Roil nl-1

by Trent Jamieson

  She glanced at his pistol dismissively, and David had a sense that she could knock it from him before he could even pull the trigger.

  “Step away from the glass, addict,” she said.

  She’d seen him, she’d seen him take the Carnival. Despite the drug, he felt his face burn with shame. David raised his hands, but he did not let go of the gun.

  “If that’s what you want,” he said.

  “Down,” she said and aimed her pistols at his chest. “Get down!”

  David dropped, as the window shattered behind him. He rolled onto his back, and found himself inches from a Quarg Hound’s flexing teeth – and in that moment of desperate clarity, David marvelled that the beast’s teeth really did flex and shiver and shift.

  Keep moving. Keep moving. He shuffled back on his arse.

  There were two loud shots. The Quarg Hound shrieked, its teeth gnashing as the force of the shots drove it to the ground.

  Its legs shuddered, then the shuddering stopped. All at once the air stank of ammonia and cinnamon.

  “You’re safe now,” the woman said.

  “Thank you,” David said, feeling particularly less than safe because the woman had not lowered her weapons.

  “Don’t thank me. I’ve been tracking that hound for hours. And when it came here, to a place I’d been told might be safe…” She looked back at the wall. “Don’t know how it got here, the walls are high and well guarded, but there’ll be more. There always are.”

  The woman regarded him curiously. “My name is Margaret.” She took a step towards him.

  “David.”

  “One thing’s for certain, David, you’re not from around here are you?”

  “How do you know?” David asked, blinking.

  “Well you’re the first person I’ve seen in this part of the city all day, and you seemed awfully disappointed that the safe house was burnt. Only an idiot or a tourist would wander around these streets, or someone desperate. The Roil is less than two miles south of the city and, as you probably haven’t noticed, half these buildings are booby-trapped.” David wanted to argue that point, but in truth he really hadn’t noticed. “Chapman’s leaders have already given these parts over to the Roil, but it’s going to pay when it arrives. Unless, of course, some idiot or tourist sets them off. So, what are you, idiot or tourist?”

  “I’m neither,” David blustered. “I wanted to think. And let me say, you are most obviously not from around here. What I mean to say is I have never seen anyone with such pale skin. And if only an idiot would be hanging around here, what does that make you?”

  Margaret pointed one of her pistols at his head. “Let me remind you, it isn’t that wise to shout at the person with the most guns.”

  David blushed, and bowed his head. “I’m sorry. It’s just the things I’ve seen. Such terrible things.”

  Margaret nodded, lowering, then holstering her guns. “We live in terrible times,” she said.

  The second Quarg Hound came out of nowhere, leaping at Margaret’s back.

  David had no time to utter even a warning. He fired his pistol. The bullet struck the beast squarely in the head, but the pistol was a small one, not capable of a fatal shot. The Quarg Hound fell to the ground, pawed at its skull then scrambled to its feet. Its body bunched up, the muscles across its back rippling, as though it was ready to leap again.

  Margaret swung around with her rifle and finished the job, as though it were the easiest thing in the world. David couldn’t believe how fast she moved, even Cadell might have trouble matching her.

  “You’re full of surprises,” she said.

  David blinked and looked at her. His fingers burned from the chemical residue of the pistol shot, his ears were ringing.

  “I guess I am,” he said, and it may have just been the Carnival, but all of a sudden he was very pleased with himself indeed.

  Chapter 39

  The city changed, as all metropolises change, be it Chinoy, the Channon or Mirrlees. But none so quickly, the Roil ever a catalyst had accelerated. Even as Chapman’s population slept, even as they armed and reinforced the city’s walls, Chapman itself wasn’t Chapman any more, but a dreaming city nascent. Soon it would sleep, and drag those who lived there down with it.

  Have I set the scene enough?

  Of course not, you who were not there and could never understand.

  • Deighton – Dreaming Cities, Scheming Cities: The Manufactories of the Roil.

