by Dan Abnett
Not that she was. This Tharpe was no sister of the orphanage, though she had shown sense in keeping her robes on when she went spying so she could claim to have taken a wrong turn on her midnight walk if caught.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘Bismillah told you,’ she replied.
‘Sister Bismillah doesn’t know you either,’ I replied. ‘How have you not disturbed the dust?’
She glanced down, and saw that I had noticed the unnatural manner of her passage. She looked at me squarely.
‘Let me pass,’ she said. ‘Let me go back to the orphanage. This is a mistake. Let me pass, and I won’t have–’
She stopped.
‘You won’t have to do what?’ I asked. ‘Hurt me?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ she said. She sounded as if she was telling the truth, but all good lies sound that way, don’t they?
‘I can assure you,’ I replied, ‘you won’t hurt me.’
She came at me. I was ready for it. I had already guessed how she would attack. I had guessed it from the undisturbed dust, and so I knew not to be looking for a tension in the muscles, and knew not to be waiting for a sudden flex and leap.
She flew at me. I mean this literally. She was a telekine, and the force of her mind propelled her at me as though she had been fired from a circus cannon.
But I was ready. I dropped to my right, leading with my shoulder, snapping at the knees, just as Mentor Saur had taught us in evasion class. She went over me, and I rolled under her, coming up with my hand on my cuff.
She landed on a crossbeam. She was poised, knees bent, her arms wide, the tails of her robes trailing. She looked like a great white-crested owl perched upon a branch. She turned, springing down. Dust kicked up around her feet as she landed. Her mind was no longer lifting her. It was reaching for me. I felt it close around me, like the coils of a constricting snake, pinning me, pinning my arms, imprisoning me.
I turned my cuff to dead.
The null of the pariah broke her grip and cancelled her outreaching mind. She cried out, in shock and distress, to find her extension gone. The telekine, so used to the freedom of mental agility, always feels especially deprived by the un-limited blank.
She stumbled, the heel of her palm pressed against her forehead in pain. She cursed, in a language I didn’t know. She lunged.
I read the placement of her feet, the angle of her bodyline. I made a passing block, as Mentor Saur had taught me.
I was utterly unprepared for her strength. Even the impact of deflection threw me sideways. I hit a cross-tie with my shoulder, bounced off, and gasped in pain. The impact rattled dust and cobwebs out of the rafters and the blackness of the roofspace, swirling it around us like flour from a sifter.
Now a kick came. It was impeded slightly by the skirts of the sorority robes she was wearing. I ducked under the cross-tie I had struck, putting it between us, and her kick splintered the old wood, shaking out more dust like powder snow upon us.
I backed away. She swung under the tie, and threw a chop with one hand, followed by a jab with the other. I blocked the first with a forearm, and twisted my body to let the second pass my ribs. Just blocking hurt: the slap bruised my bones. The old boards under us were shivering and quaking.
She kicked in again, a spin kick. I leapt out of its path, then caught her ankle, and wrenched it, hoping to flip her off balance and onto her face.
But her balance was superb. She adjusted, on one leg, and turned the sweeping kick into a heel punch. Her foot, trapped between my hands, pistoned into my chest.
I fell backwards and my shoulder blades crashed into another cross-tie, bringing down a further deluge of dust. Winded and slightly stunned, I could not recover, but fell backwards under the tie, rolling and coughing.
She came under the tie, and reached for me. I realised that her level of training was superb. Even deprived of her telekine talents, she would take me down very easily. It was not a level of skill that had been honed in a ring by a mentor, day after day. It was a level of skill finessed through practical application. She had fought before. Many times. She had killed this way.
But she had not killed me. She was reaching out for me. She wanted me subdued. Why the restraint?
I didn’t care, in fairness. All I recognised was that her restraint was a weakness I could exploit. As she reached for me, I grabbed her hand and pulled her hard, so that her head and shoulder collided with an upright beam. This impact brought actual slates down out of the roof. They shattered on the boards beside her.
