The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  The man who had been taunting them spun the rock in his palm. “Lambs led by liars.” He threw the rock to one of his friends, who plucked it out of the air without looking at it.

  The woman standing to Karaan’s side whispered something in his ear. Above her green eyes, a multitude of steel clips of all shapes and sizes glinted in her grey hair. Karaan nodded and turned back to Aalok. “I have not forgotten the debt of your people but it appears I have forgotten my manners. Please, follow me. We have heat and a hearth.”

  “And we seek meat and water,” Aalok replied formally.

  A smile flashed across Karaan’s face. “You look like one of us and you still remember our customs. It is good to see you, Reza.” He looped his arms around Aalok’s shoulders and led them away from the closed gates. “Come,” he looked at the legionnaires with hard eyes, “the Rivermen have a special place in our hearts here.”

  The Angel City was a strange mix of old and new. It was completely alien to Nascimento, who was Gate born, bred and bled. But for Ray, elements were familiar: the scratched up dot-matrix notice board, weather-vanes and wood piles. Like the people of Tear, the Donians had a central fire, where they now gathered under a sky scattered with stars. Unlike Ray’s village, many of the trees were behind bars. Some of the heartwood trees even had roses entwined around the blackened, vertical struts. Ray looked for Brooke to explain the need for cages but she had disappeared. Aalok was deep in conversation with Karaan and Kaleyne, the woman who had been by the older man’s side at the gates. Through the flames, the Donian man that had been forced to back down stared at them, only breaking his gaze to spit in the fire. Orr returned that glare.

  “Let it go, Baris,” Nascimento said.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Orr replied. “I’m not sure any of you do. You Gate-born look down on us from the Towns. Who do the Free Towns look down on? My home. New Town is still the butt of all the Bucket jokes, even though it no longer exists. Those of us who are alive get it from all sides, all the time. Where I was from, unless you’re ripping someone off, you’re being ripped off. If you don’t fight, you don’t get.” He jerked a thumb across the fire. “What that kid is after is plain in any language.”

  Ray took some food from a village boy with a tangle of black hair. A wolf carcass was being turned by a crooked-legged spit dog in his wheel. Ray wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a message or not. Aalok had told them that the villagers didn’t always use dogs to turn the spit. Stubborn teenagers had been known to be sentenced to a spell in the wheel. Better that than on the spit, Ray reasoned. Orr waved his plate away and Nascimento grabbed it. “Who do you look down on?” he asked Orr through a mouthful of piping hot meat.

  “Depends on my mood.”

  Nascimento opened his mouth to reply, but Brooke returned at that moment. Her hair was damp, her top button undone. For once, Nascimento and Orr kept their mouths shut. One was absorbed in the food, the other in the brewing tension opposite.

  A bunch of kids started playing tag with a hard ball. The rules seemed simple: hit the other kid with the ball, don’t let them get the ball. The game regularly descended into a pile of rucking bodies with someone stuck at the bottom. A few younger children were playing the same game with a ball of wool. For all their ragged coordination, it seemed no less violent. Ray caught what he hoped was a stray throw at his head, tossed the ball back and nudged Brooke. “You have a nice time, catching up with old friends?”

  “Leave it.”

  “Just asking, Brooke.”

  “That’s what you call yourself now?” It was the villager with ice-coloured skin, his voice thick with bitterness. “Your own name not good enough, so you take one of theirs?”

  Brooke poked the burning logs with a stick. Sparks burst into the darkening evening, flecks of gold and red that danced with the star-flies on the fringes of the smoke.

  “Or is it a slave name one of them gave you after taking you and sharing you with his friends, one by one, one after the other, day after day?”

  The conversation around the fire died.

  “Someone didn’t get what he thinks he deserved,” said Nascimento.

  “Someone’s going to get what I think he deserves,” said Orr, pulling his baton out.

  “Actually, Lukaz, I take them. All at the same time. It’s quicker that way. Harder. Sometimes I bleed, too. You the type of man who likes to watch a woman bleed? Because there’s a special place in the hells for people like that,” Brooke said with a smile as pleasant as a guillotine. “We’re talking about wrestling, right?”

