Storm Thief

by Chris Wooding

  Rail and Moa lived in a den that had once been a bunker of some kind. From the outside, it was little more than a round, rusted hatch on the concrete bank of a canal. It was hidden underneath a bridge and shielded from sight by a small shack that Rail had erected around it. But beneath the hatch was a ladder, and at the bottom of the ladder were three small, solid rooms which Rail and Moa had taken as their own. The hatch was secured by a combination of dials and switches, which Rail had one day found completely unlocked. Whether it was a probability storm that had done it or some other explanation, he never knew. He memorized the settings and had been living there ever since. Later, when he met Moa, he invited her to stay there with him. She was suspicious at first, but she accepted in the end. To find a place so safe in the ghetto was an extraordinary stroke of luck, and they guarded its location jealously.

  It was to their den that they went first, before going to see the thief-mistress. Though the walls and floor were bare metal, the two of them had accumulated all kinds of blankets, rugs, carpets and curtains and cushions, which they used for bedding and for covering the floor. The main chamber had a tiny portable oil stove for occasional cooking and for warming the place. It was cluttered with bric-a-brac that they had stolen or salvaged and were assembling into something they could trade or sell. Moa’s room was the smallest, and was piled waist-deep in soft fabrics. She literally burrowed into it at night and slept in the plush womb that she had created for herself.

  Moa slept a lot. She preferred being asleep to being awake, for she always had the most vivid dreams: dreams of flying or of strange and mystical lands, dreams of adventure and romance. Inside her cocoon of blankets and furs, she could be elsewhere, and in her imagination she lived a life of wonders.

  They clattered down the ladder into the main chamber, closing the hatch behind them, and there they knelt on either side of a rug while Rail gently shook out the contents of his satchel.

  Moa sat with her hands pressed between her knees. Rail glanced at her. Her cheek-length black hair was lank and dirty, her skin so pale that he could see the blue traceries of veins at her wrists and neck. She was wearing scuffed green dungarees, boots and a long-sleeved black vest that had frayed at the hem. She looked ill.

  He hoped he could score her some decent food off this haul. Maybe getting something healthy to eat instead of the tasteless gruel the Protectorate slop-houses dished up might put some colour back in her face.

  “Anya-Jacana will be pleased,” Moa said neutrally. She wasn’t thinking about how pleased the thief-mistress would be. She was thinking about how much money was there, and how much they would be left with. It was a good amount. Not a vast amount, but if the thief-mistress was fair they could live off it for a while. That was something, at least.

  Rail studied her uncertainly, thinking of the Fade-Science artefact still hidden in his pocket. Thinking whether he should tell her about it or not. Of course he would share it with her; that was never in question. It was just that if he told her about it, she would demand that they took it to Anya-Jacana. She would say that it was too risky. Anya-Jacana would know if they had cheated her. Moa would say that they shouldn’t rock the boat, that the consequences could be terrible. And even if she agreed with him, she wasn’t a good liar. She would give them away if she knew.

  But she was a dreamer, and he was a realist. And he knew that they couldn’t live like this for ever, forced to steal just to survive. Sooner or later, they would be caught, and either killed or taken away. That was what happened to those who broke one of the Protectorate’s many laws, or who disagreed with their ideas, or who talked about the possibility of a world outside Orokos.

  No. As much as he hated to do it, it was for her own good. She’d thank him for it one day. For making this decision.

  He left her counting through the haul while he stashed away the artefact under the bedroll that he used as a pillow, then he came back into the main room.

  “Let’s get going,” he said, and began gathering up the bits and pieces to stuff back in his satchel. Not long afterward, they were on their way to the lair of the thief-mistress.

  Anya-Jacana’s court could be found deep underground, through many doors and down many tunnels. Their route took them across bridges that spanned dark, rushing streams. They passed by the monstrous flanks of machines that hadn’t worked for longer than anyone could recall. Gimlet eyes watched them from the shadows: small, scuttling figures which ran across the walls like geckos.

  The thief-mistress herself lay in a room with an arched and ribbed ceiling of black glass. Coiled iron shapes, sculptures from the Functional Age, grew from the walls. A carpet of cured animal skin ran from the oval doorway to the dais where she reclined. To either side of her massive brass couch lurked an assortment of attendants and bodyguards.

  Rail and Moa walked into the room along the carpet. Other thieves stood in clusters, their faces deep with shadow, waiting for assignments or passing tips between themselves. Rail acknowledged a few of them with tiny nods, and they nodded back.

  “Welcome, my children!” boomed Anya-Jacana, and they came to a halt in front of her.

  She was grotesquely, enormously fat, swaddled in robes of bright and clashing colours, lying on her side on the couch. Her fingers were thick and banded with jewels and rings, and her fleshy arms were hung with bangles and bracelets. Lank and greasy hair, heavy with ornaments, hung over a frog-like face. When she grinned her mouth split very wide, and revealed yellow, round teeth.

  “Greetings, Mother,” Rail and Moa replied. She insisted that all her thieves called her Mother.

  “I trust you have what I sent you for?”

  “Of course,” Rail replied. “Did you think we’d fail you? We’re the best.”

