Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2

by Malcolm J Wardlaw

  But of course, there might be no barge at all.

  He took a long time to sleep that night, the sharp edge of reality chafing the flesh of his mind. He struggled to convince himself the dangers of trying to escape were worth it, relative to taking the oath in vain and escaping next year when the weather was better. Against that, what crimes would he have on his soul by the time he managed to escape? What crimes were on his soul now? Were they even crimes? The most senior glory officers had praised him again and again for his dedication to prevention. What is a crime anyway? Tom Krossington himself not only knew about the Value System, he made use of the despicable place as a dustbin. The whole sovereign caste swam in blood. Anything Lawrence had done paled against that.

  He turned to this side and that side, becoming angry at not receiving the oblivion of sleep. Scenes taunted his mind. There was this difference: Lawrence had pulled the triggers. He had seen wretched surplus torn apart by the storm of steel. Yes, there is a vast difference in the world between merely knowing something is going on unseen and actually being there pulling the triggers.

  The pointlessness of dwelling on these memories eventually exhausted him and he got his sleep. Yet the morning provided no relief. He could not change the past, only the future. What kind of future had The Captain reserved for his new lieutenant? The Captain was no fool. There would be no gentle easing-in for his new subordinate. Not a week would pass before Lawrence had branded his own chest with the iron of villainy, else shot himself.

  The nights that week were long. Lawrence slept little, his organs surging and tingling in stress at the prospects. Say yes and he could be free again, free and rich. Yet Pezzini’s sternness had taken root in him, gnawing at him. He had prevented surplus flow for years without ever doubting that what he was doing was justified. The logic could not be disputed; preventions were essential to protect the cosmos from chaos. That legitimised them. Yes, the logic was sound, the problem was, did he still really believe it? In his own mind? Say yes to The Captain and all the doubts went away. Whereas, escape meant turning into the gale of his guilt to risk the judgement of decent-minded people.

  He writhed this way and that in his bunk, sliding in his own sweat. Who was he trying to kid? He would say yes. He knew he would say yes. Even if his brain commanded his lips to say no on Sunday afternoon, his larynx would disobey orders and say yes. He had to say yes. Damn it. The Captain knew what he was doing, allowing a man a whole week in which to stew over whether he wanted to live or die.

  Chapter 12

  De Stulna, the Stolen Ones, took the stage. The clean, high tones of the nyckelharpa carried over the gamers, sitters and spays, poising them on edge. Saturday night in the Value System exploded into a leaping and spinning melée. For a blissful few hours, stiff and music liberated eighteen hundred head of value from the trap in which they were doomed for the rest of their lives.

  Lawrence edged up one wall of the Dining Hall, barely noticed in the shadows. He was sweating and flushed. Where the hell was Pezzini? The place was a Hogarth painting, value falling over tables, tipping backwards off benches, throwing each other in joy and anger, gamers a whirl of pink and yellow and scarlet, hairy arms and legs. In all this the big spay was nowhere.

  Tricky Fingers! Draped in a white toga with a pink belt. Lawrence took cover on a crowded bench, head down feigning a maudlin attack, muttering curses, urging Tricky Fingers to bugger off. Buttons had joined him now, sporting yellow tights, a green mini skirt and a black leather waistcoat. Lawrence enjoyed a vicious pleasure at the sight of that waistcoat. It had been a jacket, until Lawrence sliced off the sleeves the previous day—not out of spite, it was all for a good cause.

  A hand grabbed his arm and dragged him around. It was Pezzini. Anyone bored enough to be watching Lawrence amongst all the other men would have seen him apparently make for the stage and then switch abruptly right to pass out through one of the doors to the Yard. Such a person would have assumed he was going out to join others pissing against the wall. No sitter or spay went anywhere near the toilets on a Saturday night. Lawrence pretended to take a stroll in the Yard, inhaling crisp air as a relief from the foetid air of the Dining Hall. It was a mild night with a total overcast holding down the heat of the land. That is, the night was perfect for escape. Lawrence ambled off into the darkness beyond the lights. From the left came grunting and panting, which he supposed were two gamers having sex. In a far corner of the Yard, a ring of drunken louts was beating up some poor bastard, probably some Undead Nameless Gone unwary enough to be caught alone. Laughter and cheers, the thudding of boots impacting a body, groans and whimpering. Someone spat. The louts drifted back towards the door of the Dining Hall.

