The Sightless City

by Noah Lemelson

  So many lies. How many did Lambert truly believe? Marcel heart ran a sprint, and for the first time since being handcuffed he felt truly trapped. It seemed impossible that Lambert was in on Lazacorp’s corruption, the man had lost the same friends Marcel had to keep this city free. Could he have sent away another, for Roache’s sake? But it was clear enough the Justice Minister was not fully ignorant, he had to know he was speaking some taurshit.

  Marcel sucked in his breath. He had gone this far already; Lambert was still his only hope.

  “Have you seen the refineries?” Marcel asked. “In person? Without Roache’s permission.”

  Lambert kept quiet a moment, as he studied Marcel, who could feel the cold of sweat drops slipping down his neck.

  “That seems less like the jurisdiction of a Justice Minister,” Lambert said slowly, “and more the bailiwick of a private investigator.”

  “I think…” Marcel began, “that considering the evidence, an official investigation—”

  “Have you broken into Blackwood Row?” Lambert cut in suddenly.

  “They’re being tortured!” Marcel said, with a sudden force that surprised even himself. “And they’re not just foreign waste-mutants, they’re being mutated here, captured human slaves and stolen prisoners, some of them are even Huile citizens.”

  “I see,” the Minister of Justice said, face falling. “I see.”

  “Lambert,” Marcel said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice, “we have to do something.”

  The man sighed, fist clenching and unclenching. He gathered himself, put on a small, somber smile and asked: “Marcel, why did we attack Huile?”

  “To free it,” Marcel said, without hesitation. “To punish the Principate coup, and to let the city know liberty.”

  “True, true. But there any many cities that suffer under the iron chains of tyranny, in one form or another. We can’t well go liberating them all, we haven’t the armies for it,” Lambert said. “So why Huile, specifically?”

  Marcel sighed. “Because of the sangleum.”

  “Because of Lazacorp refineries, yes,” Lambert said. “You may not remember this, or even have been aware, but when General Agrippus’s army came down from her northern campaign to reinforce Huile, well, many people thought this might be the precursor to the big attack. That the forces of the Principate would rush down from Anklav and it would be a new Severing War. Chaos like our great-grandparents knew it, blood on the streets of Phenia, perhaps even a second Calamity, who could say? Well, that nightmare never came to pass, in no small part due to the heroic actions of men like yourself and Lazarus Roache. So, perhaps there have been the occasional mistakes, let’s say, professional shortcuts, expedited labor recruitment drives, maybe some sacrifices in the exact letter of safety regulations in the name of efficiency. Huile runs off Lazacorp sangleum, and the excess—and my dear friend there is much excess—is used to facilitate alliances with many other Border States to keep what happened during the Battle for Huile from ever happening again. Our bulwark against Imperial encroachment relies on Lazacorp, you must understand that.”

  Lambert knew. He had always known. Desct had warned him, Kayip had warned him, but Marcel had been sure the man was innocent, that if only his friend had known the truth he’d rise up to stop it. He wanted to ask how many of the men and women Marcel had helped arrest had disappeared beyond those walls, had been forced into that disposable, tortured mass of slave labor. Instead Marcel just nodded.

  “You look tired,” Lambert said, “Would you like some tea?” He pushed his cup forward, across the table.

  Marcel glanced down at the reddish water, smelled a familiar acrid scent.

  “What blend is this?” he asked, a further horror growing.

  “It’s good stuff, invigorating,” Lambert said.

  Marcel shook his head slowly, and the man shrugged.

  “But you do understand, don’t you Marcel?” Lambert continued. “You can’t go talking about this with other people who wouldn’t. A soldier’s duty never ends, and it seems our duty to the Resurgence requires us to… overlook some things. For Huile’s sake.”

  There was no place left for truth in this building, perhaps in this whole city. Marcel forced his smile. “Of course, Lambert. I get it now. You don’t need to be worried.”

