Ecko Burning (31 page)

“Who?” Rhan said, carefully. “Who torched the stalls?”

The question was weighted - he wouldn’t put it past Phylos to sow the city with dissenters, voices to goad and gouge, sparks to kindle a flame - literally, in this case. The Merchant Master’s eyes and ears were everywhere.

A crested black bird landed on the mooring-post. It croaked as if it were warning them, but no one turned.

Rhan trusted no one. Not any more.

His eyes, the only part of him unchanged in his now thin, lined face scanned the expressions round the table.

“We don’t know.” The red-faced man wiped his lip and met Rhan’s gaze. “I’m Eorig, Jas is my sister’s daughter. Some halfcycle back, the heralds told us Fhaveon was limiting her terhnwood cargo, something about preserving the city against the blight. The news spread like the pox, our own halls refused to trade and it has spread along road and river, west and north. Fhaveon’s doubled her garrison - now she threatens to take our harvest by force if need be, to give us nothing in return.” He took another long pull of ale. “We’re not warriors, Sarastiah, but if we have to fight...”

Of course.

It was falling into place now - the vialer, the whole Gods-damned plot. Phylos had taken Fhaveon without a fight, using the blight as his leverage. As his soldiers spread through the Northern Varchinde, he could take the rest of the cities likewise - “securing” each one against the blight, against the unrest that it would bring. There was nothing the CityWardens could do, he could simply walk his soldiers in and start throwing orders.

He could take anything he wanted.

And the vialer he’d seen - had they been scouts? Were these forgotten creatures even now occupying Fhaveon herself, freeing up the city troops for their wide-ranging detail?

And the blight was
here,
like Phylos’s damned ambassador, working for him, Rhan had seen it as he’d come through the farmlands. He’d felt the fear, the tension. The manors were scared. On a local level, their individual tithes to their cities were being cut back so they themselves could survive the winter, and the delicate balance of life in the tithehalls was faltering. The city populace of Foriath could face a war on two fronts -local and plainswide - or they could accept Phylos’s soldiers and use them to take on their own farmlands...

The whole thing was diabolical genius.

Damn you. You’re not going to do this.

He sat back, watching out of the window and over the river. The bird was cleaning its feathers, head tucked into its chest. He could scent the trace of smoke in the air and it rose with the grey in his mind... He closed his eyes against both of them. From somewhere, he could hear shouting.

Then he opened his eyes, and, almost dreading the answer, said, “What of Rhan?”

“Rhan!” The woman’s scornful snort was like a slap.

“Rhan?” Eorig’s tone was amused. “By the Gods, we’re here to find a solution, not make jokes.” He poured himself another ale and the scent mingled with that of the smoke and brought with them images of the Bard.

Find a solution.

Not make jokes.

That was it, then. Four hundred returns of service and it was a joke.

But Eorig was still speaking, settling the jug back on the table.

“There is one line of hope in Fhaveon - only one.”

Rhan’s gaze turned to pin him.

The red-faced man met his gaze, said, “Maybe you know this? In her youth, the Foundersdaughter had a tutor - a warrior of some note. He...”

The scent of smoke was growing stronger. Outside, the bird flew away.

Caught now, Rhan leaned forwards, watching Eorig’s face as he spoke, the shake of his jowl and the way his grey whiskers gleamed in the rocklight. He had a feeling he knew exactly where this was going.

Saravin.

Warrior, Range Patrol, something of a loner. A man of courage and humour, nasty in a fight; liked his ale a little too much.

Saravin.

“But Saravin’s dead,” said the dark-haired woman. “Phylos’s pet, the new tan commander Cylearan, carved out his tripes on harvest day. He died in the hospice.”

“But we know there’s someone helping her,” said Eorig. “The Foundersdaughter still has a voice of sanity in her ear, a stabilising influence that’s holding her strong against Phylos’s propaganda. If we can find that voice, if we can make contact...”

Gusts of faint grey smog were billowing past the window, fragments of black ash whirling in the wind.

If we can find that voice...

