City of Light & Shadow (23 page)

  To Tom's horror, the Blade started to disintegrate. There was no violent explosion such as when they had faced the Rust Warriors earlier – this was more a form of erosion, a stripping away of layers. Shreds of blackness seemed to peel off the Blade and fly backward, behind the cowering humans. It was as if the light acted as a powerful abrasive, scouring the Blade away bit by bit, like the grains of a sandstorm flailing the flesh from a living body all the way down to the bone. Nor was that the only effect. The walls around them started to tremble and crumble. A trickle of dust fell on them and Tom looked up to see a jagged crack opening in the ceiling directly above his head. It seemed the whole corridor was about to collapse.

  The Blade weren't going down without a fight, though. Black light – that was the only way Tom could think to describe it – erupted from the towering ebony figures, denying the blistering golden glow, holding it at bay. One of the Blade turned its head slowly to look at Tom. It said a single word.

  "Run."

  He did, the Blade's command seeming to free him from paralysis so that his legs were suddenly his own again. Nor was he alone. All three of them ran. As advice went, this seemed well worth heeding.

  Behind them they heard the groan of structure under pressure followed by the rumble of collapsing masonry. Tom didn't look back, even as the floor trembled and bucked and not even when a cloud of dust overtook them, he simply kept running for all he was worth.

  His blind funk was broken only when the guard said, a moment later, "Are we going the right way?"

  "Are you kidding?" Kat replied. "As long as it takes us away from those things, any way is the right way."

  Tom could only agree, though he knew what the guardsman meant. Unless they could deliver what Tom was carrying to the core, all they were achieving by running away was to delay the inevitable; and right now they were heading in completely the opposite direction; he could feel it.

  He slowed, considering options, which was when the second great upheaval came. Tom saw the guardsman ahead of him falter and fall against the wall and even Kat staggered, while Tom was thrown from his feet. A great crack appeared in the wall to his right, widening and lengthening at an alarming rate as it raced towards the ceiling. Chunks of masonry started to fall. The whole ceiling looked set to come down.

  "Tom!" Kat's voice, from somewhere on the far side of the mayhem, he hoped.

  Tom scrambled backwards on his hands and knees as the ceiling and walls began to collapse in earnest. He pushed himself to his feet and turned to run, when something struck him on the head. Searing pain obliterated every other awareness for a brief instant before everything went blank.

 

Tom wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious. He came to in a room, a big room, even though it was obviously part of a residential unit – a living room or lounge.

  "He's coming round," someone said, a boy's voice.

  His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. He tried to lift a hand to feel the bump which he was certain had risen just to the right of centre, where he'd been struck, only to discover that his hands were tied behind him, and his feet too – they were fastened to the chair legs.

  A face appeared in front of him, startlingly close. Ginger hair, plump cheeks, clean, pale complexion with clear brown eyes. "Hello," said the same voice that had spoken before. "I'm Ryan."

  "Ryan, leave him alone!" snapped another, older voice.

  The face quickly withdrew, enabling Tom to get a clearer view of the rest of the room.

  Chairs and sofas, soft and cushioned in a biscuity brown off-white colour, formed a false quadrangle, though the room extended well beyond that space; and it was all so bright. Was this how everyone lived in the Heights? He'd always imagined that the homes built deep within the city, with other walls and dwellings pressing in on every side, even from above and below, would be dark and claustrophobic. The corridors they'd been travelling through might have been wide and airy, but he'd somehow expected the residences themselves to be more akin to the oppressive closeness he'd experienced in the Swarbs' Row. This was anything but.

  Unfortunately, none of the well-padded, comfortable softness had been spared for him. He was sitting on, and indeed tied to, a far more functional piece of furniture; a hardseated chair of solid wood.

