The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  “What was all that about?” What was it Jamerson Nascimento used to say? ‘Cats are the only kind of rational pussy.’ Shouts and grunts from farther in the lobby marked out Lius’s passing. As did the bloody paw prints that skidded across the floor.

  Chester’s cat was covered in blood. The meaning of that was slow coming but hit Ray hard. He sprinted up the stairs. Three at a time. Feet thumping. Heart thumping. Raced down the corridor. Followed the red smears Lius had left. Slammed his shoulder into Chester’s door. It smacked back off the wall and into his charging body. A cloud blanketing one of the moons shifted to unveil—

  Carnage.

  A tangle of bloody limbs on the floor. Glass everywhere. Coated in blue suds. Gleaming like sharks’ teeth. There was a ragged hole in the window with wind whistling through it. The mop-bot juddered in its harness, as if it was giggling. Its rubber blade wiped at thin air. Smoke drifted out of a series of holes. The smell of carbite was rank.

  He sprinted to the bodies, heedless of the fact he was putting himself in the line of fire.

  A leg moved. A chest heaved. Bubbles formed on the grey face of Captain Lacky. Chester was moaning, groggy and dazed. Lacky was quiet. With a glance at the gaping rifle holes of the mop-bot, Ray dragged the two bodies apart.

  “Lacky. Help him,” Chester wheezed.

  Ray was already there. He’d administered enough battlefield first aid to know that the quieter the casualty, the more urgent their need. Skovsky Junior had been one of Ray’s patients. Martinez another. Ray hoped Lacky was going to have the latter’s luck today.

  Blood flowed over Ray’s hands, sliding between his fingers as he pressed them into the rents in Lacky’s stomach, a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding. The breath rattled in and out of the captain’s chest.

  “Where’s your first aid kit?”

  “Down the hall. Bathroom. Under sink.” Chester struggled to an elbow. Her dark skin was covered in blacker patches of blood. “Save him. Please.”

  Ray was on his feet. Boots skidding on the slick floor. Running. Away from the—

  Carnage.

  First door; bedroom. Sterile. Utilitarian. Cold.

  Second door; study. Spotless. Ornate. Bookish.

  Third door; closet. Funereal. Disciplined. Soulless.

  Then he hit the bathroom, his muddy, bloody boots leaving smudged prints along the floor. He skidded and slipped, cracking his knee on the floor. Wrenching the cupboard door open, he barely felt the sliver of pain that sliced into his back. Bottles were lined up in parade-ground tidiness. The first aid kit was front and centre. Glass rattled and clinked as he lurched to his feet, caught a sight of—

  Carnage.

  —himself in the mirror, face blackened, sweat streaking through soot. The face of a man who had seen too much death, a man who knew there was a mountain of corpses still to be climbed.

  Chester was wailing. Howling for Lacky. Screaming revenge. Berating herself for her stupidity. The raucous honk of an emergency alarm kicked in. The bathroom was washed in a flashing red light. It strobed, pulsed, like it had when the Monster-under-the-Mountain had decimated Ray’s old patrol. The frenzied thump of Ray’s heart seemed to slow in his chest, the light across the wall crept, rather than swept, around the white-tiled bathroom. One by one, as if a gash was being stitched in his scalp with no anaesthetic, a series of thoughts appeared.

  Chester had said ‘no’ to Ray’s request for help against the VP.

  The VP had tried to kill her.

  Lacky was dying because of the VP.

  Chester liked Lacky.

  If Chester got angry enough with the VP, would she help Ray?

  If Lacky died, what would she do?

  Could he, Ray Franklin, let a good man die?

  His fingers squeezed the green waterproof medi-kit. There were bandages inside. Something hard, too. Scissors?

  Lacky’s already dying.

  That’s not the point.

  It could help.

  For the cause. For the Resistance.

  Lacky’s death could help Ray get what he wanted.

  Can I let him die?

  He blinked. “No!”

  The red light hissed across the tiles. The klaxon loud enough for him to feel it in his teeth. Ray barrelled through the door to the corridor. The bitter shame at what he had been thinking adding speed to his feet. He burst into Chester’s office and saw—

  Carnage.

