City of Dreams and Nightmare

by Ian Whates

  EIGHT

  When they started seeing lamplighters patrolling the streets and going about their allotted task, even Kat had to acknowledge that it was getting late and they would never reach Blue Claw territory before nightfall.

  She looked at him quizzically: "Do you want to go on?"

  Tom was tempted to act braver than he actually felt and give some nonchalant, affirmative reply like, "Of course," but instead asked, "How much further?"

  The girl chewed her bottom lip and grimaced briefly in concentration. She wasn't pretty, Tom thought, not in any conventional sense - her nose was too big for a start and her chin a little too sharp - but even so, there was something about her.

  "Well, we had to detour to avoid the Blood Herons, and then went even further off course getting away from the demon hounds, so I reckon..." The grimace slid gently into a coy grin. "I reckon we're just about as far away as when we set out."

  Tom snorted with laughter, her grin widened and suddenly they were both laughing.

  "Some guide you've turned out to be."

  "Hey, we're still alive, aren't we?"

  Which was a fair point; and she hadn't called him kid in hours. He drew a deep breath, the laughter subsiding. "Do you know somewhere around here we could hole up for the night?"

  "I think so. If that's Brewers Lane up ahead, then yes."

  Apparently it was, though there were no signs to declare it as such. But Kat seemed confident enough.

  She led him down the street, nodding a greeting to a pair of lamplighters who were busy with their cart and their oil and their long tapers, the obvious glow from the latter's lit ends providing clear evidence that the sunglobes were dimming. A woman of indeterminate age hurried past, clutching her shawl, without giving them a second glance. Her focused determination was symptomatic of the time of day, as people hurried to complete their respective tasks and get off the streets. Darkness would not stop the taverns or the whores or the street-nicks from plying a lucrative trade, but people would hesitate about venturing out alone. Those who did were either brave or foolish. At least, those whose intentions were even remotely innocent.

  Kat turned to the right, heading down a side street and then left down a narrower one. They crossed a small square with a stone fountain in the middle: a long spindle skirted by a shallow bowl with a pool of water beneath. The water was stagnant and the fountain looked as if it hadn't worked in ages. A pair of dun-brown songbirds had been drinking from the pool but flew off at the pair's approach, twittering their disapproval. Birds were not common in the City Below but a few inevitably found their way in along the course of the Thair and stayed. These two had done well to avoid the cook pot and the skewer.

  Kat moved on, crossing the cracked pavement of the small square and into the tired-looking streets beyond. The fountain was barely out of sight before the girl indicated they had arrived. This was not the Runs, not a collection of rag-tag hovels tossed together like so much flotsam herded by the tide, but nor was it the sort of area that anyone in their right mind would opt to live in, given a choice.

  The place she took him to was a small boarded-up room. The second floor of a two-storey house that barely qualified as having one. It stank of damp and mould, but at least it meant they were off the streets for the night.

  To reach it, they took to the roofs again, Kat leading the way via a lower building - a single-storey tenement, a compartmented block of box-standard living spaces. That building was connected to this one. She used her knife to prise some of the boards away from the entrance. They lifted easily, suggesting to Tom that this was a bolthole that had been used often, by Kat and presumably others. He was surprised to see that the boards were cosmetic, that a door stood behind them, and one in considerably better condition than might have been expected. Kat reached up through the gap she'd made and unlatched the door, pushing it open. They both then squeezed through, leaving most of the boards in position.

  "What is this place?" Tom wondered aloud.

  "It's a safe house."

  "Who's it safe for?"

  "Us, I hope, for tonight at least."

  The very words "safe house" suggested to Tom secrets shared. He felt an irrational rush of pleasure, gratified that Kat had brought him here, as if in doing so she were granting him a privileged glimpse into her personal world, though in truth he very much doubted she saw it in quite those terms.

  The room boasted a single window which, like the door, was boarded over. The bats which roosted around the roof of the cavern housing the City Below would become active soon and nobody willingly left them easy access to sleeping areas. The bats included bloodsuckers. For now though, while it was still light, Kat kept the door open.

