City of Dreams and Nightmare (10 page)

Tom wasn’t sure how he felt about the handholding at first, but then decided that maybe he could get used to it. Then he thought of Jezmina, and realised guiltily that it was a while since he had last done so.

“Keep walking, don’t look back – and don’t let go of my hand,” Kat said quietly.

Tom was more than happy to oblige.

The further Tylus moved from the wall the more the quality of his surroundings improved, if not their smell. He turned right at what seemed the only viable point to do so, assuming his recollection of the maps held true, and walked into a street bordered by single storey brick-built buildings. The bricks were crude and looked improperly baked, but at least they were bricks.

An elderly man, gaunt and dressed in faded clothes which seemed overlarge on his emaciated frame, sat on the doorstep of the first such. He stared at Tylus with stony-faced indifference. The Kite Guard nodded and smiled in greeting and was about to ask if this was the right road for the guard station, when the man responded by opening his mouth in what might have been either a snarl or a grin – it was impossible to tell – revealing toothless gums in the process. Tylus kept quiet and hurried past.

The guard station proved easy enough to find in any case. It even had a sign over the door. Taking a deep breath, Tylus pushed said door open and stepped inside. He wasn’t sure what sort of a reception to expect, but even so, the one he got surprised him. This was much smaller than any guard station he was used to, though it seemed to contain at least as many people. Compared with the Kite Guard’s more ordered, restrained squad room, this was a scene of frenetic chaos, with people dashing everywhere, sheets of paper pinned to walls and huddles of guardsmen scrutinising objects of unfathomable purpose. It seemed he had arrived at a bad time, although perhaps this was normal and there would never have been a good one. The first officer he addressed barely glanced in his direction and clearly couldn’t spare the time to actually talk, but instead directed him to the duty sergeant with a distracted wave of the hand. The sergeant occupied a large desk which dominated the back wall, not even having a separate office by the look of it.

The man was older than Goss and had a little more hair, but he seemed no more welcoming, at least to judge by the scowl with which he greeted Tylus.

“So, have the Kite Guard come to bail us out in our hour of need?”

“Erm, not exactly, sir, no. I’m…”

“Yes, yes, I know.” The sergeant held up a restraining hand. “Had a message about you; I’ve got it here somewhere.” He started rummaging around in a haphazard pile of papers and pulled out a creased sheet.

“Here it is.” He smoothed the sheet out, held it up and peered at it. “Kite Guard Tylus, come to find some street-nick or other.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Shouldn’t be difficult, we’ve loads of the scrawny breckers running around down here. Take whichever you want. I wish you luck with your search, officer.”

“Thank you, sir.” Tylus felt a familiar sinking feeling, realising the sergeant had no intention of adding anything further. This was not going as he had hoped, but then what ever did? He continued to stand where he was, trying to find the right words.

“Was there something else?”

“Yes, sir. That is, I’m afraid I’ll be needing some help from you and your department.”

The sergeant gave a dry, mirthless guffaw. “Help? You need our help? Not a chance, son.”

Tylus reached into his tunic. “I’ve a warrant here, signed by Senior Arkademic–”

“You think that matters to me?” the sergeant interrupted. “You’re not in the Heights now, lad. This is the real world. We’re in the middle of some major gang action down here, with killings every day and not enough men to even begin investigating them all, particularly since some genius up-City insisted on having a crack-down on ‘corruption’ in the force and made me discharge a quarter of my officers a little while back. Corruption? This is the City Below for Thaiss’s sake, the whole place runs on corruption! So I don’t care if you’ve got a warrant signed by every breckin’ member of the Council of Masters and a minor deity or two besides, I can’t help you!”

Tylus’s stomach dropped a little further. This was definitely not going to plan. For the first time since his interview with Magnus, he began to wonder whether being handed this mission was such a stroke of good fortune after all.

The squad room door burst open and a figure came charging in. He wore the typical brown and orange, mud and clay, uniform of the city watch.

“There’s been two more,” he called out across a room suddenly stilled.

“Whereabouts?” the sergeant called back.

“Near the canning plant. Two Sand Dragons, both older lads, lieutenants by the look of ’em.”

The sergeant muttered something under his breath and then surged to his feet. “All right, show me exactly where.”

“What about my assignment?” Tylus asked in desperation. “Senior Arkademic Magnus insists you help me.”

“What’s he gonna do? Fire me? Fire us all?” the sergeant snapped back. “It’s chaos down here, where do you think they’d find anyone to replace us? Nobody else would be crazy enough to do this job.”

