The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  She leant on the edge of the bridge. Lines of light ran out from under her hands, wrapping around the carved images that ran through the wall. A breeze picked up and ran airy fingers though her hair. The smell of sulphur that was everywhere in the Angel City was weaker here, or maybe, Ray thought, he was just getting used to it. Brooke still hadn’t answered his question, so he answered hers. “I don’t know if cremating Bethina was the right thing to do. I’m also not sure if giving her urn to Rick—”

  “Your grandfather.”

  “Yes, him. Still struggling with that to be honest on account of him almost killing us.”

  “He was trying to protect us from the element,” Brooke said. “He didn’t know who you were. And we provoked him. What do you expect? Seems perfectly reasonable behaviour to me. ‘Violence—’”

  “‘—is the best form of diplomacy.’ I didn’t agree with a lot of what Baris said or did, but his take on diplomacy probably saved a nation.”

  A rip in the sky sent light fluttering down towards them. A twisting line of greens and blues folded around the mountaintop, lighting up the snow that clung to the summer peaks. The couple watched the colours under the stars, enjoying the rare moment alone.

  “My grandad and Beth once loved each other. I guess giving him her ashes was the obvious thing to do. I don’t know what he did with them. Maybe I’ll ask next time I see him.”

  “The urn is in the altar room where Rick attacked us, next to the cairns he and Eddie built for Ed’s wife and daughter. Eddie’s deciphering the scrolls, he thinks this green rock” — she tapped the Northbridge, sending excited sparks ricocheting through the translucent stone — “could be used as a source of clean energy. Rick’s mapping the tunnels. The Hoyden are scared stupid of him so, predictably, they’re all queuing up to be the ones to help out.” She handed out the information with all the excitement of reading a tram timetable.

  “You know this?”

  “I speak to people. You should try it. You know, ask questions and so on?”

  “You don’t speak to people, you threaten them. And getting answers wasn’t really a feature of my childhood, but yes, you’re right. I’ll try.”

  “Too many parents mess up their kids with their own hang-ups,” Brooke said. “You’re not going to do that to my kids.”

  “Your kids?”

  “If you don’t sort yourself out, yes.”

  “And your hang-ups?”

  Her reply was a sharp punch on his arm, where the nerve was most exposed. Before he could reply, she had pulled his head to hers and wrapped her tongue around his. “What hang-ups?” she asked when they broke off.

  “Nothing. No hang-ups. None at all.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said and reached for his belt buckle.

  The Northbridge was sacred to the Donian people, a symbol of unity between the two tribes of the mountains that straddled the border of Mennai and Ailan, the country that had been born of Brettia. The bridge’s sacred nature hadn’t stopped Brooke carving her name into it all those many years ago when she had been taken as a hostage by the legions. It didn’t stop Ray and Brooke making love on the bridge now, surrounded by fireworks dancing within the blue-green stone to match those within them. When they had stopped, and started again, and then stopped again, they lay on the bridge once more. Its pulsing faded, as if it, too, was satisfied for now.

  “Rhys?” Ray said finally, in answer to the question Brooke had asked just before Nascimento had arrived to refuel.

  “No.”

  “Rick or Frederick?”

  “No.”

  “Baris?”

  A splutter. “No!”

  “OK, what about girl’s names? Rose?”

  “No.”

  “Bethina?” His tentative suggestion was shot down with an acid glare. “Only a suggestion, Brooke. Seeing as you’ve got some of her DNA floating around in your belly.”

  She grimaced. “Don’t remind me.”

  “What’s wrong with those names then?”

  “It’s too traditional to receive family names. And these names have too much history. Can’t we make a fresh start and call the Worm something else?” She patted her belly.

  “The Worm? You’re really embracing this motherhood thing, aren’t you?”

  “It’s better than anything you’ve suggested,” she said.

  “OK, your turn. And none of those Donian names.”

  “Why not?” Now it was Brooke’s turn to look affronted.