Rhan would have bet Garland House and everything still in it that he knew to whom that voice belonged. He and Saravin had enjoyed a cold ale together occasionally, down through the returns, and the big warrior had sometimes had a slender shadow, a quiet and unremarkable man who’d had eyes as sharp as quillpoints, and forgot nothing.

A scribe, an artist. For the moment Rhan had lost his name, but he could picture the old man in his head, stoop-shouldered and quiet. A thoughtful man who let others do the talking.

Something in his heart sang,
I am not alone!

Then there was a sudden, harsh banging on the door.

They were on their feet in a moment, all seven of them, hearts pounding in unison as they stared at the doorway. The smell of smoke was very strong now. There were voices outside, demanding. The hammer on the door came again, and the wood juddered.

Eorig turned to the rest of them. “Go. Take the boat. Jas is my blood, they can’t touch me.”

I wouldn’t be too sure of that.

The desert lad said, “I’ll stay with you, I can help!”

“No, you go. All of you. Now!”

The hammering came again and the door rattled. The dark-haired woman ushered the rest of them out towards the little boat.

“Come on,” she said. “Quickly!”

All except Tesail scrambled past her, but Rhan went only as far as the narrow wharf and stopped, looking back into the room.

As the door slammed open, there were the expected goons, shields and weapons, there was the expected tan commander, his face etched with grim certainty. Eorig drew himself up to explain who he was.

Without waiting, the tan commander punched him in the face and dropped him, spluttering, to the floor.

The commander turned to the boy. Met his gaze. Nodded.

You little shit.

Rhan turned back to the wharf, unhooked the painter, gave the boat a shove.

And then he jumped. Not into the boat itself.

Into the water.

Again.

Fog lay deep on the great slow roll of the river - a shroud of stillness.

Along Embankment, the glare of security lighting diffused the night to a white haze. The city’s monotone had, at long bloody last, been shut off.

Somewhere to the north, muted laser-light gave evidence of London’s continuing life. A short distance above them, the blue blur of hoverdrones patrolled the security-zone barriers at the Hungerford footbridge.

Audible through the city’s rebroadcasters, Big Ben tolled a single, sullen note.

Half one in the morning.

If we’re seen out ’ere...

Uncomfortable in an army surplus longcoat, collar up to hide his beard, Lugan stood tucked into the wall. He was phoneless, all enhancements on shutdown. He felt stark-bollock naked and prospect-nervous. Beside him, a similar coat covering his ludicrous garments and hair, Roderick was voiceless and wide-eyed, silenced by the great city, by her looming shapes in the fog.

Behind them, Lugan heard a single, approaching engine - four-litre, beautifully tuned. Patrol-car headlights gleamed. Both men crouched closer to the wall, turned their faces away.

The car passed them and was gone, tail-lights receding into red haze.

“Chill.” Tinkering with the lock on the expanding metal cage-door, the woman who accompanied them chuckled. “You’re unseen, long as you’re with me.” Dusky-skinned, hair in dreads and body in layers of cast-offs, she had multiple piercings, blacklight-tats and way too many fingers. Her name was Thera, she ran “distraction”, and she was another creation of the tech Ecko called Mom. The city cameras slipped from her as though she were a phantom.

She was also hot as fuck.

Mind on the job, mate,
Lugan reminded himself.

“They don’t see me,” she’d told them, voice like velvet over gravel. When she’d held up an arm, the light tats ran like liquid round her skeletal, many-jointed fingers. “Magick.”

“Gotta love a girl with good tats,” Lugan remarked, straight-faced.

She grinned at him, white teeth bared in threat and humour. “You be watching your mouth.”

She turned away, snicked open the cage-door and slipped it a foot or so sideways - it moved easily, well-oiled. With a final check, she shifted the graffiti-tagged board that covered the entrance to Embankment Station.

And the gutted, lurker-infested corpse of the London Underground.

Heart inexplicably jumping, Lugan squeezed his shoulders through the gap.

Stopped.

Too fuckin’ surreal.

The ticket hall was so familiar, the smell, the taste of the air -the memory punched him in the face, almost made him reel with the force of it. And yet it was wrong - it was desolate, empty and grey, utterly cold. Silent, lit only by the faint rectangle of outside light, the station was layered with ghosts - a flickering mass of non-existent humanity, a city’s population who’d once had the freedom to be thronging this hallway, trudging and pushing, hating the crush, swearing about the commute... now all gone. Safe in their bolt-holes, with their twenty-minute walk to work.

