deep into the stone. A tiny metal hatch to one side seemed designed for dropping in coins.
'I am indeed. And there's no way in, Jeryd,' Malum replied coolly. 'There's no point looking. They're specially designed by cultists for safety.'
'Safety for who?' Jeryd asked.
'Right now, your own – but mostly for my women.'
'Do they normally just sit there?'
'They strip behind the glass for money, and lonely men gagging for excitement drop a coin in that hatch to the side.'
'And the men…?'
'Watch,' Malum replied, 'or masturbate. There's no sex, the women are protected. Everyone's happy.'
'How come I couldn't see you until you turned that lantern on?'
'Cultist glass – it's good stuff. I got a lot of contacts.' His tone changed. 'Get to business: why were you asking for me by name?'
'Someone gave me your details in connection with some bad meat I was sold.'
Malum laughed. 'That it? Just meat?'
'I've reason to believe that there is meat of questionable origin being circulated in this city. The trader said you helped put it about. All I want to know is where that meat is coming from.'
'You got guts, coming here, asking for this.'
'Either that, but quite possibly because I'm stupid.'
Malum grunted a laugh. 'I like you, investigator. Look, people are beginning to ask those kind of questions, and I don't like to have my name associated with such triviality. Tell you what, you leave me the fuck alone if I give you a name and an address?'
Jeryd could see through the tough-guy talk, but didn't want to anger him. 'Agreed.'
'Voland. That's who we get it from. I've done some business with him recently – other than distribution – and to be honest, I'm not happy with what he provides. He's known to me as the niche-maker, among other things, and he's let me down over poor equipment that just stopped on the job. I'm more than happy to see trouble go his way, by way of the Inquisition. So you see I'm not unreasonable.'
'What did he do?'
'You ask a lot of questions.'
'That's what I get paid for – not that you can call it much.'
'People have niches – and remember, I've got a permit from the portreeve for this establishment. Look in booth seven on your way out, and you can see some of Voland's work. I'll put the light on and activate the glass. And never ask for my name again – otherwise I can't vouch for your safety.'
Light faded to black, then something clicked inside the hatch to one side. Jeryd opened the little drawer and picked up a piece of paper with an address written on it. 'Thanks,' Jeryd said, though he didn't know if Malum was even there any more.
Voland… a strange name.
Pocketing the note, Jeryd got up and exited the room. He lit a match to navigate the corridor and found booth seven at the far end. He twisted the handle and the door slipped back smoothly. Behind the display area, a soft light shone down from above, illuminating a vibrant, crimson-walled area. Jeryd approached thinking about niches and what that might mean, when he spotted the woman's body on the floor.
No, not a woman.
A… thing.
Jeryd pressed his hands against the glass to steady himself, his stomach churning at the sight. Garbed only in white lingerie, the woman-creature possessed the legs of some animal, like a horse – though he couldn't tell precisely. Hunched in a foetal position, on closer inspection her entire body possessed the texture of fine fur, splattered with blood, a trail of which issued from her mouth. A horn protruded from her forehead, like in some mythical beast, while blood-stained blonde hair tumbled across the floor. And all of this – all of this mess – was highlighted by three other mirrors allowing a full view of the vileness on display.
What the hell was this Voland producing? What kind of person… what kind of city permits this stuff? Who would even pay to see this?
Niche-maker.
Jeryd ran to a bucket in one corner of the booth and promptly vomited.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Dead forest after dead forest, and littered with snow: it was a landscape on constant repeat. Anything deciduous had long been killed off, and only various evergreen species persisted, banking up steep slopes into the dark distance. The horses helped them trudge northwards through the thick woodlands of Folke, the beasts insouciant of the hostile environment, just plodding along, showing fright at nothing.
Randur felt as if the four of them were now quite alone, despite these elusive beings that shifted behind serried rows of tree trunks. For the first couple of hours each day, Munio would hardly shut up, but after that they found the contemplative silence comforting. The only utterances then were instructions to guide them along certain well-trodden routes, or over difficult terrain.
Metal constructs, gargantuan rusted skeletons, their foundations buried deep in the earth, leaned towards the sky. Blood-tinged sunlight filtered through their even-latticed configurement, and the travellers' path took them directly underneath, between the thick shadows. Vegetation had not fully reclaimed these relics, the first exposed structures he'd witnessed in a long time.
People talked of such remains being found off the southern coast, but they had long since formed artificial reefs, and become almost living things once again, contributing to the natural cycles. Rumours intimated there were also abandoned cities to be found, civilizations completely lost to the ocean. Before him now was a sense of history on Earth so compelling that he felt as though he himself barely existed at all.
Stranger, though, was how last night he'd experienced weird dreams of fur-covered creatures – with wings – swooping down to stare at him; and when he lurched awake to see what the hell they were, there was only the eternal calm of the night sky above him. It had happened for two nights in a row now, as they sheltered among ancient ruins. Their ghostly presence disturbed him.
*
On the third day they joined old pathways that would die away suddenly into the overgrowth. They'd cut their way through two small, dead communities, then along open tracks between desolate logging camps, or scarred and ragged opencast minescapes. Rika and Eir both seemed eager to understand the Empire's diverse territories better, and questioned why these communities were all abandoned.
Randur told them just what the Empire signified out here.
'When the Imperial armies claimed this island hundreds of years ago they declared they'd impose infrastructure and order. They sent the local tribes packing – unless they were considered civilized, which, roughly translated, meant abandoning their old ways for those of Villjamur. Quite a few were also forced into slavery.'
'I heard of prisoners committing serious atrocities against soldiers who merely asked them to work…' Rika said, defensively.
'Did you ever question, my lady, the source of your information? They were indigenous races who didn't want foreign soldiers disrupting their communities. Empire folk claimed it'd ensure great wealth for everyone. Well, that great wealth was sucked off to the trading cities, primarily Villjamur and Villiren. And even then it mostly fell into the hands of the few people who controlled the forges, especially those manufacturing weapons of war. They made a fat pile of cash, and more war always meant more business. They relied upon constant warfare, in fact. In the real histories, ones that weren't rewritten by Empire-employed scholars, the people of Folke were heavily repressed and their will broken through season after season of starvation. A few local rebellions brought more military here, and then, a few decades back, once the population had submitted completely, the formerly booming markets changed – or the Council collapsed them. Different metals were now required, and these original mining communities were killed off. Just like that. And large numbers of people were forced to leave the island. So that's
