We hurried beneath the thick arch, and I breathed a sigh of relief when the crumbling railway façade opened out onto what must have once been a long wide pavement, scattered with creeper-clad broken stones.
Concrete city foundations had prevented a lot of thick, upright growth; and a surprisingly clear old road ran parallel with the railway, lined with blackened, toothless buildings. Further up the road there was a circular juncture with several similar-looking routes extending from it like a spider’s web.
I glanced at Max in disbelief. It looked as though there was far more of a city skeleton remaining than any of us had ever expected, and the Prolets could be anywhere.
‘OK, steady progress, that’s all we need!’ he reassured, his gaze lingering on Eli.
I smiled tightly, conscious of how our footsteps seemed so intrusive here, a city that had once known the pounding of so many feet. And the sheer scale of the structured ruins meant there were countless roads and decaying buildings to scour. Even if we split up it would still be an impossible task to achieve in one night.
And yet we were here, and there was no going back.
The three of us started up the middle of the crumbling, overgrown road. Although the sun had long disappeared, everything was draped in a lazy veil of moonlight and clinging cloud. I fought a shiver. Even though the darkness was our friend, I felt more exposed now than I ever had in the outside forest at night.
My ears were straining and senses on high alert. There were enough walls remaining to differentiate between the buildings where people had once traded food and goods, and those that had offered shelter and a home. But there was a something else too, a feeling that the shells weren’t quite as lifeless as we first thought. There was a scuffle here, a rustle there, and always the sense that we were intruding, trespassing on hallowed, sacred ground.
Gritting my teeth, I focused on the sound of our feet on the cracked concrete, pushing all fanciful notions to the back of my mind. But Eli getting hurt so soon had sent a fracture haring through my confidence. Eli. I’d already come too close to losing him in Pantheon. There was no way I could risk either him or Max getting hurt again because of me. It would be worse than getting hurt myself. Which was why I knew that when the right moment came, I was headed to Pantheon. Alone.
We stole on, alert to every new noise. Eli was managing to walk unaided, but I could tell his leg was throbbing, despite the meadowsweet. I fumbled for my rations bag, intent on finding some willow bark for him to chew to dull the pain, only to graze my own shin against a dark object protruding between two broken slabs of concrete.
I yelped and reached down.
‘What’s the matter?’ Max whispered, turning to see why I’d paused.
I scowled down at the offending object, still rubbing. It was made from metal, and layered with years of grime and dirt, but with a little effort I could just make out black lettering running along its length.
‘Queen St,’ I read, frowning.
‘Queen … sting? Queen … strop?!’ Max tested carefully.
I pulled a face to cover my relief. It was the first real reference to our fight since leaving Arafel. I’d hurt him, I knew that, and in some ways I’d understand if he never spoke to me again. At least not like that. Humour was always a good, safe place for us.
But just as I opened my mouth to retort, Eli started signing frantically.
‘Something up there! Inside!’ he gesticulated rapidly, pointing up at the charred remains of a blackened second-floor window, just above us.
It was Max’s turn to scowl. ‘What kind of something?’ he signed awkwardly.
‘Not sure,’ Eli signed, ‘but it moved … a shadow?’
‘This place is full of shadows!’ Max exploded.
I glared at him. ‘If Eli says he saw something, we ought to check it out!’
We all stared up at the concrete hole that had once been a large formal window. It looked as black and uninviting as any of the charcoaled, deserted buildings.
‘Protect it with your life, Talia, come what may.’
I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard, but he was there, echoing around the edge of the cool February breeze. Cursing softly, I sprinted up the cluttered stone steps that must have once been a formal entranceway, before I could change my mind.
And as soon as I passed beneath the large grey entrance arch, I knew this building could never have been any ordinary shop or house. Even dressed in murky shadows, it was big, with a white, formal staircase that gleamed and stretched upwards in front of me. Everything was covered in years of dust and scorched debris, and half the ceiling was completely missing exposing a finely balanced balustrade. At the top of the first white flight, watching over years of debris and dust, was a single lonely sculpture. Its athletic silhouette shone in the darkness like an angel of war, and it was only when I finally made out its name that I allowed myself a smile.