  Lambert smiled back and tapped the table. The older guard came around, and stood beside Marcel, as Lambert leaned to pat Marcel’s hand. “You were never a great liar, my friend. Don’t worry, I’ll work this all out.”

  He stood up.

  “And Marcel,” Lambert continued, “I am so very sorry.”

  Marcel felt a sudden burst of pain in the back of his head, and the world descended into blackness.

  Chapter 26

  Sylvaine searched and scrambled through the winding subterranean hallways and sewerways. The rainwater from the surface was making its way down with ferocity, gushing in rivers through cracks and broken pipes. Pathways they had taken a mere hour or two before were now impassable torrents or rising swamps of excrement and oil. They had planned to meet Kayip at an older underrail station that stood beneath the wall to Blackwood Row. He had shown her the path, had explained it to her and even drawn up a map, but that was for a dry Underway.

  Perhaps it would have been easier with two sets of eyes, even if one were near blind in the dark. Sylvaine had waited for Marcel, had listened in the basement, but when it was clear that the man’s plan involved being knocked half unconscious by a rifle butt and dragged away, she had crossed into the Underway and sealed up the hole.

  He had seemed so confident; he knew the city better than she did. He had friends in City Hall, he had bragged about it. The more she tried to convince herself that she did the right thing leaving the man to his own initiative, the less confident she felt.

  There was no going back now; instead she closed her eyes, took off the scarf around her nose, and sniffed. The air was putrid, though a softer, wetter putrid than before. Still it was overwhelming, and she spent half a minute gagging before she could force herself to try again to sniff again. Though she had initially tried to ignore Kayip’s smell, she had spent enough time traveling in cramped conditions through hot wasteland afternoons with the warmonk to be very familiar with the idiosyncrasies of his odor. Now she tuned her nose for it, though it was like listening for a whisper in the middle of a concert. Though in this particular fetid concert the lead musician was a man slapping a cat against a violin, and the harmonium player had passed out on his keyboard. Despite this cacophony of odors, she was able to make out a hint of Kayip, somewhere in the distance.

  She followed this, sometimes down dead ends, or up to tiny pipes that functioned as vents. After half an hour or so the scent started to get stronger. She closed her eyes and trusted her miserable nose. The scent grew and grew and Sylvaine leapt over small streams and followed winding passageways through old basements in pursuit, all the while holding Gall’s papers tight to her chest. Then suddenly the smell was overwhelming.

  “Sylvaine!” Kayip whispered.

  She opened her eyes, the man a mere metre from her.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “Yes. Fine,” she said, wrapping her nose again in blissfully suffocating fabrics.

  “Where is Marcel?” the man asked. They were standing near old tracks, in a dilapidated station, the words “Audric Central” on a faded sign, the stairway covered in rotting boards that gave way at its bottom to a shallow river.

  Sylvaine shook her head. “He stayed back. I think he wants to reason with his friend.”

  “The notes,” Kayip pointed.

  Sylvaine handed them over. The man searched through the documents. “These are not all …” he said. “But perhaps these will do. At least the man sold his life for something valuable.”

  “Sold his life?” Sylvaine said.

  “I warned Marcel.” Kayip sat on a century-old rusting bench. “I told t
he man the truth. But I believe he will stay silent, he has the will of a martyr, for better or for worse. Yes, I think we may continue without him.”

  “So you think they’re just going to kill him?” Sylvaine said. “Are we just going to sit here then? We might still have time.”

  Kayip shrugged. “Perhaps, but it is too much to risk. This was all we could have expected Marcel to assist with. It is a tragedy, but if we must lose him… then yes, now would be the sensible time.”

  “We can’t just leave him!” Sylvaine kept herself from screaming, almost taken aback at her own anger.

  “Many have already died because of Roache.” Kayip’s gaze fell to the ground. “I cannot sacrifice their justice to save a man eager to doom himself.”

