The City of Lies

by Robert J. Crane

  On our right, traffic forcing it to a dawdle, was a double decker bus.

  It was traveling the same way as us—

  Toward the void.

  Idea!

  One eye on where I was going, the other on the compass, I called, “Heidi, get ready to open a gate.”

  “What—? Where?”

  I pointed at the bus as we drew level. “On the side.” The void was approaching the halfway point now; another ten seconds and we’d straddle the boundary. Leaping through a gate then would leave us unsure which side we would end up on, jungle or void. A little longer and only the void was promised, and with it death—or at least sudden non-existence, if that wasn’t quite the same thing.

  Half a second more, and I shouted, “Cut the gate now!”

  Heidi had taken up the rear, just slightly. With a grimace, she slipped her bracelet into her hand, squeezed the talisman, and swiped an arm through the air. An opening was carved on the side of the bus, edges perfect white lines.

  She put on a last burst of speed, grabbed Carson around the hips, and pulled—

  He shouted, a noise of terror or shock—and then it ceased as he vanished through the gateway.

  Which just left me.

  I spun on my heel, moving backward in time to keep up with the bus.

  The compass showed the boundary getting nearer and nearer. Just a few more seconds …

  The Order of Apdau charged behind me. Pushing forward with their own renewed energy now two members of their quarry had vanished from sight, they brandished daggers, cinquedeas glinting under the streetlights.

  Their leader led. His hood had slipped back just enough to see the grim set of his jaw.

  He meant to punish me for this insult, apparently.

  Well, good luck with that, buddy.

  I took one last look at the compass—time to go, now, damn it—

  And, snapping off a salute, I dove into the gateway.

  Colors spiraled around me in their frenetic dance—

  I twisted, pirouetting awkwardly to check none of the Order had followed me through.

  I let out a squeaked swear word that would’ve made Heidi proud.

  The Order hadn’t managed to follow us in. But the gate was closing—and the tunnel of light was collapsing behind me, condensing, the very end vanishing into pitch black.

  I swam backward—as close to it as was possible—panicking, trying to rack my brains and remember what happened to a person if a gateway collapsed on them. Were they spat out at their destination? Some in-between place? Lost to a different kind of void?

  The edges receded, closing in on me, moving too fast to outpace them—

  Then I fell out backward into jungle.

  I gasped at the pain of something sharp—a lot of sharp things, actually—burying themselves into my back, slamming my eyes shut just as the gateway’s dark antipode vanished from sight.

  “What an entrance,” said Heidi. She gave me a slow clap. “I thought we’d done a poor job. But to come through backward? I’m stunned.”

  “What did I land on?” I moaned.

  “Thorns,” she said. “Sorry. Would’ve kicked them clear, but I thought you had a modicum more grace than that. Also it was a bit short notice.”

  I levered up. “Oww …” The tangle clung to me, sharp points digging into skin in too many places, but mostly now holding onto my shirt. I reached behind to pull them off, and gasped as a barb jabbed me in the finger with the sharp bite of a bee sting.

  “Baby,” Heidi chided, and leaned forward to free me.

  If not for the other concerns pressing on me, I would’ve stopped to really appreciate this jungle. The towering trees, one of which we’d exited from, made me think of birch trees, their colors inverted. Midnight black in color, they were mottled with white streaks and splotches. The leaves, too, were dark—or, rather, seemed to be near ground level. As I craned up, I saw the canopy became almost translucent. Light penetrated as if through stained glass, layers of it stacked and stacked. Elsewhere, it poured through gaps in greenish shafts.

  Something smelled like bananas. Slightly too ripe, it clung to the air, coming and going in wafts that didn’t coincide with any breeze.

  Carson had found himself a tree without a garden of brambles sprouting around its base. He leaned against it, head thrown back as he took deep, wheezing breaths.

  “What if those guys follow us?” he said.

  “Gate’s closed,” said Heidi.

  “Can’t they just … open a new one?”

