Sitting at the desk was Bane, reading a report. They didn’t know his real name, but they had seen him on the panopticon, and they knew him as Grimjack. He didn’t introduce himself.
Standing in the corner of the room like some hunched gargoyle was Vago.
Moa let out a little cry at the sight of him, but the joy on her face drained away as Vago stared back blankly at her. She pieced together the situation. He was standing on Bane’s side of the desk, the light from the window falling on the metal half of his ruined face. She hadn’t allowed herself to believe before, but as she saw him she knew what Rail had known. He was the betrayer. He was on Bane’s side now.
She turned away from him, her face hardening. “She was right,” she muttered to Rail, her voice full of rage and hurt. “Kittiwake was right.”
“That would be Kittiwake of Kilatas?” said Bane, whose hearing was sharper than Moa had imagined. He didn’t look up from his desk. “Leader of the previously secret – and very illegal – underground community which is planning to try and sail away from Orokos two days from now?”
“No!” Moa cried, reaching out as if to lunge across the desk. He knew. He knew everything. Rail grabbed her arm and she reluctantly subsided. The two guards who had remained in the room by the door relaxed again.
Moa was trembling with suppressed emotion, glaring hatefully at the golem. Vago met her gaze for a moment, then wavered and looked away out of the window.
“Well. First Anya-Jacana, and now Vago. It seems you do have a poor taste in allies,” Bane said, putting aside a form he was reading with a brusque snap of paper. “Between him and your friend Finch, we already know all we need to know about your little adventures.”
“The Secret Police must be scraping the barrel if you need kids like Finch to do your work for you,” Rail said. He was determined not to be cowed. They were going to kill him and Moa anyway eventually. He might as well be defiant.
“Finch is turning into quite the surprise, actually,” Bane said. “I’m considering him for a trial apprenticeship in the Secret Police. He seems to have fallen into line nicely, all things considered. Doesn’t even seem to mind the Persuader I had to put on him. Of course, you never can tell with you ghetto folk, so I think I’ll leave it attached to him for a while longer. Just to ensure his loyalty.” He got up from his desk. He was much taller than Rail and Moa were. “I am hoping that you will be as cooperative.”
Moa said nothing about her encounter with Finch, when she had helped him get the Persuader off his arm. Bane didn’t seem to know about that, and Finch hadn’t told him. She didn’t know what it meant, or if it meant anything at all, but she wasn’t going to help Bane out by telling him. Finch was the lesser of two evils at the moment. He was just a murderer. These were the Secret Police.
“What have we done wrong?” Rail asked. “Why are we here?”
Bane walked around to the other side of his desk. “Well, you’re thieves. That’s what you’ve done wrong. But we all know that’s not really why you’re here. After all, I’d be inclined to overlook something like that. You’re ghetto folk, it’s in your blood to be criminals.” He came closer, his brows creasing into a frown. “You’re here because of the artefact you found. We very nearly didn’t get it at all, you know. If Vago hadn’t told us, we might never even have known you had it. All the time Finch was after you because of that artefact, and we didn’t know. He’s a tricky one; I admire that.”
“So how did you find us?” Rail asked.
Bane felt indulgent enough to tell him. “Finch’s Persuader has a device that allowed us to track him. Once Vago told me about the artefact I realized why Finch was after you. I sent along some of my people, both to help him capture you and to ensure he behaved. They arrived just in time, it seems.”
Suddenly Rail understood why they were here, why they hadn’t been disposed of already. The Secret Police already knew as much as they did about the artefact, so there was only one possibility left. He laughed suddenly.
“You can’t make it work, can you?” he said.
Bane backhanded him across the face. It came without warning and was delivered without passion. Rail staggered backward, then came back up again with his hand against his cheek. Bane gazed at him with dull eyes, flexing his hand. He had probably hurt himself more than Rail, for most of the impact had been absorbed by the metal muzzle of the respirator. But the message was received. Rail didn’t feel like goading him any more. Flippancy would not be tolerated.
Moa was blinking back angry tears, but she held herself in check.
“How does it work?” Bane asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said through gritted teeth. “I put it on, and it works. I don’t do anything.”
Bane stared at her hard. “Would you like us to torture your friend until you tell us the truth?”
“I am telling you the truth,” she snapped.
He looked at her a moment longer, then turned away. “I believe you are.” He walked over to the window and stood there, his hands linked behind his back. “We’ve learned a lot about Fade-Science over the years. Some of these things are designed to be used by only one person: they recognize the wearer and can’t be used by anyone else. Perhaps you accidentally triggered something. Perhaps it was only that you were the first person who must have worn it in many, many lifetimes, and it had reset itself. Who knows? It was just chance.” He turned back with a salesman’s smile. “Well then, I have a deal for you.”
“A deal?”
“A deal. I’m not a man that believes in using force when I can achieve compliance. It’s much less trouble if you work with me than against me.”
Moa brushed her hair away from her face. “What’s the deal?”
“Simply this,” he said. “You help me with a little problem, and your friends in Kilatas can sail away quite happily. I won’t try to stop them.”
