‘How long have you been working here?’ Brynd enquired.
‘Now that’s a question,’ Diggsy replied. ‘Way before the war, if that’s what you mean. Pilli’s father was one of those ore-owning types, and she knew this building of his — like quite a few others — wasn’t being used at all. Anyhow, Pilli’s good stock — not like her father — and so this has become our headquarters for the most part.’
‘Headquarters? So are you part of an official order?’
‘Ha, no. Hell no. We don’t like to get involved with other cultists. They can be shitting well poncey if you ask me. All about structures and etiquette and whatever. That’s not our kind of thing — we prefer to live by our own rules, in our gang.’
‘How many are in your. . gang, then?’ Brynd felt the situation was growing increasingly absurd. The way this Diggsy talked, his mannerisms and nonchalance, his references to his social circle, suggested this was all going to be a complete waste of time.
‘Depends on when it is. We lost one in the war. Got the odd seasonal, but that dried up a year back. Oh, watch the corner here — it’s a sharp one.’
‘I see it. You didn’t want to join in the war effort yourself?’ Brynd asked. ‘We had people far younger than you.’ They turned to the left, along a narrow corridor, the sound of their feet occasionally scuffing along the smooth stone.
‘We were too busy, to be honest. Sounds lame, doesn’t it? But seriously, once you see what we’ve got, I think you’ll understand.’
Diggsy’s voice suddenly gave off a lot of reverb. They had entered a large chamber, lighter with a lot of energetic conversation and laughter at the far end. Brynd could smell arum weed mixed with cooking meat. There were four, maybe five people there, and they turned to face Diggsy when he hollered out to them.
Diggsy turned back to Brynd, gestured with wide arms, and smiled. ‘Welcome to Factory 54. I think you’ll like it.’
Brynd looked around to take in the scene. All around the walls and hanging from the rafters were bipedal structures, things made from junk that looked like immense hanged men. They were metallic and flesh and perhaps even something else, with leathery attire and what looked like massive trays on the floor. ‘By Bohr. .’
‘Aw, this is nothing,’ came a girl’s voice, a young redhead with a slender frame and freckled face. ‘This is the shit that doesn’t work. We’ve been trying forever to get things to work, but life isn’t that easy to manufacture. Isn’t that right, Diggsy?’
Brynd eyed her and Diggsy. Judging by her look towards the lad, there was a history between them, that much was certain.
Brynd stepped closer to the large trays, which contained weird-looking brown fluids. ‘Could someone bring me a flame over? I’d like to see this as clearly as possible.’
Some of the others laughed.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, chief,’ Diggsy said. ‘Get a flame in that stuff and we’ll all be eating breakfast in another world.’
Brynd soaked up the scene. This building was immense, which meant all these hanging creatures were larger than he originally thought. He stepped back to take in their expressionless faces, if they could be called faces. They were so creased, stitched and folded they seemed as if they were old sacks. Some of them wore open fissures, which had dried to black. They were bizarre specimens. The fact that they were a parody of a human or rumel kept him from believing that this was in any way unethical.
‘Where did you get these from?’ Brynd asked.
‘We made them, of course,’ the red-haired girl said, wandering over. ‘Or resurrected them in many instances.’
Brynd asked for her name.
‘Jeza,’ she replied nonchalantly.
‘Your name was on the letter,’ he said.
She nodded coyly.
‘Presumably you all know me — Commander Brynd Lathraea, leader of the Night Guard? Leader of the military that has applied martial law across the city.’
‘Yeah, we got you,’ someone replied.
He hoped to lend a little gravitas to his presence, but they showed little sign of acknowledging that. ‘Let me get this right in my head: you’re similar to cultists, then? You use the old science in new ways?’
‘More or less, in layman’s terms, though we don’t really like cultists,’ Jeza said. ‘We deal with them, but they’re way too cliquey, and they speak in all these prophetic riddles, it’s ridiculous.’
‘So you use their technology,’ Brynd observed. ‘That is to say, I’m guessing here, this was all done with the assistance of relics.’
‘It was and it wasn’t,’ Jeza said. ‘There’s a whole mix of things — relics mainly, but we use some tribal refinements too, not to mention with palaeomancy you’re dealing with the creations of the natural world itself.’
‘I don’t think the commander needs to know all the details,’ Diggsy interrupted.
‘Sure he does,’ Jeza snapped. ‘Think about it.’
‘What’s wrong with you tonight, Jeza?’ Diggsy said softly.
‘We need him to trust us,’ she replied, then turned to Brynd. He noticed that her face revealed underlying conflicts within her. ‘Isn’t that right, commander?’
‘That depends what you need my trust for.’
Jeza took his arm in an informal manner and directed him along the lines of constructs, through the semi-darkness. Shadows seemed to exaggerate the sinister appeal of these things, but Brynd couldn’t help but wonder what they’d look like on the battlefield.
‘None of these function, right?’ Brynd asked.
‘If you mean move around like a living thing, then only some of them do. We’ve actually got a couple in an adjoining chamber, which are a little more polished, but just take in all of this for a moment. You can see the potential here, can’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘But what were you saying about the technology behind them. .?’
‘Yes, we work with a mixture of tribal knowledge and cultist science. Cultists haven’t really touched on this stuff — to our knowledge at least. They concentrate on the bits of science and the discipline of technological lore being handed down through the generations. They’re too full of shit to look further afield — you know, the tribes have some pretty powerful stuff, but no one gives them the time of day. They just dismiss it as magic.’
‘You have me intrigued,’ Brynd said.
‘I guess we were all lucky to have Lim.’
‘And who,’ Brynd asked, ‘is Lim?’
Jeza sighed. ‘He died during the fighting. But he was really, really good at this stuff. He came from one of the tribes on Varltung, which is how we got to work in this way.’
‘Off Empire? How did he make it out here?’
‘He ran away, came across on his own, learned the languages, did it all the hard way. They’ve got cultists on Varltung, too — did you know that?’
‘I didn’t,’ Brynd admitted.
‘Well, they have. Anyway, so Lim knew stuff that we didn’t. Spoke Jamur well enough to explain his findings to us.’
Brynd’s interest was most definitely piqued. He would indulge these youths a little longer. ‘You all just meet then. He comes to Villiren-’
‘Because anyone can make a go of things in a place where no one cares,’ Jeza said. ‘No one bothers us. No one pays us attention.’
Brynd nodded for her to go on. ‘You have my attention.’
She looked around at the others who were approaching to hear the conversation.
‘We all found each other, more or less. We’re the kind of people who fell through the gaps — either dead parents or kicked out of home or runaways. Those kind of things make you grow up fast.’
‘You’ve done all right for yourselves by the look of it,’ Brynd said. ‘But I don’t understand how a bunch of street kids could have come across cultist technology.’