He moved sideways along cross-beams, ensuring that he came to ground behind the backs of the houses, in the little scrap of wasteland that surrounded the foetid stub of the canal.
Yagharek dropped the last few feet and landed silently, rolling on the broken bricks. He crouched and listened.
There were three little crunches as the mechanical apes landed around him and waited for orders or suggestions.
Yagharek peered into the filthy water beside him. The bricks were slippery with years of organic muck and slime. At one end, thirty feet or so within the dome’s walls, it came to an abrupt brick end. This must have been the start of a little tributary onto the main canal system. Where it met the dome’s wall, the canal was cut off with a rudely made blockage of concrete and iron. It had been hammered into place in the water, its edges sealed as tight as they could. There were still enough tiny impurities and channels in the sodden brickwork to ensure that the trench was kept full of water from outside. It seeped in through the decaying stone and eddied to a stop, thick with rubbish and dead things, a cloying broth of water-rotting filth.
Yagharek could smell it. He crept a little further away, towards the squat stumps of a wall that rose out of the shattered architecture. Outside, he realized, in the streets of the Glasshouse, the frantic shouts continued. The air was full of idiot demands for action.
He was about to settle down, to wait for Shadrach and the others, when Yagharek saw mounds of the broken bricks rising all around him. They tumbled to the ground with a little thudding downpour. Isaac and Shadrach, Pengefinchess and Derkhan and Lemuel and Tansell rose out of the brickdust. Yagharek saw that a pile of scrap-wire and glass behind them was two more monkey-constructs, moving forward now to join their fellows.
For a moment, no one spoke. Then Isaac stumbled forward, trailing ashes and grime. The sewer muck that coated his clothes and bag was now coated with the grit from the collapsed buildings. His helmet—another like Shadrach’s, complex and mechanical looking—lolled battered and absurd on his head.
“Yag,” he said haltingly. “Good to see you, old son. So glad . . . you’re all right.” He grasped Yagharek’s hand, and the garuda, taken aback, did not extricate himself from the grip.
Yagharek felt himself emerge from a reverie he had not known he was in, looking around him, seeing Isaac and the others clearly, for the first time. He felt a belated surge of relief. They were filthy and scratched and bruised, but none of them looked hurt.
“Did you see it?” said Derkhan. “We’d just come up—it took us ages to work our way through the damn sewers, we kept hearing things . . .” She shook her head at the memory. “We found our way up through a manhole and we were in a street not too far from here. It was chaos, total chaos! The patrols were all running towards the temple, and we saw some . . . that light-gun thing. It was quite easy to make our way here. No one was interested in us . . .” Her voice trailed off. “We didn’t really see what happened,” she concluded quietly.
Yagharek breathed in deep.
“The moths are here,” he said. “I have seen their nest. I can take us there.”
The assembled company were elyctrified.
“Don’t the damn cactus know where they are?” said Isaac. Yagharek shook his head (a human gesture, the first he had learnt).
“They do not know the slake-moths sleep in their houses,” said Yagharek. “I heard them shouting: they think the moths come in to attack them. They think them intruders from without. They do not . . .” Yagharek stopped, thinking of that panic-stricken scene on the top of the cactacae sun-temple, of the helmetless cactus elders, the brave, idiot soldiers charging up, lucky enough to have missed the moths, saving themselves from pointless death. “They do not know how to deal with the moths at all,” he said quietly.
As he watched, Pengefinchess’s undine swept over her shirt from below, wetting her skin, rinsing the dust from her and her clothes, leaving them incongruously clean.
“We should find the nest,” said Yagharek. “I can take us to it.”
The adventurers nodded and began an automatic inventory of their weapons and equipment. Isaac and Derkhan looked nervous, but set their jaws. Lemuel looked away sardonically and began to pick his nails with a knife.
“There is something you must know,” said Yagharek. He was addressing everyone, and there was something peremptory in his tone, something that would not be ignored. Tansell and Shadrach looked up from carefully rummaging through their backpacks. Pengefinchess put down the bow she had been testing. Isaac looked at Yagharek with a terrible forlorn resignation.
