Catheline Dewsmine was never seen in public again. All enquiries regarding her condition were sternly rebuffed by her family though servants later related a horrible interval during which her parents attempted to care for her at home. Doctors of both mind and body came and went, various concoctions were administered, novel and experimental distillations of Green applied. All to no avail. Reliable witness accounts agree that by this stage Catheline was completely and incurably mad. By the advent of her twenty-first birthday she had been committed to the Ventworth Home for the Emotionally Troubled, an Ironship-sponsored institution specialising in the care and treatment of those Blood-blessed suffering mental affliction. Soon Catheline faded almost completely from the public mind, save as a vehicle for the occasional cruel witticism or unkind cartoon, and perhaps would have been forgotten completely but for the terrible events of two days hence.
The origins of the fire that engulfed the Ventworth Home are yet to be established. For reasons that should be obvious not one drop of Product is ever permitted on the premises and all patients are subject to close monitoring. What is clear is that at approximately two hours past midnight an intense conflagration broke out in the building’s west wing and soon spread to all parts of the structure. Only six members of the staff and three patients escaped. Tragically, Catheline was not amongst them. An initial report by the Ironship Protectorate Fire and Safety Executive confirms that the blaze began within the building but no cause has as yet been ascertained. Also, a full count of the dead is not possible due to the condition of the remains.
And so, Catheline Dewsmine, once a Queen of sorts, and an unparalleled beauty, leaves this world in as ugly a fashion as can be imagined. Her light no longer shines upon us, and in the opinion of this humble correspondent, the world is a much darker place as a consequence.
Lead article in the Sanorah Intelligencer—35th Verester 1600 (Company Year 211)—by Sigmend Talwick, Senior Correspondent.
CHAPTER 1
Sirus
He awoke to Katrya weeping again. Soft whimpers in the darkness. She had learned by now not to sob, for which Sirus was grateful. Majack had threatened to strangle her that first night as they all huddled together in the stinking torrent, Katrya pressed against Sirus, holding tight as she wept seemingly endless tears.
“Shut her up!” Majack had growled, levering himself away from the green-slimed sewer wall. His uniform was in tatters and he had lost his rifle somewhere in the chaos above. But he was a large man and his soldier’s hands seemed very strong as he lurched towards them, reaching for Katrya’s sodden blouse, hissing, “Quiet, you silly bitch!”
He’d stopped as Sirus’s knife pressed into the meaty flesh below his chin. “Leave her be,” he whispered, wondering at the steadiness of his own voice. The knife, a wide-bladed butcher’s implement from the kitchen of his father’s house, was dark red from tip to handle, a souvenir from the start of their journey to this filthy refuge.
Majack bared his teeth in a defiant snarl, eyes meeting those of the youth with the gory knife and seeing enough dire promise to let his hands fall. “She’ll bring them down here,” he grated.
“Then you had better hope you can run faster than us,” Sirus told him, removing the knife and tugging Katrya deeper into the tunnel. He held her close, whispering comforting lies into her ear until the sobs faded into a piteous mewling.
There had been ten of them that first night, ten desperate souls huddling in the subterranean filth as Morsvale died above. Despite Majack’s fears their enemies had not been drawn to the sound of Katrya’s sobs. Not then and not the night after. Judging by the continuing cacophony audible through the grates, Sirus suspected that the invaders had found sufficient sport to amuse themselves, at least for the time being. But, of course, that didn’t last.
Ten became nine on the fifth day when hunger drove them out in search of supplies. They waited until nightfall before scurrying forth from a drain on Ticker Street where most of the city’s grocers plied their trade. At first all seemed quiet, no piercing cries of alarm from a disturbed drake, no patrols of Spoiled to chase them back into the filth. Majack broke down a shop-door and they filled several sacks with onions and potatoes. Sirus had wanted to head back but the others, increasingly convinced by the continual quiet that the monsters had gone, decided to take a chance on a near by butcher’s shop. They were making their way back along a narrow alley towards Hailwell Market, laden with haunches of beef and pork, when it happened.
A sudden rattling growl, the brief blur of a flashing tail and one of their number was gone. She had been a middle-aged woman from some minor administrative post in the Imperial Ring, her last words a garbled plea for help before the drake dragged her over the edge of the roof-top above. They hadn’t waited to hear the screams, fleeing back to their grimy refuge and dropping half their spoils in haste. Once back underground they fled deeper into the sewers. Simleon, a stick-thin youth of criminal leanings, had some familiarity with the maze of pipes and tunnels, leading them to the central hub where the various water-ways converged to cast effluent into a great shaft where it would be carried out to sea. At first the roaring torrent had been filthy, but as the days passed the water grew ever more clean.
“Think there’s anyone left?” Majack muttered one day. Sirus reckoned it to be a month or more after their abortive foray, it was hard to keep track of the days here. Majack’s dull-eyed gaze was lost in the passing waters. The soldier’s previous hostility had subsided into a listless depression Sirus knew to be born of hunger and despair. Despite the strictness with which they rationed themselves, they had perhaps two more days before the food ran out.
“I don’t know,” Sirus muttered, although he had a strong suspicion these nine starving souls were in fact all that remained of Morsvale’s population.
“Wasn’t our fault, y’know.” The listlessness in Majack’s gaze disappeared as it swung towards Sirus, his voice coloured by a plea for understanding. “There were so many. Thousands of the bastards, drakes and Spoiled. Morradin took all but a handful of the garrison to fight the corporates. We had no chance . . .”
“I know,” Sirus said, adding a note of finality to his voice. He had heard this diatribe before and knew, if left unchecked, Majack’s self-pitying rant might drag on for hours.
“A hundred rounds each, that’s all we had. Only one battery of cannon to defend a whole city . . .”
Sirus groaned and moved away, stepping carefully over the damp brickwork to where Katrya huddled on a ledge beside one of the larger pipes. She held her hand out to the water gushing from the pipe, slender fingers splayed in the cascade. “Do you think it’s clean enough to drink now?” she asked. They had perhaps a bottle and a half of wine left, their only remaining source of uncontaminated hydration.
“No.” He sat down, letting his legs dangle over the ledge and watching the water disappear into the vast blackness of the shaft. He had considered jumping several times now, but not out of any suicidal impulse. According to Simleon the shaft conveyed the water to a vast underground tunnel leading to the sea. If they survived the drop it might prove a means of escape. If they survived the drop . . .