Unmanned. I am unmanned, what a mess I’ve made of it all.
He’d let them all go – the heart and mind of the city. It was only right that they should devour Mirrlees, he stared a while at the eight empty rooms and listened to the silence.
David, he thought. When they find you, if you’re not drugged out of your mind, you’ll wish you’d never run from my Vergers. You’ll curse Cadell and your father’s name with your dying breath. Please forgive me.
And, feeling old and cruel and deadly, because he was all those things, he returned to his office and worked at the one thing he knew. The logistics involved in saving the population of a city. It had to be worth the cost.
When the knock came for him to board his airship, he wasn’t ready. It, like everything else these days, had arrived far sooner than anticipated. He gathered what few notebooks remained and walked with his Vergers to the rooftop dock.
Captain Jones waited for him by the ramp to the gondola. He was obviously unable to hide his irritation, his face red, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, perhaps so he couldn’t strike Stade in the mouth. The Mayor liked him at once.
“Everything’s aboard, sir,” the captain said.
“Everything except me.” He grinned darkly. “You’re Drift-born aren’t you, Captain Jones?”
“Drift-born and raised, sir.” He couldn’t hide the scowl.
“Good.”
“If you’re ready, I’d like to take her up.” The captain gestured to the south, clenching his teeth. “Bad wind’s blowing, gales and the like, and storms too. It doesn’t do to be tethered to what’s coming.”
We’re all tethered to what is coming, Stade thought. He smiled and walked aboard his ship.
Chapter 53
No one knows of the exact human cost of that sudden retreat from Mirrlees, nor of those “persuaded” to stay behind. But it was high.
Still the city had been lost since the day the rain began to fall. A dead thing lumbering with no realization that its heart no longer beat, that it was instead tumbling towards the burial ground.
MIRRLEES-ON-WEEP 173 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
He rapped his gnarled knuckles on the wooden door.
Once, and again.
Bells tolled in the distance. Another levee had fallen, crashing down a few miles away, and people were dying. Death crowded the air and wherever he sensed death there were usually folk like him. He saw what they saw, and the Roil made sense of it for him, placed it in context. Mirrlees drowned, the streets transformed with every downpour becoming labyrinth and quagmire combined.
Finding his home had been a torturous affair, everything all muddied up the way it was. His thoughts too, had become labyrinthine, and far too crowded, it was hard to focus on the smaller things – the personal.
It was hard, but not impossible.
It just took time.
“Where are they?” He whispered to himself. “Where’s my wife? My children?”
He was reaching to knock on the door again when it opened, bright light pouring out, stinging his eyes, forcing him back a step. He had been a long time in the dark.
“What do you want?” A harsh voice demanded and then his wife cried out, dropping the iron poker she had gripped so tightly, recognising him at last. “Theodore! Come in, my darling. Out of the rain,” she said, and made to throw her arms around him.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not until we’re inside.”
He peered up and down the street.
Not far away, a cat batted at a dead thing floating in a puddle. A Verger whistled in the distance and a carriage clattered by, smoke from the driver’s pipe staining the wet air for a moment like a passing dream.
“I thought you lost,” she said leading him inside. All he could see was her mouth; he did so wish to kiss her again.
“I was, yes I was… for a little while. But I found you.” He frowned. “I found you at last.”
“And the Council? I heard rumours…”
He grinned at her, and it must have been something of his old grin, for she returned it, her shoulders relaxing. He smelt liquor on her lips and that disturbed him.
“Do not worry about the Council. They’re not worth worrying about anymore.” He looked beyond her down the hall. “Where are the children?”
“In bed,” she said. “It’s late.”
“Wake them,” he said. “I want to see and speak with you all.”
His wife looked at him oddly, her fingers lifted to her mouth as though to stall a question. She hurried off to do as he asked.
It was cold in here; he clapped his hands to bring a little heat to them. When that failed, he ran them over a nearby lamp. His skin crackled, but it did the trick.
Outside, the cursed rain fell heavier, but it would not fall forever. That was something of which he was certain, it had already stopped twice that day for longer than an hour at a time. He could wait. He had grown to be quite a patient man.
“Father. Father.” His children cried, running around him, circling his legs and laughing. Times had been hard since he was last here. The world had grown rough around the edges; spoiled when it should be fine.
“Come closer, my children, my lovely wife,” he said. “I’ve something to give you.”
Closer they came, hesitation in their eyes, but they did not stop. Nor did he, and there was no uncertainty on his part. The corruption of doubt had long ago burnt away.
He held them to him. Held his wife and children tight, as his body released its dark cargo. None of them could pull away: the urgency of his gift too complete.
“There, there,” the stationmaster crooned above their screams. “There, there. We’re a family again.”
Chapter 54
With Mirrlees all but gone, the balance tipped, and what little remained of the world quaked with the terror of it. Everything was urgency, the radical constructions of a Mayor without a city, armies in flight, figuratively and literally, the Old Men wandering, moving North (see Mcdonald and Clader’s The Path of Blood). And always on the horizon, seen or unseen, the Roil grew, driven on by the Dreaming Cities at its heart.
And what did the cities dream? That was the question unspoken.
The answer was a threat as deep and as dark as the Roil itself.
HARDACRE ,980 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
David woke from another nightmare to limbs leaden and frigid as though he were dead. The dream was fading but his heart still pounded with the memory, and the terror that he might just fall into it again. He’d been doing that, falling from nightmare to nightmare, for a very long time.
Cadell had been there, and seven other men, chasing him, howling out hungers as bottomless as any Quarg Hound’s.
He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and realised that he was no longer on the Roslyn Dawn.
We survived then, he thought.
David realised he was alone, and didn’t know how to feel about that. A petulant spark burned within him: didn’t he deserve a bedside vigil? Was he of that little consequence?
The bed in which he lay was solid and motionless, the room unfamiliar, and did not smell like wet dog.
So, unless something else had gone terribly wrong, he was in Hardacre in the pub known as the Habitual Fool. He breathed deep. Yes, he could detect the faintest odour of beer. And somewhere, below his room, people spoke and smoked. He pulled the sheet from him and looked at his arm. His wound had healed, though at its heart was a small, dark slither of ice. He brushed a finger against it. He yelped and yanked his hand away. Touching it had felt… well, it had felt wrong.
David slid his legs out over the bed, stood up and stretched. His muscles responded, but there was no heat in them. This cold should have had him shaking, and yet the shivers were gone from him.