“You . . .” Pax trailed off, stunned. And Holly wasn’t scathingly brushing the idea aside? She had come for Pax’s blessing. “You’re not serious?”
“It’s not ideal,” Holly said, “but we discussed it, at length. And I had a rudimentary chat with Sam. We’re all in this now, aren’t we? It’s our city we’re talking about. We can’t turn the volume up on the Bake Off and pretend it’s not happening. My husband coped down there drunk, I expect he can do it sober. With help. You’ve shown everyone how important a fresh perspective is.”
Pax was quiet. Of course, Sam had pestered her about going back underground, so why wouldn’t she ask the Bartons, too? “I just wanted to get out alive. Holly –”
“Between you and Sam, we can get some licences to roam or something. I don’t see it being a problem. I wanted to see where you stood, though. From here, you look ready to move on.”
Pax shook her head. “It’s not that, I needed to –”
“That wasn’t a judgement. It means it can’t be all that bad. Otherwise you’d have felt something, wouldn’t you?”
Pax gave her a worried look. Thankful, if she was honest. If the Bartons helped the MEE, she might not have to. If she let these hapless fools risk their lives instead of her . . .
Holly’s phone vibrated in a pocket, which she gave an annoyed frown. She frowned deeper as she checked the screen. “Unknown number – could be work. I called in sick.”
“Go ahead, I oughta get back, anyway.” Pax hurried out a conclusion: “And thanks for coming, Holly – if you think going back down there’s a good idea, then, sure. Rather you than me.”
Holly nodded and went to answer as Pax turned. The caller spoke so sharply it made her stop: “No time for your shit, Holly, pass me to Pax.”
“Excuse me –”
The little, familiar voice gave Pax a light thrill, and when Letty insisted, “Now! Now!” she was ready with her hand out to take the phone.
“You’re alive! Where are you?” Pax asked.
“With some fucking nerd. Well, maybe not a fucking nerd. We’ve only got a minute – where are you?”
“What? Why only a minute? They said you were at the FTC.”
“I still am. Have you seen Lightgate?”
“No – I – I’m in the WPT, but we –”
“Playing poker? No, that’s good – might convince the Fae you’re done. At least as far as the Ministry’s concerned. Look, the FTC is on lockdown and I can’t leave. They’re saying our people are hunting Fae expats to keep things quiet, some serious isolationist shit going on, scared of human corruption.”
“What? But the Ministry are trying to reach out to your people – no one’s talking.”
A pause from Letty. “That’s our governor fucking around. But there’s Fae who disagree with her. This egghead who I’m with wants to talk –”
“Ten seconds!” another voice said, somewhere behind Letty.
“Fuck.” She rushed out the rest. “This egghead thinks we can start talks, but we’ll need to figure out how. I’ll call back, okay? Keep your head down. Crush that game.”
“Letty, if you’re –” Pax started, but the call cut off. She found herself breathless with excitement just from hearing the fairy’s voice. Alive. But trapped? With Fae everywhere in danger? Didn’t matter, she was alive.
Holly took the phone back, regarding it like it was soiled. “Why was she calling on my phone? How did she get my number?”
“They do that,” Pax said, unable to stop smiling. “Guess she wanted to avoid direct contact? Or didn’t know I got a new phone – who cares – this is amazing – she’s okay. And she has help.” Pax checked the room around them. “She knew we were together.”
“Indeed,” Holly said, looking violated.
“I’m sorry. That was – Christ. I’m doubly happy you came now.”
“I’m happy for you, too,” Holly murmured, uncertainly. “A little surprising, that’s all. The Ministry insisted we were clear of the Fae, they gave us devices to alert us of them. They said we were safe.”
Pax didn’t answer that. The Ministry was anything but infallible. She turned on the spot, taking in the casino anew. Invigorated where before she’d been distracted. Her friend was alive and she would hear from her again soon, surely. In the meantime, yeah – she needed to crush this tournament.
