City of Dreams and Nightmare

by Ian Whates

  "Because I wanted it that way," said a man's voice at his ear. "You must be Lyle," the voice continued. "We've been waiting for you."

  Tom woke suddenly, with the feeling that something had disturbed him but no idea what. He sensed that morning was well on the way. It was still night but the darkness had thinned a little, to the point where he could see Kat crouching by the door in greater definition than the darker, featureless patch of blackness she had been when night held full sway. Had she been crouching there all this time? No, he clearly remembered her lying down again. And besides, the door was now closed.

  Then he heard a sound from outside; just a faint scraping, but unmistakable. Someone or something was on the far side of the door.

  He rolled to his feet, a move which earned him a glance from Kat, who immediately lifted a finger to her lips. Tom nodded, fully aware of the need for quiet. The lingering cobwebs of sleep still fuddled the edges of his thoughts, but they were quickly disappearing in the face of potential threat. He drew his knife and waited. One of Kat's long blades already rested across her knees as she squatted, still watching the door.

  In the darkness, Tom didn't see the door handle turn, but he did see the door fly open and a figure shoot through; a man, who dived through the gap Kat had made in the boards, through the doorway and into the room. At least it was human rather than some monster, albeit the strangest man Tom had ever encountered. With the door open, more light was able to enter the room and by it, Tom could see that the intruder was bald and that his head, neck and arms were covered in an intricate pattern of tattoos. Not individual pictures, but rather what appeared to be a uniform design. Lines travelled in parallel up the man's neck, curling around one ear and continuing up to cross the dome of his head like a headband, before curling past the other ear and down again. That was just one set. There were others, and circles and crescent-moons and stars. Yet he gained the impression that each mark was integral to all the others, that they worked in concert to form a whole. He imagined that beneath the man's clothes, this network of tattoos came together, combining to produce a single arcane design. The only problem being that you would need to have the man's skin laid out flat to see it.

  All this flashed through his thoughts in the split second it took the man to land, roll and come nimbly to his feet.

  "Rayul!" Kat exclaimed.

  The newcomer looked round at her and smiled. "Kat. We were wondering if it might be you."

  The missing boards across the entrance would have given away the fact that someone was in here to anyone familiar with this place, Tom realised. At the same time, he noted that Kat still hadn't sheathed her knife despite the fact that she obviously knew the intruder. Others were coming in now. All were bald-headed and decorated in similar fashion to the first. A further board had to be taken down for the larger ones to enter.

  There were marked similarities in their clothing, as well. All were dressed in tanned leather - short sleeved tunics which left their arms free and the extent of the tattoos exposed - and all seemed to be wearing skirts rather than trousers. Tom tried not to stare. None of them wore clothing identical to any other, but they were all similar enough to suggest some sort of uniform.

  As the room filled up, Kat finally put her knife away, a little reluctantly or so it seemed to him. However, he now felt foolish holding his own small blade, so sheathed that too. As so often since returning to this unfamiliar part of the City Below, Tom found himself relying on Kat for guidance.

  In total, there were five of the strangely similar men and the room felt suddenly cramped. Kat hardly looked pleased to see these new arrivals, which Tom found less than reassuring. These were no boys, not street-nicks in any sense he recognised and yet a memory stirred somewhere in the back of his mind: the Tattooed Men. Weren't there stories about such a gang?

  He tried to remember but, beyond a vague sense that they were to be feared, failed to recall any specifics. One of the men was speaking, so the trawling of half-forgotten memories would have to wait.

  "She's going to love this." Tom thought it was the first man to enter who spoke, the one Kat had called Rayul, but he couldn't be sure: they all looked alike.

  "I doubt that, somehow," Kat replied.

  "Who's your friend?"

  "Name of Tom."

  "What gang are you with, lad?"

  "The Blue Claw." He answered that himself, not seeing any point in lying.

  "A fair way from your own territory, aren't you? What's the story?"

  "None of your business, I'd say," Kat cut in.

  The man grunted, turning back to the girl. "As you wish. Doesn't make much difference. You know what comes next."

  Kat might, but Tom had no idea. What did come next? There was nothing overtly hostile about the newcomers, yet their sheer physical presence had him feeling trapped, as if he was barely one step away from being cuffed and chained.

  The girl's next words did nothing to dispel the impression. "It doesn't have to be like this," she said. "You could always let us carry on our way and just report that there was nothing here when you checked."

  "You know we can't do that."

  "Yeah, of course I do." She gave a wry smile. "But you can't blame me for trying."

  "What are you doing here anyway, Kat?" one of the others asked. "You must have known there was a good chance we'd check this place."

  The girl shrugged. "Didn't even know you were in the area. Besides, it seemed a safer bet than the big house." Tom tried to gauge what was going on but lacked the referents to do so. Kat was clearly ill at ease but at the same time chatted to these men as if they were old friends. Presumably that ought to be a good sign, yet the tension that was evident between them suggested otherwise.

  "That's true enough. If you'd pitched up there last night we could have had a merry reunion all the sooner."