  Spiderman was amongst those lined up taking a piss. On impulse, Lawrence called out:

  “Hey Spiderman—over here.” Spiderman glanced over his shoulder, squinting. “Big Stak calling.”

  Spiderman hitched up his pants and came forth, listing and stumbling. He was pretty drunk—far too drunk to make an escape run.

  “I haven’ sheen much of you. Whereyubin?” Spiderman said.

  “Not in a drinking mood. You having a good night?”

  “Pretty usual. You?”

  “So far, so good.” Lawrence felt lost for words. He looked into Spiderman’s face, seeing the tragic woe in the eyes, the creases of middle age on skin not yet forty years old. The man was lost to his fate. Lawrence could feel the immensity of the task ahead, the sheer effort of creative will, let alone the courage, required to overcome all the dangers. It was hopeless really. It was barely a death worth dying—it was just more worth dying than the years of rot that ended in this wreck of a once-man standing before him.

  “I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yeah,” shrugged Spiderman. He turned away back to the comforts of stiff and Mirror-Face sobbing through his life story one more time.

  Lawrence’s fingers touched the far wall of the Yard, where he removed his boots, bound the laces together and slung them over one shoulder. By touch, he glided along the wall until he reached the corner of the Yard and waited just inside the archway that lead out towards the Tidal Basin. Time passed. Lawrence coughed.

  “Who is that?” Pezzini muttered from the darkness.

  “Lawrence.”

  Neither one pulled the other so much as they were both jogging out through the archway.

  “Big Stak my perfect princess! Where the bloody hell are you?” The bleary, raucous yell halted them. “Princess, I know you’re out there. Get over here.” It was Tricky Fingers, yelling at the top of his voice. “Princess, get here now, that is an order.”

  On a normal night, Lawrence would have lain low, knowing Tricky Fingers was just a coward cum bigmouth with a gutful of stiff. This night he did not have such luxury. If this bloody drunken fool kept ranting, the ultras might call a midnight parade just to piss everybody off.

  “Wait here,” murmured Lawrence. “Hold my boots.”

  He loped back through the arch, his beauty, the knife sharpened to a fang of steel, gripped in his right hand.

  “I’m here, Tricky Fingers.”

  “Come closer.”

  “Come to me, darling.”

  “Get over to me,” Tricky Fingers grunted.

  “I’m with someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Come and join us.”

  Tricky Fingers stepped forward, stumbled, righted himself, trod on his Roman toga and yanked at it, muttering curses. Lawrence knew, consciously and coolly, this man was going to get no more chance than a pig in the slaughterhouse. Tricky Fingers tottered on, unwinding the pink belt to let the front of the toga hang open.

  “Where are you, damn you?”

  “Tricky Ducky, just another few paces.”

  “Stand still, you cock-teasing little bitch.”

  Lawrence permitted the hands of Tricky Fingers to reach him and slide over his shoulders. The drunk stood
up close, the open flaps of his toga falling to either side of Lawrence’s hips. His prick pressed against Lawrence’s thigh and rotten breath poured forth.

  “Ah, Perfect Princess, I always knew your queer side would win. Pretty men are always queer.”

  Tricky Fingers escorted him deeper into the darkness, quiet now that he felt victory.

  “My friend is over there,” Lawrence said. Despite himself, he could hear a quiver of tension in his voice.

  “Who is he?”

