The Broken Isles

in another world.’

Brynd soaked up the scene. This building was immense, which meant all these hanging creatures were larger than he originally thought. He stepped back to take in their expressionless faces, if they could be called faces. They were so creased, stitched and folded they seemed as if they were old sacks. Some of them wore open fissures, which had dried to black. They were bizarre specimens. The fact that they were a parody of a human or rumel kept him from believing that this was in any way unethical.

‘Where did you get these from?’ Brynd asked.

‘We made them, of course,’ the red-haired girl said, wandering over. ‘Or resurrected them in many instances.’

Brynd asked for her name.

‘Jeza,’ she replied nonchalantly.

‘Your name was on the letter,’ he said.

She nodded coyly.

‘Presumably you all know me — Commander Brynd Lathraea, leader of the Night Guard? Leader of the military that has applied martial law across the city.’

‘Yeah, we got you,’ someone replied.

He hoped to lend a little gravitas to his presence, but they showed little sign of acknowledging that. ‘Let me get this right in my head: you’re similar to cultists, then? You use the old science in new ways?’

‘More or less, in layman’s terms, though we don’t really like cultists,’ Jeza said. ‘We deal with them, but they’re way too cliquey, and they speak in all these prophetic riddles, it’s ridiculous.’

‘So you use their technology,’ Brynd observed. ‘That is to say, I’m guessing here, this was all done with the assistance of relics.’

‘It was and it wasn’t,’ Jeza said. ‘There’s a whole mix of things — relics mainly, but we use some tribal refinements too, not to mention with palaeomancy you’re dealing with the creations of the natural world itself.’

‘I don’t think the commander needs to know all the details,’ Diggsy interrupted.

‘Sure he does,’ Jeza snapped. ‘Think about it.’

‘What’s wrong with you tonight, Jeza?’ Diggsy said softly.

‘We need him to trust us,’ she replied, then turned to Brynd. He noticed that her face revealed underlying conflicts within her. ‘Isn’t that right, commander?’

‘That depends what you need my trust for.’

Jeza took his arm in an informal manner and directed him along the lines of constructs, through the semi- darkness. Shadows seemed to exaggerate the sinister appeal of these things, but Brynd couldn’t help but wonder what they’d look like on the battlefield.

‘None of these function, right?’ Brynd asked.

‘If you mean move around like a living thing, then only some of them do. We’ve actually got a couple in an adjoining chamber, which are a little more polished, but just take in all of this for a moment. You can see the potential here, can’t you?’

‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘But what were you saying about the technology behind them. .?’

‘Yes, we work with a mixture of tribal knowledge and cultist science. Cultists haven’t really touched on this stuff — to our knowledge at least. They concentrate on the bits of science and the discipline of technological lore being handed down through the generations. They’re too full of shit to look further afield — you know, the tribes have some pretty powerful stuff, but no one gives them the time of day. They just dismiss it as magic.’

‘You have me intrigued,’ Brynd said.

‘I guess we were all lucky to have Lim.’

‘And who,’ Brynd asked, ‘is Lim?’

Jeza sighed. ‘He died during the fighting. But he was really, really good at this stuff. He came from one of the tribes on Varltung, which is how we got to work in this way.’

‘Off Empire? How did he make it out here?’

‘He ran away, came across on his own, learned the languages, did it all the hard way. They’ve got cultists on Varltung, too — did you know that?’

‘I didn’t,’ Brynd admitted.

‘Well, they have. Anyway, so Lim knew stuff that we didn’t. Spoke Jamur well enough to explain his findings to us.’

Brynd’s interest was most definitely piqued. He would indulge these youths a little longer. ‘You all just meet then. He comes to Villiren-’

‘Because anyone can make a go of things in a place where no one cares,’ Jeza said. ‘No one bothers us. No one pays us attention.’

Brynd nodded for her to go on. ‘You have my attention.’

She looked around at the others who were approaching to hear the conversation.

‘We all found each other, more or less. We’re the kind of people who fell through the gaps — either dead parents or kicked out of home or runaways. Those kind of things make you grow up fast.’

‘You’ve done all right for yourselves by the look of it,’ Brynd said. ‘But I don’t understand how a bunch of street kids could have come across cultist technology.’

Diggsy laughed. One of the others was shaking their head. Jeza said, ‘You don’t know much about cultists, commander.’

‘Excuse me?’ Brynd replied.

‘I mean, you might think they’re all high-powered and respect them and stuff, but. . what you might not know is that some orders take in kids.’

‘Of course, I’ve heard of such things.’

‘Have you heard of abuse rings? Have you heard of cultists taking in dozens of young children promising to show them all the riches they can imagine, only to lock them in windowless rooms? Bringing them out just to test technology on them, or sexually abuse them.’

A silence fell in which Brynd considered the way Jeza spoke. She seemed totally unmoved by her past.

‘My apologies,’ he said eventually. Tough kids, these ones. .

‘Ah, think nothing of it, commander,’ Diggsy said. ‘We were the lucky ones. We managed to scrape some knowledge together and get the hell out of there — others are still trapped, being beaten or worse. We got out, we stuck together and used the only thing we had — our knowledge of relics.’

‘Not to mention stealing a load of relics when we ran away,’ Jeza pointed out.

‘True,’ Diggsy smiled faintly, sadly.

There was a charm about these youths that Brynd admired. They’d done things the hard way — there was a lot to be said for that.

‘So tell me the details of what you’ve achieved here,’ Brynd suggested. ‘I want to know what makes your work so special.’

Jeza told him, in approximate terms. Cultists were vague and spoke in heavy jargon, but she explained things in a very simple way. Lim could conduct rituals with relics — remnants of old technology as well as gemstones and tribal accoutrements he had brought with him from Varltung. There were tribes who worshipped such things in distant, remote valleys of that island. And sources of energy were provided to reinvigorate dead ‘cells’ — or make body parts quite literally spark into life. Jeza called it palaeomancy. The others chimed in with colour and examples to clarify this life science. Brynd concluded he would never fully understand the ways of a cultist.

‘Tell me in plain terms: what can you offer the army?’ Brynd asked.

‘As I indicated in my letter we’re developing things you might be able to use on the battlefield — though these are currently still in development.’

‘I still need to see something.’

Jeza nodded and sauntered off into a dark corner of the room, where she rummaged around on a shelving unit. She returned a moment later clutching a small black item, and handed it over to Brynd, who examined it.

It was the size of a plate, half an inch thick, smooth on one side, and slightly curved. He attempted to bend it, but couldn’t, then tried a little harder — but still did not move it out of shape. ‘What am I looking at here?’ he asked.