Storm Thief (22 page)

The cells of the Null Spire were like the corridors that had led to them: grey, featureless and sterile. As they were marched to their confinement, Rail and Moa had glimpsed rooms full of filing cabinets, dreary chambers packed with typing secretaries, and desks, desks, desks. It was a sombre place where echoes seemed hollow, and the atmosphere was that of soulless and clinical efficiency.

The Secret Police took Rail and Moa without a word as to why. Finch came with them too. Though he wasn't under arrest, the Secret Police watched him closely nevertheless. He glared at Moa, still sore after being humiliated by her.

The first thing they had done was to take the Fade-Science artefact from Moa. They even knew which pocket she kept it in. That was what they were after. They knew all about it.

Rail and Moa had been betrayed. And Rail had a good idea who had betrayed them.

At first he thought it might have been Finch, but after what Moa had told him, he ruled the thief-boy out. Finch wanted the artefact for himself, and he had wanted to kill Moa and Rail into the bargain. That left only one other possibility. Vago.

He didn't say anything to Moa about his suspicions. She was smart; she would reach the same conclusion eventually. In the meantime, they languished in their cell and wondered what would happen to them.

At least they had been put together. That was one small mercy. Though everything else had fallen to pieces, they shared the same cell. Moa was hunkered on the thin, hard bench that served as a bed. Rail sat against the wall, his head tipped back and resting against the cool grey metal. Their cell was one of a curving corridor of many cells, but all the doors were solid and without windows, and they had no way of knowing if they were the only prisoners or if there were others like them.

Why hadn't they been separated? Surely that was the most sensible thing to do. Pull them apart, break their spirit, let them stew in their own thoughts. Unless, of course, it simply didn't matter. They had nothing the Secret Police needed to know, and any interrogation would be short. They had no reason to hold out. Whether they were together or not made no difference.

That made Rail depressed, and he sank into a mire of hopelessness.

He could tell Moa was feeling worse than he was. He wanted to say something to her, but he couldn't bring himself to speak much. He felt flattened and unable to pick himself up. Suddenly, all that had happened since finding the artefact – the flight from the Mozgas, Anya-Jacana's wrath, the journey through the Revenant district, Moa's brush with death, Kilatas, their pursuit of Vago – all of it seemed ridiculous. They had been living a fantasy, struggling towards some imaginary goal where things would be
different
, where they could break out of the straitjackets they were born into. But now, Rail wondered if they had ever really had a chance. Like the city itself, life offered a certain amount of leeway, but it was apt to pull you back with a sharp yank if you tried to go too far, like a dog on a leash. The illusion of freedom was important, but in reality they were not free at all.

Rail tried to console himself with the thought that at least they tried, but it was cold comfort now. The artefact was gone. They could never return to their ghetto with Anya-Jacana after them. They couldn't go back to Kilatas. In a stroke, they had been reduced to nothing.

It was like Moa said: why bother to struggle, when all your best efforts could be obliterated by a sweep of chance? Better to let the current take you than to swim against it. You would only exhaust yourself and the current would take you anyway.

She was marking time. He could tell. Three days left. In her heart, she still held out for the possibility that the Secret Police would release them in time to return to Kilatas. They might throw themselves on Kittiwake's mercy and join her in her futile attempt at escaping Orokos. Rail felt fatalistic enough that he might have even been tempted to join her. But they would not be released. The Secret Police didn't release ghetto folk.

It was over.

The Secret Police came for them the next day. They had been given basic food and water, suffered the embarrassment of having the use the cell toilet in each other's presence, and passed a strange night. There was only one bed and Rail let Moa take it while he tried to sleep on the floor, but after some time she had invited him to share the bed with her. They lay together in each other's arms, and Moa, exhausted, had fallen instantly asleep; but Rail had been kept awake by the warmth of her body, the feel of her bony frame and the faint pressure of her breath against his throat. How casual she could be sometimes, not knowing what she was doing to him by letting him hold her this way.

For a time, he resented her for it. He had lost all hope, and he had accepted that. But now she had reminded him of something he had all but forgotten these past days: that he had one thing worth clinging to and fighting for, and she lay in his arms that night.

They were taken from the cell at midday by four burly, shaven-headed guards. They were escorted down corridors and up stairs, passing nothing of interest but doors, all closed and marked with some incoherent coding system which Rail didn't understand. There wasn't a sound except for the squeak of the guards' boots and the tiny hum of Rail's respirator pack. They passed nobody else in the corridor. The Null Spire might have been deserted for all they knew.