  The other thieves murmured at this, but Anya-Jacana roared with laughter. “Ah, so cocky for one so young. Such brash arrogance! Well, I can’t deny you have talent, that’s clear enough. An almost uncanny ability to infiltrate any location I care to send you.” She looked at Moa, her tiny eyes almost disappearing in the folds of her face as she smiled her wide smile. Her gaze switched back to Rail. “Come, then, show me what you have!”

  Two of the attendants came to stand before Rail, holding a strip of leather taut between them. He tipped the satchel on to the leather, and a small pile of money and power cells and other odds and ends spilled out. The attendants carried it up the steps of the dias and held it before the thief-mistress.

  She began to pick her way through it. After a few moments, she said: “You did do exactly as I told you, didn’t you?”

  Rail didn’t like the tone in her voice. “Yes, Mother. We found the small brass casket, and we emptied it. It was there just as you said.”

  Anya-Jacana was studying them closely now. “You took everything from the casket?”

  “Everything,” Rail said. He was beginning to get worried now. The thief-mistress’s grin was fixed in place, but her eyes were becoming colder.

  “And everything you took is here?” Anya-Jacana persisted. “Every little thing?”

  The room was dead silent now. Rail’s heart felt like it was slamming against his ribs. The world seemed to have narrowed, crowding inwards until there was nothing but himself and the thief-mistress. This was what he had most dreaded. Anya-Jacana had been after something specific. Something that she knew was in that brass casket. Something that wasn’t here.

  She’s going to kill you, he thought. He was terrified. But he held himself straight and looked her in the eye.

  “Everything,” he heard himself say. Because he knew that if the thief-mistress thought for one instant that he had held something back from her, then she would be very angry. And people died when Anya-Jacana got angry.

  Her eyes slid slowly to Moa. “Everything?” she said again.

  Moa was frightened and confused. She didn’t understand the hostility in Anya-Jacana’s tone. She tu
rned to Rail for support, but Rail was careful not to meet her gaze. She looked back at Anya-Jacana.

  “Everything,” she replied.

  The silence scratched out like a fingernail along a stone. Anya-Jacana stared at them hard, her grin fading at the edges. They didn’t speak or flinch. The moment became excruciating.

  “I will be very disappointed if I find you have lied to me, children,” said Anya-Jacana slowly. “Very disappointed.” She turned her head to one of the assistants. “Fifty per cent. Even cut between money and machinery. Give the rest back to them.”

  Rail’s legs were beginning to tremble. He tried to keep it under control, but they wouldn’t stop. He took what the assistants handed to him without bothering to count it, and then he left as fast as he could without looking like he was guilty. Moa trailed behind him.

  When they were gone, the obese mistress of the ghetto’s child-thieves motioned to one of the boys that was lurking in the shadows. He was sallow-faced, his skin jaundiced and yellowish, and his eyes were sunken and had dark rings around them that made him look unhealthy. He wore a dirty assortment of black clothes, and wispy blond hair straggled from beneath the cowl that was pulled up over his head.

  “Finch,” she murmured. “Follow them. I want what I sent them for.”

  The boy grinned. His gums were black with decay and his browned teeth were filed to sharp points.

  “Good as done, Mother.”

  “What was that about?” Moa asked, when they were out in the open again. She was shaken and trembling.

  “Putting the scares on us, that’s all,” he muttered, staring at the wet flagstones of the plaza they were crossing. “She does that from time to time, doesn’t she? To keep us in line.” His tone was deeply unconvincing.

  Moa glanced miserably around the plaza. Juveniles like them were wandering about or hanging around in gangs. There was little to do in the ghetto. No jobs, no money, hardly any food. They couldn’t go elsewhere, not with the stripes tattooed on their arm. Only to other ghettoes where life was no better. It seemed that every few days somebody was taken away by the Protectorate, accused of plotting against their leader, the Patrician. Sometimes they were people that Rail and Moa knew. Nobody could be certain when it would be their turn. It made an already grim existence that bit more uncomfortable.

  They were trapped here, purposeless, kept just on the right side of dying but not enough to make them feel alive. The only money that moved through this place was through the underground: black-market goods and services, theft, protection rackets, murder. If one of the rich folk needed someone taken out, they went to the ghetto. There were people here desperate enough to do anything.

  Rail was twiddling the end of one his dreadlocks as he walked. He was agitated. Moa could tell, even with the smooth metal muzzle that covered his face. It showed in his wide brown eyes. He was truly a beautiful boy, Moa thought, his features fine and delicate and his skin smooth and flawless. Small wonder that he hated the city that had changed him, forced him to wear that disfiguring mask, that pack on his back, the tubes that ran between them.

  “You’ve done something, haven’t you?” she asked. “Rail, what did you do?”

  Rail shrugged, as if he could make it less important by acting like he didn’t care. “I took something.”

  “You frecking what?” Moa cried. Rail glared at her, and she lowered her voice to a hiss. “You took something? From the chest?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think she’d miss it. Didn’t even think she knew it was there.”

  “Oh, Rail. . .” she said, but she didn’t have the words to express what she felt right then. An abyss had opened up beneath her, and they were both teetering on the brink. And though it was his fault, she couldn’t find it in her to blame him. She knew exactly why he had done it.