  Lawrence took a long step and turned, in that sweeping movement slashing under the chin of Tricky Fingers with the force of barging aside a charging man. The blade made a wet ripping. Hotness splashed over Lawrence’s hands and face and he heard it drumming on the front of his overalls. He jumped back. Tricky Fingers collapsed amid a splattering. From the darkness erupted a strangled gargling and a barking cough. Lawrence stooped to finish the job and got kicked in the side of the head. The heel of his right hand drove the knife deep into soft flesh under the sodden toga. He stabbed again and again, through ribs and breastbone, until the knife stuck dead as if embedded in wood and he had to work it to and fro like a pump to extract it.

  Dead Tricky Fingers was a bulky load of meat. Lawrence could have sworn the corpse was clawing at the cobbles to thwart his efforts to drag it to the far side of the Yard, where he abandoned it.

  “Pezzini, you there?”

  “I am here.”

  Lawrence groped over to the source of the voice.

  “Give me my boots back.”

  He slung the laced boots over his shoulder, gripped Pezzini’s wrist and yanked him hard into a long-paced quick march.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Of course I bloody killed him.”

  They moved in silence, their direction sure from intimacy with the way. Lawrence knew from small ruts and ridges in the path they were nearing the concrete sluice over which Pezzini had led him on Tuesday night. He felt his way towards the sluice. From the concrete footway, he reached down into the muddy shallows to retrieve the first tube. It was the size and proportion of a human arm, being made from one of the sleeves cut off Buttons’ leather jacket. Hell never knew a demon rave and curse as much as Buttons did after the discovery of the mutilation of his jacket into a waistcoat. Lawrence had actually performed the procedure on Friday at lunch time. Bloody dangerous business it had been, first digging up his beauty from the willow plantation in daylight, then rummaging through Buttons’ kit bag whilst other value yattered not ten feet away on the far side of the bunks. Two harsh slices and back to the gang with both sleeves and the knife on his person. Death by neck-shot it would have been had SMS London ordered a strip search. That was a chance he just had to take. He could not win freedom except by jumping impossible chasms again and again.

  His hand claimed the second sleeve of water.

  “I’ve got them. Take this one.”

  The sleeve ends were bound tight with bootlaces, or at least, he hoped they were bound tight and not dribbling. He carried the water tube over one shoulder with his boots whilst gripping Pezzini’s wrist with the other hand and hauling him on.

  “You did not have to kill him,” Pezzini said.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “You are a pitiless thug.”

  “Shut your precious face.”

  The path climbed. They were on the flank of the sea defence, which meant the Tidal Basin was just beyond the crest ahead. Lawrence slowed, padding forward on the balls of his feet, pausing between each pace. He doubted any guards would be on the shore, due to the risk—if only a psychological fear—from the marsh people. All he could hear was the creamy roar from the far side of the sea defence. It must be near high tide now, with the breakers right up to the base of the defence. He put his mouth to Pezzini’s ear.

  “Hold my boots and water tube and wait here.”

  “What if you don’t come back?”

  “Then I’m dead.”

  “What do I do then?”

  Lawrence practically murdered the idiot on the spot. They might be ten paces from death—and Pezzini needed career guidance.

  “Do what you fucking like. It’s your life.”

  In exasperation he abandoned Pezzini and ascended the path until it curved over the top of the dyke, where he waited. There are few guards who will not cough or yawn, or pace about to break the monotony. All seemed clear. He proceeded on down the slope, conscious of the surface changing from gravel to clay, which yielded a little and was sticky. He could hear waves lapping ahead. Again, he waited. From the darkness came only the creak of the floating pier and the small waves within the Tidal Basin. Surely it was inconceivable there were no guards? The end of the floating pier was not ten paces away. He could not have failed to hear any guards if they were there. They would talk, surely? They could not just stand like marble in this darkness for hour after hour. An unpleasant suspicion occurred to him that the barge was anchored out in the basin. He put the thought aside.

  Somewhere in one of the hundreds of books he had read was a field marshal whose principle was not to visualise what might go wrong but rather, to focus all attention on what must go right. That felt like sound advice. His hand gripped about his beauty, he advanced down the slope, toes exquisitely sensitive to contact with the boots of a lurking ultramarine. Instead, the cold sea soaked his feet. A little more exploration and his fingers touched the planks of the floating pier. He listened. The ropes and planks of the pier murmured softly. While he waited, the tide advanced and his feet went numb. The guards must be on the barge itself.

