Roil (9 page)

The Mothers of the Sky. These progenitors of Aerokin were politically moderate, and utterly unfathomable. Their impact upon history negligible.

THE AEROKIN
ROSLYN DAWN
, THE OPEN SKY

“You will do this. He is to be treated as one of us, unless or until we tell you otherwise.”

“No,” Kara Jade had said. “This is madness, absolute folly, and besides there are plenty enough Aerokin in Chapman. I will not risk the
Dawn
.”

Of course, she hadn’t actually. If you wanted to fly, if you wanted to serve your Aerokin, then you did what the Mothers told you, even if it meant danger, even if it meant doing things that you would rather not, like coming down out of the air, like having to deal with people. All she wanted was the air and her
Roslyn Dawn
. There were plenty of Aerokin in Chapman too, for the Festival, but none of them were like hers.

Kara Jade did not like flying this close to the Roil. The
Roslyn Dawn
liked it even less. It hadn’t stopped complaining in its slow deep tongue since they’d left Drift.

Mirrlees-on-Weep dominated her mirrors. The river metropolis was not as wondrous as the pilot’s city of Drift, but impressive in its way, with its monstrous bridges and its crooked towering skyline. Though now it languished beneath masses of dark storm cloud like a beaten dog.

The river Weep had swollen. Suburbs north and west of the central boroughs, right up to the old forest known as the Margin, were stained with it. Cranes, another mighty and genuflecting forest, worked ceaselessly along the levees, extending them, repairing damage, thickening the levees bases, but it was ultimately a pointless industry, for the rain fell not just around the city, but further west, in the catchments. And there seemed no end in sight to its fall.

Mirrlees she could deal with, corrupt government or not, there was money to be made there. But the Mothers of the Sky had directed her south, and on this ridiculous and dangerous mission, and there would be a man, on board, an Old Man no less, and that was enough to make her sick.

Away from one darkness and too soon into another.

A hundred and fifty mile wide ribbon of dry air stretched between Mirrlees and Chapmen, broken on the Chapman end by Roil.

From up here it was easy to see everything, and that was why she preferred the north. The weather had been crazy that way for some years, but there was no darkness rising, no obsidian curtain, you could almost believe it wasn’t happening. Here though there was no doubt.

If the mothers hadn’t commanded her, there was no way she would have flown this way. But they had.

“We wait a week,” she said to the
Roslyn Dawn
. “Until the beginning of the Festival, no more, and if he hasn’t come, we go.”

The
Roslyn Dawn
accepted that, but barely, she was as stubborn as her pilot.

Let us speak of the Grand Defeat. Let us speak of lightning and a city
’
s fall. Let us speak of refugees driven North, and Mirrlees who greeted them with less than welcoming arms. Do not be so harsh to judge.

Who could face what they represented? A world
’
s ending. A prophecy apocalyptic. Hardacre was more accommodating. Though many didn
’
t survive the journey through the Margin and the Cuttlelands, enough did to swell that Metropolis
’
population to almost double its size.

To say it had ramifications for Hardacre and Mirrlees
’
relationship is an understatement. Their alliance was in name only. Mcmahon
’
s defeat a poisonous wound that could not be healed.

Margaret consulted her maps, more through a nervous need to keep her mind occupied than to check where she was going. She had pored over these since her earliest memory, imagining lands where the sun still shone, where the light did not just radiate from lamps and lanterns and huge glowing machinery but from the heavens.

Beyond Mcmahon the land plunged away into Magritte Gorge, a canyon extending from the Sea of Cage to the deep interior of Shale. That canyon was why the city had been built here. Mcmahon was designed to impress, to mark the earth with its glory. Only six bridges spanned the mile wide gorge and four of those, complex structures of wire and rods, were in the city proper, the other two were many hundreds of miles west. If she wanted to cross the gorge, without risking running out of fuel, she would have to drive through the city.

Margaret had known that, of course, but now she was here there was something frightening about these empty streets.

Unlike Tate, Mcmahon followed an asymmetric pattern, little more than a sprawl of suburbs and outlying townships. Mcmahon was too big to have ever been walled and too young to have ever needed them. By Mcmahon’s time, the Council had stopped its aggressive expansion and the war with the remaining Cuttlefolk had moved to the North and South.

