by Tom Fletcher
Nora looked as sick as he felt. ‘What is their reason for this?’ she asked eventually.
‘They want citizens perfectly suited to the Stations,’ Alan said. ‘Like I said – there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else they care about.’
‘But what are the Stations for?’
Alan shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Nobody else does either. It all just keeps going. That’s what it’s all about: keeping going. Perpetuity. It’s a giant machine that mustn’t ever stop. But nobody in there sees it that way. They see the Stationing as intensely personal, something that they have to do for themselves, to make themselves better people. The Stations are all rituals. Oh, that’s right – there are books. Books for each Station – they contain all of the recitals, the details, the precise instructions. They’re bound in ancient metal and chained to the walls. But they’re not like the books when I was a child.’ He paused. ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong, though,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I’d done the Stationing with all my heart, and the rituals, then I wouldn’t be in this mess, and my family wouldn’t be in this mess. Maybe approaching them as personal rituals is exactly what we should be doing. Maybe that’s what they’re for: making your life work.’
‘But the babies,’ Nora whispered.
Alan looked at her. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘The babies.’
‘Everyone else in there, they’re okay with that?’
‘It’s not that they’re okay with it. It’s that they don’t think there’s another way.’
‘You do, though.’
Alan snorted. ‘Must have been born beneath the wrong sky,’ he said.
‘There are no skies down here.’
‘No,’ Alan said. ‘No, there aren’t.’
*
The next night, they saw a distant fire flickering through the trees.
‘Daunt’s people?’ Churr ventured. ‘We’re bound to run into some eventually.’
‘Most likely,’ Nora said. ‘I’ll go and find out.’ She had performed her carto and spent some time meditating. Spider had been collecting firewood – generally bits and pieces of old furniture from the abandoned brick towers of Glasstown – but his backpack was now empty, so they were not lighting their own fire that night. All they had for light were a few small starstones, which Churr had wrapped up as soon as she’d spotted the other fire. Nora melted soundlessly into the darkness between the trees. Her silence was quite unnerving and Alan was reminded of the unease she had originally stirred in him; he had forgotten it during their conversations, which were, generally, far longer and far easier than those he had with any other member of the party. Eyes was incoherent when he did speak, which was less and less now, Churr was still distant, and Spider had never been talkative.
They held their breath as they watched the faraway flame and listened. The swamp was very faintly luminescent here in the forest – the gutwood, as Alan thought of it – but not enough to shed any light upwards. Sometimes he could make out somebody or something moving against it – a brief and incomplete silhouette – but he didn’t know if that was Nora making her way towards the fire or not. Though he knew that Nora was more capable of defending herself than the rest of them put together, worry rose in him. What if they were Daunt’s people, and there were lots of them? What if Nora was surrounded?
Or what if the fire was a decoy?
A hand on his shoulder. He spun round.
Nora was standing behind him, a finger across her lips. ‘They are far away enough for us to speak quietly,’ she whispered. ‘But no screaming, please.’
‘By the Builders!’ Alan breathed. ‘You scare me, Nora!’
‘There are two of them,’ Nora said. ‘Daunt’s people: two men, bearing the symbol.’
‘You didn’t kill them?’
‘No.’ Nora looked puzzled. ‘Did you want me to?’
‘No.’ Alan glanced around. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘I thought it was better that they don’t know we’re here. Let them return to Daunt and so let us avoid arousing further suspicion.’
‘Which way were they going?’ Churr asked. ‘Were they on their way back up? Were they carrying much stock?’
‘Yes, I think so. They had full backpacks, at any rate, and we have not noticed them travelling alongside us, have we?’
‘We need that stock,’ Churr hissed. ‘That’s how we begin. The bug value of all those mushrooms – we could buy a gang or two with that. We can buy bandits.’
‘Let’s just get to Dok and get back again,’ Alan said.
’That wasn’t the arrangement.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘Daunt still doesn’t know it’s you she’s looking for, does she?’
