Read City Of Ruin Online

Authors: Mark Charan Newton

Tags: #Epic, #Fantasy, #Crime, #Fiction, #General

City Of Ruin (5 page)

Do I?

She was his sole reason for being
normal
, a reason for him to at least try. Beami was smart and tall and good-looking.
So I should feel something, shouldn’t I? I should and yes I want to.

Beami sighed, ‘What’re you doing up at this hour? Or was there a combat this evening?’

‘Yeah,’ he lied. The fight was last night; tonight had been business.

‘You never invite me along these days.’

‘You never ask.’

Discreetly, and with great thoughtfulness, he had managed to keep his dealings largely to himself. She knew about the fights he engaged in for sport – it would have been impossible to avoid her noticing the occasional scars. But it seemed important to him to keep these aspects of his life compartmentalized, as a crucial factor in making his daily existence as normal as possible. He could not hope to explain his needs.

‘I won though,’ he declared.

‘What a champion,’ Beami yawned. Her habitual sarcasm was once something he admired, but these days he hated her dismissive attitude towards him. Funny how the little things you like at the beginning often become the things you ultimately abhor. ‘You coming to bed?’

As if to highlight the ensuing silence, the heating system wheezed like an old man dying of pneumonia, indicating firegrain caught up in the piping somewhere.
Cheap shitting hack workmen
. The whole house suddenly shuddered like a living thing.

‘I’m just unwinding. I’ll be there in a moment.’

Beami gave him a forced smile, then uncoupled her gaze from his face. It took her a while to say it: ‘You want to try again tonight?’

‘Maybe.’

She left him then, with only his rum and costly possessions for comfort. The last time he’d tried . . . hadn’t ended well. Their attempts never did.

And afterwards I get overcome by rage, and try so hard to transform in front of her
. . .

It took him a while to get out of the chair, through laziness, tiredness, whatever. Then painfully slow strides to the bedroom. And there she was, lying in that huge bed, looking so small amidst all those coverlets and blankets, her hair spread out across the pillows. Boots off first, then clothes off, he climbed in next to her, the sounds of the city muffled in the background.

Warmth and soft skin.

He pressed against her, wondering if she was still awake or not, and when Beami turned towards him, the dread hit him, like it always did. Kisses didn’t do much for him, though she tried – along his neck, his jawline, and she made those noises, the ones she thought he liked to hear, little groans to indicate he might be satisfying her, as if to rebuild his confidence. Her hands skimmed across his bare skin.

Nothing, no sensation.

He made efforts too; he did not simply lie there. He felt for the heat of her stomach, tentatively explored her wetness. As he moved his mouth across her neck he resisted the urge to bite. He concentrated on the kinds of things he imagined he should be feeling. This went on for a while, duplicating gesture after gesture, and when she finally touched his cock he held his breath in anticipation . . .

Nothing. No reaction.

Time became less abstract and more relevant, and this added pressure to react pushed him over the edge. Rage had been flaring beneath the surface, and he didn’t want to express it, but he did . . . ‘Just leave me the fuck alone.’

And he shoved her aside, and turned over; he felt if he didn’t see her, it wouldn’t happen. He was now seething with anger, wanted to strike out at anything . . . But he held back, somehow. It wasn’t that easy, but he managed not to
turn
in front of her.

And he lay there, in the darkest of nights, unable to get an erection, wondering about something he dared not mention in public, not even to her. A question that couldn’t be said out loud to any of his gang, because it came loaded with shame and embarrassment.

Am I even a man any more?

 
F
OUR

Private Lupus Bel of the Night Guard informed Brynd that Villiren today was a world away from the one he remembered, and given the current rate of development and saturation with building projects, Brynd could well understand the lad’s childhood memories being different.

Under those interminable flat roofs, throughout the dreary crowded streets, men and women sought escape from reality in increasingly diverse ways. It never used to be like this, Lupus assured him. People kept hearing terrifying stories that flooded in from neighbouring islands, embellished as they passed from mouth to mouth. So what else was there to do but drink and party themselves into oblivion?

