They waited to see that the next boat was following, then continued down the channel. By the time they reached the first turn in the Canyon, the Cloaca walls were noticeably less lofty; the stream of the sky was widening to a river. By the second turn they had begun to feel they had escaped death, that they were fully alive beneath the filth whose stench came off their bodies and the boat, so that they hardly noticed the miasma fading in the breeze. Following the turn they saw the Green Gate rising to bar their way. Carnelian tensed as he realized how much the water level in the Cloaca had risen. What if the boats were unable to pass under the fortress?
The bone boat slowed as the first structures of the Green Gate loomed up before them. The Cloaca continued under the masonry along a barrel-vaulted tunnel. It was obvious there was not enough clearance for the prow and stern posts. Carnelian saw that here the walls of the Cloaca were not much more than twice his height. The stone was smooth, but they might be able to rig up some kind of ladder, or netting, to scale it. Though he could not see out, he was sure they would be able to reach the leftway that ran all the way from here to the Wheel, round it and then alongside the south road. The whole route must lie above the flood level, at least until it reached the section Molochite had had demolished. Could the flood have reached that far? That first doubt caused his vision to unravel. There were so many places where the leftway might have collapsed or been torn down. All it would take would be for one of the bridges that spanned the gates of the Wheel to be broken and they would be stranded without any means to go further. He looked again at the sloping Cloaca walclass="underline" even if he took the risk of trusting to the leftway, it was hard to imagine how they could get the thousands of children up that. He shook his head and instead examined the elaborate mosaic of limb bones from which the prow post was shaped. His hand reached out to touch it. They needed these boats. He peered down the tunnel. It seemed clear all the way through to the oozing daylight beyond. He picked his way back along the deck. What was going to have to be done would be best put to the steersman.
Kharon were hacking into the bones of their forebears. As Carnelian stood in the stern watching the prow post splinter under the Ichorian blades they had borrowed from the Marula, he remembered the columns of his home being felled at the insistence of Aurum and the other Lords. He was glad to be distracted by the approach of another boat, Fern in the prow, who raised a gore-encrusted arm in salutation. Carnelian returned the greeting, then gestured him closer so they could talk.
The splintered, butchered stump of the prow post still stood higher than Carnelian, but, as they moved into the tunnel, it was a good forearm’s length short of the vault. He leaned forward to help spy out their way. The confined space muted the thresh of the oars. He noticed all manner of holes in the vaulting that led up into the fortress. So it was he could not miss the serrated edge of a portcullis pulled up into the roof just before the tunnel end. Of course there had to be something to bar entrance, otherwise the Cloaca would have perforated the defences of the Green Gate. What a relief that it was raised. It would have been a major undertaking to find the mechanism that opened it. Unease soaked into him as he questioned who had opened it.
Just then the boat carried him out of the tunnel and he forgot everything else, mesmerized. Before them the Cloaca flowed on, seeming to rise until, in the near distance, it overflowed to fill the Canyon with a lake that shimmered all the way to where the Wheel colossi stood gazing out upon a world of blinding, dazzling light.
When the boat reached a point in the Cloaca where its walls were level with the bows, they began helping the children to disembark onto a portion of the dry Canyon floor still above the flood. Fern’s boat arrived before they were finished. Carnelian confirmed with him the details of the plan they had agreed earlier. Leaving him to muster the flotilla as it appeared from under the Green Gate, Carnelian set off down the Cloaca, his boat lighter and swifter.
Reaching open water, the boat leapt forward as if in delight at winning her freedom from the Cloaca. Carnelian too felt elation as they sped down the flooded Canyon. They slowed as they passed the ankles of the colossi. Kharon came forward to stare in wonder at a world they knew only from stories. Before them the drowned Wheel seemed shimmering glass. Carnelian could just make out the ring of punishment poles standing at its centre; the backs of the six bridges rising like huimur from the water. He gazed round the outermost edge of the lake. The five pairs of gatehouses still seemed intact, but the rim of tenements and towers that had once made the Wheel a shallow bowl seemed rotten, crumbled, broken. Beyond he thought he could make out something that might have been the ruins of the city; further still, nothing but an ominous haze that could have been the very edge of existence.
They rowed towards the Wheel, staying above the Cloaca channel in case the water covering the Canyon floor was too shallow. When they reached the moat that defined the edge of the Wheel, they decided to follow it sunwise, reluctant to move out over the submerged pavement for fear of running aground. One of the bridges that linked the Canyon to the Wheel they drifted over without mishap. Carnelian gazed at the lake, sad at how still the place was that once had been such a ferment of humanity. Soon they were approaching the southern lip of the Canyon where twin gatehouses rose from the water embossed with quincunxes. As they passed over the bridge these towers guarded, there rose on their right the vast, once dazzling brass gates, tarnished, as if sucking the blue-green up from the water. On their left the beginning of the Great East Road had become a stagnant canal clotted with mounds and debris; flanked by mouldering half-collapsed tenements like a long jawful of rotting teeth. The kharon stared, their wonder turning to horror. Carnelian shared their relief when this view was hidden by the rim wall. This too was decaying. The buildings that had once formed its smooth jigsaw were coming apart. Ramparts buttressed with brick, though bulging, still stood; but in many places reinforcing beams, charred, shattered or swollen, had torn wounds in the mudbrick walls. Leprous plaques of shattered plaster covered the facades that looked ready to shed them dangerously onto the boat slipping past below. Sewer mouths had ruptured, dribbling filth to corrode cavities into the cliff. The whole curving wall seemed a dance of giants, rotting as they staggered and threatening to collapse. The further the boat went the more nervous everyone became of the ruinous overhangs. Some looked so precarious that the waves their oars sent lapping at the foundations might bring the whole lot down on them.
At last they steered away, between a pair of crooked cranes, out over the pavement of the Wheel, eyes half closed, anticipating a grinding of the keel even as they tried to spy out a clear channel. Carnelian became aware that they were following the dark serpent of the Dragonway, sinuous beneath the water, but at that moment the steersman turned their prow back towards the rim. They were moving round the back of the second pair of gatehouses to avoid the brass posts where once guards had demanded tolls. Soon these were swept from view by the bulk of the Gate of the Sun. They slowed behind it, floating above its bridge, as they turned towards the Great South Road: another gloomy canal hemmed in by ruined, leaning walls. Its path of water in some places seemed merely a linked string of wounds gouged through the corpse of the city.
Carnelian’s heart sank into his stomach. How could they find a way through that? As he looked round, past the gatehouses, the Wheel seemed seductively open and free. Perhaps the next road would provide a clearer route to the Gatemarsh; but shadows were lengthening. If he did not find a way now, they would have to try again the next day. Could the children spend a whole night crammed on the boats? Perhaps they could all disembark in the Canyon. He imagined how long it would take; the chaos. His plan had been to disembark them on the road south before nightfall. That was still the best plan. Reluctantly, he gave the steersman the command to take them into the rotting city.