Whether he helped them or not wasn’t even the issue, was it? Pax couldn’t leave him in whatever hellish situation she’d put him in. And that aside, getting him back was a way forward, which was better than brooding. “If I rescue him from gangsters, he’ll jump back on Team Pax.”
“And you know what they say about ifs and buts and ducks and sluts.”
Pax frowned. “No. What do they say?”
Letty gave her an unappreciative look. “It amounts to don’t be a fucking idiot.”
“Okay. One” – Pax held up a finger – “that sounds like a saying I need to know in full. Two” – another finger – “he’s already screwed the Ministry once, so there’s hope.” As long as this didn’t get her killed. “Bad things have been stacking up today, Letty. If I can do something good by the day’s out, I have to do it. And whoever these Fae are, they’re with us, aren’t they? That feels like a win to me. I need a damn win.”
“Whoever they are?” Letty gave a humourless laugh. “Lightgate should’ve been executed decades ago. Would’ve been, if anyone had the balls to go after her.”
Pax was familiar with other well-spoken, deadly people, but it was particularly hard to take the threat of that tiny, finely-dressed woman seriously. And it was clear they weren’t running from these apparently dangerous Fae. “But you’re still mates, right?”
“She doesn’t have mates.” That sounded familiar.
“Associates?”
Letty finally slowed down. “Look, she’ll do what she says – and she’s definitely someone you want on your side – but she’s wired funny. Last I saw her must’ve been six years ago. She made fleeting visits into Ordshaw after she was cast out. We helped her clear out a human shed, in Hanton. A good little shack for a hideout. Me and my boys, and her, we scared off some human kids, got them convinced it was haunted, so they’d sooner kiss a clown than go back in there. She paid us off with a heap of dust. Then she set fire to the fucking shed.”
“O-kay…” Pax drew out the word. “I’ll admit that’s troubling.”
“That’s nothing. That’s the shit she gets up to during peacetime. The things she did during the coup – the things she was responsible for. Landed on both sides of the conflict, day to day. Lot of Fae dead, Pax. And you’ve promised to fuck up the Ministry for her? You’d better deliver.”
“Well,” Pax said, “we’re not going to fuck them up. We’re going to get Rufaizu back, and she can have the Dispenser, and they can raise questions about your leader without anyone getting hurt. We have to do it this way – our way.”
Letty groaned and rubbed her face, clearly still stressed at having found Pax with them.
“I’m sorry,” Pax said. “I would’ve run a mile if I’d known they were trouble. And, you know, if I was capable of running a mile. But I thought it went well...and we need them onside, not just for our own sake. To stop them doing something else. She set fire to this shed after paying you, didn’t she? And this war of yours...you must’ve forgiven her that, working with her since?”
Letty offered a vacant look, delving back into that memory. “No one stayed innocent, back then. But she was so good at it.” She took a deep breath, trying to let it go. “It was a long time ago. They can help us, now. But you didn’t know that. I don’t like going to any of them. They’re all fucking rogues.”
“Like you.”
Letty gave that a second. “Worse than me.”
“Rolarn saved me. Even if he looks like he would drown puppies.”
“I just don’t want you going the way of Apothel.”
“You and me both,” Pax said, checking back across the garage. No sign of Lightgate yet.
“And that was a great idea with the fucking chapel, by the way. Next time remind me to be more forceful in telling you no.”
“I got something, though,” Pax said. “There was a blue screen in the basement.”
“Frozen donkeys!” Letty spun back. “You went in?”
“Not by choice. It was too high to jump.”
“What happened?”
“This Blue Angel gave me an address. Chaucer Crescent. Then it figured I was bad news and spewed out some ungodly slug monster that tried to acid me. If Rolarn hadn’t shown up, I would’ve been melted.”
“Chaucer Crescent and a slug monster. Fantastic.”
“We’re wading through the same shit that dragged Apothel down, aren’t we?”
Letty considered it. “This is way worse than the shit he stirred. You heard what happened? Across town?”