Despite the words, he seemed to relent, casting his gaze around the room until it came to rest on a particularly young and sickly looking officer. “Richardson, get your arse over here, now!”

The lad scampered to obey.

“Right,” the sergeant told him, “you’re to put aside whatever you’re currently working on and help Mr Kite Guard here, got it?”

Tylus saw the young officer’s eyes widen in alarm. “But, Sergeant, I’ve got–”

“That wasn’t a request, officer, that was an order. You’ll just have to fit in your existing case load around whatever Officer Tylus here needs you to do. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.” The lad’s face now showed the sort of weary resignation that Tylus imagined his own must display in the presence of Sergeant Goss.

The sergeant turned back to the Kite Guard. “There. I know this is not what you were expecting but it’s all I can spare you – more than I can spare in truth – so make the most of it, get busy and keep out of my way. Understood?”

“Sir!”

With that, the sergeant hurried towards the door and out of the squad room. Tylus supposed he should feel grateful. After all, one officer’s help was more than he thought he was going to get just a few minutes beforehand. However, he strongly suspected that this Richardson was the runt of the department, the officer the sergeant could most afford to spare. A bit like himself. Still, whatever his shortcomings, the lad was bound to have some local knowledge, which was what he needed the most. Two runts together; the pair of them against the world.

Tylus turned to his new assistant, trying to look confident and in command. “Come on then, Richardson, we’ve got a boy to find.”

SIX

When Magnus first told him of this assignment to the City Below, Dewar had felt supremely confident. After all, this was territory he knew well, the place he had first made a name for himself. What could be simpler than bamboozling a wet-behind-the-ears Kite Guard while tracking down a street-nick who had managed to infiltrate the Heights, word of which was bound to have spread like wildfire through the streets?

Yet things were not going entirely to plan.

To start with the boy appeared to have vanished and there was not even a whisper about any daring raid on the Heights. Then there was the alarming deficiency in his old network of contacts, which had been painstakingly built up over a number of years through the judicious application of blackmail, bribery, intimidation, cajoling and violence. True, it was still largely intact, even though one or two individuals may have been a little reluctant to renew acquaintance, but their reluctance was not the real problem; it was more the one significant hole in his former network which was giving him grief. Vital links had been cut away, leaving a yawning chasm where he needed information the most. Dewar seemed to be left with no viable source within the city watch. This was frustrating in the extreme, because the watch tended to be aware of most everything that was going on, if only because they knew what they had been paid to turn a blind eye to.

In the past, Dewar had operated four different informants within the local guard units. One he knew for certain to be dead, a second he could find no trace of whatsoever and the other two had apparently both been dismissed following a crackdown on corruption within the force. This last struck Dewar as hilarious, and he wondered how they had chosen which officers to kick out and which to retain. Perhaps the tossing of a coin was involved, it being the most appropriate method that sprang to mind.

Of course, given a little time he could soon cultivate new resources, he was an expert at such things. All he had to do was single out a suitable candidate, stand beside the man in a favoured tavern for a few off-duty evenings, chat to him, befriend him, buy a few drinks – and then casually raise the subject of money. Dewar knew how the game was played, knew the steps to that particular dance by heart, but he also knew that it took time and, while he himself could be patient when circumstances required, Magnus was anything but. The arkademic would doubtless expect to see results sooner rather than later. Which meant that Dewar had a problem. Fortunately, he was rarely at a loss in such situations. After all, that was what he did best: resolve problems.

The alleyway he now walked down was a particularly wretched one, at the back of the docks and just a spit and a hop away from the Runs. Even the hovels and detritus of that shantytown were a step up from this place, which had been abandoned to the rats and spill dragons years ago. Dewar descended a flight of crumbling steps to a still-sound basement beneath the imploded shell of a building. He pulled aside rotting boards and the tangled remnants of what had once been a fishing net – things he had dragged across the entrance when leaving – and pushed open the door beyond.

Yes, patience and bribery had their place but, under the circumstances, he had decided to forego such subtleties in favour of a more direct approach.

The smell that assailed his nostrils as the door opened suggested the room’s only human occupant might have made his own contribution to his uniform’s colour: brown and orange. Mud and clay the watch liked to call it, proud at the association with good solid and honest earth. Shit and shit was how Dewar had always thought of it, and he never did understand how anyone could take pride in their uniform while at the same time surreptitiously pocketing handouts for dishonouring it.

