“Yes,” Medicine said, at last, and even then he was not sure until the words had left his mouth. “I accept your offer.”
He did not want to die just yet, that was too easy, and too final.
Stade’s grin became huge and smug and he nodded to the Verger to unlock the handcuffs.
Medicine rubbed his wrists, straightened his blood-spattered cravat. “What needs to be done? How can I help this city?”
“Not the city,” Stade said. “But humanity. Those bastards in Hardacre may have no wish to be involved, but they are. When they declared themselves a free state, they declared themselves enemies of this one. Stuck between the Roil and a free state. There will be no help from them.”
Well it was your decision that barred the refugees of the Grand Defeat from entering this city. It was your rule that swelled Hardacre’s population, Medicine thought, but kept quiet.
Stade plucked a cigar out of a box and chucked it at the Confluent, who deftly caught it in one ruined hand.
“Your first job for me,” Stade said, and the words stung Medicine more than he thought possible, he worked for the Mayor now, and nothing he could say or do that would take the sting out of that truth, “will be to take new workers up to the Underground, my grand project. There is a train line, but we have lost both our Engines. The Grendel and the Yawn.”
“How does one lose a train, particularly when they are so big?” Medicine asked.
“They didn’t reach the Underground, nor did they return here. Something happened to them, either in the Margin or on the Gathering Plain. The Gathering Plain remains Cuttlefolk territory, negotiations are a trifle difficult these days. Since the Grand Defeat we’ve little clout to back up our threats. Vergers are effective at keeping a city under control, but a standing army was the only way of dealing with the Cuttlefolk.”
Stade went over to the map, and let his fingers trace a line between Mirrlees and the Narung Mountains. A lot of land, his path took in the Regress Swamp, just north of the city, then the forest of the Margin, beyond which stretched the Gathering Plains.
“We’ve even sent an Aerokin out there. Drift pilot, one of the best. He didn’t return. It’s a mystery worthy of the Shadow Council don’t you think? Should we send young Travis the Grave to look into it?” Stade laughed at his own joke.
“The North sounds real safe,” Medicine said.
“For a small group it isn’t. But you will be, safety in numbers, plus enough guards to keep you out of trouble. Medicine, the last thing we can afford is a war on two fronts. The Cuttlefolk have been quiet for years. We’d thought them a spent force, yet even with their increased activity even if they have destroyed the trains your numbers will be such that they will be little threat to you.”
“Fifty years ago the Roil was just a legend to all but those privileged few that had had dealings with the Old Men. We live in an age of wonders and expectations overturned wouldn’t you say?” Medicine said, lighting up one of Stade’s cigars. “What am I going into up there?”
“That I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t trust you, Medicine, we just don’t know.”
Chapter 24
The Bridges of Mcmahon are surely one of the wonders of the modern age. Forget the Levees of Mirrlees. These Bridges are vast and elegant at once. Here in their beauty we find all that is great in the Engineer. Utility and form bound in the sublime.
The Melody’s brakes barely saved her.
The Perl Bridge was a long series of arches and braces and counter braces, the surface smooth and favourable to speed. So she didn’t see the gaping hole in the middle of the road until she was almost upon it.
She engaged every braking mechanism at once, swung back the gears and still the Melody almost toppled over the edge, stopping at the lip of the fall. Margaret sat behind the wheel panting. She had to get out and check the stability of the road. Her back ached as she got out of the vehicle and walked to the ragged edges of the hole.
Down she stared, rime blades clutched in either hand. Far below beasts flew around the metal limbs of the bridge, Endyms by the look of them and Floataotons in spiralling drifts thousands strong. Huge supports hundreds of yards long plunged into the bottom of the chasm and built around these, on road level, beneath bands of cable – a single strand of which was thicker than Margaret’s arm – were shops and living quarters.
She’d thought that none lived there until she caught sight of furtive movement at the windows, dark figures peering out or ducking down and hiding.
She gave them little notice; it did not pay to. Spend too long worrying about every ghostly apparition or possible threat and she would go mad. Instead she made herself focus on the bridge, it looked safe enough, and turning back wasn’t an option anyway. She got back in her vehicle, and drove it gingerly around the collapse, trusting to old ingenuity.
The structure had taken more than three decades to build. Just forty years later the Roil had washed over it, mocking such industry with its implacable shadow.
If the creators of an architectural wonder as imposing as this could fall, what chance did she have?
And what of the builders of the Engines of the World? How had they fallen? All of this, every city, every construction, even the marvellous city of Drift, was nothing compared to their metropolises.
Nearly a century ago, Tearwin Meet, the Dead Metropolis in the North had been discovered, or more correctly rediscovered, though that which guarded it had driven back any attempts at uncovering its secrets. After over a dozen fatalities, and numerous failed expeditions, people had stopped trying.
All who had been there had failed, but Tearwin Meet alone held what she needed. If the Engine of the World existed it would be there at Tearwin Meet’s heart.
Getting there was going to be the hard enough. She could deal with the rest when she reached its ice-caked boundary.
Her carriage only had enough fuel to reach Chapman, maybe a little further north. Once she ran out, she would have to find her own way with no money or friends – not that she had ever had either, and both of which, if she were truly honest, she only had an abstract understanding of.
A frightening thought played at the back of her mind, it seeped and grew into her thoughts like the darkness itself. What if the Roil had already overtaken Chapman? In truth she had no way of knowing if there was anything beyond the borders of the Roil. The whole world could have been swallowed by now.
In time, she thought. It will come to me in time. Either that or I will be dead.
She rubbed her head where she had bumped it, what felt like an age ago, and in some ways was even longer, in Tate. The spot throbbed. Margaret’s whole body ached, she was unaccustomed to so much driving. Her parents may have taken convoys out for days, but she had never driven more than a couple of hours from the city, and, most often, that had been as a passenger.
She had now been on the road for a day and a half. Every time she blinked it was an effort to open her eyes again.
Margaret found herself veering towards the edge of the bridge, found her head dipping towards her chin. She snapped awake, and slammed on the brakes, and still it was a near thing. The Melody struck the rail that ran alongside the road, merely a glancing blow, but the rail had tumbled away into the abyss.
She had to stop, rest, even if it were just a few minutes. Death by Roil or death by driving the Melody Amiss off the bridge was still death.
She needed sleep. She brought the Melody to a halt, as far from the bridge edge as possible, locked down the engines and took a few sips from one of the water jars in the car.
Margaret picked up her father’s book, opened a page and tried to read it. Her mind could not focus on the words, all she could see was the bridge rail falling.