“What, to sterilize it?” Marcel asked.
“Maybe? Seems unneeded, since they do extensive filtering already elsewhere,” she said. “It’s just an… absurd design. For one, this section is connected to a sangleum pipeline and seemingly not for power, but as part of the infusion process. Here seems to be the contact point, where it adds some sort of powder to the water, and this here would allow it to vary the doses.”
The smell of Lambert’s tea rose up in Marcels mind.
“Slickdust?” he asked.
Sylvaine blinked. Then, with a quiet franticness, she looked over the papers and her notes, “No, no. I mean… possibly?” She stared down at the diagram. “If that were the case….”
If Lazacorp was infusing slickdust into the water, then whatever Roache was planning was not limited to merely making money off slave labor and cheap fuel. Could the man be planning to poison the entire city, to make them thralls to his words? After what Marcel had seen, even that no longer seemed impossible.
“No,” Sylvaine said finally. “I mean, it could be something akin to slickdust, but this would produce exceptionally high æther-frequency.”
“Too much sangleum?” Marcel asked. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. No, on a second thought that definitely sounded worse.
“More highly activated sangleum,” she said, tapping her pen, “æther reacts with certain frequencies, I’m sure Kayip would claim it has something to do with spirits or the Demiurge or whatever, but it’s all math in the end. I don’t know the exact chemical makeup of slickdust, but if it used fully-activated sangleum, I would have noticed. This machine seems to be fairly rough in its construction, it just charges its injected sangleum to a theoretical maximized frequency ceiling.”
“So…” Marcel began, trying, and failing, to understand. He stared at the notes intently, hoping that it would somehow reform into sensible, readable phrases. When it didn’t, he decided to go for the simple, and most important question: “What would happen if you drank that slick… whatever-infused water?”
“Well…,” Sylvaine started, “when we worked with highly activated sangleum in Icaria, we had to wear full body personal projective equipment to avoid contamination… so I would say… something bad. Something quite bad.”
Marcel sat himself down on the rusting bench, trying to ignore the sudden aching pain in his cogleg.
“Is it functional?” he asked.
“Hmm?” Sylvaine looked up. “Oh no. At least it wasn’t when these notes were written up. I mean, the water filtration part is set up, but there are several issues here that would need an engineer to work out. For one, there’s this module here, which I can’t make heads nor tails of.”
The woman went back to her work, seemingly more concerned with the theoretical engineering questions than the possibility of impending doom.
“Well,” Marcel said, “I guess it’s all the same, as long we can blast it all to Inferno.”
“You speak far too loud for a man on the run,” came Kayip’s voice, half a metre behind Marcel. He jumped a little, as did Sylvaine.
The silent-footed monk let out half a smile. Marcel got up, and Kayip handed him a key.
“You must move soon,” he said. “I left, a good time ago, a motorbike hidden in a collapsed basement under Huile Field. I have supplies for several days. You could travel many kiloms, I think, before City Hall realized you had escaped.”
“Travel?” Marcel asked.
The monk opened his bag. “Water. Dried rations. An extra pistol, if you need it. I even have some old forged identification papers, if you wish to go by the name of Saht Isim.”
“Are you suggesting I run?” Marcel said. “I can’t leave, not now. We have what we need to support Desct.”
Kayip nodded. “Yes. You have helped greatly with that. But now City Hall will look for you.” He placed his large hand on Marcel’s shoulder, single eye staring with an intense, yet still softened force. “You have done your duty to your friend and your city. It is best now if you leave.”
Marcel left the man’s grasp and started to pace. He had been tricked into helping to doom Huile, he had to save it. The idea of fleeing was out of the question. “I can hide with the mutants,” Marcel said.
“If they believe you are still in the city they will call Lazacorp,” Kayip said. “We can ill afford the attention.”
“Then… we’ll fake my death,” Marcel said.
“How?” Sylvaine asked, leaning back amidst her meadow of notes.
“With…” Marcel snapped trying to think, but no plausible method arose. “We just need someone who could verify that I died…” He paused, then: “Verus.”