3
Sam Ward crept down a spiral stairwell with her Maglite held high, creating little splashes with each step. What liquid collected down here? Did she want to know? At the bottom of the stairs – fifty or a hundred feet below ground? – her torchlight barely penetrated the gloom. No side doors, only a long walk. She resisted the urge to look back. Something might appear if she turned. And her breath was too loud, she hated it.
He’ll meet you at the end of the hall. That’s what the email said.
London hadn’t bothered to mention the hall was a terrifying gauntlet of the imagination. Punishment or a test? Sam Ward, desk jockey – if she’s scared down here, how can she manage the Ordshaw Ministry of Environmental Energy?
Sam swallowed. Absolutely she could. In the two days since Deputy Director Mathers’ (brutal) death, she’d whipped her staff into a storm of efficiency. You wouldn’t know the Ministry’s staff numbers had been cut by almost half. Or that their ruling body, the Raleigh Commission, was inert, under investigation for corruption. And Sam had got Pax on board, a woman worth half a dozen, even if they had only taken baby steps towards exploring the Sunken City together.
The light caught the tunnel’s end: a riveted door suitable for detaining psychopaths. The end of the hall clearly meant in whatever death-den lay beyond. The door shrieked open onto a glare of light. It revealed a broad space with brick walls and pillars, with a vaulted ceiling divided by rib-like supports. There was another door in the far wall, and smaller ones to one side. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and at the centre sat a single desk. He was sitting there.
Sam cleared her throat as she approached. He didn’t look up, stooped over a mobile phone. “Hello? I’m Sam Ward, Acting Deputy Director.”
The phone looked tiny in his hands. The man was built like a golem, square all over and far too big for the desk and chair. He finished typing as Sam considered making a leading statement. They sent you from London was ridiculous – as if there was any other possibility.
The man placed the phone aside and sat back. His eyes ran over her, feet to head, his wide mouth open in an expression somewhere between disgust and confusion. His hair was slicked back from an already high hairline, accentuating the size and squareness of his forehead, and his deeply unfashionable wire-frame aviator spectacles added to the overall effect of a human brick. Finally he said, “No.”
He kept staring, mouth open – his default expression?
“Excuse me?” Sam said, when it seemed he wasn’t going to continue.
“No,” he repeated. A low Yorkshire accent. “You are no longer the acting deputy director. I am.”
Sam tensed. She’d hoped the choice of location indicated something that needed her attention, not a usurper.
“Wayne Obrington,” he said. “Special Agent to them in London. Your new chief.” He stood and Sam took an involuntary step back. Obrington looked like the worst kind of bouncer; one whose awful glasses invited challengers. Here to obliterate Sam’s sensible plans in favour of Management boondoggling. He turned to face the door at the rear. “Come with me.”
He marched to the door, opened it and stepped through.
As introductions went, it was an odd one.
Sam hesitantly followed. The dull, off-green glow of old lights revealed another long corridor with an arched ceiling and sweating brickwork. Older and danker than the Sunken City Sam knew.
“It’s not the Sunken City,” Obrington said, reading her thoughts as he kept walking ahead. “Old post-sorting station, built by a tea shipping company in the 1890s. Been vacant about thirty years. Up to here, anyway.” He indicated another
door, heavy wood. “That is a Sunken City entry point, and it’s been making strange noises.”
He heaved it open, with effort, and Sam looked around him onto another spiral staircase. They were on the north-west side of the city, while according to the MEE’s latest readings the horde of monsters was far south; it should be safe, but the darkness looked decidedly uninviting.
“I was pottering about before you arrived,” Obrington said, stepping aside. “Kept hearing a tapping. Thought I’d wait for you to investigate properly.” He paused, both of them listening. Nothing. “You armed?”
Sam shook her head. This was surely a test, seeing how she performed in the field.
“I’ve read your reports,” Obrington said. “Spreading your limited resources thin, aren’t you? Two field agents active at a time, and one of them busy sealing access points?”
“I only had –” Sam began to explain, but he didn’t let her.
