"Dangerous Offspring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swainston Steph)CHAPTER 7All the oil lamps stood disused, their glasses fly-spotted and filthy. Whale oil was scarce these days, reserved for lighting homes, not streets. It had soared in price since some enormous sea snakes had taken up residency in the ocean. Their main source of food seemed to be whales. The paving of the plaza outside the bar was covered in a sheen of water, mixed with mud trekked in from the towpath. I looked down, at the palimpsest of footprints spreading out from the door. Could it be possible to track Cyan? I searched around and found the fine mud drawn into a distinctive print of a thick-soled boot, too small for a man. Those are Cyan’s expensive boots. I followed them slowly, careful not to miss any. They were few and far between, but if they were hers she seemed to have walked along the towpath. I carried on, beside the dark canal, shunning the varicose hookers and their crisp pimps revealed by the night. The mud squashed under my boot soles. I was heading east towards Old Town, but I wasn’t out of Galt yet, and horrible sights loomed in alleys and alcoves. I passed quickly by a whore with bare breasts and ragged shorts, her razor ribs showing through the stretch marks on her sides. I lost the trail under furrowed bike ruts and glanced all around, overly aware of how Rhydanne I looked. I learnt how to track on visits to the mountains. Veering towards the canal, a smooth leather imprint with a firm, mannish step could be Rawney’s. Yes, there was one partially obscuring Cyan’s smudged trace. I continued, thinking; I really tried not to be like a Rhydanne in Hacilith but other people’s expectations kept throwing me back on it. I often found myself playing out the solitary self-centred flightiness they expected. But what the fuck, it meant they gave me leeway. They might be patronising but they also didn’t expect too much, and they left me free to do what I liked. There was a strong smell of fried food grease, as if every citizen had scoffed a newspaper-full of chips, then belched simultaneously. I passed out of Galt into Old Town. The canal basin has obliterated most of it, but the remaining buildings, replaced many times over, are still so close together there isn’t room to fit one more between them. Awian towns are sometimes destroyed by Insects and rebuilt in one go, but here old buildings persist, with a mishmash of modern styles between them. New houses spring up in the wake of fires and the residents continually improve their city so much of Old Town was quite new. I ran under the merchants’ tall houses. Their baroque gables sprouted pulleys and platforms to bring in goods they store in their own attics. I walked by the mooring of the River Bus that shuttles to Marenna Dock on the west bank. I passed a roast chestnut stand littered with paper bags and dripping with rain. I cut past Inhock Stables, making the rum-sellers’ pannier donkeys bray uneasily. Horses were tethered here, since they weren’t allowed in Old Town’s narrow streets. I passed the wharfinger’s office and came to a deserted part of the navigation, heading towards a footbridge. I swore as I walked; the whisky was smearing all my thoughts together and the rain was getting worse. All storms arrive first in Hacilith from the sea, all seasons seemed to start here too, and the spring rain fell with a vengeance. The gutters drained into the soupy canal basin where timber narrow boats were moored. Some were impossibly shiny, others rotting hulks. Several were a full thirty metres, others no more than boxes. Their curtains were closed and they were silent. The darkness muted their paint to different shades of grey. I went under the bridge, lit by the lamps of a narrow boat moored on its own. The tracks ran into a mass of scuffed ground, so many other prints I couldn’t tell what had happened at all. Some led back towards Galt; Rawney’s was among them but Cyan’s weren’t. She had stopped here-or the men had carried her. I searched for her tracks further away, my task made easier by the lights on the boat. In fact, the rotund lamps at its prow and stern were glowing as brightly as if there was a party on board, but it was quiet. Who would desert a boat and leave its lamps burning? The small barge was bottle green with red panels and brass trim. Its tiller was polished with use and wound with ribbons, and by it hung a bell to sound instructions to the locksmen. I casually looked down to its bow, just above the level of the quayside paving stones. Red and white diamonds like sweets decorated the top of its transom, either side of the nameplate that read: Tumblehome. Underneath in small white capitals: Carmine Dei. Registered: Old Town. I crouched down to the leaded windows. A rug had been tacked over them on the inside. I tapped the glass and called, ‘Cyan! Hey, Cyan? Rawney?’ Silence. I listened, aware of all the sounds of the night-at a distance the noise of Old Town had merged into a low murmur. Ducklings were cheeping, somewhere in the undergrowth on the far bank. I called, questioningly, cheerfully, politely, and finally with a firm demand, but it only produced more silence. I’m the Emperor’s Messenger and I’m not standing for this! I grabbed the rail on its roof and jumped onto the flat ledge running all the way round the boat. It bobbed slightly and I felt its keel bump off the fetid slime of the canal bed. I really cannot stand boats. I could all too easily imagine it turning turtle, pitching me into the black water. I edged towards the stern, feeling my boots grip on the grit embedded in its paint. I stepped down onto the stern deck, ducked under the tiller, and pushed open the varnished, cupboard-like doors. I wedged into the little entrance. The air inside was warm and stuffy. I looked down into a long rectangular room. A draught of wind blew in past me and started tinkling some capiz shell mobiles. Discs of coloured glass clattered against the windows. A hanging lantern with moons and stars cut out of its sides sent their projections spinning round the walls. From a futon, which was a piled mess of quilts and sheepskins, projected a slender blue-white arm, and a limp hand hanging down. I gasped. Cyan! She sat upright among cushions, her head lolled back and away from me, her legs apart and her skirt rucked up. A thin man lay on the floor at her feet, head back and foam dried into a crust around his mouth. He was stone dead. OK. This is nothing to do with me. Yes, it is. She’s I stretched a leg down the steps and shuffled in on my backside. The dead man was lying wedged between the wall and the futon. He must have had a fit and thrashed around because he’d kicked a potbellied stove free of its tin flue. It stood at an angle on its platform. I turned him over; he was so stiff that when I propped him on his side, his arm stuck up in the air. His blank eyes no longer stared at the ceiling but at me instead. I checked his dog tag-his name was Sharny. As I did so, something fell to the floor and rolled across the rag-rug. I leant down and felt around until my fingers closed on a glass hypodermic. Sharny’s sleeves were unbuttoned; I pushed one up. His arm was covered in red pinpoints, packed so densely his veins had collapsed, looking like they were open to the air. The skin inside his elbow was juicy with infection. Shit, shit, shit. Not I turned Cyan’s face towards me gently. Her eyes were rolled back, only showing white slivers under half-closed lids. Her lips were blue, she was hardly breathing; just a little sigh every so often. Two sips of the air, another ragged sigh with a high-pitched whistling sound. From elbow to shoulder her right arm was a solid bruise. I loosened the tourniquet above her elbow, hooked my thumbnail in it and pushed it down. I could only see one needle mark in the crook of her arm but that didn’t necessarily mean this was her first time. I tried to ignore the thought of her fast dropping into unconsciousness, helplessly watching Sharny’s avid experimentation with the needle in the back of his cold hand. I pressed my finger inside her fingers, waiting for a grasp response but nothing happened. ‘Cyan, can you hear me? Breathe. Breathe in. And out. Again. Keep going. Can you squeeze my finger? No? OK…’ I must get her outside, into fresh air. I lifted her; she folded like silk, gave every impression of being dead. I laid her completely relaxed body on the bedspread and wrapped it around her. A table beside the stove caught my attention. It carried a decanter of water, a spoon, a razor and an unfolded paper of fine white powder standing in a peak. Some had been nicked away. I recognised it immediately. It called me like a lover and the next second I was down on my hands and knees. Don’t look at it! I thought; steady! Turn away. If I so much as touch it I’ll be hooked again. I’ll be hooked before I know it! Where did Cyan get cat? Where the fuck did she get so Let me explain what craving is. Craving is when your friend manages to talk you out of the corner and gets you to put the knife down. Craving is when you ask to be locked in, because otherwise you’d fly all night from the court to score. Craving is when you wear your fingernails to bloody stumps trying to pick the lock. What was she doing, playing with cat? But they hadn’t called it cat or scolopendium. What was their word? Jook? Jook, don’t you know, it’s the latest thing, all the rage. If I just take a little bit no one will mind. The Emperor won’t be able to tell. Shut up and help Cyan. I realised I had been holding my breath for so long my ribs were hurting. I swallowed hard, then stood up. Very slowly and judiciously I refolded the fat wrap of cat and dropped it into my pocket, where it burned. I bundled Cyan out of the double door, hoisted her onto my shoulder and jumped onto the bank in a bound that set the pool of lamplight lapping up and down. It slid up the inside of the bridge’s brick arch, then quickly down to the mooring loops. Viscid water sloshed around the I lay her on the ground and checked her. She had stopped breathing. Her eyes had receded into round hollows as if her skull was rising to the surface. Shit. This isn’t just a dead faint, it’s respiratory failure. I tilted her head back, fingered her mouth open, pinched her nose and blew into her mouth. Her chest rose. I rocked back on my heels watching it fall gently, then blew again. Her lips were soft, but her mouth was rank with beer, smoke and the metallic taste of death. I had to blow hard to overcome the resistance from the air inside her; my cheeks prickled and my jaw started aching. Her hair brushed my cheek every time I put my head down, but it stank of stale cigarettes. She was only a child, just as when I saved her from the shipwreck. Her chest rose, I looked sideways down the length of her body, between her breasts falling back from the bodice collar as she exhaled. She twitched, but it must have been nerves, because she definitely wasn’t anywhere near consciousness. She gasped and began to breathe for herself again. Thank fuck. ‘Well done, girl,’ I said as I wrapped her up. ‘Keep breathing.’ I had been working so hard keeping her alive that I hadn’t been aware of my surroundings. Footsteps were running over the bridge. A boot ground on the path in front of me. I realised I’d seem like a mugger hunched over his victim, so I looked up-into the baby-blue eyes of Rawney Carron. Two men I hadn’t seen before stood either side of him. Movement at the edges of my vision told me three more had closed in behind me. They held naked broadswords, their hair was tied back into tarred pigtails. They couldn’t be sailors, because sailors, doctors and armourers are professions safe from the draft. Ex-dock workers, then, and probably owlers, a very dedicated breed of nocturnal smuggler. ‘Is this your fyrd squad?’ I asked Rawney, calmly keeping anger out of my voice. ‘Were you coming back to check on her or to collect your payment?’ Rawney spat, ‘Comet, don’t you just know everything?’ ‘Let me go, quick-she’s dying!’ ‘We won’t let you arrest us.’ ‘Look. I don’t care if you’re dealing. I won’t report you. Even though you’ve done this.’ Rawney shook his head. They knew that to be caught in Morenzia would be their end. One by one they’d be carted to the scaffold, bound to a cart wheel and every bone in their body, ending with their skulls, systematically broken by blows from a mace. What they don’t know is I never turn dealers in. The only time I confiscate cat from soldiers is when I’m in short supply myself. I stood up, palming the flick knife from my boot. ‘This is an emergency!’ ‘No!’ Exasperated, I said, ‘I know two cartels that run “Ladygrace Fine” in from Brandoch. I know Emmer Rye fences everything coming into Galt. I don’t know you, so you must be kids.’ ‘Fuck you. You’re one man against six. And you’re not much of a man anyway!’ ‘Don’t mess about.’ The legs of one soldier were starting to bend with fear. He never thought he’d see an Eszai so close in his lifetime, let alone face one with drawn sword. I could see Rawney trying to balance this against the fact I was obviously drunk and apparently unarmed. He jerked his head and said, ‘Kill him.’ I whooshed my wings open, yelled, ‘In San’s name, with god’s will-get out of my way!’ The man on Rawney’s left and the three behind me turned and ran. Rawney snarled and drew his dagger. I flicked my knife. The big man next to him chopped with his sword but I was already inside his reach and up against him. I hugged my arm round him, pulled him close and drove my knife deep into his heart. Blood forced thickly up the runnel, like rising mercury. Before it reached the handle he became a dead weight. I stepped back and let him crumple. Rawney was running, putting ground between us as fast as he could. I sprang over the dead soldier. I pounced-caught a fistful of Rawney’s hair at the nape of his neck. He cried out. I dragged his head back and pushed my knife’s point alongside his windpipe. He stumbled to his knees and I followed him down, my arm tense against his snatching hands, careful not to sever the artery. When the knife was in deep enough I levered it to the horizontal and pulled it towards me. I cut neatly through his windpipe from behind. Rawney worked his mouth but had no air to scream. He put his hands to his throat, ducked his chin. Blood sprang out like red lips. The ends of the tube snicked as they rubbed together. He drew his next breath through the cut and it whistled. I booted him in the solar plexus and he doubled up. He turned his head away and the stretched skin parted, laying bare more of the cords in his neck, slick gleam of a vein and the rings of cartilage above and below his severed windpipe. I hissed, ‘You’re to blame! You fucking killed Cyan! You can’t be her boyfriend. You’re scum. Like me. See? Eszai don’t do this…’ I crouched and leant onto him, weighting him down. With four quick slashes I drew a square around his fyrd tattoo. I sunk my fingernails under one edge, peeled the skin off, and I stuck it to the ground in front of his frantic eyes. ‘But gangsters do. Never push cat on my turf! ’ Rawney bubbled. His lungs were filling with blood. Huge amounts of bright pink aerated foam frothed between his fingers clutching his throat, and bearded him down to the waist. I lifted Cyan and jumped up fluidly into a sprint down the towpath. Behind me I heard the strangled liquid gargle, gargle, gargle, of Rawney trying to breathe through his slit throat. I ran. I ran along the slippery pavements, over the open drains. Above the roofs the moon gave a sick light through the clouds. I swear, anyone who ever bared his teeth at me has had them kicked in, and anyone who ever bared his neck to me has had his throat bitten out. I sped south, away from the canal, passing a sign pointing to the Church of the Emperor’s Birthplace. I ran beside the tiny portion of the original town wall that still remains-because no one had yet built over it. I passed through Watchersgate, the one surviving town gate, useless in its broken piece of north wall, with grooves where its portcullis had been. Life-sized statues with raised arms stood on top. They once held spears as if defending the town, but the spears were removed a hundred years ago after one fell off and, dropping twenty metres, transfixed both the Awian ambassador and his horse. The venerable astrolabe clock high in Watchersgate’s tower was called ‘The Waites’. Its iron rods started to grind as I passed and it querulously struck two. The damn thing was attached to a mechanical organ that played automatically at dawn to wake the town’s workers. If they didn’t pay their taxes it was left tinkling continually to remind them. It only had one hand, because back when Hacilith was a walled town, the hour was all you needed to know. Cyan was still locked off deep in a tiny, animal part of her brain. I didn’t know if she would ever come out, or if what crept back out would still be Cyan. I was terrified for her-and for myself-how the fuck was I