Secret drinking joints and burlesque clubs were springing up and closing down daily, moving around the city as if planned by stealth. If you had a fetish, you had a place to go. New music too, styles based around the Villjamur standards, but taken down smoother and more intricate routes, gentle minor chords and variants, a little extra beat. Despite the chill, girls would sit barefoot by fires, drinking cold lager. Teens risked injury in suicidal horse races along black-iced streets. Lift the lid on this city and you might never guess Villiren was almost under siege, a city with nothing else in mind except to wait for a war. There was an illicit fatalism about the place, a generation about to be lost to something.

In public places, Brynd had raged about his findings. Weeks had passed since the Night Guard had first encountered the enemy approaching across the ice. The military had travelled halfway across the Empire in order to investigate reported killings on Tineag’l, the island due north of Villiren, and there they had discovered what amounted to a genocide. An island’s population, all but wiped out – people butchered on the spot, or taken from their homes, leaving only blood-trails through the main thoroughfares or signs of futile skirmishes while attempting to resist. Only the elderly and children had been left – well, their bodies, at least, with bones half removed and the flesh discarded. In crowded halls Brynd had told the people of Villiren of these shocking events, while they listened dumbstruck. Still, no one seemed to have any real concept what the city was in for.

*

Brynd had been here for several weeks but still didn’t know what take of Villiren.

Empty of dramatic spires and bridges, when compared to his time spent in Villjamur, the cityscape now seemed vacant. Everything to be found over a mile away from the Ancient Quarter appeared flat and hastily built. More and more blocks were being constructed, their dull featureless facades set atop gothic foundations, and they seemed to proliferate at an alarming rate.

Another surprise to him was the heating system. Lutto had ensured that a network of firegrain pipes was constructed over the previous few years, admittedly with a little help from cultist technology. Channels of warmth were pumped like blood under the streets, through underground networks, through steaming pipes and up through the floors of houses in the wealthier neighbourhoods. Meanwhile outside, passageways and even main thoroughfares were doused by Cultist Water, a version of seawater primed with enhanced salinity, which was enough to keep the ice off for weeks at a time.

The garudas had now arrived, though only a few of them, who swept in investigative arcs to the north, along the fringes of Tineag’l, over the ice sheets that had almost bridged the islands; and sometimes pterodettes would coast lazily in their trails. These bird-soldiers never ceased to amaze: tall, and elegant yet surreal. When they flew in low one could see their dull armour, their feathers, in clearer detail, even the powerful muscles beneath their massive wings. Two or three times a day, Brynd would see the flash of
Brenna
devices, those explosive relics the cultists had devised to ensure the surrounding waters remained free of ice, so no enemy could traverse it on foot.

And now what? An endless wait, it seemed, as he discovered and observed further the idiosyncrasies of this strange city.

*

With Lupus in tow, Brynd was parading down from the citadel’attlements, heading towards the markets that lay between the district of Althing and the Ancient Quarter, where those Onyx Wings dominated the city skyline. From here the older styles of building could be seen: the original city, a mishmash of cylindrical towers and domes. This area was surrounded by a sea of flat roofing, only interrupted now and then by a large warehouse or a windmill.

Traders hastily erected stalls in the irens in the early morning, tying strips of coloured rags to indicate their territory, red or blue or green. Awnings were flipped into place and signs hoisted inscribed with esoteric symbols, in scripts of Jamur-tribal hybrid languages. Citizens themselves were hybrids, cross-breeds of the inhabitants of all islands of the Archipelago. But there were still some who clung to their island ways: Jokulites exhibiting awkward restraint and tentativeness at being this far east; Folkens behaving with spurious machismo or indifference. And derived from all cultures were thieves stealing the wares of others, seemingly nonchalant as they went about their business, of deftly pocketing whatever they could.