  Tom felt physically exhausted but, conversely, not tired, his mind still buzzing after all he had been through in the past day or so.

  As they sat on the bare boards of the room's floor, he asked idly, "How do you think it works, up-City?"

  "How does what work?"

  "Well, you know. Think about the levels verse."

  The girl snorted. "That thing? I barely remember it."

  "Fair enough, but even so, you know how each Row has its own name, its own type of people - Tanners' Row, Bakers' Row, that sort of thing."

  "I suppose."

  "Well, down here it's as if we've got the whole city rolled into one. You want a loaf of bread you go to Baker Street, you want some new shoes you go to Cobblers Yard. How does it work up there with only one type of person in each Row?"

  "Don't suppose it does."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I don't suppose there is only one type of person on each Row. How could there be? What a Row's called is probably what it's best known for, what most of the people there do, but I reckon each Row must have its own Baker Street and Cobblers Yard. After all, you don't have to be a tanner to live in Tanners Lane, that's just what most folk there do."

  The idea came as something of a revelation for Tom. He had never considered such a possibility before. Of course the girl was right. How else could the city function, how else could people live?

  "Anyway, doesn't really matter much. We'll never get up there to find out."

  "You reckon? I already have," Tom said. The words were out before he could stop to consider the wisdom of voicing them.

  "You have what?"

  "Been up there."

  "Yeah, of course you have." The girl chuckled, but stopped when Tom failed to join in. "You are kiddin' me, right?"

  "No, no I'm not." He was committed now.

  "When?"

  "Last night. I went up the walls, all the way to the Heights, to the Residences, nearly to the roof." And with that he proceeded to tell her. Once he started it all came tumbling out: Lyle, witnessing the murder, being caught by the Kite Guard, his fall from the walls, being saved by the Swarbs, everything. As he spoke he felt an enormous sense of relief to finally be talking about it. Somehow, putting what had happened into words made it more real, gave it a substance that mere memory alone had lacked. One corner of his mind heard his own words, listened to the tale and marvelled at it. That part of him felt strangely detached, as if these things had happened to somebody else and he was no more than an observer. He wondered how all these marvellous things could possibly involve him, a simple street-nick.

  Finally the words ran out, the story told, and Tom felt emptied, not relieved as he had expected to be. Kat sat silent throughout, though whenever he glanced at her she was clearly caught up in the tale. What did she make of it, how would she react? For the most part he had stared at the crack of night peeking through the boarded window as he spoke, and now found himself afraid to look at the girl, until he heard her exhale a pent-up breath and say, "Breck. You really do mean all of that, don't you." It wasn't a question. "It sounds so incredible. Don't see how anyone could have made that up. Thaiss!"

  He sat there awkwardly, not knowing what more to say.

  "Do you reckon this arkademic will come after y
ou? I mean, you did see him knife someone."

  "Doubt it. Why bother? I'm nobody."

  "You're probably right. I was just thinking..."

  "What?"

  "Well, they do say these arkademics can do some pretty strange things, and those demon hounds, they seemed to be after you; only got interested in me when I stuck a knife in one of them."

  That observation sat uncomfortably with Tom, since it mirrored a thought that had flickered through his own mind but which he preferred not to dwell on.

  "One thing, though..." the girl went on.

  "Yes?" He was so relieved by her apparent acceptance of the story that he would have told her just about anything.

  "You didn't say what it was you were sent up there to get. So come on, don't hold out on me now, what were you supposed to bring back?"

  "A demon's egg." He said it quietly; the thing he had been told not to admit to anyone.

  "No breckin' way. A demon's egg? Why?"

  "I don't know." It wasn't a question he had stopped to ask or to wonder about

  "And you went all the way up there for the sake of this girl, Jezmina?"

