‘You don’t need to tell me, Doc,’ Frey replied. ‘First sign of anything dodgy and we’re outta here.’
‘Wasn’t that the first sign right then?’ Ashua asked, pointing at Jez. ‘I mean, a half-Mane just warned us there was something bad ahead. I’d say that counts.’
Frey rolled his eyes. ‘Alright, second sign of anything dodgy. How’s that?’
Ashua shrugged. ‘Just saying.’
The entrance to the building was guarded by four Sentinels. A pair of Overlanders were parked outside, which Jez took to be the convoy they’d seen earlier, along with several other vehicles.
‘Anything from Silo?’ Malvery asked.
‘I think I can hear something,’ Frey said, covering his ear with one hand. ‘It’s really faint, but it’s. .’ He became excited. ‘Not Silo. I can’t make it out. But I can hear voices.’
‘Well, we’re not getting in through the front without a firefight,’ said Ashua. ‘Let’s take a look round.’
Staying out of sight as best they could, they circled the building at a distance. They saw no other entrance, but at the back they found a spot where another building pressed up close and there were no floods. In that dark alley was a sheer wall with windows at the top.
‘Jez? You think you can get up there?’ Frey asked.
Jez showed her teeth in what passed for a grin. She snatched the coil of rope from Pinn, slung it over her shoulder and launched herself upward. Splayed hands gripped the wall with inhuman strength. There were no handholds, but she climbed anyway. The tiniest cracks were purchase enough. She scaled the wall with a fierce joy in her heart, glad to be free of the crew for a moment. They slowed her down. Everyone slowed her down.
She slipped through the window into a corridor floored with gridded metal and bright with electric lights. It was quiet, but the sensation of strange power in this place made the air feel raucous. She secured the rope and dropped it down, then headed off scouting, unable to wait for the others.
She investigated to the end of the corridor, but found only closed doors. Her senses were too muddled to detect anything nearby, so she made her way back, in time to find Malvery hauling himself over the sill.
‘. . ever going to notice me? Don’t I do my devotions? Don’t I. .’
She froze. A streamer of thought had curled through her mind. Not Malvery’s. Someone else’s.
A door was opening up the corridor. She ran. A Sentinel stepped through, a young blond man with a pudding-bowl haircut. His rifle was slung across his back. He had only an instant for surprise before Jez pulled him through, seized him by the throat and slammed him up against the wall.
The Sentinel hung there, heels kicking uselessly at the floor. His eyes bulged in terror, face turning red. Jez glared at him, a snarl on her face.
She could squeeze. She wanted to squeeze. The bones in his neck would crack like a bundle of twigs.
Then she lashed a fist across his face, and the Sentinel dropped in a heap, out cold.
She looked down at the man at her feet. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. For once, she didn’t flinch.
‘Attagirl, Jez,’ said Malvery, and there was a warmth in his voice that she heard too rarely nowadays. ‘Attagirl.’
Eighteen
Crake felt the dark pressing close at his shoulder. Beyond the light of the electric lamps lay ghosts and dreadful memories. No matter how he tried to shut them out, they whispered at him from the blackness.
He hunched over the tome on his desk, ran his finger across the formulae to fix them in his mind. Then he stood up and took a breath.
There’s nothing behind me.
He turned around. No phantoms waited there. Only his brother, clad in a red silk gown, lying still upon a bench.
The summoning circle was ready. The air was taut with the barely perceptible throb of the resonator masts that surrounded it, throwing out a cage of frequencies that a daemon couldn’t pass through. This time, he was determined that nothing would escape.
He checked his instruments meticulously. An oscillator sat in the centre of the circle: a plain metal hemisphere, wired to a trolley rack outside the circle that held a modulator, a pair of resonator boxes and an oscilloscope. He scanned the array of gauges and dials on their faces, then checked the backup generator was running properly in case the electricity failed. Lying next to the oscillator, attached by wires to the second resonator in the trolley rack, was an iron band about a foot in diameter. He checked it was properly connected.
Lastly he glanced at the echo chamber, the great riveted bathysphere that lurked at the edge of the light. He’d not be needing that, he thought. It would take a lot to make him turn that damned contraption on again.
They’d shut the cellar up after the tragedy, and left his belongings virtually untouched. The law hadn’t been informed. The affairs of the Crakes were kept within the family: Father’s business was too important for scandal. And so Bess’s death was reported as a tragic fall, and the cellar door was locked, and the Shacklemores employed, who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut. The servants knew, of course, but no one would take their word over a powerful aristocrat like Rogibald Crake.
For almost three years the wine cellar lay undisturbed. Waiting like some malevolent creature, crouched and patient. Waiting for him.
‘Stop it,’ he said aloud to himself. His voice echoed around the pillars and came back hollow. He wouldn’t bow to terrors of the past. Bess was dead. He’d accepted that. All that remained here were memories.
It had taken him most of the night to prepare. He pored greedily through his old books, intoxicated by them. It was a store of knowledge that he’d thought he’d never lay hands on again. So engrossed was he that for a time he forgot why he was here, and when he remembered, he was ashamed. Once, the Art had been an all-consuming passion, and though he’d turned from it after the tragedy, it drew him back like a moth to a flame.
His preparations complete, he set to work at the dials, searching the frequencies of the aether. His formulae gave him a range to search in. His instincts would do the rest. This wasn’t a particularly tricky summoning, but he’d never attempted it before. Ridiculous of him, really. Of all the many uses a daemon could be put to, he’d never used one to heal.
The doctors were baffled by this strange disease that put people into a coma. But doctors didn’t have the tools he did.
The first stage was the easy part. He’d bring in a daemon to diagnose the patient. Theoretically, once it had had been introduced to Condred, it would provide him with a set of frequencies that would enable him to bring a more powerful daemon to bear, one targeted to the illness. With luck, it would cure whatever ailed his brother.
Daemonist lore had it that the most appalling wounds could be healed this way, and maladies of the brain and nervous system that were beyond medical science. A skilled practitioner might bring somebody back from the brink of death. That, at least, was the rumour, but confirmation was hard to come by in the secretive world of the daemonists.
If only he’d been that skilled, he might have saved Bess. But he could save Condred. Perhaps.
A hum began to build as he moved through the frequencies, probing, searching for a nibble from beyond. There! The needle of one of the high-end gauges jumped. He set about penning the daemon, setting up interference patterns round it so it couldn’t slip away from him. His concentration sharpened with the thrill of the chase. He’d become good at this. No longer did he clumsily fumble about the aether. He was deft and decisive, trammelling his quarry and then shrinking the cage until it had nowhere to run to. After that, he found its primary resonance and pinned it, spearing it with sonics. Then he set about matching its vibrations with those of the visible world, pulling it into phase with what most people called reality.