“Three moths left by the broken roof, dandling mindless cactacae. But there are four. Vermishank told us. Perhaps he is wrong, or perhaps he lied. Perhaps another has died.
“Or perhaps,” he said, “one has stayed behind. Perhaps one is waiting for us.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The cactacae patrols huddled together at the base of the Glasshouse, arguing with the remaining elders.
Shadrach crouched behind an alley, out of sight, and pulled a miniature telescope from some hidden pocket. He flicked it out to its full extent, played it over the congregated soldiers.
“They really don’t seem to know what to do,” he mused quietly. The rest of the intruding gang were huddled behind him, flat against the damp wall. They were as unobtrusive as they could make themselves in the moving shadows cast by the elevated torches that sputtered and burnt above them. “That must be why they have this curfew going on. The moths are taking them. Of course, it may always be in place. Whatever—” he turned to face the others “—it’s going to help us.”
It was not hard to creep unseen through the darkened streets of the Glasshouse. Their passage was quite unimpeded. They followed Pengefinchess, who moved with a weird gait, halfway between a frog’s leap and a thief’s creep. She held her bow in one hand, in the other an arrow with a wide, flanged head for use against cactacae, but she did not have to use it. Yagharek moved with her, a few feet behind, hissing directions at her. Occasionally she would stop and gesticulate behind her, flattening against the wall, hiding behind some cart or stall, watching as a brave or foolhardy soul above her pulled back the curtain from their window and peered into the street.
The five monkey-constructs scampered mechanically beside their organic companions. Their heavy metal bodies were quiet. They emitted only a few strange sounds. Isaac did not doubt that for the cactus people of the dome, the regular diet of nightmares would that night be amended to include some metallic scuttling thing, some clattering menace that stalked the streets.
Isaac found walking in the dome deeply unsettling. Even with the red-stone additions to the architecture and the spitting torchlight, the streets seemed basically normal. They could have been anywhere in the city. And yet, stretching over everything, creeping inwards from horizon to horizon, encircling the world like some claustrophobic sky, the enormous dome defined everything. Glimmers of light came through from outside, warped by the thick glass, uncertain and vaguely threatening. The black lattice of ironwork that held the glass in place ensnared the little townscape like a netting, like a vast spider’s web.
At that thought, Isaac felt a sudden shuddering lurch of emotion.
He felt a vertiginous sense of certainty.
The Weaver was somewhere nearby.
He faltered as he ran and looked up. He had seen the world as a web, for a split second, had glimpsed the worldweb itself, and had sensed the proximity of that mighty arachnid spirit.
“Isaac!” hissed Derkhan, running past him. She pulled him with her. He had been standing still in the street, gazing skyward, desperately trying to find his way into that awareness again. He tried to whisper to her, to let her know what he had realized, as he stumbled after her, but he could not be clear and she could not listen. She dragged him with her through the dark streets.
After a twisting journey, ducking out of sight of patrols and glancing up at the glowering glass sky, they halted b
efore a clutch of dark buildings, at the intersection of two deserted streets. Yagharek waited until they were all close enough to hear him, before turning and gesturing.
“From that top window there,” he said.
The swooping dome bore down inexorably on the tail of the terrace, destroying the rooftops and reducing the mass of the street’s houses to ever-more-squat piles of rubble. But Yagharek was pointing at the end furthest from the wall, where the buildings were mostly intact.
The three floors below the attic were occupied. Glimmers of light spilt from the edges of curtains.
Yagharek ducked back around the edge of a little alley and pulled the others in after him. Way off to the north, they could still hear the consternated shouting from the confused patrols, desperate to decide what to do.
“Even if it wasn’t too risky to get the cactacae on our side,” hissed Isaac, “we’d be fucked if we tried to get them to help us now. They’re in a damn frenzy. One sniff of us and they’ll go berserk, hack us up with those rivebows faster’n you can say ‘knife.’ “
“We must go past the rooms where the cactus people sleep,” said Yagharek. “We must get to the top of the house. We must find where the slake-moths come from.”