  “Kaleyne, Eleyka, Karaan, Karlyne, Mayka, Karil, Kayle, Kain, Lukaz.” He pulled Brooke closer to him. The heat under her top was coming off her in waves. “Your names are too predictable. Don’t you know any names without ‘ka’ in them?”

  “That’s traditional.”

  Ray rolled his eyes. “That’s all right then.”

  Brooke punched him on the arm nerve again. Pregnancy had done nothing to dull her aim.

  “Well I don’t know then,” Ray said. “Maybe we’ll just call the Worm the Worm for most of his life.”

  “Her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She kicks like a girl. A real girl, none of your flimsy Ailan princesses.”

  “You have a lot to learn. Not all women from Ailan fit your cliches.”

  “Name one.”

  “Lenka. My surrogate aunt who raised me while my mother was off raising a rebellion rather than kids.”

  “The one you killed?”

  “Thanks, Brooke.”

  The throbbing light in the bridge dulled, turning a sickly green to match the sudden silence. There were doubts and fears between them. A worry that the lust would fade and they would be left with nothing but a child to show for it. That the novelty would disappear and the new would become the old. That their old habits to fight and run would resurface. They had talked about it, argued over it and made up already. Ray had finished that argument with a sentence Lenka had once told him. “When something that is worth keeping breaks, you don’t throw it away, you fix it. My generation knew this long before the age of disposable toys and love.”

  Brooke rolled onto her knees and straddled him. Her curly hair was picked out in silver by the twin moons blazing down on them. “Lenka.”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s a good name. A strong name.”

  “Got a ‘ka’ in it, too.”

  “Lenka,” Brooke repeated the word, trying it on for size. She patted her belly. “Lenka.”

  40

  Epilogue

  The door shut with a clang. Lesau’s light cut through the keyhole, illuminating a man’s boots as they kicked up spits of dust and gravel. He hurried down the pitted-concrete corridor, past dirty white tiles split by lines of burgundy. There were yellowed posters advertising mints and cigarettes on the walls, women in feathered hats arm in arm with men sporting ties and bowlers. He shied away from the watching eyes of a stern-headed, moustachioed captain, caught a glimpse of a stick figure on a green background, stumbled down some stairs, scuffed his feet, looked down automatically, remembered these weren’t his shoes, expensive and gleaming, but boots, cheap and grotty and ill-fitting, staggered on, arrived at a lift and hit the call button. He waited.

  It took an age for the ancient carriage to grind its way up to his level, long enough for him to pull the thick key out of a pocket and count the number of teeth on the wolf’s head that adorned it: twelve. It should have been thirteen. Like the legion, like my legion. He laughed, low and bitter.

  The lift clanked into place much like a guillotine being raised. The door rattled shut and the lift sank into the ground, deep into the earth below Effrea, to a level where the trains had once run, where he had once ruled, carving out his own private kingdom. “Where I still rule.”

  Regroup. Reform. Return. But first, reclothe. His feet hurt. These military-issue boots were too hard. How did legionnaires run in these things? He’d left his shoes and clothes on the mountaintop, swapped them with the che
wed-up body of a man who must have been hiking and fallen prey to a wild animal. Hiking? Why? What’s the point? Watch a film. It smells better. Fewer insects. There’s only so much nature you need.

  He’d wandered through the forest and ambushed a young legionnaire while he’d been taking a piss. Kid had been from the bull and gate, the 6th Legion, men and women who Chester had tasked with helping the tribes rebuild. Randall had brained the boy with a rock, throttled him like he had Bethina and snuck onto a chopper. A late night, some boot-polish camouflage and the promise of SWAG

  (A legion may march on its stomach but it was to the drumbeat of SWAG: Spirits, Weed and Analgesics, the latter had been renamed to geese by some military wit.)

  had eased his passage back to the capital.

  As for Bethina?

  His teeth cracked together when the carriage hit the bottom of the shaft and the image of one twin became the other. He hadn’t strangled Bethina. That was Verina. The sister. Both were dead now. He’d killed both twins. But not Ray Franklin. He lived. Him and his pregnant woman.

