There is no time for negotiation. And having enemy soldiers in our midst is… surely you must understand that. We will treat them with respect. They will all be given military burials.
“Things are moving very swiftly now. Faster than you might realise.” Grappel’s face hardened. “Please consider how lucky you were that it wasn’t you with them. Though, I have bullets enough to spare one more, if your solidarity with the enemy extends that far.”
Medicine lowered his eyes.
“Good, I didn’t think so. Now, come, we have work to do. And I am sure you would like to say a few words at their funeral.”
Chapter 52
In one day the Roil ignored all known limits to its expansion. To think that it could do so knowingly and swiftly gave an edge of hysteria to all actions that followed it.
The Roil was coming and it had grown cunning.
THE AIR ABOVE SHALE
The inconsolable heavens wept and lightning split the darkness, revealing a Quarg Hound, hunched down on the corner of the street, its broad back twisted with muscle. Saliva streamed, black and thick, from a mouth that was too wide, and a malicious gleam lit its huge eyes. More disconcerting was the intelligence David perceived within them, something lacking in any of the hounds David had encountered before. The beast was bigger too, twice the size of the ones on the Dolorous Grey.
Quarg Hound? Quarg bear more likely.
“Rather nasty,” someone said beside him and David ducked and turned, hands clenched.
Margaret frowned at him, her pistols out. “You want to fight me, or it?” She looked from hound to David and back again.
“I could do with some help.”
“These aren’t much use against such a big creature,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, and holstering her pistols. She picked at her nails with her rime blade. “I think you’d better run. That’s something I can tell you all about: running.” She seemed to give the idea some consideration. “That is unless you’d prefer me to slice your throat instead; put you out of your misery as it were.”
David ran.
“Good for you,” Margaret shouted after him. “Though you might want to run a little faster… make that a lot.”
The beast followed, howling and snorting.
David sprinted down Main Street. The hound’s claws clattered on the cobblestones so loudly that they echoed above the hiss of the rain.
What a malevolent steam-engine-sound it was, bunching up as though ready to pass. Only, David knew it would not pass, had no intention of passing, that it was aimed right at the centre of his back and the soft and chewy insides his back contained.
David shrieked, tearing like a madman towards his home. He made it, then realised that the door was locked. Where were his keys? He dug in his pockets, and found them, hazarding a glance behind him.
He wished he had not.
A gigantic black shape loomed, red eyes the size of dinner plates flared at him. Teeth, large as David’s fingers, glistened with blood and spit.
It grinned at him, a huge messy grin, and a hand dropped out of its mouth.
David yelped, and slammed the key into the lock, turned it, and dove through the door.
Only it was not home but a room into which he was crammed with Cadell, Mr Whig, Mr Buchan and his father.
The room was quite large but most of the space was consumed with the business of being a huge map.
Cadell smiled at him warmly, he clapped his hands together. “Ah, David. You’ve arrived!”
“Very late,” Warwick Milde said, he laughed. “But not as late as me. Believe it or not I was worried, you know.”
“I’m sorry,” David said. “A lot has happened.”
“Still…”
Cadell frowned, and lifted a hand to silence him. “That isn’t the issue, nor are those memories useful. You’re here now, David.” Cadell jabbed a pointer down – not that David had noticed him holding a pointer until then and he focused on the map properly for the first time. He recognised it at once – a map of Shale – though unlike anything he had ever seen.
“It’s what we used to call a Panoptic Map,” Cadell said.
“It’s bloody brilliant,” David said.
The map was three dimensional and truly alive, better than anything map powder could bring about. To the south and east, above the dark mass of the sea, floated the air-city of Drift. David was tempted to reach down and pick it up until Cadell wrapped his knuckles with the pointer. “There’ll be none of that tomfoolery here, I’m afraid.”
“Of course,” David murmured. “Of course.”
“He’s a good boy, does what he’s told,” his father said. “Works hard, and he’s extremely bright. After all he is my son.”
“Shh!” Cadell hissed. “I’ve no time for your subconscious yearnings, David. Look, boy. Really, look.”
The map was hypnotic in its hyper reality. You could drown in it, and David did.
A little to his left lay Mirrlees, wound up in its tangle of the River Weep, tiny lights burning, so well crafted he could almost make out his house and the Halloween lights strung down the street. Then it all clicked, gained absolute and awful clarity, and David had an inkling of how a god might feel.
Omniscience, that was the word, David saw so much that it hurt, not just his eyes but all the way into his brain and his bowels. Omniscience was a migraine of knowledge, and yet he could not stop.
“Ah, he’s got it. Everybody does eventually,” Cadell said.
Outside, a Quarg Hound prowled and David fought the desire to squash it beneath his fingers like a bug.
David’s focus slipped south to where Chapman had once been.
Now there was just the Roil.
It seethed and bubbled, a living density of smoke. He took in its immensity. At its heart rose the Breaching Spire a silver strand that lifted off the map and reached above his head. How had he missed that before now? At the Roil’s edges, fingers of darkness reached out then sank back, as though it was dragging itself along by them. David was glad the Roslyn Dawn was well away from Chapman.
“There are things you need know, David. Things I need tell you. The Orbis and my blood give me time, and this dream gives me space. Tearwin Meet is where you must go, to the Engine of the World.” He pointed north on the map to the Old City. The ring on David’s finger crackled with ice, grew luminous and cold. “But that will take time, more than I would like. Still, it cannot be rushed – rushing would be unwise. Tearwin waits, but both you and it must be patient.”
David’s eyes followed the pointer. Something moved there, a shape he couldn’t quite focus on, huge in its awareness. David squinted at it.
Cadell slapped him again with the pointer, harder this time. “Don’t do that! You’ll alert it to our presence.”
He tapped the mile high walls of Tearwin Meet with the pointer. “Buchan’s failed expedition was only the latest. Many have foolishly tried to find an entrance to the city and paid the price with their lives. Tearwin Meet is guarded, in ways beyond the skills of those still living. But none of them possess what I’ve given you. The ring is the