Eventually, they came to the office of Lysander Bane, Chief of the Protectorate Secret Police. It wasn't in any way special, merely another door. It opened into a grey room with one curved wall at the back, in which was set a window looking out on to the Fulcrum. They had never seen it this close and from this high up before: an immense frozen whirlwind of glass shards, dwarfing the Null Spire. In front of the window was a grey desk, and grey metal cabinets stood along one side of the room. It was a fine day outside, but the window had a tint which dampened the sunlight and make the office seem drab. The only concessions to ornamentation were three paintings that were placed about the room. Two depicted scenes of troops marching, and one was a portrait of the Patrician in his black surgeon's-smock coat and his faceless mask. On the wall was a bronze plaque, and engraved on it was the legend:
WE
WILL
MAKE
THIS
WORLD
RIGHT
AGAIN
–
BENEJES
FRINE
. It was a quote from someone neither Rail nor Moa had ever heard of.

Sitting at the desk was Bane, reading a report. They didn't know his real name, but they had seen him on the panopticon, and they knew him as Grimjack. He didn't introduce himself.

Standing in the corner of the room like some hunched gargoyle was Vago.

Moa let out a little cry at the sight of him, but the joy on her face drained away as Vago stared back blankly at her. She pieced together the situation. He was standing on Bane's side of the desk, the light from the window falling on the metal half of his ruined face. She hadn't allowed herself to believe before, but as she saw him she knew what Rail had known. He was the betrayer. He was on Bane's side now.

She turned away from him, her face hardening. “She was right,” she muttered to Rail, her voice full of rage and hurt. “Kittiwake was right.”

“That would be Kittiwake of Kilatas?” said Bane, whose hearing was sharper than Moa had imagined. He didn't look up from his desk. “Leader of the previously secret – and very illegal – underground community which is planning to try and sail away from Orokos two days from now?”

“No!” Moa cried, reaching out as if to lunge across the desk. He knew. He knew everything. Rail grabbed her arm and she reluctantly subsided. The two guards who had remained in the room by the door relaxed again.

Moa was trembling with suppressed emotion, glaring hatefully at the golem. Vago met her gaze for a moment, then wavered and looked away out of the window.

“Well. First Anya-Jacana, and now Vago. It seems you do have a poor taste in allies,” Bane said, putting aside a form he was reading with a brusque snap of paper. “Between him and your friend Finch, we already know all we need to know about your little adventures.”

“The Secret Police must be scraping the barrel if you need kids like Finch to do your work for you,” Rail said. He was determined not to be cowed. They were going to kill him and Moa anyway eventually. He might as well be defiant.

“Finch is turning into quite the surprise, actually,” Bane said. “I'm considering him for a trial apprenticeship in the Secret Police. He seems to have fallen into line nicely, all things considered. Doesn't even seem to mind the Persuader I had to put on him. Of course, you never can tell with you ghetto folk, so I think I'll leave it attached to him for a while longer. Just to ensure his loyalty.” He got up from his desk. He was much taller than Rail and Moa were. “I am hoping that you will be as cooperative.”

Moa said nothing about her encounter with Finch, when she had helped him get the Persuader off his arm. Bane didn't seem to know about that, and Finch hadn't told him. She didn't know what it meant, or if it meant anything at all, but she wasn't going to help Bane out by telling him. Finch was the lesser of two evils at the moment. He was just a murderer. These were the Secret Police.

“What have we done wrong?” Rail asked. “Why are we here?”

Bane walked around to the other side of his desk. “Well, you're thieves. That's what you've done wrong. But we all know that's not really why you're here. After all, I'd be inclined to overlook something like that. You're ghetto folk, it's in your blood to be criminals.” He came closer, his brows creasing into a frown. “You're here because of the artefact you found. We very nearly didn't get it at all, you know. If Vago hadn't told us, we might never even have known you had it. All the time Finch was after you because of that artefact, and we didn't know. He's a tricky one; I admire that.”

“So how did you find us?” Rail asked.

Bane felt indulgent enough to tell him. “Finch's Persuader has a device that allowed us to track him. Once Vago told me about the artefact I realized why Finch was after you. I sent along some of my people, both to help him capture you and to ensure he behaved. They arrived just in time, it seems.”

Suddenly Rail understood why they were here, why they hadn't been disposed of already. The Secret Police already knew as much as they did about the artefact, so there was only one possibility left. He laughed suddenly.

“You can't make it work, can you?” he said.

Bane backhanded him across the face. It came without warning and was delivered without passion. Rail staggered backward, then came back up again with his hand against his cheek. Bane gazed at him with dull eyes, flexing his hand. He had probably hurt himself more than Rail, for most of the impact had been absorbed by the metal muzzle of the respirator. But the message was received. Rail didn't feel like goading him any more. Flippancy would not be tolerated.

Moa was blinking back angry tears, but she held herself in check.

“How does it work?” Bane asked her.

“I don't know,” she said through gritted teeth. “I put it on, and it works. I don't do anything.”