  "No. Yes. Sort of. But..." But it wasn't as simple as that, and she made it sound so ridiculous. Why had he ever mentioned Jezmina in the first place? He knew the answer, of course: an attempt to impress her in some way, to show that he wasn't simply a kid. Why, what was she to him, this maverick street-nick? The next morning he'd be back home and she would vanish from his life entirely.

  Yet it did matter.

  "Hmm..."

  "Mostly I went because I wanted to. If I refused, then someone else would have gone instead, and I didn't want anyone else seeing what was up there before I did."

  "And you were asked first because of the way you can hide, right?"

  "Yes."

  "So everyone knows about that."

  "No, not really, not in the way you mean." He wanted her to understand how much it had meant, revealing his secret to her. "I'm good at not being found - by the other lads, by the razzers, by everybody - that's all they know. I've never shown anyone why before."

  "What, not even Jezmina?"

  "No!" He said it hotly, defensively, then realised she was teasing him and repeated in a quieter voice, "Nobody."

  Hal tipped back both his flagon and his head, swallowing another mouthful of ale. It was a quick, deep quaff and his gaze returned instantly to the man sitting opposite him: a bland-faced fellow with short brown hair - receding slightly, but still a long way from being bald. Very ordinary to look at, yet he seemed to have done all the things that Hal had dreamed of doing but doubtless never would. At first the bargeman hadn't known whether to believe the fellow or not, but the more the man talked, the more credible he sounded. Hal didn't want to miss a word of this.

  Hal had been raised on tales of Thaiburley and ensnared by the mystique that surrounded the City of Dreams from an early age. As a boy he determined to journey there when he grew up, imagining himself a great explorer, crossing mountains with pack and sword strapped across his back and staff in hand, facing death a dozen times before finally cresting the peak of a high hill to gaze in wonder on the towering edifice that was Thaiburley, its highest reaches wreathed in cloud. As he matured, life dumped the baggage of responsibility at his feet. The reality of providing for his mother and four younger siblings after his father was killed reduced the dream to wistful yearning. His father took an arrow fighting off a raid on the village livestock. The wound became infected and Hal watched this strong man, the rock of his young life, wither away before his eyes. He knew then that life had trapped him, had deliberately cheated him.

  Yet throughout those terrible days he never completely forgot his dreams, and when the opportunity arose to work on one of the great river barges Hal leapt at the chance, knowing that this was one of the multitude of vessels which supplied distant Thaiburley.

  Within days of his gaining a berth, they set out for the city of his dreams. He would never forget that first clear view of Thaiburley as they rounded a bend and cleared a stand of trees. The towering city walls were just as magnificent and awe-inspiring as imagination had painted them. The closer the city grew, the more its sheer scale became apparent, with Hal's joy and amazement growing apace. He couldn't believe that very soon he would be passing beneath the walls of the city that had been the focus of his childhood desires.

  Hal's anticipation during that ponderous approach was matched only by his disappointment at what he actually found within Thaiburley itself. The squalor, the stench and the sheer meanness of life in the City Below was overwhelming. It hit home the moment the barge cleared the walls and he caught his first glimpse, and smell, of fabled Thaiburley's underbelly. And when he discovered how unlikely it was that he would ever be permitted to see elsewhere in the great city, the anticlimax was complete. He felt deflated and cheated. Yet again life had tantalised him with dreams only to snatch them away.

  Hal took out his frustration and anger on a whore he picked up at a bar that first night, punishing her for this latest - this greatest - disappointment; the sting of his palms and sharp pain of his fists as they struck her flesh brought short-lived relief. He felt ashamed and horrified afterwards as he hurriedly pulled on his clothes and left the sobbing girl, who refused to look at him and held a blanket around herself for the illusion of protection it provided, but he was also strangely exhilarated. As time passed, the horror faded and the memory of the exhilaration remained. On his second visit to Thaiburley he did much the same, though with a different girl from a different bar. This time, the resultant shame was a mere ghost of regret, easily buried beneath the rush of arousal and excitement, the sense of power the beating lent him.

