In this dreary room, Tane was kneeling by her side, concern on his furred face. ‘The lady wakes,’ he announced.
Vuldon thundered over and crouched beside her, one hand down on the floor for balance. ‘How are you feeling, Lan?’ he asked, uncharacteristically gentle.
‘Like shit,’ Lan replied.
‘You look it,’ Tane commented, smiling at last — a gesture that reassured her.
‘Thanks,’ Lan sighed.
A cultist arrived — not Feror, but another one she recognized who worked near their clifftop retreat, a blond man in his thirties, and he injected something into Lan’s abdomen, but she was too tired and numb to notice anything. Soon she began to feel sensations, the cold floor beneath her aching back. She felt like she’d been wrestling a bear.
‘What the hell happened?’ Lan asked.
‘Shalev happened,’ Vuldon said, rubbing his wide jaw. He moved out of the way to let the cultist make a quick assessment, then the man nodded his unspoken approval for them to continue, and shuffled out of sight. ‘And,’ Vuldon added, ‘it seems you saved the Emperor, least that’s what he seems to think.’
‘I don’t remember that part,’ Lan replied.
Vuldon went on to explain the series of events. Shalev had tried to use a relic on the Emperor, to hit him with her magic, and Lan’s intervention bought them enough time to usher him to safety. Vuldon and Tane made sure he got away to an escape tunnel, then returned quickly to find Shalev limping away, shell-shocked, before she vanished into a coloured mist, though her apparent injuries did not stop her killing two snipers on her exit.
‘Urtica might want to make another one of those presentations to show us off again, you in particular,’ Vuldon concluded, with a rare smile. ‘You did good, lass.’
She liked that, gaining his approval at last. To her it seemed important that Vuldon could have faith in her abilities, and so her thorough exhaustion had been worth something at least. ‘Where are we?’
‘An apothecary,’ Vuldon said. ‘We’re still in the indoor iren.’
‘We didn’t get Shalev then.’
‘We will,’ Vuldon said. ‘We know she’s not invincible, and that’s more than we knew before. We know she’s also predictable, seeking a big show — that’s all useful knowledge.’
‘Then why does it feel like we failed?’ Lan asked.
Vuldon stood up, groaning. ‘That’s a glitch with your own personality. Can’t help you there. Just bask in the extra fame and attention, like Tane.’
Lan tried to push herself up, but felt too exhausted. She fell to her elbows and laughed, slightly giddy, slightly drowsy. Then sprawled onto her stomach, feeling the bruises and the agony inside.
Vuldon helped her stand, and Tane suddenly turned his gaze on somewhere behind them.
Someone rattled into the doorway, a young soldier in full battle regalia. Gripping onto the door frame, in breathless gasps, he said: ‘More trouble, this time Caveside. We need your help, all of you. It’s getting out of control.’
Vuldon squared up to the soldier. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked despondently.
‘The anarchists,’ the soldier panted. ‘They’ve been leading a march out of the caves. Thousands of them. Protesters. Threatening to riot. It’s chaos.’
Vuldon sighed and glanced down at her. ‘Lan, you up for saving the day again?’
TWENTY-FOUR
Some entire bookcases were built around doors, and others were themselves doors. They might open up into hidden enclaves, showing texts bound in different materials, from different ages. Most of the books were covered in centuries of dust. Rats scurried away from the light, spiders tottered backwards into corners. The more of these rooms they travelled through, the worse the quality of the architecture became — these were more basic zones, rooms for primitive collections or almost-forgotten tomes.
‘Do the staff permit you this far?’ Fulcrom enquired.
‘I doubt they are even aware that most of these rooms exist,’ Ulryk replied cheerfully. ‘If you have noticed from our rather convoluted route, we have entered a labyrinth of sorts. It is quite a common arrangement in ancient libraries, which leads me to believe that they were all constructed, originally, by the same architect or designer. Such creators intended there to be hidden regions, for the protection of certain tracts of information, for those in power to maintain their grip on the populace, even to rewrite histories. I suspect, though, there were powers greater than mere emperors at work, areas to even which the ruling kings and queens were blind. That is the thing about knowledge: there is no discrimination over who owns it, or who may abuse it.’
Room after room, each one different. Corridors turned this way and that, with no apparent design. For much of the next hour, Fulcrom saw only the lantern and the soft glow it cast upon the side of Ulryk’s face. Occasionally the priest would pause at some dark intersection, with the possible paths ahead denoted only by their utter absence of light. Once, Ulryk raised the lantern to the wall to show Fulcrom the graffiti of yesteryear. There were names and directions written in a script that hadn’t been in common use for over two thousand years. Other languages here were even more alien.
‘Is it going to take much longer?’ Fulcrom asked, aware of how petulant he must be sounding.
‘We are about halfway,’ Ulryk replied.
‘Is this the route the dead took?’
‘I have… little idea of their methods,’ Ulryk confessed. ‘It seems that although I pretend to hold great knowledge, there are many things strange to me.’
‘You and me both,’ Fulcrom muttered.
*
Their placards argued for a peaceful resolution to their claims, though their sheer mass was an implied threat. In the late afternoon sunshine, thousands of people marched out of the caves, men, women and children, human and rumel, and old garudas with broken wings. Underground radicals and change-seekers, all were unified on this march. It seemed a critical mass had been achieved.
Perched on a wall alongside several of the city guard in their crimson finery and slate-grey armour, the Knights watched the unfolding scene.
‘Fucking inbred scum,’ muttered a soldier in the red uniform of the Shelby Corporation Soldiers.
‘Aye,’ another said, leaning on his sword. ‘Bad enough that they leech on the rest of us, now here they come spreading their diseases.’
‘Why do you hate them so much?’ Lan asked.
‘Cunts come out here and steal things for their own decrepit culture, is why,’ the first soldier said, putting on his helm ready for combat. ‘Take food from honest hard-working folk, steal whatever trinkets they can get their filthy hands on, rape women.’
Lan had a flashback to that period a few years ago, after she had left home. She tried to remember what the people were like in the caves, but she realized she had been drunk or on drugs for the most part. All that came to her was a visual echo of the girl who just about cleaned her up, their friendship born out of an urgent desire for secrecy.
People flowed out towards them in their thousands, a river comprised of years of pent-up resentment. They blocked the cobbled streets leading from the caves, dressed in the general Caveside fashions, cheap-looking breeches and shirts, overalls, shades of greys and browns. Lan couldn’t help but notice that the women were dressed just like the men. She was not sure what to make of all this, or even if the Knights would be of any use in a situation where surely diplomacy was the key.
She focused on the details, tried to discern the chants and the scrawls on crudely painted boards:
The Cavesiders called for respect. For better jobs, for investment in people’s health and housing, and not pretty irens for the rich. They wanted food for the refugees outside the city walls. And better rights for women, for acknowledgement of tribal cultures and religions, and the right for all Cavesiders — even those with unregistered addresses — to vote. They called for the end of brutal conduct by organizations like the City Guard and the Knights, and a halt to the endless victimization of Caveside dwellers. To Cavesiders, these authorities of the city were feared and despised. There were slogans suggesting oppression. Wooden boards were held aloft with the symbols of the new anarchists.