Hope was reminded then of grunts, locked into their protocols of what’s right, what’s allowed. “The rules are changing,” she said. “They have to change.” She put her hands to her head. “I feel it. I know it.”
“!¡
sensitive
¡! What’s in your head, kid? Eh?”
She looked at Sol. She didn’t know what it was that was in her head, but she did know that the voices wouldn’t quieten down while she remained in the city.
S
HE WAS OUTSIDE
watching the skimmers and boats on the Swayne when I returned from Pennysway with Skids. The river was wide, and its white-capped waves reminded her of the sea at Angiere. The buildings on the far side were like a child’s toys, so little and far away.
She heard voices and turned, and there, gathered among the trees were Skids, me, Sol, Divine and a handful of others whose names she still hadn’t mastered.
She saw that we were in some kind of shock, felt dizzy with a surge in her voices, clung to a rail for support.
Drifting closer, she picked up on me struggling to explain what we had witnessed in the neighbouring Ipp. “...blurring, folding in on itself, disappearing. !¡
anguished
¡! The whole Ipp! Just removed.”
“!¡
shocked | awestruck
¡! Unsung,” said Skids softly. “Realities realigned. Removed from the real.”
“!¡
urgent
¡! You’re saying the starsingers are behind this?” asked Sol.
Skids shook his head. “!¡
exasperated
¡! Not behind it,” he said. “But it was a ’singer that did that. I heard it. I heard the song in my head.”
By this time I’d had enough of my old nest-sib’s addled semi-mystical rantings. I’d had it from him all the way back from Pennysway. Singing realities.
Un
singing an entire Ipp. We’d seen some kind of weapon in action. Something new. And it scared the crap out of me. Just as I was about to say something, Hope put her hand, tentatively, on my arm.
She could see that I was agitated, antsy, about to pop. She could see the shock in my eyes.
And she sensed something more.
I looked at her and calmed instantly. Her broken face was a shock to me: so much had happened since the day before, and the dressing had slipped from my mind.
Reporting back to Sol fizzled out.
Hope stood there, trying to calm me, struggling to comprehend what we had just recounted. The aliens had found another way of wiping out an Ipp, of
undoing
it.
The voices in her head rose to a clamour at this, and she decided then that she really would leave this city. She did not have the ties that Sol did, the sense that this was her place. She realised that she feared the city more than she feared the unknown that lay beyond.
She led me away to the riverside, and for a time we simply stood and watched the river pass by.
She put a hand to her head and said, “You calm me.”
“!¡
agitation | confusion ... calming
¡! You calm me, too,” I replied, not yet comprehending what she really meant, but just knowing that she did, that her touch, her look, reached inside me in a way I had never experienced before.
“So...” I said to her. Small talk had always come easily to me. It was my thing. Until now, when my words seemed to have fled. “Hope. How... how’s the...?” I gestured towards her face.
She shrugged, then said, “You saved me. Again.” She remembered me clawing at her cheek, scooping the burning bugs out and hurling them away. She pointed at my bound hand. She knew that if I hadn’t done what I had, even that small knot of bugs would have killed her.
“!¡
embarrassed | awkward
¡! It’s my thing,” I said. “Shall we walk?”
The Hangings seemed disturbingly normal that morning. The air had the freshness of late summer as it drifted into autumn. Swallows arced and swept low over the river; they wouldn’t be here for much longer. Clydian dragonflies buzzed and swooped. Suddenly, what I had witnessed at Pennysway seemed very distant.
“I’m leaving,” said Hope. “No one will survive this.”
“!¡
sad
¡! We all need to leave,” I agreed. “Sol will come round to it eventually. She has to. !¡
practical
¡! What we have to do is work out how we will do it, and where to go.”
“Would they stop us if we just went?”
I shrugged. “!¡
uncertain
¡! The city has no walls. There are checkpoints on every road, though. And our pids... none of us are approved for more than Ipps and mixed zones, out of curfew.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You do clever things with pids, though, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “Not that clever,” I said. “Humans don’t have that kind of clearance; there are no pids for us to steal that would let us out.”