The guardsman was where he had left him, still gagged and bound to the solitary chair in the centre of an otherwise bare room. Dewar had expected no less but even so felt mildly disappointed. He was forever seeking a challenge and opponents invariably failed to deliver one. Light filtered into the room via a single window – a horizontal slit of grime and filth set high in the wall, immediately below the ceiling, at a height which coincided with street level outside. That any light at all penetrated an opening made near opaque through so much accumulated muck struck Dewar as a minor miracle and bore testament to the persistence of nature’s energies. Enough did so to glisten dully from the hide of the room’s other occupant: a spill dragon, about the same length from tip to tail as a man was tall. Not the largest Dewar had ever seen but impressive enough. He had found the thing skulking around the ruins above and herded it down here, locking the lizard in before going in search of the city watch.

There was nothing special about this particular guardsman, he was just unlucky: in the wrong place at the right time. Dewar had knocked him out and carried him back here, to be bound, gagged and woken, in that order. The assassin had then administered a light beating; nothing permanent, nothing too serious, but painful – just enough to make it clear that he knew what he was doing. All the while he made sure that the man was conscious of the spill dragon which lurked in the shadows, hugging the wall, unsettled by all the commotion.

As he worked, Dewar asked questions, initially about the boy, about the Kite Guard and about the disquiet on the streets. After a few minutes of this he paused, as if suddenly remembering himself. “But of course, you can’t answer me, can you? Not with that gag in place. And you do want to answer me, don’t you?”

The man nodded vigorously, his eyes wide with fear and now, perhaps, also hope.

As soon as the gag was removed words poured from the razzer in a veritable torrent, though much of it was of little or no value, as Dewar had expected. That wasn’t the point. It was what the man might come to know that most interested the assassin.

Not that he was about to admit any of this to his captive, not yet. So he feigned disappointment, gave the man a single cuff around the ear and replaced the gag, ignoring the protests and pleas.

Like the guardsman, the rat was freshly caught, though unlike the guardsman it no longer breathed. After tossing the rodent to the spill dragon, Dewar dragged his captive’s chair around so that it faced directly towards the lizard, which had already begun to examine the newly presented titbit. The assassin crouched behind the chair, hands resting on its back, his face close to the guardsman’s ear, and he resumed speaking, in a casual, relaxed manner, as if chatting to a friend.

“Have you ever seen a spill dragon attack a corpse? Of course you have – must see that all the time in your line of work. Fearsome sight, isn’t it? The way those jaws wrench off chunks of meat.”

As if on cue, the lizard placed one clawed foot on the dead rodent, took the exposed head and forequarters in its mouth and then twisted and jerked. In truth, spill dragons’ teeth were nothing special. Dewar had made a study of such things when he first arrived in the City Below. Their real strength lay in powerful neck and shoulder muscles and the ability to grip firmly. Spill dragons didn’t so much bite bits from a corpse as tear chunks off, which was exactly what this one now proceeded to do. The rat tore apart somewhere around its middle, bloodied entrails hanging from the lizard’s mouth until it tossed its head back and pulled the grizzly snack fully into its gullet.

“They’d get through to a man’s innards in no time,” Dewar continued. “Of course, as we all know, spill dragons like their meat fresh – always first to a kill, aren’t they? I reckon this one would go for your leg first, or maybe your foot.” He stopped, shifted forward and made a show of studying the man’s legs where they were tied to the chair. Then he came back behind him again. “Yes, the foot, I think. Can you imagine what short work it will make of your toes? Probably take the entire foot clean off at the ankle with the first bite.” He gave a dramatic shudder. “Brrr! A horrible way to go.”

Judging by the look in his captive’s eyes, the man agreed with him.

The dragon lifted its leg ponderously to reveal the bloodied remnants of the rat’s hind quarters, entrails and internal organs starkly visible, before lowering its head and snapping them up. The snack had been devoured in two mouthfuls, leaving behind just a smear of blood on the floor.

There was a great deal of superstition surrounding spill dragons. The level of ignorance, even among the inhabitants of the City Below who lived beside them, was alarming. Superstition inevitably led to misunderstanding, and Dewar had always found misunderstanding and ignorance to be useful tools. He needed the razzer’s spirit broken but couldn’t spare the time to see to it himself, so determined to let the man’s own imagination do the job for him.

He stood up, stepped a little away from the chair, and took out a small phial of oil, the contents of which he set about sprinkling in a tight circle around the captive, drop by drop. While he did so, he spoke in the same relaxed, off-hand manner as before.