‘Prince Albert … and about time,’ I whispered to myself.
‘Huh?’ Max whispered, stepping up beside me.
‘Nothing,’ I dismissed, carefully eyeing the curve of the balustrade from the first flight to a precarious second flight with the central rises missing. I flexed my fingers; I had my route.
Without hesitating, I ran lightly towards the staircase, took hold of the cool stone and leapt, knowing Max would have to follow much more gingerly given the fragility of the structure. It wobbled, and a shower of debris fell from the landing above us, but I didn’t pause. It was a tree-runner’s number one rule: never doubt. Doubt and you fall, Grandpa would say.
Within seconds, I was standing opposite the heroic Prince Albert, and I held my breath as I followed the shaky bannister around. The second run was much steeper, and the middle of the stone rises were missing, which meant no second chances. I narrowed my eyes, and tiptoed up until I reached a point close enough to leap. Then I was flying like a squirrel monkey, claws outstretched, until they grazed the old wooden first floor.
I drew myself up to standing, letting my eyes adjust to the dingy gloom. This part of the building seemed to have survived quite well, and there was a large open corridor leading in both directions.
After only a moment’s consideration, I turned down the left corridor. Both walls were lined with large glass cases that had somehow, by the luck of Arafel, escaped the effects of the Great War. Curiously, I peered into a cabinet labelled Gladiatorial Artefacts, only to recoil as a spiked head with black, eyeless holes in the centre leered back at me.
‘Boo!’ a voice whispered.
I gasped before rounding on Max with a glare. He grinned mischievously while rubbing the glass to remove two centuries of dust.
‘We’re in one of those places they used to display old stuff – a museum, isn’t it … Miss?’ he teased.
I turned back to the display. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rescued me from the memory of Cassius riding out into the Flavium; a monster on a black mount wearing similar headwear. And as I gazed, a tiny black sign at the bottom of the glass case caught my attention: Roman Gladiatorial Helmet – worn by Rome’s elite gladiators. I grimaced.
Of course we were in a museum. Exeter Museum. Or the shell of it anyway. It would also explain the sculpted figure halfway up the steps. It seemed incredible that anything like these silent exhibitions had survived the most cataclysmic war the earth had ever seen. They were like treasures left beside a grave.
‘The room’s up ahead.’
Eli suddenly hobbled out of the grey, his signing jerky and stressed.
I sighed. So far my attempts at protection were proving futile.
‘The back stairs were complete,’ he offered simply.
Inwardly I cursed for not having the foresight to check for another set myself.
‘You should have waited below,’ I hissed. ‘Thought we agreed no heroics?’
Two sets of eyes danced ironically, and I spun on my heels, swallowing my retort.
There was less natural light
in this part of the corridor, and the air was rank. Something with a thick tail and muffled squeak ran in front of me, making the hairs on the back of my neck strain. There were plenty of nocturnal rodents in the forest, but the shapes that moved in this ruin somehow felt much less animal than at home. I swallowed, and forced my feet forward towards the large closed door at the top of the corridor. It was the room we’d pinpointed from the street outside, where Eli had seen a shadow move.
Max leaned forward to listen, and for a moment all I could hear were three hearts pumping so hard I was sure anyone inside had to know of our presence instantly. He shook his head, and the strange tingle spread across the back of my shoulders and down my arms. Slowly, he reached out and turned the door handle. His knuckles gleamed, despite the lack of light, and afterwards I realized it was because he was gripping so tightly. Then it swung inwards to reveal a huge, shadowy room, half open to the stars. Full of eyes.
‘Get back,’ Max whispered hoarsely but not before several huge black, bulbous shapes inclined their skinny heads towards us. The stench hit us like a wall. It was putrid rotting faeces and my world closed in, taking me back to Pantheon’s tunnels in a heartbeat.
