by Andy Graham
As Ray spoke, Brooke pushed a damp curl back from her forehead. The movement revealed the sweep of a collarbone, the hollow at the base of her neck, a flash of skin that curved down to a breast. She twitched the blanket back, an unreadable expression pulling at her face.
“Skovsky Senior’s kept the Resistance flying almost single-handed,” Ray said. ”He’s a good man.” A real hero, one of the statues whispered. “And now Nasc is keeping the peace, kind of. I think both sides have found a common hatred of his jokes.”
The corners of her mouth twitched up into a short-lived smile.
“Nasc told me about Orr—”
“Gone off to save my people,” she said, with a disbelieving shake of her head. “That man has some good in him, it seems.”
“Just a sliding scale of hate.”
A second smile, stronger this time.
“Nasc told me what happened to Kaleyne, too.”
“She was my grandmother.”
Any lust at the sight of Brooke that had remained in him after the icy plunge and damp cave withered and died. The thin seams of gwenium lining the rock wall flared brightly enough to make Ray wince before the redness in the walls settled down to an agitated throb. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“What of your mother?” she asked. The fingers not clutching the blanket curled claw-like as if to ward off the reality of Kalyene’s death.
“Rose was murdered.” He told her briefly what had happened under the Bridged Quarter of Tye. How Ray’s half-brother had killed their mother in cold blood and then had Ray chained to her stiffening corpse. “Our child has lost both grandmothers already,” he finished.
“Our child.” She struggled with the word.
“I’m sorry, Brooke. For what happened, for not being here. Most was beyond my control but—”
Then she was there, her warm body pressed up against his. Her blanket wrapping around them both. A firm, round bulge was pushing into his stomach.
“I’ve missed you.” Her pupils were black holes in her eyes.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
Her hand drifted south. “So I see.”
They made love on the cave floor, fierce and passionate, rough and gentle, watched over by the statues of the dead.
More than anything, more than freedom, more than revenge, more than stopping the relentless pain, right now, the Famulus wanted to shut out the sight of the lips in front of her. But no matter how hard she tried to keep her remaining eye closed, it snapped open of its own accord. Beyond those lips, the staples that had held her eyelids open lay on the table, gleaming pinkly. Next to them, the Famulus’s other eye sat in a glass-stoppered apothecary bottle. What must have been the nerve coiled around it like a miniature serpent wrapped around a globe, waiting to devour the world, just like in the Old Texts. The shadow Wu-Brocker cast across the table twitched as if she were driven by pistons, and the Famulus’s diminished gaze once more switched back to those infernal lips.
They were mesmerising. They were utterly vile. Red, swollen and rigid. And for a moment, the Famulus was thankful. They gave her something to think about other than the pain in her face. Where the skin on her cheek had been, where the eye that was now staring blindly at her from behind its brown glass walls once was. The burning, scalding sensations were muted. The drugs had helped that. Wu-Brocker hadn’t wanted to administer them but both the Famulus and Benn-John had been screaming so much, she’d relented.
Just before the gothic syringe, with more twists and turns than it really needed, had sunk into her arm, pushing its chemical peace ahead of it, the Famulus had seen the glint of something in Benn-John’s face beyond vacant. She was too far gone in the daze of pain from her face to work out what it had been, but the man she had started to think of as the Idiot was obviously far from it.
Had the look been patience? Sympathy? Or even — and at this her heart lifted off rock bottom — hate? Hate was good. Hate meant life. Life meant hope. Despair was the real killer.
Wu-Brocker tottered over to the table holding her tools. The Famulus’s eye followed the gargantuan lips, and she heard her captor say, “At what point does statuesque become giantism?”
The Famulus moaned. Not again.
“Benn-John,” the Idiot answered, obligingly.
“At what point does wiry become scrawny?”
“Benn-John.”
“At what point does voluptuous become fat?”
“Benn-John.”
“At what point does opinionated become ignorant?”
“Benn-John.”
“How many spots does one need before it is classed as a rash?”
“Benn-John.”
