Roil Read online

  These monstrous chimneys rose high above the Four Cannon, their buttresses lit with low voltage electric lights and crammed with all manner of endothermic weaponry. Keeping the city cold generated heat and not all of it could be recovered and distributed back into the city’s engines. The waste heat released by the Vents was a constant draw to Roil spores and other more horrible entities. An endless battle raged around them. A unit of men and women called Sweepers garbed in cool-suits and more weaponry than any Sentinel, clambered over vent and chimney or rode the thermals on sharp-winged gliders into the spore cloud.

  A knot of them slid down, another rose up. Their mocking whistles echoed over Tate as they passed one another; tallies added up, kills expressed in swift signals; the sign language of the Sweepers.

  Men and women died above the city in the dry and ceaseless heat, but there were always more to take their place, drawn by the glamour and the terror of it. Margaret herself had hinted at such a career path, her parents promptly made her swear she would do no such thing: as if her parents did not risk their lives every day.

  She grabbed her harness, just as another bell began to toll. And another. She stopped and tilted her head towards the city beyond the Wire Room, and the cacophony that was building there.

  The ringing rippled over Willowhen Mount, taken up in watchtower after watchtower. In every house, in every quarter of the city, lights came on and doors swung open. Searchlights broke up the city airspace into grids of brilliance, revealing the nets and the dense darkness rising beyond.

  A gun-prickled dirigible rushed east. Something flashed, from beyond the walls. The dirigible fell, a long exclamation mark of fire. And the bells kept tolling.

  The city was under attack.

  Tate’s heartbeat raced. The Four Cannon loaded and fired, their huge engines turning, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Their grinding movements vibrated through the earth and into her feet.

  Bells tolled. Smaller ice cannon fired all along the outer walls. What the hell was happening? An explosion shook the house, but not from above, this vibration had come from below. Another series of bells started ringing. Margaret, raised on the language of the bells, knew at once what it meant.

  The Roil had breached the Jut, the gatehouse of Tate’s outer wall. Even from here she could see it burning.

  Another explosion and the Jut was gone, nothing remained of the gatehouse but a shower of blazing stone falling into the city.

  The Four Cannon picked up pace. Margaret stumbled back inside. She strapped two belts of pistols to her waist and grabbed an ice rifle. She reached for her harness again, but stopped before her fingers closed upon the leather.

  The wire thrummed as though the line were in use. She looked along the wire, east. Her breath caught in her throat.

  A Quarg Hound slid towards her, hooked claws gripping the wire perfectly. The beast’s black eyes widened as it saw her, then narrowed. It opened its mouth. A black tongue flicked out over tiers of jagged teeth, and lashed at the air.

  Margaret lifted the rifle to her shoulder, took aim and fired. The endothermic bullet hit the creature squarely, the hound spasmed and dropped.

  If the wires were compromised her father’s armoured carriage the Melody Amiss was the only way she would be able to get down to the wall. The wire thrummed again, startling her. Another dark shape raced over the city. She reached for an axe to break the line then thought better of it. The creature was a minute or so away, at least, and breaking the high tension wire was as much a danger to her as it. Margaret left the axe where it was, bolted the door to the wireway behind her and ran through to the Carriage Room.

  The ceiling was high. Her footfalls echoed loudly, melding with distant clamour of the bells. She pulled on a cold suit: time-consuming but necessary. The black, rubberised substance clung to her and it chilled her to the marrow, but the suit would protect her from the Roil. Over the suit she shrugged on her long coat its pockets already filled with ammunition and spare fuel cells. She’d been taught from childhood to dress as though the sky might fall in at any minute and decide to eat her. She considered the Melody Amiss, inside that she’d be something of an indigestible meal.

  The Melody was a brutally elegant carriage of streamlined steel and brass, an electrical-fuel hybrid her father had kitted out with more than the usual ice weaponry. Coolant fans streaked its tail. Her father regarded it as a barely tested prototype, but Margaret’s faith in it, and his designs, was far stronger. The cockpit could fit two at a stretch, but it was cramped, and the air within bitter with coolants.