“Might be an idea if you jiggle about a bit while I’m not here, just to let this one know you’re still alive. Mind you, once it realises you aren’t going anywhere, that you can’t go anywhere, I’m not certain how much good jiggling will do, but we live in hope, eh?

“Oh, and I wouldn’t go jiggling about too much if I were you. Otherwise you’re likely to shuffle the chair and yourself outside this ring of scent I’ve laid down. Dragons hate the stuff, so as long as you remain inside this circle you should be all right; until the scent fades of course, but that ought to be a good few hours away. I should be back before then. Lots to do, mind you, so it all depends on how long things take.”

The scent ring completed, he paused to survey the room and decided that everything was as he wanted. The razzer sat statue-still, clearly choosing for the moment at least to avoid jiggling entirely and rely on the circle of scent.

Dewar then left to meet up with Martha and attend to other business, nodding to his captive on the way out and saying, “I’ll see you on my return…hopefully.”

Now, a good few hours later, the pungent smell of excrement suggested that the man was sufficiently unnerved. Dewar had no idea what action on the spill dragon’s part might have caused such terror, but he did know that any perceived threat would have existed only in the razzer’s mind. Spill dragons, despite their formidable appearance and the impressive size they could sometimes reach, really did feed exclusively on dead meat. Fortunately for the assassin’s purposes there were plenty of whispered tales that insisted otherwise.

The lizard made a ponderous beeline for the door as soon as it opened, but Dewar closed it promptly, barring the way. The reptile’s presence would help to keep the unfortunate guard’s mind focused. The thing hissed at him and proceeded to dig at the door’s base. He ignored it and stepped into the room.

“Good. Still with us, I see.”

The razzer’s bulging eyes and indecipherable but clearly desperate attempts to speak past the gag confirmed what Dewar’s nose had already reported: the man was ripe to agree to anything. He loosened the gag and took out the wad of cloth from the captive’s mouth.

“Please, I’ve got a young daughter,” the man croaked.

“And you’re suggesting I take her in your place? What sort of a father are you?”

“No, no…I didn’t mean that.”

“What then?”

“It’s just…she needs her father.”

Dewar brought his face close in to the petrified razzer’s, “And I need information. Understood?”

“Yes, of course, anything.”

They soon came to an arrangement. The last thing Dewar said to the man before rendering him unconscious again was, “Remember, if you do let me down, it won’t be you I bring back here next time but your daughter.”

He then rapped his newly recruited informant on the head, before untying him and lifting him up onto a shoulder, ready for dumping back where he had been caught. How the man explained the missing hours to his commander and colleagues was his problem, not Dewar’s. He left the cellar door open as he went, allowing the frustrated lizard to escape and roam where it would. He had what he wanted from the creature and the place, and had now finished with both.

One informant within the Watch was hardly blanket coverage, but it was a start.

“Are they still following us?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, without looking round. She had let go of his hand as soon as it became obvious the ruse wasn’t going to work. At one level Tom was glad to have his hand free again, but at another he felt vaguely disappointed.

“Any idea why?”

“A couple of ideas, none of them pleasant.” She gave a sigh. “I’ve had enough of this.”

With that she spun on her heel and strode back the way they had come, towards the following knot of street-nicks. Or, rather, she bounced towards them, all challenge and attitude.

“Hey! You got nothing better to do than follow us like a pack o’ snivelling hounds?”

Unprepared for her abrupt stand, Tom could only watch, impressed despite himself. If he were one of those street-nicks, he would have been startled by such a display of confident aggression.

“No harm, Kat,” one of the nicks responded, raising empty hands defensively, “we were just driftin’ this way is all.”

“Then breckin’ well drift some other way.”

“It’s just a little strange,” one of the others said, “you travelling with company, ’specially some lad that none of us ’ave seen before.”

“What with us being on the lookout for a stranger, a nick who gave a couple of Herons a dustin’ by the stairs this mornin’,” the first nick added.

Tom came up to stand by Kat’s shoulder. Tempted though he was to join in, he reckoned Kat had a better idea of how to handle these nicks than he did, so kept quiet.

“Since when have the Thunders cared what happens to a couple of Herons? Thought you’d all be cheering to see ’em get a pasting.”

“Times change.”

“Not that quickly. What’s goin’ on?”

“Funny you should ask. Come with us and we’ll explain everything.”

The girl shook her head. “Can’t, I got business. Catch me on the way back, maybe.”