I was still prone. I hooked out my left leg, and swept her feet away before she could recover.
She landed hard, with a crash that shivered the whole section of the attic, filling the close air with more dust. I rolled aside to regain my feet, but by then I had entirely forgotten where in the roofspace I was.
The flooring ended and there was a drop of about two metres into a deeper space. I went over it and landed badly, injuring, in particular, my right elbow and wrist. My impact was the loudest yet. Several old wooden crates fell over, and my left heel cracked through the floor boarding, punching a hole in the plaster ceiling beneath. Light filtered up through this hole.
She leaped down beside me, and made to grab me again. I evaded, executed a half-turn, and blocked her next two blows, though my right arm hurt in the accomplishment of this.
In retaliation, I drove in a jab that actually struck home. She reeled slightly, and I moved in again, throwing a longer, extended jab.
I knew she would see it coming, and slide out of its line. In fact, I was counting on her doing so.
Because I was standing on the hem of her robes.
She tried to dodge, found herself pinned and tightly constrained by her habit, and her balance went. My blow hit, with little effect, but she was already wrong-footed and falling. She had been brought down by the sorority robes that, though she wore them convincingly, she was not at all used to.
She hit the floor heavily, and the floor gave way.
A section of the rotting attic boards, and the joists beneath them, unable to withstand further punishment, collapsed under her in a detonation of dust and splinters, and the most considerable uproar of snapping wood. She, and the whole portion of the ailing floor, dropped away into the corridor below with an almighty crash.
The damage to the ancient and decrepit house, once begun, could not be easily limited. What weakened flooring remained let out a warning groan, then proceeded to give under me too. Unable to grab anything, I dropped with it, feet first. It was a long drop, nevertheless, and the landing spilled me over. Pieces of roof and slate, and board and fibre continued to rain down on me.
I was dazed for a moment. The impact of the landing had shaken me. A piece of falling tile had struck me on the head, and made my vision and senses swim. I was choking on the dust.
We had come down into the upper hallway called the Top Walk. It was wood panelled, and lit at intervals with wall-mounted gas lamps. Though illuminated, this space seemed more impenetrable to human vision than the darkness of the attics above. Centuries of dust clogged the air like the autumn fogs that come up onto the marshlands south of Toilgate, curdled and yellow. The lamps made visibility worse, rendering the air as bright smoke. It was harder to see anything here than it had been upstairs in the dark. All I could make out were piles of plaster chunks, broken boards and cracked tiles that had been deposited on the hallway carpet.
I looked around, found a wall, leaned against it, and coughed some more. I could hear a bell ringing. The commotion had finally caused the Maze Undue’s night alarm to be rung. Were those footsteps racing up the wooden stairs below, or was it just the blood pounding in my ears?
My right arm throbbed with pain at the wrist and elbow, my left knee too, and I was sure that the tile had left a gash on my scalp, because that was the most painful thing of all.
I searched for her in the swirl. The yellow dust seemed sulphurous and toxic. I wondered what ancie
nt residues of glue and animal hair and plaster had aerosolised because of the collapse. What foul old particles were we breathing in?
I took up a shard of tile, perhaps even the very one that had stung my head, and clutched it as a makeshift weapon, like the scrapers used on hides by primitive humans.
Where was she? A figure darted through the glowing dust ahead of me. She was trying to flee.
I followed. She had found the door at the end of the hall, slamming it open, letting in a welcome draught of cold air that blew back and thinned the noxious dust. I was still coughing.
I heard a shout, and saw Judika running up behind me. His face was grim. He was carrying a fine autopistol, and was busily loading it for use. It was a Hecuter 116. I knew this from the pattern books Mentor Saur forced us to study. I knew that it carried a clip of forty solid rounds, that it was accurate to almost half a kilometre, that the small, dense rounds could penetrate most surfaces, including standard body armours. The weapon had a bluey metal sheen and a black and white bone grip. That meant it was a custom-finished piece, a vanity gun, not bought from an armourer’s standard stock.
