The Forgotten City (17 page)

“Can we have some sweets now?” Kellor said, childlike. “We’ve been so good.”

“Did you sexually assault the body?” Croy asked Castor directly, watching his face for a reaction.

His face registered instant shock and embarrassment. “You think I … No … No, I would never do that.”

“It must have gotten awfully lonely down there,” Darius spoke up. “Taking care of your nutter sister – living with all the corpses. They don’t fight back much. And there’s only so much you can do with your own hand.” He made a crude gesture.

Castor’s face reddened. The notion made him so angry that he couldn’t even spit out his words. It was a naive reaction to the topic. Croy concluded that it wasn’t him.

“What about your sister?” she said. “Could she have done something like that without knowing what she was doing?”

Castor shook his head emphatically. “No! She wouldn’t.”

“But she would carve symbols into someone’s dead flesh and tie them to a jetty?” Darius said.

“For some reason she thought she was helping her … or saving her …” Castor said.

“From the monsters …” Croy murmured to herself, thinking.

“He’s all alone down there now,” Kellor said. “He can’t fight them for much longer. He’s hurt. He needs your help. Can you hear him calling you?”

A prickling feeling spread over Croy’s skin.

“Who is she talking about? Who is all alone down there?”

Castor shook his head wearily. “She’s just talking. It doesn’t
mean
anything. There was no one there but us.”

“And did you see anything strange?” Croy asked.

The look on Castor’s face said it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard.

Croy rephrased. “Anything out of place – assaults, Morticians mistreating bodies … anything.”

“Nothing,” Castor said.

Croy nodded – if he had, he wasn’t going to talk about it now.

“Your sister said you were hunting …”

“The monsters,” Kellor spoke again. “they’re down there – talking, talking, talking – shhh, don’t tell Daddy – he doesn’t want me listening to them – he tried to stop them …” She lifted up her shirt, exposing her bare stomach and breasts. She had formula-symbol scars all over her body as well. Darius cursed and Castor yanked her shirt down.

“Did your Daddy do that?” Croy asked.

Kellor nodded, tears in her eyes. “I want to go home now, too. They don’t like water … Or we could go up – up to the suns – like Daddy … up …”

“What’s
the suns
?” Croy asked Castor.

He shook his head again, “Just something she’s made up. She does it all the time.”

Croy nodded. She glanced at Darius, then said to the twins, “That’s all for now.”

She stood, heading for the door, and Castor called out behind them, “What about us?”

Croy turned back. “You’ll stay here for now while the case is processed and then I’ll do what I said. You can stay together.”

Castor put his arm around his now-crying sister and hugged her. Their crazy father had brought them into this world – dumped life on them – then taken himself out of it. Croy had always thought there should be some kind of compulsory psychological testing before people were allowed to breed. Though she was pretty sure if there was, she wouldn’t have much chance of passing it.

They walked out into the observation room where the others were waiting. Trainee Kisslefish gave them a thumbs-up. Knightsbridge glared at him.

Croy gave a summary: “The girl took the body and positioned it, cut it up, but I don’t believe either of them assaulted her.”

“If the girl’s a nutter, then how could she steal and fly a drifter?” Knightsbridge asked.

“Disconnected doesn’t mean incompetent – sometimes they’re even more capable,” VP said.

“We’ll start investigating the abuse angle further,” Darius said. “We’ll go back to the Morticians, and to her family.”

VP scratched his manicured white beard. “No … the father is on the Conference.” Croy caught him darting a glance at Kisslefish. “We can’t question him and we can’t interrogate the Morticians again without a warrant of specific accusation and that won’t happen, so case closed.”

“Case closed?” In questioning VP, Darius did what most would never dare. “So we’re just letting whoever did this off the hook? What if those freaks are using bodies as their sex toys?”

VP shrugged. “They’re dead.”

“What if it was
your
daughter or wife … or mother?” Darius demanded.

“I said, case closed,” VP repeated, his eyes drilling into Darius. “We all know the parameters of our work.” He turned his attention to Croy and said, “I’m impressed.” And from the way he said it, she wasn’t entirely sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

The door to the room burst open and a Tower warden stumbled in.

“First Controller Prichard,” he said breathlessly. “I have word from Admiral Bower – he requires your immediate presence. The Drays have taken down the
Teriscoria
.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. They’d all been depending on the ship’s safe return.

VP swore and charged out, leaving them alone with their dread.

