by Jaine Fenn
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Acknowledgements
Principles of Angels
JAINE FENN
Orion
www.orionbooks.co.uk
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Jaine Fenn 2008
All rights reserved.
The right of Jaine Fenn to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2008 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.
With thanks to Barry Andrews and SHRIEKBACK for permission to reprint a verse from ‘The Big Hush’, from the album OIL AND GOLD, © 1985, Island Record Inc. All rights reserved.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN : 978 0 5750 8718 7
This eBook produced by Jouve, France
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.jainefenn.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk
For D. The only thing that matters more
Is there a flame in the dark?
Is there a bright heart star?
These creatures look the same now
We freeze wherever we are
We wake alone in the blackness
We sleep whenever we fall
One dream all around us
This big hush infects us all
‘THIS BIG HUSH’ , SHRIEKBACK
Desperation is a tender trap
It gets you every time
‘SO CRUEL’ , U2
CHAPTER ONE
Taro lay still, eyes wide, ears straining, an arm’s length from death.
There it was again, the sound that had woken him: a shrill whistle off to his left. A moment later, it was answered by two longer ones, away to the right.
The sound of a hunt.
He stood carefully. He’d spent the night on a mazeway, one of the thousands of ledges lashed and pinned to the vanes hanging below the floating disc of the City. The labyrinth of open-sided mazeways and enclosed homespaces formed the twilight world of the Undertow, Taro’s home. Below him, the early morning light broke the planet’s barren surface into a mosaic of orange rock and black shadow. Taro looked away, blinking to clear the bright after-images of a quick and easy end to his troubles. Gotta stay sharp. The hunters were probably after a meatbaby, but since his world had gone to shit three days ago, he was fair game too.
He picked up the pack he’d been using as a pillow, stuffed his blanket in the top and, keeping his back pressed against the vane that supported the mazeway, began to edge sideways. After three steps, he froze. A shadow flitted across the T-junction ahead, where this mazeway ended at another, wider one.
Another whistle, closer, but coming from hubwards, the direction the hunter had gone. Looked like they hadn’t spotted him. So he just needed to stop his legs shaking, get his breathing back under control and move off in the other direction - but cautious-like, as this was disputed territory. He’d been so tired last night that he’d just picked a quiet dead-end to stretch out on. He hadn’t even tethered himself, even though the gap between the mazeways ran to three metres here, and wasn’t properly netted. That kind of carelessness would get him killed now he didn’t have an Angel to protect him. No, don’t think about that, don’t think about Malia.
The next whistle came from further off.
At the junction he had a choice: rimwards or hubwards, the direction he thought the hunt was headed. He peered that way: the mazeway went off long and straight, with plenty of support ropes and a fully netted gap. The nets at the far end were swinging back and forth. Someone - probably the hunt’s prey - had gone that way recently: a meatbaby’s twisted limbs allowed them to take to the nets where most downsiders wouldn’t risk it.
‘Hoi, Angel-boy!’
The voice came from rimwards, behind him. Taro’s first instinct was to run - but then he’d be heading into the hunt. And the speaker should’ve seen that Taro wore City colours in his hair, so he would think twice before attacking. Taro flicked a finger to release the catch on one of his wrist-sheaves and turned slowly, feeling the hilt of his fleck slide into his hand.
A lag a couple of years older than him was standing a few paces up the rimwards mazeway. He held a vane-cutter - not a good range weapon, but perfect for butcher-work - and wore strands of orange and green plaited into his lank pale hair. Limnel’s colours. Resh, that was his name, Taro recalled, one of Limnel’s seconds, with a rep for mindless thuggery and unquestioning obedience to his gang-boss.
Resh nodded at the blade in Taro’s hand. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he lisped through the gap between his two missing front teeth. ‘You ain’t the dish o’ the day. But yer in me way.’
Taro stepped back to leave the path clear. ‘Mazeway’s all yours.’
Resh sauntered up to him. ‘Yeah. Some of us gotta work fer our food, y’know? Oh, wait, so do you now, doncha? Shame it’s an invite-only hunt.’
Taro said nothing. Until three days ago he’d been one of the lucky few: Angel lineage, protected and revered. But since his line-mother had joined his birth-mother in the Heart of the City - or whatever paradise or hell really lay beyond death - he was on his own, as Resh couldn’t resist reminding him.
