“Run!” Alba yelled, and she started to drag Marcel. He hobbled with her, pain shuddering through his leg with every step. They turned left. Left. Right. Left. Up some stairs. Right. Left. Through a rusted door. Left. Right. Right. Left. Alba had the maze memorized. The gas chased them; with every hobbled step it gained a metre.
A single pink wisp floated beyond the gas cloud and struck Marcel’s open wound. The pain was worse than anything he had imagined. He screamed, tears running from his eyes, and fell to the ground. The world twisted around him as his flesh burned. No, not burned, rotted, a month’s worth of post-mortem decay in seconds. He felt himself being dragged. The red smoke covered him, engulfed him, all was pain. Faces, he saw faces in the smoke. Henri screaming in front of him, bayonet bursting through his chest, Kalem clutching at the hole in his face, the Principate soldier crying, flesh flowing with the tears. Beyond all that Marcel saw a skinless figure in the mist. It was gargantuan, blood pouring like rivers down its sides, its eyes of shadow. The horrific figure grew and grew, until the world was nothing but its flesh, all the while staring down to Marcel, through Marcel, piercing him with his gaze. Marcel screamed, and his screams harmonized with the thousands of screams around him, as the skinless figure fell upon him.
* * *
Thud. Marcel’s metal leg hit the floor, jolting him awake.
He glanced out, blinking in the dark, sweat dripping from his forehead. His office stared back at him, lit only by the small lamp on his desk and the white of moonlight peeking in from outside.
It took Marcel more than a moment to lift himself from his chair. His back ached, the chair a poor substitute for a bed. He accidentally kicked the pulp sitting on the floor, The Ghul-Hunters of Tor, an old pre-Calamity edition. Right, he’d been reading before he dozed. The book was no masterpiece, but he’d paid ninety frascs for it, so he picked up the novella and flicked the light switch, a single bulb buzzing to brightness.
He tossed the book on the desk and stumbled through the screen door behind his chair to the nook he used as a bedroom and kitchen. His leg still burned and he braced himself on the wall, moaning softly. With a shaking hand, he took a vial of æther-oil from under the sink, and pulled up his pants leg, to refill his prosthetic’s fuel-capsule. Watching the liquid trickle in helped remind him that the leg was gone, the pain phantom.
When he was feeling a tad more himself he put a pan of water to boil for coffee. It was very late, or very early, whichever, but he had no intention of going back to sleep now.
Marcel could remember that he had been working when he dozed. Well, “working,” hence the pulp. Truth was, there wasn’t much to do beside wait for a case, a mystery, a something to wander into his office, and since the Fareau case, no one had come knocking.
He took off his sweat soaked shirt and put on a slightly cleaner one. Maybe it was the workless days that sent him into that place, back through the Battle Under Huile. It wasn’t much of a battle, though it was a victory. Saved the city, he’d been told, and it he knew it true. It was the greatest thing he had ever done, it was what made him a hero, yet even the thought of it brought on bouts of nausea and splitting agony.
Outside the streets were empty. Huile was a sleepy city by his standards, but it was a free one. He watched the simple nothing pass on by as he sipped his coffee. It was important he not forget what he had won, it was vital that he remembered what the sacrifices had been for. It had initially surprised Marcel that the exact methods of their victory had been paved over in the post-war celebrations; he had expected criticism by civilians who didn’t understand the necessity of decisive action. Instead all talk was of courage and spirit, on heroism, no words wasted on clockbombs and sangleum gas. Part of Marcel wanted to bring it up, to defend himself from the attacks that never came, but that was just egoism and foolishness. The UCCR survived on the spirits of its citizenry, public hand wringing over unpleasant specifics did nothing to defend the freedoms that brave soldiers had died to preserve. War meant death, war meant doing thing you didn’t want to, acts that would be horrifying anywhere else, but in the end, it was for the best, and in the end, a free, just, and prosperous Huile made all his petty traumas meaningless. He knew this, Desct knew this, Alba… Alba had her own opinions.