Pax nodded. More than heard it, she wanted to say. But her jaw stayed shut.
“It’s fucked,” Letty said. “I went and saw it. The Ministry don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. I heard that Ministry bitch talking, though. Might be something in that. She had ideas about that word, grugulochs. Reckoned the berserker’s making noises while it goes apeshit. Reckoned that’s the name of the berserker itself.” Letty put her fists to her hips, proud at her reconnaissance. Pax smiled. Apparently it wasn’t convincing, as Letty snapped, “Well it’s better than Chaucer fucking Crescent.”
“No, it’s good,” Pax said. “Apothel was onto something when he was killed, why else leave that word behind? Think he got close to understanding the minotaur? The Blue Angel?”
“Grugulochs. Commander of the blue screens.”
“Galactic warlord.”
“Apothel through and through,” Letty said. “The names he came up with. The clutterbattem, you know how he figured that? Only ever saw them in areas cluttered by debris, battering things about. He’d be made up knowing people used his stupid terms, Ministry included. Tuckles, sickles, all him.”
“But ‘grugulochs’ comes from the sound?”
“He named the glogockle that way.”
“The minotaur never made a sound when I saw it.” Pax recalled the snaking, twirling limbs of the electric beast. It had floated down the tunnels after her. It had surged through her, pinning her in place, tearing chunks from the brickwork of the Sunken City. It had snapped against the walls with whip-cracks of lightning, but it had never growled. “I’m not sure it’s a creature at all. I didn’t see anything resembling a mouth.”
“Maybe that shot from the Dispenser gave it a voice.”
Pax paused. “Then when did Apothel hear it?”
“There you go needling again,” Letty huffed. “Maybe it’s not the berserker – maybe it’s a fucking safe word that gets all this to stop when you say it twirling in a pink tutu. Point is we have something. You have to pick at the details till our ears bleed?”
“Yeah. You’re right. It’s a start.”
“You’re still here?” Lightgate interrupted, gliding towards them. She stopped in an action pose, one elbow and one knee cocked. Oozing style despite a slight drunken waver. “I’ve refuelled and given Arnold a dozen places to be. You should be halfway across town by now.”
“We were waiting for you,” Pax said, and opened the scooter’s seat to start assembling her helmet and goggles disguise. Aware that the Fae were regarding her clothing with distaste, she tried to show some appreciation for fashion: “Who tailors your suits?”
“This?” Lightgate held out her arms and turned them over, like the jacket was some old rag she’d forgotten she owned. “Guy in Japan, goes by K-Zero. Want me to put in a word?”
“Fetid lizards,” Letty snorted, “get a room. We’ve got a Ministry psycho to save.”
Pax murmured agreement, her focus shifting back to Casaria and the path ahead, which ended in Bees’ undesirable neck of the woods. Having Letty and Lightgate for backup was small comfort. For the moment, concentrating on having a finely tailored suit to call her own helped. She wondered whether K-Zero was human or Fae. As she considered it, her stomach rumbled. That was another distraction, to put off the danger they were wading into. She said, “I’ve gotta eat before we get there.”
“Don’t look at me,” Lightgate chided. “You wouldn’t like how I taste.”
>
There was a sound like a hammer hitting an anvil. Agony seared through his head, bouncing from one temple to the other. He blinked to clear his vision, but it didn’t help.
The hammer again, increasing the throb of his headache. He gritted his teeth and threw himself back in the chair. Arms and legs held fast, chair itself fixed in place, couldn’t move any more than to twist from side to side. A few metres’ space on either side, and ahead. No windows, only chipped grey brickwork. A little light came through a hole in the wall, near the ceiling.
The place stank like rust on a hob, making his nostrils curl. From the itch under his nose and the sting around his eyes, he guessed the smell actually came from him.
Another hammer blast, metal on metal.
