City of Dreams and Nightmare

by Ian Whates

  "Sir!"

  With that, the sergeant hurried towards the door and out of the squad room. Tylus supposed he should feel grateful. After all, one officer's help was more than he thought he was going to get just a few minutes beforehand. However, he strongly suspected that this Richardson was the runt of the department, the officer the sergeant could most afford to spare. A bit like himself. Still, whatever his shortcomings, the lad was bound to have some local knowledge, which was what he needed the most. Two runts together; the pair of them against the world.

  Tylus turned to his new assistant, trying to look confident and in command. "Come on then, Richardson, we've got a boy to find."

  SIX

  When Magnus first told him of this assignment to the City Below, Dewar had felt supremely confident. After all, this was territory he knew well, the place he had first made a name for himself. What could be simpler than bamboozling a wet-behind-the-ears Kite Guard while tracking down a street-nick who had managed to infiltrate the Heights, word of which was bound to have spread like wildfire through the streets?

  Yet things were not going entirely to plan.

  To start with the boy appeared to have vanished and there was not even a whisper about any daring raid on the Heights. Then there was the alarming deficiency in his old network of contacts, which had been painstakingly built up over a number of years through the judicious application of blackmail, bribery, intimidation, cajoling and violence. True, it was still largely intact, even though one or two individuals may have been a little reluctant to renew acquaintance, but their reluctance was not the real problem; it was more the one significant hole in his former network which was giving him grief. Vital links had been cut away, leaving a yawning chasm where he needed information the most. Dewar seemed to be left with no viable source within the city watch. This was frustrating in the extreme, because the watch tended to be aware of most everything that was going on, if only because they knew what they had been paid to turn a blind eye to.

  In the past, Dewar had operated four different informants within the local guard units. One he knew for certain to be dead, a second he could find no trace of whatsoever and the other two had apparently both been dismissed following a crackdown on corruption within the force. This last struck Dewar as hilarious, and he wondered how they had chosen which officers to kick out and which to retain. Perhaps the tossing of a coin was involved, it being the most appropriate method that sprang to mind.

  Of course, given a little time he could soon cultivate new resources, he was an expert at such things. All he had to do was single out a suitable candidate, stand beside the man in a favoured tavern for a few off-duty evenings, chat to him, befriend him, buy a few drinks - and then casually raise the subject of money. Dewar knew how the game was played, knew the steps to that particular dance by heart, but he also knew that it took time and, while he himself could be patient when circumstances required, Magnus was anything but. The arkademic would doubtless expect to see results sooner rather than later. Which meant that Dewar had a problem. Fortunately, he was rarely at a loss in such situations. After all, that was what he did best: resolve problems.

  The alleyway he now walked down was a particularly wretched one, at the back of the docks and just a spit and a hop away from the Runs. Even the hovels and detritus of that shantytown were a step up from this place, which had been abandoned to the rats and spill dragons years ago. Dewar descended a flight of crumbling steps to a still-sound basement beneath the imploded shell of a building. He pulled aside rotting boards and the tangled remnants of what had once been a fishing net - things he had dragged across the entrance when leaving - and pushed open the door beyond.

  Yes, patience and bribery had their place but, under the circumstances, he had decided to forego such subtleties in favour of a more direct approach.

  The smell that assailed his nostrils as the door opened suggested the room's only human occupant might have made his own contribution to his uniform's colour: brown and orange. Mud and clay the watch liked to call it, proud at the association with good solid and honest earth. Shit and shit was how Dewar had always thought of it, and he never did understand how anyone could take pride in their uniform while at the same time surreptitiously pocketing handouts for dishonouring it.