  “I don’t know that they’re smart enough to figure that out.”

  I didn’t agree with that, and neither did Carson going by his expression, but kudos to her for trying.

  “We should move,” I said, “before they figure out that it is in fact an option. But I threw them off the chase. The bus was approaching a boundary. With any luck they’ll get cocky and pour right through it.”

  “Do you think they have compasses of their own?” Carson asked nervously.

  Maybe. But I said, “I don’t know.” Then, after a cursory look over myself—still had some thorns stuck to my jeans, broken off and embedded there like shrapnel—I said, “Let’s move.”

  I snapped the compass off my belt, and we began a trek through the jungle as fast as we could go. Undergrowth grabbing for our ankles as it was, it didn’t feel nearly quick enough.

  The air was alive with birdsong, and insects chirped: a hundred different sorts if not more, all overlaid in cacophony that reminded me of a David Attenborough wildlife documentary. For a moment I considered the BBC handing him a talisman and letting him loose on other worlds, documenting their strange creatures.

  The blanket of noise would, I hope, give us aural cover should the Order of Apdau follow us through.

  I scanned the compass as we roved. A cityscape popped up for a fraction of a second before vanishing. Too many towers, looking far too high-tech to be London; maybe Tokyo. Water replaced it, and then another stretch of water I only knew was different because of the sudden band of clouds smeared overhead.

  I frowned at the third span of sea—and then a squawk jolted me.

  A long-billed bird, chocolate brown with a flamboyant tail, peered at us from a branch. It squawked again, and then flapped away, disappearing into the jungle in the direction we’d come from.

  “He’s cute,” said Carson.

  “Sexist,” Heidi countered. “It might be a girl.”

  “Maybe. But the tail feathers—that’s all show. And in the animal kingdom, it’s the males who have to do all the, uh … showing off.”

  “Well, maybe this is an opposite world, and the women do the chasing.”

  “You think?” Carson turned to look in the direction the bird had gone. But his eyes were slightly glazed, and I wasn’t completely certain he was really interested in whether the squawker had been male or female at all.

  “I need to pick your brains a moment,” I said to Heidi, falling into step beside her.

  “Naturally.”

  “I came out of the gateway backward because I turned around to see if we’d been followed—and the portal was collapsing.”

  Heidi’s eyebrows knitted together. “With you inside?”

  “Yeah.” I stepped over a particularly nasty-looking tangle of thorns, disrupting a handful of dragonflies, which flitted off at lightning speed, a short-lived hum the only hint they’d ever been here. “The bus would’ve passed the boundary with the gate on the side. Does it work like that?” I finished dumbly, “I don’t have a lot of experience with opening gates on moving objects.”

  Heidi shook her head. “Couldn’t tell you. I guess?”

  “Do you know what happens if a gate closes? You know, to the person transitioning between worlds?”

  The line on Heidi’s forehead darkened as she thought. “I … don’t remember exactly. But probably nothing good?”

  I thought so.

  “You’re here though,” Carson said from up f
ront. “And you’re okay. Right?”

  “I didn’t lose any limbs or anything like that as the tunnel collapsed,” I confirmed, gesturing up and down myself. “Although I did take a nest of thorns to the bum.”

  Heidi shook her head. “Those poor thorns. Minding their business, totally innocent, only for Mira Brand to crash out of the sky onto them. I’m fairly certain that’s a fate worse than disappearing in a gateway collapse.” Her eyes glinted. A faint smile touched one corner of her mouth. “Or being launched into a void.”

  “Charming,” I muttered.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure burrito boy would be perfectly inviting—”

  “London—oh, no, sorry. It’s just a rubbish dump.” I flashed the compass to Heidi and Carson, painting on an entirely disingenuous grin. “Honestly, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes, you know?”

  “You think we’ll find London, just walking blind like this?” Carson asked. “Before those Ap—those … what’re they called, again?”

  “The Order of Apdau,” said Heidi. “And we’ll find it.”

  “Before they find us though, right?”