  She jabbed at the starter buttons, the engine hummed beneath her. She engaged the automatic doors to the driving room. A Quarg Hound raced on stiff limbs through the opening. It leapt at the Melody Amiss. All Margaret saw was teeth and scrabbling claw, she released a burst of cold air and the hound shrieked and slipped away and under the carriage’s wheels.

  The Melody Amiss lurched out the doorway and on to the street.

  A body fell from the sky, striking the road with a wet thud. A Sweeper, the glider they had been riding torn to shreds. She looked up at the Steaming Vents, the air around them black with Hideous Garment Flutes and other Roilings. Gliders were being attacked from all angles. Sweepers fell here and there, broken, no grace in their descent, just plummet.

  There was nothing she could do here. But she could get to the front. She could help in the battle, and she could find out what had happened to her parents.

  Even now, there was no panic. People gathered at the evacuation points. Lifts were already taking groups down to the caverns beneath the city, Margaret didn’t even consider heading for their safety.

  She drove as quickly as she dared. Wan-faced Sentinels let her through the first gate with a quick wave.

  In the next zone, endothermic weaponry was being passed out to cold-suited Sentinels, and men and women in day wear or dressing gowns or Halloween costumes. It was an incongruous army that marched towards the walls – almost as varied as the creatures of the Roil itself. Every one of them moved with absolute economy, eyes lit with fear and a terrible determination.

  Pride blazed within her. These people did not cower before the immensity surging over the gates; they stood their ground and fought.

  At the second gate, a guard stopped her. She recognised him at once, a friend of the family and an old teacher at the rifle range. She released the door of the Melody.

  “Howard, the Jut it’s, I have to get through. Please let me through.”

  “I can’t, Margaret, the Jut isn’t there any more. You know better than most that we have evacuation protocols to follow. The gates stay shut until we get everyone we can to the caverns below.”

  Behind him, bricoled Sentinels, straining against harnesses, dragged cannon to the edge of the Wall Secundus, then winched them up. The weaponry already on the wall thundered ice into the attackers.

  “I know about the protocols. But I have to get through.”

  “You will do no such thing,” he said, folding his arms. “Of all the people that I would expect trouble from... Margaret, this is not the time. We need you up on the ramparts.”

  Margaret’s gaze turned frantically to the gate. “My parents are out there.”

  “So is the Roil.”

  “Has it reached the Secundus?”

  Howard shook his head. “Its agents are close though and getting closer. Look, I relayed Sara’s message. I know your parents were at the Jut. I need you here. I’ll send someone out for you, when we can spare them, once this is contained.”

  Another explosion shook the earth, ice crashed from the Secundus and fiery steel shards hurtled overhead, searing the air, striking the wall and exploding again. White-hot metal showered the Sentinels, igniting their cold suits so fast it was as though they had instantly become flame. All along the wall people shouted and screamed, pointing back at the way Margaret had come.

  “One of the Cannon!” Howard rushed towards a burning Sentinel, Margaret fol
lowed, though she daren’t get too close. Howard beat the flames away with his hands, then signalled to a stretcher crew.

  “One of the Four has blown.” He said to her as the Sentinel was taken away. “Get back, Margaret. You’re a Penn, we need you safe.”

  “I can’t, the Cannon sit above my home. And as to needing me, it’s my parents you need, and you know it.”

  Howard said nothing. Margaret watched him look from blazing Cannon to blazing walls.

  Fires everywhere.

  Margaret knew the Penn home was gone. Where the cannon and the house had been was a wild ribbon of flame. The other three Cannon picked up speed, endothermic shells arcing out beyond the walls.

  More ice smashed into the ground nearby. Gutters choked and water gurgled.

  Her boots were soaked, as were the tips of her coat. The ice sheathes were failing and all that water freed.

  In the middle of a firestorm the city began to drown.

  Chapter 3

  The Bridge was lost long ago, or won. Mirkton after all allowed such freedoms within the dark that no other suburb provided.