Just then, a buggy came along the road and we ducked for cover behind the low river wall. The vehicle was a transparent bubble, sitting on a square base, and was occupied by a lone chlick.
I straightened, put a reassuring hand down towards Hope, who still cowered behind the wall.
“!¡
calming
¡! It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s Saneth.”
Hope looked up at me. She still wasn’t reassured. She had reasons not to trust the aged chlick. She remembered Saneth from Anders Bars Infirmary.
Slowly, she stood and looked across.
Saneth stepped out of the buggy and then, from behind the chlick, a grey-green body appeared. It was a commensal, much like the one that had engulfed Hope and protected her on the journey from Angiere. It was a beast I’d seen occasionally around the city, but I had no name for it. I couldn’t quite see how it had fitted into the buggy, but then it surprised me by unfolding, making coughing sounds and then convulsing, vomiting a human, a man, into the dirt.
The man settled on all fours, looked up, then wiped at the slime across his face. It was Marek, one of the four from Angiere. We had thought them all killed in the destruction of Pennysway.
Hope and I climbed over the wall and approached them, just as Sol and Divine emerged from the trees.
They were already talking by the time we reached them.
“...was there,” said Marek, close to sobbing. “!¡
anguished
¡! I was with Callo, Lucias, Pleasance, Mother Faith.”
“!¡
urgent
¡! Where?” said Sol. “!¡
authority
¡! What happened?”
“!¡
shocked
¡! Pennysway Ipp,” said Marek. “It... they’re gone...”
“!¡
factual reporting
¡! The emissaries from Angiere were in Pennysway Ipp when it was that the singer of the stars unsung the All,” said Saneth, in a whispery voice. The chlick’s false eye swivelled independently, taking in the gathering of humans one by one. “Junior emissary Marek survived the unsinging.”
Hope put her hand on the small of my back, a reassuring, solid presence. Before me I saw the alien and the small huddle of humans, but in my head I saw Pennysway undoing itself and I remembered the deathly silence all around.
“!¡
shit-scared
¡! What happened there?” I said. “How close were you?”
Marek was on his feet now, rubbing at his face and head with hands and forearms to clean the alien goo away.
He peered at me, and then at Hope, as if surprised to see her here. I realised then that there was some kind of history between the two of them, something more than either had yet revealed.
“!¡
brave-faced
¡! I was too close,” said Marek. “We all were. Right in the thick of it. Mother Faith had put us up at the Keep, their main nest.”
I knew the Keep well as the site of the annual winter solstice festival; a square, brick-built building that dominated Pennysway. Childhood memories of all the parties shared with Sway clan were, for me, always set against childhood nightmares featuring that dark, looming building.
“!¡
disbelief | shock
¡! We were in a hall, sharing bread and grape-juice to start the day. The light changed. All around us. The walls seemed to get thinner, translucent.”
“!¡
factual reporting
¡! I was warned,” said Saneth. “But too late. !¡
surmise
¡! The timing would appear to have been a thing that was deliberate. !¡
factual reporting
¡! I sounded an alarm, but humans exhibit poor discipline and comprehension of alert phases. Management of a crisis dictates priorities under circumstances such as these.”
“!¡
tired
¡! She-he fled,” explained Marek. “!¡
emotional | struggling
¡! I realised something serious was hitting us. I remember Angiere burning. Melting. !¡
ashamed
¡! I did what Saneth did. I fled. It was a free-for-all, a rush for the street.
“I got out. There was Saneth-ra and the sidedog commensal and the light was getting brighter and everything was getting less clear, less
distinct
...”
“!¡
uncertain
¡! The sidedog folded itself over me... I think it protected me somehow. I don’t know how we got out. I just remember looking back and seeing that Pennysway was gone.”
“!¡
factual reporting
¡! It was unsung,” said Saneth. “!¡
indignant | outraged
¡! Somehow the Hadeen watchers have coerced a starsinger into redefining that part of the city. A rogue starsinger is a dangerous thing indeed.”
