With the stealing, and the Fae, was Pax any better than that gypsy boy? Why was Casaria still here, waiting on her, involved in this? Who was she to decide such things as the fate of the praelucente? This gambler, this thief, this friend of animals.
She rolled over, away from him, soles of her feet facing up. Wearing fresh socks, at last. The new clothing was a step up; at least she was no longer dressed like a derelict. It was easier to take her seriously, now.
And some of what she’d said, difficult as it was, needed serious consideration. The MEE had agreements with the Fae, Mathers had confided that. The creatures down there were dangerous, no one could deny that. And he’d seen what the praelucente had done to Pax. What it might have continued doing, if he hadn’t been there to help.
What if it happened again? What if it did get worse?
His eyes ran back over the room. There was no choice, really. If the praelucente was dangerous, someone needed to do something about it. It wasn’t about her, it was about saving Ordshaw. It was about him doing what others couldn’t. The Ministry weren’t prepared to get their hands dirty enough.
He was. He could do whatever was required to stop the monsters once and for all. Even if it meant co-operating with Fae scum. And when he did, Pax would see it. A hand on his arm as he stood over the bodies of their enemies. A whispered thanks in his ear.
Excuses, like propping him on that bike, excuses to get close to him.
She couldn’t do this without him.
His eyes fell on the till again. The little man might have been looking his way, or might have been asleep sitting upright. No, he had to be awake. Casaria pointed a finger at him, to let him know he knew. The shape moved, offering a gesture in return, impossible to make out at this distance.
Casaria imagined the coming glory. He’d grill Rufaizu for whatever he knew, as he had intended to do before the Fae’s Friday ambush forced him to bring the boy into the office. And he’d play the Fae before he let them play him. And what of Pax drawing Sam Ward into this? Yes. He would approach her with the truth of the trouble the Fae had caused. She’d see him for what he was, and she’d know the futility of her work, defending these bastards.
The little shit was just sitting there. Staring.
“What the fuck do you want?” Casaria hissed, making Barton’s teenager stir with semi-conscious mumbles. She blinked. It was too dark to make out anything but her doe-like eyes, wide and fearful. She was as bizarre as the rest of them, really. A girl that beautiful coming from that ingrate father? It didn’t make sense. He could scarcely bear to look at her. He whispered, averting his eyes, “Don’t worry, miss. Everything will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
He could feel her, still staring, like she needed to process it.
On the till, the tiny silhouette hadn’t moved either. Casaria glared at him again.
Let them look. Let all of them see what he could do.
There had to be thirty. At least thirty.
Like stars in the night, isolated, moving through an abyss. But connected. Electric current flowing between them. Fizzling, snapping, cracking, communicating wordlessly. Burning with unified purpose.
At least thirty.
Lightning lances shot between them, connecting, combining. Meeting in the middle. Liquids bubbled from the force. Vats overflowed with sizzling sludge.
The beast exploded, the blinding beast, rising, roaring, glowering, snorting.
Eyes of a dragon, horns of a bull.
Its skin shimmered with blue fire, growing then waning. There a second and gone the next, an illusion, but a ferocious one, a terrifying one. Watched by thirty hungry eyes.
Messages passed between them, in words that didn’t exist. And they were everywhere, watching, talking, feeling each other’s needs and pains and ideas. She rolled to avoid the closing walls. She whimpered and shielded her eyes from the light.
The lightning came from her fingers, before her face. It jumped through the darkness and touched them. They glowed brighter as they registered her.
Her eyes shot open and Pax found herself breathing sharply. Looking into the vague silhouettes of the old shop, nothing more. She blinked but kept still, trying not to disturb the others.
Letty walked across the floor a foot from her face, her artificial wing and its hefty strap absent. The fairy folded her arms, staring with concern, as unreal as the dream, this shadow of a miniature single-winged woman on an empty shop floor.