“Verus?” Kayip spat the name as if it were a piece of grub-rotten taur steak.
“Yes,” Marcel said. “He’s at odds with City Hall, with Roache, he’s the only one who, in their eyes, could have saved me.”
“To what?” Sylvaine said. “Shoot you himself?”
“Probably,” Marcel said, “all the better, I mean, if he says that. But I think I can bargain well enough for my life.” Marcel grabbed up a handle of notes, Sylvaine shouting out a “Be careful with those!”
“I can bring him these notes, or a copy of them or we keep the copy for ourselves, it doesn’t matter. Convince him to take me in, tell City Hall he’s taken me out.” Kayip’s face had started locked in shock, but seemed to morph now into at least some form of consideration, which was a step up.
“Verus hates me, but he hates Roache more. All I have to do is convince him I’m better to him as a bludgeon against the man than as a corpse.”
“You’d be gambling your life,” the monk observed coolly.
“You’d be throwing it away,” Sylvaine muttered, less coolly.
“But then we’d have someone on the inside, someone with an ear to what’s happening in Lazacorp,” Marcel said. “My presence alone could distract them, get the attention off the mutants.”
“We just saved you!” Sylvaine said, standing up. “You cog-loose maniac.”
“And this is how I’ll pay it back,” Marcel replied.
“I wasn’t asking you to…” Sylvaine pressed her hands into her face and groaned.
“And if he decides you are better dead?” Kayip asked.
“Then I’ll take what I know about the mutants to the grave,” Marcel said simply.
Kayip scratched at his mask, forehead wrinkled with thought. Sylvaine shook her head and turned to stare at the man’s subtle, shadow-obscured expression. The look of growing horror on her face told Marcel that he had won.
* * *
Several hours later, as the sunlight started to stream over Blackwood Row’s walls, Marcel found himself climbing out from the Underway into a grime-covered alley beneath vomiting smokestacks. He waited there, holding tight the notes under his hand. The morning light cut through the black clouds, and Marcel tried to suck in his fear as he glanced at the sky. He had never been very religious, never believed that the sun was a divine gift of the Demiurge, yet even still he found himself taking heart in the coming of day.
Then he noticed the voice he had been listening for, heard the footsteps, and discerned the hulking shadow of the one man who he knew would take him to Verus. Marcel did not give himself time to think, but dashed out into the street, right in front of the surprised visage of Dutrix Crat.
Marcel thrust up the folder. “I need to talk to Verus!”
Chapter 29
It was the second time in twenty-four hours that Marcel found himself in chains. Dutrix Crat had taken him into custody with more bewilderment than anything else, leading him forward with an odd gingerness, as if he were unsure Marcel was indeed his prisoner, or instead some strange envoy, or just very confused. As they walked, the man read through the folder, eyebrows raised.
Another guard, some slightly befuddled tattooed man, kept a gun pointed in Marcel’s vague direction. He muttered occasional ins
ults as they led Marcel into the basement of a nearby building, but glanced several times in the direction of Crat, as if to make sure his taunts hadn’t gone too far. The whole affair wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it was preferable to his last imprisonment. At least this time they hadn’t bashed him on the head first, and their threats to kill him were contingent on his attempting to escape, which he had no plans, nor real hope, of doing.
Still, as they walked under the slave-fueled bustle of the refineries above, through long and dimly lit corridors, Marcel couldn’t help but start to question his strategic instincts that led to his life being held at the whim of a man who unambiguously hated him. Kayip’s support for the plan had given him some hope. The monk had apparently dealt with Verus on previous visits and gave Marcel some advice on how to work the foreman. Marcel silently mouthed the Kayip’s words behind closed lips: Display anger at the betrayal, show disdain for the entire human race including yourself, seek answers, and pretend to eat up whatever taurshit he tells you.
Sylvaine had offered considerably less advice, and her suggestion to “try not to die” came only after cursing out the “ungrateful, foolish, suicide-eager” Marcel for a good half-hour. Only with great effort had Kayip been able to convince her to make a copy of Gall’s notes and begrudgingly let go of the originals.