  There were seven other people in the room, all of them boys – no girls allowed in this gang, apparently. Ages ranged from Ryan, the lad who'd said hello – he seemed the youngest at maybe nine or ten – to the boy who now dropped into a chair facing Tom. About the same age as him, maybe a year or so older; dark haired, well-fed, every feature showing the sort of arrogance that suggested a sneer was never far away from curling his thin lips.

  They were all smartly dressed, all clean-looking and all very obviously Heights boys.

  Tom continued to work at the bonds holding his wrist, but he wasn't getting very far.

  "I'm Miles," said the sneer-faced one. "This is my gang. Who are you and what are you doing here?"

  
None of your brecking business,
Tom thought and would probably have said if his hands and feet weren't tied to a chair. "I'm Tom, and I'm just passing through, not looking for any trouble. Why have you tied me up?"

  Miles shrugged. "Cos we could."

  This signalled an outbreak of sniggering which rippled around the group.

  
Kids
, Tom thought,
real kids
; none of them with the maturity of a six year old, at least not the six year olds he was used to. This was the Heights. None of these boys had needed to grow up anything like as quickly as he had. "Where are your parents?" he blurted, regretting the question as soon as he'd uttered it. Why risk antagonising them? Him and his big mouth.

  Fortunately, Miles seemed oblivious to the implications and just gave another shrug. "Dead, or gone." Neither possibility seemed to matter to him. Tom felt initial dislike turning to disdain. Didn't the idiot realise how lucky he was to even
have
parents? Evidently not, for he continued, "It's just us now."

  At least it explained what was going on here: these kids were flexing their muscles, enjoying the first taste of what they imagined to be freedom, not caring that the city was falling apart around their ears, probably convincing themselves that it didn't affect them, that they were smart enough and clever enough to somehow survive. Doomed along with everyone else in Thaiburley if Tom couldn't get out of here.

  "Listen," he said, softly, as if sharing a secret with them, and he sat forward as best he could. "When I said I'm just passing through, that's true; I am but I'm on a mission, a really important one. I've been sent to save the city, and you can help me. Think about it. I'll make sure everyone knows that you helped me. You'll all be heroes."

  He glanced around the group and could see that one or two of them liked the sound of that, but not Miles, it seemed. "And I suppose the Prime Master himself sent you."

  "Yes, yes he did," Tom admitted, wondering even as he spoke whether truth was really the best policy here.

  Miles immediately howled with laughter, the other kids following suit a fraction later. "Now we all know you're lying. You're obviously not from the Heights – the clothes give that much away – just some kid who, in all the confusion, has found his way up here into our part of the city, and is now trying to make us let him go by spouting a pack of lies." Miles sprang from his chair and came over to thrust his face at Tom, who instinctively shrank away. "You're making it up as you go along, aren't you? Well we're not falling for it, you hear?" Spittle landed on Tom's cheek. "We're not stupid. You're nothing. If the Prime Master was going to send anyone to save the city it would be one of us, not some oik from the lower Rows."

  "Yeah, right. Stands to reason." There were nods from the assembled kids.

  Miles strutted back to his seat and pulled something onto his lap. Tom froze. It was his rucksack.

  "Now, Mr Saviour of the City, let's see what you're carrying in this little bag of yours."

  "No," Tom said. "Leave that alone."

  Miles paused and grinned wickedly at him. "Why, afraid we'll discover what a thief you are? I bet you've been looting the empty residences and taking whatever caught your eye."

  "I haven't taken anything. Don't do that," Tom said, as Miles continued to undo the rucksack. "You can't. It's dangerous… part of my mission…" Still no give in the knots that held his hands, no matter how hard he tried.

  "Nice try, but if it's dangerous for us, why has a kid like you been trusted to carry it?" Miles pulled the sack open. "Well, well, what have we got here?" He pulled out the core canister.

  "Please," Tom said, desperate for them to understand, to believe him. "I need what's in that container to save the city." But no one seemed to be paying him any attention anymore.