  If Mirrlees was the beacon of the North, then Mirkton was its shadow. Life was cheap there, but still it was life.

  Until the spiders came.

  Molck – The Shadow City

  MIRRLEES – DOWNING BRIDGE

  He’d been a fool to come here.

  Mirkton crowded the gloom beneath the bridge. Its rough shanties were stacked precariously on and over each other, bound up in Aerokin-ropes, supported by rude poles, the shells of old carriages, whatever was solid and might bear weight. They sat in heaps that made them look more like midden piles than houses: gas lanterns and stolen electrics gleamed in the dark. David was surprised by just how many people lived in this small city beneath the bridge. And every eye seemed focused on him. He realised that he stood out here perhaps more than anywhere, and in Mirkton he had more than Vergers to fear.

  The place stank of the river and rot, and too many people pressed too close together, a raw smell that lingered and stung the back of the throat. The dark sang with the noises of the enclosing Downing Bridge; groaning metal; the dim thunder of the run-off from the rain; and the chatter of Mirkton’s markets, of deals being made. People lived their lives down here, and to a large extent had dragged the world that they had sought to escape from with them. David could see that there was commerce of a sort; he just didn’t understand how it worked.

  He found himself a quiet safe place, down a stinking, rubbish strewn alley where he could gather his thoughts. But every thought brought him closer to utter paralysis. There was nowhere he could go, no plan or direction that could provide him with more than a few hours life. Maybe he would have been better off just letting the Vergers take him. There’d be no worrying now.

  Carnival’s pangs struck him again, a body-wide shaking that dropped him to his knees. He vomited loudly. Sobbed when he was done, a frail sound, the sort of weakness you didn’t want to project here.

  He stopped almost at once, covering his mouth with his hands. But someone had heard him.

  Heavy footfalls drew near, kicking their way through debris.

  Quiet, safe place no longer, if it had ever been.

  “You,” someone shouted in the dark. “I’ve need of your clean skin. I’ve a hungry piece of meat for you.”

  A man, a good foot taller than David, two feet broader, at least, shuffled closer, his cock in his hand. “See how hungry it is.”

  David backed away. Not far, rough, sweating bricks pushed against his spine. Dead end, kind of appropriate, he thought.

  David clenched his hands into fists. “Come no closer,” he yelled.

  “Oh, I’ll be coming closer, fancy boy.” The man grinned. “See it?” the man said. “Now feel it.”

  David kicked at his groin, and the man caught his foot, throwing David off balance. David landed on his back, and choked as more vomit crowded his throat. “Now, let’s see what we can do with you, eh.”

  He bent down, slapping David’s hands away. “Let me se–.” The man’s eyes rolled up in his head. He groaned, and fell, crushing David in a hot and stinking embrace.

  The body lifted, an inch or two, and David stared into lifeless eyes. “Ah, he’s a heavy bastard,” someone muttered. The body dropped. “You know, the least you could do is help me get him off you.”

  David pushed. The body rolled away, a knife in its back. A Verger’s knife. David looked into a boy’s face far younger than his own, but harder, even though he was smiling. “Ain’t no Verger, by the way. May tell you how I came by that knife one day, if you make it.” He reached out a hand and David grabbed it, scrambling to his feet. “You’re not going to last long down here, without help.”

  “I’m not going to last long anywhere,” David said.

  The boy crouched down and extracted the knife from the dead man’s spine. “Well, you’ve got a chance now, the name’s Lassiter.”

  “David.”

  “Well, David, you can come with me. I’ve a bolthole, away from all this noise. You’re welcome to share it.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “Because two’s better than one here. Someone to watch your back. You wander through Mirkton alone and unknowing and ... You want to be someone’s meat puppet, David?”

  David shook his head.

  “Then step to it. I’ve no desire for death tonight.” He kicked the corpse. “One kill’s enough, don’t you think?”

  Lassiter led him away from the dim bulk of Mirkton and into the darker regions, where shanties lay broken and empty, and their boots crunched on glass, and kicked up a dust made of bone and death and desertion. Lassiter flashed a grin. “Here we’re alone, some parts of Mirkton even the scum avoid.”