  Nascimento snorted.

  Lukaz jumped to his feet, one finger jabbing at her. The firelight flickered across his pale skin, turning it a sickly yellow. “You laugh at me?”

  “Not yet, little brother, not yet.”

  “I am no brother to a slave bitch hiding behind heathen whores.”

  Brooke stood, closely followed by Ray and Orr. Nascimento put his plate down carefully and joined them. The sci-captain shuffled to one side, clutching his empty holster. The only noise was the wolf fat as it hissed and spat on the burning logs.

  “We’re behind her, you dick,” said Orr, spinning his baton on his palm.

  “It’d be better for you if she was hiding behind us,” Nascimento added. “Safer.”

  The shadows moved around them. Trees and rocks picked themselves out of the ground to become a circling crowd of people.

  “Stand down.” Aalok’s low voice cut through the sudden chill.

  Nascimento and Ray gave each other a quick nod and sat. Nasc resumed eating, eyes fixed on Lukaz. Lukaz shifted his weight. Split-stance. Rock held in his left hand.

  “Let’s play bat and ball, pretty boy,” Orr said in hissing tones, his baton rising.

  “Drop it, Sub-Corporal,” said Aalok. The squat man grasped the baton with his other hand, his left eye twitching furiously. “Drop it.” Aalok glared at him. “Or we can take the stripes off, and you and I can sort this out the old way.”

  Orr saluted, his face frozen into an ugly grimace. Lukaz stood where he was, pink-tinted eyes fixed on Orr.

  “Lukaz,” said Karaan. When he didn’t respond, Karaan added in the Ailan language, “You and your Hoyden will get what you want.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Lukaz tossed the rock into the fire and ripped a slice of meat off the roasting carcass. Raised red lines shone across his forearms as he settled back on his haunches.

  Nascimento let out a low whistle. “That was fun, wasn’t it?” he said as they resumed their places on the damp grass. “Making a good impression, behaving accordingly and all that.” He punched Orr on the shoulder.

  “Guy’s a dick,” Orr said.

  “What’s a hoyden?” Ray asked.

  “The Hoyden,” Brooke replied. Around them, the circling crowd melted into the gloom, becoming shadows of rocks and trees once more. “Misfits and rebels from all walks of Donian society. Those that see our progress as something you wipe off your shoe. The truth-seekers and fact-duckers.”

  “That last one’s gonna be hard to say after a few jars,” Nascimento said.

  Brooke scowled at him. “The Hoyden believe our life is being polluted by you folk from Ailan. They’re resisting what they see as your country’s unwritten aim to ‘civilise the body and make savage the mind.’ They hate the ‘I’m fine, fuck you’ attitude, think it’s making the Donian tribes soft and rotten.”

  “Soft?” Ray said. “You people are about as soft as rocks.”

  “Compared to you folk, maybe. The Hoyden want to bring back the times when a person could reach glory through respect and honour, with strength.”

  “Don’t see a problem with that,” Orr muttered.

  “Just that some have skipped any attempt at civility and gone full savage.”

  “Still don’t see the issue. ‘Cept when it gives you dicks like that guy.” Orr jerked his thumb at Lukaz.

  “Never mind him, my s
parkly little gem of happiness.” Nascimento clapped his hands together. “Look what we have here.”

  The kid with the tangle of black hair reappeared holding a bottle and several glasses. He was followed closely by Karaan.

  “It is traditional,” the Elder said, as glasses were filled, “to drink amongst friends.”

  Aalok gave them all a curt nod. “One. For tradition. A small one,” he said to Nascimento.

  “Do you have water?” James asked, nose wrinkling as he sniffed the liquid. “My stomach’s not good.”

  “Our guests get meat and alcohol,” Karaan replied. “Prisoners get bread and water. Which are you?”

  James went pale.

  “Just drink it,” Ray hissed.

  “It’ll put hairs on the inside of your chest,” Orr said.

  “Might put some on your bollocks, too,” Nascimento added.