“At what point do wrinkles become craggy?”
“Benn-John.”
“Or weathered rugged?”
“Benn-John.”
“When does eu-stress become dis-stress?”
“Benn-John.”
“When is small compact rather than stunted?”
“Benn-John.”
“Can wrinkles ever be cute or grandmotherly?”
“Benn-John.”
“At what point does grief become self-indulgent?”
“Benn-John.”
Wu-Brocker straightened from the fan-shaped toolbox on the table. Clutched in a wrinkled finger was what looked like a crochet hook. A sharp crochet hook. Benn-John scuttled away from her. “Benn. John. Benn. John. Left. Left. Left. Left.” In his haste he knocked into the table in the centre of the room and the bowler hat that had lain on the edge fell with a soft whooshing noise.
“At what point—”
Benn-John clamped his hands over his ears, rocking back and forth on the spot. The Famulus screamed. “Stop. Everything. Talking and cutting. Just stop. No more questions. Please.”
“Progress is built on science. Science is built on answers. Answers need questions.”
For a moment, the Famulus rued her fall from grace. The voice that had once mesmerised her flock — just like Wu-Brocker’s lips were doing to her now — had been reduced to a throaty, begging whisper. “Then answer my question.”
“Which was?”
“At what point is too much plastic surgery too much?” There were far more pressing things to ask and do, but, hate also meant defiance, and defiance meant survival. As she took in her subterranean surroundings through her remaining eye, the desperate glimmer of hope stuttered and faded.
The hardness in Wu-Brocker’s face was nothing to do with her modifications. “When I find out, you will be the first to know. Unless you’re dead.”
The Famulus looked over at the Idiot. Benn-John wrung his hands. “Help me!” she screamed. She didn’t need to hear him to know what he was saying.
“I know what your bloody name is, you idiot!” She thrashed against her restraints. The bandage on her face shifted, and as the blood dripped off her chin, she howled at the cobwebs on the ceiling.
Karaan called the meeting to order with one raised arm; the other held his brown cloak tight to his chest. The Donian, the Resistance and the outcasts from Ailan were gathered on the grass near the Dawn Rock, tangled up with their short midday shadows. Karaan smoothed his white handlebar moustache with his free hand. Embedded within a thick grey beard, it was still stained red from the consequences of Malakan’s betrayal. “There are three main chambers large enough to shelter us,” he said, a slight wheeze cutting through his once resonant voice. “The first is deep within the mountain. I believe you legionnaires remember that place?”
“The cavern with the altar? Rather not go back, if it’s all the same,” Nascimento said.
“The journey’s too long,” Ray added, “and the Monster-under-the-Mountain, the thing that used to be Shaw, is still at large.”
Brooke elbowed him in the ribs. “We need to talk, soon.”
“Talk?” Nascimento winked at her. “Like you did this morning? I could do with a good chat, too.” He grinned at Mayka. Her short dreads twitched violently as she and Brooke bot
h elbowed Nascimento at the same time.
“Second option?” Ray asked Karaan.
“The Resting Room where our dead wait in their stone skins.”
“Statues,” Ray whispered to Nascimento. “Hundreds of them with dead people inside.”
“Dude, quit joking. It doesn’t suit you.” He took in Ray’s impassive face. “You’re not joking, are you? Wonder if it’s too soon to switch sides again.”
“The Resting Room is sacred to us,” Karaan continued. Seated cross-legged before them, he was the shell of the man that had once welcomed Captain Reza Aalok and his squad to the Angel City. That had been a different life, the enemy had been obvious, the government lies less so. Ray glanced across at the Laudanum sister. She was sitting in the space between the two disparate groups. A thorn in the history of Ailan and the Franklin family. Your lies still haven’t fully unravelled, though, have they? The rest of that thought was lost as Brooke edged closer to him. One of her fingers traced distracting circles on the inside of his thigh.
“All due respect, Karaan,” Nascimento said. Ray let out a low groan. Sentences starting like that usually were anything but respectful. “The Resting Room may be sacred to you folks, but that’s not going to count for much if you’re all dead.”