  The guardsman was where he had left him, still gagged and bound to the solitary chair in the centre of an otherwise bare room. Dewar had expected no less but even so felt mildly disappointed. He was forever seeking a challenge and opponents invariably failed to deliver one. Light filtered into the room via a single window - a horizontal slit of grime and filth set high in the wall, immediately below the ceiling, at a height which coincided with street level outside. That any light at all penetrated an opening made near opaque through so much accumulated muck struck Dewar as a minor miracle and bore testament to the persistence of nature's energies. Enough did so to glisten dully from the hide of the room's other occupant: a spill dragon, about the same length from tip to tail as a man was tall. Not the largest Dewar had ever seen but impressive enough. He had found the thing skulking around the ruins above and herded it down here, locking the lizard in before going in search of the city watch.

  There was nothing special about this particular guardsman, he was just unlucky: in the wrong place at the right time. Dewar had knocked him out and carried him back here, to be bound, gagged and woken, in that order. The assassin had then administered a light beating; nothing permanent, nothing too serious, but painful - just enough to make it clear that he knew what he was doing. All the while he made sure that the man was conscious of the spill dragon which lurked in the shadows, hugging the wall, unsettled by all the commotion.

  As he worked, Dewar asked questions, initially about the boy, about the Kite Guard and about the disquiet on the streets. After a few minutes of this he paused, as if suddenly remembering himself. "But of course, you can't answer me, can you? Not with that gag in place. And you do want to answer me, don't you?"

  The man nodded vigorously, his eyes wide with fear and now, perhaps, also hope.

  As soon as the gag was removed words poured from the razzer in a veritable torrent, though much of it was of little or no value, as Dewar had expected. That wasn't the point. It was what the man might come to know that most interested the assassin.

  Not that he was about to admit any of this to his captive, not yet. So he feigned disappointment, gave the man a single cuff around the ear and replaced the gag, ignoring the protests and pleas.

  Like the guardsman, the rat was freshly caught, though unlike the guardsman it no longer breathed. After tossing the rodent to the spill dragon, Dewar dragged his captive's chair around so that it faced directly towards the lizard, which had already begun to examine the newly presented titbit. The assassin crouched behind the chair, hands resting on its back, his face close to the guardsman's ear, and he resumed speaking, in a casual, relaxed manner, as if chatting to a friend.

  "Have you ever seen a spill dragon attack a corpse? Of course you have - must see that all the time in your line of work. Fearsome sight, isn't it? The way those jaws wrench off chunks of meat."

  As if on cue, the lizard placed one clawed foot on the dead rodent, took the exposed head and forequarters in its mouth and then twisted and jerked. In truth, spill dragons' teeth were nothing special. Dewar had made a study of such things when he first arrived in the City Below. Their real strength lay in powerful neck and shoulder muscles and the ability to grip firmly. Spill dragons didn't so much bite bits from a corpse as tear chunks off, which was exactly what this one now proceeded to do. The rat tore apart somewhere around its middle, bloodied entrails hanging from the lizard's mouth until it tossed its head back and pulled the grizzly snack fully into its gullet.

  "They'd get through to a man's innards in no time," Dewar continued. "Of course, as we all know, spill dragons like their meat fresh - always first to a kill, aren't they? I reckon this one would go for your leg first, or maybe your foot." He stopped, shifted
forward and made a show of studying the man's legs where they were tied to the chair. Then he came back behind him again. "Yes, the foot, I think. Can you imagine what short work it will make of your toes? Probably take the entire foot clean off at the ankle with the first bite." He gave a dramatic shudder. "Brrr! A horrible way to go."

  Judging by the look in his captive's eyes, the man agreed with him.

  The dragon lifted its leg ponderously to reveal the bloodied remnants of the rat's hind quarters, entrails and internal organs starkly visible, before lowering its head and snapping them up. The snack had been devoured in two mouthfuls, leaving behind just a smear of blood on the floor.

  There was a great deal of superstition surrounding spill dragons. The level of ignorance, even among the inhabitants of the City Below who lived beside them, was alarming. Superstition inevitably led to misunderstanding, and Dewar had always found misunderstanding and ignorance to be useful tools. He needed the razzer's spirit broken but couldn't spare the time to see to it himself, so determined to let the man's own imagination do the job for him.

