by Andy Graham
Apart from one patch of soot-blackened floorboards, her quarters had been scrubbed spotless. Her sources had told her the apartment had been cleaned before the forensic team had been allowed in. The kitchen had been stripped and swept. Something glinted in a far corner. It looked bronze. Maybe it was from the gas canister that had exploded?
“Had been exploded.” It didn’t sound right to say it aloud like that, but it felt right. Better. Someone had tried to kill Chester with a gas canister. Jann Rainehoff had died instead. “My PA. My lover.” The latter was a lie. That had never happened. It had in Chester’s head, and her heart, but never in reality.
A cat miaowed. Lius. He had returned from That Place That Cats Go when they’re bored of the people who think they own them. He leapt up onto her shoulder and curled his bottle-brush tail around her neck. The thrum of his purring tickled.
They stood. Waiting for something. Anything. Chester sniffed. Gas.
There was no gas, that was her brain tricking her, laughing at her. She pulled open a window anyway. Cold air flooded in. It was tinged with distant sirens and barking dogs. It drove out the smell of smoke and death, of loss. Lius batted her chest with his tail.
“Fire may cleanse and purify, but cold hardens,” she whispered. Lius purred back at her. It was an old saying of her mother’s, something Chester had said to herself many times. She’d even said it in the VP’s office when she failed to stage a bloodless coup. His attempt to unseat her had been a whole lot more bloody.
It was him. She knew it. The VP had killed Jann in an attempt to assassinate Chester. She had no proof, but she knew it as strongly as she knew her own name. Captain James Brennan had brought the gas canister here. She’d recognised that deep V-groove in his forehead too late. Chester had told the medical staff. The doctors had chuckled nervously, twitching stethoscopes in their fingers, and said she was delirious. So she’d checked herself out of the hospital. Her throat was still sore, whether that was from the tube they had rammed into her mouth, or from the crying, she wasn’t sure.
“Tradition was important, the past non-negotiable.” That wasn’t her mother’s saying. That was one of Chester’s own. She kicked her shoes off and stepped onto a blackened floorboard. This was the last place she had seen Jann. She dug her toes into the wood, soaking up the feel of it, absorbing it; she even stood on the Cracks. “I dare you,” she said to the old childhood fairy tale.
“Horror stories for kids,” Bethina had called them. “Methods of indoctrinating social mores and customs into boys and girls from an early age: men are strong, women are pretty; men wave swords, women wave hankies; men lead, women weep.” Beth had spent her life fighting the insidious inculcation of that belief system. She had died for it.
“The VP murdered Beth, too,” Chester said to Lius. “He killed Jann, and he killed his superior for her crown. That’s a fairy story that’s going to have a horrific ending. I guarantee it.”
She spread her feet. Pushing them into the place where Jann had died. Something bit into her foot.
Not a Crack. A splinter.
Nine toes looked back up at her. The big toe on the left was missing. A stump of shining skin. There was a reason the past was non-negotiable. You couldn’t change what had happened. You couldn’t grow back a toe, for example. A toe that had been cut off. That’s why Chester and her mother had fled to Ailan. At that time, the country had been held up as a shining example of democracy and tolerance, envied across the world. Chester had soon realised that shine was the same shine you see on a pond by moonlight. It gleams and twinkles at you, beckons to you, and once you’re in it, soaked and shivering, you realise that the shine doesn’t go very deep; that there are things lurking in the darkness below the surface, things that will wrap slimy tentacles around your feet as they drown you in their own filth. She wriggled her feet, pushing aside the splinter. Where her big toe should be, a jagged crack in the floorboards streaked away from her like a lightning bolt.
“That’s why I limp,” she said to an uninterested Lius. “Because of my toe. Bethina knew. No one else did. I didn’t see the point of complaining or wanting sympathy.”
Lius’s purring dropped, slowed down, as a person’s breath does when they stop dozing and fall asleep.
“The past is non-negotiable.” Chester repeated it over and over until she wasn’t even sure what she was saying, until it became nonsense. It was nonsense. Always had been. It’s not the past that is non-negotiable; it’s the future. In this case, the VP’s future.
