Gears of the City (66 page)

The voice came from a room to his left; the door was open.

“Come in. Don’t just stand there.”

It was Shay, again, but … Shay stood by the far wall with his hands in his pockets, examining the pipes that twined around each other in the corners of the room. He was young, again—a man in
his thirties, plump, pink-faced, his floppy grey-white hair only a little balding—dressed in baggy clothes, corduroy and tweed. He might have walked only yesterday out of Ruth’s old photograph of the Low family. His eyes gleamed. “Wonderful, isn’t it?” “Mr. Low?”

“It’s been a while since I used that name. These days I mostly go by
Cuttle
, or
Shay
, or …” “Cuttle, then.”

“I know
you
, Arjun. I’ve been watching you for a long time, now. You and that daughter of mine. Ever since that old bastard sent you tumbling back down the Mountain! I
knew
my clever, clever girl might find you a way back.”

“And you followed? I thought I heard someone following us.” “I never could have done it on my own. I needed someone on the inside to find the safe path through all those traps. I needed someone cleverer than me. There! I’ve admitted it. I’m admitting my weaknesses here; take it as an earnest of good faith!” “What do you want from me, Cuttle?”

“Look at this thing! Isn’t it wonderful? I can tell you what it’s for, if you’re curious. I can tell you who built it. What it
does.
How all the city
hangs
from it! I can tell you, if you make it worth my while.”

“I don’t want to make any more deals, Cuttle.” “Were you in the old bastard’s room? The one where he drifts away his days? What was in it?”

“I don’t know. Photographs, lamps, a mantelpiece.” “Describe the photographs. What was on the mantelpiece?” “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t really looking.” “It’s a miracle you survived this long and got half this far.” Cuttle sighed. “My problem is this. Here I am
inside
, the consummation of all my dreams and wishes and scheming, the greatest and most secret treasure in all the city almost—
almost
—in my grasp, and I
cannot
seize it. I cannot wait. I cannot
stand to
wait for it. That old bastard doesn’t know how to enjoy it—it should be mine
now.
But he’s cunning, oh yes, I don’t get
less
cunning with the years and my travels. So,” he shrugged and smiled disarmingly, “I find myself stuck in these worthless upper floors. Below there are traps. How many? What kind? I have no fucking idea. But they must be
there—if
I’d
held this place all this time I’d have trapped it. And of course I
did
, in a manner of speaking. I don’t dare go on. I need intelligence. I need an ally. So do you, Arjun. So I thought we could make a deal.”

Arjun started to laugh; Cuttle pretended to join in, though it was clear he didn’t see the joke.

“Ivy’s cleverer than me,” Cuttle explained. “The old man’s older and he knows more and he’s had fuck knows how long to learn this machine’s secrets. Why would you help me? Because I’m desperate. I
need
you. The others don’t, really. I’m weak, that means you can trust me. Help me and when I hold the Mountain I’ll give you whatever you want …”

“No, Cuttle, no. No more deals.”

The man’s smile stiffened and soured.

A
nd Arjun went wandering the house, calling out Ruth’s name, listening for the echo of his God, watching the disintegration of the machines. Something now was very wrong and getting worse, a discord echoing back and forth through the pipes and wires. What were they doing to the machines?

He found his way back to Shay’s room by accident. He entered before he knew where he was.

The old man lay in his armchair with his head back, his mouth slack, his throat slit from ear to ear, his grubby shirt bright with gore, his lap a pool of blood, his thin fingers twisted and stiff as if he had tried to fight.

The servants hovered uncertainly.

Bloody footprints led across the carpet to the mantelpiece, where a skinny little man with razor-stubble white hair in an out-sized black coat rooted frantically with bloody hands among the photographs and dusty bric-a-brac, swearing and muttering to himself,
no, no, not this, nothing, fuck, the old bastard, not this, what the fuck is this?

The man turned as he heard Arjun cross the threshold. His face was Shay’s. Neither the oldest nor the youngest iteration of that face Arjun had ever seen. Someone had once broken his nose, and his cheeks and eyes were sunken—this was not the happiest or most prosperous of Shay’s shadow lives. Even now, in victory, he looked
bitter, resentful. His sharp vicious eyes sized Arjun up; he smiled thinly and said,
“There
you are. You and those daughters of mine did a good job leading me here.” His hand hovered near the long knife at his belt. “So I’ll give you a chance, how about this, I’ll give you a chance to be on the winning side. You were helping my daughter—Ivy, not the other one—you must know a thing or two about how this works. Tell me everything you know. Bring Ivy to me. Call me Mr. Shay, Arjun; this is going to be
my
house soon. So let’s make a deal.”

Behind the walls, the machines were going mad. Blood dripped from the murdered man’s sleeve onto the carpet. The pipes throbbed and moaned and shrieked; the floor shook and one of the clocks tumbled off the mantelpiece. Shay-with-the-knife snarled and angrily swept the photographs onto the floor after it.

Shaking his head—not taking his eyes off the angry little murderer—Arjun backed out of the room.

“You’ll regret this! You’ll regret this, you little shit! When I’m in charge here you’ll …”

The noise of the machines soon drowned out the man’s ranting.

The Shadows Return-Little Murders-
The End of the World

Arjun

H
e found Ruth
on one of the upper floors. She sat on a balcony made of marble, on a stone bench. Ivy’s work—the sky above was cold and blue. It felt like morning. Nothing was visible below except grey clouds. Did the city still exist?

A light rain fell on them as they embraced.

She’d been crying. She smiled now, weary and exhilarated. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I didn’t.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant.

She leaned on the balcony. “It’s over. “

“Is it? He’s dead, Ruth.” She nodded, bit her lip. “Not my doing.” He explained. “His shadows are returning now. We left the way open for them when we came. They were watching and waiting. They followed us home.”

