Roil (30 page)

None are more culpable than Stade. And yet, perhaps things may have been so much worse. Though it is hard to imagine outcomes more dreadful, nor lives lost greater.

Stade was a villain, but he was a villain of his time. And so history has judged him. After all, it was an age of monsters, a role that Stade embraced with gusto.

Medicine looked at the iron thing, well what remained of it. He put aside the field glasses, rubbed at his gritty, aching eyes, and called ahead to Agatha and the driver.

The
Grendel
slowed to a walking pace as it approached the wreck.

Agatha signalled to the engineer and the
Grendel
stopped. She dropped from the train while it was still moving and strode towards the wreckage. Smoke billowed from it, though it was a smoke unlike any Medicine had ever seen. It did not dissipate, but hung low, following the sun.

“Keep your distance,” Medicine said.

Early this morning they had heard (and felt) it strike the ground. And now, just a few hours from the Narung Mountains, here it was.

The vehicle was as large as the
Grendel
, though designed for flight instead. Medicine for the life of him could not see how it might fly. Yet, obviously it had flown before ending up here. Out of its element it looked ridiculous, some poor joke in shattered metal.

As Agatha neared the ship, the smoke coiled up, away from the sun towards the woman. Medicine watched its stealthy movement. He shouted at Agatha to get away, that the smoke was shifting towards her, and the woman blanched. She turned on her heel, slipping something into her mouth, and ran from the crater.

“Stay away from that ship,” she commanded. “And everyone take your Chill.”

“What is it?” Medicine demanded on her.

“They’re called Witmoths. I’d been briefed on them a few days before we left. They’re dangerous, mind altering,” she said. “This thing came from the Roil.”

“Mind altering?” Medicine asked, wondering why he hadn’t been briefed on this as well.

“Let’s just say it changes one’s allegiances. If this came from the Roil then we can expect more of them. It doesn’t do anything by halves.” She handed him a small lozenge. “This is a kind of prophylactic. It’s horrid but it works.”

He slipped it into his mouth and grimaced as it stung his teeth. Medicine’s mind returned to the night in the compound, the sound of thunder in the sky. Every time he looked at the iron ship it made him uneasy. Wherever it had come from, Roil city or Mirrlees research station, he was certain that it did not bode well for them. Very little did.

Such thoughts were quickly forgotten when they came upon a blasted battleground.

Many thousands of Cuttlefolk corpses lay across the plain. The earth itself was blackened and ruined. An airship, this one of a more familiar design, lay in fragments, its ribs rising out of the earth like the burnt bones of a titan.

The air was thick with the choking reek of ash and burning Cuttleflesh. The Cuttlefolk had been beaten here and decisively. What kind of weaponry did the Underground possess that could so blithely defeat such an army?

“Something new.” Agatha mused. “And something powerful. At least we don’t need to warn our colleagues in the mountains about the Cuttlefolk. Let us hope they know we’re coming. I would hate to think of them deciding we were the enemy.”

She called to her troops to raise all the white flags they could and to lower the train’s guns.

“Better to look unthreatening,” she said. Medicine agreed with her, though he couldn’t imagine the
Grendel
being anything else.

Medicine wasn’t sure what the people of the Underground thought about their fast approaching train, but they did not fire upon it as they crossed those last few miles. Regardless, tension built amongst all those aboard it.

The
Grendel
reached the end of the line, stopping at a heavy set of gates before which were signs of further struggle, craters and a pile of Cuttlemen dead, though nothing to rival the destruction to the south. The gates opened slowly to admit the train. Ice-cold water washed over them, the train chilled.
For the moths
, Medicine thought.
How long has this been going on?

The
Grendel
pulled at last into the Underground, tracks running all the way into the compound, buried in the mountain. And there was the
Yawn
, waiting on a parallel line. The mystery of the missing train solved, though another mystery had replaced it. Why hadn’t Stade known of its whereabouts?

They piled off the train and were met by hundreds of armed guards.

The place is a fortress
, Medicine thought. He saw no salvation for humanity here. Just war. Men and women, armed with odd weaponry, lined the walls that bounded the caverns proper. Huge cannon too guarded the wall and two tall structures of dull iron and gleaming glass that looked like crooked necked lanterns.