  Ignoring Lukaz’s mocking toast, they downed shots of what turned out to be gut-stripper. By the time the glasses had been collected, Aalok, Karaan and Kaleyne were already lost in their discussion, pausing every now and then to glance at the legionnaires.

  22

  A Fisher Gull & Four Horsemen

  The heavy iron-clad doors slammed shut. The steel blade rasped home. As the echoes faded away, the Famulus’s sonorous voice rolled around the chamber hidden below the dead streets of Tye. Stella Swann muttered the required response. She wasn’t sure she had the patience for any mystical mumblings this evening. After a morning of research into White Plague, she’d spent the afternoon rummaging through old hospital store rooms full of dust, obsolete medical kit and, bizarrely, silk scarves. It had taken her an age to escape those white-tiled rooms after someone locked her in by mistake, long enough for her to seriously consider dusting off a bunch of old specimen jars and refilling them. That was followed by a row with her boss and the hospital security chief for accessing a restricted area. The latter looked as if he had woken up hungover in a shop of used military gear and got dressed using infrared goggles. Thirsty, tired and with the bloated feeling that signalled she was coming on, she’d arrived home to two screaming kids, a shouty husband and a wall her little darlings had redecorated with a hammer. They had tried to fill the holes with tooth paste. That had pushed Stella straight back out of her front door, over the Stone Bridge and to the Ward to find some solace in nonsense. As the foot stamping started, she wondered whether she’d made the right choice. Her kids were just being kids. She wasn’t sure what these adults thought they were being. Stella wasn’t sure what she was being either and that irritated her further.

  At first, the stamping in the Ward was just a few people, more of a coordinated shuffle than anything deliberate. Slowly, others joined in. The tramping became crisper, more uniform. A woman pulled her hood to one side to untangle her long hair. She had a brightly coloured bird tattooed on the nape of her neck. It was a fisher gull, elegant but dangerous. The woman disappeared into the expectant crowd, her red hair trailing over one shoulder.

  Stella never used to see many tattoos on the Gate born. It was felt to be beneath them, something only the military and the Buckets— She checked herself, something the people from the Free Towns would do. In her experience, they were usually the same thing. There had been rumours the self-styled Freedom Fighters of the Window Riots had tattooed themselves so they could tell each other apart from government infiltrators. Surely, though, the latter could have done the same thing with temporary ink and scupper that plan?

  Sometime after the Second GTC, years after the Window Riots had ended, the quiet trend for tattoos had lurched up a gear. More of the bright young things coming to the hospital had sported shiny new ink. Any kind of overt symbolism was still banned but it was hard to enforce. How could you prove a crescent, cross or star was not merely a token of affection for a loved one as opposed to anything else? Stella had dismissed the trend as a fad, people trying to prove to society that they were different or edgy. Dangerous, even. But the owner of an arm full of tattoos could now be anything from a hardened legionnaire on the run for multiple murders, to a vegan masterchef.

  Someone stamped on Stella’s foot. She cursed. Big Foot was back in town. Tattoos and Free Towns and legionnaires. She was thinking about Ray again. I was only looking at him through professional eyes when he took his top off in my clinic. It was a necessary thing to do as his acting physician.

  Thoughts of Ray led to Lenka. Am I really going back to Tear to see her tomorrow? After all the trouble she’d been through today, it seemed Stella had already made up her mind. Another tattoo caught her eye. Lurid ink sticking out from under a sleeve. When will people learn?

  The red-haired woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd, the fisher gull design on her neck now hidden, and stood close to the altar-that-wasn’t-an-altar. The stamping was quicker. Sweatier. Stella couldn’t see the woman’s face but could imagine the expression: a vicarious smile. Yet another person looking to someone else to provide a temporary filler to plug the emotional holes in their life. Yet another person craving excitement, anger, indignation or any of the myriad emotions that ruled humanity.

  “Stop it,” she snapped. “When did you get so judgemental?”

  Big Foot gave her a puzzled grin and moved away, dragging his clown feet after him. Berating herself to keep her voice down, Stella focused on the ceremony.

