chase, pushing past us.
'Jacob,' Wilson said, his voice nervous.
'Yeah. That guy wasn't changed yet.' I turned to the proper gentleman, who was beaming after his little war party. 'You have to stop them.'
'Yes, we do. We'll stop them all, one at a time. The dead stay dead.'
'No!' I shouted, grabbing the silk lapels of his morning coat. 'Not that. Your little friends, they're going to kill that guy. He's not one of them!'
'My boy, if you don't know what the Fehn look like, then…'
I turned and ran after the party. There was shooting up ahead, and yells. The alley was short, and opened onto a warren of back roads and tiny passages. It was the kind of roadway servants used, to get packages between buildings without spoiling the master's view with their presence.
The crowd was surging through this tiny space like a flood, running down alleyways and kicking over trash cans in their excitement. More than one shot was fired, all from different directions. The narrow passageways didn't allow for much traffic.
'Screw this,' Wilson spat, then cast aside his jacket and flipped his array of arms open. Just like a spider, he scrambled up one of the walls and made his way over the heads of the crowd, dagger-like talons finding purchase on both sides of the passageway. I struggled to keep him in sight.
'Bug!' someone screamed, and now the shooting turned toward Wilson. He flinched and disappeared around a corner. I yelled at the shooters, but they weren't listening. Things were getting out of hand.
I pushed through the press of bodies, shoving the crowd aside to get to Wilson. A scattered popping marked his passage, gun shot rattling off the tight alleys, voices raised above the din. Why were they even chasing him? How easily startled were these posh gentlemen, with their antique rifles? There was a crowd up ahead, surrounding a boarded-up shack, beating on the shutters and door with their priceless weapons. The men around me surged, and I fell against the wall and slid down to the muddy cobbles. They swept past.
The world trembled around me. A muster siren from some Badge station droned under the clouds, and the mob roared with it. Wood was breaking, and other screams joined the cacophony. Terrible screams. I pulled myself up and looked around for something to fight with. A club, a bar… anything. Anything to use against the madness of the crowd.
Wilson flashed past above, jumping from one building to the next, giving me a nervous look as he passed. I looked back down at the mob, tearing the shack to pieces with their bare hands, then followed Wilson's path. My heart was hammering. I tried to not hear the screams of terror behind me. I hadn't gone far before they stopped.
Wilson waited for me in a dark alley, perched above a tiny barricade of trash cans. His eyes were dark.
'I thought they had you,' I said.
'Keep your voice down,' he spat. Rows of tiny teeth glittered wetly in the dark. 'Those are old men. Fox hunters, and gamesmen. Do I look like a fox to you? Do I look like game?'
'No, I just…'
'Quiet.' He unfolded from the wall and walked with exaggerated care around the cans, motioning for me to follow.
The Fehn was there, curled into a ball, making soft, horrible sounds. I shook him by the shoulder. His skin was nearly dry. It took several seconds for him to realize I was there, and several more to stop shaking in fear. His eyes, when he finally looked at me, were a thousand miles away.
'Are you okay?' I asked, or tried to ask. He wasn't hearing me. And when he answered, it was in a voice that was a dry trickle in the back of his throat. He was out of water. The Fehn drink water like I breathe, their lungs are full of it, their voices are wet and sloppy. He coughed at me, a sound like mud settling in a creek bed. I pulled him to his feet. He could barely stand.
'He's been out of the river for a while. He might not even have been there during the attack,' Wilson said.
'Look at him. Look at his eyes. He was there. We need to get him some water, and then some shelter.' I pulled his arm over my shoulder. 'Let's get going.'
'Let's not,' said a voice at the end of the alley. The proper man.
'Leave him alone,' Wilson said. His voice was silken and dangerous. I understood why people feared the anansi, even the tame ones. Especially the tame ones. 'He's not one of them.'
'He's not? Fascinating.' The man strolled into the alley, some of his compatriots sneering behind him. 'Tell me, Mr. Not-Fehn. What brings you to our lovely city this morning? Was it a long trip?' He poked at the Fehn with the tip of a ruined spear, the barbs poking at his naked chest. 'You look wretchedly thirsty. Don't you think, boys?'
'Of course he's Fehn, idiot.' I stood as tall as I could, tried to summon a little of the old Burn family charm. 'He's not one of them, though. Look at him. He couldn't harm anyone. Now, if you'll let us through we'll be on our way.'
'Oh, of course. Immediately.' He turned to his nervous friends. 'Boys. Let these gentlemen through, will you?'
They raised their rifles and smiled. Wilson drew steel, and I drew iron. The Fehn tore away from my shoulder and ran.
The mob hesitated. They weren't really a mob, after all. Just some proper gentlemen riled into a frenzy by a great deal of fear and a little encouragement from their leader. I stepped forward and popped the old boy on the chin. He went down, but that seemed to do it for the crowd. They steeled their nerves, sighted their rifles, and fired. I bowled into Wilson and we went down.
The Fehn didn't get far. There was a lot of lead in the air, and a lot of it went into him. Still, he stumbled on down the alleyway, howling in that silent dry cough. The mob rushed forward, not bothering to reload their weapons, and fell upon him.
The sound was awful, a hollow thumping like rotten logs crashing together, over and over, and then a crackling like kindling being crushed. They screamed in triumph, lifted the limp form above their heads and swept down the alley into the street. They were still yelling when I got to my feet. The proper gentleman was still there, on one knee, glaring at me. His lip was bloodied.
'What the hell's wrong with you?' he asked. 'Standing with a bug, defending one of those… one of those monsters? What's wrong with you?'
I dusted off my pants and retrieved my pistol. Realized it was damp all the way through. Never would have fired, even if it had come to that. Wilson was already stalking down the alley, away from the scene of the murder. I flipped the pistol in my hand, then put it through the gentleman's teeth. He crumpled.
'Gentlemen need to stand, sometimes,' I said. 'Gentlemen don't need mobs.'
I put away the revolver and ran to catch up with Wilson. We walked past the tiny shed that the mob had shattered. There was blood on the wood, pooling between the cobbles, making a sluggish stream to the drain. Neither of us stopped.
T HERE WAS NO need to talk about where we were going, or where we had been. We walked in silence, Wilson's hands thrust into the damp pockets of his coat, his thin face turned down. The fog cleared, the clouds parted, and the sun came out. It did nothing for our mood, or for the scent of madness that settled over the city. The air smelled like smoke, but not woodsmoke. Unnatural things were burning, somewhere.
The streets weren't safe. The citizens of Veridon had taken protection into their own hands, each street watching out for itself, enforcing their own idea of who should be safe. We stuck to the houses. No one was inside, not in the Lower City. Several of the houses we walked through showed signs of struggle. One house, there was something banging around in the parlor. The door was nailed shut, a couch leaned against the frame. There were bodies, too. Fehn and regular folks, some of our pearl-white friends who used to be Fehn, as well.
'They're running,' Wilson whispered, as we looked down at the bloated remains of a Fehn. There was none of the tar-black blood we had seen during our fight out on the river. 'Something's happened, and they're trying to get out of the river as quickly as possible.'
'Coming up in people's homes, or at the docks. Throw in a couple reports of these cog-dead, and suddenly every Fehn is a monster.' I rubbed my eyes and looked around the house. It had been looted at least once. The