‘No, but—’
Churr put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. ‘Hey!’ she yelled. ‘Hey! Your lady, she looking for a thief? We’ve got him over here!’
Alan froze.
Churr’s shouts were followed by what felt like a deathly silence. Then, raised voices from the distance.
‘Thanks, Churr,’ Alan said. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Now we’ve got to kill them,’ Churr said.
‘I know that. That’s why I’m pissed off.’
‘We’re not all here for the same reasons,’ Churr said, drawing her knives. ‘Remember that.’
Movement and noise, the flapping of unseen wings and ragged croaks that could have come from birds or toads. There were splashes as swamp creatures slipped beneath the surface. Silhouettes obscured the orange flames as they moved through the trees towards their target.
Alan drew his own blade, resentful that he might have to use it. Spider wielded the Boatman’s pole. And there was Nora, of course. Four against two, so in theory this would be an easy win. But Alan had never been able to fight in the dark, so it was more like three against two. And even if they won, well, it didn’t mean that nobody would get hurt. And the killing … Even if they won, there would probably be killing. Well, definitely: they couldn’t let these people get back to Daunt and bring down all of her might on him. His stomach was in his boots. Maybe he could just hide behind a tree, or jump into the swamp and wait until it was all over.
But he didn’t, and Daunt’s mushroom-gatherers broke into their camp right next to him, so he was first in line. He heard a swish and a yell right in front of him and stumbled backwards, feeling something cold stinging the end of his nose. He fell onto his arse with a bump, rolled over and crawled across a tangle of roots, then clambered to his feet again once he was reasonably sure that he wasn’t standing up into the path of a swinging sword.
He stood up and saw that any swords that had been swinging were now still. The fight appeared to be over. ‘What?’ Alan said, to nobody in particular. ‘What? Have they gone?’
‘Nora got them,’ Spider said. ‘See. They’re here on the ground.’
‘We didn’t even get a look-in,’ Churr said. ‘She’s a demon, that one.’
‘I did not get to twirl the staff,’ Spider murmured. ‘Most disappointing.’
‘There were only two of them,’ Nora said.
‘I take it that this is why Mapmakers generally don’t get involved,’ Spider said.
‘Yes,’ Nora replied. ‘We are too powerful. There is no question.’
‘And modest with it,’ Alan said.
Churr unwrapped the starstones again, and their pale light glimmered over the scene.
Daunt’s men were thin and bearded, and both sported topknots. They had the mushroom symbol on their foreheads and more elaborate fungal designs tattooed on their naked chests. Their loose trousers were tied up around their knees and their bare feet were caked with hardened mud. Strangely, both of them had eyes exactly the same colour: a very, very pale green, so pale as to be almost white, like the Boatman’s. And their skin was luminously pale, too, their black tattoos standing out sharply in contrast. Their pale green eyes were wide open, their faces shocked. What was left of their faces, at any rate.
‘Why?’ Alan asked, looking away. ‘Why, Nora, do you always go for their faces? Is it a Mapmaker thing?’
Nora waggled her head. ‘Yes, in that it is a practical thing, and Mapmakers are practical. If you are fighting with your bare hands, which is what we usually do so as to avoid carrying extra weight, then it makes sense to target soft and vulnerable – yet important – parts of the body. Like you did with the crocodile, if you remember. Faces and genitals are most effective.’ She surveyed her handiwork. ‘Also, of course, there’s the psychological aspect. People don’t like seeing excessive damage done to another’s face. They don’t want it to happen to them. Seeing a friend or ally – or indeed, even a stranger – hurt like that can be a much greater deterrent to attack than, say, seeing a friend or ally being knocked out with a stick.’
‘A crocodile isn’t a person, though,’ Alan said.
Nora looked confused. ‘Oh,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Well, no. But an enemy is an enemy. And the difference in intelligence between you and a crocodile may not be so much greater than the difference between a Mapmaker and a normal human being.’
Her words were met with a long silence.