  Dark trickles of blood tracked between the grooves in Chester’s parquet flooring. One line was black in the shadow and garish red where the moonlight caught it. His eyes followed it to Lacky’s corpse. Not body. Corpse. One hand was stained red. Where he had been thrashing in his death throes the fingers had smudged patterns in the floor. The abstract art of dying. Chester knelt over Lacky and her shoulders shook silently.

  The klaxon shut down with a whine. It seemed to go on forever until it was that low buzz of a mosquito that is just in earshot at night.

  “You’re too late,” she said.

  “I—” I what? I thought if I let the man who my grandfather saved die, you would help save me and my family. Wasn’t there a fairness there? “I slipped. In the bathroom.” It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t quite the truth, either.

  The flashing red alarm light alternately illuminated and hid Chester’s eyes, turning her into something from one of Stann Taille’s Hallowtide tales. “You slipped?” There was scorn heavy in the words. Disbelief.

  Ray held out the first aid kit. Never had he felt so late, so wrong.

  Chester screamed at the mop-bot. An uncontrollable shriek that cracked and flipped between octaves. The machine juddered in its harness, and with a creak of metal, one of the cables that had tied it to the roof snapped. It plummeted to the ground below where there was an explosion of soil and leaves. It faded to leave the rattle of shouts and orders from approaching guards. And that left only the fire of shame burning in his head.

  “Why!” Chester yelled.

  “Because it’ll be harder to find evidence if the mop-bot is destroyed. Not that evidence seems to be a part of justice any more. The bullets in the mop-bot were probably Mennai issue. More ammunition for the VP’s war.” That’s what was in his head, but what he wanted to say came out as, “He wants you dead.”

  The blue shards of glass crackled under Chester’s feet. She was listing to the left. One arm cradled across her chest. “I see the Franklin family intellect didn’t die with Rose.”

  Ray laid the medi-kit on the table, straightened the creases in the waterproof green cover. Lacky stared through him with the eyes of a taxidermist’s prize stag. They cut him right back to the guilt that Ray could taste. Chester’s eyes were those of the huntsman looking at the stag through rifle sights. Ray didn’t need to be able to read her thoughts to know that there was no way Chester would have changed her mind.

  I only delayed for a second, a truculent voice said in his head.

  That wasn’t the point. The point was he had had the thought in the first place.

  Ray did the only thing he could think of. He left the—

  Carnage.

  23

  Cobwebs

  Randall Soulier sat in a chair that matched his mood. The wood was carved into shapes that were vicious, angry and vengeful, a baby being ripped in two between its heavenly father and mortal mother, angels falling, demons rising and all manner of other grotesques. The chair had been painstakingly crafted by Randall’s great-great-grandfather and passed down through the generations. The carvings represented scenes from Mennai’s rich pantheon of myths and legends. Gods and monsters who were as much one as the other. It was exquisitely done. A lifetime of work had gone into it. Randall hated the thing. It was uncomfortable. It was ugly.

  The chair had belonged to his father. Randall should have destroyed it after he had killed him. Having it dragged down here into the bowels of the city, deep under the streets where his father had plummeted to his death, where the wood would never be wa
rmed by the sun and would crumble and decay, seemed more appropriate. Besides, sitting on a carved wooden throne while Professor Wu-Brocker, AKA Lady Flay, Princess Peel or Scalpel-Finger, carved the skin off the Famulus, had a certain symmetry that even captain Jamie Brennan would appreciate.

  “Where is Brennan, anyway?” he asked.

  “With Private Malakan,” Wu-Brocker replied. “You just sent them to the Donian Mountains. Five minutes ago.”

  “I did. Yes.” He dabbed at his brow. Sweaty. He needed a drink. The urge got stronger the farther away he was from alcohol. “Brennan should have contacted me. He’s been sloppy recently.”

  “At what point does sloppy become disobedient?” Wu-Brocker said.

  “Stop with the riddles, woman.”

  “The comms towers are out.”

  Had he known that?

  “The sun-fans crashing from the sky have destroyed some,” she continued. “Terrorists others. Communication is patchy. Major Henndrik . . .”