  The tempo of the stamping picked up. Excited moans swept through the crowd. The temperature in the enclosed space crept higher. She jostled to get a better view of the obsidian altar. A cacophony of colours swirled inside it, cracking on the inner surface like caged stars. Looming above it was the Famulus, the slight figure of her hooded assistant behind her.

  The Famulus raised her arms to the rough brick ceiling. Her voluminous robes dropped down to reveal a riot of tattooed flesh. Sweat ran in streaks through the smears of earth on her cheeks, breaking up the sharp lines of her bones.

  Unseen, one figure looked away from the spectacle. It detached itself from the shadows under one of the wall-mounted torches. Its eyes gleamed under the hood as it scanned the watching crowd.

  A sheet of flame burst towards the ceiling. A chorus of groans swept the room. A loud drum beat kicked into life, driving thuds with sharp cracks across the top. Stella felt the rhythm as much as heard it. The lean figure of the Famulus emerged from the curtain of fire. Metallic patterns glittered on her arms. Wet hair stuck slick to her face. Her voice cut through the crash of feet and drums. “Only She can heal us!”

  “Only She can save us,” the crowd roared back, drunk on the thrill of the unknown.

  “They ride again! Ignorance. Intolerance. Fear. Discrimination. The reborn Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Lords of Misrule, sent forth by their bigoted father, made in His own image, Death, the First Deceiver.”

  Moist lips parted under the hood, the figure forced its way through the sea of cloaks towards Stella Swann. Gyrating figures in the Ward threw their hoods back, arms held high.

  “Their forebears brought the world to its knees before,” the Famulus yelled. “Their offspring have risen, stronger and more malign. Only She can save us.”

  “Only She can heal us!”

  “Only Mother Nature’s children, the elements, can bring back the true order of chaos. Only She can heal us!”

  “Only She can save us!”

  Caught up in the driving atmosphere, Stella bellowed the reply with the rest of the crowd, her embarrassment lost in the growing fervour.

  The Famulus’s voice soared. Stella moved closer to the black stone block, nearer to the source driving the pulse in her arteries. The rising temperatures around her burned thoughts of work, children and legionnaires out of her mind.

  Manicured fingernails reached out to grab Stella’s cloak. The crowd surged forwards, carrying her with it. The shifting mass pushed another woman into her place. Odd-coloured eyes traced the long red hair up past a fisher gull tattoo to a face and figure that could have graced the figurehead of many a ship
in antiquity. The VP smiled. This young lady’s luck was in.

  Stella leant against the cool walls of the antechamber, drink in hand. She wasn’t sure what had happened earlier. Dancing, whirling from one partner to another. Men and women with flushed faces, couples and groups, staring at each other with dilated pupils, laughing and crying as the beat of the drums got louder and quicker.

  Then someone had tried to kiss her. The reality of the situation had hit her like a bucket of iced water on a summer’s day. She had scrambled up the stairs on all fours to get away. She pressed her glass against a rosy cheek. Never again. Going out without her wedding ring on was one thing, flirting with Ray another, but this—

  “The drums were an unexpected touch,” said a voice by her ear.

  Stella jumped. The retort died on her lips when she saw who she was speaking to.

  “The Famulus excelled herself today.” The VP’s breath smelt of stale mint.

  “You didn’t get your Higher Elements speech, though,” she said, cautiously. Maybe she hadn’t said anything incriminating last time they had met after all. “Not disappointed?”

  “On the contrary, the Four Horsemen are a subject close to my heart. As are the lesser elements, they fuel the world through coal, wind, waves and the sun. We owe our life to them.”

  He waved his drink at the people crowding around the room. There seemed to be more devotees today but it could just be the crackle in the air. A shoving match broke out between two people close to her. Trestle benches were pushed back, the men bristling and posturing. “It’s possible these Four Horsemen do drive human behaviour. An interesting thought, but not to a rational scientific mind such as yours, of course.”

  “That kind of behaviour is dying,” she said, feeling emboldened by his candour. The face-off between the two men was broken by the arrival of another pitcher of wine. “Society is inclusive by law now.”