T
hey crunched through the thick leaf litter of the forest corridor, stepping in and out of shifting shapes of shade and light filtering through the treetop canopy far above. Mossy vines constricted around the branches of the giant trees. Puffs of pollen-sweetened air stirred the undergrowth and flowers. They seemed to quieten as the travelers approached, whispering again as they passed by. The air was the freshest Diega had ever breathed. It was like a shot of pure mind-clearer straight to the brain. She’d never felt so awake, but had never realized until now that she’d been half-asleep, suffocated by pollutants.

Everything about this place was so natural and uncorrupted – and Diega felt sharply out of context in her heavy boots and fatigues covered in blood and dusty debris, reeking of smoke and sweat. She didn’t belong in any sense. She tried again and again to access her morphing and electrosmith skills, but they were gone, blocked or invalid in this world. She felt naked and on edge without them. Just ahead of her, Shawe didn’t seem to be suffering the same alienation, still moving fast despite his terrible injury.

He was an arrogant thug prick, but there was no way to deny it, Shawe was extraordinarily tough. He’d stopped at nothing to save his brother, gone literally to hell and back, and now Diega saw Shawe going after Copernicus with the same resolve. She hated to be moved by someone so completely foul, but the sight of him gave her strength and spurred her on. Her father had been the opposite – a defeated sort of person at the best of times, and when Ariana had vanished he’d fallen to pieces. Seeing him hunched in his chair sobbing, day and night, refusing to eat or speak or be comforted, just begging the stars to kill him too, had etched away pieces of her sanity. Nothing she had done or said had made any difference; he’d just looked at her as though he’d wished she was the one who had died instead of Ariana. And one day, during one of his hysterical breakdowns, he’d actually said it. His words and the guilt had driven her to run away to the gangland in search of people who were strong the way she wanted to be. She hadn’t understood then that coldness comes with a price.

She remembered herself at thirteen year-cycles seeing Christy Shawe for the first time. He’d been rumbling with a bunch of his gang-mates and she’d thought then that he was the strongest boy she’d ever seen. She’d wanted him to notice her – to see her as well. But he never had. So much had changed since then – and so little as well.

Diega sensed the light dipping and looked up through the canopy. A purple sun rode high in the sky, with a second orange sun to one side and a white moon on the other. And no stars. Anywhere. It was highly disorientating for her, so much of a Fen’s senses and self were taken from the stars. She realized this was the reason her skills were gone.

A low humming sound disturbed her thoughts as the dragonfly, Tickleback, dropped back to her side, leaving the beetle girl, Trilly, to lead.

“These are the three guardians of Praterius – the Thor, the Anvil and the Plenitude. As the Thor rises the Anvil sets and as the Anvil rises the Thor sets. The Plenitude never drops and no storm can blacken its light. Here it is always light.” Tickleback smiled.

“Then why is it getting darker?” Diega asked.

Alarm flashed in the dragonfly’s emerald eyes. He glanced ahead at Trilly.

“What?” Shawe demanded, having come close to listen in.

Tickleback paused, then spoke with a lowered voice. “A plague sweeps across the realms of the universe. The Indemeus X and his Arequium Mors are blackening the Zenzenya Lights and imprisoning all. The first signs of the apocalypse are a darkening of the light that only outsiders can see. After this – the Mors come.”

Diega’s skin prickled. “Who is this Indemeus X?”

Tickleback shook his head. “I don’t know what he is, only what he means.”

“Death?” Diega said. “Because we just fought the demon of death, and it didn’t go so well for him.”

“No, not death,” Tickleback said. “Death is mercy and he has none. He cuts our connection with our Shais in Zenzenya Zinel. They are our eternal echoes in Paradise – and without them, we can’t die, but we’re not alive, and he takes us as slaves into his realm of Ursae for eternity.”

“Sounds like a fairy’s tale to me,” Shawe grunted.

“How can he be stopped?” Diega asked.

Tickleback fixed her with his solemn stare and said, “He can’t. There is nothing to be done, but to make peace with the manner of life and take in the seconds.”

“If it moves, it can be stopped. If it breathes, it can be killed. And if it’s looking for surrender, it’ll be disappointed,” Shawe said, quoting one of Diega’s favorite sayings. It was painted across a wall in Warsaul, a suburb near the old Headquarters. She’d stopped to read it every single time she’d passed. It had always fortified her.

Her face must have shown something because Shawe said, “What?”

“You’re quoting battle philosophy?”

“Yeah, so? You didn’t think I could memorize things?” he asked.