As Chester smiled, an explosion in the city lit the night sky scarlet. Lius hissed and scampered away to That Place That Cats Go.
8
Remembering Rick Franklin
Ray ducked behind the concrete pillars, enormous supports for a bridge-cum-electrical conduit that had never been finished. Speckled with bird shit and pocked with cameras, they stretched into the smoke and clouds that choked the sky. “The elecqueduct,” Stella said between gasps for air. “The Kickshaw’s not far.”
Ray rested Dan up against the base of the pillar, amongst the crisp packets and cockroaches that fought for space amongst the grime. Someone had spray-painted a smiling face with Xs for eyes just above where Stella’s husband was sweating and mumbling to himself. The graffiti had a rash of moss across its forehead. It looked like it was diseased. “My grandad designed the elecqueduct,” Ray said, forcing himself to stay upright. He didn’t trust himself to stand up again once he sat.
“Stann?”
“The other one — Rick, Rick Franklin. Stann claims he gave Rick the idea. It was one of the things they fell out over. That and the mistake with the cameras in Castle Brecan that cost Stann half a hand and leg.”
“I know.” Stella tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Another fell loose on the other side, almost as if there was a certain level of unruliness that her hair needed. She was red and sweaty, eyes darting from her husband back to the blackness of the alleys they had just stumbled through. “Your mum told me the story in the Morgen Towers. Not much to talk about when you’re stuck out in the middle of the South Sea. Sorry to mention Rose,” she added quietly.
Rose. My mother. She can’t be dead. She— He forced the thought and the seething bundle of emotions it dragged with it down into the depths of his mind. Ray rested one hand against the concrete. He could allow himself that much rest, surely? His body was aching, begging to sit, to let the blood wash away the acidic pain burning his legs and back, and his mother had just been shot by her son and— Focus! Ray snapped himself upright, parade-ground tall. You’re behaving like a rook. Worse. Newbies didn’t complain like that. But then most new recruits still believed in the government they were serving. “Don’t,” he said to Stella. “Be sorry, that is. Rose’s gone. We need to get Dan his meds, pick Emily up and then go rescue your son.”
Stella didn’t give any sign of having heard. She thumbed Dan’s eyelids open. He winced, pulling back from her. The spray-painted smiley face on the concrete pillar gave him a twisted, drug-addled halo. Dan’s eyeballs rolled and twitched as if he was having a nightmare. Ray stood over the married couple, just in case Dan lashed out again. “They never finished the elecqueduct.”
“I worked that out myself, thanks.” Stella pointed upwards. The top of the supports were connected by clouds and smoke rather than cables and beams.
“So you are listening to me.”
“Just because I’m not answering doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”
“Don’t get—”
A howl punctured the air, chilling the sweat on his neck.
“I heard that, too.” Stella turned as grey as the pillars. “I thought dogs were banned in the city.”
“Only when it suits them.”
He didn’t need to clarify who he meant. It was obvious. He wasn’t sure if Rose would be happy to know her son now shared her evergreen distrust of government. “We need to—”
Dan’s eyes snapped open. He launched himself at Stella, teeth gnash
ing, spittle flying from his lips. She screamed and tumbled to the floor, shielding her face with crossed arms. “Get him off me. Get him off. Get him—”
Ray grabbed Dan by the scruff of the neck and yanked him backwards. Dan kicked against the floor. Sent up puffs of dirt and gravel. They went down in a tangle of limbs, snapping teeth and purple-eyed fury. “Get off him!” Stella shrieked at Ray. It was answered by a chorus of howls from the maze of streets around them.
Teeth sank into Ray’s shoulder. Dan’s arms were everywhere, lashing and punching and clawing. The men rolled into a puddle. Cold water soaked through Ray’s tunic, soaking his back.
“Don’t lie flat.” Orr’s voice. Yelling at him in wrestling practise.
No space to draw his revolver. Ray was weak and tired. Hurt. Dan was too strong. That strength madness gives you.
“Hips and head, Franklin. Control them, you control your opponent.” Aalok.
The barking was closer. Stella was even closer. Dan’s madness was closer still.
“Knee him in the bollocks!” Nascimento’s voice.