“Oh. How horrible. I suppose that was stupid of us.”

“More will come.”

“They’re not my father. My father is dead.”

“They’re going to break everything. They’re reckless.”

“Shouldn’t we try to stop them?”

“There’s only two of us. There are more of him. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to deal with them anymore. It poisons everything, the compromises you have to make. Nothing bought this way is worth having. Let them fight, let the sickness run its course.

Let the error resolve itself. Nothing can work right until they’re gone.”

A gunshot echoed in the house below.

“I want to see where he died,” she said. “Then we can go home.”

T
he servants were busy clearing away every trace of the murdered man. A hundred of them closed in overlapping together to lift the body with their pale insubstantial hands. Others drifted on their knees across the floor, picking with miniscule pointless unappreciated care the blood droplets from the carpet, while a second shadowy wave of servants rolled up the carpet itself. Like black feathers on a slowly beating wing yet more of them swept through the room taking up the photographs, and dismantling the clocks, and slipping the ugly little ornaments into their pockets, and slicing the paintings from their frames, and plying the frames apart. The servants unpicked the wallpaper, which had been vaguely yellow, and vaguely floral, and left behind stark concrete.

“His mirrors are prisons,” Ruth said. “The Beast told me that. So did Brace-Bel. There are souls still in them. Should we … ?”

“Yes. I remember.” Arjun took the dusty mirror down from the wall. A few of the servants tugged at it, but he pulled it from their feeble grip. They stared reproachfully at him as he carried it away. Ruth closed the door; the old man’s room was bare and empty behind them.

A man stood at the end of the corridor, in a charcoal silk suit, no tie, small, wiry, prosperously neat, vainly smart, white hair in a short ponytail. “Too late, am I?” A complacent drawl. “I smell blood. I smell excitement. Did I miss the action?” He had Shay’s face, but he introduced himself as
Mr. Cruickshank.
“Who invited
you?
This is a select gathering. Do you work here?” He removed a fold of vivid butterfly-green notes from his pocket, held in a golden clip, and he thumbed suggestively through them as if offering a tip to a doorman …

T
hey couldn’t find the way out.
Was
there a way out? The lower floors were full of steam, strange gases, collapsed pillars. Windowless, dark, the corridors turned inward. Buffeting pressures drummed on
locked iron doors. Wires hung from the high ceilings, twitching like dreaming snakes. The machine was a closed system. It seemed to go on forever.

They went upstairs, instead, onto the highest floor they could find. The air was clean there, and the process of disintegration not yet begun. They found a small spare bedroom. They propped the prison-mirror up against the wall. Neither of them had any idea how to open it; perhaps it had something to do with the complex arabesques and intaglios carved and molded into the frame?

The war went on below them. It accelerated. The house changed minute by minute. There was no way out but there were countless ways in—copies stepped confidently from every open door. The shadows flocked home like birds, in gathering numbers.

They wrestled over control of the servants, made them into armies. They came with Beasts of all kinds, sharp-clawed, poisonous, cunning. The servants, confused and pathetic, torn this way and that by the claims of their countless masters, performed unnecessary tasks out of habit. They cleaned and dusted constantly. Every few minutes they absentmindedly brought little servings of dry bread and coffee up to Arjun and Ruth’s hiding place.

A
rjun went walking down through the corridors. He watched the place disintegrate.

The rivals fought over the machinery. They twisted it and tampered with it. For short-lived strategic advantage they broke delicate things older than the city and beyond their imaginations. Perhaps they were shortsighted. Perhaps the nasty logic of their situation left them no choice. Now Arjun saw them in every corridor, skulking, scheming.

He saw old friends from the Hotel—Abra-Melin of the shaking staff, and Longfellow of the hair shirt, and Cantor, who had no notable peculiarities. Gate crashers, late to the party, they were quickly cut down. He didn’t see St. Loup. He saw people he didn’t recognize at all—maybe there were other Hotels, other cliques and cabals. He saw a flock of someone’s servants strangle Cantor with hands of shadow.

Moment by moment the Mountain was less and less like a house. There was very little furniture left, and no carpeting, and no
curtains, and the floorboards rotted away to expose concrete, plastic, steel, hard alien substances with a dull unfriendly sheen. The walls were sometimes paper-thin and sometimes only arrangements of bars wrought from that alien almost-metal. There were no sconces on the sheer walls, no bulbs hung from the ceiling, and the dim light appeared to issue from the air itself—for the time being there was still air in most of the house. A maze of empty rooms; a machine of steel valves and chambers. Intestinal spills of cables sheeted in something like black rubber that stank of burning and bile. Steam shrieked from bent pipes. Strange and volatile liquids coursed down sharp channels, through glassy veins. The natural form of the hallways and chambers seemed to be roughly hexagonal; or sometimes curved, like a vast snail shell; or sometimes complex and unfolding, like a fern. An elaborate machinery extruded and snapped tightly into place. A mesh of bars and wires and gears and metal teeth. The Mountain, whatever it was, was slowly sloughing off the shabby domestic facade Shay-the-first-and-eldest had hung on it. An unearthly light shone from behind the walls. Arjun had a sense of some impossible vision battering against the form of the machine. The masks were coming off. The bars were breaking and the prisoners were ready to be released. He awaited the revelation.

M
urder stalked the halls all afternoon. Temporary alliances formed and disintegrated. As far as Arjun could tell, Ivy seemed to be doing well in the struggle. She had an unusual number and strength of the servants at her command. Her servants fought her rivals’ forces in the corridors. They did it dutifully and unhappily. They made a noise like birds’ wings fluttering, like sick children sniveling. They canceled each other out. They
exhausted each
other, like a bitter drawn-out argument between people who were no longer friends. They left scraps of shadow in the corners.