“I get it. A couple days spent closing our least-used doors and we cut future patrols by half, without too much impact on our ability to get underground.” There was a sound in the stairwell. Something tapped against the stone. Obrington ignored it. “Except while you do that, places like this aren’t being guarded.”
“We’ve got sensors,” Sam said uncertainly. Support always picked up movement near access points. Had he told them to keep this one quiet, to surprise her?
Something scraped against the stone steps. Then a heavy footfall. Something coming up the steps. A pause as whatever it was scented the air. It shrieked, shaking dust from the walls; an avian cry followed by a sudden patter of ascending feet.
“We should –” Sam said, twisting to Obrington, but the stare he gave the shadows stilled her, saying he would not be undermined by some monster. Sam’s eyes darted back to the doorway and the charging noise – if it was a test, she was surely safe, shouldn’t show fear –
The thing launched out of the darkness with reaching claws, and with a short scream Sam ducked back, hands up. A gunshot made her wince, followed by the loud crash of something big and hard hitting the wall. She looked up again. Melting from the top step into the darkness was the lower body of an animal with thick legs, skin marked by patchy scales, jointed like a horse and finishing in spiky claws. A ravisher: a three-legged, wall-climbing creature with an acidic tongue. The shadows hid its thin-haired head of mandibles and jagged teeth. Obrington prodded it with a shoe, pistol at his side, as its acrid smell invaded Sam’s nostrils. She wasn’t sure whether to vomit or flee.
Obrington said casually, “You’re unarmed, Ward, you oughta have run.”
Sam straightened up, heart pounding in her ears. He’d shot it like it was nothing. They should still run, lock these doors, call on Support for an explanation and Operations for a clear up. “It shouldn’t have been here.”
“Likely to be more of them? What is it?”
“Um.” Sam struggled for the MEE’s exact faux-Latin wording. “Ultra – no, ultro rapientis. Commonly called a ravisher. They’re solitary – only a handful down here.” Trivia studied for Ministry exams flooded back to Sam. The ravisher’s existence had only been confirmed in 2012. Before then, everyone had believed it to be one of Apothel’s inventions. Like the blue screens.
“Good. We’ll get someone to clear it up later.” Obrington pushed the door closed, jolting the creature’s limbs out of the way. He tramped back the way they’d come. Sam stared dumbstruck at the closed door. Heart not quite still. Solitary as the ravisher was, it still belonged near the horde, following the praelucente, Ordshaw’s great energy parasite, currently on the other side of the city.
“Back in the office, if you please, Ward,” Obrington called out, already re-entering the big chamber. That jarred Sam from her concerns.
“Office?”
“Complete with plumbing and electricity, all we need.”
Sam raced to catch up, throwing one last glance back to the stairwell door and the horror it hid. “Wait. You intend to work down here?”
“Me and everyone else. Exciting, isn’t it?”
“But . . .” Sam trailed off. Not only was it far too close to the Sunken City monsters, but there was zero natural light, or air. It couldn’t be healthy.
“The word” – Obrington jabbed a blocky thumb upwards, indicating the city – “is we’ve got rogue Fae and unstable creatures on our hands. This is the safest place in the city. No Fae underground. Supposedly no buggers coming this far out of the tunnels.” Sam bit her lip. The ravisher had come far enough. But he said, “I’ve been down here an hour or more and that thing didn’t come beyond the door. It is secure here. We’re circling the waggons, understand?”
Sam said nothing. Pot plants and ergonomic chairs weren’t going to make this place comfortable, and she definitely didn’t feel secure.
“Sealing off access points is a fine idea,” he went on. “Cutting back patrols is not. Considering that this grugulochs thing you took down supposedly controlled the praelucente –”
“It didn’t control it, it used the praelucente,” Sam corrected. “The grugulochs was merely diverting energy from it.”
“You make a habit of interrupting people, Ward? No? I’ll continue, shall I?”
Sam felt her face flush.
“Considering this thing, now dead, had an influence on your monsters, and we had a great beast tear apart your old place of work, the Sunken City warrants clearing out. Yet you’re not enacting Protocol 38.”
