The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (3 page)

There was no legal power in the Discard, but there was the Mushroom Queen. Of all the Discard lords and ladies, she had the greatest power and reach, and her halls were the grandest, and her whims were the cruellest. If there was one person in the whole of Gleam that it was absolutely imperative not to piss off, it was the Mushroom Queen: Daunt the Undaunted, Lady Redcapper, the Pale Sadist. But here he was.
Here he was
.

Four years after his exit from the Pyramid, Alan stood beside Daunt’s throne, trying not to let his nerves betray him. More than anything else he just wanted to be back in the House of a Thousand Hollows; it was the closest thing he had to a home these days, and the only really safe place available to him.

Daunt had had her throne made of
bone
, for Green’s sake. Its arms were large crocodile skulls, jaws wide open, human skulls nestled within. The throne shone by the light of the roaring fires, both of which occupied
fireplaces that stretched the entire length of the hall. Two hunched little men carrying huge baskets of wood on their backs hurried up and down the room keeping the fires alive. Their bodies had been twisted over time by the weight of their burdens, and due to the constant heat their skin was red and dry. They wore nothing but loose pantaloons, into which they tucked their greying beards. Onto their foreheads, Daunt’s sigil had been tattooed: a black triangle pointing upwards, crowned by a half-circle. A symbolic representation of the mushroom, the squat fruit on which she had built her empire. Many of the people gathered in the halls for the evening’s entertainment wore this sigil on their foreheads, as did Daunt herself. Those who did not wear the symbol were paying customers, or entertainers, or clients. Or a mix of all three, like Alan. But Daunt’s feasts were as much for her people as for anybody else; she had many ways of keeping them fiercely loyal, and these lavish events were one of them.

Like much of the Discard, Daunt’s halls were not readily visible from the outside. They were reached through a labyrinth of empty rooms and overshadowed rooftops. Through tunnels carved out of heaps of waste, and between the rusting metal hulks of dead machines. There was perhaps some vantage point from which to view the halls, but if it did exist, Alan hadn’t found it. Whenever he was here, he felt as if he were at some deep level; deeper than he’d normally venture. He suspected that the halls were themselves all located inside a different, larger
structure, itself perhaps buried beneath the piles of broken things from which the Discard took its name. Whatever their origins, though, whatever their first purpose, the halls now were a series of large open spaces interconnected via high archways, the largest chamber presided over by Daunt’s throne, which was raised on a semicircular dais. The floors were paved with black stone and the walls were of some kind of smooth grey brick, covered with the mounted skulls of prey that Daunt’s mushroom gatherers had hunted and killed in the depths of the Discard. Gigantic reptilian jaws grinned down, alongside others that were disconcertingly difficult to identify.

The queen herself sat on the throne, legs crossed, arms resting on the crocodile skulls. She wore a wooden circlet decorated with tiny wooden mushrooms. Her long blonde hair was loose tonight, her green eyes bright, the pupils small. She wore a flowing green skirt, but her arms, torso and feet were bare. Two naked, musclebound skinheads massaged her hands, their thumbs circling her palms, the scents of mint and lemon rising from the oil. Her lips were slightly parted in a half-smile. She caught Alan looking and he averted his eyes, cursing himself. If Daunt wanted him, she could have him. He would go willingly. He was as much her slave as those beardy shufflers down by the fires. But better she didn’t know that.

There was no way she didn’t know.

‘Are you going to play for us, my sweet?’ she called.

Alan spun back to face her again, hoping that his cheeks
were not too red still, and bowed low. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘I mean, I am. I am going to play for you. Now?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Would you like me to start now?’

Daunt’s smile widened. ‘Is there anybody else playing?’

Alan looked around. ‘No.’

‘Then you’re on, Hollowboy. Silence isn’t … good for me.’

Alan nodded. The halls were hardly silent, and he didn’t really like being called ‘Hollowboy’, but he didn’t say anything. He fumbled taking Snapper from his back and the guitar slipped through his sweaty fingers. He caught it again before it hit the ground and stared for a moment. ‘Sorry, Snapper,’ he whispered.

He was usually more together than this. In the past he’d only met Daunt out in the wilds, and their encounters had been purely business: she sold him mushrooms. Her power and allure were diluted away from her own halls, and he’d always had an escape route planned if things went south. And more recently he’d only dealt with various knuckleheaded subordinates, who – though large and lumpen – were hardly threatening. Here, things were different. Here, he was in her claws.