  CHAPMAN

  Margaret’s limbs shook. When had she last slept? She could not remember the last time she had slept. Her brain kept circling this, though the question held no real relevance. She wanted to ask David if he knew.

  Of course he didn’t. He didn’t look like he could possibly know anything. All those capable friends and allies she had lost. And now this addict, barely a man, he was as lost as her.

  Every time she looked up and saw the sun or the blue sky, no matter how smoke and spoor shrouded, reality sloughed away and her head spun. This sky had been all she had ever dreamed of as a child. Now she would happily trade it back if everything could be the way it once was. A few weeks ago, all she had known was darkness and the cruel comforts of her city. Now she was alone, stalled by the light, and with no one to help her. She didn’t even have her Melody.

  She did not know where to turn.

  Maybe David, after all he had been looking for the safe house and that suggested links with Anderson’s allies.

  Who was this idiotic window-shopping addict, with his dark and innocent eyes? She wondered if her eyes had ever been so innocent, her worries ever so simple.

  She wanted to clip him under the ear and alert him to his foolishness.

  But, then again, it was all relative.

  Not too many days ago she had made her empty vigil at the walls of her city, wondering when her parents were coming home. Back then she had rarely needed to make decisions, her parents had always been there to guide her (even if she had not really noticed) and to ensure that she was safe.

  And now she was alone.

  How does one go about saving the world?

  She didn’t even know how to go about talking with this stupid drug addled boy.

  “This weaponry, this cold suit, they were built in Tate,” she said. “My home.”

  David’s eyes widened. “But Tate fell years ago, decades ago.”

  Margaret shook her head. “Tate stood and fought and survived. No thanks to you Northerners. I grew up there, it was my home for twenty years. But it’s gone now.”

  “How many made it out?” David asked.

  “Just me,” Margaret said, the words meaningless and all too heavy; she was surprised she didn’t choke on them, that she could relate the facts so calmly. “The city was destroyed and everyone there. If they were lucky.”

  “I think I know what you mean,” David said. “The Witmoths.”

  “Yes,” Margaret said. “The Roil grew a mind and it took everything away.”

  Cadell was weary, and angry.

  Two tunnels beneath the city had collapsed, the third had involved a slog through dusty crevices then half-flooded sewers. His clothes were soiled by the time he climbed out into the street, and then the hunger took him. He’d heard voices in the sewers, so he descended again: gripped in a madness that did not pass until his clothes were drenched in other, ruddier, fluids.

  Cadell woke from the killing to guilt and rage. His hunger was growing strong again. The stress of the journey was taking its toll.

  Lucid and remorseful, he went to a bathhouse, one in a shadier district of Chapman where few questions were asked. As he washed away the blood, he had heard all manner of rumours, every bit of it disturbing. The least of which were explosions in the Deserted Suburbs.

  Perhaps something had gone wrong with Stade’s Project.

  By the time he had bathed and changed from soiled clothes to marginally fresher ones, it was late, and he hurried to the meeting place.

  David
wasn’t there, but he could just sense his scent.

  Cadell rushed to the safe house and found it a blackened husk, the boy nowhere to be seen. He cursed David as he searched the shell of a house. He found evidence of recent habitation and, curiously, a fuel cell for an ice rifle of a make he was unfamiliar with.

  He picked it up and regarded the stamp at its base. Now that was peculiar. It was stamped with Tate’s symbol. He slipped the cell into his pocket.

  He sniffed at the air, eyes closed. There was Roil Spore everywhere and the deeper musk of Quarg Hound, and faintly, just faintly, David. The young man had been here. And, a Quarg Hound had started hunting him, and something else. He was missing something here, and he wasn’t at all sure what.

  He cursed David again, and returned to the scent trail.

  It didn’t go far.

  He found the boy talking to a young woman, pale as the moons, and nearly as tall as him. Another one, another damn stray, punishment for his sins: he checked his nails for blood. Nothing, but he knew it was there.