He held his breath as the other youth passed him. In a world where water was currency, washing was a luxury, but Resh smelled bad even by Undertow standards, the rancid stink of sweat mixing with the sour reek of burnt mash on his breath.
A sequence of three short whistles came from hubwards. Resh glanced back at Taro and said with a sneer, ‘Boss’s offer’s still open, y’know. Fer now.’ Then he headed off purposefully. If the rumours were true, Resh would be in no hurry to finish off the hunt’s p
rey. Meatbabies might have twisted limbs and simple minds, but they were more or less human. Resh would have other pleasures on his mind first.
Once he’d rounded a couple of corners and could no longer hear the hunt’s whistles, Taro stopped. He was still shaking, and his throat was parched.
After checking no one was around, he sat down and opened the leather hammock that, now he had no homespace to sling it, doubled as his pack. His remaining possessions made a pitiful tally: the clothes he stood up in plus his flecks, the knives fashioned from slivers of vane material and worn at each wrist; and in the pack: a harness of twisted cord with a plaited rope tether; one thin blanket; a spare shirt, as dirty as the one he wore; a bent metal spoon and a bone-handled eating knife; a plastic bowl and cup; a rusty hand-mirror; and, wrapped in rags to cushion it, the flute carved from his birth-mother’s arm-bone, his only memento of the stranger who loved him, but who had died before he had the chance to love her, leaving him in the care of her sister. He found what he was after at the bottom. The waterskin was all but empty. He sucked the last few drops from it, tipping his head back against the vane.
So, Limnel would still let him join his vagabond troupe of muggers, liggers, thieves and tarts. The gang-boss had made the offer the evening after Malia took the fall, striding into the homespace Taro had shared with his line-mother without a by-your-leave. ‘So, boy, word is yer all alone now. I could use someone like you. Take up the old hobby full-time, neh?’
Taro, still in shock at losing his protector, his last surviving relative, had murmured, ‘No thanks, Limnel. Don’t think so.’
The gang-boss had looked around the central common-room, lingering on the dark stain on the nets strung across the gap in the middle of the floor. ‘You won’t hold onto this place long by yerself, y’know. Think about it.’ Then he’d left.
The next morning, soon after dawn, a medium-sized troupe - five adults and three children - came round. They were armed with flecks and one ancient-looking boltgun, but they didn’t want trouble. They wanted somewhere to live, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t have this place. From the smell of them they were shit-gardeners and a large, isolated homespace that had once belonged to an Angel was perfect for their necessary but anti-social trade. They eased Taro out almost apologetically, waiting while he bundled his things into his hammock. He didn’t take anything of Malia’s. Her room had been out of bounds when she was alive and he couldn’t face going in there now she was dead.
He had asked everyone in his small group of friends for a place to stay, but no one had space in their troupe for an extra mouth. He thought he might at least be able to beg safe crash-space for a day or two, but had no luck, though one ex-girlfriend had given him a refill of water. He couldn’t be sure how much his cold reception was due to his association with a now-fallen Angel and how much resulted from Limnel putting the word out that he wanted Taro for himself. At the time he’d seen this rejection by those he’d considered friends as justice; he didn’t deserve a break, because his line-mother’s fall had been his fault.
For the last two days he’d been living in the mazeways, keeping out of everyone’s way, sleeping only when he was too tired to move. The unexpected meeting with Resh had fractured the numb self-pity he’d been wallowing in since Malia’s death. Throwing his lot in with Limnel was the only sane option. The gang-boss would be a harsh master, but he would have a safe place to sleep and the protection of belonging to one of the biggest gangs in this quarter of the Undertow.
But first he needed money to buy himself in. And for that he had to go topside.
Taro stuffed the waterskin back and slung his pack over his back, then carried on walking rimwards, accompanied by the ever-present sigh of the wind below the vanes. He checked the daubed tags marking the gang territories and managed to get back into safer mazeways without having to stop and check water-trap colours - which was a relief, as he didn’t much fancy hanging over the edge of a mazeway to check out the troupe colours fluttering from the ropes of the nearby ’traps.
He managed to get within a few mazeways of the edge without meeting anyone else; anyone around this early had probably decided to lie low in the wake of the hunt. He passed a few strangers near the edge, downsiders whose daily business was with the rollers and coves in the City above. No one challenged him, and some gave way to him. They weren’t to know that he no longer had the right to wear City colours. He should un-plait the red-and-black from his hair, but he wasn’t ready to cut that final tie to his line-mother, not with her death still on his conscience, her fall yet unavenged.