Perhaps it was the Gileon Fareau case that had been bothering him. Everything had gone well, impressively well, near perfect; Lambert had said so himself. Marcel couldn’t quite pin down why, then, it had felt so disappointing in the end. Perhaps it was that his suspicions of Verus went nowhere. Or it was the simple anticlimax, with Gall shipped out of town towards Ordone, where justice would be duly and dryly meted out. Marcel signed a few witness statements and received an envelope of frascs plus a pat-on-the-back as payment from Lambert. Then back to his apartment.
Yet, how was it supposed to end? With some dramatic confrontation, with justice meted out instantly? Summary execution was the style of waste barbarians and Principate tyrants. A sensible world worked slowly and methodically. Things were as they should be, he told himself.
Alba had been right about one thing, though, the real world wasn’t a pulp. Sometimes you just had to grind your teeth and do your job, whether it was painful, or utterly monotonous.
He poured himself another cup and sat down back at his desk. He picked up the pulp and started to read. Tomorrow, perhaps, work would come knocking. Perhaps he’d be called on for something great, or at least, something to keep him busy.
Until then, he’d sip and read.
Chapter 17
The hours of the night went by in a blurry haze, fear fueling Sylvaine’s every step. She could barely remember how she had made it to the bottom of the mountain, dashing around winding back roads, sprinting through sleeping mountainside suburbs, and scrambling down rocky, scrap-strewn scarps. She ran past late-running agri-factories, sprinting from bush to rock to forgotten junk-pile in a panic. The factories’ lights had once comforted her from the distance of her apartment, but now each dusty window bursting with industrial glow seemed to her like searching spotlights.
Late night turned to early morning, and Sylvaine found herself still sprinting, clothes torn, fur matted, through landscapes of rusting machinery, the skeletons of old abandoned industrial towns, scavenged hollow. She gave only a single glance back at the distant ætherlamp blur of Icaria. The city that had once been a grand sanctuary on a hill now loomed over her, judging her, its lights a thousand eyes ready to search out the animal who had mauled its citizens.
Eventually her fear dissolved into dazed despair, and she could barely force herself to shuffle forward, along the cracked ground, crumbling concrete, and waste-hardened shrubs. She swore softly as a razorbush took off a digit-length of her dress-sleeve, as well as a small amount of skin and fur. She glanced up at the sky: still black, but framed on the horizon by a soft glow. It would be sunrise soon. How soon? She hadn’t a clue, but she was near deliriously weary. Her mouth was dry, and she caught her nose searching vainly for the smell of meat.
She let herself collapse and crawled slowly into a ditch that led off from some ruins of an indeterminable function. There she found a large rusting pipe to drag herself into.
She curled up, hands clutching her knees. The face of Gearswit stared even through her closed eyelids. As much as she tried, she found she could not remember how he had looked before, in lectures and in private meetings, but could only see his body curled in a puddle of blood and agony. She clenched her eyes shut and tried not to think, tried not to feel.
Sylvaine had almost made it to some delirious slumber when she noticed a deep humming. It took her a moment to realize it was the voice of a man. She heard footsteps and smelled musk. It was a familiar odor, but in her half-sleep she couldn’t place it.
Her breathing slowed, and she squeezed herself into a smaller ball. She tried to remember the scent. It wasn’t from any student she could recall. Was the man a cop? They’d have to be searching pretty far, which seemed unlik
ely, but then luck had clearly already abandoned her. Perhaps her nose had misplaced the odor and it was a stranger, some violent raider or greedy slaver. No, she was too close to the city for that. Truth was she could not think of a single person she’d want to find her.
The man interrupted his humming with occasional bursts of hymn-like song, somberly cheerful. She couldn’t understand the words, but recognized them as Oradea, the tongue human preachers would mutter in when they went about on their nonsense rituals during Abolinia and other holidays.