“Having a bad dream?” Letty whispered, voice tiny. “Your man hasn’t slept. He’s still watching.”
“Mm,” Pax replied, trying to pass it off as a snore.
“You’re gonna tell me what’s going on, aren’t you?”
Pax nodded, slightly, but said nothing, waiting for Letty to take the hint: Later.
The fairy sat on the floor, crossing her legs. Pax rolled her eyes to the side, indicating Casaria, as the fairy had said. Not in front of him.
“You spasmed like that fucking thing still had its claws in you,” Letty said.
Pax inclined her head, another little nod. That pretty much summed it up.
Letty kept staring. She must have suspected what Pax had been going through. It didn’t help, though, did it? There wasn’t anything she could do.
“I’m right here, Pax,” Letty said. “I can’t help if you’re gonna keep shit from me.”
“It’s an aftershock,” Pax whispered, as quietly as she could, “that’s all.”
“And if it’s not?”
Pax offered a slight smile. All they could do was stop the Blue Angel, anyway. Letty kept staring, clearly with some inner turmoil of her own. She pointed at Pax’s brow, to where she’d hit Pax with her pistol at the chapel. “I’m sorry, okay? I should’ve been more willing. Don’t freeze me out thinking I won’t help. I will.”
Not waiting for a response, or not wanting to deal with one, Letty turned and lay on the floor herself, facing away. Going back to sleep, or at least pretending to. Pax watched her tiny form, how delicate and peaceful she looked now. Yeah. Better to keep at least some of the pressure off her.
2
Having forced herself up at the sound of three different dawn alarms (just in case), Sam only fully awoke when she saw Landon waiting for her in Greek Street. Impossibly, he looked no more tired than when she’d left him, insisting a few stolen kips on Ministry sofas had recharged him. Leading her through the building his mood bordered on excitement, as he explained that he’d corralled help after Mathers disappeared around midnight. The lightness in his tone told Sam that, despite appearances, he definitely needed some sleep. He’d sent a fax to Lord Asquith and persuaded Roper to look into Dr Rimes’ map as soon as it was clear that there were no residual effects from the disaster in Nothicker. They’d also traced Dr Rimes’ phone and found it rapidly moving out of the city – a satellite image picked it out on the roof of a lorry before they wasted more time on that. As if that wasn’t enough, Landon had even got another member of the IS team, Ryan, to come in early and monitor for any correspondence from the FTC, freeing Sam of her responsibilities. Whatever she planned next, she’d need to be quick, he said. Asquith was yet to respond and Mathers might be in any time now.
Sam thanked him and told him to go home, suspecting his exhaustion under the surface. He said no – not until she’d seen what they’d found.
In the bullpen, Roper sat at a cluttered desk with Rimes’ map spread amongst reams of number lists like the ones he’d shown Sam before. Another analyst joined them, along with a field agent – Devlin? He had wide eyes, a high voice and a thick head of black hair. Tori the receptionist stopped, too, on the way to drop off some mail.
Based on Sam’s questions about the energy from the praelucente being transferred, Landon and Roper had gone back to six major novisan surges over the past twelve months and cross-referenced them against the marks on the map. Each time the praelucente had drained novisan, small spikes had occurred over some of the marks. Even the single anoma
ly Roper had previously found matched a circle on the map in Hanton.
Sam wanted, deeply, to go back to their records for the night when the Stray Symphony was written, to see if the spike attributed to the masterpiece was matched with another spike somewhere else in the city. That would get people’s attention, wouldn’t it? Bring their all-encompassing anecdote into question.
It wasn’t a simple correlation, though: with each surge, the spikes hit only a limited number of marks on Rimes’ map. And never any of the marks within two miles of the praelucente.
“And there’s no difference,” Sam asked, as the analyst’s report concluded, “between the surges? Nothing to suggest why some are marked with circles and some with crosses?”
“Not that we’ve found,” Roper confirmed. “More or less equally spread.”