Old rubbish lay scattered across the black-and-white tiles. There were great gouges in the wall where the dispenser machines had been forklifted away. It was chilled in here, bigger than Lugan remembered. Gooseflesh crawled up his arms.

A city’s bustling life, blown away like an old sheet of newspaper in a cold and empty wind.

“You be wanting the forgotten, the unseen, the unknown?” Thera said to them. “They all living down here.”

Once the city’s circulatory system, now the Underground was the place where she conveniently dumped her waste.

As the silent Roderick ducked in after Lugan, the thought came with a sharp realisation: what if the patrol car had seen them clearly? Was it only making sure they stayed within their boundaries?

Thera ran the cage-door closed, replaced the board. The hallway was suddenly in utter darkness.

“Don’t you be thinking of nightmares, now.” Her deep voice chuckled, wicked and throaty.

And, as Lugan turned, her tattoos came to life, dragons coiling in the darkness, fire that flickered over her skin. They were breathtaking, impossible - a circus light-show that limned her spider-hands, the shape of her face. A single thought and she’d transformed from invisible to prophetess, a manifestation of the city’s continuing underlife.

Like hope.

He reached for a dog-end, cursed when he realised he’d left his cut-down in his office.

There was a hand on his shoulder.

“Lugan?” Roderick sounded surprisingly calm - on some level, he understood why, though he couldn’t focus on it immediately. “Can you see?”

“Only the skin-job, mate. You?”

“The darkness does not bother me.” He sounded faintly amused. “And the lights are very beautiful.”

“Thanks, man,” Thera said. “We going down.”

Helplessly, they followed her spectrous writhe of light.

They passed what was left of the ticket barriers, descended the unmoving escalators, boots clanking on corpse-metal as they headed down, down under the city. A thousand noisy memories scudded through the emptiness - the tourists, the drunken party-goers, the laden shoppers and the frustrated families, the corporate security of the tube’s last days...

...now just broken lights; ads forgotten, faded and peeling, lit only by the ghost-light that was Thera’s skin.

All gone.

He lost sight of Thera’s lights as she jumped from the platform’s edge into cold, breezy darkness.

Lugan hesitated briefly, instinctively, then jumped down after her, followed her glimmer into the stinking black throat of the tunnel. Rails rusted in the puddles that splashed beneath his boots - somewhere down here there were flood-barriers, closed against the rising of the river.

The Bard said, mouthing horror for the first time, “People made these tunnels to live in?”

Beside them, frayed cables shed sudden sparks.

“No mate, they jus’ live in ’em now.”

He had no way of knowing where they were, no sat-access, no info upload, no fucking starlites. He missed Fuller, missed the aural link. Fuller’d
know
how deep they were, which line they’d crossed to, this time, and this one... Where the nearest fucking exit was...

Spark!

Yeah, awright, this place was spooking the shit out of him.

His Manhunter ten-mil was a comforting weight.

After a while, Roderick said softly, “There have been times when The Wanderer has manifest within the great Kartian Crafthalls, guest of the Church of Sires.” In the darkness, his voice was pure, rich melody. “They have always welcomed me, plied me with metal and bade me... entertain them.” Boots splashed - they must’ve dropped down to the deeper tunnels, now, they were up to their ankles in water. The air was freezing. “Their darkness is vibrant, alive; this, I do not comprehend. Your lore and history is this close, it seethes in the air about you - and yet you have left this place by choice? It is as though you have abandoned your world’s lore by... by apathy. By Kazyen.”

Spark!

“The lore is still there,” Thera said. She laughed again, soft and echoing. “But most don’t care. They only live as they’re told. Apathy has become a way of life, for most.” She paused by a crumble of brick wall, a mouth of darkness even deeper than that of the tunnel. “You be stopping now. We here.”

They turned sideways, stepped over a - broken? - hole in the brickwork and Thera’s light-tats were gone, flatlined. Lugan could see absolutely fuck all.