The ascendancy veil bp-3

by Chris Wooding

  'No I mean… about them.' She motioned with her head to indicate the others; they had drifted a little way apart from the group.

  'Juto and Lon?'

  'And Nomoru.'

  'Nomoru?' Kaiku was surprised. 'Why?'

  'There's something between them. Something they don't want to reveal to us.'

  Kaiku was inclined to agree. While Cailin's teaching left her less and less time to see her friends, it brought her into closer contact with the other Sisters, and of them Phaeca was her natural ally in temperament. Through sharing the trials of the Red Order's apprenticeship, they had come to understand one another very well, and Kaiku knew better than to dismiss Phaeca's intuition where people were concerned.

  'They used to be in a gang together,' Kaiku murmured. 'It could be anything.'

  'They're not pleased to see Nomoru.'

  'Who is?' Kaiku returned dryly.

  'But Nomoru volunteered…'

  'Which is entirely unlike her.'

  'Exactly,' Phaeca said, clapping her fingertips against the heel of her other hand. 'They didn't know she was coming, but she knew that they would be here. There's a history between them, that much is certain. And it's Nomoru who has chosen to dredge it up.'

  Kaiku sighed, rubbed the back of her neck. 'We must be careful.'

  'You ready?' Juto said, walking over to them. 'We'd better go. It will take us most of the night.' Behind him, Lon was manhandling a plank into place with Nomoru's help, lowering it to form a bridge across the narrow alley to the next rooftop.

  Juto caught Kaiku's gaze and smiled. 'We're not going down to street level until we don't have any other choice. Not scared of heights, are you?'

  Lon scampered across the plank and secured the other side as they approached. Kaiku looked over the lip of the alleyway into the empty street below. Nothing moved.

  'Get on with it,' Nomoru hissed.

  Kaiku gave her a disdainful stare and stepped up onto the plank. It was thick and solid, wide enough so that she would have thought nothing of walking its length if it were not suspended above a bone-breaking drop. Taking careful steps, she crossed the alleyway and stepped past Lon onto the next rooftop, which was similarly flat. The others followed without mishap, and then Juto and Lon hefted the plank between them and went to the other side of the roof.

  'There, that wasn't so bad, was it?' Juto grunted as he passed. 'We're great improvisers here in Poor Quarter.'

  In that way, they began to head round the hill on its westward side. Juto's preparations were certainly thorough. Though most of the rooftops were not flat but made of patchy slate, he had mapped out a route that meant there was always one adjacent roof or balcony that they could use. It was circuitous and indirect, certainly, but caution was needed over speed, and his method did not require them to touch the ground for the greater portion of their journey. The buildings of the Poor Quarter were crowded close enough that it was often possible to jump the alleys without needing the plank, and they began to spot other people doing the same thing as them, passing by stealthily in the distance.

  As they went, Juto explained how this kind of travel had evolved in response to the curfew, and was used all throughout the Poor Quarter, which was the only place in Axekami where there were enough flat roofs to make it viable.

  'It's a sort of truce,' he murmured, as they darted quietly across another dark expanse littered with derelict shacks. Men idled there, watching them as they passed. 'There's people who live in these buildings who'd cut my throat in the daylight; but at night, they give us free passage, and our gang will do the same for them. We might be dirty bastards, but we'll be gods-damned if we'll let the Weavers imprison us in our own territory.'

  'Could we not have got closer to the pall-pits during daylight, and gone from there?' Phaeca asked. 'We would not have had so far to travel then.'

  Nomoru snorted a laugh. Juto's lips twitched in response.

  'You don't know the Poor Quarter,' he said. 'Believe me, that dump where you met us was as close as any of our gang could safely get. The pall-pits aren't far; it's just slow going.'

  And it got slower, for the Aberrant predators were appearing in numbers now. More and more often Juto froze as if in response to some signal, and they crept to the edge of their rooftop or balcony to see the dark, sleek shape of a shrilling loping through the street below, its soft pigeon-warble drifting up through the night to them. Eventually Kaiku realised that the clicks and taps that she had thought were the sounds of boards settling in the night were being made by the men and women who lounged on the rooftops: they were lookouts, communicating in code, warning each other when Aberrants were nearby. She found herself marvelling that such a disparate group of antagonists could be so united in purpose against a greater enemy. It was like the battle for the Fold, when the people of the Xarana Fault had joined against the Aberrant army. Perhaps Juto was wrong; perhaps there was hope for an uprising, if the folk of the Poor Quarter were willing to put aside their differences and resist their new despots.

