Those Revenants that didn’t yet have bodies swooped and glided over the bloodless carnage. They would dive at one corpse or another, pick it up with their tentacles and stand it upright. Then they would melt into it, pulling themselves inside the dead body and awakening it again. A fire of aether ignited in their breasts that burned and glowed through their eyes and mouths. The newly born Taken would then race away, seeking out living beings to kill.
Rail felt his knees go weak at the sight. The gantry they stood on was crisscrossed with other gantries, and on this network of walkways there were still some people alive. They were the guards and overseers who used the walkways to get a bird’s eye view of the workers below. They had been trapped up here when the Revenants had invaded. Now the energy ghosts soared up and around the roof of the factory, plunging down to take new victims now and again. They skimmed along the gantries to grab the hapless guards, who fired at them ineffectually with thumper guns. Those that they had already snatched and turned into Taken now prowled along the walkways, hunting.
On the far side of the workspace was a row of open windows. Going down to to ground level would be suicide, but the windows promised a way out, and Rail guessed that they faced out on to the docks. With Vago they might just make it down. He glanced at the golem, whose eye was asking him the question. And though he was so afraid that his insides had turned to water, there were no choices left to him. The enemy was behind and all around. The only way was forward.
“Do it,” Rail murmured.
Vago set off at a sprint, taking great strides along the gantry, his long body hunched over Moa as he carried her. Rail ran full tilt in his wake, as if the golem could somehow shield him. All they had to rely on was luck, to hope that in all the disorder the Revenants would be too busy to notice them. This was Moa’s way: to surrender themselves to chance and hope for the best. Rail hated being put into that position. Chance hadn’t been kind to those factory workers below, after all.
But it seemed that luck was with them. They fled across the walkway, and nothing arose to block their way. There were so many other targets for the Revenants. By the time they were halfway, Rail began to believe they might pass unhindered through the chaos.
They almost made it.
He saw it only an instant before it struck, just long enough to give a cry of warning. It was an energy ghost. He saw its sparkling form through the slatted metal of the gantry floor, winging up from below them. He braked himself instinctively, but Vago wasn’t fast enough. The Revenant flew through the gantry floor, coming up underneath the golem, passing through him . . . and suddenly dissipating in a cloud, as if torn to tatters.
But Rail barely even noticed what had happened to the Revenant. He cared about one thing only.
Vago had been holding Moa.
“Moa!” he cried, the sound of her name plaintive and desperate.
Vago turned slowly, dazed. Aether was sparkling along the bladed fins that ran down his spine between his wings. Moa was limp in his arms, unmoving. The dead seabird that hung around Vago’s neck lay across her chest.
“No!” Rail howled through his respirator, reaching for her. But at that moment Vago seemed to come back to himself, and he pulled her away from him.
“Run!” he told Rail, and he was off towards the window. Rail followed, not because of the grave danger that he was still in, but because the golem had taken Moa.
They reached the window, the screams of the factory workers thinning behind them. They were right by the bank of the canal. There were no Revenants visible, for they were all inside. The probability storm was quieting now, the colours turning muted and fading in the clouds overhead. The rain had become a fine drizzle that misted down from the sky.
As the docks met the water, the warehouses fell back and turned into a ropy clutter of jetties and gangways. There, berthed and silent, were the small boats that plied the canals of Orokos. They rocked under the barrage from the sky, low and long and sombre. One of them had been turned into diamond by the probability storm and had sunk. Only its prow was visible, where the mooring line kept it anchored to the dock. Still another appeared to have been turned inside out, its engine parts on the outside of its hull, but by some twist of physics it was still afloat.
They had reached the canal, but they were high above the ground, and the wall of the factory was sheer. There was no way down.
Vago shifted Moa’s weight to one arm, carrying her as if she were a sack of grain. With the other, he snatched up Rail, and before he could protest or squirm, Vago jumped.
Rail was too surprised to even yell. The rush of the wind, the awful anticipation of impact, the ground rushing up to meet him . . . and then they hit, and he felt a hefty jolt but nothing more. He blinked. Vago had absorbed the force of the landing through his machine-augmented legs.
The golem put him down. He reached for Moa immediately, but Vago held him back.
“Boat,” he said, and pointed one long finger.
Even through his grief, Rail saw the sense, but he hated the golem for interfering, hated him for being right. Hated him because he was carrying Moa when the Revenant got him. Hated him for being alive when Moa . . . when Moa was. . .
He bit back tears and ran for the jetties. If there was one thing he could do, it was steal. Taking a boat would be child’s play to a thief like him.
The storm passed by, the rain stopped, and darkness claimed Territory West 190 again.
The canal made its steady way towards the edge of Orokos, where the great plateau ended and dropped into the sea. It took with it a narrow boat, a long, thin vessel shaped like a canoe, painted black as the waters it floated on. It was a crude thing compared to some of the cargo haulers that had once plied these lanes, but it was small enough to slip along unnoticed. The Revenants had quieted after their feeding, and the district was deserted once again.