Sweat splashed from Dan’s face into Ray’s eyes, stinging.
“Think, Ray. Think.” Brooke.
Dan reared up. Ray slammed one foot into the other man’s hip. Pivoted on his own back. Swung the other leg up and over to chop his calf down on Dan’s neck. Locked it with the other foot. Dan’s head and neck were trapped in the triangle made by Ray’s legs. Dan pulled and twisted and turned. Ray squeezed his legs together, and as the thud of rotors started blowing a hole in the smoke, Dan’s thrashing twitched to a halt.
Ray rolled free.
“What did you do to him?” Stella knelt at her husband’s side, probing his flesh with fingers that were both concerned and professional.
“Not kill him,” Ray said, sucking in lungfuls of burnt air. “That’s what I did — not kill him.” He tugged the top of his jacket open. Two red half-moon marks dented the skin, smudged and angry where Dan teeth’s had been.
Then Stella was there, pushing his hand away. “No blood. He didn’t break the skin. You’ll live.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“Stop with the macho crap, Franklin. You’ll survive the bite. I don’t know if what they” — again there was no need to specify who they were — “injected Dan with is infectious.”
There was a retching, coughing noise. Dan was on all fours, trails of silver spittle forming a puddle under his mouth. Ray stepped in front of Stella. She pushed him out of the way and rushed over to her husband. “Sorry,” Dan said, voice hoarse. “Knew it was you. Couldn’t stop. OK now. Am OK.” He sat back on his haunches, his eyes shot through with purple.
Stella took his face in her hands. “Can you walk?”
He nodded and mumbled something that made Stella giggle. As out of place as it was, it sounded right. “What did he say?” Ray asked.
“That if his exercise-allergic wife can do up-downs, he can walk.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means I’ve got my husband back.”
Stella wrapped her arms around Dan, squeezing herself into his chest. Hesitantly, as if he didn’t trust himself, Dan did the same to her. “Thank you,” he said to Ray.
Ray didn’t reply, his gaze was fixed on a growing hole in the smoke and clouds. “We need to go.”
“What?” Stella asked. “The dogs? I can’t hear them.”
“Not the dogs.” Ray pointed. A funnel of swirling air opened up around them. Smoke and clouds whipped in grey streams away from the down draft of the chopper. A klaxon blared at them to stand still. Powerful searchlights cut holes in the darkness, hunting, seeking. There would be snipers behind those lights.
“The chopper. It found us,” Stella said.
“Not the chopper, above it.”
“Oh my—”
“Run!” Ray yelled.
They turned. Sprinted. A bundle of damp fur, teeth and snarls burst from the shadows. Steel spikes shone on a collar lashed around the hunting dog’s neck. It crashed into Dan, knocking him to the ground. The dog righted itself and launched itself at the fallen man. Teeth sank into flesh. Dan howled. Stella stamped on the dog’s hind leg, snapping it. A shot crashed through the air as the dog whimpered.
“Move!” Ray, his revolver held in one hand, dragged Dan to the shelter of a concrete support. Stella dived for cover. More barking. Shouts. Warnings from above.
The red winking light that Ray had seen up by the cloud line stopped being an indistinct twinkle and became a solid shape. It was a platform with mirrored panels arranged around four man-sized fans: rotors. The mirrored panels were dull and cracked. There would be cameras dotted amongst the black metal structure, too. Cameras with dragonfly lenses that had been retrofitted. Ray knew this because his grandfather (“Not Stann, the other one, Rick.”) had fitted them shortly after the incident in Castle Brecan. Stann had told Ray this a long time ago. Stann had been drunk. While drunk, he’d also told Ray why the sun-fans — aerial energy-units designed to harness solar and wind power — occasionally stopped working and plummeted to the ground.
“They stopped working because . . .” Stann had slurred to the ice cubes at the bottom of his shot glass. “Because Rick uploaded a video to them. Best you don’t know what’s on that tape. But Rick wanted to keep it safe. I reckon the video has mutated. It’s sent the electrics crazy. Dunno how that works. Seems unnatural to me for computer code to start doing its own thing. Who knows where it’ll lead.” He’d paused, sucked on his teeth and scratched at his shirt pocket, muttering about needing a cigarette. “That’s why the sun-fans just drop out of the sky like dead fisher gulls.”
