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.
Chapter 16
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.
Chapter 17
Quarg Hund, Quarg Hund Burning Bright
In the Suburbs of the Night