“If you can get to him, then they might as well. I don’t like loose ends.”
Tope’s lips pursed. “We’ve few loose ends left, and the boy is the least of them. Both John Cadell and Medicine Paul have evaded us.” Again that wondering tone.
Stade’s gaze dropped to the withered fingers floating in the jar on his desk, the Orbis on one of them thick with verdigris. He should have never been so lenient those decades past. Perhaps none of this would have happened if he had cut off Medicine Paul’s head instead of his fingers. “You are right, and those are loose ends enough. The Confluents are broken, all credit to you and your Long Knives, fine and bloody work, indeed, but you have not removed the threat in its entirety.”
“We will find him.”
“Good. We have limited resources and not much time. Milde’s death was unfortunate but he let the Old Man out. Such open dissent could not be without penalty, and not just the death of his brother. The Engine… what he had proposed… actions with consequences far too dangerous. We could not let it continue, knowing what we know.”
Tope’s eyes were inscrutable. He never gave much away, and he certainly didn’t now. “Knowing what we know, yes.”
Stade sighed. “I should have killed him sooner. The day he defied me. The day he crossed the floor. I should have cut his throat, then the Old Man would not have been set free and none of this would be necessary. But I was a gentler soul in those days. And we had been friends. Ah, Tope; it’s always the ones I don’t kill that I regret. Blood and murder, how else do you reach the top of the Tower?”
He turned to the window, glared down at Mirrlees as though it might reveal his enemies if he scowled hard enough. Ruele, the tower of the Council of Engineers extended into the sky, almost as high as the low layer of cloud from which rain fell and fell and fell.
Stade’s offices had an unmatched view of the city, from the outer orbit of radio arrays, round which Aerokin circled – their flagellum twitching in ceaseless hungry jactitation from their underbellies, water tumbling from their flesh until they breached the cloud bank – to the vast bulk of Downing Bridge and the levees, nearly five hundred yards high, yet barely containing the River Weep. The Dolorous Grey crossed the bridge, bellowing smoke, the train making its way south, to Chapman and the edge of the Roil.
Rain wormed along the office windows. Wind whistled through a crack in the lower edge of the window frame, bringing with it the smoky, rotten odours of the city, and dribbles of water that pooled upon and stained the carpet. Stade grimaced at the mess. Such was the pace of work required with other endeavours he had no one to spare for even the simplest of maintenance.
“Not long for this city,” Stade said. “The bastard had to die. Now tie me up those loose ends, Mr Tope. We’re running out of time.”
Chapter 2
That the city of Tate could have survived its absorption by the Roil was unthinkable. That Shale lost its brightest minds in the Penns was an absolute tragedy.
The Penns, though, had never been popular leaders outside their city, seen in the north by Confluents as too much in their sympathies like Engineers, and by the Engineers as far too much like Confluents. It could be argued that little effort was expended by the three Allied Metropolises of the North to aid their southern cousin, and that all parties were complicit in it.
The Roil baffles radio signals but, without a doubt, more energy could have been applied in trying to contact the city.
However, it must never be forgotten that those first years of the Roil’s rebirth were madness, its creatures (outside popular fictions and fairytales) unfamiliar, and terrifying.
THE CITY OF TATE 600 MILES SOUTH OF MIRRLEES: WITHIN THE ROIL
Margaret’s parents were late. She sat in the basement of the family home beneath the Four Cannon, seeking distraction in weapons prep and failing. It was a mindless sort of work (charging vascular systems, checking regulators, resetting clips) that set your thoughts wandering, and all her thoughts wandered in one direction.
Two days ago a bullet-shaped balloon drone flew over the Jut and the wall, passed beneath the Four Cannon of Willowhen Peak and the vast and twisting buttresses of the Steaming Vents, and landed on the forecourt of Tate’s Breach Hold Chambers, meeting place of the Council.
Within the balloon’s storage nacelle, along with various letters to Ministers and Engineers alike was a short note to Margaret written in her mother’s crabbed hand:
Tests successful. The I-Bombs drove back the Roil and we saw the sun. Hah! Knew you’d be jealous, my child. This will be an end to it all. Combined with my iron wings we can destroy the Roil. A new age is begun!
A few things to conclude, then we’ll begin the journey home. Your father sends his love. Back tomorrow, no later than six.
Both anxious to see you
A
Margaret read the note again, it was particularly jubilant for her mother: beginning of a new age or not.
Margaret had finished her sentry duty for the day, a twelve hour shift, dull, nothing to mark the time but the occasional opportunity to launch a cannonade at Quarg Hounds, or a dusty-winged Endym, or practice her marksmanship on Hideous Garment Flutes – though so many of them filled the skies it was harder to miss than strike one.
She hadn’t even spied a Walker: those driven to despair who clambered down the spiked and ice-slicked outer wall of the Jut and walked into the dark, never to be seen again. Of course, such despair was unjustified now.
Margaret had barely slept the night before, and her superior officer, Sara, had ordered her off the Jut, promising to alert her as soon as her parents arrived with three rings of the intercom bells.
Margaret had agreed wearily, but her head was buzzing and soon there’d be no need for such vigilance. The I-Bombs had been successful. The Roil could be forced back. She would see the sky, the real sky, and its sun and moons and stars.
Her parents had achieved what many had considered impossible. No less than a means of destroying the Roil that did not involve the near mythical Engine of the North – the ancient saviour and scour of the world.
But it hadn’t happened yet. She cleaned her guns, swapped the old fuel cells for new, and set to charging the drained ones.
She checked her watch. Her father had given her that on her seventeenth birthday. All it did was remind her of him. Why were they late?
Nearly six. As her watch reached the hour, the Four Cannon fired, launching endothermic shells out into the darkness of the Roil, driving its substance away from the Outer Wall – though it would quickly return. The Four Cannon – designed by her parents, like every other endothermic defence in Tate – were the city’s heartbeat. Without that regular cannonade Tate would have long ago succumbed to the Roil.
Conventional weapons did little harm to the creatures of the Roil, indeed they only seemed to encourage them to fury. However, Roilings could not survive in temperatures below three degrees Celsius, and Roil Spores themselves were killed by temperatures below freezing. All the city’s weapons took advantage of this, creating a zone of cold around Tate that kept the Roil out.
Margaret stretched her arms, appreciating the quiet. As much as she looked forward to seeing her parents again, she knew that once they drove through the gates it would be non-stop, starting with her flight down the wireway to see them.
The bells rang three times.