A vanity piece. Was this Judika nowadays? A high-and-mighty interrogator with a custom gun, and airs and graces too, no doubt?
‘Intruder,’ I snapped, spitting to clear my throat.
‘We are aware,’ he replied. ‘Which way?’
I pointed.
‘Stay back,’ he said. ‘And turn on your cuff.’
‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘She’s a telekine. A vicious one.’
‘Turn on your cuff!’ he insisted. ‘Beta, it’s not my order! It’s the Secretary’s. If we don’t blunt her, we can track her mind.’
Could we, indeed? I knew of no one in the Maze Undue who had such psychic gifts. But then we knew nothing about the faculties of the Secretary or the other mentors. We had never seen them tested by such an invasion.
I set my cuff to live.
Judika led the way down the hall, the pistol raised. He looked like he knew what to do with it, but then Saur had trained him too.
The air was filmed with dust, but visibility was better. We spotted her, dashing into the opening of a small, narrow staircase that led back up into the attics. Perhaps she intended to double back through the rambling dimensions of the roof.
Judika rushed up after her. I was close behind, close enough to see him come up over the lip of the attic floor and take aim. The gunfire was deafening in the closed space. Flames barked from the snout of the gun. The shots ripped into cross-ties, shattered wooden crates and the dry and empty bottles inside, and punched out some of the tiles. Each impact was an explosion of dust and splinters.
Sister Tharpe had taken cover. We saw her dart, low, from behind a stack of packing crates towards the more significant shield of a brick chimney breast. Judika fired again, stitching three shots across the chimney that painted the air red with brick dust.
He paused, edged around, and fired a third burst. This time he hit something more significant. Something flopped onto the blackened boards. I thought at first he had killed her, but it was simply her starched white headdress, mangled and dirty.
I felt a sudden, wallowing ebb of telekinesis. Judika was about to resume firing.
‘Wait!’ I cried.
He did not. He blasted again, a stream of shots.
Sister Tharpe had emerged from behind the chimney stack, striding out to meet the bullets.
She was smiling.
Her headdress was already missing. As she appeared, she stepped out of her sorority robes too, all badged with soot and dust, and freed herself of them. It was a curiously sexual manoeuvre, letting her garments fall away behind her. She was like a courtesan in the comfort of her boudoir, advancing lasciviously upon her client.
Unburdened by the bulky robes, she was even taller and more slender than I had imagined. She was dressed in a tight bodyglove of brown leather. Her hair, black as Old Night, had been bound up in a tight chignon in order that it might fit underneath the headdress.
She met the bullets. A sharp, fluid gesture of her right hand, as one would make to brush aside a persistent horsefly, made them all turn aside at right angles and rip into the underside slope of the roof, shattering the slates.
Judika snarled and fired again.
She cried out in reply, a growl of defiance, and raised both hands, stopping the next six rounds with an invisible wall that squashed them flat and sent them scattering like coins onto the floorboards.
‘Desist,’ she said.
She made a clutching gesture with her right hand, then jerked it aside. The gun ripped free of Judika’s grip and flew across the attic. He threw himself at her, but she crossed her arms in front of her body, her fingertips aiming at the floor, and Judika left the ground.
She drove him up into the roof, cracking a rafter and smashing roof tiles so they rained down everywhere. Then she threw him aside. Judika slammed into a cross-tie and tumbled onto the floor.
I knew he would not be getting back up for some time. Part of me sincerely hoped that he was not badly hurt. The integrity of the Maze Undue, and the personal welfare of a boy whom I had been smitten with for a long time was at stake. In that regard, I was vengeful and unrestrained.
But part of me thought he deserved the bumps and rough handling because of his foolishness. We were blanks, and we go against a telekine limited? What had the Secretary been thinking? What was Judika Sowl thinking? Why were we ignoring our key strength and our basic training?
I had reached the pistol, where it had fallen. I would take it up, disarm my cuff, and force her to surrender or forfeit her life.
