Joining her, he still couldn't believe what they were standing on – a city-ship that apparently floated along, using sources of energy he couldn't get his head around. The texture of the clouds looked unusual from this angle, the inverse ripples carpeting the distance. Only by seeing all this did he realize just how far he'd come since he had first left Folke for Villjamur.
'I don't know,' she yawned.
The ship was easier to see at this hour, and he was astounded by how extensively moss and lichen blanketed the deck. The platform itself seemed so long that Randur could barely see the end of it.
'Good morning.'
The face was hers, Rika's, but the voice was utterly different. Her clothing had changed also. Dressed like a man, in khaki breeches, a black shirt and boots, she looked like an assassin more than an empress. She strode purposefully towards them, Artemisia some distance behind. Everything about Rika's posture and her manner told Randur that this was someone reinvented, but he was surprised to see it happen so quickly, so thoroughly. Was that a blade hanging from her belt? Leather straps ran diagonally across her shoulder, and he stole a glance to see if there was a sword nestling behind, but there was nothing. Why was she dressed like this? What had happened to this formerly passive woman?
The transformation disarmed him.
Eir moved nearer to her sister and seemed uncertain how to begin. 'What happened last night? We heard-?'
'I was absolutely fine,' Rika replied sternly.
'You look different.'
'I am different.'
Eir sighed and shifted back by Randur's side. He placed a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged him away. Rika regarded them both as if they were merely a part of the ship.
Artemisia reached them, unchanged, as if she never could be any different. Her skin looked lighter now, but the ridges of muscle in her arms were still clearly defined.
'We're heading for Villiren immediately,' Rika declared.
'Still to see the commander?' Randur asked.
'Yes. Artemisia has offered to aid us in combat, so while I'm there I'll persuade the Night Guard to give me their allegiance. Once they're made aware of the situation, we're certain they will comply. From there we can build a platform to seize back the Imperial throne from Urtica – by force, if we must. That man will suffer for what he's done to us.'
Seize it by force, Randur thought. Make him suffer. These surely aren't her own words?
'The allegiance of the Night Guard lies with the Empire,' Eir observed. 'Not you, personally.'
'Then their allegiance will change.'
Randur was impressed with Rika's tone, her firmness. Her manner suggested things might be done with a little more zest at last.
'And just what can Artemisia do?' Eir turned to face the pale-blue woman. Randur wished she wouldn't behave so petulantly in front of the killer, not that Artemisia seemed to care much.
'I will turn whatever fighting there is in favour of the defenders,' Artemisia said. 'My presence alone will probably cause quite a stir. I believe, also, that I can set the Exmachina on course to disable the gateways through which they've infiltrated. I might lose the ship temporarily, but I can salvage enough equipment for me to return home.'
'Why didn't you just stop them coming through earlier?' Eir said.
'It is not a permanent solution. My disabling of the gates will not last that long. The Akhaioi will open them within… weeks perhaps. The technology they use is sophisticated enough. It's rather like drilling a borehole through existence.'
Randur didn't understand the concepts or the philosophy, and being made to feel ignorant merely angered him. 'Let me get this right,' he said. 'We go to Villiren – if it's still there and we're not too late – and join a war in which we'll most likely perish.'
'Worry not. Rika will come to no harm under my guidance.' Artemisia placed a hand on Rika's shoulder. 'And we will aid the Jamur dynasty, as part of our deal.'
Eir looked disgusted. 'What did this thing do to you?'
'She did nothing,' Rika replied coolly.
'Last night – I heard you.'
'I don't know what you're talking about, sister.'
'Look, I think we're all wondering, did she fuck you last night?' Randur interrupted. Everyone turned to glower at him, and he could sense their collective rage. He held his hands up, apologetically, knowing that he had been a tad too blunt.
Artemisia towered in front of him, then pushed her way past. A dozen Hanuman spiralled above their heads, and she communicated to them in that guttural language. Then she turned to regard the group of humans, but only Randur was paying her any attention. Eir and Rika stood gazing at each other, the fracture between them painfully clear.
Artemisia announced, 'We leave immediately.'
T HIRTY-EIGHT
They scoured the streets house by house after nightfall, the Bloods, searching for vacant properties or rented accommodation where a Night Guard soldier and a cultist woman might have taken shelter, and all the while a snowstorm was gusting bitterly around them, never settling.
Malum had requested for his gang to embrace their more feral nature. His anger had connected with some deeper, weirder aspect of his vampyrism. They were masked and fuming and filled with purpose. They swaggered. They strutted and hollered out names to women heading home from the bars. They brandished hand-signals to intimidate the other gangs, who were hanging back in the shadows: Come fight us, you cowards. Fuck the Dog Gata Devils. There were stand-offs and mock scraps, name-callings and a sense of belonging. This was a subtle, directionless conflict.
Malum, wearing his surtout and mask and heavy gloves, flashed his blades in the eyes of the hesitant until they whimpered their responses to him.
'No, we ain't seen nothing.'
'Please, we're just two old sisters.'
'Fuck you doin' at this time of night? Oh, it's you, Malum – I didn't mean to be rude, I…'
He found out where all the slum landlords were located, those who had enjoyed licence from the portreeve to rip off the poor, who possessed no housing rights, and were without provision of firegrain for nights at a time. He beat them up because they were of little help to him, and maybe because they deserved it. One guy Malum decided he particularly despised was even chosen as a blood donor. In the man's new-built Scarhouse mansion Malum's gang gleefully ripped into him, punching their teeth into all his major veins and arteries. Malum took a glass from the man's own drinks cabinet, filled it with fresh blood, before raising it in a toast to his victim's good health.
*
Fifty gang members in all sifted through the likeliest streets anistricts. They kicked down doors, surprising couples who were rutting like animals; disturbed three old cultists who projected a net of energy into the doorway to block their entry; outraged a disgruntled rumel belonging to the Inquisition who was wearing some terrible- coloured breeches.
The first real clue he got was from a lonely fat tenement owner he caught entertaining himself with a porno golem – Malum vaguely wondered if it might have been supplied by himself: 'Yeah, they was here, the floor below, about two nights ago, though mainly the woman 'cos the fella keeps slipping off back to the barracks, like. But they only stayed a night.'
'Where'd they go?'
The man shrugged and meekly pulled the sheets across to try to hide the writhing pink golem as it fell off his