  They walked on for a way, out of the plaza and into the narrow alleys and paths that ran alongside the canal. He told her about the artefact as they went. The ghetto, like the rest of Orokos, was built around the bones of older buildings from the Functional Age. Towering, alien constructions made of strange material loomed over streets of brick and rusty iron. Indestructible walkways of shining obsidian bridged dirty yards full of junk. What order there had once been in the ghetto had been gradually destroyed by the probability storms, jumbling everything up until it was difficult to tell where the past ended and the present began. It was a maze of many levels, and it moved from time to time.

  “We run,” Rail said eventually. “It’s the only way. We run.”

  “Oh, no,” Moa pleaded. “Maybe Anya-Jacana was just scaring us. Can’t we pretend the artefact just wasn’t there? Maybe she’ll just think the information she had was wrong. The Mozgas could have moved it before we got there. She didn’t tell us what to look for, so how can she blame us for not finding it?”

  “She knew,” Rail said. “I could see it.”

  Moa laid a gloved hand on his arm, bringing him to a halt. “I don’t want to leave. Can’t we get rid of it? Can’t we just throw it away?”

  Rail gave her a look that was half pity, half condescension. She was frightened of the unknown. But she knew as well as he did that it didn’t matter whether they had the artefact or not. If Anya-Jacana thought that they had stolen from her, their throats would be cut before tomorrow night.

  Once the decision was made in his mind, Rail felt strangely exhilarated. “This is an opportunity. It’s a chance to change things for us. Maybe.” He lowered his head, looked deeply into her eyes as if searching for something there. “You want to throw that away?”

  “Things will change on their own, Rail. Things always change, if you wait long enough.”

  He tapped the side of his respirator muzzle. “I’ll make my own luck,” he said bitterly. And with that, he stalked away, and Moa followed after him.

  At a distance, Finch followed him also, with a small gang sent by the thief-mistress to get back what was hers.

  Rail shut the hatch of their den behind him, and didn’t let go until he heard the heavy clank of the locks slamming into place. Moa had already slid down the ladder and was burrowing around in her room, picking up the scattered keepsakes that she had left among the blankets and furs. Once satisfied that they were safe, Rail went to his room and retrieved the artefact from beneath his bedroll, then put it in his satchel. When he returned to the main room, Moa was sitting cross-legged on a rug, stuffing assorted knick-knacks into a tattered backpack.

  “Where are we going to go?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “Yet.”

  “We can’t leave if we have nowhere to go!” Moa cried.

  “Yes we frecking can,” Rail shot back. “Unless you want to argue the toss with Anya-Jacana?”

  Moa was silent for a moment. Then: “I know where we can go,” she said quietly.

  Rail knew too. He just didn’t want to admit it.

  “I know where we can go,” she said again, “where we’ll be safe, where there will be people who can help us.”

  She waited for him to say it. Rail liked to be the one to make these decisions, and she liked him to make them. It gave them both a feeling of stability. He needed to be in control, she needed someone else to be in control. That was the way it worked with them.

  “All right,” he said at last. “We go to Kilatas.”

  Moa sprang up, threw her arms round him and kissed him on the cheek, behind the cold edge of the respirator that fitted over his mouth and nose.

  “I’m going home!” she cried.

  He pulled away from her suddenly. She had forgotten: he didn’t like people touching his face. Embarrassed, she mumbled an apology.

  “S’OK,” he said, looking away.

  It made her sad to see him like that. He was ashamed of himself, ashamed of his condition. He wouldn’t accept what had been done to him by the probability storm. Why
couldn’t he understand that change just happened, that there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it? Why did he struggle so hard? You could spend your whole life fighting to make something of yourself, to get out of this awful ghetto, and then one day you find yourself struck down with some disease, or turned into a cat, or dumped on the other side of the city with no way back. That was the way the world worked. So why make your life miserable by swimming against the current? It made far more sense to lie back and wait for things to turn your way.

  But Rail wouldn’t do that. He was angry at being burdened with a respirator. He didn’t even think how lucky he was that Anya-Jacana had one to give to him. She had saved his life in return for his service, but that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to go to some rich doctor, to have them fix him and make it right. Even though it would cost more than they would ever have, even though no doctor would ever work on anyone with the stripes of the ghetto-folk tattooed on their arm. He wanted to make his fortune so he could change back what the city had done to him.

  It was his dream. Moa knew that. And she knew that was what he had been thinking of when he had decided to steal from the thief-mistress.

  “Here it is,” he said, digging in his satchel and retrieving the artefact. He put it carefully in her hand.

  She stared at it in wonder. Suddenly, she could see why he had been so reckless. It was mesmerizing. The working of the brass was incredible. The amber disc was made of something like polished stone, or glass, or a gem. But it was none of these. It turned the light in a curious way, so that from some angles it looked like it was deep. Instead of a flat disc it seemed like the mouth of a great, amber-lined hole, even though the disc itself wasn’t much thicker than a biscuit. It was a tiny miracle, an echo of a past long forgotten that Moa believed in desperately. A time when things were different.