Margaret dragged the body to the side of the road, the trail of blood she left behind revealing the extent of Sara’s injuries. She brushed Sara’s face with her fingertips. The heat was already going from her flesh.
She gripped her rime blade in her hands and cut her friend’s head from her shoulders. She had promised, she owed Sara that much at least.
Margaret sprinted to the Melody Amiss; struck by a horrible epiphany. The first glimpses of an answer to what was going on; how the Jut had been obliterated just seconds after the alarm bells started ringing; and why the Four Cannon had fallen so quickly. The Roil was affecting people, transforming them as it had transformed the land beyond the Outer Wall.
What had happened to her parents? She could not bear to think of them as changed.
Margaret guided the Melody Amiss through the broken gateway. As she drove onto the bridge, she took it all in, not daring to get out, there was no one left standing, just human wreckage amongst the bare stone. More death than she had ever seen, sightless eyes and still, bloodless limbs. But that was not the worst of it.
As the Melody Amiss passed them, they rose. Sentinels, faces wreathed with moths, their movements stuttery at first, as though their muscles were new to them. Soon they quickened, their shambling turned to sprinting as they shook free the cowl of their deaths. They rushed the carriage, their fingers reaching. Eyes not empty but alien and terrifying, black as the moths that crawled and tumbled from their wounds and their lips. But they were not as swift as the Melody Amiss ; she left them behind as she had left everything else.
A hundred yards from the gate, rubble was all that remained of the Jut. Roilings massed there, some humanoid, others sluglings or crab-octopuses, and around them in their thousands, barking and baying, circled packs of Quarg Hounds. Into the monstrous clamour dived Endyms: huge eyes shining in the fire, their leathery wings showering the ground with dusty Roil spores as they scooped up creatures and dropped them over Tate’s walls. Above it all, the city’s nets blazed and fell in great fiery clumps. A few battle drones remained raining endothermic weaponry upon the enemy, but they were not enough. Even as she watched, Endyms dashed them from the sky, the burning remnants tumbling to the city, setting even more buildings alight.
Margaret neared the end of the bridge. The whole structure shook and the valves that had before ejected icy slush now churned with a liquid fire.
The moat beyond was still thick with ice, but it would soon grow warm as blood. Bodies floated on the surface, drifting backwards and forwards as more water rushed in. Margaret wondered how many of her people the Roil had infected.
Not now. Do not think of it now.
She was running out of time. The banks of the moat would not contain the rising water for much longer. She could already see dark cracks spreading across its outer edges; water seeped from them as blood from a wound.
A crab-like Roiling, legs spiked and furious, almost as big as the Melody, scurried in front of her. Its fore-claws slashed out and its mouthparts flexed.
Margaret slowed almost to a halt, gave her front cannon a full charge and fired, tearing the Roiling apart.
Fingers tapped against the Melody’s side window: a little girl struggled frantically with the handle. Margaret popped the door open.
“Get in! Quick!” A blast of cold air shot out into the night. The little girl screamed as the air crashed against her face. Her head folded back, unveiling grasshopper-like mandibles. Luminous eyes stared from the pit of the girl’s skull. The creature hissed at her then bound away on prickly legs that had been hidden by the little girl part of its body.
Margaret slammed the door shut.
Chapter 7
Carnival. The sweetest dreams for the darkest times. No common opiate, it was wilder, crueller in its denial. It had appeared upon the streets of Mirrlees, in its dens and its parlours, only two years before the end.
In those last days its use was commonplace, both lowlife and highborn drawn to its comforts. It did not discriminate. Only the most paranoid would suggest it was addiction as assault.
Cadell shook him awake, the Old Man’s touch cold enough that David could feel it through the sheets. He shivered.
Cadell pulled his hand away, looked almost apologetic.
“You were talking in your sleep.” Cadell’s breath stank of liquor, David blinked in the burning wash of it. “Bad dreams?”
“Yes,” David said. “Bad dreams.” Churning, horrible dreams that he’d fallen into every time he closed his eyes: knives and blood and Downing Bridge itself, drowning bridge in truth, with its dribbling levee-bed, its profusion of spiders and their hungers.
Cadell chuckled. “Curse of these times. The city’s rotting as the Weep swells, no one has pleasant dreams. Of course the lack of Carnival in your veins wouldn’t help.”
He nodded to the table. David’s breath caught in his throat, a small syringe of the disposable type lay there. Not more than a few feet away.
“I’ve powders for the journey ahead, better for travelling, less chance of breakage. But today you’ve need of the purer stuff,” Cadell said. “Much as I might wish it otherwise, we’ve no time for you to break free of the Carnival. It’s a maintenance dose, but a quality one.”
David’s mouth was dry. It was all he could do to stop himself from leaping out of the bed and driving that syringe straight into the fattest vein he could find. He already had three in mind. He’d shove it into an eyeball, if it meant he could have it now.
“I understand such hungers,” the Old Man said, drawing David’s attention back from the syringe, though his voice sounded distant.
David’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he worked it loose. “You were a user?” he said thickly.
Cadell shook his head. “No, but there are other addictions – believe me, and some much more harmful than sticking a needle in your arm or your foot. When you’re done, there are clothes in the bag by the dresser, they should fit.”
Cadell left the room then, and David did the one thing that he’d desired since he’d fled his father’s house into the dark and the rain. These were no sere old pills. This was the good stuff.
When he was done, and the Syringe disposed of, he slumped in the chair, breathing deeply a stupid smile broad across his face. Cadell hadn’t been lying about the Carnival’s purity. The tension left his limbs and the deep grief that had threatened to overwhelm him evaporated. It was almost as if none of it mattered, and it didn’t really. Not one little bit.
But he’d kick along with Cadell, of course he would. He didn’t want to die – unless it was right now. That he could handle
David finally dragged himself from the chair and looked through the bag. Cadell was a man of impeccable sartorial taste, and a good judge of size at that. David cleaned himself up, dried himself down, and dressed.
He winked at his reflection in the dresser mirror. He looked almost human.
“If you’re done…” Cadell said, startling him.
Everything had increased in clarity. Cadell’s bloodshot eyes gleamed. David blinked.
“You look better now,” Cadell said. “Much more the man about town than the fugitive fleeing through it.”
“Clothes and Carnival maketh the man,” David said, feeling stupid as soon as the words left his mouth.
Cadell sat down. “We’ve a while yet, and time to talk. Ask what you will.”
David nodded. “What do you know about the Roil? Your name always came up when father spoke of it.”
“More than I ought. More than what’s good for a man. And so will you, before this is done.” He reached over to the table, picked up his hat, ran his hands along its brim, turning the hat around and around, perhaps to keep his fingers busy and his eyes focused on something other than David. “But that’s the way of this decaying world, and I owe your father this much at least.”