Vago, in the corner, shifted uneasily at this. Moa didn’t respond, sensing that Bane was going to go on.
“You see, Kittiwake’s calculations are all well and good but she hasn’t accounted for one thing. She has been testing with unmanned craft. But the Skimmers can tell when there are living beings on board a ship. If the people of Kilatas try and sail, the Skimmers will come in their hundreds. Not a single person will be left alive, mark me.”
“How do you know?” said Moa, her voice quiet with the edge of hysterical anger. “How do you know that?”
“Don’t you think we’ve tried it ourselves?” Bane said. His face and chest were shadowed by the light behind him. The Fulcrum glittered over his shoulder. “Don’t you think, in all this time, that we might have tried it? And with better resources and better techniques than Kittiwake’s shabby operation? We loaded people like you on to barges and sent them out to see what would happen. We did exactly what Kittiwake wants to do. And they all died.”
Rail and Moa were stunned at the raw cruelty of this. Bane spoke as disinterestedly if he had been talking about buying vegetables.
“Did you know that we tried to build flying machines once?” he said. “Oh, we have the technology. It’s just that if anything non-living takes to the sky above this city then it gets torn to pieces by airborne Skimmers. They come out of the water and swarm at it. Even gliders and balloons.”
Rail felt a slowly squeezing fist of dread in his belly. Bane was telling them too much. Could he really let them go with this kind of knowledge?
Crome walked up to Moa. He regarded her coolly. “You can help.”
“Why should I help?” said Moa. “You just told me that the people of Kilatas will die no matter what I do.”
“No,” he said. “There is a way, perhaps, to save them. If you cooperate with me. There is a way that we can both get what we want. Kittiwake can sail away unharmed, and we can do the greatest service to our city that has ever been done in all of remembered history, in all
the days since the Fade.”
Moa was terrified. “What do I have to do?”
He stepped aside and swept a hand to indicate the colossal, alien construction beyond the window. “Use the artefact. Get us into the Fulcrum,” he said. “We’re going to rid this city of the probability storms and the Revenants and maybe even the Skimmers.” He looked back at them, and something like fever danced in his gaze. “We’re going to destroy the Chaos Engine.”
There was a shocked silence from Rail and Moa. Was what he was proposing even possible? Did he really intend to try and get inside the greatest fortress in Orokos, where nobody had penetrated before? Did the Chaos Engine, the legendary source of the probability storms, even exist?
And yet, if it could be done, then they might shut down the storms. The scourge of their existence since the days of their ancestors. The phenomenon which had put Rail in a respirator, which had cost thousands, millions of lives through the havoc it wreaked and the Revenants it unleashed. They might make Orokos whole. They might kill the Storm Thief.
“Do you see that plaque?” Bane asked, pointing to the quote on the wall. “We will make this world right again. That’s a sentence from one of the few surviving fragments of pre-Fade language we have managed to translate. Benejes Frine was an important man, the greatest scientist of the Faded if our studies are correct. I believe he wrote that after the Chaos Engine wrecked this city. He lived in a perfect world and he saw it torn apart by Revenants. Now I’m carrying on his work. I’ll make this world right again.”
It was while considering this that Rail spotted someone else in the room, another witness to Bane’s declaration. She had been listening all along, hiding behind the statue of the Patrician in one of the paintings. Lelek, the girl who lived in pictures. No wonder she had known where Vago was being taken when he disappeared. She had been keeping an eye on him. Rail wondered briefly what the connection was between the girl and the golem, but he knew he would get no answers from either of them.
But Lelek couldn’t help them now. And Rail wasn’t even sure he wanted to be helped. As much as he hated the Secret Police, he had to admit that Bane’s plan was tempting. When they had the artefact, Rail had been thinking small-time. He would have used it to rob a vault or a rich family’s house. Bane had bigger ideas.
You always wanted to change the world, Rail, he said to himself. Now’s your chance.
“One condition,” Moa said. “Rail comes with me.”
“Agreed,” said Bane.
Moa studied him a moment longer. Enemies they might be, but they all wanted the same thing. If she could get to the heart of the Fulcrum, maybe there would be a way to deactivate the Skimmers. Not only would Kittiwake and the people of Kilatas be saved, but the doors of their prison would have been blown off. They could escape. Anyone could escape.
“Deal,” she said.
Bane nodded at the guards, and Rail and Moa were led away, back to their cells. When they were alone, Vago spoke at last.
“Even if this works, Bane, you don’t really intend to let those ghetto scum from Kilatas be the first people to reach the sea, do you?” he growled. “Think of the publicity. A fleet of junk ships beats the Protectorate Navy to the prize.”
Bane sat back at his desk and began looking through his papers again. “Of course I don’t. Perhaps they are sailing to nowhere, perhaps not. But I’m not going to let some ragged group of outcasts become the inspiration for a generation of rebels. Our forces in the western Territories are assembling already. By tomorrow evening, Kilatas will be just an unpleasant memory.” He turned in his chair and considered the golem, fingers steepled under his chin. “You will come with us into the Fulcrum tomorrow. I need to field-test your capabilities. It will be as good a time as any.”