Rail sat next to Moa, holding her hand. It was cold. Vago hunkered at the prow of the boat, scanning their surroundings. He had his back to them both.
The golem was confused. He wasn’t practised enough at the art of emotion to know what he should be feeling now. On the one hand, what had happened to Moa had made him terribly sad. It was like when the bird had died; that was how he recognized it. On the other hand, he felt better than he had felt since he could remember. A Revenant had touched him. He should be dead. And yet instead he felt more alive than ever. His heart was a muddle, and he tried to make sense of it; but everything was too jumbled up inside him now.
Rail had taken his glimmer visor off and stashed it in his satchel. Moa’s he had laid aside in the boat. It seemed wrong to view her through that strange lens. He relied on Vago to spot Revenants, but in truth he wasn’t sure whether he cared about them now. Moa was dead. He might as well die too.
Her eyes were open, and she was staring at the sky. It was only when he had taken off her visor that he saw her eyeshadow had changed colour, from black to red, clashing with her dark green lipstick. So the probability storm had changed something when it touched them, after all. He almost laughed at how trivial an alteration it was, but he knew if he laughed he would start to cry, and he would not let himself do that.
“What is it I am looking for?” Vago murmured ahead of him. The sound of the golem’s ruined voice ignited fresh anger in Rail, and he held on to that.
“A tower,” he snapped. “A tower with three spires, on the north side.”
Vago didn’t reply, nor did he turn around. He seemed to be furiously ignoring what had happened to Moa, as if by not acknowledging it he could pretend it hadn’t happened. Rail wanted to kill him.
If you hadn’t taken her from me, she’d still be alive.
How had the golem survived, when Moa hadn’t? It wasn’t fair! Nothing about this frecking horrible world was fair!
But he knew in his heart that he was blaming Vago because he couldn’t cope with the tru
th. He was the one who had led them into Territory West 190, who had come up with the idea of braving a district full of Revenants. It was his fault.
He closed Moa’s eyes with his fingers. Now she looked like she was only sleeping.
“I see the tower,” Vago said.
Rail hardly reacted. When he did, it was to say: “Can you see a hatch near the base of the tower? Facing on to the water?”
“Yes,” he said.
So the secret route that had been rumoured among Anya-Jacana’s thieves really did exist. He had been right. How hollow that victory seemed now.
Vago went to the back of the boat, stepping over the two of them without so much as a glance. He turned the rudder to bring them up to the hatch. Rail didn’t take his eyes from Moa as the tower – a Functional Age thing of smooth ceramic and indestructible glass – loomed up before them. He let the golem take them in.
As Vago was getting out on to a concrete shelf just above the waterline, Rail said: “We’re bringing her with us.”
“I know,” Vago replied.
The hatch was set in the sloping wall of the canal bank. Vago took hold of the wheel at its centre and turned it. It resisted, but not enough to thwart him. The hatch came open. Vago hunched down and peered into the darkness within.
“A tunnel,” he said, and went inside.
For a time, Rail didn’t move, and Vago didn’t come back. The golem knew instinctively that he wasn’t welcome now.
Rail just looked at her, lying in the boat. He didn’t have the words to say, and he didn’t believe in pointless eulogies anyway. Instead, he took a breath, and slipped his respirator off.
“It shouldn’t have been this way,” he said. “I was going to make a life for us.”
And he bent his head down to hers. A kiss, their first and last. It seemed the only way to end it.
But their lips never touched; for as they neared, he felt something. The tiniest of movements in the air.
Moa was breathing.
He pulled his head back, gasped in surprise and then flailed as his lungs didn’t respond. A momentary panic took him, until he could get the respirator back over his face.
“Vago!” he cried, and the golem was there in an instant. Rail was so delirious that he didn’t even think of the danger of shouting in the silence of the night.
He put his fingers to Moa’s lips, and felt it again. Shallow, barely there, but she was breathing! It was impossible, it should have been impossible, but the touch of the Revenant hadn’t killed her. Yet.
Rail lifted her up in his arms, as gently as he could, and stepped out of the boat. His eyes were wet.
“She’s alive, Vago. She’s frecking alive.”
They hurried into the tunnel together and closed the hatch behind them. In their haste, neither of them noticed that they had left Moa’s glimmer visor where it lay in the boat. It would have been worth a tidy sum on the Dark Markets, enough to feed and clothe both Rail and Moa for a fair while. But though his life had been spent in its pursuit, the thought of money didn’t even occur to Rail at that point. He had other priorities now.
The next day found the city shining wet and cleansed. The sun was bright and sharp, providing little warmth but offering a harsh white light that cut stern shadows from the towers and minarets of Orokos. The sea, stretching for ever on all sides, glittered blindingly. The air was specked with bomber birds, hovering above the waves, plunging in and emerging with bulging beak-sacs full of squirming fish.
