“I’m watching your back,” Warwick said. He had an old revolver in his hand. Damned if he knew it would even work. Medicine looked more comfortable with his own weapon: a long knife that looked even crueller than a Verger’s blade.
“I know,” Sean said, cramming his powders into the lock. He lit a short fuse, turned from the door, and covered his ears. There was a soft detonation, Warwick had been expecting something louder, but it was enough. The door opened, Sean poked his head through doorway.
“Mr Cadell-”
“Shut it. Shut it,” came a soft voice.
“I can’t,” Sean said.
A hand snatched out and dragged him through the opening, lightning fast.
Then the screaming started.
In the few seconds it took for Warwick to reach the door, Sean was dead. Cadell, little more than skin wrapped around bone looked up, his mouth rimmed with blood.
“Sorry,” he breathed. “Sorry.”
But it didn’t stop him swallowing down chunks of Sean’s flesh.
“Sorry.”
Warwick raised the gun, aimed it at Cadell’s head.
“No,” Medicine snarled, grabbing his arm, and pushing Warwick out of the room.
“We need him,” Medicine said.
“He just killed my brother.”
“Get out there,” Medicine said, pointing to the hallway. “People will be coming. Keep our exit clear.”
Warwick fled the room. The single door leading into the basement opened, a Verger stormed through and Warwick discovered that his revolver did indeed work.
“We have to go,” he yelled
There were too many of them. Warwick expected he would soon be dead, he thought of his wife, of his brave son.
Forgive me. He fired at the next Verger, trying to keep them at the door. How they were ever going to make it out was beyond him. He’d use up his bullets and then he would just sit on the floor.
Cadell was a blur racing past and the Vergers began to scream.
“You don’t want to go in there,” Medicine said, as Warwick walked back towards the room. “Warwick!”
But he didn’t stop, Sean deserved that much at least. In the centre of the room was a bloody pile of broken bones and a skull. That was all, nothing to signify that he had ever been his brother. The room itself was bare but for claw marks in the walls. We were so stupid. What had they unleashed upon the world?
It took Warwick a while to notice the screaming had stopped. It never would inside his skull.
“Hurry, Warwick,” Medicine yelled, his voice cracking. “We need to go. Now!”
Warwick left the room.
“Hurry.” Medicine slung a cloak over the much less emaciated Cadell, though he remained more bone than meat. The Old Man couldn’t meet Warwick’s gaze.
“I’m sorry,” Cadell whispered.
Warwick lifted his pistol, pointed it at Cadell’s withered face. His hand didn’t shake. He took a deep breath. What have we done? He lowered the gun.
Bring him back, the other voices chorused. Bring him back. Warwick looked at the blasted door, that wasn’t going to happen, just as Sean wasn’t going to walk out that door.
Warwick stepped over the ruined bodies of the Vergers. Turned his back on the Old Man, and the broken door.
“I’m sorry.” And that was all Cadell said for two days, over and over again, he didn’t say it enough times. He could never say it enough times.
Chapter 38
All books now available in Powder form. Engage with a narrative in ways hitherto unknown. Fiction, Non- Fiction, Maps take your drug of choice.
Pre-emptive Counselling provided free of charge.
• Matheson’s Books – Summer Catalogue.
David found a bookstore, the Vellum Shore. The place made him ache for home and the days when a bookshop was enough. The shop was poorly stocked, but David reasoned that had more to do with the imminent evacuation of the city rather than poor ordering. He bought a small foldout map of Chapman and a sachet of map powder to go with it.
Now he had a chance of finding Chadwick Street and the safe house.
Of course, he had already found a supplier of Carnival. That had been the easiest thing of all and never knew for certain if he’d see Cadell again.
David had enough money left over to buy a fried sausage at a street stall. The thing tasted lovely. The anticipatory buzz of the Carnival, the festival itself all helped to lift his mood. He ate the sausage as he sat under a statue of Councillor Elmont, founder of Chapman. He unfolded the map he’d bought over his legs. Chadwick Street was at the other end of Chapman. His shortest route followed the wall. He took a little powder and the wall came into focus. Grey old stone, fringed with dead mould. Wanted posters for Buchan and Whig fluttered in the wind.
DEAD OR ALIVE. Less life met with Largition.
The image ruined his mood. He finished his meal, strode two streets over and climbed the stony steps to the great circle wall.
He was sweaty, breathless and dizzy by the time he reached the top of the wall, but the dry wind stripped away the sweat and his breath returned to him.
From up here, you could see everything with almost as much clarity as Map Powder provided. Chapman was a city of circles within circles, split only by the fat River Weep. Well, a tributary of it; the Lesser Weep. the Greater Weep disgorged into the sea twenty miles north of the city. Where Mirrlees was undulate and coiled around the river, up and down and side to side, her streets like a nest of serpents, Chapman was an example of much more careful civic planning.
Everything was constructed around a central landmark: the Field of Flight. David could just make it out, patches of green through the balloon and Aerokin heavy sky. To the west of it was Chapman’s Tower of Engineers a smaller version of Mirrlees’ Ruele tower. With night just a few hours off, its twin searchlights were already lit, at its base would be the famous motto of the Engineers: “In Knowledge Truth. In Truth Perfection”.
From the Southern Wall where David stood, you could see the Deserted Suburbs. The gaudy wrap of the Festival of Float failed to conceal the poor condition of Chapman from even the most cursory of inspections.
The streets were empty. Only around the pubs and the buildings near the Field of Flight could people be seen in any numbers. And those areas were overflowing with crowds, few from what David could tell, actually locals.
David stood on the Southern Wall, staring into the city and then out beyond the wall to the Roil, alternating between two forms of dreadfulness, though one was by far the worst. Down south, past the lost suburbs there was little to look at… or too much.
Every time he glanced that way, a thrill of terror rushed through him. It was a visceral dread. Indeed, the mere sight of it gripped and damned and made every doubt come bubbling up like a sickness.
The Roil dwarfed his imagination; transformed Chapman to an insignificant scrap of human clutter. This close it, and its vast mute prophecy, was impossible to ignore. How were they ever going to stop that?
David had seen Cadell work his power over cold, he had seen the sky rain ice and the frozen remains of poor creatures caught in that furious boiling chill. However, impressive as it had been, the Roil made it seem like nothing. But then he saw, in the distance far, far in the heart of the Roil, the coruscating finger of light that was the