“I still have several days of conditioning left to undergo,” the golem reminded him. “I would not want to be a liability to the Protectorate.”
Bane smiled to himself. “I trust you won’t be,” he said. In fact, the golem had responded unusually well to the conditioning. Between the revelations about his ugly past and the truth of the present, his spirit had been broken even before the machine got to work on him. And besides, conditioning him properly was something of a waste of time: once they had fully tested his capabilities, they would have to dissect him to get out all the prototype parts they had put into his body.
But there was another reason. The Fulcrum was home to the Chaos Engine, and the Chaos Engine was home to the Revenants. Vago was their ultimate weapon against the energy ghosts. He had to be there.
“I will do my best to live up to your trust,” Vago said. He left Bane soon after, and Bane sat at his desk and dreamed of perfection. After a time, he began to plan.
Tomorrow they would go to the Fulcrum. Tomorrow they would change the world. There were preparations to be made.
She stood at the foot of the Fulcrum, her heart pounding. Before her and above her, the forbidden citadel of the Faded blocked out the sky. It was a bladed cyclone of metal and glass, glinting maddeningly in the midday sun. Hiding within were the secrets of a lost age, if rumours were to be believed. Nobody since the Fade had managed to penetrate it. It had no doors, no windows, and its surface, though glass-like, was made of something utterly indestructible by any technology that the people of Orokos knew.
Moa waited at the head of three hundred Protectorate soldiers and Secret Police, in the great paved plaza that surrounded the foot of the Fulcrum. More guards prowled around the edges of the plaza, fending off curious spectators. Bane let them watch. They would see, for the first time in history, the defences of the Fulcrum breached. Or so he believed. Moa wasn’t so sure.
There had been brief tests yesterday to ensure that the artefact worked in Moa’s hands. It performed superbly.
So they needed her. That was the reason she and Rail were still here. And Bane certainly didn’t waste any time. He had obtained the approval of the Patrician and assembled the forces he needed in less than a day. Moa wasn’t sure what had provoked such haste. Maybe it was simply that planning made no difference when they hadn’t the least idea what awaited them inside. And maybe it was just that he couldn’t wait. She saw, behind his rigid composure, a burning passion for order. She knew that the chance to strike at the Chaos Engine was what he had waited for all his life. That was why he was leading them personally into the Fulcrum.
But Moa could only think of what would come next if she laid her hand on the flank of the Fulcrum and nothing happened. What if the artefact couldn’t penetrate the skin of this place? Bane had invested too much in this; it was too public. The humiliation would be terrible for him if this didn’t work. The last thing she would hear would be the sound of an aether cannon as it blew her soul apart.
She felt Rail’s hand reach into hers, and she clutched his fingers tightly. The pressure helped to calm the fluttering inside her. Her ribs were a cage of panicked birds.
On their right stood Finch. He was no longer wearing his black, close-fitting clothes and cowl. Now he had on a long trenchcoat and jackboots, and his head was bare, his wispy white-blond hair straggling across a naked skull. He was dressed as one of the Secret Police. He bared his rotten fangs in a smile as Moa caught his eye, and she looked away hurriedly. Both he and Vago were Bane’s men now.
Vago himself stood next to Bane. He was as silent as ever, but now Moa saw the horror of him. Whereas before she hadn’t thought him ugly, he had become suddenly terrifying. Perhaps he had always been that way, only she hadn’t seen it. He didn’t appear to notice her, but she felt a pang of loss as she looked at him. He had been a companion to her once, even a friend, and friends were in short supply in this world. He had saved her life in Territory West 190. He had adored her. But since meeting Bane, he had become something different, and when he looked at her it was with disdain. She didn’t know what Bane had done to him, but it had shrivelled him, and now he was li
ke a hard blackened nut instead of the wide-eyed child she had met many days ago.
Rail had been right. She was too soft-hearted. She was too willing to believe the best of people, when it made more sense to assume everyone was a potential enemy until they proved otherwise. But when she said this to Rail, he surprised her by his response.
“No,” he said softly. “Don’t ever think that. That’s what I think, and I wish I didn’t. You have faith in people, Moa; you’re willing to give. I can’t do that, but being with you when you do it makes my life a little more worth living.”
Her thoughts were brought back to the present as Bane walked over to her. He looked sternly down and said: “It’s time.”
Rail gave her hand a final squeeze and released it. She and Bane went ahead of the mass of troops, across the short distance to the base of the Fulcrum. It leaned out over them, for it was narrower at its base than at the top, and she couldn’t help a feeling of vertigo. Bane said nothing as they walked up to the sloping side of the building. There was no obvious way in, no doorway or any part that might be better than any other. It was a complete unknown.
She looked at their reflection in the massive leaf-blade of reflective material. They were tiny in the mirror it made. She reached out and touched it. It was freezing, though the day was clear and warm.