The Blood Debt (43 page)

Then — disaster. Strangers leapt out of the jumbled ravine floor and surrounded them. A net swept over them, too strong to break, and tangled them in its cords. Voices snarled and blows fell. They were taken captive and locked in a cell.

Brutality and ignorance. The politics of fear. The twins didn’t know who was fighting whom, but they recognised victimisation when they saw it. The language of abuse was universal. They tried hard not to care. A higher purpose drove them. They couldn’t afford to become mired in power plays. But they were human, despite everything. Deep down, they didn’t want to stand apart from the world they were trying to save.

Hey, you! You said you’ve met me before. Come out and talk to me, since we’re such good buddies.

Who is wrong here, Galeus?

The question came from the twins almost unwillingly. And even as they asked it, they knew they were committed. But with commitment came confusion. Their thoughts fragmented. If one person, undecided, could be said to be in two minds, did that mean that they were in
four?

Their new body strained to contain them.

The world convulsed. For a moment, it seemed that all would come undone.

When they returned, the world had indeed changed. They had allies, now. They weren’t alone.

The knife in their back prodded the twins forward. They stumbled, finding it hard to balance with their legs tied in pairs and all their wrists bound. What would their allies do now? Would they stage a daring rescue attempt? Would they trade someone else’s life for theirs? Would the ones with knowledge of the Change exert their will over the world to save them?

The twins tried not to feel resentment as Galeus and the others fled in a small blimp and sailed off over the ruined city, out of their sight. The twins had volunteered for this duty, after all. And they had lived longer than all of the others put together, even if most of that time had been spent outside the world. It was better than idly watching as blood spilled at the hands of a psychopath.

The twins didn’t know if their new body
had
blood, but they weren’t prepared to find out the hard way. The distant past held memories of knife-wounds for both of them. Blood and horror. Death and despair. Back when they had had names.

You don’t know what you’re doing,
they told the man at their back.

Shut up or I’ll put a hole in you.

But we have somewhere to be. Somewhere important.

So do I, and you’re going to take me there. Get moving!

The shadow pushed the twins forward, and they let momentum carry them, stumbling, along the streets of the city. They could hear the sounds of the ravine’s inhabitants as they reclaimed the ruins. The shadows had called them by an unusual name.
Mannequins,
perhaps. They looked like nothing so much as statues come to life. The shadow with the knife seemed afraid of the ones in the city, although Galeus and his friends treated the one called Mawson with respect. It was difficult to understand the allegiances of those around him. The rules had changed.

Names ...
Galeus’s mother was among those the twins had helped to rescue. She was safe now, flying away in a blimp to somewhere called Laure. Laure was the city on the other side of the ravine. And Galeus’s friends called him Skender for some reason. Names were slowly sinking in. The twins needed names if they were to get a handle on the new world, and on the doom that threatened it.

Their destination — the wrongness — hung over them like a storm front, deep and dark and growing larger every day. Even when they stood still it seemed to grow, responding to their presence. The air was thick with hunger. It made their head hang.

Don’t slow down!
The shadow at their back shoved them again.
Keep moving!

More words fell into place.
Your name is Pirelius.

So what if it is?

You remind us of someone. A wolf. What was the name of the man we hurt in the cage?

Forget him. He’s irrelevant.

The twins remembered the feel of bone and gristle under their joined fingers. It had sickened them, even though they understood the necessity for it.
We could have killed him.

And I could kill you. Remember that.

It’s wrong to kill.

Goddess! Am I going to have to gag you?

The twins fell silent, not because of Pirelius’s threat, but because the man had triggered another memory. Pirelius wasn’t the first to mention a Goddess, but it hadn’t seemed especially significant before.

Peace, Seth,
someone had told them, once.
This is neither our first meeting nor our last. In your future, the Goddess awaits.

They didn’t know who had said the words, although an image of a woman, glowing, green, came with an exhortation to remember. Remember what? The details didn’t stir.

Who is the Goddess?
they asked Pirelius.

All they received in reply was a snarl and another poke with the knife. Their captor picked up the pace and began to sing words the twins hadn’t heard since the misty days of their former life. The bizarre juxtaposition of the exotic and the familiar made their minds spin.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward
—

Far overhead, the blimp ploughed silently through the air, visible as a faint smudge against a midnight sky. Terror and loathing brought a kind of connection to the world, the same as anger, but it was fading. Resignation took its place, and the world was grey by that light.

* * * *

The Fugitive

‘Body, mind, will: on these three pillars rests all

life on this Earth. The Change works through

them in an act of glorious, ongoing combustion

that casts light on dead matter and drives the

shadows back into the night.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
FRAGMENT 252

limbing a rope ladder was a lot harder than Skender expected. He swung crazily beneath the heavy lifter, wishing there weren’t so many wardens watching him, making encouraging noises and reaching to help him when he came in range. He felt dizzy and winded when he finally hauled himself over the edge of the gondola and collapsed with no grace at all onto the wooden floor. There were so many legs. He worried about the ability of the dirigible to keep its numerous passengers in the air.

‘Here.’ A young warden offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. ‘You’re safe now. Let me take a look at your face. That’s a nasty bruise you’ve got.’

Skender fended off the warden’s ministrations. He could feel the dirigible turning under him, heading back for Laure, no doubt.

‘Wait!’ He pushed through the crowd to the front. ‘We can’t leave yet.’

‘Grown attached to the place, have we?’ asked a familiar voice from the pilot’s position.

