He walked under yet another emergency door, five-foot thick steel that would seal the tunnels should something breach the compound and, hopefully, gain him and his crew a little time to make their escape. He shook his head. Should something breach the compound.
Strictly speaking something had breached the compound an hour ago, and he and his guard walked straight towards it.
Part of him kept thinking, we’re going the wrong way. But he suppressed that tiny terrified voice and kept to the task at hand. This was his job and though he had spent every minute of it afraid, he had never turned away from his duty.
Nor would he now.
The tunnel ended at a pair of steel doors, their frames set solidly into the stone. Winslow waited there, his nervous face shining.
One of Anderson’s guards sprayed him with ice water from an atomiser at his belt. Winslow blinked, but that was all, no moans or smoky exhalations. Everybody relaxed, but only a little. What had happened with the Dolorous Grey was fresh in all their minds, things were not as they seemed.
“Are they here?” Anderson asked.
“Yes. They haven’t been waiting long.”
“Conference Room One?”
“Of course.”
“Good, we’ll let them wait a little longer.” Anderson turned to the guard nearest him. “At the first sign of trouble I want you to ice that room, regardless of my or Winslow’s discomfort. I’m tempted to get you to do it now, but I am in no mood for running today, or explaining why we gave up this installation so easily.”
The guard nodded, her eyes impassive through the thick glass of her faceplate. She left them, walking down a side chamber to the observation area.
Anderson fitted his own mask, Winslow following suit. The masks were claustrophobically tight, not at all conducive to such things as ease of breathing, and their effectiveness a subject of dispute, but Anderson believed himself marginally safer with it on and that was all he had.
He coughed once, took a deep breath through the stifling mask and opened the door. Go in strong. See if you can unsettle them for a change.
Four of them waited in the room, standing by the huge glass window that looked out on to the Roil. And he remembered immediately what he remembered every time he dealt with these creatures; that he could not unsettle them. They were too alien, too distant. Nonetheless he tried.
“That stunt you pulled with the Dolorous Grey. What was that all about? We have an agreement.”
One of the Roilings turned its pitch-dark eyes upon him and Anderson had to dig deep to control a shudder – how could any agreement be made with something that possessed those eyes? They had been human once, but now they could not be mistaken as such. The decrepitation of the flesh that the Witmoths engendered was well advanced. The Roil transformed all it had contact with, if it could touch it intimately enough, and these humans had been touched deeply.
There was a smell about them, sweet and foul all at once, like meat that had only been half-cooked and left out in the sun. Huge eyes, all pupils, gazed upon him and hands with fingers far too long flexed. Fragments of flesh had worn from their faces, revealing not bone but a substance like ash or coal mixed with dark honey, as though they had been torrefied from the inside out. No blood moved through their veins any more, just dust. Clothed in robes made of the moths that moved and shivered in waves from head to toe and back again, a restless nest of shadows, they were something out of a nightmare.
But nightmares were what Anderson was paid to deal with. How did that happen? Just how did that happen?
“Unfortunately, Mr Anderson, we are not all of a single mind,” The Roiling said, in a voice clipped and far too normal. “Though the Roil sits in agreement on most issues there are shifts, swift passings of anarchy. It was a passing of this nature that the Dolorous Grey experienced. It will not happen again, even these last twenty-four hours have seen a deepening of control. Which is why we are here, in part. To apologise, of course, but also to make a request and offer a deal.”
“And what might that be?”
“There is something we require of you.”
Anderson and Winslow exchanged glances.
“We’re listening,” he said. “What exactly do you mean?”
Tap.
Tap.
“You better answer that,” Alice Penn said, and ran on legs far too long and too fast up the hill, away from her. “You better answer that.”
Tap.
Tap
“I know,” Margaret whispered and shivered in the cold. She couldn’t keep up. “I know. But I’ve been chasing you all day.”
Her mother paused, eyes bright with a manic intensity. “You were a good daughter,” she shouted. “Just never fast enough. All you’ve done is run and you still can’t catch me.”
She sprinted away, up and over the rise. Out of sight.
Margaret tried to run, but could not move. Out of frustration, she reached for the rifle in her lap. A Quarg Hound pup lay there instead, its jaws closing on her fingers.
It bit down, but the sound it made was odd, a soft sort of scrapping: over and over.
Margaret started awake. She blinked.
A pale face stared in through the window next to her.
The Roiling gave her a clownish grin, idiotic and terrifying, its long white fingers working on the lock of the door, their nails scratching, scratching.
“Mother!” it shrieked so loud that even Margaret could hear. “Mother!”
Margaret engaged the engine, her fingers fumbling over the controls so that she nearly stalled the carriage. “Mother!”
If only she had a sentient carriage, like an Aerokin, then none of this would be happening. The Melody’s engine turned, but didn’t catch.
The Roiling’s movements grew desperate; moths swirled around its head. A flap of bone white skin slid from its cheek, revealing a dark resinous substance beneath.
Margaret stared into the Roiling’s face, into its dead black eyes and wondered if it had ever been human. Of course it had, it wore an old morning suit, tattered and dusty, but still recognisable.
“Mother!”
The engine came to life, the carriage shot forward, accelerated.
“Mother!” The Roiling tumbled off the carriage and ran back down the bridge towards Mcmahon.
A dozen Roilings circled the Melody Amiss watching. She sprayed a short burst of ice and opened up a gap that closed even as she passed through it. The Melody ’s endothermic weaponry ammunition was almost gone, its efficacy reduced. One of the Roilings struck the carriage and its arm tore from its shoulder with a spray of smoky blood. Margaret picked up speed, and soon they were out of sight. And all she had again was the deserted highway.
She did not want to think about what would have happened if she had slept for even a few moments longer.
Chapter 28
Buchan and Whig. Two men of one mind. Stade had banished them from Chapman early September, almost two months before the Festival of Float. Two men, one swift mind. Slaughter not exile would surely have been the result, had not the pair been so quick in their flight. Not a single sitting member of their party was assassinated.
Mirrlees’ Confluent party would have done well to learn from them. But they did not, and blood stained the streets red.
Three columns of black smoke drifted on the edge of the eastern horizon, there was no wind and so they had grown much larger than they might otherwise have. The sight disturbed David, more than he would care to admit, there was something ominous about the smoke as though the Roil had detached itself and flowered where it did not yet belong.