The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (9 page)

Alan didn’t know. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You should get ’em out of there,’ Eyes said, pinching his nose. ‘Billy and Marion. I’m not talking about causing trouble. I’m talking about finding another way. Dok … I’ve been thinking. Dok is bad, Alan. Dok is the worst. No fucker goes there for a reason. Every fucker’s scared of it.’

‘That’s how Pyramidders see the Discard, though. Billy and Marion – they wouldn’t come with me. Nobody leaves the Pyramid of their own accord. You don’t know what it’s like in there, Eyes – the things kids are told about the Discard. The horrors they’re warned of as they grow up. The beasts they believe are lurking just outside the Pyramid. Imagine: you are kept warm and safe, you are
fed and watered, you have gardens and fountains in which to wile away your spare time, and you know that when you are old you will be looked after. You are blessed. You are lucky. To leave the Pyramid for the Discard is to throw all that security away for a life of desperation and uncertainty: a life of raw snails, undercooked toad-meat and venomous snakes; a life spent hiding from bandits and cannibals – and worse things, inhuman things. They have creatures from the swamp kept alive in great glass chambers up there, exhibited for all the Pyramidders to see, to show them what they’d be up against. Weird things, the like of which I’ve never actually seen since I was kicked out.’ Alan shook his head. ‘People with ten legs. Men and women with twisted horns and dead eyes. Heads on a torso like garlic on a rope.’

‘The Horned,’ Spider said. ‘I’ve heard of the Horned. I didn’t think any had been seen in decades, though. There used to be reports – I remember my uncles telling me – reports of the Horned from deep down. I had one uncle – he had his teeth filed into fangs and played the hurdy-gurdy. I thought he painted his face white but apparently he had some kind of condition. He spent a lot of time on the lower levels … What was his name? He told me about the Horned. Told me he hunted them in return for spirit salves, potions he said sent him a long way from his own body. Uncle Staniforth! That was it.’ Spider took a long drink. ‘He was a funny one.’

Alan waited to make sure Spider had finished before saying, ‘Well, exactly. So I rock up at the meeting place, Billy’s lanky old dad, with his shitty guitar and dirty hair, and say … what? Come with me, son! It’s a better life out here in the Discard, out here in the Factory wilds, with our Horned and our Uncle Staniforths – who sounds delightful, by the way. Yes, it’s dangerous, and yes, it’s dirty, and yes, you will have to eat toads, and sometimes there won’t even be toad, and no, you won’t always have a roof over your head, and it does rain, yes, it rains hard, and yes, there are cannibals, and thieves, and gangs, thugs, killers – worse, dangerous snakes, yes, horrible insects, crocodiles and worse, still worse …’

‘Wouldn’t you have left?’ Spider asked. ‘Of your own accord?’

‘Probably.’ Alan put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. ‘But I knew things.’

‘Why don’t you tell Billy those same things? Why don’t you explain the cost of Pyramid living? What it really is. Tell him what happened to you, to your parents. Tell him what they did to Eyes.’

Alan exhaled thick white smoke and narrowed his eyes against it. ‘He’s only six. Too young. And besides, we never have much time.’

A boy carrying a tray laden with empty glasses hurried past the table, but Eyes stopped him with a hand to his arm. ‘’nother Dog Moon, boy, if yer please,’ he said. The
boy nodded wordlessly and rushed off, sweat running down his face. The Cavern Tavern was full now, and really hot. Alan was glad of the window seat.

‘When they exiled me I thought that was it,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d be dead within the week. Something else I owe you two for.’ He looked up from his tumbler and smiled, then raised the glass. ‘To you two,’ he said. ‘To my friends. To the band.’

Spider and Eyes echoed his words and downed the spirit. Spider winced. ‘Rough stuff for necking,’ he said. He refilled his glass once more.

Eyes fished a small clay pot of ointment from his trouser pocket and smeared some of the oily grey substance into his dry red eyes. ‘Going to have to pick up my job lot,’ he said.