He pulled at his restraints, first with his wrists then with his legs. A sharp pain stung his foot. A scream came out that sounded too high, too girly, to be his. But his eyes were watering, and he was the one hurting. And that was his foot, bound in a sodden bandage, black at the point of the toe where he’d bled the most.
Tears streamed down his cheeks as he clenched his jaw against the pain.
The hammering stopped. They’d heard him.
He sniffed, hard, as his face leaked more weak, pitiful fluids.
This was nothing, he told himself. Just the body betraying him. False signals, indicators of pain that didn’t really matter. Nothing to fear, nothing really at all.
He forced himself to smile. Nothing at all. Enjoyable, if you let it be.
Something squeaked behind him, the hinges of an old, heavy door. Footsteps thumped into the room. The slow, low voice of the animal that had brought him here. Dry, emotionless. “Ready for more?”
He started laughing, head bowing forward, and as his body shook pain shot through him again. He flinched and shifted his foot. The bad foot. It produced another agonised shriek. But he was still laughing, louder, manic. No way anyone’s gonna know the difference, a scream or a laugh.
Between his wheezing chuckles and behind his tears, he heard the goon say, “Fuck’s sake, this again.”
20
Sam Ward watched the artificial lung working alongside Rufaizu. In the two days since he’d been interred in the Greek Street med bay, no one had done much to make the young man clean or comfortable. His bright turquoise coat was draped over a chair, darkened by patches of blood, but there was no sign of his other clothes or possessions. He lay in a beige hospital smock, restrained by thick leather straps at his wrists and ankles, with two tubes sticking out of his arm, one connected to a drip, the other running into the machine. She had no idea what it was doing; certainly not pumping air into him. The lung moved with a clattering, unsteady noise that suggested, along with the tarnished bed frame and the scuffed seat of the chair, that the MEE’s medical facilities needed updating.
Whatever the case, Landon had been mistaken. The young man was very much unconscious, and hadn’t responded to her various attempts to stir him. She’d opened an eyelid and found his eye rolled back in his head. Casaria was the only one who had talked to their most valuable lead. Maybe the only one who’d seen the boy awake. That was probably his intention, from the haphazard way that Casaria had reeled the boy in, holding off bringing him here to enact his own personal investigation. It wasn’t clear exactly what was wrong with Rufaizu now, other than the patched-up bullet wound on his neck, and Dr Hertz wasn’t around to ask. No surprise there; with dusk setting in, most of the Ministry staff had left the building, patting themselves on the back for a good day’s work. A member of Support’s night team would drop in on Rufaizu every few hours, with alerts for emergencies wired to a computer upstairs.
The latest incident was in hand, with the media briefed and all casualties accounted for. Support had tracked the praelucente towards the southwestern districts of Ordshaw, most likely under Nothicker, where building fires and accidents were a part of everyday life. As Nothicker was unlikely to make the news, everyone could go home. They’d received a fax from Lord Asquith on the Raleigh Commission, congratulating the office on a good day’s work: Back to normal tomorrow, the world stops caring overnight! Something about his communication encapsulated everything that was wrong with the Ministry. The affirmation of an out-of-touch pencil-pusher, a generation removed from reality with his bloody printed messages. Never mind his actual message, in what world did he find a fax better than their countless other options? Near as Sam was aware, it was just a slower email that required printing. Of course, he was afraid of change. Doing things the way they’d always been done, the same mentality that got people going home when the bell went.
If I was in charge of this office, Sam told herself, everyone would’ve been in on Saturday morning and no one would’ve gone home yet. If she could live without bad dates and learning about marine life in South America, they could live without their pubs and reality TV shows. The monsters would be fully monitored, her questions answered, and this boy would have medical care 24/7. At the very least the supervising doctor – their only doctor – would leave a chart by the bed detailing exactly what the problem was. The W4-MS filed in the weekend’s reports said Rufaizu had been shot and placed under guard, but the details were scant and written in what looked like purposefully obtuse handwriting.
That was another thing: all handwritten reports should be legible.
