City of Light & Shadow (17 page)

  The metallic, slightly sweet smell of fresh blood seemed to have been with Tom since they passed the first body, but here its cloying presence tainted every indrawn breath and was accompanied by the stench of something rotten. The massacre had obviously been recent but enough time had passed for decomposition to begin – a couple of days ago or perhaps three, Tom judged; no longer.

  He could picture it, people being herded and driven from the corridors that fed into the square, running from certain death until there was nowhere left to run. A mob of frantic, terrified folk erupting from the mouth of each passageway simultaneously, milling in confusion and horror, four panicked streams of the doomed colliding, to swirl together like water thrown casually into a bowl. A mother's hand clutching tightly to the smaller hand of a child, desperate not to lose that tiny strand of human comfort; her other arm reaching out to shove and pull people apart, to force a way through, to escape. Except there was no escape. Behind each knot of people a party of Rust Warriors entered the square, moving with efficiency and purpose, spreading out to form a cordon and then closing in, tightening that cordon with every step and killing as they did so.

  Tom had no idea whether these vivid scenes were the result of his talent picking up on some echo of actual events or just his imagination working overtime. All he knew was that he was suddenly sweating and finding it difficult to breathe. His stomach convulsed again, and this time there was no stopping it. He bent forward and threw up. He felt somebody pat him on the shoulders, not in admonishment but in sympathy. Kat.

  As he stood upright again she held out a small cloth. "Here."

  He took it gratefully and wiped his mouth, before craning forward to spit out more sourness, not looking, not wanting to know where his vomit might have landed.

  They started forward again, skirting the perimeter of the square, where the bodies were marginally fewer, picking their way with care. The Council Guards were grim-faced and even the Blade seemed more vigilant.

  Tom found the best way to deal with this was to take it literally one step at a time and not think about how far there was to go or how many dead people he still had to pass. He half expected Rust Warriors to rush out of the side corridor and attack them at any moment, but their party crossed the open mouth without incident. Eventually they made it to the far side of the killing field, their passage contested only by the flies.

  Kat summed up the sense of relief. "Thank the goddess for that!" she muttered as they stepped over the final outstretched arm and into the clear corridor beyond; a sentiment Tom suspected many of the guards in white and purple around them would happily have echoed.

  They still hadn't encountered any Rust Warriors, but no one could doubt the enemy were nearby, not after what they'd experienced at the playground. This lack of direct confrontation began to play on Tom's nerves. It wasn't as if he had a death wish or anything, he would have been delighted if they could reach the core without meeting any opposition at all, but that was never going to happen. At some point they'd have to fight, they all knew that. The only question was when. The anticipation was becoming an irritation, the constant need to be alert fraying Tom's nerves. He found himself peering into the depths of every corridor they passed and scrutinising closed doors as if he might somehow predict which one was about to burst open and disgorge deadly ambushers.

  When the attack finally came it was almost a relief.

  Without any warning Rust Warriors erupted from a side corridor, falling upon the rearguard. The ambush displayed the sort of cunning Tom wouldn't have expected from Rust Warriors – the one he'd killed beside the Thair had seemed lumbering and slow-witted, though he wasn't sure why he'd assumed that – since it required them to stay hidden while the rest of the group passed by.

  The first Tom knew of the attack was when a man screamed. He whipped around to see one of the Guards enveloped in the same eerie nimbus of light that had spelled an end to Kohn. All the guilt he'd felt then at his failure to react quickly enough to save his friend came flooding back.

  The stricken guard's colleagues tried to help, only to be forced back by the other Rust Warriors, and they were soon engaged in a desperate fight for their lives.

  The Council Guard were more than just ceremonial decoration, for all the purple-trimmed whiteness of their gleaming uniforms. They were expert swordsmen, strong men at the peak of physical fitness, chosen for their courage and prowess and schooled in the art of killing; warriors disguised in popinjays' clothing. The other three guards engaged the enemy swiftly and efficiently. Steel flashed and stabbed, blades sank into their opponents. But not a single Rust Warrior fell.

  Tom watched helpless as one Guardsman's sword struck his nearest adversary once, twice, piercing stomach and then chest without any effect. A scything blow from his opponent then cut the man nearly in two, slicing through armour, flesh and bone with equal ease. Whatever the arkademics had done to empower the guardsmen's weapons didn't seem to be working.

  Tom's view was then obscured as Verrill rushed past him, leading the other four Guardsmen from the main party to reinforce their colleagues. As he went he called out orders, telling the four-strong advance guard to lead the party onward.

  "Go!" he then yelled, either to Tom or the Blade. "We'll hold them off."

  Kat looked as if she might be about to join the fight but Tom stopped her. "Don't," he said. "You heard the captain, and there's likely to be worse waiting ahead of us."

  She nodded, but clearly didn't like running away any more than he did, though run they did, urged by two of the remaining white liveried guards who now dropped back to bring up the rear.

  On reflection, Tom would have been more impressed by the Rust Warriors' ingenuity had there been a second group waiting to attack from the front, but it didn't happen. Unless, of course, the ambush was intended to simply cut off any retreat and their party was already heading exactly where the Rust Warriors wanted them to go, perhaps towards where their main strength lay in wait. Now that was a sobering thought.

• • • •

The road to Deliia was busy, far more so than Dewar would have expected even given that this was the great trade route. Riders flashed past them, individually and in small groups, while the caravan he'd joined proved to be one of several headed for the coast. Business must be booming.

  The traffic was too heavy for any normal circumstance, though, and he began to suspect there was more going on than he'd realised, suspicions that were confirmed when they stopped to rest and water their horses a little after midday. Dewar engineered a conversation with a rider who was also taking a break from the road – one heading in the opposite direction. Dewar didn't press the point, he didn't need to; the phrase "rumours of war" told him more than enough.