Marcel’s escorts led him up a stairwell into a small foyer. It was plain and undecorated, unlike the warmly lit and luxuriously furnished rooms Roache had once toured Marcel through.
Crat approached and traded whispers with a strange man who stood behind a desk. This man wore what appeared to be a leather jacket, with a hood hanging unused in the back. Marcel got a glimpse of a necklace swinging low, at its end a red glass orb. The sphere did not seem wholly solid, but instead some sort of hollow container, where an indeterminate liquid sloshed, though it had no clear lid or stopper. The man’s face was covered in tattoos, not unusual for Lazacorp guards, but the designs were strange, not the usual skulls, thorns, gearworks, monsters, or naked women, but instead odd, sharp letters, in a script Marcel didn’t recognize. On his shaved forehead there appeared to be an abstracted tattoo of an eye.
Kayip had warned Marcel he might meet some “odd-looking ruffians” in Verus’s entourage. He had also claimed some of them might be demon-worshiping magicians, but Marcel had decided to take the monk’s more outlandish accusations with the skepticism they deserved.
The odd-looking ruffian muttered into a vocaphone speaker at the edge of the desk, and after a few moments nodded and pulled a lever to bring down a clanking lift from up above.
* * *
Verus’s office sat on the top floor. It was a large, sparse space, dimly lit by irregularly placed floor lamps that were not up to their task. The foreman had windows, large ones in fact, but they were completely shuttered, letting in only the barest hint of sunlight. The room was filled with unadorned cabinets and cracked vitrines, intermixed with old mining and industrial tools long since taken by rust. Its walls held faded paintings of strange angular figures and red-brushed landscapes, which Marcel could not quite make out the details of. The room reminded him, oddly, of a temple or cathedral, admittedly one decorated by a half-mad recluse.
Verus sat behind a heavy, plain desk; dressed in his usual torn-up and stained black leather. He pushed himself up, staring as Crat and his crony led Marcel into the room.
“Funny. Talwar. Funny,” Verus said. “I’ve had a funny day. Been maintaining a pleasant silence with that taur’s arse Roache when he, well his traitorous lickspittle, calls me up, to warn me that his viscous lap-hound, his priggish little knife-blade that he had shoved so gently in my back, that you, Mr. Talwar, had gone rogue, had betrayed ‘us.’” Verus used air-quotes on the ‘us’. “I didn’t know there was an ‘us,’ but apparently in times of panic, we’re best of friends.”
Marcel opened his mouth, but Verus didn’t give him time to speak.
“So I get told to put my men on alert, that, in the unlikely event you were idiot enough not to skip town, you might try to stir up trouble, as if that wasn’t your basic fucking instinct. So imagine me, Talwar, sitting here, wondering how Roache had possible managed to screw the wastehound so damned well on this, when, just fifteen minutes later, I get another call that you have come knocking straight over to me.”
Marcel stared down at his feet. “Roache betrayed me,” he said. “Used me as a weapon to find dirt he planted, to perform political hits.” Marcel tried to sound genuine, and realized it took no effort. The pain in his voice was not put on.
Verus snorted. “Worked that out for yourself? Did some investigating?” The last word was thick with mockery.
“I was an idiot, believed it all, needed to believe it,” Marcel said. Verus stared at him, his one eye piercing and prodding. “I went along until I dug just a little deeper. Was all it took, really, the truth was never far from the surface, I was just too blind to know where to dig.”
Verus crossed his arms. “To be frank I thought you would have been wheeled into it. Paid off or drugged up like the rest of them. Guess it wasn’t all an act then, you were genuinely the nuisance you seemed. I took you as a fool, Talwar, but I didn’t know you were that much of a fool.”
Marcel winced. It was surprisingly easy to act the part, since the man’s words did sting true.
Crat opened his mouth to speak, but Verus raised his finger.
“Or,” he said, smiling, “you’re still the paid hound, and Roache has you by the collar.”
