The clouds that had hung over Dorminia like a shroud for the last few days had finally dispersed. Now a new problem faced the city. Bodies were beginning to wash up, hundreds of them, bloated corpses floating in on tides that had travelled all the way from the flooded remnants of Shadowport. The City of Shades was slowly regurgitating its dead.
Eremul watched the clean-up operation in the harbour as the goodlady wheeled him slowly down towards the docks. He had no idea what the woman planned to do with him, but he suspected it would not be pleasant.
Maybe she’s going to throw me into the harbour. Will my chair carry me straight to the bottom like a stone, or will I float free to enjoy a more leisurely drowning? I can hardly decide which I prefer. Perhaps a net will sweep me up and deposit my corpse on one of those trawlers.
He felt strangely calm. If he was going to die, drowning probably wasn’t such a bad way to go.
As it turned out, it appeared his tormentor had other intentions. They stopped short of the harbour and took a left turn into a narrow street piled high with stinking rubbish on either side and peopled with rough-faced men and women. Whether it was Goodlady Cyreena’s demeanour or just the sheer absurdity of an attractive woman wheeling a legless cripple around in one of the scummiest parts of town, no one bothered to molest them as they made their way down the alley. Eventually they stopped in front of a run-down house, little more than a shack, with a broken door and a roof that sagged in the middle and was coated in bird shit.
The Augmentor stood there for a time, staring at the decrepit little building. ‘This is where I was born,’ she said. Her voice was carefully neutral but the words shocked him nonetheless. He found that he could move his eyebrows now. One of them arched up in surprise.
‘You won’t remember the riots that took place during the Culling,’ she continued. ‘I imagine you were indisposed at the time.’
What gave you that idea, he wanted to say, but his lips still refused to form the words. He made do with a frown.
‘The city was in chaos. The mages fought back, as you might expect, which gathered support for an uprising. This particular area was a hotbed of unrest.’ She looked up and down the dirty streets. ‘I was one of the loudest calling for change. I was in my early twenties then, in love with one of the ringleaders of the rebellion.’
She stared at the busted door hanging off its hinges. This time there was a hint of emotion in her voice. ‘My parents were loyalists. They wanted no trouble. When the revolt was in full swing and there was fighting out on the streets, out here’ — she gestured, sweeping her hand around to take in the filthy row of houses — ‘my lover convinced me to let his gang into my home. He knew I was sympathetic to the rebellion and assumed my family were the same. They demanded my father and brother join them in fighting the soldiers.’
Eremul sat and listened in silence. It wasn’t as if he had much choice in the matter, but hearing this cold-blooded Augmentor reveal her past was oddly compelling. Besides, she seemed to be finding the experience cathartic. He hoped that boded well for his continued existence when she got around to deciding what to do with him.
‘My family… exchanged harsh words with the rebels. My brother took a knife in the throat. That set my father off. He, too, was murdered while my lover held me back. I screamed and kicked but he wouldn’t let me go.’
Goodlady Cyreena went silent for a time. There was a strange glint in her eyes now. ‘My lover dragged me from the house as his friends raped my sister. She was little more than a child.’
Eremul fancied he saw a tear, though it could have been a trick of the light. I suppose I should be grateful I’m paralysed, he thought. I might be expected to rise from my chair and give her a supportive hug. That would be awkward for both of us.
The Augmentor blinked and suddenly her momentary vulnerability was gone. ‘My lover was cut down by soldiers barely a second after we stepped out of the house. I was arrested and released a few weeks later. When I returned, I found my mother had committed suicide. My sister was nowhere to be seen. I never learned what became of her.’
She turned to him and crossed her arms in front of her ample chest. ‘Civilization functions only because strong men do not permit weaker men to indulge their baser instincts. Freedom and liberty are the means by which anarchy reigns — and anarchy is the natural state for men to freely express the evil that lurks within them. Within all of them. Within you,’ she added, staring down at him with an expression that froze his blood.
This woman is insane.
‘I was young and naive. I am no longer that person. I no longer answer to the same name. There is but one man I believe in, and he is no man at all. He is a god.’
She bent down so her face was close to his. ‘Feel no sorrow for those you betray,’ she said softly. ‘Embrace what you do. You serve Salazar, whose wisdom is beyond reproach by the likes of us. Do not lament the loss of your legs. Instead, celebrate the fact they have liberated you from the evil you would have otherwise committed. You are half a man — yet by virtue of that simple fact, you possess only half the evil of a man.’
She turned away from Eremul and so, fortunately for him, didn’t see the look of pure poison he shot her. Batshit insane. She’s batshit insane.
The Augmentor looked up at the sinking sun. Evening was near. ‘I will bring the books we gathered to the Obelisk,’ she said. ‘You can make your way home in your own time. The paralysis shouldn’t last much longer.’
Goodlady Cyreena walked away without a backward glance.
It was growing dark by the time he recovered enough feeling in his arms to begin wheeling himself up the side street and back towards the depository. This was the worst day he could remember since the Obelisk dungeons had changed his life, and that was no small feat — there was the time he had fallen out of his chair while taking a shit and wallowed in his own excrement for six hours waiting for Isaac to return, to name but one possible contender.
He wondered what had become of Isaac and the rest of the small band that had set off for the Wailing Rift two weeks past. The ship sent up Deadman’s Channel to investigate the collapsed mine had failed to discover any sign of the saboteurs. That gave him hope they were still alive. Despite his maddening enthusiasm and annoying knack for effortlessly picking up new skills, Isaac had proved a loyal assistant.
Lost in sudden melancholy, he didn’t realize how close he had come to the harbour until he heard the sound of lapping water below. His curiosity got the better of him and he wheeled his chair out until he overlooked the vast expanse of water. The cleaning operation was winding down for the night. Crew were disembarking all around him. He gazed out, amusing himself with the thought of Isaac and the others slipping furtively through the detritus of floating corpses on their tiny sailing boat, wondering what disaster had befallen the city in their absence.
An odd noise suddenly caught his attention. It almost sounded like a baby crying, and it came from somewhere below him. He peered down into the murky water.
There. A tiny bundle fidgeted pathetically on a small piece of flotsam bobbing towards him. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then, with a brief unveiling of magic, he levitated the twitching figure up to drift slowly into his arms.
It was a dog — a scrawny little thing with patchy grey fur and drooping ears. It watched him nervously with watery brown eyes.
Eremul felt something strange stir within him. This poor creature had somehow lived through the absolute destruction of its city. Even more miraculously, it had survived a voyage across the Broken Sea clinging to a fragile piece of furniture.