“I was just wondering. It has to come from somewhere. We’re not close to the sea, so where could it come from?”
My classmates looked at me like I smelled.
“A river will be diverted, or a lake will be siphoned. It doesn’t matter, Italy.”
But doubt welled up inside me. Try as I might to dam it up, I could feel the pressure building.
My hand raised once more. Mrs Davenport suppressed a flicker of weariness, and hid it by straightening her silver hair. “Yes, Miss Webster?”
“Why keep the Fallen out of Llangour? Aren’t they a threat to Caldair too? And, well . . . can’t we make friends with them? Reason with them?”
My classmates sniggered.
Mrs Davenport sighed: “The Fallen are not capable of abiding by laws. They see themselves as superior. They have no souls, and no conscience. They are incapable of goodness because they reject the Exalted. Even if we formed a pact, they would find some apparently logical reason to break it.” She took off her glasses to rub her brow. “As for the wretches in Caldair, they are a threat to each other already, and almost as dangerous as Fallen. A lot of them worship the Ruiner. We do what we can for them by sending Purifiers to keep the peace and save the souls of those who have strayed.”
*
When I was sixteen, my classes changed. I tried not to worry, everyone’s classes changed a little at that age, but I went from learning about art, music and literature, about Realm Lore and politics, to learning how to handle explosives, how to assemble shell casings.
*
After graduation, I was sent to work in a munitions factory. My life became drudgery, gruelling work, thirteen hours a day, with barely a break. I’d make bombs for the Realm to drop on people who didn’t deserve to die, and then I’d go home, eat whatever I had the energy to make, then collapse into bed. Most people in Realm cities work as hard, it’s considered the right thing to do, but I hated it. It was like slavery! People said I was childish for thinking that, but years later Andreas said the same thing in a way: “Wage labour is exploitative. People have to work for their masters instead of themselves, starve while their ‘superiors’ live in luxury. The only way to survive is by being of use to the people who have money.”
The manager was a pervert whose eyes squirmed over me. I had a boyfriend at the time, my first, named Phillip. He was older than me, but it was perfectly innocent . . . and boring. There was no attraction or feeling.
“Please, speak to him,” I asked him one day. “Ask him to treat me with more respect. He’ll listen to you.” It made me feel sick to have to ask him to speak for me, but I had tried objecting and the manager had only leered more. If I complained, there was a very real danger that it could be taken as an objection to the work in general.
“Maybe he isn’t doing what you think,” he whined, “maybe he’s just watching you work.”
I called it off. I was still making up stories about brave, righteous heroes who would save me from bad men. My parents were furious. Looking back, I’m not sure I blame them. If I’d stayed with Phillip I’d still be more like who I was then. That girl had seen horrible things, but she’d never seen wars, or explosions or throats torn out by teeth. She’d still been able to believe in an afterlife. She’d still been able to believe in heroes.
*
One night, I sat at my window too tired to sleep, watching the sunset, breathing the colours of the Shimmer Barrier, and the most heartfelt music trickled out of Caldair; A violin, a guitar and a woman’s voice.
Hear me sing, traa lala,
The bells, hear them ring, tra lalalaa.
I’ll take you away, singing traa lala,
I’ll take you home and I’ll traa lalalaa.
The words weren’t special, it was the tune and the vocals. I’d never known music could be so emotional. In the Realm, the only songs allowed were hymns. I sang along, but shut up quick before anyone could hear. I wanted to be with the musicians.
The music came night after night, haunting and invigorating, an aurora of feelings. I sat at my window listening every evening until the music stopped, not wanting to miss a note, feeling the ecstasy and pain and melancholy and excitement in the music. I couldn’t tear myself away, in case it suddenly stopped forever.
*
My parents invited me to the execution of a man who had spoken out against flooding the canyon. He was sentenced to death by a thousand cuts, the worst punishment the Realm inflicted. His blood would slowly be drained and his soul would drift away into the ether. I hadn’t attended an execution since seeing the Fallen burned when I was a child, and I refused to go. It was horrifying, and I needed to stay home and listen to the music in case it stopped forever.