‘A slow one,’ he said. ‘A slow one, to start with.’

‘If you insist.’ Daunt withdrew her hands from the masseurs and clapped once, twice, three times. Though the halls were full of voices and laughter, and the clapping sounded small, it had the desired effect. Everybody
fell silent and turned to look up at the dais. Daunt stood up and, wordlessly, presented Alan.

Alan looked down at the crowd. The crowd looked up at him. There were bikers in their leather waistcoats and extravagant headdresses, transients dangling assorted junk from their many belts, white-robed Glasstowners, warty green-skinned Toadies, hermits bearing highly polished shells proudly on their backs and, of course, fungus fiends, already slightly foamy around the mouth. No Mapmakers, which was something of a relief. Alan had heard that Daunt had a relationship with the Mapmakers, and he believed it – it was surely the only way she could have established a supply chain from the lower levels, which was where the mushrooms were strong and plentiful. Where the effects of the ascending Swamp could be felt. Alan had been apprehensive at the thought of potentially meeting one of their number, but it had always been unlikely – the Mapmakers generally did not attend social gatherings outside of their own tribes.

All these people, with their whiskies and beers and berry wines, and their salted garlic snails and their stuffed vine leaves and their roasted sunbladder-heads and their trays of sausages, splitting and blackened almost to perfection –
sausages
! A true delicacy in the Discard, and vastly expensive – and their pipes and, of course, their fried mushrooms, mushroom soup, and pots of mushroom tea – all these people, they’d all been having a
perfectly nice time, and he, Alan, Wild Alan, Hollowboy, was about to ruin it.

He licked his lips. He took off his long coat – torture up in the hot Gleam sun, but a necessity down here – and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He deliberately slowed his movements so as not to appear nervous, and in doing so regained a modicum of control over his shaking hands. He looped Snapper’s strap over his neck and adjusted it. The hall was still silent and all eyes were on him. He hadn’t expected this, in truth. He’d expected to be stashed away in some dingy corner, playing to and being ignored by a roomful of determinedly intoxicated libertines. And right now, that was what he wanted. This was a hard crowd to read. He’d better steer clear of anything too factional, too partisan to this settlement or that community. Which was tough, because so many of the classics had their roots in turf.

Of course, there was one song whose sentiment would raise no Discard hackles. ‘The Black Pyramid’ always went down well. Some Discarders were indifferent to the Pyramid, but most feared or hated it, and the song was a song of defiance against it. And it was slow and simple – at least to begin with – and he should just about be able to pull it off, even in this state.

There was no generator down here – it was all open fires and flickering candles wedged inside skulls and guttering paraffin torches – so he didn’t have a microphone.
The rooms looked good, acoustically, so he was all set to do without, but then from nowhere some skinny, symbolled lackey wheeled out a contraption consisting of a frame bearing a large, twisted brass megaphone decorated with small, horned figures dancing around – inevitably – mushrooms. The lackey made a respectable attempt at nodding and bowing and pointing and backing away all at the same time, and slipped on the lip of the dais, cracking his knee. Alan nodded his thanks as the emaciated man hobbled into the shadows, and started to play. The amplifying device actually had two megaphones, he saw, twisted around each other. One for his mouth, and one with a lower, wider aperture for – he guessed – whatever instrument the singer happened to be using. He found a pedal at the bottom of the frame that swung a beater at a skin, and kicked it. The sound was pleasingly solid. When he started to sing the volume surprised him, and he sounded different – slightly distant, slightly warped – but he liked it. He relaxed. He loosened his fingers and raised his voice, and started stamping on the pedal, and a couple of hermits started to dance, their glossy shells bobbing up and down as if they were floating on top of the crowd. Others were smiling, nodding. A few started murmuring to each other again, but not too loudly, so that was okay. It was all okay. As long as they were happy, it was okay.

He could ignore them now.

Alan closed his eyes, and threw himself into it. His mind and body dissolved into the air and he lost himself.

*

When he found himself again, later, he was painfully thirsty, drenched in sweat and almost slipping from the edge of the stage. No, he corrected himself: not stage; dais. He was on a
dais
. He giggled. What had he drunk? He glanced backwards at the empty glass bottles littered about where he’d been standing. Some beer, some whisky. Some other stuff. And still so
thirsty
. He laughed again. Already there was other music playing, and he wanted to dance, but it was not easy to dance to. It was just drumming; one loud, rhythmic beat. He felt a cool hand on his wrist, and turned to see that it belonged to the Mushroom Queen. She handed him a tall clay cup, but was studying his arm.