‘Right then,’ Alan said, clapping his hands together. ‘Okay. Shall we raid their camp? I mean, morally, now, it’s small potatoes, really. As far as I can see.’ He glanced down at the dead bodies and then looked away again.
‘I need to wash my hands,’ Nora said, holding her hands up. It looked as if she was wearing long red gloves.
‘Is there any point?’ Alan asked.
‘Drying blood feels unpleasant,’ Nora said, plunging her arms into the swamp and sluicing the dirty water over them.
‘Somebody should stay with Eyes,’ Churr said.
‘I will,’ Spider said shortly. ‘I am very excited to see what kind of fungus these two unfortunates may have been carrying, but Alan here has been quite literally shouldering the burden of care for my old friend and so I will remain by his side.’ He stroked his beard. ‘Then tomorrow I will take my turn at carrying the poor fellow. All I ask is that I can spend some time drawing any unusual specimens before they are ingested.’
‘We’re not going to ingest anything,’ Churr said. She was almost dancing with excitement. ‘Not unless Alan has one of his emotional episodes and feels like a binge. But’ –and here she addressed Alan directly – ‘he’d better fucking not. Now come on, people.’
As the group hopped from root cluster to root cluster, Alan thought about the gatherers that Nora had killed. They had lit a fire, but they had not been reticent about fighting in the dark. He remembered what Daunt had once said to him, about taking mushrooms in order to open her eyes. He had thought she was speaking metaphorically – and maybe she was, in part – but perhaps there were mushrooms that could actually help a person to see.
Spider would know.
There was nothing much at the mushroom gatherers’ camp apart from the fire, now burning low, and a couple of large, bulging backpacks. Churr fell upon the backpacks with delight, but stopped herself opening them. ‘We’ll open them back at our own camp,’ she said. ‘It’ll be more exciting.’
Alan looked longingly at the fire. ‘We could make this our camp,’ he said.
‘Yeah, sure, if you want to be the one to drag Eyes over.’
Alan didn’t say anything. His back and shoulders were on fire.
‘Yeah,’ Churr said. ‘Thought you might have had enough of that by now.’
Why had Alan even invited Eyes along? He couldn’t remember. It had been a bad idea and he was angry with himself for it, but almost immediately the anger was subsumed by guilt. Eyes was not a burden; he was a friend. Alan got angry with himself for feeling angry. ‘Oh, come on,’ he growled. ‘Let’s fuck off.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Nora said from behind him, as he led the way back to their own camp, ‘we will come back here and I will track the gatherers directly to Dok. Our journey will be quickened. This encounter has been a stroke of luck.’
‘For us it has,’ Alan muttered.
23
The Bottom of the World
‘So sometimes the swamp is deep, and sometimes it isn’t. Why is that? Are there more buildings beneath us? Are there chasms in between them? Deep trenches full of sludge?’
‘Yes. Obviously we don’t really know what is sunken, what is lost.’ Nora raised an eyebrow. ‘Not yet, at least. I will find out.’
‘But sometimes it is shallow and marshy and it feels like ground. Like the hill the Pyramid is built on.’
‘Well, of course: the swamp is not just water, Alan. We do not fully understand its provenance, but wherever the water is coming from, it is bringing with it earth, mud, silt. And whatever you think about magic, about the structure of Gleam being imbued with something that keeps it standing, there is no doubt that buildings are crumbling into the swamp and becoming part of it. Perhaps the stone lasts longer than it should, or at least longer than you would expect a new construction to last, but it does not last forever. Not all of it, anyway. So perhaps some of the ground you feel – perhaps some of the mud that supports this forest – was once brick. Perhaps towers have risen and fallen time and time again before the Gleam that we know came to be.’
Alan was silent for a time as they walked through the gutwood. There were signs of other human life now: treehouses with candles in the windows, snailshells bearing the remains of cooking fires, a paraffin lamp screwed into a trunk. ‘Are there any plans to, y’know’ – Alan waved an arm – ‘save it? Stop it? Save Gleam, and stop the swamp? Find out all about it and reverse it?’