I reached for the gun, but my grab was arrested. An object suddenly pinned the cuff of my tunic to the floorboards. It was a long, silver pin, driven in like a railway spike by invisible hands. I was trapped, unable to pull my sleeve free. The gun, tantalisingly out of reach, rose up, and flew away to the very far end of the long attic.
The silver pin dug itself out, and raced off into the air like a guided missile. My hand freed, I rolled and turned.
Sister Tharpe walked towards me, the silver pin orbiting her like a pet bird. A second silver pin, twin of the first, drew itself out of the tight bun of her black hair, and began to rotate around her in an opposite orbit. Every time they passed close to me, I heard them hum.
‘Beta,’ she said. ‘This was not supposed to occur. An unfortunate turn of events. I am leaving now. Do not attempt to obstruct me.’
+She will not have to.+
The psionic pronouncement made me wince. Mind-voices are often ghastly contortions of their owner’s flesh voice.
This was scarcely human.
I saw sudden and considerable alarm cross Sister Tharpe’s face.
Something came up into the attic to join us. I did not know where it came from, apart from ‘out of someone’s mind’, though in fact the thought ‘out of the daemonic maelstrom’ also occurred to me.
It was a thought-form. I saw it as a blur, a blur of reddish light, like a piece of a swollen, bloody sunset fashioned into a vaguely human shape and then allowed to walk free. It oozed up into the cold darkness of the attic and faced Sister Tharpe.
It sizzled. It crackled and seethed, as though it was made from a swarm of angry neon insects, or as though it was a scorching, radioactive thing that was cooking the very air.
Then the true battle began.
CHAPTER 11
In which an unimaginably terrible thing occurs
The thought-form, a thing of malice, advanced through the cold gloom of the attic towards Sister Tharpe. It was like a dull, dying sun that had risen alone in a dark sky.
Everything began to shake. The attic was shaking. The upper floors of the Maze Undue were shaking. Dust was swirling. Pegs were rattling loose. Tiles were dropped out of the roof and smashing on the shivering floorboards. Everywhere there was a cracking and groaning and screeching of wood.
The fierce, bloodshot light kept moving, steadf
ast. I shrank back from it. The light was burning hot, but the attic was brutally cold. A winter wind was suddenly invading through every crack and slot.
I heard the thought-form speak to her again, its mind-voice jarring my unprotected brain.
+What are you? What has sent you?+
Sister Tharpe recoiled from it. Her face could not hide her consternation. She twisted her hands and the silver kine blades whipped at the red shadow, but they could do no damage.
+Patience. Patience. Patience.+
The nonvocal words etched into our thoughts like acid. I stumbled back, and tried to find Judika, but I could not take my eyes off the daemonic light.
+He should not have sent you to us. He is a fool, and he will grieve over his error. Tell him, tell him Grael Magent found his spy and ended her.+
The bloodshot light struck.
The force of its telekinetic fury burst the ancient house’s ailing roof, flinging slates into the air from the initial point of impact, and then ripping along the ridge line, peeling the entire roof back from the rafters. This rippling, travelling force threw thousands of loose tiles into the night wind like dry leaves. The attic section we occupied was suddenly opened to the air, and shredded sheets of tiles were blowing off into the sky like sloughed snakeskin. The rafters themselves, along with the ridge beam, the purlins and the trusses, splintered and cracked, or burned away like fishbones in a fire.
As the section of roof tore away, I was fully exposed to the fierce, cold wind that had been trying to get in since the thought-form appeared. I realised quite how precariously high up the top of the Maze Undue was, perched on the seat of Highgate Hill overlooking the twinkling lights of the city. We were at the summit of the sky, with faraway stars below us.
With the wind came rain, torrential rain, which I had not been aware was falling. The driving rain drenched us in the open attic, wetting down the dust. A terrible storm had, that night, dropped across the city of Queen Mab, blotting out the stars and sending down a deluge, but the battle inside the Maze Undue had quite distracted us from the elemental changes without.