  Eventually they came to the great thoroughfare that delineated the western edge of the Poor Quarter. They rested on the rooftop, overlooking the wide street, a river of deep shadow separating them from the more affluent districts on the other side.

  'That was the easy part,' said Juto, hunkering down close to them. 'From here on in we have to go through the streets. We have to be fast, and quiet; and don't fire your rifles unless you have absolutely no other choice. Understand?'

  'Is that it over there?' Phaeca asked, looking west to where an infernal red glow leaked into the sky, underlighting plumes of slowly roiling smog.

  'That's it,' Juto said. 'We're close. But it only takes one Aberrant to see us, and it's over. Now you all know about shrillings, right?'

  'Echo location,' Nomoru said. 'Helps them see when it's too dark for their eyes. Only forward, though. Can't see behind them.'

  'It's mostly shrillings we'll be dealing with, though there's skrendel out here too, and they're hard to spot. Not so dangerous, but they'll put up a racket if they see you. Maybe ghauregs, but they can't see too well without any light. Chichaws, feyns. Assorted other types.'

  Kaiku felt a strange thrill. She and Tsata had christened those creatures, among others, back in the Xarana Fault; it made her feel unaccountably dislocated to hear those names used here, hundreds of miles away. She found herself in a fleeting recollection of the Tkiurathi man with whom she had shared that feral existence for a time. They had seemed sweeter days, somehow.

  They slipped down to ground level via a series of unsteady ladders and balconies on the north side of the building, after checking that the thoroughfare was clear. Kaiku felt her pulse begin to accelerate as soon as she touched the street. Suddenly the rooftops seemed a haven which she was reluctant to forsake. She clutched the barrel of her rifle, but it gave scant comfort, for like her kana it was a weapon of last resort and more likely to cost their lives than to save them.

  'Stay here,' Nomoru hissed to the group at large. 'I'll go ahead.'

  Lon made a noise of protest, but before he could speak Juto grabbed her arm. 'You won't,' he said. 'We stick together.'

  She shook him off, her thin face angry, eyes glittering. 'I'm a scout,' she snapped. 'Wait for my signal.' Then before he could say another word, she flitted across the thoroughfare and disappeared into the black slash of an alley.

  Lon swore in frustration. Juto motioned the others back against the wall, and slid to the corner of the building where he could get a better view of anything approaching. The clicks and taps of the lookouts were fainter here, but Kaiku still had the distinct impression that Juto was listening to them keenly, keeping track of the beasts that stalked their streets.

  Time passed, marked by the thump of Kaiku's heart. She glanced at Phaeca, who managed a wan smile of reassurance and clutched her hand briefly. The night was full of small movements: rats scuttled along, hugging close to the buildings; part of a wall would crumble in a soft patter of d
ust, seemingly of its own accord; a stone bounced into the street from a rooftop, making them jump in fright.

  'Enough,' said Juto. 'She'll find us. Let's move. It's too dangerous to stay here.'

  Nobody protested. They slipped out of the Poor Quarter and across the street, where they were swallowed up by the alleys on the other side.

  Lon took the lead now, moving with a purpose. They hurried through the narrow ways that lay between the main thoroughfares, pausing at every corner, scrambling into cover at the slightest hint of motion. There were more lighted windows here, but they were shuttered tight and only a tiny glow fought through to brighten the night. No lookouts aided them now; each turning could bring them face to face with the beaklike muzzle of a shrilling. Periodically they would stop and listen for the telltale warbling that the creatures made, which might give them a few moments' warning; but that did nothing to counter the threat of the other Aberrants who prowled more silently. Kaiku found her hands trembling with adrenaline.