‘Go soon,’ Spider said. ‘The swamp’s squeezing the bandits, so banditry’s on the up. Traders say there’s disruption on the way. They reckon the House won’t be much better-provisioned than the rest of the Discard before long.’

‘Well.’ Eyes screwed the lid back onto the pot. ‘Nothing keeping us here then. When are we heading for Dok?’

‘Depends on our erstwhile conspirators,’ Alan said. ‘But let’s prepare to go soon. The day after tomorrow.’

‘Then I’ll pay Loon a visit in the morning,’ Eyes said decisively. ‘Alan, we know more about Dok than Pyramidders know about the Discard. You know that. Come on – this Churr, she’s got into your head. I’m not wagging
my finger here. Who and how you love, that’s up to you. But if you think we can really do this … I want to. I do. But I don’t know. I don’t know if even with a Mapmaker it’s a good idea. I think it’s not a good idea, Alan.’

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Alan said.
‘But I’ve run out of good ideas. As for Churr, things are complicated. I’m not infatuated. But she has …’ He looked down into his drink. ‘She has leverage.’

Neither Eyes nor Spider said anything. When Alan raised his head, he saw them looking at each other, eyebrows raised. ‘Shut up,’ he said.

‘Nobody’s saying anything,’ Spider said.

‘Kid,’ Eyes said, ‘we don’t want to know.’

‘What it boils down to is this: you don’t have to come. But I’m going.’

‘I am thinking of accompanying you,’ Spider said, ‘because I have an academic interest in certain plants and substances, thought lost to the swamp, which may yet exist in Dok, it being so proximate to the swamp itself. I am still in two minds, however, so don’t bank upon my company just yet. I have appointments that I would need to cancel – appointments I am loath to cancel.’

Alan nodded. He tried not to let on how desperate he was for Spider’s assistance: the man’s reputation as a fighter was fearsome, but unlike most other famous fighters in the House or its vicinity, he had an aura of calm that almost negated Eyes’ nerves.

‘Something else I wanted to ask you,’ Alan said. ‘Unrelated. Daunt’s got a new pet. Some beast called Bittewood. Have you heard of him? More of an
it
, really, but let’s be kind.’

‘Never,’ Spider said.

‘Same,’ Eyes said.

‘Not a known thug, then. He doesn’t seem sharp or …
spiritual
enough to have come from the tribes. Maybe a transient, but again, probably not sharp enough. Maybe a bandit.’

‘The swamp’s throwing all kinds up these days,’ Spider said.

Alan felt again those fingers in his mouth and shuddered.
The swamp
. His mind wouldn’t linger too long on the swamp; it always skittered away from it like a startled lizard. But soon enough that wouldn’t be an option. He watched small lights moving out over the Discard – lanterns and torches. The sides of the Black Pyramid were now peppered with glowing apertures. Somewhere in there were his son and his wife. He hoped they’d be happy to see him, when the time came. ‘Never mind, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s wait for Churr and this Mapmaker and drink.’

Spider lifted his scuffed violin case up onto the table. ‘Let’s play,’ he said, ‘and wait,
and
drink.’

The audience was drunk and raucous. There was clapping and cheering, condensation dripping down the whitewashed walls, the smell of liquor thin in the air. Alan looked out over them as Eyes got comfortable at the drum-kit behind him. A crowd of outlaws, misfits, loners and freaks. There were faces he recognised, people who made the House of a Thousand Hollows their home, their community, and then there were transients, drawn to the House looking for hot food and a roof over their heads, for once. The amps clicked and buzzed as Spider plugged in two mics, one for Alan and one for Snapper – a rare treat, thanks to Maggie letting them use the House’s generator. Spider swayed back and forth over by the amps, generating feedback, and as it merged with the sound of the crowd, Alan felt his breastbone begin to resonate, and grinned. Eyes was adjusting the drums, bringing the hi-hat in a little bit, lowering the stool, absentmindedly running his sticks over the skins. Spider
handed Alan his guitar and he took it in both hands, then lifted the strap over his shoulder. He waited until he could hear Spider’s violin and plucked a string. It sang out clear, falling into Spider’s swirling notes in just the right place. There was a structure to the music, a pattern; they just had to find it – and then it happened: they were there. It felt like magic as his fingers danced up and down the neck. His playing was clean, even if the amps were fuzzy.