  What Randall could only have described as a dreamy expression stuttered across the woman’s face. It was completely out of character and made her look like a plastic doll left too close to an open fire. Well, well, well. That’s an interesting titbit to file away for future reference. Did Latex-Face have a soft spot for the major? Wouldn’t be the first woman. Wouldn’t be the last. Problem was, Randall was unsure there was enough of the original Wu-Brocker left for her to still count as female. Probably suited the major. Long as there were holes that bled, he was a happy man. The tighter the better. The unwanted image cut through Randall’s worries about Brennan and made him want to retch.

  Wu-Brocker bent from the waist like a human-hinge. The figure in the chair shied away from her. The professor no longer looked wistful. Now the expression on her face reflected what was inside her mind, and her prey, strapped into the chair in front of her, whimpered.

  “Major Henndrik just informed you of this communication issue personally,” Wu-Brocker said without taking her eyes off the woman in front of her. “He is concerned about mounting an operation in enemy territory with such a handicap. He is also worried about Brennan’s suitability for command.”

  “Henndrik just doesn’t like Brennan.” And Brennan definitely doesn’t like Henndrik. Never seen the captain so twitchy. “And sun-fans and terrorists are not excuses I’m interested in.” Randall eased himself forwards in the chair. Something was digging into a buttock. He thought it was a carved virgin’s face as she looked longingly up to the heavens for a celestial saviour. Idiot, he thought. You need to look inside for salvation, not to someone else’s fairytale.

  “Then maybe Captain Brennan doesn’t want to talk to you.” Wu-Brocker’s voice was dry and dusty, verging on metallic, and Randall’s patience wore thin.

  “Did you have your vocal cords modified as well as everything else?”

  Wu-Brocker’s eyes flicked towards him. They were about the only part of her face that could move quickly after the amount of work she’d had done to it. “At what point—”

  Randall held up a finger. Wu-Brocker may have narrowed her eyes. She may even have pressed her lips into a thin line. She may have done any number of things that were supposed to demonstrate irritation, but given her face was practically paralysed, Randall had no way of telling.

  “Vocal cords are muscles,” she said. “They get weak. Weak muscles do not perform well. Weak vocal cords sound—”

  “Weak, yes, of course.” He sat back on the virgin’s face and an image of Lascivious Lena surfaced in his mind. This one was her writhing on silk sheets, when she’d still been excited by the idea of being tied to his bedposts.

  “Weak,” Wu-Brocker said. Sibilant.

  The image popped. Why hadn’t Brennan called? What happened to Chester? Was she dead already? Was it daytime up there on the surface? Randall’s watch said it was early morning, but the gloom of the sub-metro gave time an unreal quality, as if it could be anytime of day you wanted but you knew it was never the real thing.

  “Weak,” Wu-Brocker repeated. “At what point does weak become strong? Weightlifters are always weak in their minds. That’s why they keep lifting.”

  “I said no more riddles.”

  “I developed the vocal-cord tightening for businessmen who wanted to sound more authoritarian. It worked. It took me an age to find someone I could trust, and once I had wrung promises of good behaviour out of them, I used the procedure on myself.”

  “How many times?”

  She didn’t answer. The VP wondered if Wu-Brocker’s clipped way of speaking was also a result of all the surgery she had had affecting her brain. “Why hasn’t Brennan contacted me? Brennan or Mastarban—”

  “Malakan.”

  “Whatever the Donian runt’s name is. What do you think of Brennan’s behaviour?” he asked Wu-Brocker. “Do you think Major Henndrik is right about Brennan? Can I still trust him? You’re a scientist.”

  “Scientists are trained to observe, not judge. We notice things non-scientists don’t. That is our blessing, our curse.”

  “Be hard not to notice everything around you when your eyes have been welded open.”

  She fixed him with a snake’s stare.

  “Oh, come on, woman. Did you have your sense of humour tucked and pinched along with everything else?”

  The ageing surgeon picked a scalpel off a tray that Benn-John was offering her. The dirty little man gave her a scuttling bow. His threadbare orange smock flapped around blotchy legs thick with veins. Wu-Brocker had a gleam in her eyes that was nothing to do with the odd lighting in the room. The scalpel twitched. It sent slivers of light scattering across the walls. And the Famulus, strapped into the chair that was two sizes too small for everyone, screamed into her gag.

