Storm Thief (4 page)

Rail and Moa made it back to the ghetto by midday. The skies overhead were a monotonous grey, but the rain had stopped and left the city shining wet. They had spent the morning picking their way through the complicated districts of Orokos, detouring around areas where Revenants had taken over. They paused often to check with locals that things were the same as they had been before the last probability storm. Streets and buildings in Orokos had a disconcerting tendency to move. Even entire districts had been known to get displaced.

Old folk still recalled the day when the whole of Orokos reversed itself, turning into a mirror-image. Buildings on the north edge found themselves on the south side, east and west flipped over, everything perfectly symmetrical. It wasn't often you got an upheaval like
that
, they said. Generally the changes were smaller, such as when Moa, who had been right-handed all her life, woke up left-handed. Or when Rail's lungs stopped working properly in the middle of a probability storm and he nearly died. He had been forced to wear a respirator ever since. The Storm Thief had stolen his breath.

The ghetto was a dense tangle of streets and alleyways. It had been partially enclosed by a wall, but like all walls in Orokos it hadn't lasted. Within, rainswept plazas that had once been magnificent were crowded with rotting shanties. Vast, elaborate buildings reared above clutters of miserable shacks and houses. The grim façades of ancient mausoleums glowered at each other over thundering canals, and gaping metal archways led into the city's subterranean depths.

There were gates watched over by Protectorate soldiers, who checked the identity stripes tattooed on every ghetto-dweller's forearm. Ghetto folk were only allowed outside their assigned areas with special passes, and although people like Rail and Moa flouted the rules regularly, it was a dangerous game. If they were caught by the soldiers they would be taken away, and ghetto folk who were taken away never came back.

Rail and Moa got into the ghetto through one of dozens of back ways. They had lost Fulmar some while ago. Rail had promised that he would
definitely
tell Anya-Jacana about Fulmar's slip-up unless he made himself scarce. He didn't seriously intend to do it – Fulmar didn't deserve the kind of punishment the thief-mistress would deal out – but Rail thought he could let the younger boy sweat for a while. Maybe next time he'd think twice before he deserted his post for a pie.

Rail and Moa lived in a den that had once been a bunker of some kind. From the outside, it was little more than a round, rusted hatch on the concrete bank of a canal. It was hidden underneath a bridge and shielded from sight by a small shack that Rail had erected around it. But beneath the hatch was a ladder, and at the bottom of the ladder were three small, solid rooms which Rail and Moa had taken as their own. The hatch was secured by a combination of dials and switches, which Rail had one day found completely unlocked. Whether it was a probability storm that had done it or some other explanation, he never knew. He memorized the settings and had been living there ever since. Later, when he met Moa, he invited her to stay there with him. She was suspicious at first, but she accepted in the end. To find a place so safe in the ghetto was an extraordinary stroke of luck, and they guarded its location jealously.

It was to their den that they went first, before going to see the thief-mistress. Though the walls and floor were bare metal, the two of them had accumulated all kinds of blankets, rugs, carpets and curtains and cushions, which they used for bedding and for covering the floor. The main chamber had a tiny portable oil stove for occasional cooking and for warming the place. It was cluttered with bric-a-brac that they had stolen or salvaged and were assembling into something they could trade or sell. Moa's room was the smallest, and was piled waist-deep in soft fabrics. She literally burrowed into it at night and slept in the plush womb that she had created for herself.

Moa slept a lot. She preferred being asleep to being awake, for she always had the most vivid dreams: dreams of flying or of strange and mystical lands, dreams of adventure and romance. Inside her cocoon of blankets and furs, she could be elsewhere, and in her imagination she lived a life of wonders.

They clattered down the ladder into the main chamber, closing the hatch behind them, and there they knelt on either side of a rug while Rail gently shook out the contents of his satchel.

Moa sat with her hands pressed between her knees. Rail glanced at her. Her cheek-length black hair was lank and dirty, her skin so pale that he could see the blue traceries of veins at her wrists and neck. She was wearing scuffed green dungarees, boots and a long-sleeved black vest that had frayed at the hem. She looked ill.

He hoped he could score her some decent food off this haul. Maybe getting something healthy to eat instead of the tasteless gruel the Protectorate slop-houses dished up might put some colour back in her face.

“Anya-Jacana will be pleased,” Moa said neutrally. She wasn't thinking about how pleased the thief-mistress would be. She was thinking about how much money was there, and how much they would be left with. It was a good amount. Not a vast amount, but if the thief-mistress was fair they could live off it for a while. That was something, at least.

Rail studied her uncertainly, thinking of the Fade-Science artefact still hidden in his pocket. Thinking whether he should tell her about it or not. Of course he would share it with her; that was never in question. It was just that if he told her about it, she would demand that they took it to Anya-Jacana. She would say that it was too risky. Anya-Jacana would know if they had cheated her. Moa would say that they shouldn't rock the boat, that the consequences could be terrible. And even if she agreed with him, she wasn't a good liar. She would give them away if she knew.

But she was a dreamer, and he was a realist. And he knew that they couldn't live like this for ever, forced to steal just to survive. Sooner or later, they would be caught, and either killed or taken away. That was what happened to those who broke one of the Protectorate's many laws, or who disagreed with their ideas, or who talked about the possibility of a world outside Orokos.

No. As much as he hated to do it, it was for her own good. She'd thank him for it one day. For making this decision.

He left her counting through the haul while he stashed away the artefact under the bedroll that he used as a pillow, then he came back into the main room.

“Let's get going,” he said, and began gathering up the bits and pieces to stuff back in his satchel. Not long afterward, they were on their way to the lair of the thief-mistress.

