Candlelit Vigil Held For Sadie Abernathy—Who Was ‘The Woman In The Window’?
Fallon’s fingers tightened around a cold, smooth iron railing. He peered down into a drab, dreary water tank squatting at the bottom of Dalthea’s new water filtration centre. It reeked like a hospital ward—too clean, too sterile.
That was before the bodies in the water.
‘Do we know who they are?’ He refused to look away from the bloated, pea-green and rotten corpses.
‘We believe at least one of them is one of our confirmed cases of bloodlung,’ Waltham said. ‘But with the decomposition...’
‘The bloodlunger corpses were to be burned.’
‘I’ll have my men look into it.’
‘The bodies were put here after the water was purified?’
‘They were. Following the shift change, the watchmen coming in discovered them. Our working theory is that whoever is responsible intentionally transported contaminated water from here into the city.’
‘Meaning the Watch.’ Fallon’s grip tightened. Was this where the bodies Valentine recovered in the abattoir were to wind up?
Half of the installation was still under construction; it was supposed to be the keystone of getting Dalthea back on its feet. It was supposed to reinvigorate the kingdom—provide fresh, clean water without having to send Raincatchers halfway across the desert. More than that, it was to be a symbol of hope.
Now, tarpaulins fluttered like shadowy spectres and the construction gear stood as still as gravestones. Like the never-completed Tower of Remembrance, the purification centre would be another monument reminding Dalthea of its dead.
‘Everything I’m working for is slipping away,’ Fallon said. And at the hands of my own people. Aramon Fallon had spent his whole life refusing to trust people—so far, he’d been proved right every time.
‘How much water made it into the city?’ he asked.
Waltham cleared his throat. ‘We have no way of knowing, sir. Not until—’
Fallon smacked the iron rail. ‘Not until people die.’
‘Sir, what do the Lightbearers gain from this? It won’t help their recruitment.’
‘They’ll put the blame on us, just like the water stations they destroyed. And they’ll be right.’
The Council’s turning against me. Dustwynd’s a no-go zone. The banking house is calling in all of our debts. People are being murdered and put on display. The Press is twisting the truth.
And now the water.
‘This is part of a co-ordinated attack, Waltham. And elements of the Watch are part of it.’
‘Sir, I assure you, I will root out the corruption in my ranks and—’
‘But they ain’t acting alone. The Lightbearers and a few watchmen don’t have the stones to carry this out on their own—not without backing.’
‘I’ll find the Judge,’ Waltham promised. ‘You have my wo—’
Fallon turned his back on the Arch Vigil. ‘This is a war being waged on multiple fronts, by multiple enemies—and soldiers win wars, Waltham—not statement takers. You’re relieved of your command.’
Buzz had never been much of a coffee drinker, but the sweet and tart aroma of roasted hazelnuts warmed his insides. After two days beyond the barricades of Dustwynd, chasing down leads and doing his best to avoid bloodlung, he welcomed anything that didn’t reek of piss and vomit.
The plump, rosy-cheeked owner of the Elmheart Café kept her eyes on Buzz as he approached a booth at the rear. Filth stained his clothes, and he couldn’t quite wash away the stench.
Sneaking into Dustwynd was hard, but getting out was easy when no-one wanted a piece of you. The moonshiners, drug dealers and bootleggers were nowhere to be found; the whisperers and messengers had silenced; and the men and women on the corners had retreated elsewhere. Even the underground temple of Irros was empty. Red rings were painted on the front doors, warning of quarantined bloodlungers. How many had Buzz seen? Dozens? Hundreds?
Buzz had devoured his entire food and water rations before nightfall on the first day—and when you downed water in the centre of Dustwynd without a scuzzer or an urchin trying to thieve it from you, well, then you knew something wasn’t right.
The few people who still remained slammed their doors on him. Farro Zoven’s former heavies—always willing to bloody their knuckles on your face—simply told him to piss off, so fearful of catching bloodlung that they refused any kind of physical contact.
Without people swarming its lanes and roads, Dustwynd was as alien as an invitation for high tea at Castle Rochefort—and the lack of information gleaned from Dustwynd meant Buzz had only one idea left—one place to go. And the dread rose inside him like sewage.