  "She's there, then." Kat spoke as if this were a matter of passing interest at best, but she wasn't kidding Tom and he doubted she was fooling anyone else either. Whoever this "she" might be, she was clearly someone of importance to the girl.

  "You can see for yourself in a few minutes. Ready?"

  Kat shrugged. "As if I've got a choice. You don't need Tom, though, so let him go at least."

  "I thought he was with you."

  "I am," Tom said quickly. He appreciated Kat's concern but had no intention of leaving without her, even if that was an option.

  They filed out of the room, two of the men staying back to replace the boards covering the door. Tom watched the girl for some sign, ready to run, to make a break for it if she did, though she gave no indication of doing so.

  As they came out into the brighter environs of the under-City's breaking dawn, he was able to see their captors, if such they were, more clearly. The traceries of tattoos which marked each were in a uniform ochre colour, and they were astonishingly precise, resembling well-executed works of art. The combination of these flowing, arcane patterns and the men's hairless pates made them seem eerie, otherworldly even, and at the same time formidable.

  Once they had come down to street level, Tom caught up with Kat and walked beside her, the pair of them bracketed by the taller men. "So, who are they?" he asked quietly.

  "The Tattooed Men."

  This time the words stirred fragments of memory: he had a vague sense that these were nomads, street-nicks without fixed territory, said to be fearsome fighters. "The wanderers," he said. "And they're friends of yours?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Enemies, then?"

  "Not them so much as their Chavver."

  "Chavver?"

  "The Queen Bitch who rules their little gang."

  "And it's this Chavver that we're now being taken to see?"

  "Afraid so. Don't worry though, it's not you she's got a problem with, just me."

  "Why, what happened?"

  "Long story."

  There were further questions he would have liked to ask but at that instant everything seemed to turn much d
arker, as if some vast object had passed between them and the cavern's roof, cutting out the sun globes' light. There was a distant, echoing sound of rending metal. Somebody behind him shouted; a call that conveyed fear and urgency, a warning. Tom stared up, to see an enormous object falling towards him. At first he couldn't make sense of it, his mind unable to process the image, then he realised it was one of the sun globes, that it had somehow come loose from the ceiling and was plummeting downward. Only seconds remained before it would impact with the ground, the city.

  Someone tugged at his arm and yelled at him, though he didn't really hear the words: Kat. He was slow to respond, mesmerised, unable to look away as the globe grew larger and closer. He started to move again, to run, allowing himself to be pulled along, but he still could not resist looking back over his shoulder in time to see the sun globe strike. It hit the low building adjoining the one they had slept in.

  He watched in fascination as one edge of the mechanism began to buckle and fold, spreading out to crush the loft room Kat had called a safe house. The process seemed to occur in slow motion. The building caved in, its roof and the top of the walls collapsing inward even as the rest of the walls commenced to push outward.

  Without warning, something deep within the globe exploded.

  A ball of fire blossomed forth, propelling stone and metal fragments before it. Tom felt the heat, the wind against his face and arms, and the trembling of the ground through the soles of his feet. He ducked and lifted a hand to protect his face, aware that debris was flying in all directions. A chunk of something seemed to head straight towards him, as direct as a bullet. He barely had time to register its threat and certainly none to react, before the object struck him and he remembered no more.

  The smell of burning hung in the air. Tylus stood just outside the station and gazed at a city which seemed in the process of bracing itself, as if expecting some awful catastrophe. No one awake could escape the knowledge that somewhere in the City Below a fierce fire had been raging. The very light was dimmed, the sun globes obscured by clouds of smoke which roiled around the cavern's ceiling. Every breath carried the acrid taint of it.

  He headed inside to the squad room, where Richardson was already hard at work, catching up on the reports that his assignment to assist Tylus had prevented him from completing.

  The young guard was a revelation. Since they returned with the three captured street-nicks, he had been a much altered person. The timid, apologetic demeanour had disappeared, to be replaced by a confident attitude that saw him hold his own in the squad room, answering back when put upon and taking the jokes of his fellows in his stride, as if they didn't matter to him anymore. He no longer acted like a victim.

  The young officer's retelling of the mad chase through the backstreets sounded far more dangerous and exciting than Tylus's own memories painted it, and the Kite Guard's own part in events as seen through Richardson's eyes sounded a great deal more proficient than it actually had been.

  Richardson's part in the capture of the three nicks, albeit that two of them effectively gave themselves up, had clearly given the young guardsman the required boost of confidence, and it was evident that his attitude to being assigned as Tylus's aid had also completely reversed. From being the superfluous officer given the task that nobody else wanted, he was now the one who had been honoured with the most prestigious job in the department. The more the lad acted that way, the more the other officers were going to believe it.

  Looking at him, seeing the leap forward the young man had made, Tylus suddenly realised how much his own attitude had changed over the same period. Since coming to the City Below, he hadn't once questioned his own competence, his own right to wear the uniform of a Kite Guard. In the past couple of days he had acted and felt the part, without any sense of incongruity at all. It was a moment of true personal revelation for him. For the first time since being accepted, Tylus felt that he truly belonged in the ranks of the Kite Guard.