‘Quite possibly. There was much about our work that I was never told. I wanted to know, but …’ Nora sighed. ‘They didn’t talk to their young ones – well, not to their young girls.’ She held up a hand and stopped the party. ‘Shuddersnake,’ she whispered, pointing with the other hand at a thin, pale yellow serpent lounging somehow insolently atop a wide branch. It gave them a lazy hiss as they gave its tree a wide berth.
‘Nora, when we first came to the swamp, you said you would change. And you seemed to undergo some kind of … episode.’
‘I was opening up to the spirit, letting it change me before performing the carto.’
‘You talked a lot about a needlestick.’
Now Nora fell silent. Eventually she said quietly, ‘I wish I hadn’t.’
Alan didn’t press it.
When Alan was not pestering Nora with his questions, Nora would converse quietly with Churr in a language of murmurs and half-smiles and subtle tactility. But Churr would not remain at Nora’s side when Alan was there. She would look coldly at him and then slip away. Alan wondered at Nora’s tolerance of him, given the way he’d treated Churr, but that was only one of the many things about Nora that he did not understand. As for Churr herself … He knew that he had been cruel to her back at The Cup and Skull, and knew that he ought to apologise. He ran through conversations in his head. When he’d worked out how to phrase it properly, and when the atmosphere between them was not so bitter as to make anything positive he might say sound insincere, he would say sorry properly.
Nora was on the trail of the mushroom gatherers, looking not for signs of their recent passage, but evidence of an established route. And indeed, there were mushroom symbols carved into the bark of some of the trees.
‘It seems a trifle thoughtless,’ Spider opined, upon their discovery of the first. Surely they would not literally signpost the way to the source of their power and wealth?’
‘There must be more to it than merely knowing the way,’ Churr said. ‘It must all be protected.’
‘By what?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘In truth, I thought we would have had more trouble by now,’ Spider said. ‘I would have expected Daunt to be more of a presence. And where are the murderers? Where are the monsters?’
‘Maybe Nora’s scared them off,’ Churr said, laughing.
We’ve got the monster with u
s, Alan thought. The greatest monster of them all.
‘Yes,’ Spider said, ‘a formidable ally indeed.’
‘Nora has already saved our lives more than once,’ Churr said, seriously now. ‘It’s hardly been a relaxing trip. If it wasn’t for her, then we would have had more than enough trouble.’
‘Though some of us have had more trouble than others,’ Spider said. ‘I’d say Eyes was on his last legs, but he is beyond even that point.’
‘We’re not leaving him,’ Alan said.
‘Well, no,’ Spider replied, appraising Alan. ‘Of course not.’
*
They saw figures watching them from the trees and Alan thought about the Boatman with his second mouth. Sometimes they heard cackling, and sometimes songs, though nothing Alan knew, and not ones that he liked. The voices were eerie and the songs were tuneless and meandering. They saw distant fires, but even Churr resisted the urge to investigate. Sometimes the swamp was bright, sometimes it was not. ‘I have heard stories about the lights in the swamp,’ Churr said one evening, as they watched Nora perform the carto. ‘Some say it is like lightning, but deep, deep down. The flashes last a long time in the thick slime. They start slow and fade slow. Some say there is a great war going on, far beneath us, where the drowned dead are battling each other with fire and magic.’
‘The deeper we get the more and more we talk about magic,’ Alan pointed out.
‘It is not about heading deeper,’ Churr said. Now that there was plenty of wood around, she was using it to make some basic crossbow bolts. ‘Those of us who don’t enjoy the security of a House talk about magic all the time. It’s about exposure. It is about being out in the Discard wilds, away from the business of employment and bugs and rent. It becomes more important to those of us on the outside.’
‘Do transients travel much through the swamp?’
‘No.’ Churr shook her head. ‘It might not feel too bad really, but if Nora wasn’t with us, things would be very different – much harder. And it’s so bloody wet and dark and miserable.’