She peeked out through a crack and recognized the strange bald man who had accosted her twice. She shrunk back. Wasn’t it enough to have her life collapse completely? Now she had to hide in a pipe from some maniac who had most likely been chased out of Icaria. Or worse still, came the chilling thought, had been stalking her.
After a moment she peeked out again, to see that the man had paused at a clearing just above the ditch. He surveyed the ground, and then started to gather dried brush into a pile. With some flint he lit a fire, and then sat on an old cinderblock. He still wore the same silver-tinted plate of a mask over his left eye, still held that strange blue-gray bracelet, but in his hand he now held a piece of her torn indigo dress.
The man reached into his bag and pulled out raw meat. Dustsnake, Sylvaine was embarrassed her nose could recognize it, and more embarrassed about how much she ached for it. But why had the man stopped at this ditch? She hoped against all reasonable hope that he didn’t know she was—
“Do not think me a threat, Sylvaine.”
Her breathing froze completely.
The man took the meat and skewered it, continuing to hum. “If you were to run now, I would not chase, and if you choose to stay and say nothing, I will leave in my time.”
He cooked the meat over the fire, turning the skewer slowing in his fingers.
“I did not introduce myself, I realize, back in Icaria,” he said. “My name is Kayip. I am sorry for how I acted. I have spent too long in the Wastes. I did not know how to reach you, to warn you. I must have seemed a madman. You are not the first to think that of me. Had I the time, had I been able to speak with you on sensible terms, had I known how to present myself… If I knew now…”
His voice drifted off for a moment. Daylight started to hint at the edges of the horizon, and somewhere a skragger cawed.
“I know what sort of man Roache is,” the man said. “I have dealt with him before. I know what horrible things he did to you. All I can say is that I am sorry I was not able to stop him.”
He paused, staring into the fire. His face seemed long worn, it hung baggy and scarred. Yet there still seemed some energy to his gaze, some determination. Not ferocity, just a weary resolution.
“It is no excuse,” the man continued. “It was my failure. And now an innocent man is dead and more still are forever hurt, yourself included. Were I younger, perhaps I would have said that I know how you feel. Or perhaps I would have said nothing, for I was not one to talk when action would suffice. But the world is bigger than I knew when I was young. The Demiurge made people in all shapes and minds, and I cannot claim to understand the truth of all of them. Instead I will say that I have made mistakes, and that I no longer judge others who make them as well.”
He took out a small pouch and sprinkled salt on the snake meat.
“Let me tell you a story. It is from the Chronicles of the Ascended. I know engineers are not known for their piety, but perhaps you can find some wisdom in it. The story starts in ancient times, before the Calamity, before the birth of the Principate and the Resurgence, before the regental Republic that preceded them, and even before that first Imperium that gave mankind the gift of æther and the revelations of the Demiurge.
“In this time men lived among beasts, and there were neither malva nor salvi, nor mutants nor kortonians. Perhaps there were ferrals then, but if so, they lived no worse than the men, who huddled in tribes, with walls of wood and nothing more than bows and slings to keep the monsters of the night at bay.
“In one of these tribes lived two brothers, Istmol and Ephram. They ruled their village together, and it was a rich village, on the banks of the river Delur, guarded by four walls, so that troglyns and trolls could not harm their family.
“One day the brothers decided that they should go hunting. They were the greatest bowmen in their village and wished to see who could bring down the largest boar. But there was another man, Fauvius, who lived in the forest. He was a wicked man, a sorcerer, one who spoke to demons, and danced with troglyns and satyrs. This man envied the village, and when the brothers were gone, took fire to it, killing the men and woman alike, until there was nothing left but ash.
“When the two brothers returned they fell to the ground with grief and lamented their woes for three days and three nights. After this, they spoke with one another. They knew it was their fault, for they were great warriors, yet they had left their village unguarded. Istmol said they should go to the mountains to start again and build a new village. Ephram did not agree. He said they must fight the sorcerer, must make him bleed a drop for every drop of blood he spilled of their family. And so the two brothers traveled along their own paths. Istmol went to the mountains. Ephram went to hunt Fauvius. And true to his word he killed the sorcerer. By this the land was rid of that man’s evil.”