At least the Viator sounded like its old self. Reading was the best thing that Buzz had learned, until he was forced to hide his books when his father cuffed him for enjoying them. Still, they came in handy when he needed something to sell for a quick fix.
‘Over here.’ Valentine eyed him from a rear booth the way a jackal eyed a hare. She wore a long but light bottle-green tailcoat and slack mud-brown trousers. Even out of her uniform, the red-haired woman still looked like a soldier. Steam coiled from her coffee cup.
‘Mornin’!’ Buzz slipped into the seat opposite and drummed the table with his fingers.
‘What’ve you got?’
‘Not even a “hello”, eh?’ It was the second time Buzz had met his handler since taking up Fallon’s offer. She hadn’t warmed to him.
‘Skip the small-talk—a Watch motorcarriage was torched last night, and Tristan got beaten half to shit. If the Lightbearers had captured that kid, how long you reckon he’d last before givin’ up the Watch’s deployment manoeuvres or Waltham’s schedule for the next damn month?’
Buzz cleared his throat. ‘“Twentieth of Lunos—as usual, I will be reporting to General Fallon to enquire just how far I should bend over for him. Thereafter, I shall huff and puff to the point where my face is as red as my ’stache, then it’s a trip to the cells to see what the courtesans are willing to do for a whiff of freedom.”’
Valentine scowled. ‘Dustwynd is locked down because of bloodlung—I’ve got better things to do than babysit your ass, so if y’all ain’t got anything useful—’
‘All right, all right.’ Buzz leaned across the table and reduced his voice to a whisper. ‘You don’t need to tell me about the state of Dustwynd—I spent two full days down there—and let me tell you, it ain’t pretty.’
‘How the hell did you get inside Dustwynd?’
Buzz rolled his eyes. ‘I could get into the palm of Princess Anabelle’s left hand if it had the City Watch guarding it—and no-one knows where she is.’
‘You should’ve told the boss.’
Buzz snorted. ‘People see me waltzing in and out of your barracks, how long d’ya reckon my cover lasts?’
Valentine didn’t argue. ‘What did you find?’
‘Dustwynd’s dead—no blind preacher on his soap box, no scuzzers or laudanol dolls lying in alleys… And no Lightbearers, no Judge. You’d have thought with Kayn dying, someone would step up.’
Valentine’s fingers curled into fists. ‘Sugar, I know you ain’t gonna tell me they’re gone.’
‘Nah.’ Buzz scratched his armpit. ‘But they always were good at moving.’
With slumped shoulders, Valentine leaned back in her seat. ‘How can the biggest threat in the kingdom just up and disappear?’
Buzz stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Don’t know, but your lot didn’t have a clue about the biddy arranged in that shop window, or about the bloodlung outbreak ’til it was too late. You honestly reckon the Watch control anything ’cept how shiny their helmets are?’
Valentine threw the rest of her coffee back like a shot of bourbon.
‘Something’s coming, Valentine—something big. Ask me, the best thing to do is scarper.’
‘I ain’t running—neither are you. Come on, there must be somebody in this town who knows something.’
‘All right, where do we begin?’
Sewage boiled in Buzz’s guts. ‘Same place it began for me. Same place I got hooked on scuzz.’
Kids sat cross-legged upon sandy slabs in the orphanage’s back court. They were surrounded by dead, gnarled trees with branches the colour of a scuzzer’s arms when their veins collapse.
‘Careful around here,’ said Buzz.
‘Reckon I can handle schoolteachers.’
‘You might be in your civvies, but you still carry yourself like a soldier. Your back’s too straight, your shoulders are too square, and your eyes check the corners too much.’
Valentine’s lips pursed. Judging by how often she adjusted her casual clothes, Buzz reckoned she was born in her army gear.
‘No-one’s reported kids in the Lightbearers’ numbers yet,’ Valentine pointed out. ‘This better not be a waste of time.’
‘Aye, well, your attempts at gaining insight have been as productive as organising an orgy at a Fayth picnic. Although, from what this place used to be, that might not be too far-fetched.’
In the courtyard ahead, a young teacher was giving lessons on the dynamics of airships. ‘And if there isn’t enough lifting gas in the ballonets,’ the instructor announced, ‘the whole thing plummets.’ He whistled and twirled his finger in the air, painting an invisible, descending spiral.