  The lift disgorged him into the level of the sub-metro. He ran, kicking over a traffic cone and turning into a service tunnel. He ducked the cobwebs that hung from the overhead pipes like a woman dangling from a tree. Squinting into the gap-toothed smile of light that slid from the far door, he burst into:

  A square room.

  Low ceilinged.

  Five lights. Giant, scorching glass eyes, one for each corner.

  There was a low table with a cut-throat razor, a bowler hat, an axe, a triangular piece of brass-plated wood, and a multilayered toolbox. Dead Brennan’s Box of Surprises, the whisperer’s toolkit, everything the discerning torturer could ask for. And in the centre of the room? The chair, the one that was two sizes too small for everyone. The one with the thick leather straps with the double-holed buckle piercings like vampire teeth.

  “Nonsense.” The word bubbled through a layer of snot and self-pity. “Vampires. Nonsense. A fairy tale, like the Cracks.” He was standing on a crack. He moved before he had realised, and that brought a snarl to his face and his foot stamping back down. “Damn you. I am the president. I am the rightful ruler. The people want me.”

  There was someone in the too-small chair, broken, clothed in bruised shadows. The Famulus. Was she still alive? Wu-Brocker must be taking her time if so. His thoughts came in clunky segments. Like the cogs and teeth grinding the guillotine of the lift shaft. Like his breath. “Professor?” he called. “Professor Wu-Brocker?”

  She deserved her title. Not many people did. She deserved her nickname even more, but not even he had the courage to call her Lady Flay to her face. That bit of her may have had so much work done to it that it was incapable of human emotion that it only made looking into those dead eyes worse.

  Whispers slithered out of a corner.

  “How many tellings does a lie need to become the truth?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “At what point does principled become stubborn?”

  “Benn-John.

  “At what point does wealth make a lie the truth?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “At what point does loyalty become a liability?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “At what point does flexible become weak?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “At what point does gratefulness become deference?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “At what point does volume make fiction fact?”

  “Benn-John.”

  “When does harsh but fair become harsh and unfair?”

  “Now. He’s here.”

  “What?” Randall’s surprise at hearing the man say anything other than ‘left’, ‘right’ or ‘Benn-John’ was short-lived. There was a flurry of orange material and a pungent cloth was placed over his mouth. It was cold, chemically cold. It sucked the heat out of his skin, the light out of his eyes and the air left his lungs.

  He woke with a shuddering gasp. Sweat was trickling down his forehead, itching. Splinters cut into his arse. He moved to wipe the sweat off and ropes bit into his wrists. He was naked. “Wu-Brocker! What’s going on?”

  “Wu-Brocker?” a woman’s voice slurred.

  “Wu-Brocker.” A man’s.

  “Yes! Wu Bloody Brocker! Let me out!” His respect for the woman and the nickname she had carved out of the flesh of countless victims and patients was lost in his anger. He thrashed and struggled, the ropes leaving burning red lines on his skin. “Let me out of this chair.”

  A shadow moved into the light. Light streamed through the thin fuzz of hair on the scalp. “Wu-Brocker, there you are. Where are my clothes? That fool Benn-John’s got the wrong man. I’ll have him hung for this.”

  “I didn’t get the wrong man,” a voice whispered in Randall’s ear. Nose close to him was the scarred face of the orderly. He looked like a nightmarish clown before the make up went on. Randall’s eyes drifted to the cuts on the man’s neck.

  “These?” Benn-John asked, sliding a finger along the puckered skin. “Made by a razor. I was called Benn Tate then. I had a family then. I came into hospital then. I had an operation then. Wu-Brocker changed me then. Corrupted me then. Switched my hands inside my brain then. Left to right and right to left. Then and now.” As if exhausted by a torrent of words after half a century of silence, Benn Tate placed both hands on his throat. He retreated into a corner until only his orange smock was visible, swaying over knobbly knees and filthy feet.

  “Wu-Brocker? What in the seven levels of hell is going on? When did that mute idiot find his tongue?” A triangular piece of wood landed in his lap. It was clad in brass, his desk sign. “What’s the meaning of this? This is from my office. Let me go!”

