Storm Thief (14 page)

The next day found the city shining wet and cleansed. The sun was bright and sharp, providing little warmth but offering a harsh white light that cut stern shadows from the towers and minarets of Orokos. The sea, stretching for ever on all sides, glittered blindingly. The air was specked with bomber birds, hovering above the waves, plunging in and emerging with bulging beak-sacs full of squirming fish.

The jagbats were out in force today, great dark-winged shapes that glided between the highest points of the city and out over the ocean. They took down the birds when they could, or squabbled with each other in the air, hissing and yowling. Earlier that morning, one of them had snatched a Protectorate soldier from the deck of a Dreadnought that was patrolling near the foot of the cliffs. The Dreadnought had fired upon it with explosive shells, but it had flown out of range, over the sea. Jagbats were not the smartest of creatures, but they had learned that the armoured ships couldn't go beyond a certain distance from Orokos. The city would not allow it. It had defences that prevented anything from leaving.

At the very centre of Orokos stood the Fulcrum, surrounded by a loose ring of solitary mountains that thrust up from among the cramped and mazy streets. And in its shadow was the Null Spire.

The Fulcrum was one of the most shocking pieces of architecture left over from the years before the Fade. It was a feat of engineering and construction almost unequalled in the whole of Orokos. Some argued that the serpentine Coil in the south or the shifting mirrors of the Light Gardens – that lay in the flooded east and were lost to the Revenants – were just as spectacular. But the Fulcrum had its own special awe and dread. Inside it, so rumour held, was the great machine that controlled Orokos, that generated the probability storms and created the Revenants. They called it the Chaos Engine.

The Fulcrum was built like a spiral, its base smaller than its top, a fragmented masterpiece of metal and sparkling glass. It leaned slightly westward, defying physics by staying upright when it should have toppled. Its exterior was comprised of many hundreds of bladelike sections, like those of a pinecone. The sections were tilted to follow the swirl of the architecture, so that the whole impression was like a tornado of glittering leaves. It was a bewildering mass of edges, sealed away from the outside world, the greatest prize of Orokos. For nobody had ever managed to see what was within.

The Null Spire, in contrast, was plain and bleak, a thick needle of darkness pointing towards the sky, dwarfed by the colossal Fulcrum. At its tip dwelt the Patrician, immortal ruler of the Protectorate. And it was here that Lysander Bane, Chief of the Protectorate Secret Police, had come to report.

The chamber was small and dim, empty of ornamentation. Everything here was a perfect black: the walls, the circular ceiling, the marble floor. A single globe glowed above them, casting overlights on the figures beneath. Bane stood before the Patrician, who sat on a raised platform on a throne of twisted brass. The Patrician himself was as shadowy as his surroundings, dressed in a high-collared black trenchcoat. His face was hidden behind a mask of darkness, which reflected nothing of the room around them and showed nothing of the features beneath.

Bane wasn't intimidated. Like himself, the Patrician used fear and uncertainty to inspire cooperation and respect.

The Patrician wasn't immortal. He was many people, many leaders, united in a single guise. There had been a dozen or more who had worn that mask over the years. The people didn't really believe that he lived for ever, and yet, they could never be quite sure. After all, between the probability storms and Fade-Science, who knew whether a man might
really
live for ever? In Orokos, anything was possible. So they entertained the fantasy. They would rather have a leader that was like a rock, ageless and invulnerable, than a succession of different faces.

Bane had spent the last hour recounting the affairs of the Secret Police, explaining victories and failures and projects in progress. The Secret Police were the enforcers of the real business of the Protectorate. The carefully edited news feeds on the panopticon were merely there to keep the populace happy and secure. The soldiers on the streets were more for show than for their effectiveness. Like all governments, the meat of the matter was dealt with behind the scenes, where people didn't have to see it. Though they would never admit it to themselves, the citizens preferred it that way.

He had almost finished, and was preparing his conclusion, when the Patrician posed him a question.

“What of the golem, Lysander Bane?”

His voice echoed eerily, though whether because of the room or his mask Bane couldn't tell.

“The golem eludes us for now,” Bane said.

“I see,” the Patrician said. “Perhaps we can make another, then?”

“It would be impossible. There was only one. The golem is the prototype.”

“You made no copies?” he said. “Careless.”

His tone somehow implied a threat, which Bane didn't like, but he was prepared for this.

“Copying the technology that made that golem would be the work of years,” he replied. “And until we knew the technology worked, there was no point expending that amount of effort on it. So we built a prototype for a field test.”

The Patrician considered this. Bane found himself trying to catch his reflection in his leader's face. He knew it
should
be there, but the mask turned the light somehow so that it was empty.

“The golem is probably unaware of its own nature,” Bane continued. “We hadn't had time to condition it properly before it disappeared.”

“Yes. An unfortunate incident.”

Bane grit his teeth behind his lips. The Patrician had a way of making it sound like it was
his
fault. He knew as well as Bane that nobody could account for a probability storm. The best-laid plans in all recorded history were peppered with their influence. They could turn a brilliant victory into defeat or allow a bungled scheme to suddenly come good against all the odds. It seemed to him that the city took joy in ruining the perfection of order, that the better the strategy the more likely a probability storm would turn up and throw a spanner into the works. He hated them, as much as he hated the Revenants.

“I don't believe the golem poses any danger to us,” he said eventually. “The worst that could happen is that it is destroyed before we manage to get it back.”

“And what will you do when you recapture the golem?” queried the Patrician.

“We will finish conditioning and field-test it if we can.”

“And then?”