‘Mister Drimmon!’ A kid prodded his fingers into the sky. ‘You said ballonets, but I thought there was only one big balloon on old airships?’
‘That’s the envelope,’ Drimmon explained. Gods, he sounded as happy as a pig in shit. With scuzz. Getting laid.
‘The envelope covers the frame,’ the teacher continued, ‘and the frame holds the ballonets. It’s for safety—if one ballonet goes, the others’ll still hold her up. Not that we need ’em in this day and age—new airships have rotors and thrusters. Technology’s a marvellous thing. Now, when it comes to propulsion, igneus is—’
‘Tell us again about how you saved the kingdom from the evil Prime Councillor!’ a girl yelled.
Valentine marched ahead, but Buzz tugged her back. ‘Gotta listen before you walk.’
‘Oh, that old story,’ the teacher laughed. ‘Nah, we really don’t have time to—’
‘Please?’
‘Well, okay!’ Drimmon bent down lower. ‘So, I’m piloting a raincatcher, right, and there’s all this lightning shooting around me. The RSF’s warship is taking a beating from the Spire—hurling lightning, it was—so it was up to me to go on a daring, last-minute rescue mission. I take the Liberty Wind—my old airship—and soar towards the Spire, dodging bolts of lightning as I go. I bypass the door’s security—remind me to tell you about that—and go inside, where—with seconds to spare—I deactivate the lightning Spire and save the kingdom.’
‘Except the Schiehallion was still destroyed,’ spoke an unimpressed lass sitting up at the back. Buzz had never met Nyr the Death God, but he reckoned she’d probably look like her.
Drimmon scratched his head. ‘Aye, that’s as may be, Evelyn—but it was me who flew the Liberty Wind up to the monstrous, flaming thing and rescued its crew. The RSF ain’t quite as hard as they want you to believe, if y’ask me.’
Another kid put her hand up. ‘Didn’t you almost die? Angelo said you almost died.’
‘I did almost die—and fortunately for me, Clara the cook was on hand to save my ars… ahem, save my posterior. She’s the real hero.’ Drimmon tossed a wrench through the air and caught it, then used it to point to his students. ‘I’m lucky to be here—and so’s each and every one o’ you.’
One of the kids erupted into a fit of coughing, and Buzz’s stomach knotted. Two boys and a girl sprang to their feet and backed away.
‘Um, just, just hold on a minute there,’ Drimmon stammered. ‘You okay, Ainsley?’
‘Just a cough,’ the kid answered.
Drimmon mopped his brow. ‘Right. Of course. Can’t be too careful, eh?’
Buzz’s heart thumped faster than a burglar running from a Watch house. Most folk could ignore Dustwynd being the site of a bloodlung outbreak—most people ignored Dustwynd anyway—but nobody ignored little old ladies in shop windows. The papers named her as Sadie Abernathy—Buzz wasn’t sure if knowing her name made it better.
Drimmon clapped his hands. ‘Right, that’s all for today then. Remember to read chapters six to eight of Airships: A Visual History, and remember to fill in your forms for next week’s trip with Guildmaster Tugarin.’
The kids rushed to their feet and scampered off, some of them grumbling, others chorusing Drimmon’s story about saving the RSF.
‘C’mon.’ Buzz approached the teacher, Valentine at his side. ‘This place has fair turned a corner, eh, mate? Much better’n the old church.’
‘Aye, you could say that,’ said Drimmon. ‘You looking for some food, friend? Clara—’
‘Nah, nah. Looking for info on the Lightbearers.’
Drimmon placed his hands on his hips. His fingers were dirty and caked in machine oil, and a gentle smell of ignium surrounded him. ‘You won’t find ’em here—unless you reckon it’s defenceless orphans who’re making folk burn ’emselves alive.’
Buzz threw his hands up. ‘No need to get defensive, mate—I ain’t a fan of the Lightbearers neither. But I know how buggers like them operate—they go for society’s most vulnerable, eh? The go for easy targets, convince ’em they can be a part of something bigger and reel ’em in. Makes sense that they’ll come here. You heard anything?’
Drimmon shook his head. ‘The kids don’t talk to me about much, other’n airships and stuff.’