  She strode to match his pace. “Be more optimistic in life, Yates. Brand’ll get us out of here. That’s her specialty.” And she sashayed ahead, taking the lead.

  I eyed the compass again—grassland, very brown—and then collided with Carson’s back.

  “Why’d you stop—?”

  “Plumage,” he said stupidly.

  “Huh?”

  He jerked back into motion. “Sorry.” And off he went, head down and shaking.

  I joined him with a shake of my own. That boy. Green sun must be addling his brains.

  After a while—still no sign of the Order piling through, thank goodness; it looked like we were home clear (should we ever find a place to cut back through)—I overtook Carson and joined Heidi. Starting to sweat now; the jungle wasn’t over-warm, but the strenuous task of navigating was getting to me. Carson had already removed his sweater, tying it around his waist. I could hardly lose my t-shirt, so I’d made peace with the fact I was going to sweat dark spots into it.

  Heidi, as ever, looked more put together than she had any right to.

  “Afternoon,” she greeted. “Or, uh, evening. Night? I don’t know what time it is in our world anymore.”

  “Still night, I hope.” I couldn’t bear the thought of crossing over to find some weird time contraction magic had occurred and shunted us into tomorrow morning. “Listen, I’ve been wondering. How do you think the Order of Apdau found us?”

  “Good question. I was going to ask you the same thing.” She bit her lip. “Is it too much to hope they weren’t specifically waiting for us on the Spurn Wyle?”

  “Seems awfully convenient, after buddy boy back there demanded we give up the Chalice Gloria.”

  “Mm,” Heidi agreed. Then she shook her head. “No one should’ve known we’d be there—in the Felldawn, or on the Spurn Wyle. So how did they?”

  I didn’t have an answer. My silence said as much for me.

  “London,” I said after a moment.

  “Yeah?”

  I showed Heidi the compass. The London Eye looked back, or half of it anyway. It was lit up against a dark sky, but I didn’t entirely trust the image presented to us was necessarily what we’d meet on the other side.

  “Found our exit!” I called back to Carson.

  He was struggling. Brambles low to the ground had grabbed him by the ankle of his trousers. Heidi and I turned to the particularly graceful sight of him kicking himself free, stumbling, and then narrowly avoiding running headlong into a tree trunk.

  “Great,” he wheezed. “Just perfect. Perfect timing.”

  Heidi looked him up and down. A month ago this might have been a glare. Now there was a hint of sympathy in those eyes. “Almost home. You can change your shirt.”

  “Is it dirty?” His head jerked down, eyes scouring.

  “You’ve sweated,” Heidi said. “It’s a little bit see-through.”

  “Um!” Carson crossed his arms. Face rapidly reddening, he twisted away.

  “It’s hardly anything,” Heidi said. “Honest. Barely noticeable.”

  A kind lie—but definitely a lie nonetheless.

  “Can we just go back to London now, please,” Carson mumbled.

  I obliged, cutting a gate through.

  “You first,” I said to him. “We’ll give you thirty seconds to slap your sweater back on, hm?”

  “Th-thanks.” And with his arms folded very tight around his chest, he vanished into the hole.

  “You’re not really going to make me wait thirty seconds, are you?” said Heidi.

  “Yep. Let the man have some dignity.”

  “How about letting a girl have a little fun? You know what they say about ‘all work and no play.’”

  “Your name isn’t Jack.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  I shook my head. “Time. Go on, go follow him.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Heidi vanished.

  Alone, I stepped to the precipice—and stopped. One backward glance—nothing but the noise of the jungle’s inhabitants, and no sign of cloaks and daggers moving amongst those trees or filtering through the green rays of light coming down in shafts. Then I peered at the edge of my gateway.

  Its edges were indistinct. Not like Heidi’s, smooth and perfect. Mine seemed to have blurred just slightly, and the line itself was uneven, drawn by an unsteady hand. It shimmered—again unlike Heidi’s, which shone with pure brilliance.

  And then there was the matter of Carson’s.

