
The image flickered into life again, opening on a wall that appeared to have been clawed by some ferocious animal. As the focus adjusted, the scratch marks became identifiable as writing and crude images, like the cryptic symbols from Apothel’s book. A childish depiction of a minotaur and a savagely scratched lightning bolt. Other nonsensical shapes. The camera dwelt on them briefly before turning away, to Young Barton, sat on a barrel. He gave another sheepish smile, then chugged on a can of beer.
“Called it,” Pax muttered to herself.
Behind Barton, the room stretched far back into deep corners. A circle of light obscured part of the image, a lantern on a distant table. Apothel moved by the other wall, something in his hands. He turned towards the camera and the lantern lit him from one side. He fit the descriptions Pax had heard well enough. Big, bearded, and friendly, even in this poor resolution. He waved, but the camera spun back to Barton.
Barton’s mouth moved, responding to something Greivous was saying. From Barton’s tight shoulders, the cameraman was teasing him.
“His idea of fun,” Barton mumbled. “Bothered me more than Apothel.”
“I can’t even,” Holly said, and Pax saw the concern in her face, watching her husband in this unfamiliar terrain. “This whole other life...”
“Where was this?” Pax asked.
“The Ripton Chapel,” Barton said. “It was like a meeting hall. Apothel had a few places like that across Ordshaw. Squats. That was one of his favourites; he laid out a lot of ideas on those walls. Can’t make them out here, can you?”
Pax squinted at it, as if that would help. “Is it still there?”
“I haven’t been back in nine years. The only place I revisited was the loft in
Hanton, where...” His eyes rested on Grace for a moment, as he thought better of saying it. Where Apothel was killed. “I checked other places, looking for Rufaizu, but half of them had been boarded up by the Ministry within a week. The chapel included.”
In the video, Barton crushed his can in one fist before tossing it towards the camera. The image jolted as Greivous ducked, then it started shaking up and down. The cameraman was laughing.
Clueless fools. They’d blundered into something big enough to affect the whole city, and then sat around boozing and making home videos, while the doctor conducted brazenly unscientific experiments. No wonder the Blue Angel had taken advantage of them.
Pax said, “How’d it work, then? You waited for a signal from the Blue Angel?”
“No,” Barton said. “We usually only went to those blue screens for glo. The Angel gave a street name, where we looked for a hiding spot. If we found it on our own, fine. If not, the Invisible Proclaimer came.”
“The prancing horse playing an invisible trumpet?” Holly asked.
“The horse beat the drum,” Barton corrected. “The trumpet –” He stopped as Holly intensified her glare. “Essentially, yeah.”
“A horse and trumpet that appears and disappears out of thin air.”
“So did the glo. The weird thing –”
“Not the horse with a drum or an invisible rider? That wasn’t the weird thing?”
Barton’s eyes hardened, but he didn’t bite. “There were times that the glo appeared in spots we had already checked, even within minutes of returning to them.”
“An invisible delivery man, too,” Pax said.
“Something like that.”
“Or a teleporter,” Grace mused, a hand tucked thoughtfully under her chin.
The room went quiet, because there was no way to reject that suggestion without admitting there was no better one. Pax sensed they were missing something. She watched the projection as the camera twisted again, running over the writing on the wall. True enough, it was illegible in this low-lit, shaky recording. But Apothel had preserved ideas in that room, as he had in his book. What else was there?
“The Ripton Chapel isn’t far from here,” Barton said, watching Pax’s face. “Relatively, at least. There was a blue screen near there, the laundromat one. I could try contacting the Blue Angel. It might not suspect me. At the least, it might give us more glo.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Holly intervened. “You’re not going anywhere, you’re practically disabled. And you’ve all been preaching about this Ministry – they’ll spot any one of us with facial recognition traffic cameras or something, won’t they?”
“Actually,” the doctor ventured, “I’ve – well, my understanding is that they have the technology. Certainly. But. Well. They can’t monitor everything.”
“What’s that mean?” Barton frowned. “We know what they’re capable of. Remember the Misty Cellar? A barman there heard noises behind the walls. Apothel found him when tracking a slather ghast and barely convinced him to share what he’d heard. The guy told no one else, he was scared he was going mad. The Ministry caught up to him all the same. Disappeared. No more Misty Cellar.”
“Ah, yes.” Rimes smiled at the curiously dark memory. “Though they may have been tracking the slather ghast, don’t you think? Remember, they needed me because they don’t have much staff. I have – I don’t believe they can monitor everything.”
“They certainly weren’t out in force last night,” Pax considered, recalling the two inept agents who had joined Casaria in his search for her.
“Well, that’s just typical, isn’t it?” Holly turned this on Barton. “You always just assume, don’t you? We could be on a train to Manchester – we could be talking to –”
“No we bloody couldn’t,” Barton snapped. “Even if they can’t watch the whole city, you think they won’t have eyes on major transport links? They’ll have the police looking out for us, at the least.”
“Maybe...” Rimes started, but stopped.
“Just say it, Mandy,” Barton grumbled.
“They may be distracted. With the news this morning. You – you heard them, visiting, yes? They were more interested in the prael – the minotaur – than you. Now, I have my scooter – the scarf would hide your face.”
