City of Hope and Despair (2 page)

TWO

From the Streets Below to the Market Row,

From taverns and stalls to the Shopping Halls,

From trinkets so cheap to exclusive boutique,

From the Cloth-Makers' Row and people who sew,

To haberdashers, tailors, and upward we go…

His name was M'gruth and he was on a mission. Yet these were unsettled times. Brief days ago gangs of subverted street-nicks had rampaged through the City Below, looting and killing, throwing themselves into pitched battles with the City Watch while strange spiderlike mechanisms haunted the shadows. Nothing like it had been seen since the war. The Maker was dead, the Dog Master was dead, and the street-nicks were now a broken force; it would be years before they could hope to re-establish their grip on the under-City and its trade, if ever. In the aftermath, territories were shifting, unexpected alliances had been forged and new powers had begun to emerge and flex their muscles, keen to fill the vacuum left by the street-nicks' demise. Any journey undertaken at such a time promised to be a hazardous one, as the various pretenders scrambled to establish a position of prominence in the new order.

  Most chilling of all, the Blade had once again returned to the streets of the City Below.

  So M'gruth's movements were governed by two conflicting imperatives: haste and caution.

  But M'gruth was a professional. He had lived with such pressures all his life. His progress was therefore swift, while every move was considered and every shadow scrutinised.

  As a result, he was not the wisest choice of target for an ambush, as the three over-confident nicks were about to discover to their cost. Over-confident, because they must have known who he was; not by name, perhaps, but certainly by generic type. After all, it was written all over his body. Yet still they were lying in wait.

  The terrain was broken; derelict buildings and shattered homes – the former pens and living quarters, guard stations, cook houses, weapons stores, practice yards – all part of the enclave that had sprung up around the Pits. Empty now, abandoned when that hellhole closed down; gone to wrack and ruin and left to the mercies of looters and scroungers, local folk who had undoubtedly dismantled the buildings piece by piece, wasting little time in taking what they needed for their own homes. Death by increment; no more than anywhere associated with the Pits deserved.

  He ducked down behind a partially demolished wall, heading at a right angle to his original course. Crouching low and moving quickly, he circled and came up behind the first kid while the would-be ambushers must still have been wondering what had delayed him, where he'd gone to. The lad had a crude sling in one hand and a pile of half a dozen oval stones beside him. The weapon was made from braided rope, even to the pocket in which the shot would sit. M'gruth crept up unnoticed, tapped the kid on the shoulder and, as the wide-eyed boy turned quickly around, waggled an admonishing finger in the lad's face as he struck him hard across the forehead, using the pommel of his sword as a cudgel.

  Transferring the blade to his left hand, M'gruth took up the sling from where the unconscious nick had dropped it and fitted one of the stones into the vacant pocket. Peering beyond the small heap of rubble the kid had chosen to hide behind, he saw the second nick, now standing straight, craning his neck to try and spot the man the group were intending to ambush.

  M'gruth whipped the sling round and around, only a couple of times, before letting fly. Perhaps the nick heard the sling slicing through the air as it spun or even the missile hurtling towards him, certainly he looked around just in time to meet the stone head-on. Two down.

  The third, closer than the second and doubtless alerted by the collapse of his mate, raised his head and stared at M'gruth, who smiled and lifted his arm, hand still clutching the sling.

  "Are you mad? See these?" and he rotated the arm, displaying the continuous pattern of ochre tattoos that ran up the limb before disappearing beneath his shirt to re-emerge at his neck and run on to adorn the bald pate of his head. "I'm a Tattooed Man for Thaiss's sake! Did you really think the three of you could take me?"

  "S-sorry." The nick was backing away, fear obvious in every contour of his body.

  "I don't have time to deal with you properly now, so breck off!" This last the Tattooed Man yelled.

  The boy needed no further encouragement, but immediately turned and ran, almost tripping over his own feet in his haste to escape. M'gruth smiled. The irony of being attacked here of all places hadn't escaped him. He'd enjoyed this little diversion, for all that it had caused him a momentary delay. The thought brought his focus firmly back to the mission, and he hurried on.

  If he were ever asked to name one place in the world he would least like to return to, this would be it; but needs must. He was now in the very shadow of that detested theatre of blood known as the Pits.

  A moment later and he was passing under the arena's walls, something he had vowed never to do again.

  He heard them before he saw them. Sounds that came rolling down the tunnel like echoes from a past he had tried so hard to forget. Sounds that sent cold shivers tingling down his spine, causing him to falter, to stumble to a halt for a second with his eyes closed. For a moment he was back there, sword clasped tightly in his hand, guts screwed up in a knot of terror and heart pumping with both fear and anticipation, as he wondered whether this was to be the day he died. It was the sound of combat that had halted him; the harsh clash of steel meeting steel, the gritty shuffle of feet manoeuvring for better balance, the grunt of expelled air from extreme exertion as muscles powered an attack or strained to repulse one. M'gruth gathered himself and ran on, reassured that he was not yet too late and afraid that if he delayed any longer he might be.

  He burst from the tunnel into a large amphitheatre, flanked by curving banks of seats to all sides – crude wooden benches, many of which were now broken or absent entirely, presumably scavenged for material and fuel like the buildings outside since it wasn't that long ago the place had closed down. Other than that, everything was much as he remembered it. The Pits, where people paid to see men die, and where friend was forced to slaughter friend simply to survive. M'gruth had always imagined that, if viewed from above, the arena and its seating would resemble some wide-opened mouth screaming obscenities to the heavens, those on the floor of the Pit a snack about to be swallowed by that unholy maw.