Villiren, rather than Villjamur, was the real commercial centre of the Empire. Metals came south from Tineag’l, meaning they were the first to get hold of the ore. Conspicuous qualities of goods therefore were manufactured here and distributed around the Jamur Empire, mainly to Villjamur, a city distant enough to never see completely what was going on here. Consumer items were branded according to the fashion they were made. Fabrics were woven in unique ways, specific colours, alloys that resonated at a given pitch, then sold on in the cities as desirable commodities. Branding, in fact.

Whether or not they were distracted by such a plenitude of trinkets, Brynd couldn’t tell, but it seemed that the people here didn’t care too much about the ice, let alone the threat of war. But that was the way of things: people concerned themselves with the small details rather than prophetic events.

This was no prison city: indeed what really made the difference was the absence of encircling walls, no sense of confinement. Buildings sprawled ever southwards, to dissolve gradually into farmland or forests. No tent city of refugees camped outside, like Villjamur. Nevertheless Brynd guessed they were probably crammed inside the community somewhere, hidden away within the large housing blocks, but well away from what was left of the old city.

Some of the traders had lit stoves so that passers-by would loiter around them for warmth and, given time, perhaps be tempted to buy something. Everywhere around them there was snow, on the roofs, on upturned crates, lining the walls of houses. People, garbed in furs and a few wearing masks, rooted through the stalls for the freshest catch of fish, and there always seemed to be a surprising amount of meat on display, given the city’s circumstance, which was another thing Brynd couldn’t fathom.

A small cluster of figures caught Brynd’s eye.

The three of them were huddled next to a corner, examining something on the ground, while other citizens milled around them heading towards the iren or on their way towards the old harbour.

As the two soldiers now approached them, one looked up and saluted. She was a tall and lanky woman with a permanent expression of surprise etched on her face by age. Nevertheless pleasant-looking, she wore a tweed cloak with a muddied hem, and a fine-tailored tunic underneath, of the type of cut you just didn’t see much any more. Under one arm was a battered old book, bound in brown leather.

She greeted Brynd. ‘Sele of Jamur, sir!’

The other two looked up abruptly from their business. One man was chubby, with a moustache, a flat cap, and a serious look on his face; the other completely bald, stocky and savage-looking. Both wore layers of brown tweed, and neither of them reacted in the slightest to Brynd’s unusual appearance, his albino skin, his red-rimmed eyes – as so many other people did.

‘Sele of the day,’ flat cap hailed, an older variation on the usual Empire greeting, and his voice was heavily accented from some place Brynd didn’t recognize.

‘Sele of Jamur. Can I check what the three of you are doing?’ Brynd enquired.

The tall woman, clearly the leader of the group, stepped forward with an earnest smile. ‘A little examination of old ley lines, dear sir.’ Her voice was bass with age, and loaded with cheap charm. A quick gesture on her part steered Brynd’s gaze towards a small tripod at the base of the wall, presumably a relic to judge by the metallic shimmer and the dials. At the top of it rested some kind of graded instrument, aimed at the faintest glow of red sun visible behind the clouds. These were cultists, surely.

‘Nothing illegal, this?’ Brynd asked, glancing towards Lupus. The private had his bow already slung across his shoulder, but he didn’t think there would be need of it. These people seemed innocent enough.

‘D’you hear that, Abaris?’ She turned to flat cap, then back with her face creasing in smiles.

‘Pah! Illegal, he says,’ Abaris replied. ‘Nah, nothing of the sort, lad. We’re merely exploring some technology of the Ancients, ley lines and the like. Bit of lore stretches across this island – you know, myths and whatnot. All in all, we were rather hoping we could be of some use, given that the city might soon be having a few problems, like.’

The bald man remained utterly silent.

‘We’re from the Order of the Grey Hairs, sah!’ Abaris confirmed. ‘Last remaining cultists of various minor sects. United in the fact that, well . . . um, the rest of our lot are dead, more or less. Us old things is all that’s left. And now at your service!’

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