  Now, on the second night of his third visit, he was finally able to few a little of his dreams, if only by proxy. This newfound friend claimed to be well travelled throughout the city and had already described enough wonders to keep Hal hanging on his every word. The bargeman was more than happy to stand the fellow a drink or two in exchange for hearing such things.

  "Built against the wall at Musicians Row is the wind park," the man was saying. Hal had forgotten the fellow's name and didn't want to look stupid by asking again. Somewhere during the evening they'd separated from Hal's crewmates and it was now just the two of them huddled over their ales. "This is one of the greatest wonders in all Thaiburley. Cunningly wrought tubes and vents draw air from beyond the wall and channel it through enormous horns and trumpets and flutes, built of wood and brass and cane in bewildering variety, each with its own specific pitch and tone. Still more wind is brought into play across curtains of bells and chimes. You never know what you're going to find when you visit the wind park. One minute all will be mellow wafts of sound and subdued tinkling, like some fairy orchestra at play, the next a great booming cacophony will break out, as if the fairies have been supplanted by giants.

  "But go there on a concert night and the true wonder of the place is revealed. When one of the great pieces by a master composer such as Waschnet or Siebler is being performed, then you hear the wind park in all its glory. You see, each opening to the walls is controlled by vents and stops, the flow of air through them can be blocked and regulated, enabling all this vast barrage of sound to be shaped and directed into something remarkable. That, my friend is a wonder that everyone should hear at least once before they die."

  Hal tried to picture the scene in his mind's eye, imagining himself sitting there listening to such magnificent music. "Sounds amazing; wish I could see it," was all he mumbled.

  "Maybe you can some day."

  Hal's attention snapped back to the man's face, to find him grinning conspiratorially. "I'm sure we can sort something out, if you really want this so badly."

  Hal could hardly believe it and had to suppress a surge of hope. "Do you mean that?"

  "I don't see why not." His new friend drained the last of his ale. "Come on, let's find a real alehouse."

  The bargeman looked ar
ound, puzzled. The room was crowded, dimly lit, dingy but warm, and boasted perfectly acceptable ale. "This place seems all right to me."

  "It's all right, granted," the other replied, before tapping the side of his nose knowingly with a single finger, "but trust me, it's not one of the best places." The man stood up and shuffled a little unsteadily towards the door. "You can stay here if you want, of course."

  Stay here and let this fellow walk away after what he had just said so casually? Not a chance. "No, wait up, I'm coming." Hal scrambled to his feet and hurried after his new friend.

  He was already a little hazy as to where they were in relation to the barge. Not far from the docks, obviously, and close to the shantytown known as the Runs, but it was a real warren of alleyways and tight streets around here, so beyond that he was thoroughly lost. Yet his friend led the way confidently enough, so he happily followed.

  "It's breckin' dark here," he commented, as they moved out of reach of the nearest street lanterns.

  "A short cut."

  "Where are we going, anyway?"

  "Just a little somewhere I know, a little way inside the Runs; someplace where the ale is as bitter as the girls are sweet."

  "Sounds good to me." What did he have to lose after all? The barge wasn't due to leave until late the next day; plenty of time to sober up.

  "You've had a taste of the girls here, I take it?"

  "Oh, yes." Hal couldn't help but smile at recent memories. "There was this one last night. A real looker, with a mouth that could suck like a whirlpool swallowing a stick."

  His friend laughed appreciatively. "If she's that good, I might have to look her up myself. Don't suppose you can remember her name?"

  Hal frowned. What was her name? He could picture the girl easily enough: young though not too young, long auburn hair matched by even longer legs, a pretty enough face, though a little narrower than his ideal, and a peach of a bottom that just cried out to be slapped. He remembered the paleness of her naked back and shoulders as she knelt on all fours on the bed in front of him, the warmth of the skin beneath his finger tips as he raked his nails down from shoulders to ribs while taking her from behind. She'd cried out at that and twisted around, telling him to stop, the bitch.