City Of Ruin (40 page)

‘Shall we?’ He offered her his arm.

*

Nanzi loitered on the rooftop, observing people shuffling along thtreets below with monotonous strides, one after the other, their headowed and hunched under the snowfall. Skies had clouded over. Many of the lanterns kept being taken by thieves looking for scraetal, leaving a darkness in which Nanzi, in her arachnid form, couleel comfortable. Snow had amassed along the guttering, obscuriner view, so the spider poked one leg over the top to clear some spacor her to scrutinize the scene fully.

She was halfway between the theatre and Jeryd’s house. Her targead announced proudly to Nanzi earlier that day where he would be going tonight for his wife’s surprise, providing the spider with the perfect opportunity to be rid of him.

Every couple that walked by, she homed in on and scrutinized patiently, sensing to see if any one of them was Jeryd. In the mass she sensed joy, misery, excitement, awkwardness – a whole host of states of being, which came to her in alterations of air chemistry.

Down to the left: Jeryd and Marysa. Arm in arm, he smiling, her laughing at something he had said. After a kid narrowly missed Jeryd with a snowball, he scooped up some loose snow from a wall and arced one back.

Cautious now of being spotted, Nanzi withdrew her legs, and watched them cautiously. The couple drifted further along, and Nanzi propelled her body across the roof tiles with the agility of a ballet dancer, all the time studying their progress. The lights of the city proved hypnotic, reaching her in languid pulses of heat, and chemicals from street vendors smeared the air, but she kept herself as focused as possible, tap-tapping from tile to tile, spitting fresh silk to support herself, so that she didn’t slip and plummet to the ground.

Streets became people-thick, the golem show pulling in quite a crowd.

Then she lost them, Jeryd and Marysa, in a throng of bodies by the entrance to the old theatre. Her animalistic instincts took over: she must find him, she must kill him.

Up to the roof of the theatre eventually, up and up to a giddy height. The precarious structure seemed to rattle in this wind. Scuttling back and forth, she examined the surface for a few loose tiles, then managed to remove enough to squeeze her bulbous form into the building itself.

And down into the darkness.

*

Lights out. A dignified ripple of applause.

Three rows from the back, on the right side of a red-upholstered auditorium, Jeryd was getting vaguely interested as a golemist lumbered onstage in a flamboyant white shirt. His face resembled a sack of potatoes and he was laughing merrily to himself. A small white pterodette of some kind, all spindly and barbed, shambled along by his feet.

What a damn humiliation for a cultist
, Jeryd thought,
to be reduced to mere entertainment. Does he get teased by the others?

The man blew kisses to the crowd and Marysa excitedly clutched Jeryd’s hand. This was all a little cheesy, and Jeryd couldn’t tell if she liked these shows ironically or genuinely, but at least she seemed happy enough. Certain things seemed to reduce her to a sweet young girl again, so he simply smiled then focused on the man up onstage.

As they usually did, the golemist placed several waist-high, potbellied statues about the torch-lit stage, before stepping back into the shadows at the centre rear, the white creature tottering after him to stand by his feet.

A guitarist began throwing some chords, minor thirds mainly and, after a few predictable flashes of magic, the stone statues became liquid and motile. One by one, they began gyrating in a hypnotic rhythm.

*

With so many people, the air chemistry completely altered, anndividuals began losing their individuality. Nanzi ripped her way through the various floor levels and dropped down onto the ceiling of the auditorium proper. No – right above the stage now, looking down on all the rigging and apparatus of theatre. Ropes spiralled down to the limelight, and a red curtain sagged sadly like an age-collapsed face. Analysing the audience, Nanzi eventually located Jeryd and Marysa near the back, safely away from the majority. Although a large crowd, the theatre could have accommodated hundreds more. The auditorium walls – dry and stable – looked excellent surfaces to crawl upon.

Nanzi scampered across. Her legs pinged along the little metal railings above the stage. The figure on the stage briefly glanced up as she darted into the shadows beyond.

*

Well this is certainly nothing new
, Jeryd reflected.
The performers in Villjamur do this sort of thing ten times better than this fool. How much did I pay for these damn tickets?
‘
Great’ Iucounu my arse
.

Something flickered above him, to one side, but it was too dark to perceive what it was. Perhaps he was looking for any excuse not to watch this poor excuse for a show.

Back on stage, the statues flopped about like some poor creatures dying of hunger, while the ‘Great’ Iucounu glanced up from his semi-bow almost apologetically. In Villjamur you saw these things flying around amidst the audience for the finale – so what would this loser achieve? Jeryd shook his head and sighed. Someone nearby booed, and he would have joined in, if it hadn’t been for his wife watching so sympathetically.

*

With precise steps, Nanzi navigated past the vast portraits lininhe wall – and she would have to be careful, because Jeryd had scanned in her direction once already. She noticed that she was too close to the people in the nearby rows so she banked up higher, thirty feet up, and now on to the ceiling, observing the auditorium upside down. She then moved to a position directly above the target couple. There, she spat webbing. Satisfied it would take her weight, she began to descend, as careful as possible that others wouldn’t—

*

– a scream: a blood-curdling scream and Jeryd turned round, peerineft and right, then to the rows in front and the talentless goon unstage but there was nothing . . . and then it happened so quickly, the
thing
looming above him –
a fucking spider
, just standing there, doinothing – and he remembered screaming ‘Please no!’ and his hearammering, and the tenseness and tightness returning inside, and hidn’t want it to
touch
him—

Suddenly Marysa hauled him aside, a blade in her hand, and shoveim beneath the row of cushioned seats. As the silent screams rattleround inside his head, he placed his arms over his face and peeperom behind them at his wife. She was slicing, this way and that, ahe massive limbs of the creature darting with phenomenal grace, rolling and ducking under the blows it tried to deliver in return. Bue had to turn away and cover his eyes. The seating nearby was ripped apart and Jeryd began to shiver, and the images blurred, and the sound of screaming faded, and he . . .