In a period of relative peace, Mcmahon had grown rapidly.

There was evidence of the city’s swift collapse everywhere; cannon piled high like a child’s blocks, their muzzles so pale that Margaret doubted they had fired at all; and buildings torn down and strewn all over the road.

Worst of all were the burnt remains of the residents in market squares and other public meeting places, rough pyramids of skulls long ago picked clean of flesh.

Though there was no human meat to consume here, Quarg Hounds crammed the streets, scattering like cockroaches before the beams of her carriage. Nothing had come this way in a long time and the noise unsettled them.

However, as in every other part of the Roil through which she had travelled, their fear quickly gave way to curiosity, and they followed her passing with huge indolent eyes, jaws yawning wide then wider, revealing teeth-crowded mouths.

As tempted as she was to let fire with all her endothermic weaponry, Margaret held back.

She was starting to run low on everything. She could see a time when her ammunition ran out, when all she had left was, if she were lucky, her rime blade and a bullet for herself.

The
Melody
’s passage through Mcmahon couldn’t come fast enough, every second within the city a callous weight. Many of the bone-towers had collapsed, covering the roads to such a height that Margaret often had to double back, and find a different route. Hours passed before she drove beneath the Tower of Engineers with its raw edges of stone reaching up into the sky: a vast architectural howl that never stopped. Her skin prickled at the sight of it, and she was glad to have it at her back. But it remained another memory of ruin and despair that she had fled.

The ground shook, and bones tumbled from a nearby pile.

“What on old earth is that?” Her voice startled her. Her throat was dry, her head ached, and the words had come out shrill and barely recognisable as her own.

Perhaps she had imagined it; it wouldn’t have been the first time on this journey. She checked her instruments; the
Melody
was running a little hot, but not enough to explain the vibrations. The carriages were sensitive to such things, quite often such sly beats were the only warning of Sappers or other digging Roilings lying in wait beneath the road.

Moths tapped gently against the glass.

Her lips twisted with hatred. She released a blast of cold air through the side vents of the
Melody
and the moths were gone.

The vibrations increased in intensity. Margaret pulled into a narrow side street, stopped the carriage and extinguishing the lights. In the darkness she waited and she did not have to wait too long.

Something glowed, an indistinct light that quickly became stronger. Twin beams of light, and then more, illumining the entire road. A whole convoy of vehicles was coming.

Hope swelled within her, dying when the first carriage became visible through the murk.

The cockpit cabin had been blown open or torn apart; only tattered fragments of metal remained. Sara hunched over the wheel, her head bound with a smoky halo of moths. A Quarg Hound crouched beside her – much larger than the creatures she had seen throughout the city. Another and another carriage rounded the corner, all with cabins cracked, moth-smothered drivers and Quarg Hound companions.

By the time the first carriage passed the side street in which she had hidden, nine cars in total had turned the corner.

Nine cars, all of them heading for the Perl Bridge.

She could think of only one reason they would be travelling that way.

They were hunting her.

She waited until all of the cars had passed, then she pulled out her maps. If they were going to the Perl Bridge to the west she would take Pascal’s Bridge in the east. Margaret just hoped the bridge remained. Quickly, she worked out the fastest route, then started on her way.

Quarg Hund, Quarg Hund Burning Bright

In the Suburbs of the Night

David yowled and crashed into the night, hitting the soft wet ground and rolling.

The
Dolorous Grey
roared by. All he could hear were the carriages, its wheels but yards away. All he could feel was its rolling boiling breath.

He hit something and stopped so abruptly that his teeth slammed together, biting the inside of his cheek and filling his mouth with blood.

He lay there a moment, trying not to choke or throw up. The muscles in his legs shook as he pushed himself to his feet. He knew that much, you always got up. He fell on his arse again.

Cadell came into view, bag over one shoulder. “You right, lad?”

“Think so,” David said.

“We better get moving. They won’t let us go that easily.”

True enough, a little down the line, the
Dolorous Grey
shrieked and rumbled and came to a furious halt.

“I suggest we run,” Cadell said. He motioned over at the
Dolorous Grey
, smoke billowed from the train, wreathing the air in clouds veined with fluttering darkness.