  He stood up, stepped a little away from the chair, and took out a small phial of oil, the contents of which he set about sprinkling in a tight circle around the captive, drop by drop. While he did so, he spoke in the same relaxed, off-hand manner as before.

  "Might be an idea if you jiggle about a bit while I'm not here, just to let this one know you're still alive. Mind you, once it realises you aren't going anywhere, that you can't go anywhere, I'm not certain how much good jiggling will do, but we live in hope, eh?

  "Oh, and I wouldn't go jiggling about too much if I were you. Otherwise you're likely to shuffle the chair and yourself outside this ring of scent I've laid down. Dragons hate the stuff, so as long as you remain inside this circle you should be all right; until the scent fades of course, but that ought to be a good few hours away. I should be back before then. Lots to do, mind you, so it all depends on how long things take."

  The scent ring completed, he paused to survey the room and decided that everything was as he wanted. The razzer sat statue-still, clearly choosing for the moment at least to avoid jiggling entirely and rely on the circle of scent.

  Dewar then left to meet up with Martha and attend to other business, nodding to his captive on the way out and saying, "I'll see you on my return...hopefully."

  Now, a good few hours later, the pungent smell of excrement suggested that the man was sufficiently unnerved. Dewar had no idea what action on the spill dragon's part might have caused such terror, but he did know that any perceived threat would have existed only in the razzer's mind. Spill dragons, despite their formidable appearance and the impressive size they could sometimes reach, really did feed exclusively on dead meat. Fortunately for the assassin's purposes there were plenty of whispered tales that insisted otherwise.

  The lizard made a ponderous beeline for the door as soon as it opened, but Dewar closed it promptly, barring the way. The reptile's presence would help to keep the unfortunate guard's mind focused. The thing hissed at him and proceeded to dig at the door's base. He ignored it and stepped into the room.

  "Good. Still with us, I see."

  The razzer's bulging eyes and indecipherable but clearly desperate attempts to speak past the gag confirmed what Dewar's nose had already reported: the man was ripe to agree to anything. He loosened the gag and took out the wad of cloth from the captive's mouth.

  "Please, I've got a young daughter," the man croaked.

  "And you're suggesting I take her in your place? What sort of a father are you?"

  "No, no...I didn't mean that."

  "What then?"

  "It's just...she needs her father."

  Dewar brought his face close in to the petrified razzer's, "And I need information. Understood?"

  "Yes, of course, anything."

  They soon came to an arrangement. The last thing Dewar said to the man before rendering him unconscious again was, "Remember, if you do let me down, it won't be you I bring back here next time but your daughter."

  He then rapped his newly recruited informant on the head, before untying him and lifting him up onto a shoulder, ready for dumping back where he had been caught. How the man explained the missing hours to his commander and colleagues was his problem, not Dewar's. He left the cellar door open as he went, allowing the frustrated lizard to escape and roam where it would. He had what he wanted from the creature and the place, and had now finished with both.

  One informant within the Watch was hardly blanket coverage, but it was a start.

  "Are they still following us?"

  "Yeah," the girl said, without looking round. She had let go of his hand as soon as it became obvious the ruse wasn't going to work. At one level Tom was glad to have his hand free again, but at another he felt vaguely disappointed.

  "Any idea why?"

  "A couple of ideas, none of them pleasant." She gave a sigh. "I've had enough of this."

  With that she spun on her heel and strode back the way they had come, towards the following knot of street-nicks. Or, rather, she bounced towards them, all challenge and attitude.

  "Hey! You got nothing better to do than follow us like a pack o' snivelling hounds?"

  Unprepared for her abrupt stand, Tom could only watch, impressed despite himself. If he were one of those street-nicks, he would have been startled by such a display of confident aggression.

  "No harm, Kat," one of the nicks responded, raising empty hands defensively, "we were just driftin' this way is all."

  "Then breckin' well drift some other way."