  By late afternoon as their caravan hove into view of the sea and Deliia's low-rise dwellings appeared as a dark stain on the horizon, progress had slowed to a crawl. They had joined a long queue of those waiting to filter through the city's gates.

  It occurred to Dewar that he needn't have bothered joining a caravan at all under these circumstances and that, with such a constant stream, he could have ridden straight through and made better time. Too late for regrets now but there was no point in compounding the problem by staying with the wagons without good reason. He made his excuses and rode forward, bypassing the long line of waiting carts that clogged the road to the envious glares of their drivers. Even so, he wasn't the only horseman anxious to enter the town and still had to bide his time.

  Eventually, as the sun set and the rosiness of dusk tinted the skyline, he found himself passing beneath the old walls of the town that was just a quick skip across the sea from the island on which he had been born and raised. Nearly home, and nobody had a clue that he was coming.

 
 

 
 
 

Part of Tylus was actually relieved to see Kat go, not to mention Tom. He recognised the lad immediately as the street-nick he'd attempted to arrest on the city walls, the one whose escape had brought him to the City Below in the first place. Clearly there was more going on here than he'd been told.

  Of course Tylus had been startled when Kat and Tom disappeared in the same abrupt fashion that the boy and the Thaistess had initially arrived, but not sorry, not by a long shot. Kat's presence had proved a distraction all morning, far more so than he would ever have anticipated. And that fact disturbed him.

  It probably wouldn't have been an issue if not for the conversation with Richardson the previous evening. Kat had been a pain throughout the journey. Her abrasive attitude and stroppy mood were enough to make anyone give up trying to be civil and leave her to get on with things, but Richardson's announcement regarding his surprise betrothal had forced Tylus to consider his fascination with the Tattooed Men's leader in a different light.

  Kat
was
intriguing, no question about that. Utterly different from any woman he'd ever met before. She was bold, edgy, thrilling – the free spirit Tylus had always yearned to be. And
that
was the source of his fascination. It was all down to novelty. How could he fail to be enthralled? But she was also young. A fact that was easy to forget when you saw her strutting before the Tattooed Men and wielding those twin swords with such skill, but she was probably not much older than Jezmina. It meant she was still a girl rather than a woman, despite her behaviour. Certainly in the light of his upbringing and the culture of the Heights, he couldn't consider her as anything but. Down here, he wasn't so certain. People tended to grow up much quicker on the streets.

  So was he being a hypocrite? He'd been so discomfited by Richardson's talk of marrying Jezmina, even though the girl's demeanour belied her tender years, and more than a little embarrassed for his friend. How then did his own interest to Kat – his
attraction
– differ from Richardson's situation? Yes, she was older than Jezmina, but not by that many years, certainly not enough to make the thought a comfortable one.

  For a surreal moment Tylus pictured what the future might hold in the unlikely event he and Kat were ever to develop a serious relationship – the reaction of his family and friends in the Heights. He imagined they would respond as he had to Richardson's happy news, with uncomfortable politeness and ill-concealed dismay, embarrassed for
his
sake. It would mortify his mother; she'd probably never recover from the shame. He could just see it now, as he stood in the cosy front room of the family home and introduced Kat to both his parents, the inevitable look of horror they'd share.

  Actually, the relationship might almost be worth pursuing just for that moment. An unkind thought, but it brought a smile to his face when little else that morning had.

  No, he was determined to be sensible about this, and forget his developing interest in Kat. It could only ever lead to disaster and significant embarrassment. Issie on the other hand, was a breath of fresh air. Even his mother couldn't fail to be impressed by an arkademic…

  He shook his head, as if to dispel such thoughts, and turned his attention to the situation at hand, specifically to what Mildra was doing as she worked on the fallen men. He was suitably impressed by what he saw. She was obviously a highly talented healer and worked with competent efficiency. As he observed her, he couldn't help reflecting on how different people's lives were, all dictated by an accident of birth. Had he been born anywhere other than the Heights he could never have become a Kite Guard. There were no Thaistesses in the city's upper Rows, so if Mildra had been born there she would most likely have become an arkademic like Issie – a career that opened up the way to the Assembly, the administrative tier of the city's government. She might have been debating and implementing policy that affected millions instead of devoting her time and energy to a religion that few in the Heights even gave credence to.

  This sort of disparity was something he would never have spared a thought for prior to his arrival in the under-City. He had never even realised that such institutionalised inequality existed in Thaiburley. All the more reason to bring the Kite Guards down from their lofty perches so that they could experience a taste of real life at the other end of the social scale. It reaffirmed his determination to get the new training school up and running as soon as possible.

  Issie came over to join him. "The Prime Master has contacted me via the Blade."

  Interesting; so the Prime Master was able to commune with the Blade at distance. Hardly a revelation, but not something Tylus had realised before. "We're to continue on and take out the second target," Issie said.

  "Can you do that, lead us to this Insint thing, I mean?"

  She nodded and showed him a crushed piece of mechanism. He recognised it immediately as the piece he'd recovered from the scene of the fallen sun globe during his early days on the streets. "This is part of the creature we're after. Once I attune myself, I'll be able to take us straight to it."

  Tylus was duly impressed. "Is that something all arkademics can do?"

  She shook her head. "No. Well, yes, to a degree. We all study the same disciplines but have aptitude in different areas of talent, and so tend to specialise in those. All arkademics have a basic grounding in resonance skills, but there are at most half a dozen or so who are as adept at it as I am."

  He grinned. "Good for you."

  "Why thank you, kind sir." Her smile in response turned sour almost immediately. "Mind you, look where it's got me." She glanced around meaningfully at the Stain.