Bane stared at her hard. “Would you like us to torture your friend until you tell us the truth?”

“I
am
telling you the truth,” she snapped.

He looked at her a moment longer, then turned away. “I believe you are.” He walked over to the window and stood there, his hands linked behind his back. “We've learned a lot about Fade-Science over the years. Some of these things are designed to be used by only one person: they recognize the wearer and can't be used by anyone else. Perhaps you accidentally triggered something. Perhaps it was only that you were the first person who must have worn it in many, many lifetimes, and it had reset itself. Who knows? It was just chance.” He turned back with a salesman's smile. “Well then, I have a deal for you.”

“A deal?”

“A deal. I'm not a man that believes in using force when I can achieve compliance. It's much less trouble if you work with me than against me.”

Moa brushed her hair away from her face. “What's the deal?”

“Simply this,” he said. “You help me with a little problem, and your friends in Kilatas can sail away quite happily. I won't try to stop them.”

Vago, in the corner, shifted uneasily at this. Moa didn't respond, sensing that Bane was going to go on.

“You see, Kittiwake's calculations are all well and good but she hasn't accounted for one thing. She has been testing with unmanned craft. But the Skimmers can tell when there are living beings on board a ship. If the people of Kilatas try and sail, the Skimmers will come in their hundreds. Not a single person will be left alive, mark me.”

“How do you know?” said Moa, her voice quiet with the edge of hysterical anger. “How do you know that?”

“Don't you think we've tried it ourselves?” Bane said. His face and chest were shadowed by the light behind him. The Fulcrum glittered over his shoulder. “Don't you think, in all this time, that we might have tried it? And with better resources and better techniques than Kittiwake's shabby operation? We loaded people like you on to barges and sent them out to see what would happen. We did exactly what Kittiwake wants to do. And they
all
died.”

Rail and Moa were stunned at the raw cruelty of this. Bane spoke as disinterestedly if he had been talking about buying vegetables.

“Did you know that we tried to build flying machines once?” he said. “Oh, we have the technology. It's just that if anything non-living takes to the sky above this city then it gets torn to pieces by airborne Skimmers. They come out of the water and swarm at it. Even gliders and balloons.”

Rail felt a slowly squeezing fist of dread in his belly. Bane was telling them too much. Could he really let them go with this kind of knowledge?

Crome walked up to Moa. He regarded her coolly. “You can help.”

“Why
should
I help?” said Moa. “You just told me that the people of Kilatas will die no matter what I do.”

“No,” he said. “There is a way, perhaps, to save them. If you cooperate with me. There is a way that we can both get what we want. Kittiwake can sail away unharmed, and we can do the greatest service to our city that has ever been done in all of remembered history, in all the days since the Fade.”

Moa was terrified. “What do I have to do?”

He stepped aside and swept a hand to indicate the colossal, alien construction beyond the window. “Use the artefact. Get us into the Fulcrum,” he said. “We're going to rid this city of the probability storms and the Revenants and maybe even the Skimmers.” He looked back at them, and something like fever danced in his gaze. “We're going to destroy the Chaos Engine.”

There was a shocked silence from Rail and Moa. Was what he was proposing even
possible
? Did he really intend to try and get inside the greatest fortress in Orokos, where nobody had penetrated before? Did the Chaos Engine, the legendary source of the probability storms, even exist?

And yet, if it could be done, then they might shut down the storms. The scourge of their existence since the days of their ancestors. The phenomenon which had put Rail in a respirator, which had cost thousands,
millions
of lives through the havoc it wreaked and the Revenants it unleashed. They might make Orokos whole. They might kill the Storm Thief.

“Do you see that plaque?” Bane asked, pointing to the quote on the wall. “
We will make this world right again
. That's a sentence from one of the few surviving fragments of pre-Fade language we have managed to translate. Benejes Frine was an important man, the greatest scientist of the Faded if our studies are correct. I believe he wrote that after the Chaos Engine wrecked this city. He lived in a perfect world and he saw it torn apart by Revenants. Now I'm carrying on his work. I'll make this world right again.”

It was while considering this that Rail spotted someone else in the room, another witness to Bane's declaration. She had been listening all along, hiding behind the statue of the Patrician in one of the paintings. Lelek, the girl who lived in pictures. No wonder she had known where Vago was being taken when he disappeared. She had been keeping an eye on him. Rail wondered briefly what the connection was between the girl and the golem, but he knew he would get no answers from either of them.

But Lelek couldn't help them now. And Rail wasn't even sure he wanted to be helped. As much as he hated the Secret Police, he had to admit that Bane's plan was tempting. When they had the artefact, Rail had been thinking small-time. He would have used it to rob a vault or a rich family's house. Bane had bigger ideas.

You always wanted to change the world, Rail
, he said to himself.
Now's your chance
.