“Eventually, after we are sure that everything works, we will kill it and remove the technology for study. Then we can begin to copy it and make more of them.”

“See that you get it back, Bane. The Protectorate does not appreciate failure.”

And so he was dismissed.

As he made his way down through the Null Spire, he found himself turning the problem of the golem over in his mind. Had he been right to make a deal with Finch? Well, no matter; it couldn't have done any harm. Sooner or later, a freak like that golem would be seen. He couldn't go anywhere without inspiring panic and disgust. Word would get back to Bane, and the Secret Police would have him.

The creature couldn't hide for ever.

At that very moment, had Bane known it, the object of his thoughts was creeping through the streets of Territory West 190, thinking about him also. For Finch, though, matters were considerably more personal.

He made his way along the north edge of the canal, staying behind what cover he could, alert for movement from any direction. He was wearing the glimmer visor that Bane had given him, and in the daylight it lent everything a pallid yellow hue. But the Revenants appeared to be occupied elsewhere for now, and he was thankful for that. He had survived the chaos of the night without being seen, weathering the probability storm by hiding in the cellar of an empty house. That was no protection from the storm, of course, but it kept him out of the Revenants' way until things had calmed down.

By the time he had emerged, Rail and Moa's trail was stronger than ever. Near dawn, he had found traces of aether cannon fire on one of the streets. Most importantly, he had found a trail of Taken dead. Other Taken were clearing up the mess, or new ghosts were inhabiting the vacant bodies.

From there he got to the canal, where he lost the trail. He could only assume that they had taken a boat, and downstream seemed the logical place to go. He hadn't heard the rumour of the secret way into Territory West 190. But nevertheless, he was drawing near to it. The tower on the north bank, a finger of ceramic and glass pointing at the sky, was rising before him.

Unconsciously, he rubbed at the metal band that was clamped around his upper arm, just below his shoulder. As if it would come off that easily.

“I wouldn't try to get it removed,” Bane had told him. “It's very sensitive. It's liable to explode.”

Bane,
he thought with a snarl.

Perhaps he should have been thankful that he hadn't been executed when the Secret Police had caught him back at the gate. But then, he wondered if he wouldn't have preferred that. Simple and straightforward. Instead, Bane had made him an offer. One he couldn't really refuse.

“You want to live?” he had said. “Tell me what you were doing here.”

Finch had lied. Of course he had lied. He had worked out by now that the Secret Police must have come in response to something, though he couldn't imagine what Rail and Moa had done. Perhaps to investigate how they had got past the wall? It didn't matter. He told Bane some story about how he was hired to kill them by a rich and nameless man. He didn't know why the man wanted them dead. He just took the money. Bane swallowed it; it was what he expected to hear. It happened all the time in the ghettoes.

Finch didn't mention the artefact. He kept that to himself.

“Go in there after them,” Bane said. “I'm not interested in the ghetto thieves. I'm interested in the one that's travelling with them. A golem of flesh and metal. Find him.”

Finch couldn't believe his luck at first. The moment he was out of Bane's sight he would disappear. But he should have known it wouldn't be that simple.

Bane had motioned to a companion, and they had affixed the device which was now clamped around his arm beneath his sleeve. He had no idea what they were really called, but street slang had christened them as Persuaders. They were thin bands of metal, thickening at one point where explosive charges were packed. A favourite device of the Secret Police to ensure cooperation.

“If you don't show up at the Null Spire within twenty days,” said Bane. “That thing will blow your arm off. If you try and double-cross me before that time,” he held up a small brass device, shaped like a yo-yo, “I twist this, it'll blow your arm off. If you try to remove the armband—”

“I get it,” Finch said dryly. He was seething. Being executed was one thing, but being forced to serve the Secret Police was something entirely different. “How do I contact you?”

“With this.” Bane handed him a short, thick brass tube with a press-stud on top. “You know Tick-Tap, don't you? Of course you do.” He brandished another tube. “We call these voxcoders. I'll keep this one. Just tap out your message with the press-stud, and I will hear it. I can contact you the same way.”

Finch was surprised. Tick-Tap was the thieves' code, a language of rhythmic taps that was originally used by prisoners to communicate between cells. He had learned it at his mother's knee. What he found remarkable was that Bane not only knew about it, but knew how to understand it. The Secret Police had more secrets than he had given them credit for.

“Take this as well,” Bane said, holding up a small black card of plastic, on which were printed several lines in spiky white Orokon lettering.

Finch snatched it from him. He knew what it was. A pass, so that a ghetto boy like him would be allowed to travel outside the ghettoes without being arrested. He sneered at it, just as he sneered at the Protectorate's laws that were supposed to stop boys like him leaving their assigned districts; but he put it in his pocket anyway.

“I see you're not too happy with our arrangement,” Bane said. “Let me add another little incentive, then. If you bring me what I need and we get that golem, you'll get paid. More than your employer would give you. Call it a perk of working for the Secret Police.”

He named a price. Finch raised an eyebrow.

So he was back on Rail and Moa's trail, and hunting their mysterious companion too. What did the Secret Police want with a golem? He didn't know. But as long as he got his hands on the Fade-Science artefact that Rail and Moa had stolen, he didn't care. Because he suspected that once he had it, he wouldn't need Bane or Anya-Jacana or
anyone
any more.

The thought cheered him up a little. Several minutes later he came across a boat moored at the foot of a strange tower, and lying inside it he found a glimmer visor. Moa's visor, that Rail had carelessly forgotten. He looked up at the door which Rail and Vago had taken when they carried Moa away.

“Silly children,” he said to himself, grinning his horrible grin. “Finch is coming for you.”