going to explain this to Lightning? ‘Cyan, scolopendium is powerful shit. Nobody knows better than me on this subject, nobody! When I overdosed the Circle always bailed me out. I based my life round that cycle of “feel good, feel bad”. But you can’t shrug it off like I can. I’ve seen what it does to Zascai who don’t respect it. I’ve seen too many die. Stupid girl! What did you do it for? You’ve got to be already screwed up if you’re taking to drugs. Some people need it but what pain could you have? ‘Oh, god, oh god. Don’t worry, Cyan, I won’t let you die. I’m the one who’s good at becoming addicted, not you. I’m the one who leaves used needles around the place. I wake up junk sick. I punish myself for taking it by taking more. I’m the one who shoots enough to kill a destrier, not you. You’ll be fine…Nearly there…keep breathing…please keep breathing…Oh, god. Why did you come here in the first place? The city is a cess pool, where the same shit goes round and round and round!’ I continued blethering in low and high Awian, then in Morenzian and its old and middle forms, Plainslands and its Ghallain and Ressond dialects, ancient pre-vowel-shift Awian, Trisian and Scree. I could tell I was closing in on the university, because the number of brothels was increasing. Five minutes and eleven languages later I reached the south end of Old Town, and the curlicued gates of Hacilith University, the oldest university in the world. The university’s gates were always open, just as the Castle’s gates are always open. Its red oriflamme pennant flew from a pole beside them, representing the light of knowledge. I sped through the gates, ignoring the porters shouting behind me. I flitted into the shadow of a residential hall and quietly along the path, leaning sideways to counteract Cyan’s weight. Her stockinged feet jutted out in front from the end of the bedspread roll. The university buildings were older as I neared its centre. Joss stick smoke caught at the back of my throat. Student poverty everywhere smells of cheap incense and burnt toast. Light diffused from oilcloth windows, each of which gave onto a different student’s room. They were silent-not tranquil-ominously dead quiet so I feverishly envisioned every undergraduate inside had been murdered in a different way. But worse still-they were cramming for exams. My imagination removed the outer wall, so each square room was suddenly visible in a cutaway like pigeonholes. Each room has a lamp, a book-laden table, a chair, a scholar sitting pen in hand. One lies on the bed, one sits on the floor. Each one works by himself, no one talks to another. Hundreds of individual student’s lives are separated in tiny rooms in a huge building; they reminded me of polyps in a coral. I clattered through a courtyard, past a marble statue of the founder, so ancient it wore a doublet and hose. An old professor stood in its shadow with two prostitutes, male and female, on the plinth in front of him. They were stroking his bald head and I heard their silky voices, ‘You’re sexy…you’re so sexy…’ The don was shaking but I couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or excitement. They didn’t look up as I hurtled past. Now in the very centre of the university I came to an unsurfaced track. I slowed my pace in awe, feeling as if I had walked back in time. Stony and yellow in the lamplight the track ran for a few hundred metres and stopped at the perimeter fence. It did not join nor bear any resemblance to any road in the modern Hacilith street plan. The city I knew had been built around it and the university’s buildings now hemmed it in. It was sixteen hundred years old-a road when Old Town was all of Hacilith, the only town in Morenzia, and the country was ruled by a king from a palace god-knows-where in Litanee. The wattle-and-daub houses along the track had decayed over a millennium ago, but the College of Surgeons survived. I walked across and jumped the remains of a deep stone gutter. It once drained stinking effluent from the boilers that had reduced cadavers of paupers and rarities to skeletons for teaching aids. I hammered with my free hand at a nail-studded door. ‘Rayne! Rayne! Help!’ Cyan’s body convulsed and she vomited down my back. ‘Oh, god! Well, better out than in, I suppose…Ella Rayne! Open up!’ Rayne’s squat, square tower was once the College of Surgeons. Other faculties, refectories and dorms had gradually aggregated around its revered centre of learning-the university formed in much the same way as flowstone in a Lowespass cave. It was officially founded in the fifteenth century, only because it was no longer convenient for the faculties to ignore each other. The tower’s sixteen hundred years gave it a serious gravity. The newer buildings would have overshadowed it if the university had not built them at a respectful distance. Small bifora windows let meagre light into its upper level where a three-tiered lecture hall, now disused, once doubled as a dissecting room and operating theatre. Its roof was flat and its walls unmasoned stone, apart from the deep arch around the door decorated with several bands of zigzag carving. Ironically, given Rayne’s origins, the university had presented the building to her, and when she was not at the Castle or the front she lived here among her cabinet of curiosities. A shutter slid open and Rayne peered out through its iron grille. ‘Comet!’ She clanged the shutter and creaked the door open. ‘Wha’ are you doing here?’ ‘Thank fuck!’ I pushed past her into the room, seeing stacks of chests and medicine boxes packed ready for removal. Rayne said, ‘You’re supposed t’ be a’ th’ dam. My carriage is on i’s way. Wha’-you’re covered in blood!’ She grasped her brown skirts and hurried after me, as I loped through the museum and a doorway leading to her bedroom. Her pudgy, purplish feet bulged out between her sandal straps. She had been seventy-eight for fourteen hundred and five years, the oldest Eszai, and the oldest person in the world apart from the Emperor himself. I strode to her box-bed, set into a deep niche in the wall hidden by a curtain. I laid Cyan down gently inside it, on the crochet blanket, and unwrapped her. Rayne saw a patient and immediately hastened to examine her with quick, expert movements, while she bombarded me with questions: ‘She’s no’ bleeding. Whose blood is i’ then? Wha’s happened t’ th’ lass?’ ‘She’s Lightning’s daughter,’ I said, swaying. Rayne stopped and looked up at me. ‘Cyan Dei?’ ‘Cyan Peregrine.’ ‘Has she been mugged? No. There’s no concussion. I’s drugs, isn’ i’, Jant?’ ‘Cat.’ She knelt and turned Cyan on her side to prevent her swallowing her tongue. She observed the girl’s violet-grey face, her clicking, shallow breathing. She pressed her dimpled fingers against Cyan’s neck for her pulse. ‘Obstruc’ed air passages. Bradycardia. Classic scolopendium poisoning. Wha’ have you done t’ her?’ ‘It’s not my fault.’ ‘Yes, i’ is. Of course i’ is! How did you give her i’?’ ‘It wasn’t me!’ ‘You’re a born liar! You’re tot’ring, yourself! Oh, Jant, I hoped you wouldn’ take i’ again. I hoped you’d learned your lesson. You can’ be bored, you should be occupied wi’ t’ dam.’ ‘I haven’t touched cat for five years!’ ‘You haven’ made t’ decade. You’re no’ truly cured.’ ‘Please,’ I begged Rayne. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ The appeal to objectivity quietened her long enough for me to shoehorn a word in. ‘Cyan did it to herself. I wasn’t there. She bought it from a Zascai, cocktailed with alcohol and god knows what else. A knackered old junkie showed her how to shoot it and for all I know they shared a needle. At any rate, it was back-flushed. I found her already under. I gave her the kiss of life and I’m still trying to get her taste out of my mouth! I killed the dealer-’ I tugged my shirt demonstratively, pulling the material, hard with clotting blood, from where it had stuck to my chest. ‘You murdered a Zascai?’ ‘I never murdered a Zascai who wasn’t the better for it.’ ‘Shi’. If t’ Emperor finds ou’, he’ll…’ ‘Nobody is going to find anything out. Are they?’ ‘I-’ ‘Are they, Rayne?’ ‘No.’ ‘He was a corporal and he’d turned his whole squad into a gang. They probably were, before they were recruited. Fuck…Select Fyrd pressganging street scum. If I catch any of them again I’ll pump them full of twenty poisons…Anyway, they didn’t know that I’m twice as fast as a human. Well, nearly, ‘cause I am the worse for drink but I’m not stoned.’ ‘No. You’re replacing one drug with another.’ Rayne had her back to me but I saw her expression reflected in the mirror by the bed. She was preoccupied with Cyan. In Rayne’s white bedroom, the eye slid along arrangements of objects as smoothly as a scale of music. Models used for teaching stood on the mantelpiece; large anatomical figures of a man and woman, accurate and to scale. There were painted clastic models of torsos with removable organs like a jigsaw, and a ‘wound man’ demonstrating various injuries. Mice were carved seamlessly onto the furniture, scurrying up the chair legs and nibbling the table edge. But netting held the far wall together: ancient goat hair and wood laths showed through the flaking plaster. A bookcase dominated the corner-the books she had written-and it was buckling under the sheer weight of paper. Cyan wants experience. She’ll run headlong into ordeals like this and each one will chop a bit off her teenage enthusiasm until it’s down to adult size. I looked at her slack face and burned with fury. ‘Is this what you bloody want? Tell me, does it make your party go with a swing? People like Rawney don’t want you. He wants to be ‘Jant…’ Rayne said. ‘It’s fine to be an outsider by choice, but if you get addicted you’ll be an outsider by necessity! Then you’ll be the loneliest posh minx in the world!’ ‘Calm down! OK, Jant, you’re no’ t’ blame. I believe you.’ I pulled up a three-legged stool and sat down heavily, legs apart, wings splayed to the floor. I stripped my vomit-covered shirt off and scratched at the bald spots in the pits of my wings. ‘Can you bring her round?’ ‘We may jus’ have t’ wai’.’ Rayne rang a small hand bell. She asked her servant to go across to the medical faculty and bring atropine, and some clean clothes for me. ‘I’ll do it,’ I offered. ‘I’m faster.’ ‘She knows her way through t’ complex. And I don’ trus’ you wi’ th’ key t’ th’ vaul’s.’ Rayne filled a glass of water, took a dropper from the drawer and began to drip water onto Cyan’s lips. ‘I used t’ do this for you, when you had i’ bad.’ I huffed. The last time I fell asleep under the influence, Wrenn and Tornado shaved my head and painted me blue. I woke up shackled to the prow railings of the Sute Ferry. I haven’t taken cat since. You can face down death, by choosing the harder alternative. Not that I’m overly brave or more than usually lucky; I simply never believed death was an option so I never took it. ‘You can’t begrudge me a little escape now and again. I’m immortal, I need to lose track of time.’ ‘You risk losing too much.’ ‘Yeah, well, the only excitement in immortality is a possibility of loss.’ Rayne grunted vaguely. I indicated the anatomical male carving. ‘He’s well-endowed, isn’t he?’ She looked up. ‘No, tha’s t’ average size.’ I was never any good at waiting. I paced through to the museum and stood blinking until my eyes adjusted. Rayne’s museum, representing her workshop through the ages, was a vast collection so tightly packed together it overwhelmed. Candlelight reflected on the curved surfaces of glass jars, thousands of different sizes, and on the sliding door of a I stepped back, trying to perceive an order to the collection. In the centre a grey stone fireplace housed a copper alembic with a spout, resting on a little earthenware furnace with a bellows handle projecting. It was for fraction-distilling aromatic oils. The lintel above it bore the deeply incised and gilded legend: ‘Observe nature, your only teacher.’ I looked at the anatomical preparations: dense white shapes in jars, organs folded, wrinkled or bulging, or feathery and delicate like branching lungs. Alcohol preserved specimens like paperweights, of this or that organ in sagittal or cross section. Living with these, Rayne must see people as machines, nothing but arrangements of tissues and liquids, interesting puzzles to solve. She also knows that individuality is mostly skin-deep because, inside, people are all the same. Rayne and Frost, I reflected, had many traits in common. Her reference collection was ordered by pathology. Some samples were hundreds of years old-the only immortality available to Zascai by virtue of their interesting ailments. The sufferers usually readily agree to be preserved; it’s all one to them whether their useless remains are placed in the ground or in a jar. The only exception are Awians, who prefer to be interred in tombs as florid as they can afford, as if they want to take up space forever. A glass case housed a collection of surgical instruments past and present-steel bone saws and silver catheters, water baths for small dissections. Rayne kept some-like cylindrical saw-edged trepanning drills and equipment for cupping and blood letting-to remind the world of the doctors’ disgusting practices to which she put an end when she joined the Circle. A six-fingered hand, a flaky syphilitic skull. A hydrocephalic one five times normal size, and the skeleton of a man with four wings growing out of his chest. Rayne uses me in demonstrations when I’m available. I pose at the front of the auditorium while she lectures the students on how weird I am, or on her great achievement in healing my Slake Cross injuries. One day my skeleton might stand here to be prodded by subsequent generations, my strong, gracile fingers adapted for climbing, my curve-boned wings articulated to stretch full length to their pointed phalanges. Beside the door I’d come in by stood a large showcase of chipped stone arrowheads, which Rayne had arranged into an attractive pattern. She buys them for a few pence each from boys who pick them up on the Awndyn Downs. There was also a ‘piece of iron that fell from the sky onto Shivel’. On the other side of the door a skeleton inhabited a tall cabinet; its label said: ‘Ancient Awian, from a cave in Brobuxen, Ressond’. Over two thousand years the grey smell of old bone and neat alcohol had saturated the tower’s very fabric. It was a haze of carbolic and formalin. Spicy volatile notes of orange and clove must be the essential oils Rayne had most recently prepared. I examined the labelled majolica jars: oenomel, rodomel and hippocras; storax, orchis and sumac. Patent medicines crusted or deliquesced in slipware pots. Their names skipped off the tongue like a schoolyard rhyme: Coucal’s Carminiative Embrocation; Popinjay Pills for Pale People; Ms Twite’s Soothing Syrup; Cornstock Electuary; Emulsion Lung Tonic; World-Famed Blood Mixture; Dr Whinchat of Brandoch’s Swamp-root Kidney Cure; Fruit Salt; Spa Mud; Abortion Lotion; Concentrated Essence of Cinnamon for Toothache; Confection of Cod Livers; Balsamic Elixir for Inflamed Nipples; Bezon amp; Bro. Best Beet Juice. A pot with a spout: Goosander Lewin’s Improved Inhaler. Preparation of Bone Marrow: an Ideal Fat Food for Children and Invalids; Odiferous Macassar for Embellishing the Feathers and Preventing Them Falling Out. ‘I’ doesn’ work,’ Rayne said. ‘What, any of it?’ I asked, but I turned and saw she was referring to the atropine, which her servant had brought, and she had mixed a miniscule amount with the water drops she was squeezing into Cyan’s mouth. ‘This should work. Why doesn’ i’?’ she said, annoyed. ‘I’ brings you round, on t’ times I try i’ wi’ you. I daren’ give her more than this. Do you know how much she took?’ ‘No…’ I suddenly remembered I had the wrap in my pocket. I stopped moping around the museum and joined her in the bedroom. ‘But I can assay it. I picked up her scolopendium from the barge.’ ‘Of course, you would.’ I sighed. ‘Just don’t let me put my fingers in my mouth.’ I cautiously brought out the wrap-the sight of it triggered my craving and damp sprang up on the palms of my hands. Truly we are nothing but chemicals. ‘Don’ give in,’ said Rayne, over her shoulder. I pinched the bridge of my nose. ‘I…I can’t…’ ‘So you’ll give in? Think of t’ disadvantages-look a’ her! Remember how bad you feel for six months after kicking. You’re doing well now; each time you ge’ clean i’s for slightly longer. The balance has tipped.’ I calmed myself, thinking; no one is asking me to do without it permanently. I said, ‘It’s cooked at source somewhere in Ladygrace. But is it cut?’ The rounded hills of Ladygrace, where scolopendium fern grows, have that name because as you approach from a distance their profile looks like a voluptuous woman lying on her back with her knees in the air. The most difficult part of the route is shipping the finished product across the Moren estuary. It never occurred to me, when I was ripping off Dotterel’s shop and selling at the wharves, how much more money I could have made smuggling by air. I poured water into another glass and delicately shook the paper over it. Grains fell out and dissolved on impact with the surface, leaving no residue. Even the largest had gone before it fell half a centimetre through the water column. ‘Shit, it’s pure. Maybe eighty to ninety per cent…If I hadn’t used for a while I wouldn’t shoot this.’ Rayne said, ‘If Cyan was buying, I think she could prob’ly afford pure.’ ‘That’s what killed Sharny. He wouldn’t have been used to it. He didn’t even have time to take the tourniquet off…’ I imagined him thinking-some bastard’s cut this-then the fact it isn’t cut hits with full strength. His hands clench, he struggles for breath but it’s clear there won’t be a next one. Feeling suddenly nauseous I dumped it in the fire and wiped my hands. ‘It’d lay me out.’ ‘For how long?’ ‘A day and a half. Is she likely to die?’ ‘I can’ tell. But if she does i’s no’ my faul’.’ ‘I’m fucked. What will Saker do when I tell him his only daughter is in a coma from a massive overdose? I’m the only junky he knows. He’ll shoot me!’ ‘Mmm.’ ‘When I first saw her I drooled like a dog on a feast day. I thought she was feek! She was a mink!’ I ran out of slang and just scooped a feminine body out of the air with a couple of hand movements. ‘But now she looks like a corpse! They called it jook, not cat, or I would have known!’ We called the stuff cat because it makes you act like one, roaming all night on the buzz at first, then languid and prone to lying around. ‘Did you jus’ throw i’ ‘Yes.’ The night wore on, mercilessly. I put on the clothes the servant had found for me, though they were not svelte enough to fit-I have to have clothes made to measure-and the shirt was red. Red is not my colour at all. I ate some bread, but it didn’t cure my hangover. The liquor settled in my gut, leaching water from my body and diluting it. The water I drank turned straight into piss and I was still so dehydrated my tongue clacked on the roof of my mouth like a leather strap. I felt as if my skin was drying; my fingertips were wrinkled and a headache like a steel band tightened round my temples. My heartbeat shook my whole body, and I scarcely knew what to do with my hands. I looked up. ‘What’s that noise?’ ‘I don’ hear any noise,’ Rayne said. ‘That noise like water drops?’ ‘Look around,’ she said. ‘My collections are valuable.’ I did so and noticed a movement on the first turn of the spiral steps where the staircase rose into the gloom. A worm was crawling there. As I watched, another one fell from the upper floor. It wriggled to the edge of the step, tumbled over and dropped onto the step below. Rayne yelled, ‘Worms? Where are they coming from? An infesta’ ion?’ ‘It’s worse than that,’ I said. ‘I had t’ theatre cleaned this morning!’ She glanced from them to her patient. I said, ‘It’s from the Shift. It’s called the Vermiform.’ ‘Is i’ safe?’ ‘No…’ I giggled. ‘It’s not safe.’ With a sound like flesh tearing, a curtain of worms appeared over the top of the spiral stair. It started to tatter as individuals fell from it. Large holes appeared, a rent, the curtain swung sideways and fell with a slap onto the steps then began to undulate as it slithered down them. A flake of plaster fell off the wall, leaving a round hole. Something that looked like the end of a twined rope spewed out, then all of a sudden swelled to the thickness of an arm, and a mouth formed on the end. Under the plaster, flesh seemed to continue in all directions. The mouth bobbed closer to me, then back, as the mass undulated. It said, ‘Go to the door.’ ‘Go to the door!’ A crack ran from the hole and raced splintering along the wall, then forced out another flake of plaster. A thin cord, rolled like a butterfly’s tongue, unspooled from the hole and hung, dangling, a mouth on a flesh tube. ‘Go to the door.’ It touched the floor and dissociated into long worms that went crawling out in all directions. More mouths started sprouting from the bases of beams, the corners of the room, ‘Go to the door! Go to the door!’ Rayne’s face was set with fear but she didn’t back off. She went to the grate and picked up the coal shovel. ‘Wha’ is i’?’ ‘Don’t bother. Even if you hit it you can’t harm it. It’s a colony of worms and it’s sentient.’ The Doctor nodded sagely. ‘I’ll le’ you handle i’.’ She went to stand next to Cyan, still holding the shovel. As far as she was concerned, her most important task was to protect her patient. The handle of the outside door turned. Rayne and I glanced at each other. The door burst open and the Vermiform woman flowed in. Ten arms appeared from all over her, waved at me, then sucked back into her. She was much larger than last time I saw her; her worms must have bred, and though her shape and features were pretty her skin was a padded, pulsating mass. Added to the pink tide toppling down the stairs and falling from the ceiling the Vermiform must be huge, and this time I could hear it. Its worms made a rasping noise as they stretched, contracted, slid, with invisibly small bristles. They seethed and pressed like maggots and gave off a stink like urine-ridden sawdust, like old piss. Through the open door I saw that the statue of the university’s founder had gone. That was even more horrific-I couldn’t stand the thought of the statue wandering around out there. I stared at the empty plinth until I realised that must have been the place where the Vermiform Shifted through and it had crumbled the marble into rubble. More worms were pouring through the plaster as if Rayne’s room was moving. They twitched out of the ceiling and wound down the wall. They knocked her models onto their sides, and swept them off the mantelpiece. From her shelves a stack of tiles on which pills were made fell and shattered. A flask smashed, spilling heavy mercury. Its curved shards rocked like giant fingernails. A jar tipped over and ovate white pills cascaded onto the floor. Rayne flinched. ‘Hey! Stop destroying my house!’ The worm-woman created two more beautiful female heads on stalks from somewhere in its belly and raised them to the level of the first one. It moved them about in front of my face. I couldn’t choose which to focus on and I felt myself going cross-eyed. ‘Are you the same Vermiform as before?’ I asked it. ‘We are always the same.’ ‘Well, you’ve grown.’ ‘We were asked to find you, Comet, although we do not appreciate being a Messenger’s messenger. Cyan is in Osseous-for the moment. She is in deadly danger. She is trapped in the Gabbleratchet.’ The Vermiform paused, as if it expected me to know what the fuck it was talking about. Its surface covering the walls smoothed and stilled, lowering slightly as the worms packed closer together. It became denser and more solid, and the shapes of the furniture buried under it bulged out more clearly. I had the impression it was deeply afraid. Rayne asked, ‘Gabbleratche’? Wha’s tha’?’ ‘Why are you frightened?’ I added. The layers of worms blistered as individuals stretched up indignantly. They looked like fibres fraying from a flesh-coloured tapestry. The necks bent and the heads swayed. Their lips moved simultaneously, and its voice chorused like thousands of people speaking at once: ‘The eternal hunt. It is travelling through Osseous at the moment. We must try to intercept it before it veers into another world carrying Cyan away for good. We cannot predict it. No one can pursue it. Time is of the essence.’ The worms around my feet reached up thin strands and spun around my legs. I tried to wipe them off. ‘What do you mean, “we”? I can’t Shift. If I take an overdose the Emperor would feel it. He promised he would cut my link to the Circle and let me die.’ At the other end of the room the worm tentacles were picking Rayne’s clothes out of the wardrobe, filling them, and making them dance about. Rayne folded her arms. ‘Tell us more.’ This vexed the Vermiform. ‘Dunlin asked me to fetch Comet, not an old woman.’ ‘An old woman! Do you know…! Dunlin?…Jant, why is i’ talking abou’ Dunlin? Does i’ mean t’ former King?’ ‘Yes. He’s still alive, in the Shift.’ ‘ ‘I’ll tell you later.’ I addressed the Vermiform: ‘Did Dunlin see Cyan?’ ‘Yes. He saw the Gabbleratchet snatch her. Dunlin was advising Membury, the Equinne’s leader, how to wage war against the Insects when the hunt appeared. We saw it cut a swathe through the Equinne troops. Those who survived have taken shelter in their barns.’ ‘Can’t Dunlin command these eternal hunters?’ ‘No. The Gabbleratchet is unfixed in time and space. It was ancient even before the Somatopolis achieved consciousness. We do not pretend to understand it. It never separates and nothing controls it. It eats what it rides down. Cyan mounted a horse when the hunt was still and it ran with her. Like the others it has abducted she will fly until she dies of starvation.’ ‘ ‘Yes. Be careful the instant you arrive. We are easy prey. If it catches us, it will tear us apart.’ The Vermiform’s three heads on long necks danced about on the surface of the worm quilt like droplets of water on a hot stove. ‘We will take you through bodily, without causing a separation of mind and body. It will not strain the circle that suspends time for you, so none of your co-immortals will feel the effect of it labouring to keep you together.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t like the sound of this. So I won’t be a tourist in the Shift but actually there in the flesh? So this ‘Ratchet thing can eat me? No way, it’s too dangerous.’ The Vermiform washed up around my legs and bound them together. ‘Make haste. Be ready.’ I wasn’t ready at all! The room started shrinking: the ceiling was lowering. It drooped in the middle, sagged down, brushed my head. The corners of the walls and the right angles where they met the ceiling smoothed into curves, making the room an oval. I saw Rayne protecting Cyan with her coal shovel raised, then the walls pressed in and obliterated my view. They came closer and closer, dimming the light. From the box-bed Rayne must have seen worms hanging down from the ceiling, bulging out from the walls, passing her; closing in and leaving the furniture clear until they tightened around me in a flesh-coloured cocoon. I struggled but the Vermiform held my legs tight. The meshed worms masked my face. I closed my eyes but I felt them squirming against the lids. They let me take a deep breath, then pressed firmly over my lips. Worms closed tightly around my head, all over my body, seething upon my bare skin. I pushed against its firm surface but had no effect. It was like one great muscle. I couldn’t move, panicked. I was bundled tight! Hard worms gagged me. My chest was hurting, every muscle between every rib was screaming to exhale. I was light-headed and dizzy. I lost the sensation in my fingers, my arms. The curved muscle under my lungs burned. I held my breath, knowing there was nothing to inhale but worms. I couldn’t stand it any more. I gulped the stale air back into my mouth and exhaled it all at once. I sucked on the worms and my lungs stayed small, no air to fill them. I started panting tiny breaths. My legs were weak, my whole body felt light. I started blacking out. The next breath, the worms peeled away and cold fresh air rushed into my lungs. I collapsed to my knees, coughing. The Vermiform extended grotesque tendrils and hauled me upright. |
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