City of Dreams and Nightmare

by Ian Whates

  Could he? He remembered Ty-gen looking straight at him and then saying that his ability didn't work on Jeradine. What if it only worked on humans? He thrust the memory to one side, refusing to be distracted.

  "All right, then. Crouch down like this and get as close to me as you can."

  "Frissin' pervert."

  "Quickly," he repeated, desperation in his voice.

  "You'd better know what you're doing, or I'll kill you myself when this is all over." With that, she did as instructed, hunkering down so that her knees pressed into his legs. Tom began his familiar mantra, reaching out to hug her at the same time.

  She shrugged his arms off irritably and hissed, "Watch your hands, kid."

  "Shut up!" The conviction in his voice startled even him. "Do you want to survive this or not?"

  Her eyes widened but she suffered him to reach around and hug her; the only reaction this time being a long, deep breath.

  We're not here; you can't see us, you can't smell us or hear us, Tom began again, adapting the mantra for the occasion.

  "What are you doing?"

  "For pity's sake, shush. Let me concentrate."

  We're not here; you can't see us, smell us or hear us.

  Would it work? This was something new in more ways than one. Tom thought his ability worked on dogs - had noticed their apparent indifference to him when he was hiding and reciting the mantra - but he'd never deliberately set out to conceal himself from dogs before, and the incident with Ty-gen had shaken his confidence. Then there was the additional concern that he had never attempted to hide anyone else this way before. Could he conceal Kat as well as himself? He had to. Banishing any doubts, Tom concentrated on the all-important mantra.

  A muttered repeat of, "You'd better know what you're doin'," impinged on the periphery of his awareness, but he ignored it.

  Seconds later he could hear the pack approach, could hear their snorting, snuffling breaths. A dark shape loped across the mouth of their refuge, to be followed by another. Then everything grew abruptly darker as something loomed in the mouth of the alley. One of the hounds stood there, its vast form completely blocking the entrance. The beast sniffed the air querulously, as if it almost scented something but was not entirely sure.

  It took one slow step towards them and then another, testing the air the whole while.

  Tom squeezed his eyes to tight slits, hardly daring to look at the creature but not able to look away. He recited faster and faster, fiercer and fiercer, repeating the mantra for all he was worth.

  Still the hound came closer, until it stood no more than a pace from the huddled pair, its muzzle looming above them. A sticky strand of glutinous saliva dripped down upon Tom's shoulder and it was all he could do not to flinch away. Kat now clung to him as desperately as he held her, and Tom could feel the rise and fall of her shoulders beneath his arms, her small breasts pressing against his side. He knew that she was close to panic and prayed that she did nothing to give them away. He feared too that if she didn't, he might.

  If the hound were to take just one more step it would bump against them. Surely the thing must sense the pair of them at any second. Its fetid breath washed over them and Tom squeezed his eyes shut, determined not to let his concentration waver.

  Just as he thought he could take no more, that his nerve was going to break, that he couldn't recite the protective mantra for as much as another second, there came a familiar mournful baying from the street beyond the alleyway. Instantly, the hound stiffened, its head whipping around. Then it turned, not without difficulty in the narrow space, and trotted off, presumably to see what its fellow hounds had discovered.

  Tom remembered to breathe again.

  Kat still clung to him. He felt her trembling, was conscious of her warmth, and continued to hug her as tightly as ever. They remained like that for a further minute, maybe more, her head buried in his shoulder, neither of them daring to move until the sounds of the pack receded and ceased.

  Tom stayed motionless for as long as he could, but this was hardly the most comfortable of positions and his leg muscles were protesting like mad. Finally he shifted, only a fraction but it was enough to break the spell. Kat pulled away from him and hastily jumped to her feet, as if embarrassed.

  "Gods, boy, how did you do that? What did you do?" Her voice was shaking. She prowled around to the mouth of the alley like a caged beast, all jumpy, nervous energy, peering out as if to make certain the hounds really had gone.

  "I don't know," he replied, straightening up and flexing his legs, all the while staring at her, trying to decide what had passed between them during the brief minutes they had hugged each other, or whether indeed anything had at all. "It's just something I can do."

  "Well, that's a neat trick my little street-nick, and no mistake." The girl was fully in control once more, her voice having steadied and regained its conviction. She stopped pacing long enough to stare at him, as if seeing him anew. "There's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there? No wonder old Ty-gen thought you were special."

  Then she was moving again, grabbing him by the wrist and hauling him out of the alley. "Come on. The hounds aren't about to give up. They'll be back."

  This was the second time Kat had touched him willingly. The first time, in front of the Thunderheads, had been awkward, an unnatural moment for both of them, but this time she had done so without a second thought. Something had changed, but Tom didn't have time to stop and ponder what. He stumbled after her, trying to think what more they could do to evade the hounds, but he was out of ideas. His mantra and its cloak of invisibility had always been enough before.

  "Where are we going?"

  "Back-track," she explained. "When they can't find us, they'll come back to the last definite scent and try to work out where we went. If we go back on ourselves, they might not catch on for a while - buys us some time."

  "Maybe, but then what?"

  "I'm thinking, kid, I'm thinking."