“Tansell, Penge,” said Shadrach decisively, “you watch the door.” They looked at him for a moment, then both nodded. “Prof? I reckon you’d best come in with me. And these constructs . . . you think they’ll be helpful, yes?”
“I think they’ll be damn well essential,” said Isaac. “But listen . . . I think the . . . I think there’s a Weaver here.”
Everyone stared at him.
Derkhan and Lemuel looked incredulous. The adventurers were quite impassive.
“What makes you say that, prof?” asked Pengefinchess mildly.
“I . . . I could sort of . . . sense it. We’ve dealt with it before. It said it might see us again . . .”
Pengefinchess glanced at Tansell and Shadrach. Derkhan spoke hurriedly.
“It’s true,” she said. “Ask Pigeon. He saw the thing.” Reluctantly, Lemuel nodded that yes, he had.
“But there’s not much we can do about it,” he said. “We can’t control the bugger, and if he comes for us or them, we’re pretty much at the mercy of events. He might do nothing. You said it yourself, ’Zaac: he’ll do whatever he wants.”
“So,” said Shadrach slowly, “we’re still going in. Any arguments?” There were none. “Right. You, garuda. You’ve seen them. You saw where they came from. You should come. So it’s me, the prof, the bird-man and the constructs. The rest of you stay here, and do exactly what Tansell and Penge tell you. Understood?”
Lemuel nodded, uncaring. There was a glowering moment with Derkhan, as she swallowed her resentment. Shadrach’s hard, commanding tone was impressive. She might not like him, she might think him worthless scum, but he knew his business. He was a killer, and that was what they needed right now. She nodded.
“First sign of any trouble you get out of here. Back to the sewers. Disappear. Regroup at the dump tomorrow, if need be. Understood?” This time he was speaking to Pengefinchess and Tansell. They nodded brusquely. The vodyanoi was whispering to her elemental and checking through her quiver. Some of her arrows were complicated affairs, with thin, spring-loaded blades that would whip out on contact to slice almost with the savagery of a rivebow.
Tansell was checking his guns. Shadrach hesitated a moment, then unbuckled his blunderbuss and handed it to the taller man, who accepted it with a nod of thanks.
“I’ll be at close quarters,” said Shadrach. “I’ll not need it.” He drew his carved pistol. The dæmonic face at the end of the muzzle seemed to move in the half-light. Shadrach whispered; it seemed as if he was speaking to his gun. Isaac suspected that the weapon was thaumaturgically enhanced.
Shadrach, Isaac and Yagharek walked slowly away from the group.
“Constructs!” Isaac hissed. “With us.” There was a pistoned hissing and the shudder of metal as the five compact little simian bodies came away with them.
Isaac and Shadrach looked over at Yagharek, then tested their mirror-helms to make sure their reflected vision was clear.
Tansell was standing before the little huddling group, making notes in a little book. He looked up, pursed his lips and stared at Shadrach, his head on one side. He looked up at the torches above them, took in the angle of the roofs that loomed over them. He scrawled obscure formulae.
“I’m going to try and get a veil-hex going,” he said. “You’re too visible. There’s no point asking for trouble.” Shadrach nodded. “Shame we can’t get the constructs as well, really.” Tansell motioned the automated apes out of the way. “Penge, will you help?” he said. “Channel a bit of puissance my way, will you? This shit is draining.”
The vodyanoi crept over a little and placed her left hand in Tansell’s right. Both of them concentrated, their eyes closing. There was no movement or sound for a minute; then, as Isaac watched, both their eyes fluttered blearily open at the same moment.
“Extinguish those damn lights,” hissed Tansell, and Pengefinchess’s mouth moved silently with his. Shadrach and the others looked around, unsure what he was referring to, when they saw him glaring at the flaming streetlamps above them.
Quickly, Shadrach beckoned Yagharek. He strode over to the nearest lamp and linked his hands, making a step. He braced his legs.
“Use your cloak,” he said. “Get up there and smother the flame.”
Isaac was probably the only person to see Yagharek’s infinitesimal hesitation. He realized the bravery he was seeing as Yagharek obeyed, preparing to tangle up and ruin his last disguise. Yagharek undid the clasp at his throat and stood before them all, his beaked and feathered head uncovered, the enormous emptiness behind his back shriekingly visible, his scars and stubs covered with a thin shirt.