‘Chu!’ She looked exhausted, and the bandage on her head was brown with dirt and dried blood. They eyed each other warily. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re already in enough trouble, aren’t you?’

‘I guess this rescuing thing is becoming a habit. You can pay me double.’

The dirigible was turning.

‘Wait. Don’t take us to Laure just yet. We have to head up into the ruins, towards the tower.’

‘There’s no tower any more, stone-boy. The man’kin brought it down.’

‘But you know the direction, right? We just need to go back for a second.’

‘Go
back!’
The officious, balding warden who led the expedition from the Haunted City squeezed into the front of the gondola.
Eisak Marmion,
Skender remembered. His eyes were a startling cerulean in colour. ‘Under no circumstances are we going back. We have to follow the Homunculus!’

‘I know, but not yet,’ Skender insisted. ‘Chu, your wing is hidden in a safe place. I can find it for you.’

‘My wing?’ She looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. Behind the expression he glimpsed disbelief, relief, caution — a welter of complex emotions. ‘I’d assumed you’d mangled it and left it in a ditch somewhere.’

‘Why would I do that? Sal and I have been lugging it all over the Divide. I knew you’d kill me if I didn’t bring it back in one piece.’

‘I’ve trained you better than I thought, clearly.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Marmion, ‘but the wing is irrelevant. We have to keep on this heading. We can’t take any more risks.’

‘Who’s flying this thing?’ Chu asked him. ‘If I say we’re going to get my wing, that’s exactly what we’re doing.’

‘Then you’ll be doing it without my help. I will refuse to give you the directions you need to fly.’

‘That doesn’t matter. Skender, do you still have that licence of yours?’

He felt under his robes. The bandits had paid no attention to mere paper when they had searched him. ‘Indeed I do.’

‘Good. Put it on and do your stuff. If the man’kin have stomped on my wing, your luck is going to change fast.’

Skender plastered the licence to his chest while the warden went off smouldering. The tattoos spread across his skin and vision, bringing the winds over the ruins to vivid life. Despite his many aches and pains, he felt good. His mother was safe; Chu was safe; and so was he. He felt bad about Rattails and what they had had to do to escape, but all they needed to do now was get back to Laure, and everything would be fine.

‘Take us up the ridge and you’ll catch a current right across the city.’ She made room for him on the seat next to her, and he squeezed in. ‘Then it’s clean flying all the way.’

* * * *

Shilly didn’t want to let go of Sal’s hands, but she had to so he could be checked over. He seemed fine to her, despite the dried blood covering him: a little rough around the edges, and he definitely needed a wash, but they all needed one, she supposed. His long dark hair was full of dust, and he was sunburned even through the charms. He would have freckles when the redness faded. She would like them, even if he didn’t.

His blue eyes didn’t leave hers. They warmed her.

‘I missed you,’ he said.

‘I worried about you.’

‘You shouldn’t have. I always knew you’d rescue us in time.’

She feigned puzzlement. ‘Really? That wasn’t the deal, as I remember it. You were supposed to meet us in Laure.’

He waved away the point. ‘Details, details.’

The warden declared him fit and gave him a bottle of water. He swigged, and managed to spill most of it when Marmion jogged his shoulder from behind.

‘Where to now?’ Shilly asked the balding warden. ‘Ready to face the music in Laure?’

‘Don’t even ask,’ Marmion muttered as the heavy lifter swung around.

‘We should look for Kail and the Homunculus,’ said Sal. ‘They’re both still down there somewhere.’

‘I know exactly where Kail is, thank you very much. He’s doing his job, as we should be.’

A small piece of the puzzle fell into place. Shilly remembered the lone figure she had seen watching Sal and the others from a distance. ‘Kail is still tracking the Homunculus, isn’t he? He was keeping back in case it made a break for it. When it did, he followed.’

‘No,’ said Sal. ‘That’s not how things went. The Homunculus isn’t running away at all. It’s been taken hostage by Pirelius — the man who kidnapped Skender’s mother and the others. It’s his prisoner.’

‘No honour among thieves, huh?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think they knew about each other,’ Sal said. ‘In fact I’m certain of it.’

‘The Homunculus wasn’t coming to the Aad after all?’ Shilly abandoned her previous theory with a slight feeling of foolishness. ‘I was so certain of it.’

‘Laure it is and always has been,’ said Marmion. ‘And here we are chasing after some fool girl’s lost property!’ He stormed off to bother someone else. Shilly was glad to see him go. The blue of his eyes had faded along with the mote of light in his tore, leaving both dark and glowering.

‘Listen,’ Shilly said to Sal in a low voice, with her mouth right against his ear. ‘Your father woke last night. He told us what the Homunculus is.’

‘It’s from the Void,’ he said, nodding. ‘Skender says it’s actually two people in one body — twins from before the Cataclysm.’

‘Twins?’ She knew she shouldn’t be surprised that he knew as much as her, and more besides. He had been with the Homunculus on the ground, whereas she had been hearing about it second-hand. ‘There’s so much to catch up on,’ she said.

Sal nodded distractedly. He had her stick in his hands again, and he stared at it, not her, as he asked, ‘How is Highson? Is he well?’

‘He’ll be okay.’

‘You don’t sound certain of that.’

She took Sal’s hands off the stick and put them back in hers. ‘He’s had a tough time of it. You’ll have to be patient with him.’

‘We could take him back to Fundelry with us. That’s the perfect place to recuperate.’