She checked her watch. Her father had given her that on her seventeenth birthday. All it did was remind her of him. Why were they late?
Nearly six. As her watch reached the hour, the Four Cannon fired, launching endothermic shells out into the darkness of the Roil, driving its substance away from the Outer Wall – though it would quickly return. The Four Cannon – designed by her parents, like every other endothermic defence in Tate – were the city’s heartbeat. Without that regular cannonade Tate would have long ago succumbed to the Roil.
Conventional weapons did little harm to the creatures of the Roil, indeed they only seemed to encourage them to fury. However, Roilings could not survive in temperatures below three degrees Celsius, and Roil Spores themselves were killed by temperatures below freezing. All the city’s weapons took advantage of this, creating a zone of cold around Tate that kept the Roil out.
Margaret stretched her arms, appreciating the quiet. As much as she looked forward to seeing her parents again, she knew that once they drove through the gates it would be non-stop, starting with her flight down the wireway to see them.
The bells rang three times.
Margaret sprinted up to the Wire Room and responded with three rings of her own. From here she could ride the wires down the slope of Willowhen Peak to the Outer Wall itself. She took a moment to admire the view before all the noise and fury of her parents’ return.
Tate was about to change: the I-Bombs had been a success. She glanced from the Outer Wall and the Jut, and the beginning of the white thread of Mechanism Highway leading north, then back over the Wall Secundus to the ice sheathed inner walls and the Swarming Vents.
These monstrous chimneys rose high above the Four Cannon, their buttresses lit with low voltage electric lights and crammed with all manner of endothermic weaponry. Keeping the city cold generated heat and not all of it could be recovered and distributed back into the city’s engines. The waste heat released by the Vents was a constant draw to Roil spores and other more horrible entities. An endless battle raged around them. A unit of men and women called Sweepers garbed in cool-suits and more weaponry than any Sentinel, clambered over vent and chimney or rode the thermals on sharp-winged gliders into the spore cloud.
A knot of them slid down, another rose up. Their mocking whistles echoed over Tate as they passed one another; tallies added up, kills expressed in swift signals; the sign language of the Sweepers.
Men and women died above the city in the dry and ceaseless heat, but there were always more to take their place, drawn by the glamour and the terror of it. Margaret herself had hinted at such a career path, her parents promptly made her swear she would do no such thing: as if her parents did not risk their lives every day.
She grabbed her harness, just as another bell began to toll. And another. She stopped and tilted her head towards the city beyond the Wire Room, and the cacophony that was building there.
The ringing rippled over Willowhen Mount, taken up in watchtower after watchtower. In every house, in every quarter of the city, lights came on and doors swung open. Searchlights broke up the city airspace into grids of brilliance, revealing the nets and the dense darkness rising beyond.
A gun-prickled dirigible rushed east. Something flashed, from beyond the walls. The dirigible fell, a long exclamation mark of fire. And the bells kept tolling.
The city was under attack.
Tate’s heartbeat raced. The Four Cannon loaded and fired, their huge engines turning, trying to cover as much ground as possible. Their grinding movements vibrated through the earth and into her feet.
Bells tolled. Smaller ice cannon fired all along the outer walls. What the hell was happening? An explosion shook the house, but not from above, this vibration had come from below. Another series of bells started ringing. Margaret, raised on the language of the bells, knew at once what it meant.
The Roil had breached the Jut, the gatehouse of Tate’s outer wall. Even from here she could see it burning.
Another explosion and the Jut was gone, nothing remained of the gatehouse but a shower of blazing stone falling into the city.
The Four Cannon picked up pace. Margaret stumbled back inside. She strapped two belts of pistols to her waist and grabbed an ice rifle. She reached for her harness again, but stopped before her fingers closed upon the leather.
The wire thrummed as though the line were in use. She looked along the wire, east. Her breath caught in her throat.
A Quarg Hound slid towards her, hooked claws gripping the wire perfectly. The beast’s black eyes widened as it saw her, then narrowed. It opened its mouth. A black tongue flicked out over tiers of jagged teeth, and lashed at the air.
Margaret lifted the rifle to her shoulder, took aim and fired. The endothermic bullet hit the creature squarely, the hound spasmed and dropped.
If the wires were compromised her father’s armoured carriage the Melody Amiss was the only way she would be able to get down to the wall. The wire thrummed again, startling her. Another dark shape raced over the city. She reached for an axe to break the line then thought better of it. The creature was a minute or so away, at least, and breaking the high tension wire was as much a danger to her as it. Margaret left the axe where it was, bolted the door to the wireway behind her and ran through to the Carriage Room.
The ceiling was high. Her footfalls echoed loudly, melding with distant clamour of the bells. She pulled on a cold suit: time-consuming but necessary. The black, rubberised substance clung to her and it chilled her to the marrow, but the suit would protect her from the Roil. Over the suit she shrugged on her long coat its pockets already filled with ammunition and spare fuel cells. She’d been taught from childhood to dress as though the sky might fall in at any minute and decide to eat her. She considered the Melody Amiss, inside that she’d be something of an indigestible meal.
The Melody was a brutally elegant carriage of streamlined steel and brass, an electrical-fuel hybrid her father had kitted out with more than the usual ice weaponry. Coolant fans streaked its tail. Her father regarded it as a barely tested prototype, but Margaret’s faith in it, and his designs, was far stronger. The cockpit could fit two at a stretch, but it was cramped, and the air within bitter with coolants.
She jabbed at the starter buttons, the engine hummed beneath her. She engaged the automatic doors to the driving room. A Quarg Hound raced on stiff limbs through the opening. It leapt at the Melody Amiss . All Margaret saw was teeth and scrabbling claw, she released a burst of cold air and the hound shrieked and slipped away and under the carriage’s wheels.
The Melody Amiss lurched out the doorway and on to the street.
A body fell from the sky, striking the road with a wet thud. A Sweeper, the glider they had been riding torn to shreds. She looked up at the Steaming Vents, the air around them black with Hideous Garment Flutes and other Roilings. Gliders were being attacked from all angles. Sweepers fell here and there, broken, no grace in their descent, just plummet.
There was nothing she could do here. But she could get to the front. She could help in the battle, and she could find out what had happened to her parents.
Even now, there was no panic. People gathered at the evacuation points. Lifts were already taking groups down to the caverns beneath the city, Margaret didn’t even consider heading for their safety.
She drove as quickly as she dared. Wan-faced Sentinels let her through the first gate with a quick wave.
In the next zone, endothermic weaponry was being passed out to cold-suited Sentinels, and men and women in day wear or dressing gowns or Halloween costumes. It was an incongruous army that marched towards the walls – almost as varied as the creatures of the Roil itself. Every one of them moved with absolute economy, eyes lit with fear and a terrible determination.
Pride blazed within her. These people did not cower before the immensity surging over the gates; they stood their ground and fought.
At the second gate, a guard stopped her. She recognised him at once, a friend of the family and an old teacher at the rifle range. She released the door of the Melody.
“Howard, the Jut it’s, I have to get through. Please let me through.”
“I can’t, Margaret, the Jut isn’t there any more. You know better than most that we have evacuation protocols to follow. The gates stay shut until we get everyone we can to the caverns below.”
Behind him, bricoled Sentinels, straining against harnesses, dragged cannon to the edge of the Wall