Protocol 38. The plan to purge the Sunken City of its uniquely vile creatures. Particularly the praelucente itself. The Ministry had believed it benevolent, so their plan to remove it was entirely theoretical and relied on unproven weapons. Sam had prepared an answer as to why they must wait. Not the truth, which was that she and Pax feared attacking the horde would drive the blue screens into deeper hiding, but something close to it. “I can explain my thinking –”
“Save it for your therapist.” Obrington didn’t give her a chance. “Hotshot young department head unsettles decades of stability and stokes a conflict with the Fae. Doesn’t want to make things worse. Sound right?”
“I didn’t –”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, surprising Sam into silence. He waited for that to sink in, then continued. “But the accepted opinion on Ordshaw is that you leave it well alone. You don’t poke it. People itching to poke it, they get moved somewhere that needs poking. Mathers should’ve transferred you two years ago.”
“He was effective in his way,” Sam replied, only polite now he was dead.
“He was a musty fart with no imagination. But since you did start poking, we now need to draw this fiasco to its conclusion. You’re scared of following through, which leaves me sitting in that chair.” Obrington indicated the desk. The chair behind it was a small plastic thing, suitable for a school hall. Did he carry it and the desk down here himself? “You’re not an idiot, are you, Ward?”
Sam stalled – trap question? Her hesitation cost her the chance to respond.
“You’re gonna be my right hand, because your innovation is bleeding useful. In fact, I’ll de facto let you run this show. Give you a chance to prove your mettle. But you’re gonna assume I know what’s best. Understand?”
Sam replied quickly, “Are you going to –”
“No. See.” Obrington drew this out. “I didn’t ask for questions, did I? I asked do you understand?”
His rocky disposition challenged her to answer carefully. Not voice the nagging thought that poor communication had got them in this mess.
“Yes or no.”
“Yes,” Sam said, with just a little defiance.
“Yes what?” Obrington pressed.
“Yes, sir.”
“I was going for yes, I understand. But that’ll do. We’ll keep at what you’ve started, but manoeuvre towards Protocol 38. Once we’re better staffed. I’ll have more agents here in a few days. Meantime, talk to me about your proposals to use these pesky civilians.”
The Bartons, an idea Sam had already relayed to Management. She said, “I’m already working with them. They’ve been cleared, we can –”
“Some of them have been cleared. Pax Kuranes raises a big question mark.”
“We’re lucky to have her,” Sam rushed out. “Her perspective is refreshing – free from Ministry prejudice.”
Obrington’s eyes bulged behind those glasses. “You sleeping with her?”
“What?” Sam exclaimed. “No – I’m not gay –”
“Try not to sound so offended. We’d all do best to avoid prejudice. But nine out of ten potential recruits, it’s an agent trying to get in someone’s pants.”
“That’s not true.” Sam stopped, flashing on Cano Casaria. The man who’d recruited her certainly made enough awkward passes, culminating in a narrowly avoided violent outburst recently. He’d gone off the rails chasing Pax for the same reason, hadn’t he? Obrington’s claim might be a little true.
“Pax has connections to the Fae,” Obrington said. “Making her suspect. Especially as you’ve not managed to follow up with them since the attacks?”
Sam paused again. This was a bad start. She had been careful about exactly what she’d said to Management about Pax, and her unique senses, aware that her superiors might take rash action against either her or the Sunken City. Obrington’s comments were giving her no confidence that she could safely share Pax’s full situation with him. Partly to steer the conversation, partly because she had even less confidence that the fairy situation was under control, Sam said, “I hoped London might’ve heard from the Fae. Management kept such information from me in the past.”
Obrington regarded Sam like he’d stepped in crap. “London hasn’t heard a thing. This is your problem. These fairies took our weapons? All those men dead? And you can bet the Fae aren’t sitting idle. Holding off following through there too, aren’t we? Haven’t you got gasses that could kill a Fae colony?”
The Sunken City Trilogy Page 68