We stumbled backwards through the doorway, my thoughts running wild. Had Cassius already unleashed monsters from the tunnels? Could we have happened upon a pack of sleeping strix?
Nausea reached up my throat, as my clumsy movement sent a loose stone scuttling across the floor. There was a moment’s poignant silence, and then the air was filled with opal hunting eyes, threatening hissing, and the deafening beat of large, heavy wings.
Pandemonium ensued, but somehow I was conscious of Eli forging forward in the opposite direction. I made a grab for him, but clutched only thin air as he disappeared into the murky whirlwind inside.
‘Eli,’ I yelled, holding my arms high in front of my eyes to protect them from the thick, swirling dust.
Eli was the most gifted animal whisperer I knew, but what if these new creatures were of Pantheon’s design? I recalled the effort it had taken to calm the manticore and molossers, and felt my panic swell.
Then, just as suddenly as the chaos had erupted, it fell unnaturally quiet.
‘Eli?’ I whispered again, my chest thumping so hard I thought it might explode.
Although my brother couldn’t hear me, he usually sensed when I called him. But there was no response, and the still black was more than I could bear. So, swallowing my panic, I crept inside.
For a moment, I was conscious only of breath, of living bodies other than our own sharing the same dark space. Then as the moon moved out from behind the gunmetal clouds, and the shadows became low-lit pools, my gaze was drawn to the centre. Towards Eli.
He was seated cross-legged on a central, raised dais that must have originally been some sort of displaying table; while a pack of waist-height, hairless birds scavenged around him. They were huge, skinny, and beyond ugly.
But they weren’t strix.
Holding my breath, I edged closer. The birds clattered around the floor, occasionally raising their heads to sniff the rank air. With featherless blue-grey heads, brown ruffed necks and tapered wings, they were clearly birds of prey; and at more than a metre tall each, they were also birds to respect. But no creature on our free-living planet could resist Eli, and right now they appeared calm enough.
‘What are they?’ I signed.
‘Cinereous vulture,’ he responded studiously. ‘One of the two largest, vulturous species of birds on earth.’
A brief memory of the giant, clawing strix flickered through my head, but I knew he was talking about birds outside Pantheon. Apex predators of the natural world.
‘Have been known to eat flesh, but much prefer their dinner deceased.’ He smirked as Max stepped up beside me.
‘Yeah, well … when you’re done having tea with the local wildlife, we’ve a job to do,’ Max forced out, scanning the room.
I followed his gaze and scowled as more silhouettes of stuffed, old-world creatures took shape within the gloomy darkness. A towering elephant and giraffe made the vultures look little more than pecking chickens; while their glassy, yellowed irises gleamed lifelessly from their mottled skins.
I dragged my eyes away. The stuffed creatures’ stare was almost worse than the vultures’ clear suspicion that Max and I were a potential threat to their new king. I glared at my brother, who sighed before standing up to address the unsavoury group with a series of crude gestures. Then he slowly backed away, taking care to push us through the doorway first.
‘So, what did you say to them?’ I signed, once we were back on the road outside.
‘I told them my friends were a little chewy; but if they stuck around I knew of a few others who were rotten to the core,’ he responded blithely.
And right on cue, a dozen dark shapes soared effortlessly out of the window and into the smoky sky above.
I scowled. Ravenous, cinereous vultures weren’t exactly my idea of the perfect cavalry.
Chapter 6
The grey air was oppressive in this part of town, the memory of the Great War clinging to the buildings like a shroud. We picked our way down the old road, avoiding the shelled buildings which felt like tombs after nearly two hundred years of desolation. Their scale could only mean we’d arrived in the city centre and we walked soberly, the way we might through Arafel’s graveyard. And although there were no visible human remains here, I could feel anguished faces staring out of every crumbling window and burned-out metal box Grandpa used to call cars and lorries.