“What?” Marcel said.
Verus waved around his desk, an unusually genuine smile cracking across on his face, an unnerving look. “Another game from Roache? What did he tell you, that you wouldn’t be in danger? That if I saw through your little ploy, your little game to get another pair of ears in this room, that I’d simply send you back? Marcel, why would you ever think that I would miss an opportunity to plant a bullet in your forehead?”
“Roache betrayed me!” Marcel said, nearly shouting. “He lied about my own friend’s death. Corrupted City Hall. Inferno, Lambert tried to have me killed.”
“And you figured this out all on your own?” Verus raised his eyebrow.
“Ye… Yes!”
The man simply snorted again. “Not worth the risk. Crat take him to the Underway, make it quick, before Roache starts to complain.”
“Yes, Awakener,” Crat said, a strange title, one Marcel didn’t have to time to muse over.
“Crat!” Marcel shouted. “Show him the notes.”
Crat glanced down at the folder in his hands unsure of what to do.
“Awakener,” Crat started, “Talwar came in with some—”
“Don’t listen to him!” Verus spat. Then after a moment, “But give those here.”
Crat threw the end of the chains to his lackey and walked over to Verus. “He had these on him when he came shouting. Was waving them around.”
Verus took the notes and started to leaf through them, genuine surprise in his eye.
“A gift,” Marcel explained. “They were yours, properly, anyway.”
“Should I?” Crat asked, pointing to Marcel.
Verus didn’t look up, but waved his hands as he kept reading.
The two guards stood still, sparing only the occasional glance to each other or towards Marcel, who held his breath. His heart beat heavy as Verus slowly inspected his prize.
“Sorry, I wasn’t able to sneak all of it away,” Marcel said, gesturing to the notes. Verus ignored him, flipping through the pages, one after another.
“How?” Verus said simply.
Marcel shrugged. “I helped steal them in the first place.”
“I knew it!” Verus said. “Knew Roache had to be behind that somehow.”
“I was told it proved that you were conspiring against Huile.” Marcel shook his head. “All lies, just some game Roache was playing. Makes me sick, I’d kill them all if I could.”
Verus sucked
in his breath, staring at the notes, tapping his finger on the page, his face cut between rage and vindication. Then a hint of a grin snuck out the side of his face as he released a stuttering half-laugh.
“This is the first time,” he finally muttered, “that one of you stifflanders ever made my day better.”
“Stiff?” Marcel caught himself asking an unnecessary question.
Verus raised his eye. “Not wastefolk. You, Roache, Lambert and all the other idiots and scumsuckers out here.”
Marcel laughed. “A bunch of shitsacks.”
Verus lowered the notes. “Don’t think I’m Roache, don’t think you can kiss my arsehole and nod in agreement to my every word, that that’ll win you anything.”
“Noted,” Marcel said, shaking his head. “I just want to get back at the fucker who betrayed me. I thought these notes might help.” Or at least prove he wasn’t allied with Roache.
Verus closed the folder in one hand and leaned on his desk. “Fine. Maybe you’re not with Roache. Maybe you are just a raging taur, trying to thrash at the man who tied you to the ground and fucked you. Doesn’t change anything. You came to me. You’re scared, Talwar, knew you’d be hunted in Huile, can’t handle running to the Wastes. You want to hide in my den like some beaten wastehound pup.”
Marcel shook his head. Betrayal, anger, disdain, that’s what Kayip had said. “I don’t care what you do to me, doesn’t matter anymore. As long as these notes make sure you fuck them over. The whole crop of them are nothing more than mog-lizard shits given waistcoats. This city deserves to burn.”
Verus actually laughed, it was a frightening sound. “That it? Don’t want me to transport you down to some Resurgence town? Don’t want to be offered some stiffland office, covered in the desecrated corpse-meat of a decadent past? Don’t care if I have my men shoot you, toss you in the sewer?”
Marcel shrugged. “Pointless now. It was all lies. What would the UCCR offer me now? Just fancier lies.”
The Sightless City Page 28