‘New tattoo?’ she enquired, pointing at an ornate black beetle with a human skull visible in its carapace markings. ‘Very nice, Hollowboy.’

Alan stopped gulping down the water she’d given him in order to answer her question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, new. How did you know? How did you notice?’

Daunt smirked. ‘I see a lot, Hollowboy. I see an awful lot. I open my third eye, my fourth, my fifth, and I observe. I am observant. Some use my fruits to dull their vision, or confuse it; I use them to sharpen it.’ She grinned. ‘Come. It is time for the next entertainment.’

Daunt swept past him. She had her naked attendants
on fine chain leads, Alan saw now. They followed her, their hard, lean bodies glistening, and Alan rushed after, then past them so he was walking at Daunt’s side.

‘Your first audience in my halls,’ she said. ‘They enjoyed you. I enjoyed you. You did well. I will have you back.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Your reputation is not entirely undeserved.’ She looked sideways at him. ‘Your reputation as a singer, that is.’

Alan took a deep breath. ‘What other reputation do I have?’

Daunt smirked again. ‘You know fine well. Do not play the fool with me. I intend for you to be one of my men tonight. There is no need to fence.’ She pressed herself against him and kissed him full on the lips. He could feel her breasts through his cold damp shirt. She broke free and undid his uppermost done button. ‘You may as well just take that off,’ she said. ‘It is foul. Your body is much more pleasing without.’ And around them, people were indeed removing their clothes, some as they danced, some as they kissed. The beating of the drum was louder and faster now. Alan’s skin felt hypersensitive; every brief contact sent waves tingling across his whole body. Something he’d drunk, perhaps. Some fungal liquor he’d downed unknowingly in the mindless space between songs. Or spores in the air. Daunt’s parties were legendarily debauched, and the provenance of her power probably had something to do with it.

What was the next entertainment?

Alan followed Daunt through one of the archways into a long rectangular space. People were squeezed onto the little floor space that bounded a pit in the middle of the room. In the pit were two small silver bowls, their surfaces pitted, each full of fragments of something that looked like dried orange peel. The bowls rested on a surface of some fine grey dust, possibly ash.

The crowd parted for Daunt. Alan remained at her side, and she did not motion for him to be removed. He had expected greater security than this. Though presumably the masseurs were also bodyguards. He certainly didn’t want to provoke them. He had no doubt that the chains were decorative, and as insubstantial as cobwebs against the slabbed muscle beneath.

He watched as two similarly built – and equally naked – men jumped down into the pit. Daunt clapped delightedly, and the drumbeat accelerated to an aural blur. A woman dressed in rags and covered with mushroom tattoos held out a platter of small red things that smelled deliciously of spices. He took a handful and thanked the woman, but she was gone, offering food to the next spectator. The morsels were meaty at first, but melted into nothing. Some kind of offal, fried in something bright. Luxury food. He watched as the men in the pit bowed to their queen, sat cross-legged opposite each other and tipped the silver bowls to their mouths. They inhaled the orange fragments and chewed furiously. Alan
looked across at Daunt, who was rapt. Her empty throne was bobbing its way into the room, carried by enthusiastic members of her following, and when she noticed it behind her, she quickly climbed backwards into it, trying not to take her eyes off the men in the pit. They were getting to their feet. One made claws of his hands and snarled at the other. The men collided, one lowering his head and smashing his skull into the other’s, and the room erupted into a roar that nearly knocked Alan from his feet. He could tell from the men’s expressions that they were howling and screaming, but he couldn’t hear a sound from them. It was disconcerting. Their nails drew ribbons of blood across each other’s taut flesh. They grappled and punched and kicked and bit. Yellow drool ran from their mouths. Alan watched, his jaw dropping, as one headlocked the other and thumped him repeatedly in the face. The one in the headlock grabbed his opponent’s penis and squeezed, hard. Alan flinched, looked away, looked up at Daunt. She could barely contain herself. She was pointing and laughing hysterically. There were whoops from the crowd. He looked back into the pit, and one was on the floor, being kicked in the ribs. He couldn’t tell them apart. They were both covered with streaks of blood now, and blood poured from their noses and ears, and spattered across the floor of the pit as they moved. The one on the floor somehow wriggled into a position where he could reach the other’s shin with his mouth. He sank his teeth into it. Now they were both on
the floor, writhing around after each other. The ash coated their skin, sticking to the blood and the sweat and rising in clouds around them.