*

‘Jeryd . . .’

His wife’s voice, soothing.

Water splashed across his face, not so soothing.

He rubbed himself dry, peering about him now, alert and on edge. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘You fainted,’ Marysa declared embarrassingly.

‘Nice one, mate,’ someone commented, and a man laughed in the crowd of theatregoers staring down at him.

Jeryd was lying on a pile of coats on the floor of the foyer, with its fancy flambeaus and elegant decor in the background.

‘Well, I realize that,’ he muttered. ‘I mean, what the hell happened before?’

‘A massive spider just dropped down and tried to attack us but I managed to fight it off with my messer.’ She held it up for a moment, a sharp weapon with a wooden handle, before slipping it back into her boot. ‘It’s a good thing I went to all those Berja classes.’ Her expression showed that she was feeling proud of herself. ‘The thing nearly had you at one point – it kind of hovered over you as if it couldn’t decide whether or not to kill you. I don’t think it
wanted
to – if that makes any sense. How bizarre! Anyway, it wasn’t just me that helped you – there were one or two men from one of the gangs, I think, and they fired crossbow bolts at it until it cowered away somewhere up in the darkness.’

‘I didn’t know you carried a blade.’

She suddenly looked coy. ‘I was awarded it in my class, by the master.’

Jeryd grinned awkwardly, and pushed himself upright with great unsteadiness. Then it dawned on him:
the spider
. The one he was tracking – it was after him, too.

A spider. After him.

Fuck.

‘Marysa, we have to go,’ he said urgently, and she helped him off the pile of coats before guiding him through the parting crowds.

The image of the creature made him breathe heavily once again and Marysa hugged him. He couldn’t believe how she was now the
tough one
.

‘Marysa, we have to go somewhere safe. I think . . . I think this spider is out to get me.’

*

As they made their way home, he explained the danger they faced. Hold her that they had to move houses again, just in case. He suggestewo good hotels. Throughout the night they packed their essentiaelongings and moved out.

It was now abundantly clear to Jeryd that he would have to get the spider or the spider would get him. If he was honest, neither of these options radiated charm – although remaining alive was certainly preferable. So he would have to confront his deepest fears and snare a spider much bigger than himself.

If you looked hard enough, there seemed to be no end of places a colossal arachnid could hide. Every niche in a stone facade, every section of old guttering offered the potential for paranoia. It made choosing their new abode more complex.

A bloody spider.

In all his decades of working for the Inquisition back in Villjamur, Jeryd had never come up against anything quite so simultaneously ridiculous and frightening, but he had also learned in recent times to go with what seemed unlikely – because in this wide-flung Empire, nothing was impossible.

They’d found a hotel still open, which was all bad carpets and unfashionable curtains, but Jeryd was incensed to have to pay over the odds for a room. Empty corridors and vacant rooms were to be found everywhere, because of the war, but the night receptionist insisted that they did not barter.
Damn rip-off city
. . .

‘There had better be a bloody good breakfast as part of this price,’ Jeryd muttered as he slapped coin after coin on the counter.

The following morning, after a restless night’s sleep, Jeryd decided to walk along the harbour of Port Nostalgia, maybe clear his head a little, try to regain some perspective. A calm day seemed promised: the cloud layered pale and high, and for once there was no wind, so a pungent aroma lingered, of seaweed and fish and organic detritus abandoned on the boats. This peace was interrupted only by soldier-calls or the hammering of boards being nailed across windows. Troops had been stationed on hastily constructed wooden watchtowers up on the hills to either side of the city, and garudas sailed constantly through the skies on patrol. It was a watched city.

He had recently discovered the harbour to be one of his favourite spots in Villiren, despite the military presence. Soldiers had brought a sense of fatalism to the place, that there was only an ending in sight. Still, here he could stare out to sea and lose all concept of time. With nowhere to run, all he could do was look back to the past. Memories flooded and ebbed.

A few of the local bistros were doing a roaring trade, serving so many off-duty soldiers, and Jeryd decided that some tea might be a good way to continue the morning, perhaps to jolt his mind alert.

Traders were making their way to the irens further in the city, rumel and humans pulling carts, huddled in layered clothing, their breath like smoke in the morning light. Four trilobites were following a rumel stevedore down a side street. Jeryd could smell bread baking somewhere frustratingly distant.

Further up along the street, he spotted three elderly types in dark cloaks behaving rather oddly. They were crouching over some bizarre object, and something about their mannerisms suggested immediately to Jeryd that they were cultists. All wore different shades of tweed cloth, the kind he hadn’t seen in a long time. One was a tall woman, the other two were men as short as Jeryd himself. Listening hard, he distinguished the words ‘Amber’ and ‘Teuthology’.

‘Sele of Jamur,’ he announced, approaching, and they turned sharply to regard him. ‘What have we got going on here?’

‘Ah, good morning, indeed, sir,’ the woman replied. ‘Just a spot of research.’ Grey-haired and thin, she possessed well-proportioned features, laughter lines suggesting amiability, and her blue eyes were intense and warm. A wonderful perfume lingered around her.

Of the other two, one man had a thick grey moustache and wore a flat cap over his wide, chubby face while the other was completely bald and it seemed he wasn’t one for wasting words.

‘Anything we at the Inquisition ought to be aware of?’ Jeryd asked.

‘Oh, um, no,’ the woman said. ‘That is, I mean to say, nothing of a questionable nature. We’re simply cultists, looking into something unusual. We’re not even local, sir.’

‘Cultists . . . say, maybe I could use a bit of your wisdom. Could I buy you all a drink?’