‘Have any of them been acting different?’ Valentine asked. ‘Said anything, done anything out of the ordinary?’
Drimmon shook his head. ‘They’re scared, same as everyone else. And even if they were running with the Lightbearers, it’s like I said—they wouldn’t tell me.’
Buzz couldn’t stifle his laughter. ‘Pile o’ crap, that is.’
‘’scuse me?’
Buzz pressed a finger at Drimmon. ‘I saw how them kids looked at you. You’re Stanley Drimmon—hero of the Raincatchers’ Rebellion! I recognised you from yer picture in the Viator soon as I rolled up here. You’re a hero to them kids—reckon you’re the first bugger they’d talk to.’
Drimmon’s nostrils flared. ‘Listen, these kids are good as gold, all right? They deserve better’n what we can give them, and the last thing I’m gonna do is betray their confidence to some scuzzer.’
Wondered how long it’d take to play that card. So Buzz played one of his own. ‘How’s Ena?’
Drimmon froze. ‘How do you know Ena?’
‘How do you reckon I know Ena?’
Drimmon grabbed Buzz and pinned him against a tree.
‘Hey. Hey!’ Valentine hauled Drimmon away from Buzz. ‘Play nice.’
Drimmon backed off, his face red and slick with sweat. ‘Ena don’t work in Scab End no more,’ he said. ‘An’ when she did, I don’t reckon she’d ever go near a rat like you.’
‘Y’all need to learn some calm,’ warned Valentine
‘I know Ena because her and her pals were good to me once,’ Buzz explained. ‘That was all there was to it. Gave me shelter for a night. And in return, I… I stole their water tokens and sold ’em for scuzz. There ain’t much I can do about that now, and I ain’t gonna beg for forgiveness. But if you know anything about the Lightbearers, then maybe I can stop what happened to me happening to someone else.’
Drimmon looked like he might say something, but then he shook his head. ‘I’ll go to every hell before I sell my kids out to a scuzzer.’
‘You get that a lot?’ Valentine asked when the teacher was out of earshot.
‘Every day.’
And for a moment, Valentine’s eyes softened.
Saliva flooded Buzz’s mouth at the aroma of minced beef, mashed potato and carrots wafting through t
he orphanage’s halls. ‘Slow down, Valentine. You couldn’t look more like a soldier if you had a helmet and a gun.’
Valentine stopped. ‘I do have a gun.’
‘Listen, we ain’t out of the game yet—I know a place concocting moonshine; give me some aerons to grease the right palms and I’ll—’
‘Hell no.’
‘Fine,’ Buzz grumbled. ‘How’s a soldier like you get saddled with me, anyway?’
‘You read the Viator’s story about Outpost One Three Seven a month back?’
‘That lab where they experimented on dead folk? Heard some rumblings, aye.’
‘Yeah, well… I was the one who did the rumbling.’
‘Ah, I get it—sold your bosses out, eh? Good on you.’
‘You reckon it’s good? You got any idea what it’s like working with people who can’t trust you? Every other day I find a dead rat in my locker.’
‘Eiro’s arsehole, just making conversation.’
Valentine scowled, but before she could say anything, a kid around sixteen years old walked up to her.
‘Hello.’ His choppy, dark hair sat on his head like an overused toilet brush, and the glasses on his face sat at a crooked angle. The dog-eared corner of a book poked out of his pocket.
‘Hello, sugar,’ said Valentine. ‘Angelo, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know ’im?’ Buzz asked.
‘No, I’m just damn good at guessing names.’
Angelo’s feet dug into the scuffed wooden floor. ‘Heard you talking with Drimmon. Heard him shouting.’
Through the fog in Buzz’s head—through the drug-addled memories—he recognised the kid. He’d seen him before… With Serena.
Shame burned in Buzz’s chest. How much destruction could he have avoided if he hadn’t spied on that green-haired girl? ‘You shouldn’t be listenin’ to people’s private conversations, kid.’
‘Not private if you’re loud. You want the Lightbearers.’
Buzz ushered Angelo to the side. ‘Careful who hears you saying that.’
‘I can help.’
‘You can?’ said Valentine. ‘We’d sure appreciate it.’
Wrath of Storms Page 19