  'Back! Back!' Lon was whispering suddenly, and they flattened against the wall. They were in the middle of a long and narrow lane between residential houses, facades blank and featureless without the shrines and votive ornaments that they used to display. Dead plants straggled from clay pots, poisoned by the atmosphere.

  A soft trilling coming from the end of the alley. Lon looked in alarm the other way, but it was too far to run. Kaiku felt a sinking feeling in her stomach, and gripped her rifle hard enough to bleach her knuckles.

  'Here!' Juto snapped, and they scrambled behind a set of stone steps that descended from the porch-front of a house. It was pitifully inadequate as a hiding place: the four of them could barely cram behind it. Then Kaiku saw what Juto was up to. There was a cross-hatched grille there, covering the opening to the house's basement. He was pulling at it frantically.

  Phaeca drew her breath in over her teeth. She was peering down the alley, where the lithe shape of a shrilling was silhouetted against the lighter street. It paused, head swinging one way and then the other, deciding which way to go next. The seconds it took making up its mind were agony for the Sister, who was praying to all the gods at once that it should go on its way and leave them alone.

  But the gods, if they heard her, were feeling malicious that day. It turned towards them, and into the alley.

  'It's coming,' she warned.

  Lon cursed. 'Get that grille off!' he urged Juto, who gave him a roundly offensive oath as a reply. He had given up trying to pull and was shaking it instead, trying to work it loose from its setting. He had made some progress, for the stone was crumbly and weak, but it was still firmly in place.

  'How close?' he murmured.

  'Close,' Phaeca replied.

  'How close?' he hissed.

  'I don't know!' she said. She had never been good at judging distances.

  Kaiku began to look over the edge of the step, but Lon pulled her down, and Phaeca with her. 'It'll see you!'

  The warbling they could hear was merely the lower end of the aural spectrum of the shrilling's calls, which rebounded from objects and were picked up and sorted by sense glands in their throat, in a manner analogous to that of bats. The Sisters had captured live specimens in the past and studied them well.

  Juto had freed up the grille a little, but not enough. The warble of the shrilling was becoming louder. He shook the grille hard. It was breaking away the stone bit by bit, scraping out dust and tiny pebbles, but it was still not coming free.

  'Sweet gods, come on,' he pleaded. The shrilling was almost upon them now, they could hear it, as if it were standing right beside them…

  Phaeca grabbed his arm.

  And they were still, all of them, like statues hunkered together. A moment later, the shrilling's head appeared, its long skull curving back to a bony crest, its sharp teeth bared beneath its rigid upper jaw. It came slowly forward, bringing its scaled, jaguar-like forequarters into view, and there it stopped, cooing softly, looking up the length of the lane.

  The creature was mere feet away from where they crouched motionless in the shadow of the steps. They could see the rise and fall of its flanks, hear the hiss of its breath. They were paralysed, some ancient and primal biological response freezing them to the spot like a mouse in sight of a cat. It seemed ridiculous that the thing was right in front of them and it had not yet pounced.

  But it did not see them. The darkness was too deep for its peripheral vision to pick them out, and its echo location system was too directional to detect them. At least, until it turned its head.

  Still it did not move. The outsize sickle-claws of its fore-paws tapped softly on the cobbles. Some animal intuition was pricking it, a sensation of being watched, of the nearness of other beings.

  Go, Kaiku urged silently. They were close enough so that she could see the glistening black nexus-worm buried in its neck. Heart's blood, go!

  She could sense Lon reaching for his dagger, moving slowly, slowly. She wanted to tell him to stop, but she dared not make a noise, fearing that even the movement of her lips or the disturbance of her exhaled breath would tip the balance here and bring the creature down upon them. Her kana was on a hair-trigger, coiled inside her, ready to burst free in an instant.

  The shrilling padded onward.

  Kaiku could barely believe it. They watched it go, prowling up the lane, its sinuous form exuding a deadly confidence, its tail dragging behind it. She thought it was a trick at first, and she kept thinking that right up until the point where the Aberrant turned out of the end of the lane and was lost from view.

  They sagged with ragged sighs of relief.

  'I think we all owe Shintu a year's worth of thanks for that one,' Phaeca murmured, invoking the trickster deity of luck.

