"SARAH! SARAH! SARAH!"
Many mouths, with broken and blackened teeth, all yelling in unison. Smiling, wild, sometimes grotesque faces, but all with expressions of admiration and even affection.
They were gathering along the way now — Sarah couldn't believe the sheer number of people lining the route. Someone — she didn't see who — thrust a discolored sheet of rough paper into her hands. She glanced down at it. It was a crude etching, the sort of thing the underground press distributed to the people of the Rookeries — she'd seen the like before.
But this one caused Sarah's heart to skip a beat. The largest image, in the center of the sheet, was a picture of her, a few years younger than she was now, although dressed in almost identical clothes. Her face in the picture bore an anxious expression and was looking melodramatically off to one side, as if she was being pursued. It was a reasonable likeness of her. So that explained how she'd been recognized. That and the rumors, which would have most likely spread like wildfire through the Colony, that she'd been brought back by the Styx. There were four other, smaller pictures in similarly stylized roundels in each corner, but now wasn't the time to examine them.
She folded the paper and took a deep breath. Seemingly there was nothing to fear, no threat, so she raised her head, throwing her shawl around her back, as she continued down the alleyway, the masses thronging on either side of her. She didn't acknowledge them, nor look to her left or right, but kept going as the clamor grew even more tumultuous. Wolf whistles and huge cheers and the chanted "Sarah! Sarah! Sarah!" reached the rock canopy above, their echoes falling back to earth and mingling with the uproar all around her.
Sarah reached the narrow passageway that would lead her out through the other side of the Rookeries. Without looking back, she entered, leaving the throng behind her. But their shouts still rang in her ears, and the drumming still resounded deafeningly in the enclosed space around her.
Out in the wider street where the more affluent Colonists' houses stood, Sarah stopped to order her thoughts. She felt dizzy as she tried to deal with what had just happened. She just couldn't believe that all those people, whom she'd never laid eyes on before, had recognized her and had bestowed such adulation upon her. After all, they were the inhabitants of the Rookeries — they neither respected nor admired anyone beyond its confines. It wasn't their way. Before now, she hadn't had the slightest inkling that she was a figure of such renown.
Remembering the sheet of paper still clutched in her hand, she opened it and began to scrutinize it. The paper itself was coarse, with frayed edges, but she didn't notice this as her eyes fell on her name at the top of the sheet, spelled out in ornate copperplate letters within a twisting banner, like a flag stirring in the wind.
And there she was, her picture clear as day — the artist had done a good job of capturing her likeness. Around her picture a stylized and wispy fog, or perhaps it was meant to be the darkness, formed an oval frame, and in the four corners of the sheet were the smaller roundels she hadn't had the time to look at before.
They were just as accomplished as the main picture.
One showed her leaning over her baby's crib, tears making her face shine. There was a shadowy figure in the background that she assumed was her husband, standing by just as he had done while their child was dying.
The next roundel depicted her with both her sons, stealing out of her house, and another had her grappling valiantly with a Colonist in a semilit tunnel. The last depicted a huge phalanx of Styx, scythes drawn, hot on the heels of a running, skirted figure as it fled down the length of a tunnel. The artist had taken liberties here; it hadn't happened like that at all, but the meaning was clear. She instinctively crumpled up the sheet. It was strictly forbidden to portray the Styx in any way whatsoever — only in the Rookeries would they dare do such a thing.
She couldn't get over it. Her life… in five pictures!
She was still shaking her head with utter disbelief as she caught the gentle creak of leather and looked up. She froze at the sight that met her.
Stark white collars and long black coats that rippled with the illumination from the streetlamps. Styx. A large patrol of them — perhaps as many as two dozen. They were watching her, unmoving and silent, in a casually arranged line on the opposite side of the street. The scene had something of an old photograph from the American Wild West about it — a posse of long riders arranged around the sheriff before the start of a manhunt. But in this picture the sheriff was a teenage girl.
Rebecca, in the center of the front row, took a single step forward. As she stood, proud and commanding in front of her men, the strongest sense of power emanated from her.
Who is she really? Sarah thought, not for the first time.
Rebecca flipped her hand vaguely in the air, the gesture telling the Styx at her flanks to remain where they were. As the chanting continued, muffled now by the boundaries of the Rookeries, she gave a faintly amused smile. She crossed her arms primly and looked askance at Sarah.
"Quite the hero's welcome," she called over, tapping a foot on the cobblestones. "How does it feel to be such a big shot?" she added sourly.
Sarah gave a nervous half shrug, conscious of all the dark pupils of the massed Styx upon her.
"Well, I hope you made the most of it, because the Rookeries, and all the scum rotting inside, will be no more than a bad memory in a few days' time," Rebecca snarled. "Out with the old, as they say."
Sarah wasn't sure how to react to this — was it just an empty threat because Rebecca was angry that she'd dared to leave the Styx compound and venture into the Rookeries?
A bell began to toll somewhere in the distance.
"Enough of all this," the girl announced. "It's high time" — she snapped her fingers and the Styx around her stirred into action — "we were on our way. We've got a train to catch."
24
"The place of Cross Staves," Drake said as he looked at the sign by the letterbox opening in the ground. Will estimated it had taken them ten hours of rapid walking, punctuated by frequent bouts of jogging, to reach the place where — he had thought until now — Cal had died. Both he and Chester were thoroughly exhausted but filled with fragile hope.
At Drake's suggestion, they had taken a couple of breaks on the way, but no one had spoken as they drank water and chewed on some salty sticks with a nondescript flavor that the taciturn man had produced from a pouch.
As they had jogged along, with only Drake's faint miner's light to guide them, Elliott had prowled behind, constant yet undetectable in the dark. But she was with them now, as Drake stood by the letterbox opening, a place Will had hoped he'd never again see in his lifetime: a place of fear and dread, a portal into the deathworld.
Drake undid the buckle and slung his belt kit to one side as Elliott handed him a mask, which he fixed over his mouth and nose. "I was given this by a dead Limiter." He smiled dryly at the boys. Then he made sure the strange lens was positioned correctly over his eye.
"I want to help," Will declared. "I'm coming with you."
"No, you're not."
"Cal's my brother. He was my responsibility."
"That has nothing to do with it. You stay with Elliott and keep watch. We've broken every rule in the book on the way over, and I don't want to get pinned down when I'm in the sugar trap." Drake gestured to Chester. "He's the stronger of you two — he's going to help me."