  They'd left him with no choice. He couldn't allow them to open that canister. Apart from the devastation raw core material would cause if let loose, this really was Thaiburley's only hope of salvation. Tom focussed and reached out with his talent. He hated to do this, remembering all too clearly what he'd done to Dewar, but he had to.

  "Looks like the sort of thing they store documents in," someone said. "Maps and stuff like that."

  Tom pushed against Miles's mind.

  "Yes, and very fine it is too," Miles said. "Look at the detailing, the studwork. It's beautiful."

  Nothing happened. Tom stared at Miles. He could sense the older boy; his consciousness was there as a solid, dense block, but Tom's talent couldn't penetrate, it just slipped around the surface without gaining any purchase, washing over it as an eddy of water might around solid stone. Perhaps it was the blow to the head, perhaps that had affected his abilities in some way. He turned his attention to one of the other boys, the one who had identified himself as Ryan, reaching out and tweaking, just a little.

  "Ow!" The boy cried out immediately.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing, just a headache, I'm fine now."

  This elicited another juvenile snigger from the boy next to him.

  So it wasn't a problem with his abilities, they were still working fine. It was Miles. Miles was himself talented, whether he realised it or not, and his talent made him impervious to others', or at least to Tom's. What could he do now?

  "Clearly a discerning thief," Miles was saying. "Just the one thing taken by the look of it. Let's see what's inside this pretty little package, shall we?"

  
You mustn't let him open that cylinder,
the goddess said, materialising, as was her wont, to stand beside Miles.

  
Don't you think I know that?

  
If he does, the energies released will kill everyone here and de
stroy this whole section of the city.

  "No, you mustn't, you can't!" Tom wriggled in his seat, stood up falteringly, hands and feet still bound to the chair, and tried to frog-hop towards Miles and the canister. Two boys sprang forward and pushed him back down.

  Miles made tutting sounds with his tongue, clearly loving every second of this. He reached for the first clasp on the core canister.

  Tom relaxed, knowing that he had no choice. He hated to do this. The other boys were innocents really, they were just easily led. Without Miles they'd probably be perfectly reasonable, but he had to do something and he couldn't touch Miles; whereas he could touch them.

  Miles fiddled with the first clasp, appearing to move in slow motion. Tom reached out with his talent towards the other boys, resigned to what he was about to do even as he regretted it.

  "Well, well," said a familiar voice. "What have we got here? A bunch of cloud scrapers playing at being street-nicks."

  "Kat!" Tom could hear the relief in his own voice. She stood in the doorway, twin swords drawn.

  Miles looked up, startled, but he wasn't about to give ground. "Get her!" he yelled.

  "Oh, come on." Kat laughed as three of the gang started towards her, brandishing two knives and a length of piping between them. Ryan, the youngest, was among the trio, clasping one of the knives. "Is that the best you can come up with, 'Get her'?"

  "Don't," Tom said, reckoning these kids didn't need to die; they were just doing their best to survive in an impossible situation, latching onto the first authority figure that presented itself. "She'll kill you."

  "What are you waiting for?" Miles said as the three seemed to hesitate, "She's only a girl."

  "No," Tom insisted. "She isn't 'only' anything. She's a Pits warrior and a Death Queen, and if you attack her she'll kill you."

  Ryan at least paused at his words. Tom saw the boy glance in his direction, fear in the lad's eyes, but it was already too late. Kat sprung forward, straight towards the centremost kid. Her twin swords were flickering blurs to either side which ended with one of them striking forward and stabbing deep into the middle boy's torso. His body slid off the blade and hit the ground a fraction after the other two.

  Miles leapt to his feet, shock on his face, but he still kept hold of the canister. He backed away from Kat, in such a way that the chair he'd sat on was between her and him, as if that was going to stop her. The other three boys stood motionless, horror on their faces as they stared at this dark apparition who had walked in and so casually cut down three of their friends in the blink of an eye. Tom noticed a damp patch blossom on the crotch of one, clearly visible against the dark brown of his trousers.