“Plainly,” Sam said, carefully, “the praelucente is redirecting novisan, somehow, to different spots in the city. It’s doing it well outside our typical range of observation. The question being, is it a coincidence that we’ve narrowed our focus that much, or are these energy transfers designed to avoid detection?”
“No one has forced us to keep a narrow focus,” Roper said. “Spreading a wider net would’ve been folly, given our resources – but even if we had, the likelihood of noticing this as a pattern would’ve been negligible. These minor surges are scarcely hitting the same location two or three times in the space of a year.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “But how did these civilians know about these hot spots? And why did they differentiate between two kinds?”
No one answered, but Sam had a partial idea herself, recalling Pax’s panicked words. The Ministry had laughed off Apothel’s claims as tantamount to admitting a belief in Bigfoot or alien abductions, but what if he wasn’t mad? He had talked of things they’d never seen, spread all across the city. “Do we have a record of where Apothel claimed the blue screens were?”
She met with uncomfortable silence, so she looked to Landon in particular. “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “Apothel was known for creating distractions.”
“You know about the crocodile?” Devlin chipped in.
Sam gave him a confused look, fairly sure Devlin was too young to have been around when Apothel was. The lift pinged, someone else entering the office as they all waited for more.
“It was one of the only times we caught up to Apothel. He took an agent to West Quay, to check out a loading bay with a supposed creature above the surface, something we had no records of. Crocodile with hands or something.”
“Hands and eyes on stalks,” Landon confirmed, as the newcomer approached their group. “And a lizard tongue. Half a day, they searched for it, and found no trace. Apothel slipped away during the search. Exactly the sort of distraction I’m talking about.”
An irritated voice cut in: “Which he appears to have succeeded in beyond the grave.”
It was Mathers.
Everyone straightened up, squaring shoulders, faces serious, searching for something productive to look at. Devlin and Tori scuttled off, muttering comments about their work. Roper hunched over some papers, pretending to read. Mathers’ face was as angry as Sam had ever seen it. She said, “Sir, I think you need to hear –”
“A building came down last night,” Mathers snapped. “Untold casualties. Seven dead yesterday. Ordshaw’s all over the papers. You have one job, all of you. Whatever else you think you’re doing here. You have one job. Keep a lid on the Sunken City. I need focus now more than ever, and I find this? The whole office exchanging rumours about a man long dead?”
“This map –” Sam tried again.
“In my office,” Mathers ordered. “Now. Everyone else, back to your damned jobs, while you still have them.”
Fists balled tight and braced at his sides, he marched away. Landon gave Sam a concerned look, wanting to help. She shook her head. It was up to her.
Every movement Mathers made was angry. A heavy thump into his chair, the forceful opening and closing of drawers, slapping a piece of paper onto his desk, deep, frustrated breaths. Even his blinks were angry, pointed breaks in his search for something. Sam watched in silence, waiting for the conclusion.
A suspension form, an AE-12? Or the AE-54, discipline for insubordination?
Sam squinted at the first lines of fine print. It was a WP-SoE, and it had already been filled in. He stabbed a finger at the text, searching for a particular line, then quoted, “Showing a marked lack of respect for protocol...Direct dismissal of MG-7b, using inappropriate terminology...Direct dismissal of MG-7d, assigning time to unauthorised tasks. Multiple details not accurately recorded in W4 forms.”
Sam frowned. She had written it herself, three years ago, regarding Cano Casaria’s behaviour. He had been flouting Ministry guidelines to conduct his own personal crusade against the myriad creatures, enjoying himself too much and failing to do the MEE’s work properly. Mathers sat back and glowered.
“This is different, sir,” Sam said.
“I thought you, of all people,” he said, “understood the chain of command. Imagine me hearing that Sam Ward had destroyed the home of our civilian asset – and worse –”
“I didn’t destroy –”
“And worse, appears to be distracting everyone with some mindless boondoggle!” Mathers waved her report in the air. “The same Sam Ward who gave me this?”