  “He did this out of a sense of his own justice,” Sylvaine said, surprised with the vehemence with which she was defending Marcel. “I’m not sure I even like the man—he’s cocky and more than a bit of an idiot, but he was willing to risk his life, sell his life for a bunch of people he didn’t even know.” She grabbed at and massaged the hair of her forehead. “Fuck, I should have stayed, should have talked the idiot out of it, grabbed him, something.”

  “You cannot let yourself swim in the guilt of all you have left behind. It is too much, you will drown,” Kayip said.

  Was this all that Marcel’s life was to Kayip, a playing piece, a strategic trade in the battle for justice? She thought she knew the monk, at least a little. He had always treated her like she mattered, but did any life matter as much as his revenge? Sylvaine couldn’t speak; she just stared at the man. This is not what she thought she had agreed to, her vengeance was a reason to keep living, it had never been a reason to die. This wasn’t a game to her.

  But then, it wasn’t a game to him either; she could hear it in his voice, in his slow, tired breaths. Marcel’s fate weighed on him, even as he accepted it as necessary, perhaps he had already decided that he would soon follow.

  “Marcel wasn’t the first, was he?” Sylvaine said.

  Kayip shook his head. “I could have given up after any number of my failures. Perhaps I deserve to drown, the Demiurge has that final judgment. I only know that we are risking far more than just one man. We must do the wise thing, even if it hurts, even if it cuts us down to nothing.”

  “What if it were me?” Sylvaine said. “What if you had no need for an engineer? Would you have left me there? Up in that municipal hall, or sunstroked outside Icaria?”

  Kayip stared up at her but said nothing. She could read the lines on his face; despite his words he did not display callousness. Instead it was pain, layer upon layer of pain, so many that it would be easy to fit another fold without making any visible difference.

  She walked up to him and grabbed the diagrams out of his hand. “What can you do with these?” she asked. “Do any of the mutants have technical training? Do they know how to follow æthericity lines, to cut off power, where to block something up to blackout the whole system?” She crossed her arms. “We have to try. You can either help me, or we go our own ways.

  …Rex Sharpeye pushed his hands deep into the billowing sanctuary of his long and well-worn trenchcoat, which billowed in the dark rainy wind of the city’s midnight. The woman said she’d be here, no amount of beating by rain-gutter brutes could knock that memory out of his head, and he had taken a beating. Then again, he had given it back twice as hard. Yet still, if she said she would be here, then why wasn’t she? Had his own lover betrayed him? Rex knew this was a very real and very dangerous possibility. Dames, you could never trust dames.

  Trusting his own masterful, honed instincts, Rex retreated deep into the gloomy deep shadows of the dark shadowy alley. The shadows would protect him he knew, but maybe not protect him enough. He slid his fingers over the steel coolness of his pistol that he held in his pocket. The weapon had got him through many a night like this one, maybe it would get him through this one as well.

  As he hid, three men approached the very spot he had been standing in moments before. He recognized them as the brutish henchmen of Madame Treetar.

  “He’s not here.” Said one, in a voice that reminded Rex of a dullard he had known in his youth.

  “He must have ran off.” Said a second, with a voice like a drunken bear.

  “Then we must run ourselves.” Said the last, an El’Helmaudi man by the look of him, wearing a scarred face and strange hat. “Lest he try to beat us back to our Mistress’s hideout.”

  With that the three ran off. Rex snuck out after them, and as his foot hit the cracked pavement of the long untended road, whose cracked cobblestones matched his own cracked heart at the betrayal he had now realized had taken place under the auspices of the woman he thought he had loved, the roar of an æroship roared.

  Rex Sharpeye watched as a great bulbous ship of metal floated above the roofs of the city and then floated away. Other men in such a situation would have cursed, or bewailed their fate, or cried unmanly tears. Rex was not such a man. Justice had been corrupted in the city of Annocance, but that just meant there was more work for him. He smiled as he loaded his pistol, there was work to be done…

  —“Rex Sharpeye, Private Investigator. Book 5: The Murder at Goldford Hills” By Klaus Askoy. A Pre-Calamity pulp. Received lukewarm reviews upon first publication.