  In the time it took him to bite another nail down to the quick, beads of blood gleamed blackly on the Famulus’s skin. Quite how Wu-Brocker had managed to make such a precise line when the other woman was thrashing against her leather restraints was beyond Randall. It was also boring him.

  It didn’t seem to be boring young Jake Swann. The kid’s expression, complete with snotty-green runners bubbling over his lips, was blank. He was also utterly silent. Randall thrust a hand into a pocket and rubbed a thumb along the ridge of the pocket watch he had taken from Prothero. It was sweaty. “Not it, you. You’re sweaty. Metal doesn’t sweat.”

  Wu-Brocker made an incision in the Famulus’s face and the child glanced over at Randall. For a second, it looked like Jake winked at him, just like the Famulus’s eye was winking at Wu-Brocker. The brat should be crying not winking. Randall jumped to his feet, pushed Benn-John out of the way,

  (“Benn. John. Benn. John. Left. Left. Left. Left.”)

  raised a hand. It twitched in time with the thump of blood in his head. Jake’s jaw dropped, as if to say: It’s not true? Adults don’t really hit kids, do they? And the harsh jangle of a phone rattled around the room.

  Benn-John shouted his name. The Famulus’s eyes flared in an irrational hope, which faded as Wu-Brocker’s shadow covered her face. Randall lurched for the phone. “Brennan! Where have you been?”

  “It’s not Brennan . . . sir.”

  “Mastadon?”

  “Malakan, sir.”

  “I don’t care what your name is. Where’s Brennan?”

  “He’s—”

  “This is out of order. I want to speak to Brennan. Now!” He slammed the receiver down. On the third attempt, it stuck. “Damn it! What’s wrong with Brennan? What—” He was shouting, spitting words into the dusty silence. They were all staring at him, all but the Famulus. Her eyes were twisted in on themselves, staring at the scalpel hovering over her nose.

  Wu-Brocker arched one of her pencilled-on eyebrows at him. With her inflated red lips, plumped up cheekbones and the crater-like cleft in her chin, the VP’s anger drowned in a sea of wonder: how was it possible for Wu-Brocker to consider her full-frontal assault on facial geometry attractive, or even sustainable?

&n
bsp; The phone clanged into life again as Wu-Brocker sliced, neatly, into the Famulus’s skin. Her scream blended with Jake’s. Randall squeezed the receiver to his ear, cursing the coiled cable that tied him to the scruffy, wall-mounted phone. “Brennan. When I want an update I want you, not Spanner-Can.”

  “Malakan, sir.”

  The Famulus shrieked.

  “Where are you?”

  “En route to Donia, sir. We’re meeting up with the advance units of the 13th as discussed.”

  “And Chester? Is she dead?”

  (If the VP could see Brennan, he would have seen his captain holding a picture of a young woman. She had long dark hair, a dancer’s lithe figure and a smattering of pox scars over one eyebrow. There was a certain cast to her face, which was similar to her brother’s.

  If the VP could have seen further into Brennan he would have heard him think: Dead? Like Lena? Like my sister. And tucked behind that thought was: Like Luke Hamilton? Like the former president who I killed when I was not much older than Jake Swann?

  The VP couldn’t see or hear this, of course. All he heard was the crackle of Brennan’s breath in the receiver.)

  “Brennan!”

  “She’s dead.”

  (But Brennan was thinking aloud. Brennan was thinking about the sister he had sworn to protect.)

  “Good,” the VP said.

  (And Brennan heard this ‘good’ as a reference to his sister, not his field-marshal. And later that night, a fresh recruit to the Unsung who had thought that backchat was a good idea, got taught a lesson in discipline that her colleagues spoke about in terrified whispers for generations.)

  “Now listen to me, Brennan. When you get to Donia, you take Mangiaman and use him to find the Elders. Those peasants still believe in the primacy of age. No idea why, old people can be more stupid than young people, purely because they’ve had more practice at it. Mantakan’s from there. He knows the way they think. His sister’s there, use her to make him help us.”

  “I don’t think it will be an issue getting Private Malakan to help us, sir.”