The wind blew softly from the Wastes and the meat crackled and sizzled.
“I always thought of myself as Ephram,” the man continued, “that I could not see an evil so great, one that had wronged me, and permit it to live. I know the sins of Roache, and I know whatever ill you have to say of the monster it is the truth. You are innocent. But you are also clever and strong—I can see that. If you wish, you could be like Istmol. I believe you could survive it. But I do believe it would be better if Ephram did not go it alone.”
He sat there motionless for a few minutes. Then he took a piece of meat and started to chew. Slowly, very slowly at first, Sylvaine crawled out of her hiding spot. The man didn’t react, he did not turn to her or get up. She stood and started to walk out of the ditch, tripping once. She was conscious of how she looked, filthy, covered in dirt and blood, not all of it her own. When she got close the man looked at her with a small smile. With a languidness to match her own caution, he took up a skewer of meat and offered it.
“You look hungry,” Kayip said. “And there is much I would like to discuss.”
“…And I saw a figure, gilded by sunlight,
Standing on a hill of empty memories,
He stared down at me, ignoring the blight,
Of a land forgotten amongst miseries,
What could be taken from such a man? I wondered there,
Or what could be given?
I cannot tell you, my friends, for as the sun finally left us,
The figure walked off into the night…”
—“Poems of the Wastes” Collected by Bengard Stranik
Chapter 18
One month later.
The Phoenix swayed languidly in the evening drafts that had snuck in through the large open doors of City Hall. Men and women of every flake of Huile’s upper crust drank, mingled, and laughed. Debutantes from nearby cities flirted with mustached politicians, who made promises both lofty and empty while caravan-lords told lewd jokes, garnering mixed receptions.
Marcel leaned on one of the marble pillars of the multistoried atrium, tulip glass still full, and watched the swaying Banner of the Phoenix. He had been there, two years ago, when they first hoisted the undying firebird up onto those white walls. It was a testament to a new era of peace, the phoenix’s howling cry a promise of justice and prosperity for the people of Huile. The banner itself was stunning, strands of red sewn by the most elaborate machinery, the eternal bird of flames and freedom woven in a detail that was not lifelike, but truer than life. It was beautiful. It was wondrous.
It was also generic. One of hundreds of the exact same make he had seen com
e out of factories back in Phenia. Just as rote and routine as this party, utterly indistinguishable.
Marcel sipped his drink. It was an off-brown liquor, speckled with colored chocolate to look like metal shavings. An Icarian Rusty, supposedly an import from the City of Engineers, or so Lazarus had claimed. It tasted much like it looked, and Marcel spat the mouthful back into the cup
This was supposed to be a celebration of Lazarus Roache’s homecoming, but Marcel hadn’t found a moment yet to speak with the man. As soon as Lazarus had finished his speeches, apparently a vital part of the return-party process, he was swarmed by old-friends, well-wishers, and brown-nosers. As of now the man was hosting a conversation between himself, a visiting dignitary from the city of Nortas, and Mayor Durand, spurring both intense nodding and bouts of laughter from the lookers-on.
Marcel had walked into this party with a focused purpose. Lazarus was finally back, which meant there was finally someone whose ears Marcel could trust with his misgivings over the Gall case. If there were anyone who might know if Marcel’s suspicions about Verus had some merit, it would be the man who had worked with the foreman for most of a decade.
Yet watching the crowd now, Marcel couldn’t help but feel foolish. Why should Roache give the idea any more heed than Lambert had? It was all speculation, gut feelings, no proof. If there was any truth to his misgivings, Marcel hadn’t managed to scrape it up. Most likely he was chasing a figment: Gall was a brute, Gileon a dead idiot, and Marcel was wasting his time trying to connect dots that didn’t exist.
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