  That was one time too many. He stopped in his tracks, wrenching his hand from her grasp. "I'm not a kid!"

  She looked startled, as if it had never occurred to her that he might actually object to being called kid. "Right." Her smile was sardonic, but she resisted any temptation to respond further.

  "You're barely older than I am."

  "It's not all about the number of years, but you made your point." The recollection that this girl had survived the Pits flashed through Tom's mind. "Now come on!" That last was virtually a snarl and Tom was suddenly afraid that he had pushed her too far and that, despite everything, the girl might decide he was more trouble than he was worth and so abandon him in order to concentrate on saving her own skin.

  They ran back through streets which had already passed in a blur once that day. People, who were beginning to emerge from their homes now that the hounds had gone, stared at them with suspicion: dozens of pairs of hostile eyes whose gaze followed them as they shot past.

  They reached a more affluent quarter, where the homes were noticeably more solid and better built, and the girl slowed.

  "Merchants homes," she explained. "No skimping in these houses. Now, if I can just find...there!"

  She jogged across to one of the properties. It was large by the standards of the City Below, though still single storey as were most of the buildings down here, and built of solid-looking stone.

  "Give me a leg-up."

  Tom cupped his hands and braced himself, as Kat placed one foot into the stirrup made by his fingers, then transferred all of her weight onto that foot, with Tom straining to lift her higher as she reached for the wall's top. She made it, and nimbly lifted her body onto the roof, before reaching down to offer Tom a hand as he leapt and scrambled to follow her.

  He too made it, though not as elegantly or as easily.

  "Gods, kid, you're heavier than you look!" Kat complained in the middle of it all. He was too preoccupied at the time to object to being called kid again.

  Once they were both safe
ly up, she led the way across the roof with delicate steps. "Tread carefully," she warned over her shoulder. "No matter how sturdily these things are built, they weren't meant to support anythin' as heavy as us."

  Tom followed as best he could, with Kat's warning ringing through his thoughts. He willed the roof to continue supporting him with every step.

  They soon crossed to the back of the house. There was only a narrow gap between this building and the next, which Kat leapt with ease, while Tom was simply relieved to reach the other roof at all.

  And so they went on.

  He didn't ask her why they'd adopted this elevated route. He had no intention of giving her a further excuse to make him feel inadequate and in any case, the answer was pretty obvious. As far as he could tell, the hounds couldn't climb, and if the beasts did catch on to the back-tracking trick and follow them to that first building, they would have no way of telling which direction their quarry had taken from there.

  Which was all well and good, just so long as they didn't run out of accessible rooftops. The moment they encountered a gap too wide to leap or a roof too high to reach and were forced to return to street-level, however briefly, was the moment they became vulnerable again. He knew all about dogs' sense of smell and didn't doubt that the keen nostrils of quartering hounds would detect the faintest of spoor once they chanced upon it.

  Tom tried not to think about that and instead concentrated on the figure of Kat ahead of him. There was no denying the litheness of her movements, the way she seemed to flow from one step to the next, making him feel like a stumbling fool in comparison. Subconsciously, he started to mimic her gait, the rhythm of her footfalls. She also made the leaps from building to building look easy, where as he was finding them anything but. The vertigo that had assailed him in the city's upper Rows gathered at the fringes of his awareness, waiting to pounce, but he resolutely ignored it. After all he had been through of late, the drop to the ground here was nothing.

  Kat made each jump without breaking stride, stretching out with her lead leg and soaring through the air like a bird, whereas he had to pause, focus, and then run flat out, hurling himself across the intervening gap.

  "Careful!" she snapped after one particularly heavy landing. "Carry on like that and you're bound to go through at some point."

  Angry protestations from within and the knocking of what could only have been a stick or broom handle against the ceiling beneath him helped to emphasise the warning. Tom expected Kat to use this as an excuse to berate him again, but instead she simply laughed and he found himself laughing with her.

  "Come on," the girl said with a good-natured grin, and his spirits lifted.

  She set off once more, dancing across the roofs of the City Below while he did his best to follow, though his own efforts were more akin to a blundering assault or reckless charge than any dance.

  The cramped, crowded nature of these streets worked in their favour, with the buildings huddled so closely together that the pair had little trouble in leaping from the top of one to another and would be fine so long as they avoided any major thoroughfares.

  They managed to do so for a further dozen or so leaps. Eventually, as they approached the lip of yet another roof, Kat came to a halt. So abrupt was this stop that Tom, who had been focusing on each individual step and not on his wider surroundings, was taken by surprise and barely avoided bumping into Kat and knocking her off the roof.

  Her graceful movements had all but mesmerised him. The further they travelled together the more he began to see her as something other than a prickly and irritating guide. He had never met anyone quite like her before. This new appreciation was confusing and he felt embarrassed as she looked back and raised an eyebrow, worried that his face might betray his thoughts in some way.

  "Well, looks as if it's the streets again from here on in," was all she said.

  He stepped up beside her and they crouched at the edge of the roof, looking down at what was clearly a major street, far too wide to even think about leaping. A peddler pushed a barrow of dubious looking knickknacks along immediately below them, the top of his head not far beneath their toes. One of the barrow's wheels squeaked annoyingly with each revolution. The man's every movement was laboured and spoke of intolerable effort and weariness.