David blinked. His head rang with all the discordance of a half dozen broken bells. He knew he should get up, and start running, but his body resisted the babble of his thoughts. He wondered if he would have taken it all so calmly if he’d not a little Carnival remaining in his veins.

And that thought had its own terrors. A little Carnival! A little wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. He could be here crooning at the moons and the rain, instead he had the spiders of his addiction crawling in his veins.

Cadell was saying something. David blinked at him. “Up now. Up.”

“What?”

Cadell grunted, bent down and gripped David by the shoulder, dragging him from the edge of the railroad and onto his feet. “Anything hurting? Can you walk?”

David nodded. He felt his body finally listening to what he required of it.

He had more aches than he could catalogue but, at the same time, fear dulled them, a short-lived remedy no doubt, but one for which he was oddly grateful.

Cadell made a noise in his throat. “Then we’d best get out of here.”

Sounds echoed from the
Dolorous Grey
through the dark and the pounding rain, doors slamming open, boots crunching hard on gravel and the stuttering, shrill laughter of the Roilings. From the engine room, something howled.

David shuddered, he had heard an imitation of that sound on one of the radio serials he used to listen to as a child. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cadell nodded; his face wreathed in shadows that failed miserably to hide his dismay. “Quarg Hound, and a big one. I haven’t heard that cry in over two thousand years.” There was another howl and another and another. “Three of them, time to run, Da–”

David was already sprinting into the darkness, away from the train. He turned, Cadell stood by the tracks staring at him.

“Well, hurry up then,” David said.

Behind them the
Dolorous Grey
returned to rumbling life, and its whistles shrieked until the Quarg Hounds shrieked back. David was not sure which was the more terrible, but he had no doubt what those hounds would do if they caught him.

So he ran, and ran hard, his breath coming fast and hot in the driving rain. The train behind him – wheels slipping loudly, whistle shrieking – continued on its journey south, down to Chapman.

David could not see how he and Cadell were ever going to make it to the city. The
Dolorous Grey
raced there, the Roil was down there, and all of it was intent on stopping them.

The land quickly became overgrown. Lantana and a dense and prickly scrub known as Meagre’s Knife closed in around them, but it did not stop the rain. The sodden ground sucked at his boots with every step. Twice they stumbled into overgrown streams, Meagre’s Knife tearing at their faces and hands, blood-warm water thigh high, the stones beneath treacherous. David was soon shivery and exhausted.

However, there was no stopping for them, the Quarg Hounds were always close behind, their guttural ravenous howling drawing nearer by the minute.

Cadell closed with him, glancing left and right.

“That’s funny,” he said, his voice thin and hopeful, he lifted a hand and David couldn’t shake the feeling that he smelt the air with it. “I remember this place. Vaguely and distantly. Bah, David when you get to my age things blur and each turn of the road or rise of the hill becomes familiar.”

David looked at him askance, opened his mouth to speak, and a Quarg Hound crashed into his back.

David grunted, the wind knocked out of him, he fell forward, arms flailing about.

Then he tumbled, through the tangle of lantana, the scrub giving way, cracking and scratching. David tried to hold on, but couldn’t. All he could think of was that Quarg Hound coming down behind him, David pitched headfirst into a much broader, much deeper stream.

The water rushed up and it was cold, then he was through, his head clipping a rock. He gasped with the cold and the pain, and sucked water into his nose and mouth.

As though on springs, he jumped to his feet, retching, head swinging this way and that.
This isn
’
t good.

He raised one hand as though to point, or perhaps to ward something off. He couldn’t remember, so he lowered it again, turning in a shaky circle as he tried to clear his head. What was he doing here?

The cold stream tugged at his knees, slowly pulling him down; knees, thighs, groin and belly.

The Quarg Hound that had tumbled down after David yelped and pushed away from him towards the edge of the stream, convulsing so savagely David could hear its back cracking. David watched it die, the Hound’s shuddering limbs folding up, and it sank into the water dragged down and away by the current. He knew he should be afraid, but he just couldn’t manage it.

“David!” Cadell shouted from above.

David’s vision narrowed to splotches of light and dark and pain. He tried to focus on Cadell’s voice but couldn’t, his head pounded as though a hundred hammers were trying to beat their way out. The pain dimmed, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

He blinked.

