“There’s nothing safe about you,” David said.
“No, there’s nothing safe. But everything is relative, and I would suggest you swap certainty of death at spider bite or Verger’s knife for the uncertainty of me. I am dangerous, yes, but even more so to those that hunt you. Surely it is the obvious choice.”
“The obvious ones are hardest,” David said.
“Ah, as obstinate as your father.”
“It did him little good.”
“Exactly, but it might serve you better. Put that will into your flight with me, and you may yet live out the day, and those that follow it.”
“And where will you take me?”
“Away from here, for one.” Cadell peered into the bolthole. “Hurry, we can discuss the future at length where there are no spiders listening or dead boys to drive another nail of guilt into my heart.”
David didn’t say anything, just stepped a little further from Lassiter’s tomb. He felt another pang of addiction, bent over and was sick. Not much to bring up, but it came painfully nonetheless.
He wiped his mouth and looked up into Cadell’s face. It was too dark, even with the lantern, to know what he was thinking.
“Come on, Mr Milde,” Cadell said, and his voice was gentle, no hint of the danger of which he had just spoke. “We’ve such little time left to us. Oh, and I’ve your drug… your Carnival.”
Cadell turned and walked from the bolthole, not looking back, and David followed him, away from the electric lantern and Lassiter’s corpse, and into the dark.
“I don’t trust you,” David said.
They had been walking some time, the Old Man leading them on a path beneath Downing Bridge that kept well away from Mirkton, their only company being drops of rain and the occasional scratch and scurry of rats. Once a shape the size of a very large dog came lumbering out of the gloom at them, and the Old Man snatched a blade from the handle of his umbrella, but whatever it was wasn’t interested in them, it passed by quickly lost again to the dark. Twice they came upon the corpses of rats smothered in spiders, bringing back to David the image of Lassiter. David had been but minutes away from the same fate. Where he was headed now he had no idea, just the looming bulk of the Old Man before him. He realised that the Old Man was laughing.
“I wouldn’t trust anyone right now. Lack of trust is an extremely useful survival mechanism. But I am all you have,” he said. “I am sorry that your life has taken this turn, Mr Milde. I really am, but there is nothing for it, but to keep walking.”
Soon enough that walking led them to the eastern edge of the Bridge, it was wet and murky beyond, a typical sort of day. A fog had lifted from the levee and settled on the streets.
“Look, I brought you an umbrella.” He pushed it into David’s hands and David took it, wondering if it contained a sword as well.
“It doesn’t,” Cadell said. “See, I don’t trust you either.”
The sky was dark, with rain, and the deeper darkness of Aerokin and the Cuttlefolk’s messengers, swift racing smudges through the air. Looking back, he could see the pale lights of Mirkton. Stale air from beneath the bridge washed over them. “Where are we going?” David opened the umbrella.
“My room,” Cadell said. “Then we’re going to catch a train.”
“North or south?” David asked.
“South.”
David still wasn’t sure he’d heard him properly. There was only one train that went that way: The Dolorous Grey. The Roil was down south. Nothing safe was down south.
“Yes, South,” Cadell said. “We have to get you out of here. I will get you to Hardacre, I promise. But the direct route North is too obvious, and too dangerous, there’s the drowned suburbs, the Margin, Cuttlemen, and not the refined folk we have in the city, but the ones for whom the war is still fresh and bitter.” Cadell said. “We’re travelling to Chapman. We’re going to the end of the world.”
There was a slight sucking sound as the machine disconnected itself from Stade’s skull. Stade hated that noise, the wet extraction of filaments from his brain.
Stade blinked. He tasted blood in his mouth; he reached for the glass of water by the chair. Tope stood in one corner of the room and Stade glared at him. He didn’t like the Verger seeing him in such a vulnerable state. Stade spat the bloody water into a bowl.
He shivered. All that information, all those eyes. His skin crawled every time he entered that space, his teeth ground away at the inside of his cheeks. Old tech, it never really translated to these new situations. He’d caught flashes of other images, other spaces beyond the interface between him and the arachnids: a pyramid of skulls, a spherical particle accelerator, and his mother’s face.
“David got away. The spiders are hard to control, always have been, too many of them, too many thoughts; they settled on the other one.”
“Who has him then?”
“Cadell.”
Tope frowned. “Well, that is something of a challenge.” Stade spat out another mouthful of water, clearer this time. “Yes, chances are the Old Man will kill him before we ever find them.”
“I’ll find them, and I’ll kill them both.”
“You’ve Cuttle in your blood, Tope. But he’s an Old Man.”
“I’ll find them and I’ll kill them both.” Tope left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Stade laughed, he dug through the pockets of his coat for a cigar. “The thing is you really think you can, and you might just be right.”
Chapter 6
Death, when it comes, is always unexpected. But a reawakening to something else, another shifting mental space, how peculiar that must be. When the churches speak of this, surely they do not mean the deathlessness of the Roil.
The Death cults, the Birthers and the Renewal, their resurrection could not be thus.
This was madness and hunger and dreams.
TATE
“Stay where you are,” Sara said.
“It’s me.” Margaret raised her hands above her head. “It’s me.”
“How can I be sure?”
“It’s me. What are you talking about?” She searched her friend’s face. Sara spat a little blood onto the ground. Her brow creased with some sort of decision and she lowered her gun. “Doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Dead bodies, coming back to life, I’ve seen them. You don’t want to stay here. You strike the heads from their shoulders. I die and you do that for me. Promise me now or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“I promise,” Margaret said.
“There’s moths everywhere,” Sara’s eyes grew unfocussed, she clutched at her gun. “Even in their carriage.”
“You saw them,” Margaret demanded. “My parents…”
Sara shook her head. “Something happened. Whatever was driving your parents’ carriage wasn’t human.” She lowered her voice. “They’re dead, and if not, perhaps it’s better to consider them that way.”
“I have to find them.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I don’t think you would like what you found. Margaret, believe me, what came through the Jut was no more your parents than the Quarg Hounds they guided to the wireway.”
Sara rolled her head, towards the blazing heart of Tate. “But you can’t go back. There’s no way you can go back, there’s only death in the city for you now, for all of us.”
“Get out of here, north, along Mechanism Highway. That’s an order. You might have a chance.”
They let what they both knew was a lie stand there between them. Margaret shuddered, took great gulping breaths. Calm down, she thought. Slow your breathing down. She was her parents’ child. She was a Penn, and born of the city of Tate. Her breathing slowed, her mind stopped its flailing, she even managed a grin. “Well, you’re coming with me.” Finally, she had the comfort of her resolve.
Sara stared up at her, silent. Dead.