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.
Chapter 18
Two enemies united, by a common, greater foe. Such alliances are fragile. The Vergers had been formed to ensure such alliances remained whole. Of course, it was open to corruption.
What isn’t?
The Dolorous Grey made its smoking, juddering progress out of the station, picking up speed on the slippery tracks as it clattered past the final gates of the platform. The driver released the horn and, all over Mirrlees, people paused and listened to that mournful sound. Medicine, in his hiding place in the shadows by Central Station, was one of them.
He crouched in a nest of iron beams and watched as smoke and the storm devoured the train.
“Good luck, David,” he whispered, and rubbed with aching fingers at the tension turned to knots in his neck. “You’re going to need it. At least the Council won’t have you now. Your father would be pleased with that if not the company that you keep.”
Desperate times demand desperate measures.
He slid from his hiding place onto the street, gripping his umbrella in both hands. The damn thing was heavier than his usual, a sabre hidden in this one’s wooden neck. When he moved too fast he could feel the blade rattling.
Medicine hurried down Argent Lane reflecting that while you could not see that bright moon in Mirrlees’ Sky, the downpour did little to obscure this street’s luminous stretch. Red lights glowed in every window, and the whistles of painted ladies, from doorway, corner and alley, pierced the crashing rain with their lascivious promises. Some of them calling out to him by name.
He was tempted, very tempted. Just to get out of the rain, he told himself, but his funds were dangerously low, most of his money had gone into Cadell’s wallet. Medicine still had his supporters, people he could call on, though every day that number decreased. And those remaining were, perhaps, suspect. Just who had they made deals with? A few more weeks and Medicine knew he would have to flee the city; but there remained things to be done. At least David and Cadell were gone.
He considered Cadell, and the two years it had taken before he was ready. So much had gone wrong, starting with Sean’s death. After which Warwick had discovered a mad recklessness within him, as first he lost his brother, his wife and then, finally, let his son float away from him into addiction. Medicine regarded this recklessness, as much as Cadell’s release, as the cause behind Stade’s Dissolution.
Their allies in Chapman, Lord Mayor Matthew Buchan and his advisor Whig, had been banished from that city and the Confluent party effectively broken there. Cadell had lingered in Mirrlees, drifting from safe house to safe house, indulging his hungers with any Verger that sought him out. The man had been afraid, an odd prospect, considering how terrifying Cadell could be in person, and that fear had kept him confined in the city. And, every day, the Roil moved north.
Medicine’s face flapped on a nearby lamppost (WANTED. DANGEROUS. DEAD or ALIVE), a terrible photograph, Medicine tore it down and hurled it onto the streaming street. If only everything could be that easy.
At the end of Argent Lane, after he’d ripped up another wanted poster, he realised he was being followed.
The painted ladies had stopped their whistling, and all along the lane, red lights died.
Not now.
He knew of only one thing that would silence the Ladies of Argent Street. Not coppers, nor thugs, nor gangs from the Northmir.
A Verger.
Medicine gripped his umbrella even more tightly, loosening the sabre it contained with a flick of his wrist.
He peered behind him: just rain and fog. The Verger filled the silence, perhaps in honour of Argent Lane, with his own whistling. Medicine felt the blood drain from his face, his lips thinned to a single nervous and angry line. The Verger whistled an old Confluence tune, a call to arms.
Bastard. Fucking Bastard. How dare he? Do not take up the challenge. Just keep walking. Bastard. Fucking Bastard.
Once round the corner, he ran, heading for a safe house on Wisden Street: a place that he had held in reserve for years. Most safe houses had burned in the last few days, greasy smoke rising into the rain. This one remained, empty, but its windows were broken. Blood stained the living room floor.
Footsteps echoed from outside. His nerve broke, and he ducked through a bolthole hidden in the living room that led, via a narrow stone tunnel, to a street two blocks behind. All the way, he walked with his sabre unsheathed and held shakily before him.
No one was waiting in the back street, but he did not hang around. Soon enough, the Verger was whistling again.
One place remained and he made his way there, all pace, through slivers of broken suburbs, wading along half-drowned streets, clambering over walls and under bridges.
Little traffic came this way. Those roads that weren’t covered in water were potholed, devourers of cart and horse. Empty side streets coiled and wound away from the city and the river. The city here had clenched around itself like a wounded beast. Medicine’s wet boots slapped down Cove Street and over the Cove Bridge. If luck were with him, he might lose his pursuer in the northern district, then come back via the Shine Bridge and into the rear of the Ruele Tower. The Verger’s tune followed him all the way.