Beef, he could sense it even through the can.
“Thank you,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
David envied her.
He ate alone, watching the city fall behind the horizon, his back turned to her because he was ashamed how he looked when he ate. The meat was cold, and salty, there was no blood to it, it was unsatisfying. When he was done, he wiped his face, walked past her and checked the larder, certainly a lot of food.
He opened another can and ate it too.
And by the time he was done, Hardacre was little more than a soft and fading glow, the dark around it possessed of a great and terrible authority.
He hoped that Whig paid good attention to the note David had left him. David worried that he was leaving them buried to the neck in trouble, hadn’t he been doing that all along? Since the moment he’d run from his assassinated father — the body still twitching — he’d been leaving behind one darkness after another, and more bodies than he wished to dwell upon.
What did it matter that he was doing it again?
After all, if he failed, then none of them had that much time left anyway. Old Men or Roil, there really wasn’t a lot of difference. At least the Old Men wouldn’t have them twitching to the commands of Witmoths; the Old Men’s one command was die.
Simple.
Even the biggest fool could understand that.
CHAPTER 17
Let us be honest. When all lost their heads, Stade didn’t. Madness leads to madness, but his was a particularly rational one. How are we to blame with such distance? With distance, quite easily, blame and analysis are all we have left. Stade rose to power because no one, Engineer or Confluent alike, ever offered a viable alternative.
When others faltered, he remained strong and persuasive. A charm that combined political aptitude with coercion.
MIRRLEES-ON-WEEP, TEN YEARS AGO 1500 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL EDGE
Two days after the great storm when, for the first time in a generation, the mighty gates to the levees had been closed, Stade walked through a city swept clean. But that could never hide the nature of this suburb. Excrement remained excrement, no matter how you scrubbed it.
Tomlinson Pharmaceuticals was built in a neighbourhood less than salubrious, places that Stade tried to avoid because he had grown up in them. He did not like to revisit the scrambling hell of his childhood, but there were times that such excursions couldn’t be avoided. And he could trust this work to no one. Two Vergers walked with him, a new recruit by the name of Tope — who had already proven himself loyal — and Mr Sheff, an old and canny bastard Stade had known since he’d first joined the Council. Sheff knew when to whisper and when to murder, and could differentiate between the two.
A young boy tried to sell them the latest street drug, fresh blood obviously, or he would have recognised two Vergers. Sheff snarled at him, Tope reached for his knife, but at a headshake from Stade, he slid it back into its sheath. And the boy, wide-eyed, sprinted for his life down the nearest alleyway.
Stade smiled, then frowned. He'd been that boy once, he wished him well. Tomlinson himself met them at the door. A nervous bird-like man with owlish glasses that he kept sliding up and down his nose, an irritating tic that had made it easy for Stade to hate the man from the beginning.
He led them through a building that was the picture of industry. Machines whirred, men and women worked at various conveyor belts, sorting and packaging. Tomlinson's staff must have numbered at least a hundred people. Obviously the production of salves and map powder was quite lucrative.
There was no small talk — certainly no talk of the Grand Defeat. Stade only got that in the halls of Parliament now, thanks to that damn Medicine Paul. At least Tomlinson was deferential, he opened the door to his office, a big room on a mezzanine with a window that afforded a view of the workers below. Stade wondered if they were as terrified of Tomlinson as the chemist was of him. At a nod from the mayor, Sheff pulled the blinds to the window closed. Stade could see sweat beading on his host's brow.
Stade could tell that Tomlinson hated him. No matter how hard the chemist tried to hide it, or his fear, it shone bright in his eyes. Still, he walked to his desk, picked up a clipboard and scanned its contents, as though the mayor was just like any other client.
“All of the subjects have acted similarly under the drug,” Tomlinson said. “A low level of euphoria, a gentle calm. Though it can have side effects, a certain haphazardness of character, moments of clarity giving way to confusion. An addict could be quite conflicted, almost mad.”
“Everything is weighted with… consequence, Mr Tomlinson.”
“To scramble the mind so, it is-”
“Exactly what modern medicine does, and this is a very specific form of medicine. Now, the drug is easy to produce?”
“Yes, and to produce cheaply. We can have it in the… facilities within a month.”
Facility was a polite way of saying prison, those groaning, fetid pits where the damned would cling to a drug like this. Stade chewed on his cigar. It would start with the prisons and spread out from there. He said, “Good. The, um, recipe
— I want it distributed as widely as possible.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Tomlinson rose to his full height, almost as tall as Stade. “This drug will reduce the will of a city.”
“Mr Tomlinson, I am not putting it in the water. “ Stade loomed over the chemist, tapped a little ash onto the ground. “Believe me, there are far more dangerous things than this drug you have invented. Far more dangerous things.”
Tope cleared his throat. And Tomlinson’s eyes grew pleasingly wide.
Stade said, “Of course you have nothing to fear. This is a legal contract.”
Tomlinson took a deep breath. He walked to his desk, watched closely by Tope and Sheff. He pulled a file from the teetering pile of notes. “Everything you need is here.”
Stade walked from the building; the boy was back on the corner, but the moment he saw Stade and his Vergers, he ran. Tope gave him a look, and Stade shook his head, in a few weeks he would be selling Stade’s new drug. Though perhaps not on this corner, there would be too many bad memories here.
The production of drugs was such a dangerous activity, all those chemicals. Fires got out of hand all too quickly. It would be a terrible tragedy of course, and as a mayor who had risen on the back of small business he would speak at the funeral. One did such things for important constituents: it was a sign of respect.
He couldn’t risk anyone in Parliament finding this out. Not even Warwick, he wouldn’t understand. His friend wouldn’t understand a lot of things that Stade had put into action. A week after the Grand Defeat, and still no one seemed to understand that the world was ending.
Rain clouds had gathered. Stade pulled Tomlinson’s file under his jacket, and scowled. He hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella.
Part Two
Drift
I should have taken David with me, not left him with the monster Cadell. Though in truth where I had ended up was just as dangerous. The worst thing was all the time I had: to doubt, to regret, to grow fearful. I'd been left alone, my companions murdered, my city squandered for something that was already lost to it, an Underground that