“The map –”
“I know what that blasted map is!” Mathers raised his voice, making Sam jump. A vein throbbed in the side of his neck, and his eyes looked ready to pop out.
She replied in a disbelieving squeak, “You do?”
Mathers let out a noxious breath. “In what world did you think it wise to go over my head? In what world did you think the Commission weren’t fully behind my decisions here? To say London are unhappy is an understatement.” Sam cringed at the realisation, and knew his scathing tone was justified. How stupid she had been to think Lord Asquith would care. “The only saving grace in this mess, right now, is that we somehow kept the explosion in Long Culdon out of the news. Chance alone, it would appear, prevented Dr Rimes’ other defences from being activated. You’re aware that she could’ve utterly exposed us?”
Sam said nothing.
“No, you weren’t, and you know why? Because your job is InterSpecies Relations, not whatever desperado quest you’ve been on!”
Sam opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. Someone had to ask these questions – if it wasn’t her job, whose was it?
“Exactly.” Mathers read her face, wrongly. “You had no idea, and no authorisation. And now I find you distracting my whole office with nonsense we fought for years to keep out of the MEE. Apothel was mad. Verified so by a hospital in Reading, which he set on fire! There were times when our productivity ground to a standstill with agents chasing Apothel’s fantasies – we cannot afford to do that now.”
“Respectfully, sir, the marks on that map correlate with the surges. There’s –”
“I know,” Mathers said. “You honestly believe we limit our monitoring activity due to computer processing power? You think no one’s noticed patterns before? They drive people to distraction. They’re residual effects, with nothing there. They are not important.”
“According to who?” Sam asked.
“According to the Raleigh Commission,” Mathers answered heavily. “Who else?”
Sam held his gaze. It wasn’t enough to say it didn’t matter. Not when Apothel’s people had come across this information on their own. Mathers had to know it. But he was taking the easy route and blaming London. “When did they decide it, sir?”
“You’re one of our best people, Ward,” Mathers replied without answering. “You know I can’t afford to lose you, especially not over something trivial. But heed my words when I say that our work in Ordshaw is carefully regulated. With the limited staff we have available, distraction is our single greatest enemy. Coincidental novisan surges are the height of it. Do you understand?”
>
“I do, sir,” Sam said, tersely. “But there’s a detail here that I don’t see how we can possibly ignore.”
“Trust me, there are no details that have not been considered.”
“How did Apothel’s people know about these locations? These novisan spikes?”
“I fail to see how that affects your work.”
“It affects all of our work –”
“Your job,” Mathers said, “is to be accountable for the Fae involvement in this. Where are you on explaining who is responsible for their weapon?”
Sam froze. Her anger at him demanding a patently impossible task was shadowed by a realisation. He didn’t want the complications because London did not want them. They wanted to police the Sunken City in the same blinkered way as usual, while they concentrated on their more central interests. Interests outside Ordshaw, whose unnatural phenomenon was, for some reason, not the most fascinating thing in their arsenal. It was the same for the praelucente as it was for the Fae: the Commission had more answers than they were giving. Sam made the same request that she had made a hundred times before: “Sir, I respectfully request to speak with the Raleigh Commission on that matter. I believe they have contacts of their own that we might use.”
Mathers’ anger dissipated as this shifted into familiar territory, with her asking rather than doing. He rolled a hand towards the door, repeating his usual stance: “Put a request into writing and I will relay it. And stop getting in the way.”
Sam nodded. Exactly back to normal. She turned for the door.
“Ward?” Mathers relaxed slightly, the tension past. “Where on earth did you see this going?”
Sam hesitated. “Back to the praelucente, sir. We’re being exposed to how unstable, and dangerous, it is right now. My concern is that it’s no longer viable.”
Mathers was cold in the face of that shattering observation. He said nothing, merely gestured again to the door.
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 54