“What happened to the others?” asked Sol.
“!¡
factual reporting
¡! They were unsung,” said Saneth. “I came away with junior emissary Marek. We left Pennysway Ipp just before it ceased. Reports account for four members of Sway clan who were outside the Ipp and therefore survived. All others, including clan guests Callo Hart, Lucias Benchport and Pleasance Benchport, are no longer real.”
I looked at Sol. Dead. Saneth meant that they were all dead.
I wondered if our nest-mother was now beginning to accept that we would have to leave all this behind, depart the city and strike out for a new start elsewhere.
I didn’t have time to ask her then, or later, for that was when we heard the first rumble of the approaching death trucks.
We stopped talking to listen, and then we saw them, two long wagons that twisted like snakes around corners, approaching along the riverside highway at a little more than walking pace. A swarm of sentinels flew above the wagons and as they approached the Hangings they peeled off and buzzed through the trees, surveying the territory, spotting us, identifying us, targeting us for the watchers and their squadrons of grunts who followed on foot in the wake of the wagons.
Chapter Nineteen
I
STOOD BEHIND
a tree that forked at head height, its trunk shielding my body as I peered through the split to where the first death truck had pulled up.
I held Hope close, her slim body tight against mine. I had expected her to be trembling, had expected her to be on the edge of panic – the same panic that I kept desperately bottled up in my own head. Instead, she seemed calm, curious, strong. I found her strength seeping through me, helping me to focus.
The second truck went past and kept going, leaving the first to disgorge its occupants: a squad of about twenty grunts, led by a faceless, human-form watcher commander. They knew we were here. They’d come for us.
I looked around, trying to assess the options for escape. The trees provided cover, but beyond were buildings with only a few gateways and alleys; as soon as anyone fled, the grunts would find it easy to cut them off.
Staying in the Hangings and sneaking through the trees was an option, but progress would be slow and the grunts could easily outpace us along the road and intercept us.
The river cut off any other escape route.
And all the time, as I looked around and weighed up the options, a sentinel hung a short distance over our heads, monitoring.
“!¡
seeking attention
¡!”
I glanced across. Skids was hiding behind a tree nearby, clicking softly for my attention. He nodded, said, “!¡
urgent
¡! The drains. If we can get to the drains we can lose them there.”
There was no other way out.
The only route to the drainage tunnels was from the river bank, but that would involve crossing the highway in full view.
Just then, Saneth emerged from beyond the truck where her-his buggy had been. Immediately, a knot of sentinels clustered over the chlick’s head. “!¡
consternation | confusion
¡! I...” Saneth said. “I don’t understand what it is that is happening here. !¡
hierarchy | sneering
¡! Ah, a watcher of the Hadeen persuasion. Good, good. Clear the way for me, lower-denomination-being. You understand? I wish to pass through, but you hinder me.”
Saneth waved contemptuously with both hands at the watcher commander, the gestures reinforced by a string of patronising, dismissive clicks.
The watcher raised a hand and pointed at Saneth, and immediately four grunts trained beam-guns on the chlick. It was impossible to see anything in the alien’s featureless face.
“!¡
amused | dismissive
¡! How quaint!” said Saneth. “!¡
commanding
¡! Allow me to pass, body of collected slugs.”
The watcher snapped its hand up, back at the wrist, and the grunts fired, beams of blue light stabbing at where Saneth had been.
But the chlick was no longer there.
Hope squeezed my arm and nodded to where Saneth now stood by the riverside wall.
The grunts aimed again, but their watcher commander appeared to halt them, redirect them – with a gesture, a thought, a command I couldn’t detect... As one, the grunts swung left to where Divine, Skids, Ruth and some of the others were scampering across the road towards the river.
Divine was first to the wall; she swung over, squatted among the boulders and reached back to help Ruth, but she was too late. As Ruth reached the wall and swung a leg over, her foot caught and she stumbled. A blue needle-beam swept across her. The top half of her body fell to the ground as her legs and lower torso twisted and bucked and fell against the wall.