Pinch lifted higher over Hardacre, catching the wind of the storm, her nacelles riding with it, driving them west and north. There were rooftops far below. The city was luminous, though it was a softer glow than either Mirrlees or Chapman, all that gas. A northern suburb burned, and David wondered if there hadn’t been another riot.
He tapped the membrane, and tried to zoom in, but the rain fell too heavily now or the membrane had yet to fully develop; all he got was magnified blur.
Down below were the hard old fields that fed the city. Rocky ground, and thin hard earth, and yet the city had sprung from them, these fields ploughed and nurtured with an efficiency and skill that softened and sweetened the cruel landscape. Hardacre had become so good at it that they even supplied a large percentage of Mirrlees’ food, or had.
David considered that grim grey land; he knew that daylight would shine on fields ready for harrowing, and that four months ago Hardacre had a bumper crop.
Things, perhaps, were never as awful as they seemed. He knew that they were heading into trouble, but he owed Kara Jade this at the very least, whatever the nature of her trouble was. Without her they would never have gotten as far as they had. He liked to think he was a better man than someone who would leave a friend in trouble — even if it meant deserting other allies.
And, finally, they were moving again, crossing a new landscape, putting another city to their backs. David was tired of hunting — it hadn’t taken long for that weariness to settle in — and of being in the one place. He wondered if you could ever get so used to running that it became comfortable.
He closed his eyes. Up here, away from the noise of the city, he could feel them much more easily.
Flashes of woodland came to him, trees leaning against each other, gnarled and weary. Screams came near and distant. Mumbled conversation, because the Old Men never stopped talking. Cadell had managed to rein all that in, but David knew how much it had cost him. David could taste death in his mouth, they had killed recently, they were always killing. He felt some sympathy with their hunger, with their rage, even if it was directed at him. After all, whether they liked it or not, whether he liked it or not, they were linked now. And would be until either they died or he did.
Margaret was wrong — Death didn't wait for them, it accompanied them.
The Old Men were some distance to the south-west, but not nearly far enough away. At least now they couldn’t catch him for a while. David sensed that even if he made it to the Tearwin Meet, and activated the Engine, they would still come after him, that they wouldn't stop.
His stomach rumbled.
“You better eat something,” Margaret said, lobbing a can at him. He snatched it out of the air easily, reflexes so much better attuned to food, even when it was wrapped in metal. The tin opener followed. He caught that too.
Beef, he could sense it even through the can.
“Thank you,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
David envied her.
He ate alone, watching the city fall behind the horizon, his back turned to her because he was ashamed how he looked when he ate. The meat was cold, and salty, there was no blood to it, it was unsatisfying. When he was done, he wiped his face, walked past her and checked the larder, certainly a lot of food.
He opened another can and ate it too.
And by the time he was done, Hardacre was little more than a soft and fading glow, the dark around it possessed of a great and terrible authority.
He hoped that Whig paid good attention to the note David had left him. David worried that he was leaving them buried to the neck in trouble, hadn’t he been doing that all along? Since the moment he’d run from his assassinated father — the body still twitching — he’d been leaving behind one darkness after another, and more bodies than he wished to dwell upon.
What did it matter that he was doing it again?
After all, if he failed, then none of them had that much time left anyway. Old Men or Roil, there really wasn’t a lot of difference. At least the Old Men wouldn’t have them twitching to the commands of Witmoths; the Old Men’s one command was die.
Simple.
Even the biggest fool could understand that.
CHAPTER 17
Let us be honest. When all lost their heads, Stade didn’t. Madness leads to madness, but his was a particularly rational one. How are we to blame with such distance? With distance, quite easily, blame and analysis are all we have left. Stade rose to power because no one, Engineer or Confluent alike, ever offered a viable alternative.
When others faltered, he remained strong and persuasive. A charm that combined political aptitude with coercion.
MIRRLEES-ON-WEEP, TEN YEARS AGO 1500 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL EDGE
Two days after the great storm when, for the first time in a generation, the mighty gates to the levees had been closed, Stade walked through a city swept clean. But that could never hide the nature of this suburb. Excrement remained excrement, no matter how you scrubbed it.
Tomlinson Pharmaceuticals was built in a neighbourhood less than salubrious, places that Stade tried to avoid because he had grown up in them. He did not like to revisit the scrambling hell of his childhood, but there were times that such excursions couldn’t be avoided. And he could trust this work to no one. Two Vergers walked with him, a new recruit by the name of Tope — who had already proven himself loyal — and Mr Sheff, an old and canny bastard Stade had known since he’d first joined the Council. Sheff knew when to whisper and when to murder, and could differentiate between the two.
A young boy tried to sell them the latest street drug, fresh blood obviously, or he would have recognised two Vergers. Sheff snarled at him, Tope reached for his knife, but at a headshake from Stade, he slid it back into its sheath. And the boy, wide-eyed, sprinted for his life down the nearest alleyway.
Stade smiled, then frowned. He'd been that boy once, he wished him well. Tomlinson himself met them at the door. A nervous bird-like man with owlish glasses that he kept sliding up and down his nose, an irritating tic that had made it easy for Stade to hate the man from the beginning.
He led them through a building that was the picture of industry. Machines whirred, men and women worked at various conveyor belts, sorting and packaging. Tomlinson's staff must have numbered at least a hundred people. Obviously the production of salves and map powder was quite lucrative.
There was no small talk — certainly no talk of the Grand Defeat. Stade only got that in the halls of Parliament now, thanks to that damn Medicine Paul. At least Tomlinson was deferential, he opened the door to his office, a big room on a mezzanine with a window that afforded a view of the workers below. Stade wondered if they were as terrified of Tomlinson as the chemist was of him. At a nod from the mayor, Sheff pulled the blinds to the window closed. Stade could see sweat beading on his host's brow.
Stade could tell that Tomlinson hated him. No matter how hard the chemist tried to hide it, or his fear, it shone bright in his eyes. Still, he walked to his desk, picked up a clipboard and scanned its contents, as though the mayor was just like any other client.
“All of the subjects have acted similarly under the drug,” Tomlinson said. “A low level of euphoria, a gentle calm. Though it can have side effects, a certain haphazardness of character, moments of clarity giving way to confusion. An addict could be quite conflicted, almost mad.”