Yagharek clutched Shadrach’s linked hands as gently as he could with those great taloned feet. He stood up. Shadrach lifted the hollow-boned garuda with ease. Yagharek swung his heavy cloak over the sticky, spitting torch. It snuffed with a burst of black smoke. Shadows fell on them like predators as the light went out.
He stepped down and Shadrach and he moved quickly to the left, to the other flame that illuminated the cul-de-sac they crouched in. They repeated their operation, and the little brick gully was doused with darkness.
When he stepped down, Yagharek opened out his ruined cloak, charred and split and foul with tar. He paused for a moment and tossed it away from him. He looked tiny and forlorn in his dirty shirt. His weapons dangled in full view.
“Move into the deepest shadow,” hissed Tansell, his voice grating. Again, Pengefinchess’s mouth mirrored his own, and emitted not a sound.
Shadrach stepped backwards, finding a little alcove in the brick, tugging Yagharek and Isaac in with him, flattening them against the old wall.
They pushed themselves down, settled themselves and were still.
Tansell moved his left arm out stiffly and slung the end of a roll of thick copper wire towards them. Shadrach reached out and caught it easily. He wrapped it around his own neck, then looped it quickly over his companions. Then he slipped back into the darkness. At the other end, Isaac saw, the wire was attached to a hand-held engine, some clockwork motor, the catch of which Tansell released, letting the momentum take the mechanism, unwinding and dynamic.
“Ready,” Shadrach said.
Tansell began to hum and whisper, spitting out weird sounds. He was almost invisible. As Isaac watched him, he could see nothing more than a figure shrouded in obscurity, trembling with effort. The murmuring increased.
A shock snapped through him. Isaac spasmed a little and felt Shadrach hold him where he was. Isaac’s skin crawled and he felt a stinging current trickle in through his pores, where the wire touched his skin.
The sensation continued for a minute, and then dissipated as the engine wound down.
“All right,” croaked Tansell. “Let’s see if it’s worked.
”
Shadrach stepped out of the hollow into the street.
The shadows came with him.
Enveloping him was an indistinct aura of darkness, the same one that had covered him as he stood in the deep shade. Isaac stared at him, saw the patch of deep black in Shadrach’s eyes and below his chin. Shadrach stepped slowly forward, and into the light shed by torches in the junction a little way off.
The shadows on his face and body did not alter. They remained fixed in the conjuncture they had assumed as he crouched in the coal darkness, exactly as if he stood still hidden from the flickering glow, beside the wall. The shadows that clung to him extended perhaps an inch from his skin, discolouring the air that surrounded him like a caliginous halo.
There was something else, an untimely stillness that crept with him even as Shadrach moved. It was as if the frozen furtiveness of his concealment in the bricks suffused the shadows that coated him. He stalked forward, yet the sense of it was that he was still. He confused the eye. You could follow his progress if you knew he was there and were determined to watch, but it was easier not to notice him.
Shadrach motioned Isaac and Yagharek to join him.
Am I like him? thought Isaac as he crept out into the lighter darkness. Do I slip around the corners of your eye? Am I half invisible, bringing my shadow-cover with me?
He looked over at Derkhan, and saw by her wide-mouthed stare that he was. To his left, Yagharek too was an indistinct figure.
“First sign of sun-up, go,” whispered Shadrach to his companions. Tansell and Pengefinchess nodded. They had disengaged, and shook their heads in exhaustion. Tansell raised his hand in a gesture of good luck.
Shadrach beckoned Isaac and Yagharek, and stepped out of the darkened alley into the sputtering firelight in front of the houses. After them came the monkeys, moving slowly, as silently as they could. They stood beside the two humans and the garuda, and the red light glinted violently from their battered metal shells. The same light slipped off the three hexed intruders like thin oil off a blade. It could find no purchase. The three unclear figures stood before the five quietly clattering constructs, and moved across the deserted street towards the house.
Perdido Street Station Page 55