  A young boy scampered along in the opposite direction, presumably on some errand or other. A street-nick in the making, or was he one of the privileged few, apprenticed to some tradesman? Whichever, his hurried passage set the peddler's dog to barking. Tom had not even noticed the dog until then, so closely did it shadow its master's cart. A small and scruffy thing, little more than a tatty streak of brown fur, this was a very distant cousin to the beasts that hunted them. The dog looked set to chase the boy, but scampered back to heel at a gruff command from its master.

  Kat hesitated, as if listening. All Tom could hear apart from the cart's squeaking wheel was the nearby calling of a street hawker and the rhythmic clanging of a blacksmith's hammer somewhere in the near distance. He hadn't heard the demon dogs' howls for some time, not since they'd given the beasts the slip. He dared to hope the hounds hadn't rediscovered their trail.

  Evidently satisfied, the girl looked at him, briefly raising her eyebrows. "Ready?"

  He nodded. "Is this far enough, do you think?"

  "It'll have to be," she responded, turning around.

  Kat let herself down backwards, clinging to the edge of the roof with both hands so that her feet almost reached the ground and then dropping the short distance that remained. Tom copied her. Two well-dressed women hurried past, eyeing them with obvious distaste, while the gaze of the drunk slumped in the doorway opposite was less accusing.

  "This way," and Kat was off again.

  As far as Tylus could make out, there was nothing much wrong with Richardson. A little quiet, it had to be said, but he put that down to the lad being bullied by his fellow officers or singled out by the sergeant. Comments made by others in the squad room - jokes at the young officer's expense - seemed to confirm his assumptions regarding the lad's status, but Tylus suspected that he was merely lacking encouragement and a bit of self-confidence.

  Certainly Richardson had quickly proved his worth in the Kite Guard's eyes. From his new assistant he had already learned the names of the three major gangs whose territories overlapped the patrol area of this particular station: the Scorpions, the River Snakes and the Blue Claw. The first two he could understand, but had to ask about the Blue Claw. Apparently they took their name from a type of giant crab which lurked in the deepest parts of the Thair and was rarely seen. Reputedly as large as a house and famed for their ill-temper if disturbed, the meat of these formidable crustaceans was considered a great delicacy, but obtaining it was hazardous in the extreme, since the crabs were said to be capable of cutting a man in two with a single snap of their oversized front claw, which, of course, was blue.

  Leaving out many of the details, including the embarrassing ones such as his own part in the street-nick's escape, Tylus summarised events for Richardson's benefit and explained the nature of his mission to the City Below. The guardsman thought the most likely starting point for any street-nick's ascent via the walls would have been the very stairway by which Tylus first arrived in the under-City. He further explained that this particular stairway was controlled by the Scorpions, and anyone wanting to use it would have to come to an arrangement with them first, paying a sort of toll known as passage fee, which would be made in the form of either coin or bartered service.

  This information lifted Tylus's spirits considerably. He had barely arrived in the City Below and already his investigation was progressing with admirable speed. He could see the whole process unfolding neatly before him. The Scorpions would tell him exactly who had paid them to use the stairway, thus identifying the relevant gang and the guilty street-nick. Richardson, with his local knowledge, would show him where to find the boy and he would then make the arrest, taking greater care this time around, before e
scorting the lad up-City. Simple and effective; a resounding endorsement of investigative procedures properly applied. Even Sergeant Goss could not fail to be impressed by such alacrity and efficiency. There might even be a promotion in this. How that would stick in Goss's craw.

  The relationship between the street-nick gangs and the guardsmen of the Watch struck Tylus as an odd one. From the outside they appeared to be natural enemies and yet the two groups co-existed and even co-operated with each other on occasion. He struggled to fully grasp the dynamics of the situation and, en-route to the arranged meeting with the Scorpions, quizzed Richardson in the hope of gaining some insight.

  "But it amounts to extortion, surely."

  "If you say so," Richardson said, a little defensively, "but it works. Every stall holder and shop keeper pays the local street-nick gang a small tithe for protection and they get no trouble as a result. Keeps the peace." Removed from the environment of the guard station, Richardson seemed to relax, and spoke far more freely than at any time before.

  "But if all the traders in a given street were to band together and look out for each other, they could do the same thing, surely, cutting the street-nicks out and saving themselves the tithe."

  "That's been tried, more than once. Most recently a year or so ago. Not on our patch, thank Thaiss, but we were among those roped in to bring the resultant fire under control. It was a nightmare - burned out three whole streets."

  "You're saying the street-nicks set the fire? Surely not. Those other streets must have been on their turf too. The fire would have cost them dear."

  "Better that than let a rebellious bunch of traders get away with not paying their tithes. Others'd get the same idea and that would cost the gangs dearer still."

  Tylus mulled it over. "And if the watch comes across a group of shopkeepers or stallholders banding together to resist the gangs, they support them, I presume."

  "Nah. We have a quiet word in their ears and tell them to pay up like good little boys. Best not to rock the system."