Perhaps to light the underground at night,
he thought.

Medicine walked warily at the fore with Agatha.

A man met them at the platform. “Welcome,” he said. “My name is Grappel, we were expecting you.” He gestured at the Grendel. “Though not for some days, and certainly not aboard this. You’ve proven yourself... resourceful.”

Agatha frowned. “I do not know you,” she said. “Where is Sam?”

“There has been some restructuring,” Grappel said. “After we restored contact with Mirrlees, Sam Asquin was moved to another area. It seemed he was a little slow in reacting to the problems we have been having in completing work on time.” Grappel smiled. “The addition of your thousands will aid us considerably.”

“We were going to warn you of the Cuttlefolk,” Agatha said. “But it looks as though you didn’t need it.”

Grappel laughed. “We dealt with them quite efficiently, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You did,” Medicine said. “But how?”

“New technology. While Mirrlees rots, we have been nothing but industrious here. The cannon above are coolant launchers, but those lanterns are prototypes, they launch nothing more than light, expressed as heat energy, though in an extremely concentrated form. I doubt it would do much against the Roil in the long term: the spores would find the heat quite invigorating, but the Cuttlefolk, they’re a different prospect altogether.”

“It was a massacre,” Agatha said.

Grappel bowed. “And one that we engineered as a warning. The Cuttlefolk will think twice before they attack the Underground again. The last bastion of humanity cannot be threatened before it is even completed. Now, please come in. You all must be very tired, and Councillor Aidan would meet with you tonight.”

Agatha glanced over at Medicine. She didn’t look happy, but it was her job to be concerned with such things.

Grappel sighed. “Now, we can all stand here chatting till the Roil comes or we can take you into the shelter of the Underground and you can have the rest which every one of you deserves after all those miles. I know which I’d prefer. First though, you will need to be checked for infection. Please, empty the train and take the first few steps into your new home.”

Agatha signalled to her troops and they disembarked. Once they were gathered outside the train and heads counted Agatha turned to Grappel. “All are accounted for. Now do what needs to be done, I would communicate with the Mayor.”

Grappel shook his head, and raised his hands towards the wall. The guns mounted there had turned upon them. Grappel bowed deeply and ironically. “Welcome again to the Underground, ladies and gentlemen. A new territory of the Free State of Hardacre.”

Medicine looked to Agatha, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Stade had lost before he had even begun. Agatha’s face was without expression, though Medicine could see the fear and anger bound deep within her eyes and a bleak resolve. She grabbed the rifle from across her back.

“Find some cover,” she whispered at Medicine. He didn’t move.

“We can’t win this battle here,” he said. “We’ll be slaughtered.”

“I know.”

“And I, for one, have no wish to die.”

Agatha lowered her gaze. She reached for Medicine’s hand, squeezed it gently. “None of us do. But I have my duty, and it is to the city of Mirrlees and its people.”

“What of your duty to your soldiers?”

“Put down your weapons and you will be treated with respect,” Grappel said. “We’re not butchers, there is far too much work to be done to waste lives now.”

Agatha hesitated. Medicine watched her eyes flick from him to her soldiers, and the armed men on the wall. Her shoulders slumped and she dropped her rifle.

“Do as he says,” Agatha hissed at her troops. “We’ve not come all this way to die now.”

They were not quick about it, but there was no fight in their eyes. They were all too exhausted. The soldiers of Hardacre were much faster in their confiscation of the weapons.

This is not about loyalties
, Medicine thought,
but survival
. He had learnt that lesson tied to a chair by Stade in Ruele Tower. He wondered if Stade could live by those rules. He thought of Stade’s arrival and the discovery that all he had laboured for was gone. Well, he’d created this mess, set it all in motion when he turned aside the refugees from the Grand Defeat.

There was a grim satisfaction to be found in that.

The Underground soldiery led away the workers to mess halls and people were simply pleased at the thought of real food (none of them had ever possessed any loyalty to Stade in the first place). Grappel took Medicine aside. Agatha made to follow and Grappel shook his head. “Not yet. You will need to be debriefed. Things are different here to what you are used to.”

Agatha nodded her head.