  Benn Tate’s hand appeared from nowhere and tapped the arm of the chair with curled, yellowing fingernails. Randall squirmed and, as he did so, he realised what chair he was strapped into. There was a moment of separation. A moment when he thought he should have been in his office in Lesau Tower, not here. This chair belonged aboveground, where he could look down on the capital. No! Brennan and Henndrik had moved it here: underground. He remembered now.

  Randall tugged at the ropes, trying to unbalance the chair. It was heavy, made of dark wood, carved with shapes and symbols from the pantheon of Mennai, the country he had fought against for so long, the country he hated, the country his fathers had been born in, the real one and the bully. His anger was now cut with a growing sense of panic.

  “It’s a tradition in Mennai,” a dry voice slurred. “A family heirloom carved by a distant relative is passed on from son to son or daughter to daughter. Your father, David Prothero, wanted to pass this particular heirloom on to you before you killed him. He got it from his grandfather.”

  A pause. A stillness. Long enough, deep enough for the fears that Randall was fighting to blossom and wrap their icy tentacles around his spine. Randall yelped as words cut through the gloom.

  “As a young man, your great-grandfather spent years carving all manner of gods and beasts into this chair. But with great beauty comes great responsibility.” There was a sigh, theatrical and insincere. “The pious young man couldn’t bear to look upon the magnificent yet blasphemous representation of heaven and hell he had created.”

  Benn’s skeletal hand appeared again and tapped the arm. To Randall’s fevered mind, it sounded like someone knocking on the inside of a coffin lid.

  “The story goes that the young man wanted to hang himself from a tree. Ironic really, given how Verina died. But a celestial vision convinced him otherwise. That young man died an old man, happy and fulfilled with a large family at his bedside.” The figure fell to its knees, arms raised high in supplication. “Shall the gods appear now in front of us? Shall we be blinded by their divine light and shown the error of our ways? Shall your bonds be set asunder?” Another sigh, the stick-like figure cut a black slit in the room. “I guess not. There are no gods left in Mennai or Ailan. The ancient gods that survi
ved the Floods were stolen from us by your government. But no true god would have allowed itself to be banished from streets and schools by a mortal. No real god is subject to the laws that people devise. No real god needs money, either. Which is why some of us made our own, better gods.”

  The figure stepped into the light. Vain as it was, Randall was still hoping to see Wu-Brocker: the inflated red lips that looked ready to burst, the stretched skin and eyes, the mouth incapable of smiling and the inhumanly large breasts. This woman couldn’t have been further from Wu-Brocker’s alien attempt at hyperfeminity. Tall and wiry, going on scrawny, her voice was as thin as the thread veins on her hands. Her straggly hair fell in unkempt waves down a face that was covered in bloody bandages. Torturously, the woman peeled the cloth away. One-half of her face was missing its skin. It had been sliced off perfectly, an exact line led around the black hole of an eye socket to her nose and mouth.

  “You?”

  “Not as much me as there used to be,” the Famulus replied. “But still enough to enjoy seeing you again. Unfortunately for you.”

  There was a shuffling noise to his left. Benn had moved to reveal the corpse in the chair that was two sizes too small for everyone. Wu-Brocker. The buckles had been pulled so tight around her limbs, her bones had broken. The front of her clothes were soaked a dark red that flooded down from her throat.

  “Benn cut her throat,” the Famulus said. “Slowly.” Benn started counting under his breath. It sounded like the pendulum of a grandfather clock ticking. “Slowly enough to get to forty. Which is, I believe, approximately the number of years since he was stolen from his family by Wu-Brocker.”

  Light danced in slivers off a cut-throat razor that Benn had pulled from his pocket. Randall pushed himself back into the chair. His triangular desk sign fell between his naked legs, cold against his shrivelling cock. The Famulus leered at him, one side of her face skin, the other flesh.

  He’d heard her fire-and-brimstone speeches in the Ward, the cult to the elements she had run. He’d dealt with the earnest, dishonest side of her outside of that. Now he was faced with a woman stripped of her skin and the thin veneer of civilisation it had hidden.