“How dare you?!” my mother snapped, her control wavering for the first time. “How dare you act like you’re better than us? You can’t stand to see an evildoer delivered to the Exalted, but you’ll sit and listen to those deviants? You’re disgusting!”
My father watched with disdain until she’d finished, then stepped forward and spoke to me quietly and firmly. “We are going to this event, Italy, and you can stay here and listen to your friends one last time. In the morning, I will report to the head of my department and Purifiers will be dispatched to Caldair. The next time we invite you to spend a night with us you will graciously accept.”
“Come along,” mother sighed. “Stop giving her attention.”
Dad turned, put his arm round my mother’s waist and they walked out. That was the night I left for Caldair, and the night I met Andreas.
*
The iridescent music came again, desperate and anxious, lonely and doomed, and I thought, that’s what the people in Caldair must feel like. There were stone bridges across the canyon—just two back then, lots more now. They had high railings made of polished black metal, and massive iron gates on either end. The gates don’t stop Fallen, who can jump or fly or climb over. The people of Llangour are issued keys. Who were they keeping out? Only the pitiful Baneful and humans living in Caldair. No-one who was any threat.
My legs trembled. The bridge was wide and sturdy, but I felt like I was going to lose my balance and plummet into the canyon. Halfway across, I clung to the railings.
Caldair buildings were very different. Three or four stories high, each covering so much ground that they must have contained about ninety rooms, made of crumbling bricks or rough hewn stones. There weren’t any real pavements, everywhere was cobbles or flagstones, many broken or missing. Small animals would run past, then disappear down a drain or through a window.
I could still make out the music, but it faded and swelled as the wind whipped in every direction. My hair blew in my eyes and mouth. Then something barrelled into me and I was hitting the ground, and my ribs and ankle flared with pain.
The stinking man was growling, and had me pinned down. He was wearing rags and his body was hairy and muscular, his jaw distended like some wild beast and his jagged teeth plunged into my right breast. I screamed so loud I felt my throat tear. Then the man-beast was gone, spinning through the air into the steps of a nearby building. I heard bones break.
Two people loomed over me. The first was a tiny, slightly awkward woman with dark hair and a guarded expression, who had picked up my attacker and thrown him away like trash. She quickly slunk away, and when I later tried to recall her face it was as though the memory had been smudged out. The second stranger was a tall, thin man who stood a little too still. He was wearing old black trousers and a jacket of home-made leather. His hair was a long, black tangled mess. I couldn’t see his features clearly in the darkness.
“Get to your feet, don’t lie there in the gutter,” he said. Was he trying to be inspirational or was that a tinge of reproach in his voice?
I remember being in his shadow and accepting his freezing cold hand. I got up, with his help, and got my breath back.
My attacker staggered away into a dark alley, and I saw that his arms and legs were too long.
/> “Is that a Baneful?” I asked.
“No, that was a human. Of sorts. That is what natural selection eventually did to groups of people that survived by being vicious and predatory. We call them ‘depraedor’.”
He spoke slowly and carefully. Even after his encounter with the depraedor, he seemed perfectly composed. He examined me with his glowing red eyes. “You haven’t asked what I am,” he observed.
“You’re a Fallen.”
“Yes. My name is Andreas Sorotos.” He took a step closer. That wonderful music trilled the pungent night air. A breeze blew over me and I shivered.
“Are you going to drink my blood?” I asked.
“No,” he answered. “I would never take blood without permission. Not from an innocent, anyway . . .”
In the space of a murmur, he disappeared into the alleyway, following the depraedor. I heard a guttural cry then silence again, save for the occasional sigh of violins.