“I’m here,” David yelled. Or tried to because no sound escaped the torpid cage of his lips.

His voice failed him, followed by his legs. David fell forward, a numb and silent weight; his head slipped under the water and cold darkness found him.

Lassiter was laughing, and David’s parents were egging him on.

“David! David, wake up.” Someone shook him. “You must wake up.”

“I–” David said, coughing up more water. He stopped at last, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm and whispering, “Are they gone?”

Above the stream, from behind the thick shield of lantana, came two rough growls. Cadell jerked his head in the direction of the sound. A Quarg Hound tumbled out of the dark, shrieking as it struck the water. Cadell walked over to it, gripped its shuddering head and snapped its neck. He looked back at David, and winced. “Now, you must try and stand.”

David struggled to his feet and stumbled, falling forward, the cold had seeped into his muscles turning them stiff and sore and clumsy. His nose ran. His knees were raw. And his head, what had happened to his head? “I seem to be having difficulty.”

Cadell nodded, pulling David up again and letting him lean on his shoulder, one arm reaching around David’s back and gripping his right arm so tightly that it hurt; numbed only a little by the chill radiating from Cadell’s fingertips.

“I’m just so tired.” David tried to pull away, but he couldn’t manage it.

Cadell nodded. “Of course you are, so we’ll just keep going. This water is colder than it ought to be. What say we follow it to its source? I suspect what we find there might help us.” A shadow of a grin passed across his face. “I thought this place was familiar.”

Even with Cadell’s aid, each step was a challenge. When he closed his eyes, the whole world would spin and tumble in too many directions, and yet, several times he found himself almost falling asleep. This was worse, because Lassiter waited behind his eyelids, or his father, both mocking corpses, already beginning to rot, things rotted fast in the rain and the heat. David batted at spiders, the memory of their webs.

Everything had become so fractured and dreamlike that he took some comfort in the increasingly believable hypothesis that he
was
in fact asleep, his head lolling against the window of the train or better yet, in bed; his parents still alive.

“Don’t do that!” Cadell shouted, shaking him hard. “You must stay awake.”

“Absolutely,” David said, vomiting explosively into the river. “Nothing easier. Where did you say we’re going?”

Cadell patted his back gently, though his grip on David’s arm did not loosen.

“Too hard to explain while you’re so addled, but we’ve not far to go, then you can rest, I promise.”

Cadell’s not far to go turned out to be quite the opposite. They walked for nearly two hours, harried by the remaining duet of Quarg Hounds. Cadell chattered constantly, apologising, demanding, cajoling, and drawing every single step out of him one at a time.

Did they walk the length of Shale or had time been arrested somehow, beyond the trudge of weary feet, the howl of hounds and the continuous stream of talk that tumbled from Cadell’s lips?

But the scrub came at last to an end, opening onto a flat clearing a mile in diameter at least. A small hill marked the centre of the clearing. The source of the stream was a tiny spring at the foot of the hill, the water gleamed, a single silvery eye.

Cadell grinned. “A Lode of the Engine. Lode B1914 in fact,” he said almost smugly. “Ah, yes. It’s all turned out rather well, considering.”

Before David could ask him what he meant by that and how anything that had happened to them that evening could be construed as going even remotely well, the Quarg Hounds howled again, paws slamming into the water.

“David, you’re going to step out of the water now. The stream is broadening and deepening. There is no way we can continue to walk in it. Once we reach the shore, you are going to have to run. I know how difficult that is, but you must. Run as hard and as fast as you can towards that hill. The Quarg Hounds will be running too.”

David glanced from hill to hounds to Cadell. “What about you?”

Cadell shook his head. “I must stay in the water. If I could I would have you stay here with me, but it would be... dangerous.”

The Quarg Hounds were already sprinting towards the edge of the stream. “But–”

“David, don’t ask questions, questions are for later – now run.”

David shuddered, his cold lips clung to his teeth, all he could taste was blood and snot, and all he wanted to do was curl up and die.

“Run!”

He dragged himself to the edge of the stream, clambered over its grassy bank, and ran on legs ready to collapse beneath him. Ran, towards the hill.

Ran towards the Quarg Hounds.