  On this occasion the snack in question consisted of two women, girls really, though it was often hard to remember the fact, especially when you saw them like this, with knives drawn and battle joined. Both were dressed in black, even down to the leather boots, belts and accoutrements. Occasional flashes of silver studwork the only relief. The two girls wove an intricate dance of flowing limbs and flashing steel in the centre of the arena, strikes and counter strikes that challenged the eye to keep pace. M'gruth was a Tattooed Man – the fiercest warriors in the City Below, yet even he was dazzled by the speed of attack and riposte before him.

  One of the girls was marginally larger than the other and perhaps a few years older, though the difference was slight and seemed to have had little impact on the fight as yet. Both were covered in a sheen of sweat and had suffered minor cuts, where blades had kissed against flesh and drawn blood, though presumably without causing any real damage, since neither seemed in any way hampered. Another thing that was impossible to ignore was how alike the pair looked.

  M'gruth knew them both, respected and even perhaps feared them both, and at one time or other he had called each his friend.

  The task that had been entrusted to him was a thankless one, though not impossible, or so he hoped. His job was to stop these two lethal girls from killing each other in a senseless fight. Each thought they couldn't carry on living while the other did; neither had yet stopped to consider how difficult it might be to live
without
their counterpart. Sisters. He was just glad he'd never had one.

  "Stop it, both of you!" His call sounded small and impotent even to his own ears, a mere whimper which was instantly swallowed by the vastness of this place, so he tried again, louder this time. "I said
stop it!"

  "Breck off!" Kat, the slighter of the two snarled without sparing him a glance, too intent upon her opponent.

  "What are you doing here, M'gruth?" the other asked, without pausing in the fight.

  "For Thaiss's sake, listen to me will you? She's back. The Soul Thief is back."

  The two girls froze. For long seconds neither moved, though their gazes remained unflinchingly fastened on each other.

  "You sure about this?" the older, larger girl said at length.

  "Positive. Now will you both stop this madness?"

  Slowly, ever so slowly, weapons were lowered, though neither girl stood straight, neither gave ground, and their eyes never wavered.

  The older girl, Chavver, was the first to stand up, gradually abandoning her fighter's crouch. As her sister warily followed suit, Chavver looked at the Tattooed Man for the first time, if a glare infused with such fury could ever be considered a mere look, and said, "If this is some sort of trick to stop us from killing each other, M'gruth, you're a dead man."

  He didn't doubt it for a minute.

Tom was more nervous than he could remember ever being before; certainly more than he was prepared to admit to the prime master. Not terrified, as he'd been when cornered by the demon hound, convinced he was about to die, and it was true he'd felt a little scared when first setting out to reach the Upper Heights – that distant Row at the very crown of the city – but that had been nothing compared to this. Somehow, the Heights hadn't seemed entirely real; a fable of a faraway place which had no relevance to him. His aborted attempt to go there had been part adventure and part impossible dream. Deep down he'd never expected to actually reach the roof of the world and had always known he'd be back in the under-City by morning.

  This, however, was different in every way.

  For long seconds he simply stood there, breathing in great lungfuls of sweet air, so cool and fresh, feeling the unfamiliar spring of grass beneath his booted feet and letting the wind stroke his face as he glanced up at the vast, distant sky.
He was outside.
That reality would take some getting used to, for all that the prime master had brought him out here a couple of times beforehand to acclimatise. Those earlier visits did help, a little, but they were just brief tasters, akin to quickly popping your head out the door before scurrying back inside. This was the real thing.

  He turned and looked back. Seen from here, the city was a truly awe-inspiring sight. There were no balconies or terraces at these lower levels, the austerity of the faintly yellow stonework broken only by the occasional window. Yet the eye refused to dwell here but was rather compelled to look higher, drawn that way by the thrust of sheer stone walls erupting from the ground and reaching ever upward towards the heavens, as if the city somehow pulled at everything in the vicinity: the ground, the landscape, the very air surrounding it, even the attention of those insignificant people standing at its feet.

  Seeing Thaiburley like this, Tom could well understand why this was considered to be the City of Dreams. Snatches of the levels verse, that childhood guide to the city's complexities learnt at his mother's knee, played through his mind, as they had during his ill-fated climb to the Heights.

From Residence Rows where Kite Guards patrol,

And learned folk study the soul,

Arkademics and masters with wisdom to share,

The city's leaders, entrusted to care,

To the topmost Row, the Upper Heights,

Where stars and demons frequent the nights,

The end of this verse, fair Thaiburley's crown,

From which lofty peak you can only fall down!

  
He gave an involuntary shiver, as the verse brought back memories of his fleeting visit to the Residences and the first time he'd glanced over the city walls, the sudden disorientation and the sense of absolute dread that had engulfed him. Without the prime master's help he felt certain a similar horror would have overwhelmed him now in the face of all this open space. It still didn't feel natural, but at least he was managing to cope.

  "Liberating out here, don't you think?" his mentor said from beside him.

  "I suppose so," Tom replied. Liberating was not quite the word he would have used.

  The prime master chuckled. "You'll soon get used to it."