Never before had I been quite so aware of the erasing effect of the Great War. A hundred thousand people had once lived in the bustling city of Exeter, and now it seemed even the scurrying ants avoided this place.
‘We haven’t come across any large life whatsoever, let alone the Prolet insurgents,’ Max muttered, voicing my thoughts.
I threw a glance at the sky, where a silent flock of vultures shadowed our progress.
‘Aside from baldies anonymous of course,’ he conceded with a quick grin.
I grinned back, grateful for our new ease, and immediately noticed the new bronze-edged angular weapon hanging over Max’s right shoulder.
I nodded. ‘What’s that?’
‘This old thing?’ he repeated airily. ‘Oh, just something I picked up back there.’
‘Back there, where?’
‘Er … in the museum,’ he muttered, faint colour creeping up his neck.
‘Max Thorn!’ I exclaimed, trying to prevent a laugh from escaping. ‘What on earth can a respected Arafel hunter pick up at a wreck of a museum that could possibly be of use in the Dead City?’
‘It’s just a keepsake – nothing to get excited about.’ He flushed, shifting the stolen item further down his back.
I made a grab for it.
‘OK, OK, it’s a cheiroballistra,’ he admitted, sidestepping deftly.
‘A cheiro-what? What in the name of Arafel is one of those?’ I asked.
‘A cheiroballistra. Y’know, a … Roman … crossbow,’ he answered as though it was the most natural item in the world to loot.
‘You stole a Roman crossbow from the museum?’ I repeated, this time unable to keep from laughing.
‘No! Well, not exactly … This has got to be a reproduction. A real one definitely wouldn’t be worth stealing! But this one is made of some other hard-wearing material I can’t really identify and … Look, it’s not like anyone was using it, or looking at it even!’ he defended. ‘I just thought it might come in useful, and, well, I’ve always wanted one.’
‘And now we get to the truth!’
‘Cool!’ Eli signed. ‘Get me one?’
Max shook his head teasingly as I smiled, aware it was the first time the three of us had shared a joke in ages. And maybe he was right. Its addition could hardly hurt, and besides which, it looked as though the ice between Max and I had finally thawed, which was worth all the looted crossbows in the world.
‘Just
so long as your pockets aren’t stuffed with little tin soldiers too!’ I winked.
We walked for a while in an easier silence, our footsteps interspersed by the groaning breeze. Eli had dropped a little way behind to observe the vultures, or so he said.
‘Do you think there’s any chance Aelia could have got it wrong? About the Prolet insurgents hiding out here?’ Max asked after a few minutes. ‘I’ve seen no fresh water, let alone anything a group of sixty people could survive on for more than a day or two.’
‘Not sure.’ I glanced around, unable to deny the truth of what he was saying. The buildings felt as dead as the people who’d once lived in them.
And Aelia. What was her real motivation for stealing the Book? I recalled the glint in her eye when she talked about the Voynich, how I’d tried to navigate the maze of conversation about the Book of Arafel, without revealing the whole of Grandpa’s precious secret. And finally, there was August. And his stolen kiss.
I inhaled softly, trying to order my wayward thoughts.
I’d told Aelia about the cipher, even drawn it out for her, because I needed her specialist symbolic knowledge. And I knew the cipher was useless without the keyword. I also told her Thomas’s original research was destroyed. But I was obviously the worst actress in the world because she guessed it still existed, as well as where it was most likely to be hidden. Had she worked out the keyword already? She had a much better understanding of Latin and genetics than anyone I’d met before.
And finally, there was the question that spun harder than all the rest: how long did I have before she traded the Book for the Prolets? Or August? Or both? If any of them were still alive.
‘Look, just because Aelia drops into Arafel and steals the one thing she knows will create a reaction, doesn’t mean anything’s changed between us, OK?’ Max offered a little roughly. ‘And that goes for arguments too. It doesn’t change the fundamentals … At least not for me.’
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