  Lon was chanting a mantra of swear-words that were lurid enough to make even Kaiku uncomfortable.

  Juto, visibly rattled, got to his feet and kicked the grille he had been trying to loosen. It broke free and fell into the basement.

  'Come on,' he said in disgust. 'The sooner we're out of this gods-damned place, the sooner I get paid.' They came upon the pall-pits not long afterward.

  Nomoru had still not returned, and Kaiku was worried despite herself. She did not like the surly scout – nobody liked her, as far as she could fathom, though she and Yugi did seem to have a tacit connection – but she had become used to her, enough so that her disappearance made Kaiku concerned for her well-being. Phaeca was more pragmatic: she was only hoping that Nomoru had not got herself caught or killed and alerted the enemy to their presence. But the Weavers seemed quiet now; in fact, there was a curious absence of them, for when Kaiku and the others first arrived in the city there had been periodic sweeps across the Weave to look for Sisters or other anomalies, and in the last few hours there had been none.

  The pall-pits were set into the hillside at a slight angle, and from where the intruders hid at the edge of the housing district they could see the whole terrible scene. A great swathe of the city had been levelled to make space for the pits, and rubble still surrounded them, half-standing walls and split beams and spars of metal piled in heaps or leaning against each other to form bizarre and discomfiting sculptures of ruin.

  Beyond the waste ground the disorder ceased: the pall-pits themselves were built with ruthless precision. They were two sets of concentric circles side by side, enclosed by a wall of metal. Each circle was stepped lower than the last as they progressed inward to the gaping holes at the centre, colossal black maws that exuded turgid, oily smoke in vast columns. Wide, smooth ramps led from the inner pits to their outer edges. The red light of furnaces blazed along the tiers, trapped behind grilles and slats and vents, painting the pits the colour of dirty blood. It sheened across a grimy warren of pipes.

  They paused for a time in the shadow of the houses, surveying the cluttered waste ground. The glow from the pall-pits pushed back the darkness; they would be exposed when they broke out into the open. Lon was more nervous than ever now, glancing
here and there, his fingers twitching as if playing some invisible instrument. He kept on choking back coughs, occasionally eliciting an annoyed glare from Juto.

  'We'll never make it across that,' he murmured. Then, tangentially: 'Where is that bitch?'

  Kaiku felt irritated that he should be abusing a companion of hers, no matter how disliked she was; it made her feel cheap and disloyal to tolerate it. 'Will you be quiet?' she hissed sharply, and he gave her a resentful glare and held his tongue.

  'We'll make it,' Juto said, responding to Lon's first comment. 'The fog's coming. Let's wait a while.'

  Juto was right. There was indeed a thickening in the air, the murk drifting down in veils too heavy to stay aloft. The rank taste in Kaiku's mouth that had been there since they had arrived in the city became more pronounced, an unhealthy metallic tang.

  'Could have done with this earlier,' Juto observed, scrunching up his face.

  'Does it happen often here? The fogs?' Phaeca asked.

  'Once in a while. Not often. Seems we really do have Shintu on our side tonight.'

  The haze sank into the streets quickly, concealing the pallpits and turning the waste ground into a red mist, in which shadowy shapes hulked like the carcasses of wrecked ships. At Juto's signal, they scuttled out into the disconcerting light, running low towards a heap of rubble and rusty iron beams. They skidded into cover in a scramble of loose stones, and Juto was just scanning to be sure all was clear for their next run when Lon grabbed his arm.

  'We can't go,' he whined.

  'What?' Juto said. 'Why not?'

  'The fog. It's the demons. It's the demons!'

  A spasm of disgust passed across Juto's face. Lon was cringing, his eyes darting about.

  'Don't be an idiot,' Juto snarled. 'It's just fog. It doesn't mean it's the feya-kori's doing.'

  'It's the demons!' Lon cried, trailing off into a strangled whimper as Juto grabbed him by the throat and pulled him closer, so that they were eye to eye.

  'It's just fog,' he said menacingly. There was a moment when they held each other's gaze, and then Lon looked down and away. Juto released him. 'You're the one who knows the way into this place. Get moving, or I'll shoot you myself.'