Karaan pulled his hand away from his beard. He appeared to have noticed the red flecks on his fingers. A sadness crossed his face that was as fleeting as the hardness that followed it was fierce. “We can argue the niceties over whether beliefs make something sacred or the reverse when this is over. But from a practical perspective, the Resting Room does not provide enough space for everyone and is hard to access. We will not use that unless we have to. With all due respect, Nascimento.” He offered the big legionnaire a smile that broke off into a hacking cough. Eleyka started to her feet, only for him to wave her down. “The third choice is the Council Chamber.”
An unnatural hush settled across the group. Even the chittering insects and hooting sun owls fell silent. From where Ray and the others were sitting, the Council Chamber was partly hidden by the curve of the stone bore within the mountains. Ray hadn’t noticed it on his first visits here, he’d been too caught up in Orr’s fight around the Dawn Rock and his own sweaty encounter with Brooke. A gentle slope dotted with boulders and shrubs led down from the mouth of that cave to the bottleneck pass that connected to the rest of the Angel City. So soon after the recent slaughter, no one liked the idea of being back there, especially as the Unsung corpses by the entrance were still smouldering.
“The Council Chamber holds fresh ghosts,” Karaan said, “but it is fed by a stream and has limited access to the cave farms. We will wait there.”
“Is this Council cave of yours safe?” Matt, the Resistance’s leader, called out.
“What about entry points?” someone asked.
“The main entrance you can see and a tunnel at the back leads to the Resting Room. That leads to more tunnels, which disappear deep into the mountain. Where they go exactly…” He shrugged his unhurt shoulder. The man was ashen, as if every word he spoke plucked another chunk of life out of him. “Any maps we had were lost some thirty years ago, all of them, all at once. I have no idea why but I suspect Kaleyne was behind it. The arrival of the creature under the mountain a generation ago has made recent attempts to redraw them impossible. But if we don’t know the tunnels, it is impossible for someone not from the Angel City to navigate them, not without the Devil’s own luck at least.” As Karaan’s voice trailed off, a lone fisher gull, lost and a long way from sea, landed on a rocky outcropping above the cave. It was eyeing the smouldering pile of Unsung. One legionnaire had rolled halfway down the slope, leaving a blackened trail of burnt skin behind it.
“Two exits should be easy to defend,” Ray said.
“There is a third tunnel.”
“Gonna give us a clue?” Nascimento asked. “I like my surprises wrapped in slips of silk,” he whispered and tipped a wink at Mayka, who looked puzzled, until Brooke explained. Then she didn’t look surprised; then she looked angry; then she slapped him.
“The third tunnel is submerged,” Karaan said. “The stream in the Council Chamber has a small underground section that connects to the Resting Room. It is a tight fit but passable. At least for some.” He gestured to his ruined arm. “As long as we watch that tunnel, we should be safe in the Cave.”
“We could block this underwater tunnel to be sure? There are plenty of rocks around.” Ray suggested.
“We may flood the Resting Room and that we cannot permit,” Karaan replied.
“Right, done, then.” Nascimento leapt to his feet. “Let’s kick some legionnaire arse. Never liked those Unscum.”
“Hang on, Nasc. Let’s just be sure about this, OK?”
“I see Reliable Ray’s back,” Nasc muttered, sitting down again.
“Why not the cave farms or the salt mines?” Ray asked Karaan.
“The former have too many entrances to defend. The entrances to the latter are little more than bore holes.”
“We could run away across the mountains?” Nascimento’s question was met by the rustling muttering of an unhappy crowd. Beyond them, the stray fisher gull had alighted on a legionnaire’s charred foot and was ripping off strips of flesh.
“Our people do not flee,” Eleyka said, resting one hand lightly on Karaan’s knee, as if giving him permission to be silent. “Our ancestors found safety in these mountains when the Flood drowned the world two millennia ago. As much as any land belongs to any person, these mountains were our home long before the country of Ailan was created from the bloody ashes of Brettia. We may die here but we will not run.”