  A peculiar sensation of enrichment alarmed him, as if his eyes were suddenly hallucinating all manner of swirls and gleams. It was the moon. The clouds were breaking up and a crescent moon peeked through a gap, casting a thin, milky light on the low horizon of the sea defence running around the Tidal Basin. He checked his tag was tucked under his hat, to stop it glinting.

  He tried crawling out along the pier but found his canvas overalls made an dragging noise on the planks. It was actually quieter to stand and tight-rope walk along the edge of the pier to minimise creaking of planks. He thought ahead. The ultramarines were not hard-working by nature. Not even heelers stooped to menial routine. He just could not imagine ultramarines mounting guard duty out here in the open, far from electric lights and central heating. However, they could not possibly leave a barge untended.

  Certainly, a barge had arrived and been unloaded by Gang 9 during the afternoon shift. The barge could not have left since then. None of the barges had engines, therefore they could not depart the basin against the tide. So, the barge was still here and it must be guarded.

  Lawrence edged on, dead slow and dead cautious. He slid one socked foot ahead and paused, then brought the other foot up behind the first and paused again. He began to hear a soft clapping sound. That was, unmistakably, the sound of rope slapping against a mast—incontestable reassurance the barge was there. He prepared to lunge for a stomach. The midriff is an easy target. A man stabbed there will collapse from shock in a few seconds.

  The next pace dropped horribly into thin air. He flailed for balance, almost hurling his beauty far out into the basin, by the slightest margin winning over gravity to take a pace back. He was at the end of the pier. No slapping of waves against the hull. No boots clumping on the deck. No hull.

  A nebulous dread gathered in Lawrence’s chest. Something was extremely wrong. He stretched out into the night to touch the steel hull, yet his fingertips met thin air. The barges had a freeboard that should have presented the gunwale at about his head height, yet he was feeling nothing… The sky must have taken pity on Lawrence. The thin moon shone again and glimmered with just enough light to reveal that a few feet out from the pier, a kind of sloping rope ladder emerged from the water and climbed into the darkness.

  The simplicity of the truth, the sheer obviousness of it, held him stunned. The barge was on the bottom of the bas
in. The crew left it with the valves open and the tide simply rose over it. No need to guard a thing. The crew would shut the valves and wait for the tide to rise when they wanted to go to sea.

  After the relief of understanding came fear, a terrible and lonely fear that crushed him down. Panic ran off him in streams of sweat. He was going to die. He was going to die by the ghastly way of the marsh people or by the quick way of SMS London’s pistol; he was going to die, for he had lost.

  It has to be said of Lawrence that he had a bold heart, whatever his other failings. He blocked the thoughts of death and cleared his mind to a pure white and he held it clear by will power until that surging terror faded. He was not dead yet. There were many hours of the night ahead. Think options. He could wait for the tide to fall and then shut the valves in the barge. Within a few seconds he knew that option was a no-go. The next high tide was almost midday. In any case, the valves were probably locked open, or else some vital link was removed to make it impossible for value to use the barges.

  Lawrence stood on the end of the pier, clenching his teeth, thinking for life. Back on the far side of the sea defence, Pezzini must be getting pensive. In not too many more minutes he would turn pessimistic and then resigned, he would go back to his dormitory and awaken to face a new life in the ultramarines. Lawrence needed a Plan B compelling enough to keep Pezzini in the escape. Without Pezzini as a supporting witness, his own escape would be useless.

  At length, Lawrence did return over the crest of the sea defence and he called in low tones into the darkness. “You still here?”

  “Why have you been away such a long time?”

  “I’ve had an idea.”

  “Are you saying there is some kind of problem?”

  “They leave the valves open after unloading. When the tide comes in, the barge stays on the bottom. There are no guards out here because there is nothing to guard.”