 

Anya-Jacana's court could be found deep underground, through many doors and down many tunnels. Their route took them across bridges that spanned dark, rushing streams. They passed by the monstrous flanks of machines that hadn't worked for longer than anyone could recall. Gimlet eyes watched them from the shadows: small, scuttling figures which ran across the walls like geckos.

The thief-mistress herself lay in a room with an arched and ribbed ceiling of black glass. Coiled iron shapes, sculptures from the Functional Age, grew from the walls. A carpet of cured animal skin ran from the oval doorway to the dais where she reclined. To either side of her massive brass couch lurked an assortment of attendants and bodyguards.

Rail and Moa walked into the room along the carpet. Other thieves stood in clusters, their faces deep with shadow, waiting for assignments or passing tips between themselves. Rail acknowledged a few of them with tiny nods, and they nodded back.

“Welcome, my children!” boomed Anya-Jacana, and they came to a halt in front of her.

She was grotesquely, enormously fat, swaddled in robes of bright and clashing colours, lying on her side on the couch. Her fingers were thick and banded with jewels and rings, and her fleshy arms were hung with bangles and bracelets. Lank and greasy hair, heavy with ornaments, hung over a frog-like face. When she grinned her mouth split very wide, and revealed yellow, round teeth.

“Greetings, Mother,” Rail and Moa replied. She insisted that all her thieves called her Mother.

“I trust you have what I sent you for?”

“Of course,” Rail replied. “Did you think we'd fail you? We're the best.”

The other thieves murmured at this, but Anya-Jacana roared with laughter. “Ah, so cocky for one so young. Such brash arrogance! Well, I can't deny you have talent, that's clear enough. An almost
uncanny
ability to infiltrate any location I care to send you.” She looked at Moa, her tiny eyes almost disappearing in the folds of her face as she smiled her wide smile. Her gaze switched back to Rail. “Come, then, show me what you have!”

Two of the attendants came to stand before Rail, holding a strip of leather taut between them. He tipped the satchel on to the leather, and a small pile of money and power cells and other odds and ends spilled out. The attendants carried it up the steps of the dias and held it before the thief-mistress.

She began to pick her way through it. After a few moments, she said: “You did do
exactly
as I told you, didn't you?”

Rail didn't like the tone in her voice. “Yes, Mother. We found the small brass casket, and we emptied it. It was there just as you said.”

Anya-Jacana was studying them closely now. “You took everything from the casket?”

“Everything,” Rail said. He was beginning to get worried now. The thief-mistress's grin was fixed in place, but her eyes were becoming colder.

“And everything you took is here?” Anya-Jacana persisted. “Every little thing?”

The room was dead silent now. Rail's heart felt like it was slamming against his ribs. The world seemed to have narrowed, crowding inwards until there was nothing but himself and the thief-mistress. This was what he had most dreaded. Anya-Jacana had been after something specific. Something that she knew was in that brass casket. Something that wasn't here.

She's going to kill you
,
he thought. He was terrified. But he held himself straight and looked her in the eye.

“Everything,” he heard himself say. Because he knew that if the thief-mistress thought for one instant that he had held something back from her, then she would be very angry. And people died when Anya-Jacana got angry.

Her eyes slid slowly to Moa. “Everything?” she said again.

Moa was frightened and confused. She didn't understand the hostility in Anya-Jacana's tone. She turned to Rail for support, but Rail was careful not to meet her gaze. She looked back at Anya-Jacana.

“Everything,” she replied.

The silence scratched out like a fingernail along a stone. Anya-Jacana stared at them hard, her grin fading at the edges. They didn't speak or flinch. The moment became excruciating.

“I will be very disappointed if I find you have lied to me, children,” said Anya-Jacana slowly. “
Very
disappointed.” She turned her head to one of the assistants. “Fifty per cent. Even cut between money and machinery. Give the rest back to them.”

Rail's legs were beginning to tremble. He tried to keep it under control, but they wouldn't stop. He took what the assistants handed to him without bothering to count it, and then he left as fast as he could without looking like he was guilty. Moa trailed behind him.

When they were gone, the obese mistress of the ghetto's child-thieves motioned to one of the boys that was lurking in the shadows. He was sallow-faced, his skin jaundiced and yellowish, and his eyes were sunken and had dark rings around them that made him look unhealthy. He wore a dirty assortment of black clothes, and wispy blond hair straggled from beneath the cowl that was pulled up over his head.

“Finch,” she murmured. “Follow them. I want what I sent them for.”

The boy grinned. His gums were black with decay and his browned teeth were filed to sharp points.

“Good as done, Mother.”

 

“What was that about?” Moa asked, when they were out in the open again. She was shaken and trembling.

“Putting the scares on us, that's all,” he muttered, staring at the wet flagstones of the plaza they were crossing. “She does that from time to time, doesn't she? To keep us in line.” His tone was deeply unconvincing.

Moa glanced miserably around the plaza. Juveniles like them were wandering about or hanging around in gangs. There was little to do in the ghetto. No jobs, no money, hardly any food. They couldn't go elsewhere, not with the stripes tattooed on their arm. Only to other ghettoes where life was no better. It seemed that every few days somebody was taken away by the Protectorate, accused of plotting against their leader, the Patrician. Sometimes they were people that Rail and Moa knew. Nobody could be certain when it would be their turn. It made an already grim existence that bit more uncomfortable.

They were trapped here, purposeless, kept just on the right side of dying but not enough to make them feel alive. The only money that moved through this place was through the underground: black-market goods and services, theft, protection rackets, murder. If one of the rich folk needed someone taken out, they went to the ghetto. There were people here desperate enough to do anything.