The jagbats were out in force today, great dark-winged shapes that glided between the highest points of the city and out over the ocean. They took down the birds when they could, or squabbled with each other in the air, hissing and yowling. Earlier that morning, one of them had snatched a Protectorate soldier from the deck of a Dreadnought that was patrolling near the foot of the cliffs. The Dreadnought had fired upon it with explosive shells, but it had flown out of range, over the sea. Jagbats were not the smartest of creatures, but they had learned that the armoured ships couldn’t go beyond a certain distance from Orokos. The city would not allow it. It had defences that prevented anything from leaving.
At the very centre of Orokos stood the Fulcrum, surrounded by a loose ring of solitary mountains that thrust up from among the cramped and mazy streets. And in its shadow was the Null Spire.
The Fulcrum was one of the most shocking pieces of architecture left over from the years before the Fade. It was a feat of engineering and construction almost unequalled in the whole of Orokos. Some argued that the serpentine Coil in the south or the shifting mirrors of the Light Gardens – that lay in the flooded east and were lost to the Revenants – were just as spectacular. But the Fulcrum had its own special awe and dread. Inside it, so rumour held, was the great machine that controlled Orokos, that generated the probability storms and created the Revenants. They called it the Chaos Engine.
The Fulcrum was built like a spiral, its base smaller than its top, a fragmented masterpiece of metal and sparkling glass. It leaned slightly westward, defying physics by staying upright when it should have toppled. Its exterior was comprised of many hundreds of bladelike sections, like those of a pinecone. The sections were tilted to follow the swirl of the architecture, so that the whole impression was like a tornado of glittering leaves. It was a bewildering mass of edges, sealed away from the outside world, the greatest prize of Orokos. For nobody had ever managed to see what was within.
The Null Spire, in contrast, was plain and bleak, a thick needle of darkness pointing towards the sky, dwarfed by the colossal Fulcrum. At its tip dwelt the Patrician, immortal ruler of the Protectorate. And it was here that Lysander Bane, Chief of the Protectorate Secret Police, had come to report.
The chamber was small and dim, empty of ornamentation. Everything here was a perfect black: the walls, the circular ceiling, the marble floor. A single globe glowed above them, casting overlights on the figures beneath. Bane stood before the Patrician, who sat on a raised platform on a throne of twisted brass. The Patrician himself was as shadowy as his surroundings, dressed in a high-collared black trenchcoat. His face was hidden behind a mask of darkness, which reflected nothing of the room around them and showed nothing of the features beneath.
Bane wasn’t intimidated. Like himself, the Patrician used fear and uncertainty to inspire cooperation and respect.
The Patrician wasn’t immortal. He was many people, many leaders, united in a single guise. There had been a dozen or more who had worn that mask over the years. The people didn’t really believe that he lived for ever, and yet, they could never be quite sure. After all, between the probability storms and Fade-Science, who knew whether a man might really live for ever? In Orokos, anything was possible. So they entertained the fantasy. They would rather have a leader that was like a rock, ageless and invulnerable, than a succession of different faces.
Bane had spent the last hour recounting the affairs of the Secret Police, explaining victories and failures and projects in progress. The Secret Police were the enforcers of the real business of the Protectorate. The carefully edited news feeds on the panopticon were merely there to keep the populace happy and secure. The soldiers on the streets were more for show than for their effectiveness. Like all governments, the meat of the matter was dealt with behind the scenes, where people didn’t have to see it. Though they would never admit it to themselves, the citizens preferred it that way.
He had almost finished, and was preparing his conclusion, when the Patrician posed him a question.
“What of the golem, Lysander Bane?”
His voice echoed eerily, though whether because of the room or his mask Bane couldn’t tell.
“The golem eludes us for now,” Bane said.
“I see,” the Patrician said. “Perhaps we can make another, then?”
“It would be impossible. There was only one. The golem is the prototype.”
<
br /> “You made no copies?” he said. “Careless.”
His tone somehow implied a threat, which Bane didn’t like, but he was prepared for this.
“Copying the technology that made that golem would be the work of years,” he replied. “And until we knew the technology worked, there was no point expending that amount of effort on it. So we built a prototype for a field test.”
The Patrician considered this. Bane found himself trying to catch his reflection in his leader’s face. He knew it should be there, but the mask turned the light somehow so that it was empty.
“The golem is probably unaware of its own nature,” Bane continued. “We hadn’t had time to condition it properly before it disappeared.”
“Yes. An unfortunate incident.”
Bane grit his teeth behind his lips. The Patrician had a way of making it sound like it was his fault. He knew as well as Bane that nobody could account for a probability storm. The best-laid plans in all recorded history were peppered with their influence. They could turn a brilliant victory into defeat or allow a bungled scheme to suddenly come good against all the odds. It seemed to him that the city took joy in ruining the perfection of order, that the better the strategy the more likely a probability storm would turn up and throw a spanner into the works. He hated them, as much as he hated the Revenants.
“I don’t believe the golem poses any danger to us,” he said eventually. “The worst that could happen is that it is destroyed before we manage to get it back.”
“And what will you do when you recapture the golem?” queried the Patrician.
“We will finish conditioning and field-test it if we can.”