“I didn’t think you could even read.”

Shawe snorted. “Typical, trutting, thinks-her-shite-don’t-stink fairy-breed. That battle philosophy, I wrote it – yeah, I can write, too. What do you think about that?”

Diega had no idea how to respond, and had to give this one to him.

Shawe scratched at the binds around his wound, giving her and the dragonfly a glimpse of his back. The dark lines of poison had reached further up, corrupting more of his skin, but then they faded out. It looked as though the toxin had met Christy Shawe’s armpits, then curled up its toes and died.

Diega saw Tickleback’s eyes widening as he spotted the injury. Concerned the insect-breed might think it was something contagious and stop helping them, she said, “He was just stabbed.”

“Yes, by an Omarian – injected with fireblood,” Tickleback said.

“Omarian?” Diega and Shawe repeated in unison.

“Can’t be,” Diega said. “A person we know is the last Omarian.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying to clear her blurred memories of the attack. Had she seen firebird dragon bloodline marks? Maybe …

“Perhaps your person is the last Omarian on Aquais,” Tickleback suggested. “Many more exist in their own realm, Omar Montanya.”

“They took her, our Omarian – that’s why we’re here. Why would they want her?”

Tickleback shook his head.

“Forget why,” Shawe said. “Just tell us how to get to them.”

“A portal into Omar Montanya is the only way,” the dragonfly replied. “But Omarians are a people you cannot fight. Brutality defines them and their prince, Lecivion Oflock, will destroy you in a glance. He is evil fighting evil, and evil always wins.” He turned to Shawe and said, “To survive their poison you must surely be of godlike strength.”

“Finally!” the gangster bellowed. “Someone recognizes my true worth.” He grinned savagely. “See, sunshine – godlike. Remember that.”

“We need an antidote to their poison,” Diega told Tickleback. “Our other companion, the man we’re looking for, was stabbed as well.”

“An antidote,” the dragonfly repeated, pupils dilating and shrinking as he thought. “I don’t know of one, but for all our sicknesses here we go to the healing plants of the Eti River.”

“The river,” Diega said. “How do we get there?”

“There is a shortcut on the borderline of the Blackwater Forest, through the Head of Solomon, but Tickleback must warn you the Eti flows in what was once the Zanzarra Basin. It has now been corrupted, blackened and turned into the Murkmire Slough. It is a foul place, full of hidden treachery and mortal danger.”

“Sounds like where I grew up,” Shawe said, and Diega snorted.

“Here!” the beetle girl, Trilly, cried out ahead of them. “Here’s the turn!”

She whirled to the left and vanished out of sight.

The others ran to catch up, taking the sharp turn and stepping into a clearing. In it stood a tribe of impossibly thin insect-breeds with mottled brown and olive-green skin. Some had partially missing limbs in various stages of regeneration. They stared with tiny eyes, then collapsed to the ground, lying in a heap, looking like a pile of sticks. Beyond the stickmen, four giant stone sculptures sat around a table, holding cards as though they were playing a game.

“Morning greetings, friends,” Tickleback called out to them. They animated suddenly, their gray-brown faces stretching into gruesome but friendly smiles.

“The Bouldermen mark the first shortcut to the Woods,” Tickleback told Diega and Shawe.

“I thought we were already in the trutting woods,” Shawe swore, swatting at a tiny pixie dancing on his head.

“Not yet.” Tickleback smiled.

He led them past the stone giants to the edge of the trees, where they stepped out into a field of tiny violet and dark pink flowers. Trilly was already halfway across the field, heading for more forest on the other side. All around her gigantic blue and purple snails with crooked houses built into the shells on their backs were munching their way through the flowers, leaving silver trails behind them. Diega and the others hurried to catch up with the beetle girl. They re-entered the forest on the far side of the field and headed toward the distant
shhh
of fast-running water. The sound intensified to a roar as they closed in on the source, finally breaking through the trees to a place where two rivers, rushing from either side, met in the center. Their waters crashed down a mammoth fall, churning into white froth on the rocks far below. Behind the thundering falls a city was built into the rocks.

“Illendriel,” Tickleback told them, pointing to the shimmering city. “Second shortcut to the woods.” He smiled and plunged straight off the bank, zooming all the way down into the water, vanishing into the froth. Diega peered down and felt her stomach turn.

“Scared, princess?” Shawe grunted beside her. He stepped off the edge and dropped like a bomb into the water below.

“Prick,” Diega muttered and jumped straight after him.