He moved back to the microphone and looked out across the bar. The whisky was hot in his belly. People were gorging themselves on Maggie’s chilli now, great red bowls of the stuff, cooling their throats with copious quantities of beer, but a few of the regulars had started stamping their feet in time to the beat that had emerged from the tumbling notes. It was fast and low, a version of Black Pyramid that always went down well.

They were three songs in when the first scream rang out. The music faltered and Alan opened his eyes. He gazed around the newly silent room. The oblivion he’d been working towards vanished. There were strange new people in the room. They looked familiar, but they were in utterly the wrong context and so he couldn’t put a name to them. Not at first. Then –
Arbitrators
. Fucking Arbitrators. And that one there, behind the bar, standing where Quiet Diaz had been, all red with fresh blood, was lifting its arm at him, Alan, and putting a megaphone to its lips.

‘If your players surrender themselves,’ it said, its magnified voice raspy, ‘we’ll leave you in peace.’

The crowd were all staring at him again, but now with very different expressions on their faces. Arbitrators stood all around the room, bows pointing at particular members of the audience, holding them hostage.

‘What have we done?’ Alan said into the mic, but not confidently enough. He sounded weak. He cleared his throat and spoke again. ‘Why do you want us?’

An arrow flew into and through a fat man’s neck. He gurgled, flailing about, splattered chilli everywhere, then and fell off his stool and out of sight. A moment later blood fountained up, followed by more screams, and the room erupted. Tables overturned as half of the room rushed towards the stage and half ran roaring at the Arbitrators.

Alan gripped the mic’s wire in his fist and swung the mic around. It looked like a vertical black disc, just hovering there, but when the first stage invader – a gaunt, long-haired man with silver hoops in his ears – scrambled up onto the low wooden platform, Alan let the mic fly and it crunched into Long-hair’s mouth. He fell backwards, spitting teeth. Alan didn’t have time to gather it back up all the way – more audience members had turned Arbitrator and were clambering over Long-hair to get at him. They’d probably never liked him anyway. He wanted to look up and see how the rest of the crowd – the good ones – were faring in their fight against the Pyramid scum, but he couldn’t.

He cracked another bastard in the temple with his makeshift mace and wrapped its cable around the neck of another, then he realised that Eyes and Spider were at his side and Spider was thrusting something into his hand. The knife was long and curved and vicious and
perfect
– perfect for fighting the enemy, at least. Not fellow Discarders.

‘I don’t want to use this!’ he shouted, brandishing it in front of him. ‘Not on you. Fuckers,
listen
to me! We’re the Discard! We don’t—’

He was interrupted by the whistle of an Arbitrator arrow, and then a beefy woman with sunburned arms smashed a pint glass over his head. ‘
No!
’ he wailed. He tried to smack the side of her head with the flat of the knife but it twisted in his hand and cut her deeply across the face. He felt it stick on her cheekbone and the sensation ran through his hand and his arm all the way down to his stomach, where it felt like nausea. She went down and he stepped backwards, using the knife as a threat, as a shield.

Eyes appeared to be suffering similar reservations, but not Spider. He was stabbing and slashing and running people through without even blinking, without even breaking a sweat. He had a knife in each hand: not curved, like the one he’d given Alan, but straight and razor-sharp. Eyes was armed with a small wood-axe, but he was using the back of the head like a club.

Who were these arseholes coming for them? Did
they not see that if they worked together, they could easily overpower the Arbitrators? Were they so craven? So traitorous?