When Stann had sobered up, Ray had been advised to forget it. He had, figuring that Stann had been bad-mouthing a friend he had come to hate.
In the seconds that these memories tumbled through Ray’s brain, the sun-fan crashed through the clouds. The chopper never stood a chance. A wrenching explosion of metal and flame coloured the stars crimson. Shrapnel thrummed through the air. Fragments clattered against the supports for the elecqueduct that had never been finished. The concrete shielded the cowering trio of fugitives from the hail of steel and flame.
Ray Franklin, saved by a structure designed by his grandfather from another thing also designed by the same grandfather. As the explosion roared in his ears, he realised that there was a symmetry to that, which would please some people.
Right now, he was just happy to be breathing.
9
War
The explosion started slowly, a bubbling of flames that twisted and squirmed before tearing a crimson and gold hole in the centre of Effrea. A wave of heat and noise rushed over Captain James Brennan. It brought with it the taste of ash and rubble, the taste of the dead. He flinched, unsure whether his hands wanted to be held still by his side or rammed deep into his pockets. He went for the latter.
“What the—” Private Malakan, a newbie, a rook, a Donian warrior made of sinew, skin and sweat stared off the edge of the president’s balcony. Firelight flickered off the beads of moisture on his forehead, along his rattish nose.
“Sun-fan,” Brennan said, fingers twitching.
“Aren’t they supposed to be in the sky?”
“They crash. Happens a lot these days.”
“Looks like they took out one of your choppers, too. That’ll take days to sort out. What are we gonna do in the meantime? Sit here while the clean up crew sort out the president and that kid the VP mangled? Boring, that is. Why don’t we—”
“We wait.” Brennan’s flat, impassive tone cut across the younger man’s.
“But—”
Brennan clicked his fingers and pointed upwards.
“What?” Malakan’s eyes searched the clouds.
“You wait. You watch. You listen.”
“For what? Watch for what? What am I watching for?”
“Sun-fans. Watch for more sun-fans.”
“How do I know if any more sun-fans will
fall out of the sky? Is there a warning sign? A noise?” There was a slurring to Malakan’s voice, as if he was drunk or still not used to the Ailan language.
“How do you know?” Brennan asked. “Do you think the chopper crew thought they were going to be hit by a falling sun-fan?”
“No, but—”
Brennan clicked his fingers again, to Malakan’s left, right, above his head. The private’s nervous eyes twitched after the noise. “I don’t know how you got promoted to the Unsung so quickly.” It was a lie. Brennan did know. The VP wanted numbers not quality, numbers at speed, that meant sacrificing quality. “But you’re not in the Donian Mountains now.”
“Peasants,” Malakan butted in.
“In the 13th Legion—”
“Superstitious peasants.”
Brennan’s voice crept up a notch. “In the 13th Legion—”
“They believe in all kinds of stuff: the Others, little people under the mountain we got to feed, a Monster-under-the-Mountain who wants to feed on us. Why not cut out the middle man and it eats them? And it doesn’t stop there. We got angels falling and demons rising. We’ll have werewolves licking their balls next. Not to mention my people bury each other in statues. Alive, sometimes. Nonsense. Believe the dead are gonna come back to life, too, with lava and fire and all kinds of crap. You believe that? Crazy shit, if you ask me. Kids’ stuff. You won’t get that stuff in the capital.” He leant on the parapet. A sweep of his arm took in a city that was cloaked in the reds of the fire burning in its heart and the blues of emergency lights, a city dragged out of its sleep by the wail of sirens, a city Brennan had been born in, a city his sister had died in.
Malakan licked his lips. Even to Brennan’s blunted imagination, it made the man look like a snake. “There’s a hill in the Donian Woods called the Lion’s Crest and the peasants think there’s a Devil that lives underneath it who watches the sky for them. I reckon it’s nonsense ‘cos you can’t be under a hill and watching the sky, can you? And it’s always under things, never on or near or in. Under, got to be under. What is it with people and tunnels? Superstitious peasants.”