  "It's just a little strange," one of the others said, "you travelling with company, 'specially some lad that none of us 'ave seen before."

  "What with us being on the lookout for a stranger, a nick who gave a couple of Herons a dustin' by the stairs this mornin'," the first nick added.

  Tom came up to stand by Kat's shoulder. Tempted though he was to join in, he reckoned Kat had a better idea of how to handle these nicks than he did, so kept quiet.

  "Since when have the Thunders cared what happens to a couple of Herons? Thought you'd all be cheering to see 'em get a pasting."

  "Times change."

  "Not that quickly. What's goin' on?"

  "Funny you should ask. Come with us and we'll explain everything."

  The girl shook her head. "Can't, I got business. Catch me on the way back, maybe."

  "That's a shame," the first nick said. "You see, we got business too. That kid you're with looks an awful lot like the nick we're lookin' out for and there's things we need to show the both o' you. So your business will just have to wait."

  The group of nicks were already edging apart, nothing obvious, just little movements and shuffles that saw them start to fan out, their haphazard knot unravelling into a line.

  Kat snorted. "So not only do the Thunderheads care about the Blood Herons these days, they run errands for 'em as well now, do they?" Her hand rested casually on her hip, close to one of her knives.

  "It's not like that."

  "How is it then?" The aggression was back in her voice, the challenge in her posture plain. "You explain it to me."

  The nicks at each end were easing forward, so that the line started to curve towards a crescent. Tom's hand drifted to the grip of his own knife as Kat adjusted her balance, taking half a step back and in the process coming level with Tom.

  "Don't come any closer," she warned, "or this'll turn ugly."

  "Ugly for you, maybe. It's five against two."

  She stared at the speaker, the nick in the centre, then swept her gaze across all of them. "You know me. Some of you've seen me fight. Do you really want to do this?"

  The nick at the far end of the line, the girl, clearly didn't. Her gaze flicked nervously towards her friends, presumably hoping for signs of a climb-down. Perhaps she had seen Kat fight before. Tom hadn't, and could only hope that his companion was as formidable as she seemed to think she was.

  With as
swift and smooth a movement as he had ever seen, Kat drew her twin blades. Long, much longer than the knives he was used to, almost small swords. Kat now looked more warrior than street-nick, an image her next words did nothing to dispel.

  "I fought in the Pits and lived. You know that. Why are you facing me?" The words were spoken calmly and seemed to carry more concern for the other nicks' lives than her own.

  The Pits? Was Kat telling the truth, or playing on some popular myth? If true, how old must she have been? Tom had heard rumour of bouts in which children were armed and then child was thrown in against child or against slavering dogs and other creatures, but he hadn't entirely believed them. Until now. Before this, such tales were merely a threat to instil obedience: "Do as I say or it'll be the Pits for you."

  Looking at Kat, as she brandished the two blades before her and started to twirl them, expertly twisting them around each other in a blur of dancing steel, he believed her.

  Somewhat belatedly he pulled out his own knife, almost embarrassed to do so. It seemed totally inadequate, little more than a toy in the present circumstances. None of the Thunderheads had drawn steel yet, but they hadn't retreated either. Tom sensed that this was the key moment and guessed that the fight or flight question was currently crossing each of their minds. In their position, he knew which he would have gone for.

  On impulse, he spoke, hoping to find the right words to tip the balance. "Maybe the five of you can take us if you want it enough, but what will that cost you? And who's going to be first? Cos there's no way the first one's going to walk away from this."

  On cue, Kat smiled, emphasising the point. She was suddenly all menace, flash and steel personified.

  "Oh look, he speaks," the nick at the centre said.

  There was a single snigger from the boy beside him but the girl at the end wasn't the only one who looked nervous now. Glances flicked up and down the short line. What was holding them? Why hadn't they backed down yet? A sneer, a token insult or two and then a cocky saunter in the opposite direction was what Tom would have expected, yet the nicks continued to hold their ground.