  I frowned, tapping a finger to the edge. It rippled gently, like the surface of a pond after a maple seed had spiraled down to land upon it. Inside, a burst of color fired off and then faded.

  I’d entrusted so much to these gateways, my own personal safety and everyone else’s.

  Could I still?

  Like the questions I’d asked Heidi before opening the gateway, there were no answers. And so I stepped through—and this time did not turn to watch the portal behind me.

  17

  We were not cursed with time contraction going into the obsidian jungle, and so exited into London streets in the dark. Though we’d missed most of it journeying to the Mirrish world and through the Felldawn, a ghost of the day’s heat remained; Heidi’s phone claimed it was still eighteen degrees Celsius, which was a temperature I was perfectly content with during the afternoon, but not entirely pleased about at night, thank you very much.

  Carson fiddled with his phone all the while, although after a telling off from Heidi he stowed it begrudgingly. I knew the moment we got back to the hideout it would be out again though—and indeed it was, Carson following us into the kitchen distractedly to grab an apple from the fridge and a bottle of water, then saying a short goodnight and vanishing into the study. I could’ve told him to sleep—should’ve, really—but now he was in full-on Ostiagard mode again. If I left him to it, maybe he’d tire himself out tonight, just as soon as he found that the Mirrishes’ records showed they’d found exactly nothing in the City of Lies.

  In the morning, I discovered I was wrong.

  “—conquered by the people of Pharo, so maybe they—Mira!”

  “Err.”

  I stopped dead in the doorway to the study. Either Carson had been up all night, or he needed to fill out his sweater drawer; navy blue two days in a row had me thrown.

  He was leaning forward and animatedly chatting to Heidi—at her, I realized; she leaned back in another seat, dark shadows under her eyes, her hair flatter than usual. Sprawled back as far as she could go, she was practically lying in the seat, legs out as far as they could go (which was not very).

  She looked particularly despondent. Or maybe irritated. Or both? Honestly, it was hard to tell.

  “I was just telling Heidi about the third group of people to conquer Ostiagard,” Carson said cheerily.

  “Did you eve
n sleep last night?”

  “Yeah. So they came from—”

  “For how long?”

  He frowned. “I dunno. Like five hours? Six?” He shook his head as though dislodging the thought. “Anyway, the people of Pharo invaded in—”

  I dumped myself heavily in another seat. “Did you read your whole book then? You can’t have. It was too long.”

  “I skimmed to the relevant records. Anyway, Pharo’s people—”

  “And you found out …?”

  “Nothing,” said Heidi, in a dull monotone. “The Mirrish didn’t find a thing in Ostiagard, and their records proved it.”

  But of course.

  Carson shot Heidi a rare glare, which she didn’t see. Or, I figured it was a glare; though behind those old-man glasses, pushed up just too high, it wasn’t very threatening. He didn’t have a thing on the ice queen’s expressions.

  “What I was saying is that Ostiagard was invaded by the people of Pharo. That’s one of the cities on the same planet, a few hundred kilometers over, just so you know.”

  “I know,” both Heidi and I said in unison.

  “Oh. Right. Anyway, so I’m thinking, maybe their records have something about what they found during the invasion. They’d know Ostiagard a bit better, right? Like, they’re from the same culture; they’d be more likely to know the way Ostiagard’s builders would’ve cached things away, or hidden secret rooms, that sort of thing.”

  “Carson,” I started, massaging the corners of my eyes.

  “They’d know better that the Vardinn or the Mirrish, you know?”

  “Can I just wake up a bit before having this conversation please?” I said. “Yesterday kind of took it out of me.”

  “Right. Of course, yeah.” A moment’s pause. “It’s just that I was thinking—”

  Ungh.

  Heidi turned to me lethargically, barely moving her head around. “Thought anymore about the Order of Apdau?”

  “A little,” I said.

  “Come to anything?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Guys!” Carson said. “We’ve done the Order thing. Back on Ostiagard, yeah?”