I ran. At first I ran blindly, as far and fast as I could, in any direction that would have me, hearing nothing but the pounding of my blood, the gasps of my lungs and the echoes of my feet. Then the music came again, and I followed it. It floated on the air and echoed off the sad, strange buildings and every time I thought I was getting closer, I got further away. Other noises drifted through it, mingled with it—a squawking bird, the whistling wind, drunken voices, a crash. When I could run no more I staggered to a halt, hands on my knees to prop myself up, and dragged in cold, acrid air. I was back at the canyon, and standing in front of a low, collapsing wall. Three more steps and I would have fallen.
The violins drifted in and out of earshot before they were crushed by an unknown, unstoppable sound that pulverized the ears, a godly roar like the collapse of an empire. I looked up into a sky full of stars and mist sprayed my face, made me blink, pricked my tongue. Thousands of gallons of water poured into the canyon, claiming it, forcing itself in like a rapist.
I felt the Fallen behind me before he spoke. He’d kept pace with me effortlessly, without even getting short of breath.
“It’s the deluge,” he said. “It won’t keep us out of Llangour. Blessed water will burn us if we touch it, but that stuff about crossing running water is a myth.”
Without looking around (I was too transfixed by the view) I asked the question that had been on my mind since St Deloun's. “Where is the water coming from?”
“It’s the water supply for Caldair,” he said. “A dam’s been built, some pipes have been redirected, a reservoir’s been decommissioned, this is the result.”
“Is it still . . . I mean, can people still drink it?”
“No, it will be too polluted.” His voice was still measured, like he was weighing every word before speaking it, but there was faint anger. “It won’t be treated anymore like it was at the reservoir, the walls and floor of the canyon are full of heavy metals, and several sewage outlets spill into the canyon. This water will be undrinkable.”
As this awful folly blotted out the music, I decided that I hated Llangour and never wanted to go back.
I turned to face him. There was more light here, moonlight and a gas lamp, and I saw his face clearly. He was gaunt, with ruddy, blotchy skin, like a corpse I’d once seen carried out of a Purifier truck. His teeth were long and sharp, his eyes were passive and unblinking, his smile was knowing and cruel.
“The Realm is getting things really wrong, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Can anything be done?”
“Yes,” he said. “Things will be done.”
*
I was so excited to meet this Fallen. I had childish fantasies about him sweeping me off my feet (I was only nineteen) but instead he found me a place to stay. We wandered Caldair for hours looking for an empty place. Caldair had fewer colours than Llangour, but it was more colourful. It lacked the floating light from the Shimmer Barrier, the monuments to the sun, the skyscrapers and exotic fashions, but it had a richness of character, freedom and honesty. Plants were growing out through the windows of one abandoned building we passed. They were tall and thorny, with drooping shrivelled black leaves, and covered in what looked like cobwebs. They were lovely.
The streets were no consistent size or shape—one street would be barely wider than an alleyway, crowded with hab-blocks, turn the corner and you were in a wide plaza, with buildings fifty feet apart. Sometimes hab-blocks ran parallel to each other, sometimes they clustered together, facing all different angles.
“People have big houses around here. Those buildings must have a hundred rooms!” I said, with no idea how naive I sounded.
“Those are shared,” Andreas said. “People are crammed in five to a room in some places. There is no privacy, barely space to breathe.”
“How many do you share with?” I asked. Was it obviously a dig for information?
“I . . . no, it’s just me.” He looked humbled, like he’d never thought about his unfair advantage. “But that’s different, I don’t have a family to share with, and most mortals wouldn’t willingly live with Fallen.”
“Some people get all the perks.” I teased.
He gave a rueful smile. “I guess there can be advantages to being feared, but I would prefer to be accepted and improve the lives of people in Caldair.”
“How? How could you do that?”
He stopped walking and turned to face me, flashed that knowing smile, and said, “You’ll see.”
We were outside a building with half its windows boarded up. It looked empty, but Andreas was cautious. “Perhaps whoever is there just wants the place to look empty, because they’re hiding from Purifiers or they want to lure people in.”
“But . . . wouldn’t the landlords say anything about that?”
“Do you have money for rent?” he asked, rhetorically. “These are squats.”