A man came at him with a chair leg; Alan ducked, cracked his attacker’s knuckles with the knife and then, once the man had dropped the chair leg and was grasping his broken hand with his good one, Alan stood up and kicked him hard in the bollocks. The man doubled over and Alan got him on the back of the head with the knife hilt. With each blow he landed he felt less guilty – the adrenalin, maybe. Ultimately he had to defend himself, whether he was being attacked by Discarders or not. Spider was moving methodically, gracefully, ruthlessly, and then suddenly nobody was attacking Spider any more. They’d got the message. That was the way to do it: scare the bastards away.

But, in truth, the crowd was in chaos. Now that the band members were defending themselves properly, the rush to get them had slowed. And the Arbitrators were beating their way in from the back; those who’d been eager to capture the performers were being crushed by others who were just trying to get away from the merciless, well-trained attentions of the Arbitrators. Those Arbitrators without bows had an array of other weapons attached to their belts – cudgels, knives, and short-swords – and they were employing all of them enthusiastically; those with bows were no more restrained.

Had the Discarders been single-minded, they could have given the Arbitrators a good run for their money. Had they been prepared, and sober, and single-minded, the Arbitrators wouldn’t have stood a chance. You didn’t get by in the Discard without learning how to fight. But they’d been taken by surprise in a safe place; they were drunk, confused and divided – it was a rout, and a bloody one. Dead House inhabitants lay everywhere, slain by arrows, by blades and by trampling feet. It wasn’t impossible that some of the more experienced and less particular Discarders – and Green knew there were a few of those – had taken the opportunity to settle old scores.

Alan surveyed the damage from the rear of the stage, where he had his back to the wall. Spider, next to him, gave him the side-eye. ‘Don’t think because they’re Discarders that they’re your friends. We’re not all on the same side.’

‘Should be, though,’ Alan said.

‘Why? Most Discarders couldn’t care less about the Pyramid. Many would like to live in it. They don’t feel like you do. Remember that.’

The tall helmets of the Arbitrators were getting nearer, closing in on them. ‘I don’t know why they want us,’ Alan said. ‘If it’s because of me, I’m sorry.’

‘The way Spider fights, it ain’t no problem,’ Eyes said. ‘Just let him kill ’em all.’

Spider shook his head. ‘We can’t win this one,’ he said.
‘Close combat I can do. Close combat with an arrow in my leg – no.’

‘You reckon they want us alive, then?’ Eyes asked.

‘If they wanted us dead, they could have done it more easily than this.’

‘They’re not having me alive again,’ Eyes said. He was as white as his shirt and shaking like a leaf. ‘Not this time. Not this time. Give me a knife, boys, to turn on mesel’.’ His knees went. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘These fucking bastards. Look what they’ve done to me already.’ Alan tried to help him up, but his legs wouldn’t take his weight. ‘Let me just sit here. Leave me be here on the floor. If I didn’t have such a tremble I’d play dead, that’s what I’d do. Here – give me a knife so I don’t have to play at it.’

The Arbitrators beat down the remnants of the audience and finally emerged into full view of Alan, Spider and Eyes. They stood in a solid semicircle just before the stage, their armour spattered with blood. Their tall helmets gave them the air of strange, long-necked creatures. Moans and coughs filled the air. The room stank of blood and vomit.

The Arb with the megaphone stalked through to the front. The plumage of his helmet was silver; all the others wore blue feathers in theirs. He had somebody with him, held in a headlock: the serving boy, just a kid.

The Arbitrator pointed at Alan again, but with a sword this time. ‘Alan. You and your companions are to come with us back to the Pyramid.’

‘For what? Is this an arrest? What have I done?’

‘An arrest? No.’ A raspy laugh. Alan thought the voice was male – more likely male than female, anyway – but he couldn’t be entirely sure. ‘Use your brain, worm. We cannot arrest anybody in the filthy Discard, because in the filthy Discard there are no laws and we have no jurisdiction. This is not a legal operation, worm. This is a strike. A seizure. A kidnapping.’

‘Somebody must want me for a reason, though.’

The Arbitrator didn’t speak. Its face was invisible behind its mask, and so its expression could not be read.

‘You don’t know, do you?’

