Chapter XVI
They had wound their way through the maze of warehouses surrounding the caravan’s unloading area when Rennie said, “Wait up a second.”
Daenek stopped and slid his pack from his shoulders. It had been late afternoon when the caravan had pulled into the Capitol, and now the setting sun tinted grange the city buildings ahead of them. He felt little disappointed as he gazed up the narrow alleyway they had stopped in. Almost nothing in the city seemed to be much higher than the one and two story village buildings of which he had seen so much, even though these in the city appeared to be made from the same smooth white material that the Lady Marche’s house had been.
The exception was a massive, many-windowed edifice in the distance that dwarfed the low buildings around it. Daenek assumed it was the Regent’s palace. And before that, he thought, it was my father’s. He turned, hearing the rustle of paper behind him, and saw Rennie unfolding a large map. “Where did you get that?” he said.
“Stole it out of the bridge,” she said nonchalantly. “They’d never have any use for it—it’s just of the Capitol.” She knelt down and spread it on the ground. “Now here’s where the caravan came in.” She traced out a spot with her finger. “And this must be the landing pit over here, for the starships. And we’re walking east, so that means we should be right about here.” She tapped another spot with her finger.
Daenek looked down at the map’s jumble of lines and spaces.
“So?”
“So if we keep on going in the same direction, we should hit the central part of the city. Maybe find a place to spend the night.”
“Wonderful,” said Daenek. “For that we needed a map?”
Rennie shrugged and began refolding the paper. “You never know.”
They continued on through the deserted alleyways, past the silent buildings with doors agape to reveal empty interiors. The population must have shrunk, thought Daenek, from what it used to be. Even here things are dying. As the twilight grew dimmer, a few lights flickered on in the windows of the buildings in the distance before them. They hurried their steps to reach them before it was completely dark.
“What’s that?” said Daenek suddenly. He thought he saw a group of white-robed figures standing on the roof of a building at the end of the street.
“Ahh, those damn sociologists,” muttered Rennie. “Don’t worry about them, they can’t recognize you. And ignore ’em, we don’t have time to answer any of their dumb questions.”
The space between themselves and the projected images of the sociologists lessened as they proceeded up the narrow street.
The buildings on either side were silent and decaying from long disuse.
What are they waiting for up there? thought Daenek. As he and Rennie passed beneath the rooftop, the images were projected upon, he looked down to the street to conceal his face, although it was still set in its mask. A piece of crumbled roofing tile clattered into sight, dislodged from above.
Wait. Something made the skin across Daenek’s shoulders tighten as he looked at the dark fragment. One of them kicked that off—then they’re not prolections. But— He looked up and saw something with a gun-like muzzle and mounted on a tripod being swung down to point at them.
Rennie’s breath came out of her with a single grunt as Daenek slammed her body between himself and the wall of the building.
The thing on the tripod coughed a single muffled whup, and the pavement where the two of them had been walking exploded, showering them with gravel and ash.
“What the—” Rennie wheezed with her first breath.
Daenek put his hand over her mouth and pressed her against the building, only to look up and see the winged figures, silhouetted by the fading light, swivelling their weapon’s snout down upon them again. Daenek looked desperately about for a doorway. But there was only the angle of wall and ground that held them trapped beneath the carefully aimed muzzle from above.
Suddenly, the weapon’s barrel swung away from them. It coughed again, and a section of the building on the other side of the road flew apart. Looking up, Daenek saw the weapon jerk through a spastic arc, teeter on the edge of the roof, and then come crashing down, the tripod’s legs splayed like a metal spider.
From the roof top came the sound of blows and stifled shouts.
The silhouetted figures, some with wings outspread, were struggling back and forth. One of the sociologists landed on his back halfway over the roof’s edge. Another connected with a kick into the ribcage of the outstretched figure, and it toppled over the side, landing heavily beside the broken weapon. The circle of light over its head flickered and went out.
“Come on!” Rennie pulled on Daenek’s arm. “Let’s get out of here!”
He hesitated, staring first at the sociologist moaning in the middle of the street, then swinging his eyes up at the sound of the others fleeing from the rooftop above them.
“Come on, before they come back with more!”
Daenek spun around and ran after her. They had gone only a few streets away when Rennie grabbed his elbow and stopped, pulling him to a halt beside her.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Do you hear anything?”
He followed her gave in the direction from which they had come. “No,” he said after a moment.
“Maybe we’d better go back.”
“What for?” He looked in surprise at her face barely visible in the darkness.
“To find that sociologist,” she said. “The one that got pushed over.”
“That could have been an accident. Whatever was going on up there—it could have just fallen or something.”
Rennie shrugged. “Either way. There’s two of us and one of it. Maybe we can get some info, if we get there before the others come back for it.”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, weighing what she had said in his mind.
“Look. What other plans do we have?”
He thought for only a second, then shook his head. “None, I guess.” It was true—the farther they had walked into the city, the less their chances of penetrating any mysteries of the past had begun to seem to him.
They retraced their path to the street where they had been attacked, but there was no sign of the fallen sociologist. Rennie located her pack where she had dropped it against the wall, and took out her small flashlight. She swept the beam over the pavement, then knelt to look more closely at something she had spotted.
“It’s hand must’ve split open when it landed,” she said. A red, hand-shaped blot was centered in the yellow circle of light.
She got to her feet and directed the beam around the buildings on either side of the street. The light stopped on another print like the first, smeared on the corner of the building leading to another street that crossed the one they were in.
“That way,” said Rennie, pointing with the flashlight.
They followed the street to which the handprints pointed. It led eventually into the inhabited part of the city. Daenek noticed lights in the windows of the buildings they passed. “I think we’ve lost him,” he said.
“No, we haven’t.” Rennie shone the flashlight on a doorframe in one of the buildings. The same wet handprint glinted under the shaft of light. Rennie went to the door and pushed it partly open. Noise and more light flooded out of the crack. “Hey,” she whispered back to him. “It’s an inn.”
“What’s it doing in there?” Daenek stood behind her and tried to look through the narrow opening.