  The three nicks' surrender and their desperation to be taken into custody were still something of a puzzle. What became immediately obvious was that the trio were terrified. What continued to be confusing was the source of their fear. According to the three nicks, it was the other Scorpions - their fellow gang members - that they were afraid of, but not in any manner which made sense. The three insisted there had been no falling out, that they had not transgressed within the gang's own particular code or crossed their fellow nicks in any way. Yet they were adamant that their own gang was after them.

  When pressed for an explanation, all the kids could say was that the other gang members had changed, were no longer themselves, and that if the three didn't get somewhere beyond the reach of their former friends, they too would be changed. Apparently it was not just the Scorpions that were affected, and the three had no idea who could be trusted and who couldn't, which left prison as the only fully safe place they could think of.

  Richardson seemed as bemused by these claims as he was, yet Tylus realised that he might have stumbled onto something important, that if this problem was occurring across several gangs it could be connected to the spate of street-nick related killings which were causing the watch such concern. He reported the matter immediately they returned to the station, and the three nicks were now being questioned by other officers. Hopefully, being more attuned to the streets and what went on here, they might be able to make more sense of the situation than the Kite Guard could.

  As promised, the prisoners had provided him with the information he'd been after, and he now knew that a gang known as the Blue Claw had negotiated passage via the Scorpions' stairs for one of their members, and that the night before last, a boy called Tom had slipped up those stairs on a mission that clearly went beyond the norm. Word was that he was attempting to slip up-City, though not everyone believed that. What seemed certain was that the boy had yet to return.

  Despite this last snippet of information, Tylus felt confident that he was closing in on the escaped street-nick. He felt the weight of destiny upon his shoulders and knew that he would soon bring the lad to justice and so be able to return to the Heights triumphant.

  Not even Goss could question his fitness to belong to the Guard after this. More importantly, nor would he.

  The key to all of this lay with the Blue Claw, he was certain. Only by questioning them could he discover why a street-nick had climbed so high into the city, what he had been after. Now all that remained was to convince the officers of the watch to mount a raid on the gang. As yet, no means of doing so had occurred to him, but he felt certain it soon would.

  Opportunity arrived in the form of the station commander, Captain Johnson.

  Tylus had met him after bringing the street-nicks in and still wasn't entirely sure what to make of the man. Younger than his duty sergeant, he wore the uniform of the watch with evident pride; neatly pressed trousers, creases straight and crisp, his fastidiousness a marked contrast to the sloppy, casual attitude the Kite Guard had noted in other members of the section. In fact, the good captain displayed all the qualities that had been drummed into Tylus as essential in an officer; and yet, down here, they made the man seem vaguely pompous and out of touch. It was another example of how his brief stay in the streets was already influencing Tylus, giving him a different perspective on many aspects of life. He was beginning to consider whether values were not entirely set in stone but were more flexible than he'd imagined, being affected by such factors as circumstance and environment.

  Johnson even spoke differently from the officers under him, having a more cultured accent, leading Tylus to wonder whether he was a native of the under-City at all, or whether perhaps he had been assigned here from the City Above. What misdemeanour could warrant such a fate? Perhaps the captain was simply from a better district, though it was hard to believe that the City Below boasted any such.

  Their initial meeting had been an awkward one, neither certain of status, one a captain, the other a Kite Guard on special assignment f
rom a senior arkademic - who outranked whom? They settled the dilemma without ever acknowledging there was one, by treating each other as equals. Tylus was amazed by his own audacity; this was something he would never have dreamed of doing mere days previously.

  This second meeting promised to be no less trying than the first. The captain came across to where Tylus sat next to Richardson, who disappeared as the senior officer approached. It was immediately apparent that the captain wanted something.

  "You've heard about the incident in the early hours?"

  "Yes, indeed," said Tylus. He assumed this was a reference to the sun globe falling and the subsequent fire, and had to wonder how anyone could have failed to hear about it.

  "A terrible business."

  "Terrible." It was the talk of the squad room. Officers had been called in from all across the under-City to fight the blaze, including their own station. A number of buildings had been gutted and the total of confirmed dead rose by the hour.

  "Sun globes do not simply come crashing down of their own accord. Somebody must have brought this one down deliberately."

  The captain stopped, clearly hoping for a reaction. Tylus refused to give him one. By approaching matters in this circumspect manner rather than coming straight out and asking a direct question, Johnson had placed himself at a disadvantage. Tylus rather enjoyed the fact that they were no longer quite equal. "Really?" was his only response.

  Johnson fidgeted a little more, and cleared his throat: a nervous sound which almost caused Tylus to grin, though he fought hard to keep his face deadpan. "The thing is, you see, the globe itself has been pretty much blasted apart in the explosion. We're collecting the debris, of course, but it's proving to be a long and slow process. Goodness knows how much we'll be able to learn from whatever's left in any case..."

  "Hmm. Very frustrating," Tylus said. He began to see what the captain was leading up to.

  "What we really need to do is get up there and take a look at the roof, to examine where the globe fell from and hopefully learn something from that."