Raspy spoke again. ‘Take them,’ it said. ‘Alive.’

The Arbitrators moved slowly forward, swords drawn. Their lack of speed wasn’t down to caution, or fear: it was entirely deliberate. Their steps were perfectly synchronised. Down where he was on the floor, Eyes wrapped his arms around his head and moaned.

The way they’d handled this did not bode well for their expedition, should they ever get to go.

One of the Arbitrators reached over its shoulder and drew forth what looked like a bag of some sort, but then it passed it to its colleague on the right and when it took hold of it, Alan saw that it was in fact a very finely webbed net. They spread the net out amongst themselves, each holding it with their left hand whilst keeping their blades in their right. Once the net was distributed, they stood still. They were about six feet away.

‘Throw down your weapons, Discard scum,’ Raspy said into the megaphone. He had the point of his sword pressed against the boy’s stomach. The boy’s shirt was soaking wet with either sweat or spilled drink. A pale pink blossom marked where the sword’s tip had already broken his skin. ‘You’ve got enough blood on your hands already, don’t you think?’

Alan felt as shaky as Eyes looked. He glanced around the room, his gaze settling on nothing. He didn’t know what he was searching for. A way out of this? But there wasn’t one. And Raspy was right: there was blood everywhere.

‘You did this,’ Alan said quietly, ‘not us.’

‘You tell yourself that if you must. Soon you won’t be able to deny the consequences of your actions, or of your words. Now. Put your knives down.’

Alan knelt down and put his knife on the floor. Spider followed suit. Eyes had already dropped his axe.

‘Hands on the back of your head.’

They complied.

The Arbitrators resumed their approach. Alan found himself watching their feet as they got closer. In the Pyramid the Arbitrators went barefoot or wore light strappy leather footwear, but they’d donned boots for their sojourn into the wild. They were less of an advantage than they’d thought, most likely; they were obviously more worried about getting moss or insects on their skin than they were about speed or balance.

Not that their lack of speed or balance had thwarted them in any way.

By the Builders, they were fucked. What a mess. And still Alan didn’t know for what. He was staring at the Arbitrator’s boots in front of him, right in front of him, racking his brains, when he suddenly felt something brush past his head and his view of the boots was obscured by a tattered grey cloak.

Between him and the Arbitrator stood a short cloaked figure with its hood up. The Mapmaker? The newcomer’s arms hung at its sides, but its hands were empty of weapons, though the nails were long and curved and wickedly sharp. They were painted pale green: the green of lichen, of verdigris. Chunky, skull-shaped rings of the same colour and others – pastel pink, silver – decorated the fingers.

The blocked Arbitrator laughed. ‘What is this? A child?’ The laughter was picked up by the others.

Alan’s heart sank. Not salvation, then. He tensed his legs to jump up and swing the child – a girl, judging by the hands – behind him. If she wasn’t in the way, then perhaps they wouldn’t hurt her. Perhaps.

Then the first Arbitrator to laugh started screaming. Something wet and warm drenched Alan’s head and face: a shower of blood. The girl was gone, and so was the Arbitrator’s face. He staggered around, his skull in full view, clutching at his ripped throat. Alan stood up. The girl was leaping from one Arbitrator to the next, landing
on each like a cat might before swiping at their throats with her now gory hands. She wasn’t blocking any blows directed at her, merely sliding out of the way like something inhuman, like oil. The blows landed instead on the Arbitrator she’d just leaped from. She was standing on shoulders, hopping from the tops of helmets, somersaulting in mid-air, surrounded at all times by a fine mist of Pyramidder blood.

Her hood was down. Her pale blonde hair was cut into a severe fringe across her forehead and the sides of her skull were shorn to the same line. A heavy plait whipped around her head. She’d smeared pink dye into the skin surrounding her large eyes and was shining red up to the elbows. A high-pitched humming sound vibrated through the air. Alan thought maybe it was coming from the girl, but he couldn’t be sure. She was moving too fast for him to make out her facial expression with any certainty, but he thought she was smiling.