  Soon the paths they took were criss-crossed in gossamer threads.

  David brushed past a web, and something stung his arm. He cursed, shaking out his hand to free it of the web, and was stung again. David slapped his palm down over the bite; whatever had bitten him smeared beneath his fingers.

  “Spider,” Lassiter said. “Keep away from the webs. There’s a lot of them down here. Closer you get to the levee, and under the main part of the bridge. Mirkton was much bigger a couple of years back, but the spiders drove them out of the deeper parts. Some say that’s the Council’s doing, I don’t know about that, but it’s interesting that when the Vergers stopped patrolling this place the spiders started to swell in numbers. There’s still refuge to be found in a few of the spider territories if you know what you’re doing.” Lassiter puffed up his chest. “And I know what I’m doing.”

  Another spider bit him. David snarled and squashed it definitively with his thumb. “Are you sure this place is safe?”

  Lassiter laughed. “Nowhere’s safe down here, but it’s safer than most.”

  They passed down long abandoned streets lined with dipping treacherous looking houses, their walls mould-black or furred with web, and finally reached Lassiter’s bolthole. There was some light here, a small electric lantern, the power taken, Lassiter told him, directly from the levee itself.

  There were also a couple of paper-thin mattresses, and a few books stacked neatly in a corner, mostly pulp adventures: The Night Council, The Ragged Poet. David picked one up, a Night Council title. On the cover, Travis the Grave was fighting an Endym, its wing blades bloody. David stared at the lurid cover like it was a picture of home.

  “Got to get your mind off all this crap sometimes,” Lassiter said.

  “This was a good one,” David said.

  “Yeah, that Travis the Grave is crazy. No-one takes on an Endym that way,” Lassiter said, as though he had considered the tactical elements of a one on one fight with an Endym and worked out the best way. David almost thought to mock him, then realised that he had done the same thing many a time, as a boy, not too long ago, before the Carnival gripped him. It saddened him in an unfamiliar way to think of that boy – where was he now?

&
nbsp; Dead as his father, and his mother.

  “You hungry?” Lassiter asked and hurled David a bruised apple before he could reply. Lassiter grinned a proud and clever grin, as though this feat matched any conquest over an Endym. Perhaps it did. “Nicked ’em a week ago, valuable as gold, what with all this rain.”

  David was starving. He wolfed the soft and floury fruit down. Lassiter tossed him another. David ate it more slowly. When he was done, while hardly full, he found himself wearier than he could have believed possible.

  “Oh, and you might want this.” Lassiter slid a small package into his hand.

  David almost wept.

  “It isn’t much, but it’ll see you through the night.”

  David didn’t ask how he knew, he just slipped the three dark pills into his mouth and dry swallowed them.

  He yawned. Too early for the drug to take effect, but knowing that it would was enough to calm him. True calm would follow.

  “You’re tired.” Lassiter said. “We’re safe enough here, won’t let nothing hurt you. You rest up, and we’ll talk properly when you wake. World’s changed for you, David. You’ve a lot of work to be done: if you’re going to live.”

  David wondered just how Lassiter could know all this about him. Some of it was obvious, he guessed. After all, here he was in the darkest of the dark of Mirkton. Few came here because they wanted to.

  He had questions to ask, yes. But not now. He’d run too far that night, and he was bone weary.

  Answers for the morning.

  And if Lassiter slit his throat in his sleep, well, at least he would be sleeping.

  He knew there were worse ways to go.

  The Dolorous Grey’s shrill whistle echoed down the streets. The sound tightened the muscles in John Cadell’s neck. He should have been anywhere but here, standing in the dimly lit vestibule of what was somewhat contentiously considered a safe house.

  Surely, the last twenty-four hours had put paid to the concept. No place was safe for members of the Confluent Party, or their allies. Ha, there wasn’t a Confluent Party any more, just a list of corpses. And he was responsible. They’d died protecting him. That thought was enough to set the earth spinning. He yearned just a little for his old cage.