“Look at him!” Holly cried. “He’s not going on a bloody scooter!”
That silenced the doctor, but Pax’s mind was ticking. This cramped room was only going to get tenser, and she needed answers. She needed a sign that the answers were out there, at least. And if there was no way to get to Rufaizu, yet, then maybe she could bridge the gap between them with what his dead father knew. She sensed she might regret this, but what the hell, it hardly seemed safe here. “There might be a blue screen at that laundromat. And Apothel’s place, if it’s still there, might be unguarded. That’s good enough for me. I’ll go.”
8
After Rolarn didn’t answer her shouts, Letty started rummaging through his stash, searching for ammunition and food. His hiding place, in a human security safe, was a nice two-tier setup, with a lounge and living area on the shelf and stacks of weapons, supplies and treasures on the bottom. The safe sat behind the counter of an absurdly large human shop, long since closed down and abandoned, itself covering three empty floors; a vast open space that Letty had cautiously flown through, expecting all manner of traps. A couple of electric lanterns flooded the safe in yellow light, wastefully left on while Rolarn was out, but there was no other sign of life. If he was off raiding, it might be hours before he got back, days even.
Letty wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed or not at Rolarn’s absence. She had little interest in connecting with a Fae activist; they tended to believe the war for control of the FTC had never ended, and that glory there – the overthrow of Valoria – would revive the fight with the humans. As they couldn’t get near the FTC, it typically resulted in violent infighting; Rolarn had forcibly taken this hideout in Broadplain from a gang called Vagnam’s Reds on the justification that it was of historical significance and belonged in the hands of a patriot. Really it was just bigger than the shoebox he’d been living out of. But it was an insanely big space for a single angry Fae.
Letty had half-filled a bag with dried meat and bullets, and was moving towards the Fae dust, to give her fuel for the journey back to Pax, when a knock made her spin towards the open safe door. Her pistol was drawn, cocked at her hip, but the man had a shotgun on her, two fist-sized barrels, big enough that he held it in both hands. He was rotund, with a round, red-cheeked face and a comb-over of thin, straight hair that barely concealed his baldness. With his grease-stained beige suit and ruddy face, he looked like a failing shop manager who didn’t understand smiles.
“You’ve put on weight, Rolarn,” Letty said.
Ignoring the comment, he said, “This goes off, it takes the room with it.”
“So lower it,” Letty said. “I come in peace.”
“Doesn’t look like it.” Rolarn’s stare was unsettlingly steady, his beady eyes dark.
“You heard what I’ve been through this weekend? I figured you’d sympathise.”
“I heard,” Rolarn said levelly. “And I got warned you might come here. Seemed unlikely, since I also heard you got eaten by a human.”
“Clearly, no damn human ate me.” She straightened up. “Not that they didn’t try.”
“I’m glad,” he said, flatly. He nodded to her pistol and she nodded back. Together, they slowly lowered their guns. “There’s been all sorts of talk over you and your crew.”
“That so?” Letty said. “Does that talk involve how the Ministry of Fucking Energy stole the Dispenser?”
“No. The talk is that the Ministry took something inconsequential, which you and your boys were trying to flog.”
“Sack of fucking lies. I recovered it – a marvel of Fae engineering, our best hope of taking back the Sunken City. Apparently Governor Val doesn’t want to take it back, though, sitt
ing pretty as she is. I figured that’d be something you understood.”
Rolarn kept staring with his dead eyes. “You lost a wing. How did that happen?”
Letty scoffed, holstering her gun and turning back to his lair. The Fae dust was out in the open, a waist-high sack leaning against a stack of human coins. “I lost my wing trying to get help with the weapon. Trying to take back the place that’s rightfully ours.” Letty picked up a bag and started filling it without asking. It was only polite to share with a Fae in need. Rolarn didn’t react. Letty tied off the bag and shoved the takings into her backpack, then said, “My own boys came gunning for me last night. Val wants me dead. She wants the Dispenser buried.”
“Val the Peacemaker?” Rolarn replied, with the clearest hint of sarcasm his dull tone allowed. “Promiser of everything the Fae can dream of?”
“As long as everything is contained in the fake city she’s built,” Letty snarled. “Turns out she wants to preserve the FTC forever.”
“So your eyes are finally open.”
Letty curled her nose at him. Activists like Rolarn had a range of personal reasons to hate Val, but most of them stemmed from resentment that she was in charge and they, or their bloody-minded mates, weren’t. Still, she and Rolarn had common ground now. “How about you pass me a phone while you explain where we stand, then.”
Rolarn hesitated, then gave a slight nod. He ambled to one side and rifled through a pile of small electronics, saying, “All this talk, it suggests you were working with the humans.” He held up a phone but kept it back. “Did you give them our tech yourself?”
“Sound like something I’d do?” Letty said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “I spent nine years looking for that fucking weapon.” She snatched the phone. Rolarn let her.
“You’re not co-operating with the Ministry,” he said, “but not eaten, either. My guess would be you’re friendly with someone useful, but lost our technology on account of incompetence.”
“Try backstabbing and betrayal,” Letty snapped.
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 37