  Cadell cleared his throat and was suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun. Maybe he deserved such an ending. He raised his hands slowly, studying the woman’s rifle as he did so. The weapon was sophisticated, better than any he had seen in Mirrlees. The sort of thing a man could approve of being killed by.

  “Cadell!” David said, sounding for once as though he was pleased to see him.

  “David,” Cadell said calmly. “Could you please tell your friend to put down that gun?”

  “Her name’s Margaret, she’s a Penn,” David said. “Margaret, this is Cadell.”

  The woman lowered the rifle and Cadell relaxed. The Old Man pulled the endothermic charge out of his pocket. “Well, that explains this. A Penn, eh, I’ve heard of your family. Didn’t expect to come face to face with one. I believe you have quite a tale to tell. Tate remains, eh, when all had thought it fallen decades past.”

  Margaret shook her head. “No, it’s gone. Taken by the Roil,” Margaret said. “My parents designed ice moats and endothermic cannon. But even those could not hold forever. Tate has fallen, as you said, but less than a week has passed since she fell.”

  Cadell passed her the spent charge. “I can refuel this for you, my dear.” He smiled. “Oh, this would be such a foreign world to you, but we can help.” Already he was seeing ways he could use the girl, her aid would be useful in the journey north. A little luck had come his way. A useful stray at last, he thought. “There is so much you need to know.”

  “I have learnt my share.”

  Cadell snorted. “Slinking around these suburbs I am sure you have.”

  On the wall Tope had thought he’d caught wind of David Milde’s scent, then whatever smell or presence was gone again as a gust blew in from the south. The damn Roil Spores drowned out his senses, no matter how much Chill he devoured.

  It was the blasted cuttle-blood that made the Roil such a rush, burning in his veins, the blood and the looming Obsidian Curtain. That was why the Vergers of Chapman were not blooded, just men, who had not suffered a childhood of transfusions, and training to control the rages. He envied them their weaknesses sometimes. And they, for their part, feared him.

  He sniffed the air again. No, there was no hint of David at all, just the Roil, just its mad promise.

  He slipped another lozenge in his mouth and bit down hard.

  Chapter 40

  The folk of Drift look down, look down and what they see makes each one frown

  • Folk Song

  The first thing Margaret noticed about Cadell was his extreme age, he somehow reeked of it, but in him it wasn’t a weakness but a strength born of time, as though he were granite. The second was the Orbis he wore, it drew the eye, and looking at it now, it seemed as bright as the sun. She’d seen nothing like it, her own parents had worn simple silver bands to signify their office.

  Cadell caught her gaze. “Once, all councillors wore these. But that was a long time ago. Today’s rings are markedly inferior.” And as he said it, it was as though the Orbis disappeared, what glamour what light it possessed was hidden, and it could have passed as merely a tawdry bauble.

  He turned to David. “Well, lad, you have the habit of making interesting friends.”

  They talked for an hour in the shadow of the wall and Margaret felt as though she had been plunged into some sort of fairy tale. Old Men, Vergers. Cadell claimed to know the secrets of the Engine of the World. In fact, he claimed to have built it. As much as, he’d said, anything of its complexity could be said to be built.

  For the first time in a week, she thought she might have a chance at succeeding in her aims, that maybe she’d had a turning in her luck. She looked at them both as resources, stepping-stones to the North and the Engine there.

  Margaret shared her own intentions to find it, at which Cadell patted her arm avuncularly. “You know so little about the Engine, my dear,” Cadell said. “You cannot know how lucky you are. If you had somehow made it to Tearwin Meet (and I could credit it because, well… you have made it this far) the walls would have stopped you, and if they didn’t, and there is a chance of that, slim, but a chance, then still you would have failed. Only the Old Men can operate the Engine. Only our blood, and this,” he raised his hand, revealing the Orbis again, and once more it burned brightly. “The Engine would have stripped the flesh from your bones. You may come with me to Tearwin Meet. You may help me reach the Engine, but you can never operate it. It is a folly of the ancient Engineers, it is my madness, and the curse laid down by the Engine itself. It would have been your undoing, no matter how lucky you were.” Cadell glanced at his watch. “We can’t stay all night here. We’ve a meeting to attend.”