  Chapter 27

  It sounded like rain. Strange, as Marcel could see the sun clearly through the window. His head pounded, and he wasn’t sure why, though perhaps that answer could also explain the strange noises that echoed softly from some far-off corner of nothing.

  Where was he? Marcel couldn’t quite remember, everything was a bit fuzzy. He heard the sound of an autocar driving by, some men talking outside. He focused through his headache, and the world became clearer.

  He was in his apartment. Of course it still seemed strange to him, as it was brand new. Lambert had told him it used to be some Principate official’s place, some high-up who fled after the battle. Marcel would have thought that those high on the Imperial command would requisition nicer housing, but the cheap rent suited him, as he was technically unemployed.

  The room itself was unfurnished, aside from his new bed in the backroom, and his desk, which he assumed would be useful at some point. He also had some photographs in a box, but he’d get to those in due time.

  Instead he tried to distract himself with the pulp in his hand. Rex Sharpeye, Private Investigator. He wasn’t sure which one it was exactly, The Mystery of Stempston Street, or maybe The Hallowed Fens, he had brought a couple up all the way to Phenia. It was hard to read the words, they kept wiggling. Why did his head pound?

  His metal leg, still store-fresh shining, moved sluggishly, and as he tried to stand up he kicked over a glass on the floor.

  Malson’s Waste-Brewed Whiskey. He hadn’t drunk more than a few sips of alcohol since his university days. Except for that night before Alb—

  Ah. So Alba was leaving today. That explained the alcohol and therefore the headache, as well as the strange tugs, as if the world was shifting slightly around him.

  Well, so it was. If she wanted to leave, she could leave. She had done her duty. It was within in her rights to abandon all common decency, abandon the city, abandon him. He couldn’t stop her, wouldn’t try. Anymore at least. If she had anything to say—

  As if on cue, knocks on the door. He had been reveling in the idea that she would come crawling to him seconds before, but now dreaded the conversation.

  “Who is it?” he shouted.

  “Me,” came the voice of Desct.

  Marcel sat up. “The door’s open.”

  Alba opened the door. Marcel leaned back on his chair in an aggressively casual slouch and tossed down the pulp.

  She strode into the room wearing a sleeveless shirt, her old military pants, and a taur leather jacket that gave her the look of a wasteland wanderer, which was her intended career path. Desct slunk in behind her.

  Alba didn’
t say anything. She didn’t apologize, or beg, or even toss out some final insult. Marcel didn’t say anything. He knew he had nothing to apologize for, and certainly couldn’t let himself beg, but at the moment he didn’t trust his mouth well enough to open it.

  Finally Desct said something.

  “I thought it was, I don’t know, fucking proper that you two should have your send-off, regardless of whatever complications of Demiurge-damned…” he petered off and shook his head. “I’ll leave you to it, I guess.”

  Desct left, and the two continued to not talk for some time. She was a tough one, maybe that’s what attracted him to her, but then, she couldn’t let herself be beat, she’d rather push them both into misery than admit she was wrongheaded. He didn’t even want an apology, really, didn’t want to hear anything. The silence was fine, if she only stayed. They could both just pretend then, pretend it was like the way it was before. Just for a little bit, even.

  But her eyes were clear enough. Not angry, as he half-expected, not a cutting gaze, but a firm one all the same. If it spoke of anything it was not insult, not mocking rage, but a hint of pity. It would have been better if she were angry.

  Finally Marcel sighed. “So you’re leaving.”

  “You know the plan, Marcel.” Alba had her hands in her pockets. “But I am still looking for hires. You have experience with a rifle.”

  “Eh, I never fired the damn thing in combat anyway.”

  They both chuckled.

  “I could ask Lambert for work for you,” Marcel said, frustrated that his heart was naïve enough to pulse with hope.