‘The waters are rising,’ said Lom. ‘It must have been raining in the hills.’
Maroussia shook her head.
‘The giant is gone,’ she said. ‘Without him to work the sluices, the waters are running wild. All this wetland will go. There’ll be nothing left but the city and the sea.’
A dark mossy floating lump of tree nudged heavily against the bow and rested there, travelling alongside them in the current. Lom stared at it. It was a mass of little juts and elbows of branch-stump and bark canker. Every crook and hole was edged with a dewy fringe of spider’s web. Lom shifted the weight of the gun, which was pressing into his leg. The death of Aino-Suvantamoinen, and the weight of all the other deaths before him, had left him feeling numbed and stupid. The boat was taking them into a darker, emptier future.
Maroussia pulled hard at the oars, skewing the Sib sideways. She rowed in silence, looking at nothing. Lom watched her hands on the oars. Large, strong, capable. She’d pushed back her sleeves. Her hands were reddened but her forearms were pale and smooth. He could see the tendons and muscles working as she rowed. Her black hair was slicked with river mist: it clung to her face and neck in tight shining curls.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Lom.
‘What?’
‘The giant. It was Safran that killed him. Not you.’
‘He tried to help,’ said Maroussia.
‘He thought it was important. So did Raku.’
‘Yes.’
‘So it is important.’
For a long time Maroussia didn’t say anything. She just kept rowing. Then she looked up at him.
‘I’m going to find the Pollandore,’ she said. ‘The angel is destroying the world. The Pollandore can stop that.’
Lom noticed how thin she was, though her arms were strong. As she rowed, he watched the shadow play on the vulnerable, scoop-shaped dip at the base of her throat. The suprasternal notch. She was human and raw and beautiful. She rowed in silence for a long time. Lom watched the empty mudbanks pass by. He wiped his weeping forehead.
‘Vissarion?’
‘Yes?’
‘That thing in your head…’
‘It’s gone now.’
‘What was it? How did it get there?’
‘I was young. I don’t know how old. Eight maybe. Eight or nine. A child.’
‘That man I killed…’
‘Safran.’
‘He had one the same.’
‘Savinkov’s Children. They call us that. Ever heard of Savinkov?’
‘No.’
‘You should have. Everyone should know about Savinkov.’
‘I don’t.’
‘He was provost of the Institute at Podchornok when I was there. Vishnik went there too. He was my friend.’
‘But he didn’t… he didn’t have anything like that.’
‘No. Only a few of us. Before he came to the Institute, Savinkov was an technician of angel-flesh. His specialism was the effect of it on the human mind. Putting a piece of it in direct contact with the human brain.’
‘They put that stuff in people’s heads?’
‘And the other way round.’
‘You don’t mean…’
‘It’s common practice with mudjhiks to put in an animal brain: naturally they tried with human brains too, but it doesn’t work that way. The mudjhiks become uncontrollable. Insane. But there are less dramatic methods than full transplant. Angel flesh has a sort of life. Awareness. It affects you. And it encourages loyalty. The sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the whole. It’s a way of binding you to the Vlast.’
‘But… you… They did it to you when you were a child.’
‘That was Savinkov’s subject. His research. Were children more or less susceptible? Did the effect grow or diminish with time? How could you measure and predict it? The skull insertion technique was Savinkov’s invention. It used to go wrong a lot. The children died, or… well, Savinkov put them to work. In the gardens. The stables.’
‘But… the parents?’
‘We didn’t have parents. None of us did. Savinkov used to take waifs and strays into the Institute for the experiments. I never knew who my parents were.’
‘Oh…’
‘Savinkov saw nothing wrong with it,’ said Lom. ‘He had some successes too. Some of them became excellent mudjhik handlers and technicians with the Worm. Servants of the Vlast of great distinction.’
‘But not you.’
‘No. I was one of Savinkov’s disappointments in that respect.’
Walls rose on either side of the river. The channel narrowed. A roar of rushing water. The skiff rolled and yawed, rushing ahead out of control.
‘Hold on!’ yelled Lom.
Maroussia almost lost the oars as the Sib pitched over a low weir and spun out into wide grey water. The Mir Ship Canal. The skiff settled, drifting slowly with the current.
It was a bleak, blank place after the edgeless mist and mud of the wetlands: a broad channel cut dead straight between high embankments of stone blocks and concrete slopes, wide enough for great ships and ocean-going barges to pass four or six abreast. Featureless. There was nothing natural to be seen, not even a gull in the sky. The trees were out of sight behind the great ramparts and bulwarks built by armies of giants and serfs. Built by the Founder on their bones. The water was deep: Lom felt it fathoming away beneath them, dark and cold. A bitter wind, freighted with flurries of sharp sleety snow, was pushing upstream off the sea, smelling of salt and ice, slowing their progress. It had been autumn when they entered the wetlands. It felt like winter coming now.
‘It’ll be easy from here on,’ said Lom. ‘Downstream to the sea lock. We can leave the boat there and walk back along the Strand to the tram terminus. Let me take the oars for a while.’
Maroussia wasn’t listening. She was staring over his shoulder up towards the embankment. He followed her gaze. The mudjhik was standing on the crest, a smudge of dried blood and rust against the grey sky. Grey snow. Grey stone. It was watching them. As the current took them downstream, the mudjhik began to lope along the top of the high canal wall, keeping pace. Lom looked for an escape. On either side of the canal the embankments rose sheer and high. No quays. No steps cut into the stone. Nowhere to go. The mudjhik had only to follow them.
‘Maybe we’ll find a place on the far side where we can get out,’ he said. ‘It can’t cross the canal before the sea lock. We can be miles away by then.’
As if in answer, he felt the dark touch of the mudjhik’s mind in his. It felt stronger than before, much stronger, and different now. There was an intelligence there that had been absent before, with a sickening almost-human edge to it. It was almost a voice. No words, but a cruel demonstration of existence and power. It was a voice he recognised. Safran. But it wasn’t quite Safran: it was something more and something less than he had been. Lom felt he was being touched intimately by something… disgusting. Something strong but inhuman, broken and foul and… wrong. A mind that stank.
He slammed his mind-walls closed against it. The effort hurt. His head began to ache immediately. He felt the pulse in the socket in his forehead flutter and pound.
‘We have to destroy that thing,’ he said. ‘Somehow. We have to end it. Here.’
Safran-in-mudjhik considered the pathetic little rowing boat sitting there helplessly, a flimsy toy on the deep flowing blackness. The two frail lives it carried, cupped in its brittle palm, flickered like match-lights. He had shown himself deliberately so he could taste their fear. Their deaths would be… delicious. Especially hers. The one that had taken his head when part of him was in the man.