The door opened and Landon entered, holding two disposable cups, their contents steaming. Sam caught the scent of chocolate from the murky brown liquid he offered her. His, she noted, was black, strong coffee.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink milk,” Sam said, taking the cup anyway.
“It’s done with water,” he said. Sam didn’t bother explaining the concept of powdered drinks. It was a nice enough gesture, and they’d enjoyed at least an amicable kind of silence since Bristol Street station. She regretted raising her voice at him, but it must have made an impression, as he’d made no more fuss.
“Shouldn’t you be heading home?” Sam asked.
“Got a shift starting in twenty minutes,” Landon said. “Might as well slog through.”
“But you’ve been in all day?”
He shrugged. Perhaps his disengaged style used so little energy it could be sustained indefinitely. “You need a ride home?”
“No. I’m not happy with where we’ve got to.”
“Plenty of avenues to try tomorrow.”
“And this evening. I intend to search our files for a reference to this grugulochs. To see what was written about the Ripton Chapel. Maybe look deeper into Pax Kuranes’ known contacts. Who’s on the Support night shift? I want to ask about Pax’s question, too, about where the energy goes.”
Landon had an almost sympathetic look on his face.
“You honestly don’t see why it’s useful?” she said.
Landon was ready to move on. “Word is,” he said, pointing his cup towards Rufaizu, “he’s been out since yesterday. Operations have been waiting for Hertz to declare the kid stable before anyone questioned him.”
“How bad can it be?” Sam said. “A Fae bullet surely doesn’t leave that much damage. How can he lie half awake for two days then slip into a coma?”
“I don’t think it’s a coma,” Landon said. He indicated the drip. “He’s sleeping.”
Rufaizu was certainly in something deeper than sleep, but she’d assumed that bag was feeding him vital nutrients. “They’ve drugged him?”
“Not unusual. We’re not running a hospital, or a prison. You get someone difficult, it’s easier that way, till we can decide what to do with them. Chances are Casaria’s interview got him agitated and made it more necessary.”
“Can we disable it?” Sam said. “Wake him up?”
“Without a signed AO-31, no. You’d need director-level clearance for that, to override the doctor’s orders.”
“Then let’s get Dr Hertz on the phone.”
“I tried. Three times.”
Sam gave Landon a surprised look. It wasn’t good ne
ws, but at least he was trying.
She studied Rufaizu again. What a life he must have led, hiding so effectively that their organisation had believed him dead. He was so young, not meant for the abuses of someone like Casaria, or the Sunken City. It was dumb luck that he’d been picked up by Casaria rather than someone more professional. Could they have avoided this if her search plan had been implemented properly? Sam said, “How exactly did Casaria find him?”
“Only way Casaria ever does anything effective. Coincidence. Rufaizu frequented the sort of dives Casaria ducks into himself.”
“It wasn’t Operations following my guidelines? Checking Apothel’s old haunts?”
Landon gave her a look that said he had no idea what she was talking about, so that was a no. But Casaria didn’t get things done by coincidence, Sam knew that. He got things done by forcing them. Ignoring the rules. In this case, maybe he had taken her plans on board, even if the rest of the team hadn’t. Sometimes, uneasy as it made Sam to admit it, his ways worked. What choice did you have in an office that made you fill in forms to open a door? There was a reason Casaria was the only person to speak to Rufaizu. The same reason he’d got close to Pax Kuranes and whatever she was involved in. Maybe the same reason he was stuck in a low-end position all his life, too. Never mind.
Sam said, “Are the sedatives monitored? Would it raise alarms if we cut them for a few hours?”
Landon’s face fixed in discomfort, but he said, “It’s a bag of liquid – you could drain a bit in the sink if you wanted the levels to read right.”
He’d surprised her again, and it made Sam smile. “And the machine?”
“Measuring novisan. Kind of.”
Sam arched an eyebrow, unaware that it was possible to directly measure the strange energy in people. Though Landon’s kind of suggested it wasn’t.
“It won’t be affected by removing the drip,” he added.
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 45