The vanes were shorter this close to the edge; Taro felt he could almost reach up and touch the underside of the City. Ahead, the sparkling orange of the forcedome enclosing the City marked the edge of the world.
A close-woven net about six metres wide hung down from the rim, its bottom edge bolted firmly to the outside edge of the wide mazeway where Taro stood. These were the best-maintained nets in the Undertow, as they provided the only route topside. Every respectable troupe - those, that is, that didn’t call themselves gangs - considered it their duty to check for damage and repair faults. Everyone’s lives depended on it.
Though Taro had done it hundreds of times, that first step into the rim net always sent a surge of fear through him. Dry mouth and churning guts warned him unnecessarily how close he was to taking the fall. He wiped his palms on his breeches and stepped forward, using his long toes to grip the edge of the mazeway. The net was made partly from plaited rags and lengths of cord, though the support ropes that ran up from mazeway to rim were the real thing, bought or stolen from topside. The outermost mazeway was inside the rim of the City, so the net didn’t hang vertical. You had to fall off the mazeway into it.
He leaned forward. As gravity pulled him off-balance his eyes fluttered closed and his hands spasmed as they reached for the ropes. The impact was gentle, but it still winded him.
He paused to catch his breath, then started climbing, slow and careful, always making sure he had at least two limbs anchored before moving on. Ignoring the hypnotic glow of the forcewall in front of him and the bleak, rock-scattered ground far below him, he looked only at his hands, thought only of the next move.
To get up the outside rim of the City, he needed to be on the other side of the net, to go from being inside facing out to outside facing in. He worked his way to the edge, then hooked his right hand round the reinforced edge of the net. Right leg now, get a good solid hold. A small pause - time for a silent prayer to the City, for all the good that might do - then he swung out and round.
He wasn’t used to climbing with anything on his back, and halfway through the slow-motion pivot his pack slipped, pulling him off-balance. He felt his grip begin to loosen. The rope started to slide away under the sole of his right foot. He clawed for purchase, his head full of panic, his body too sluggish—
—until he caught the rope with his toes and curled them round it, ignoring the shooting pains of a sudden cramp. The nets above him creaked, but his grip held. His flailing left hand came round, found rope and grasped it. The creaking subsided.
He hung still until the nets had stopped moving, deafened by his heartbeat, staring blindly back into the darkness of the Undertow.
When he’d calmed down he dragged his pack back up onto his shoulder and started climbing up the sloping rim until his nose was pressed against the grey material of the City. He inhaled its sharp yet comforting smell. Down in the Undertow the scent of the City was masked by the smells of people - sweat and piss, burning tallow and composting shit - but here it filled his head, a reek like mother’s milk gone sour.
The rest of the climb was easier: the nets lay against the City itself, hanging from bolts that made safe, easy holds for hands and feet. The only problem was the gravity. With every step his limbs felt heavier, and each move took more effort than the last. Why the people who lived on top of the City’s disc wanted gravity that made them twice as heavy as those who lived b
elow, in Vellern’s natural gravity, was just one more topside mystery.
When he finally pulled himself up onto the flat ledge at the top he was tempted to lie there for a few moments and catch his breath . . . but he knew better than to block the way. He rolled away and pulled himself onto all fours, getting used to being heavy, then stood, blinking until his eyes adjusted to the light. He kept his gaze down; looking up at the forcedome arching overhead could set off a vertigo attack worse than looking at the ground when you were downside. Behind him there was no sign of the route he’d used, which was as it should be. Topsiders did not go into the Undertow . . .
Only, one had, and that was how Taro came to be without home or lineage, with nothing in the world but the bundle on his back.
He started to walk sinwards around the ledge. On his left, a couple of metres away, the fence that ringed the City hummed faintly, a warning to the ignorant. The pylons supporting the fence were thick, holding up the wire and fire, and supporting the circle-car tracks running overhead. The passage of an unseen carriage was announced by a faint swish and the pop of displaced air. Mostly the fence enclosed blank walls, some of the cleanest in the City - no one had any reason, or the opportunity, to tag or deface them. Every few metres Taro passed an alley mouth, giving a view through the links of the fence into the sidestreets. He stopped at the third alley and turned to face the fence. He drew in a deep breath, and reached out to it.