After we’d checked for occupants, he left without saying goodbye. The place wasn’t pleasant (a hole in one wall was infested by tiny bugs with half-spherical shiny green shells) but it was mine.
The music was close to my new home. It poured through the broken windows, filled the rooms, vibrated off the splintering floorboards and cracked walls. I could pinpoint its direction, and it wasn’t just drifting on the wind; the musicians were moving around.
*
It was ages before I saw Andreas again, and he became a symbol of this exotic place where people were free to sing and create. In my first few days in Caldair, I saw things I’d never seen—simple things like a man carrying a bag of potatoes, or lovely things like fireworks, or a woman reading poetry on a corner. Shocking things, like women selling themselves, or people passed out in gutters, or children scavenging rubbish. Strange things; a three-headed moth and an armadillo creature with a crest on its back that looked like a face. Wondrous things; a man levitating and spinning like a whirlwind in mid-air, to quake-like applause.
People’s lifestyles were so radical, and there were people who did things I wasn’t comfortable with, but Caldair had a vibrant side that Andreas doesn’t appreciate any more.
The people of Caldair were wonderful! So friendly and diverse. I’d never met such fascinating people. I spent my first week there exploring, going wherever people gathered. I found a market a few streets away from my flat, filled with people of all colours, cultures and shapes. Baneful mingled with human. All were in rags but most had things to trade. A Baneful with scales traded a foot-tall brass idol of a bat god for a flute from a man smoking a funny smelling pipe, and one with ten tentacles sold shawls and paints from a tent.
“What you have offer?” The creature gurgled at me. I turned out my spare change, stupidly forgetting that I’d need money for food, and eagerly bundled pots of paint into my arms. A tentacle snatched my cash and the Baneful blew appreciative ink bubbles.
A man at one end of the market preached about the Exalted and praised the Purifiers, while in a stall on the other end a Fallen woman handed out pamphlets on the benefits of immortality. So
me people walked past without looking, others jeered, a few stopped to chat. I walked over to the stallholder with my arms full of paints.
“Hi,” she murmured. She was about my height, much thinner, raven haired and jittery. I picked through the pamphlets on her stall, struggling not to drop my purchases. “We, um, we have information on how you can beat hunger or starvation, on helping your education by Falling, and on how being Fallen can, heh, boost your confidence.” She pushed pieces of paper towards me across the table and smiled nervously, amused and embarrassed by the irony. “I’m Sara. Mathias. Hi.”
“You’re Fallen?”
“Does it show? It doesn’t show does it? But yes, I am. I like your paint. Nice colours.”
“Oh, thanks!” I didn’t know what to say, what to ask, I was just curious. “Why are you here?” was the best I could do. Then I added: “I’m new.”
“Really?” she laughed. “You know, I’m not sure why I’m here. Most people can’t read. No schools in Caldair. Fallen learn things a lot easier—I taught myself to read—but the pamphlets aren’t useful to people who are already Fallen, are they?”
As if to prove her point, a man in a tatty blue robe stumbled past, muttering about “stuck-up undead scum”.
I sighed, and adjusted my grip on my paints so I could offer Sara my hand to shake. “I’m Italy. Keep at it. At least you can do this sort of thing here. If this was Llangour you’d be dead by now. I mean actually dead. I mean . . .”
Sara laughed. “I know what you mean.” She leaned over and tucked pamphlets under my arm. “Get the impression you might be interested. Have a look.”
*
A week passed. I reduced myself to stealing a bag of plantroit roots, and eating them raw, one a day. With my few remaining coins I bought tiny portions of foul broth from the market, one every other day. It was gritty, with chewy strips of beige meat in it.
Eventually, the music came again, as I was looking through Sara’s pamphlets. They were all written to be inspirational, to make you want to be everything you could be . . . only less corny and more long-winded. So, when that music came to distract me from the rumbling in my belly I resolved to go searching for it. Better than trying to clean stains off the stone walls with a dry cloth because my water was dirtier than the walls.