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.
Margaret dragged the body to the side of the road, the trail of blood she left behind revealing the extent of Sara’s injuries. She brushed Sara’s face with her fingertips. The heat was already going from her flesh.
She gripped her rime blade in her hands and cut her friend’s head from her shoulders. She had promised, she owed Sara that much at least.
Margaret sprinted to the Melody Amiss; struck by a horrible epiphany. The first glimpses of an answer to what was going on; how the Jut had been obliterated just seconds after the alarm bells started ringing; and why the Four Cannon had fallen so quickly. The Roil was affecting people, transforming them as it had transformed the land beyond the Outer Wall.
What had happened to her parents? She could not bear to think of them as changed.
Margaret guided the Melody Amiss through the broken gateway. As she drove onto the bridge, she took it all in, not daring to get out, there was no one left standing, just human wreckage amongst the bare stone. More death than she had ever seen, sightless eyes and still, bloodless limbs. But that was not the worst of it.
As the Melody Amiss passed them, they rose. Sentinels, faces wreathed with moths, their movements stuttery at first, as though their muscles were new to them. Soon they quickened, their shambling turned to sprinting as they shook free the cowl of their deaths. They rushed the carriage, their fingers reaching. Eyes not empty but alien and terrifying, black as the moths that crawled and tumbled from their wounds and their lips. But they were not as swift as the Melody Amiss ; she left them behind as she had left everything else.
A hundred yards from the gate, rubble was all that remained of the Jut. Roilings massed there, some humanoid, others sluglings or crab-octopuses, and around them in their thousands, barking and baying, circled packs of Quarg Hounds. Into the monstrous clamour dived Endyms: huge eyes shining in the fire, their leathery wings showering the ground with dusty Roil spores as they scooped up creatures and dropped them over Tate’s walls. Above it all, the city’s nets blazed and fell in great fiery clumps. A few battle drones remained raining endothermic weaponry upon the enemy, but they were not enough. Even as she watched, Endyms dashed them from the sky, the burning remnants tumbling to the city, setting even more buildings alight.
Margaret neared the end of the bridge. The whole structure shook and the valves that had before ejected icy slush now churned with a liquid fire.
The moat beyond was still thick with ice, but it would soon grow warm as blood. Bodies floated on the surface, drifting backwards and forwards as more water rushed in. Margaret wondered how many of her people the Roil had infected.
Not now. Do not think of it now.
She was running out of time. The banks of the moat would not contain the rising water for much longer. She could already see dark cracks spreading across its outer edges; water seeped from them as blood from a wound.
A crab-like Roiling, legs spiked and furious, almost as big as the Melody, scurried in front of her. Its fore- claws slashed out and its mouthparts flexed.
Margaret slowed almost to a halt, gave her front cannon a full charge and fired, tearing the Roiling apart.
Fingers tapped against the Melody’s side window: a little girl struggled frantically with the handle. Margaret popped the door open.
“Get in! Quick!” A blast of cold air shot out into the night. The little girl screamed as the air crashed against her face. Her head folded back, unveiling grasshopper-like mandibles. Luminous eyes stared from the pit of the girl’s skull. The creature hissed at her then bound away on prickly legs that had been hidden by the little girl part of its body.
Margaret slammed the door shut.
Chapter 7
Carnival. The sweetest dreams for the darkest times. No common opiate, it was wilder, crueller in its denial. It had appeared upon the streets of Mirrlees, in its dens and its parlours, only two years before the end.
In those last days its use was commonplace, both lowlife and highborn drawn to its comforts. It did not discriminate. Only the most paranoid would suggest it was addiction as assault.
Cadell shook him awake, the Old Man’s touch cold enough that David could feel it through the sheets. He shivered.