“See you soon,” Medicine said.

“Yes,” Agatha said, brushing his arm with her fingers. “Be careful.”

Medicine reached out and squeezed her hand. “The hard part’s over isn’t it? We made it here.”

Grappel gestured to Medicine to follow him. “The hard part’s only beginning, I’m afraid,” he said.

Grappel took him to a small room, built into the mountain near the tracks. He passed Medicine a flask. “You might want a bit of this.” Medicine noticed the administrator’s hands were shaking. He waved the flask away.

“Not now,” Medicine said.

Gunshots cracked, men howled, and more guns fired.

“What are you doing?” He demanded, but he already knew the answer.

Grappel raised his hands, his face pale. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was an order.”

Medicine pushed his way past him, and back to the courtyard. The Council troops lay dead, Agatha with them. Medicine watched as they dragged the corpses away: the blood trailing them an accusation.

He dropped to his knees. “What have you done? You said you needed workers, everybody you could get.”

“Mr Paul, you of all people must understand,” Grappel said, as though speaking to a child. “We are at war. There is no time for negotiation. And having enemy soldiers in our midst is... surely you must understand that. We will treat them with respect. They will all be given military burials.

“Things are moving very swiftly now. Faster than you might realise.” Grappel’s face hardened. “Please consider how lucky you were that it wasn’t you with them. Though, I have bullets enough to spare one more, if your solidarity with the enemy extends that far.”

Medicine lowered his eyes.

“Good, I didn’t think so. Now, come, we have work to do. And I am sure you would like to say a few words at their funeral.”

In one day the Roil ignored all known limits to its expansion. To think that it could do so knowingly and swiftly gave an edge of hysteria to all actions that followed it.

The Roil was coming and it had grown cunning.

THE AIR ABOVE SHALE

The inconsolable heavens wept and lightning split the darkness, revealing a Quarg Hound, hunched down on the corner of the street, its broad back twisted with muscle. Saliva streamed, black and thick, from a mouth that was too wide, and a malicious gleam lit its huge eyes. More disconcerting was the intelligence David perceived within them, something lacking in any of the hounds David had encountered before. The beast was bigger too, twice the size of the ones on the
Dolorous Grey
.

Quarg Hound? Quarg
bear
more likely.

“Rather nasty,” someone said beside him and David ducked and turned, hands clenched.

Margaret frowned at him, her pistols out. “You want to fight me, or it?” She looked from hound to David and back again.

“I could do with some help.”

“These aren’t much use against such a big creature,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and holstering her pistols. She picked at her nails with her rime blade. “I think you’d better run. That’s something I can tell you all about: running.” She seemed to give the idea some consideration. “That is unless you’d prefer me to slice your throat instead; put you out of your misery as it were.”

David ran.

“Good for you,” Margaret shouted after him. “Though you might want to run a little faster... make that a lot.”

The beast followed, howling and snorting.

David sprinted down Main Street. The hound’s claws clattered on the cobblestones so loudly that they echoed above the hiss of the rain.

What a malevolent steam-engine-sound it was, bunching up as though ready to pass. Only, David knew it would not pass, had no intention of passing, that it was aimed right at the centre of his back and the soft and chewy insides his back contained.

David shrieked, tearing like a madman towards his home. He made it, then realised that the door was locked. Where were his keys? He dug in his pockets, and found them, hazarding a glance behind him.

He wished he had not.

A gigantic black shape loomed, red eyes the size of dinner plates flared at him. Teeth, large as David’s fingers, glistened with blood and spit.

It grinned at him, a huge messy grin, and a hand dropped out of its mouth.

David yelped, and slammed the key into the lock, turned it, and dove through the door.

Only it was not home but a room into which he was crammed with Cadell, Mr Whig, Mr Buchan and his father.

The room was quite large but most of the space was consumed with the business of being a huge map.

Cadell smiled at him warmly, he clapped his hands together. “Ah, David. You’ve arrived!”

“Very late,” Warwick Milde said, he laughed. “But not as late as me. Believe it or not I was worried, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” David said. “A lot has happened.”

“Still...”

