perfect time to do it.
I had been wandering the warehouse floor while I thought, taking careful sips from the bottle. Now I was standing by the window I had broken to get in, last night. The clouds were dark and low, the whole city vibrating with the threat of truly heavy weather. The air had that smell of electricity and rain that preceded the worst storms of the season. I rubbed my head and looked down at the empty bottle. What was going on out there? What was happening in the city, while the rest of us hid inside and waited for the rain to pass?
'Who am I kidding?' I muttered, tossing the bottle aside. I emptied the two shells I had put into Jeremy the Badge last night, reloaded, and stretched the stiffness out of my back. 'I'm just no good at running.'
I hoisted myself up to the window and hopped down to the street. Thunder echoed down the delta, rolling through the empty avenues of Veridon like a bell tolling the last man's funeral in an empty city. Let it rain. Let the storm fall. I was ready.
Everything was wrong. It wasn't just that I had never seen Veridon like this: quiet, dead, the streets empty and the factories shuttered. I couldn't imagine what kind of political pressure had to be applied to turn the madness of my city into this still, empty thing. That was wrong, of course, but there was something more. Deeper.
Because of the curfew, I had to travel on side streets and in the underground passages that no honest citizen even knew about. Veridon had been built over the bones of a river delta, marbled with tributaries and creeks that fed into the three larger rivers that defined the boundaries of the city. Bridges and streets had been built over these bodies, and sometimes the water was diverted, either intentionally or by some architectural blunder. There were a lot of dry rivers under the city of Veridon, and a lot of flooded cisterns, too. Lots of ways to get from place to place, as long as you didn't mind walking through darkness. I was used to it.
I hadn't really expected to be alone, either. Curfew or no, the underground markets were going to keep moving. Especially with the legitimate harbors cut off, I thought that the dark passages would be alive with contraband smugglers and the kind of underhanded merchants I had spent most of the last six years doing business with. There was nothing. The passages were empty, the cisterns echoed my footsteps, no matter how quietly I stepped, and the dry rivers were mine to wander alone. There was more going on here than a curfew. The city had been paralyzed, like a patient on a table. Still and cold, as good as dead.
I started my expedition with no real purpose in mind. Just wanted to get back among the criminals. Someone who might know something about what was going on and be willing to talk about it directly, rather than as part of some political game. An hour of dreary wandering made it clear that there wasn't anyone down here to talk to. And an hour after that, I saw why.
Veridon lies at the foot of the river Reine, by far the largest of the three rivers that border the city. Both the Edb and Dunje flow into it, bringing trade down from the high plains to the east of Veridon. The Reine itself flows to the south, until it tumbles over the enormous waterfall that once marked the edge of the known world. It was the discovery of the zepliner that opened up the market downfalls, and gave Veridon a certain amount of political power, power that it eventually translated into absolute dominance. The Reine itself is a deep and mysterious river. Its waters hold the strange wreckage that the Church of the Algorithm treat as found revelation, as well as the underwater dwellings of the Fehn.
Part of the city extends over the Reine, held up by the piles of piers that laced together to become streets and houses and, eventually, just another part of the city. But underneath the houses, the river still flowed. There was a shore, a miles-long floodwall of dark stone, cut and shaped at the birth of the city. It was at the floodwall that I found the traffic I expected. Sort of.
They looked like a congregation of the dead. Thousands of pearl-white heads, standing shoulder to shoulder, facing out into the river. Perfectly still. Their numbers continued over the wall, disappearing slowly into the tide until they were just beneath the water, their heads breaking the surface with each wave like a morbid reef. They were silent, standing guard. The city was cut off from the river, at least by this route. They stood ten deep in some places, all along the bank. Without a word, I crept away from them. Whatever magic commanded their attention, it didn't ask them to turn around. All that saved me, probably.
There were other ways to the river. Many houses built over the river had a private dock built into their basements. But whatever force had organized this blockade wouldn't have ignored that, not if they'd taken so much trouble to block the whole bank under the city. I shuddered to think what had become of those households, what steps had been taken.
This was more than a curfew. It was a blockade. We were quarantined from the rest of the world. Why? What was going on in Veridon, that we needed to be sealed in until it was over?
Did I want to know, or did I want to find a place deep enough to ride it out, and bury myself? I had the feeling that the people I wanted to talk to, the criminals and professional troublemakers, had smelled the trouble in the air and done just that. And three years ago I would have been with them. Hell, this morning I would have been with them. I left Wilson in a huff last night with the full intention of getting the hell out of town. Hide. Run.
And now I was considering finding the wrong people, the ones who might actually know what was going on, and finding out for myself. Maybe do something about it. What had happened?
I stopped in an open cistern, one that had drained years ago and was now nothing more than an empty stone room deep under the streets. The corners were piled with trash, and a little light trickled in from a grate high up in the wall. Probably a street vent on some curb, something people walked by everyday without considering. Without looking down. I sighed and rubbed my face, then put my hands in my pockets and pulled the coat up around my shoulders. Cold down here.
My hand brushed against something cold in my pocket. I took it out. The badge, with the tiny bullet-nick in the side. Chance encounters, I thought. The kind of chance encounter that changes your life. Maybe. I laughed. Chance, like that kind of thing ever happened to me.
I stopped laughing. It couldn't have been chance. It was too weird, too sudden. Not that I had stumbled upon them, that was just Jeremy the Badge's bad luck. When I stumbled into people, it was usually bad luck for them. But that that happened the night before the curfew. What had he said? Ricky became an heir last night. Bad night to be an heir.
I tapped the badge against my hand, staring up at the grate. Where was I, exactly? Somewhere in the lower third of the city, maybe near the barge market? I could count two families who made their homes in this district, both of them industrialists. I probably wouldn't get the friendliest reception at either house. Nearest Founder was Tomb, and there was no way I was going there. Not going home, either. Never going home. Anyone else was just too far to risk during the curfew.
I sighed, slipped the bullet-gnawed badge into my pocket, and started the long climb back up to daylight.
They weren't expecting someone at the door. Why would they, with the whole town shut down? And these were the people who had shut it down, so they knew the extent of the blockade. If anyone wasn't expecting company today, it was these people.
There weren't any guards, which surprised me. I know this was one of the Councilors' estates because it was the hereditary home of the Nailers. Nailer and his wife never had any kids, after five generations of slim procreation, and so they sold the seat while it was still worth something and took off to the country. One of the happier succession stories. No one died, no one went broke. It was my understanding that the seat had changed hands a couple times since then, some of those transitions peaceful, some quite violent. But when I walked up to the gates, I had to check the address and my memory. The exterior was well maintained. Not like it was abandoned. But no guards, and the lock on the gate looked like it had been forced. Not a good sign. Still, I was a little surprised to be met by the barrel of a shotgun when the door eventually opened.
'You don't know me,' I said to the pair of eyes peering at me through the crack in the door.
'Not the best thing to say,' shotgun-eyes said. A young voice. Wonders never cease. I judged the height of the eyes and the angle of the shotgun. Just a kid, really.
'Is mom home, kiddo?' I asked.
'Mom isn't,' said a voice from my side. 'But his sister is.'
I turned to see the lovely Veronica Bright, leading four housies out of the bushes, all of them with short rifles trained at my heart.