From her cross-legged position, Vena rose elegantly to her feet without the need to push off a knee or the ground. She addressed the assembly with the voice of one used to speaking to large crowds. “We cannot go across the mountaintops. The weather at night would kill those of us not used to the harsh climate, and we’d be in the open.” Her voice wavered for a second. “Randall Soulier would drop whatever bombs he could get his hands on until these mountains glowed.”
More so than the looming war, having this woman, the Thorn of Ailan, a dire wolf in sheep’s clothing, amongst a people she had played games with and hunted for decades, grated on Ray’s every fibre. Her calm, her poise. The way she placed her syllables so her voice would carry, her habit of directing her words at certain individuals in the crowd to keep them all watching. The fact that she could stand more effortlessly than he could while being old enough to be his grandmother. The shudder at that thought shook him to his toes. But, more than that, was the pure fact that she was right about Randall. It irritated him. His question was out before he could stop it. “How do you know?”
“Being the president’s twin sister has some advantages.”
Ray brushed Brooke’s circling finger off his leg. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Nothing you don’t yet need to know.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that, Laudanum?” Her shouted name spiralled up the rock walls of the stone cauldron. He was a head and shoulders taller than her. He didn’t remember standing up.
“It appears that your grandfather, Rick Franklin, was the last of his line with any manners. Even the singularly unpleasant Stann Taille has more decorum than this.”
“Ray, sit.” Brooke tugged at his trouser leg.
“Well, young man?” Vena clasped her hands in front of her waist, unfazed by Ray’s temper.
“Our people are on the verge of annihilation,” Karaan said. “Do you think you could keep your family squabbles for later?”
Ray and Vena refused to break eye contact. Each more stubborn that the other. Until Vena, with an imperious wave said, “We shall talk about this later, young Franklin. My apologies, Karaan. Please continue.” Vena sat on a lone tussock of grass. She made it look like a throne. That left just Ray on his feet, surrounded by people sitting and squatting on their haunches. The irritation gave way t
o a sense of embarrassment and . . . tallness. The smug smile on Vena’s face didn’t help. He crashed to the ground, where Brooke slipped her arm through his.
Karaan’s gaze slid off Ray, onto his people and then to the Resistance. There was a metre of space between the uneasy allies, filled by Nascimento, Mayka, Vena, Stella and Emily, Ray and Brooke. From Ailan’s outcasts, Karaan’s eyes rose to Eleyka, questioning. “Don’t,” she said, with a shake of her head.
Whatever battle passed through their shared gaze, Karaan appeared to win. “We have also found the Scroll Room.”
Excited whispers sprang up from the Donian, bemused, patronising looks from the Resistance.
“You say too much,” Eleyka hissed. “In front of people from Ailan you would share secrets we have not long uncovered.”
“The more people know, the more chance we have of not losing this place again. Society should be based on honesty, no matter how unpalatable, rather than secrets. The legends are true. When the current storm passes, we will take each of you there in turn. All of you. We will also devote as much time as we need to mapping the tunnels. We have ignored the land we stand on for too long.”
“But the Monster!”
“The Others that we leave food for?”
“The Burnt Thing!”
“The tunnels are not safe.”
“We’ll die.”
The noise grew. Concerns and fears fed off each other like a pebble tumbling down a snow-clad mountain peak. This time Karaan’s raised hand did not quiet his audience until he staggered to his feet. Eleyka rose to hold his elbow. Near-broken, his fragility quieted the crowd. “They are problems for another time. Now, those who would fight, stay here. Those who cannot fight” — ‘Yet’ was unsaid, but they all heard it — “are to go to the Council Chamber.”
“When?” Mayka asked, her fingers tangled in the short crop of hair across Nascimento’s head.
“Now!” A voice boomed from behind them. It echoed round the rock bore, dragging eyes and ears with it. Lukaz, face like a thunderhead, one arm held across his body in a crude sling made from a leather belt, limped towards them. “We need to move now. The Unsung are coming.”