Cadell frowned, and lifted a hand to silence him. “That isn’t the issue, nor are those memories useful. You’re here now, David.” Cadell jabbed a pointer down – not that David had noticed him holding a pointer until then and he focused on the map properly for the first time. He recognised it at once – a map of Shale – though unlike anything he had ever seen.

“It’s what we used to call a Panoptic Map,” Cadell said.

“It’s bloody brilliant,” David said.

The map was three dimensional and truly alive, better than anything map powder could bring about. To the south and east, above the dark mass of the sea, floated the air-city of Drift. David was tempted to reach down and pick it up until Cadell wrapped his knuckles with the pointer. “There’ll be none of that tomfoolery here, I’m afraid.”

“Of course,” David murmured. “Of course.”

“He’s a good boy, does what he’s told,” his father said. “Works hard, and he’s extremely bright. After all he is my son.”

“Shh!” Cadell hissed. “I’ve no time for your subconscious yearnings, David. Look, boy. Really, look.”

The map was hypnotic in its hyper reality. You could drown in it, and David did.

A little to his left lay Mirrlees, wound up in its tangle of the River Weep, tiny lights burning, so well crafted he could almost make out his house and the Halloween lights strung down the street. Then it all clicked, gained absolute and awful clarity, and David had an inkling of how a god might feel.

Omniscience, that was the word, David saw so much that it hurt, not just his eyes but all the way into his brain and his bowels. Omniscience was a migraine of knowledge, and yet he could not stop.

“Ah, he’s got it. Everybody does eventually,” Cadell said.

Outside, a Quarg Hound prowled and David fought the desire to squash it beneath his fingers like a bug.

David’s focus slipped south to where Chapman had once been.

Now there was just the Roil.

It seethed and bubbled, a living density of smoke. He took in its immensity. At its heart rose the Breaching Spire a silver strand that lifted off the map and reached above his head. How had he missed that before now? At the Roil’s edges, fingers of darkness reached out then sank back, as though it was dragging itself along by them. David was glad the
Roslyn Dawn
was well away from Chapman.

“There are things you need know, David. Things I need tell you. The Orbis and my blood give me time, and this dream gives me space. Tearwin Meet is where you must go, to the Engine of the World.” He pointed north on the map to the Old City. The ring on David’s finger crackled with ice, grew luminous and cold. “But that will take time, more than I would like. Still, it cannot be rushed – rushing would be unwise. Tearwin waits, but both you and it must be patient.”

David’s eyes followed the pointer. Something moved there, a shape he couldn’t quite focus on, huge in its awareness. David squinted at it.

Cadell slapped him again with the pointer, harder this time. “Don’t do that! You’ll alert it to our presence.”

He tapped the mile high walls of Tearwin Meet with the pointer. “Buchan’s failed expedition was only the latest. Many have foolishly tried to find an entrance to the city and paid the price with their lives. Tearwin Meet is guarded, in ways beyond the skills of those still living. But none of them possess what I’ve given you. The ring is the key and the map, and it will guide you there if you let it. But once there...” His face softened, David couldn’t read the meaning of his expression, beyond a gentle sadness. “Be careful with the Engine, and all your dealings with it. Caution. Caution. In the ages since it was last engaged it has grown a little mad.”

“How does an engine grow mad?” David demanded. “It’s a machine.”

“First you make it smarter than anything living, then you let it destroy a world,” Cadell said. “Why
I
was driven mad enough and it knows more guilt than I ever did. It blames itself with the sort of precision that only a mechanism can possess.”

“And how do we deal with it?” David said.

“Ah, that’s the rub isn’t it. The most important thing.” Cadell shuddered, dark blood trickled from his ear, he touched it with a finger and brought it to his lips. “Oh dear, I really am quite a mess. Pity, there is so very much that you do not know. Truths and lies, but you will walk that thorny path alone. Just remember, the most important thing is… Ah, but I suspect you already know.”

David shook his head furiously.

“Take care, boy. I think you better wake now.” Cadell pointed to the map. He whispered into David’s ear.

“You’ll find the solution there. Oh, and my body, you will need to do something with it. Burning it would be best or... well… it could become... problematic. Now, to the problem at hand.”

He stabbed the pointer at the panoptic map. Three iron ships tracked towards the
Roslyn Dawn
.