  Margaret must have looked confused, and Cadell shook his head. “Oh the sorts of people I gather around me, lost children, when what I need are warriors.”

  Margaret scowled at that. She knew how to fight.

  “There’s an Aerokin pilot,” Cadell said, “waiting at the Inn of the Devoted Switch.” Cadell looked at his watch again, and tsked. “And we are rather late.”

  No time for rest then. But soon, and then she might just show Cadell who was the lost child and who the warrior.

  “You’re late,” Kara Jade said. “And you said nothing about passengers.”

  Cadell laughed. “If you only knew the day I’ve had.”

  The day all of us have had, David thought.

  Kara Jade didn’t look amused, just looked at her watch. “I was hoping we’d have done our talking by now and I’d be drunk.”

  “Things don’t always turn out how one hopes,” Margaret said.

  Kara turned towards her, as though she were some annoying biting insect newly discovered. “You’d better hope that that is true, then. I’ve some awful inclinations towards you, and we’ve only just met.”

  “Please,” Cadell said. “Please. I did not come here to fight.”

  “And I didn’t come here to be a pilot for three people. Just one. That is all.”

  David had never been in a pub like this. While the Inn of the Devoted Switch seemed crowded and a little forcefully jovial, he could not be at all sure it was not typical of its ilk. In Mirrlees he had been to but a handful of drinking places with his father, being too young to legally buy drink (though those who had sold him Carnival had never set such an age restriction).

  Drifters he knew, his father had had dealings with them, even counted some among his friends. But even the best of them were arrogant if not rude. He’d seen the city of Drift once, a few miles east of Mirrlees. He had been young, perhaps no more than five, sitting on his father’s shoulders.

  And his father had recited this poem.

  The folk of Drift look down, look down and what they see makes each one frown

  The folk of Drift they rule the skies

  A truth contained within their eyes

  The folk of Drift are rude indeed

  If the clouds were yours, wouldn’t you be?

>   Nice poem, but some Drift folk lived by its lines too faithfully.

  The inn was crammed with Drifters, and their haughty and garrulous natures were in evidence in every over-emphatic movement, every dark and dangerous stare. The air folk were loud and famous boasters and brawlers. If you were to believe them their city was older than the Council itself, their technologies built in the eons before, they’d once ruled not only the sky but the ground as well, but had found it boring, so the “tedium of empire” (as they called it) had given way to the Council. They were, according to them, also better lovers, poets and fighters than any one of the groundlings. David did not believe a word of it. Which did not mean he would voice such doubts here. He wanted to live a little longer, if he could.

  The Drifters wore their various guild colours, the yellow of elevator coxswain, the dark greens of steersmen, and the coveted red and black of Aerokin captains.

  In one corner, and David had to blink twice when he realised who it was, lounged Mr Blake and to his left his partner in flight, Miss Steel. They were arguing about something, which was no surprise. Lawrence Blake and Catherine Steel were a running argument, almost as famous for their fights as their Air Show, a bit of which – the Air Show, not the fights – David had seen when he was ten. Five Standard Dirigibles at mock battle, flying low and in tight formation, and Mr Blake leaping from ship to ship carrying a big coil of rope, binding them together like they were sheep rather than ships, then clambering onto the back of his Aerokin, the Arrogant Spice.

  “Blake and Steel,” he said, pointing in their direction.

  Cadell blinked.

  “If you say so.” Margaret said, clearly unimpressed. “Drifters, let them see how long they would have lasted in my city.”

  Cadell nodded to the crowded press of people at the bar. “David, why don’t you go over there and order some drinks. The house brew for me, please.”

  “Nothing for me,” Margaret said.

  “Bourbon,” Kara Jade said. “Two fingers of it.”