Still swearing under his breath, Steven turned back towards the hills of rubbish. This time he stopped dead, his foot in mid-air: when he looked down, he saw he was about to put his boot on exactly the spot where his knee had twice buckled beneath him.
Standing upright, one foot suspended several inches above the ground, he waited until he felt it: a muted sensation, like the soft rubbing of fingertips against an unfinished pine tabletop or the coarse skin of a callused palm. ‘Gilmour?’ Steven whispered, then stepped back, planting his foot away from the impacted snow where he had fallen. It was an urge now, like something – someone – was guiding him; he reached out, palms forward, as if to feel the air before him. He tried to recall how he’d felt all those months ago, when he was so determined to break into the bank safe and see what William Higgins had deposited there a century and a half earlier – he remembered feeling driven as he hurried home to see what was so important it had merited an eternity in a safe-deposit box.
He recognised that feeling; it was back: Lessek’s key and the Larion far portal were here, close by. He was not too late; not yet.
Steven covered his eyes: they were deceiving him, telling him there were acres of garbage to consider. There were not. Now, when he removed his hand, the landfill was gone, blurred into a waxy backdrop of beige, green and white. In its place were three tears, like irregular gashes on an oil canvas. The rips separated the landscape, pulling and tugging at the wash of colour that had been the valley below.
Steven’s breathing slowed as he understood what he was seeing; he had experienced something like this before, when he had touched the leather binding of Lessek’s spell book that night on the Prince Marek. He was overwhelmed with a monumental sense of power, as vast as the Midwest he had crossed just days before. Closing his eyes again, he reached into the air; it was tangible, malleable. When you are running, run, Steven. The way to win the battle was not to battle. The way to win the battle was to create. Ideas and algorithms swirled around him, and for a moment everything that ever was or would be was spread before him: opportunities won and lost, all was clear. It was maths. Maths could do anything, even the Fold could…
When Steven broke free from the magic, he found himself struggling to breathe, as if unseen arms encircled his chest. He cursed the altitude, rubbed his eyes and zipped his jacket up under his chin. It had grown colder; around him, the valley seemed darker.
Delicately, carefully, Steven edged the toe of his boot forward until it reached the point where he had fallen twice that morning. Nothing. No shock of Larion magic this time. He cautiously inched forward; now he knew what he was looking for. ‘A speed bump,’ he said, ‘a speed bump in a city dump. Who would have thought-?’
He walked to the snow bank towering above the road and began kicking at the base of the five-month accumulation of ploughed snow and ice. It was there; he was certain – just a foot or so away from where his legs had given way: a small granite stone, irregular and nondescript. Lessek’s key.
‘A speed bump.’ He shook his head and laughed out loud. ‘It bounced off the truck when it hit the speed bump.’ Steven turned the stone over in his hands, then slipped it into the pocket of his stolen jacket. The distant scream of sirens carried up the valley from Clear Creek Canyon.
He slipped several times on his way up the north face and some twelve feet down the other side of the middle mound of garbage, making him bitterly regret his lack of clean clothing. Wiping off a lump of what he was hoped was only rancid beef, he began digging through the layers of snow, frozen mud and damp rubbish. Three feet of mouldy food, rotten newspapers and dirty diapers later, his torn gloves came away thick with black, smoky mud. Paydirt: the remains of 147 Tenth Street.
Ten minutes later found Steven pulling out a wrinkled, sodden, almost unrecognisable Larion far portal. Though it looked – and felt – disgusting, as he tossed it over his shoulder, he noticed its fragrance, a hint of lilac, Hannah’s perfume. Its energy, the force that had driven him to rob his own bank, hadn’t waned. He could feel it pulsing through the muscles of his shoulder like a second cousin to the hickory staff. He glanced at the stolen watch, 10.54 a.m., six hours until he could get it back again. He hadn’t expected to miss it so much.
As he came down from the trash mountain, Steven wore a look of grim confidence. Lessek’s Larion portal was his; this time all the trepidation and terror he had experienced the night he followed Mark to Estrad were gone. In six hours he would step back into Eldarn, this time without fear, but he would carry with him sadness for Versen’s loss, loneliness without Hannah, and slow-boiling hatred for Nerak.
From the trees to the north came yet another wailing siren. As if he had suddenly heard it for the first time, Steven snapped his attention towards the sound. He swore, and began sprinting towards Howard’s car. Nerak was in Idaho Springs.
CASKS ON THE QUAY
On the north bank of the Medera River, where it spilled out into Orindale Harbour, there was an alehouse, bigger than most along the waterfront, catering to a mixed clientele of sailors, stevedores and merchants, and even a few Malakasian soldiers. It was a positive hive of revelry, from early morning until late each night, with fights tending to be little more than angry shoving matches as no one wanted to bring the full scrutiny of the local occupation force onto the establishment. Going too far would raise concern among the officers, and risk them closing the tavern, or, worse, having it burned to the ground.
Periodically someone would drink too much, talk too much, grope too much, or spout one too many unwise remarks about Prince Malagon, the occupation generals or even the wife or mistress of a good friend, and fists would grasp knives, blood would spill and bodies would be carried out a side entrance and unobtrusively tossed into the river.
The tavern owner kept a massive barrel filled with sawdust and it was the scullery boy’s job to scamper across the floor, dodging kicks and comatose drinkers, and ladle a few scoops onto whatever was pooled on the stained planks underfoot. The process generally took a few moments, and then noise level would rise again and things would return to normal.
In the predawn avens, violence was overcome by sex – or at least what might pass for sex in the grey time before sunrise. Sailors on leave, often just returned from long Twinmoons at sea, would spend the early part of the evening puffing out their chests shouting bold, if idiotic, platitudes about bravery and the sea, and fighting one another. By the middlenight aven, their thoughts turned as they grew desperate to find a warm woman in a warm bed. There were rare nights when full-on sex could be had on a table, behind the bar, or on a burlap sack out the back, and there were nights when a woman or two – periodically, even a bright young man – would take a knee and in front of the gods of the Northern Forest offer oral entertainments.
But with relatively few women willing to kneel down and service a crowd of healthy, if dog-piss-drunk sailors, the men were left to get creative, or to rely on the grippers, those females (generally), not all of them whores, who would make the late rounds, collecting coins and leaving a trail of comparatively satisfied young men in their wake, often while chatting with companions or enjoying a beer themselves. Evenings when the beer had flowed particularly deep and when women were particularly scarce, some men, desperate as they were, would come to agreeable terms and perform the service for one another.