Mirrorworld (28 page)

The cultural elite of Portruss’s underworld, who had come to identify themselves exclusively as ‘tricksters’, were thus surprised to find themselves offered a commission; depart Portruss on a mission to all of the other burgeoning local settlements, make use of their skills to acquire ownership of all the rights and capital that these towns had built up, and send it back to Portruss. Successful completion of this task, they were told, would result in a fair return, a generous percentage of their winnings returned to them, and a chance to take up new positions in society as heroes of the modern era. This opportunity to go legit while continuing to do what they loved was too good to pass up, and so the tricksters departed Portruss almost to the man, a swarm of well-dressed villainy that descended on any town that looked like it might be getting large enough to rival Portruss, conned its residents out of all their stuff, and then moved on with Biblical efficiency.

The expedition was, by and large, a huge success. The tricksters were
good
at their work. In their wake many of the settlements of Eurora’s western plains disappeared overnight for reasons unexplained, and whilst that wasn’t the greatest of news for their inhabitants, it wasn’t the end of the world either, because there was this place not very far away where everyone could go and live, a city called Portruss that had been doing very well for itself of late. The tricksters were proud of their efforts, and so returned to Portruss, heads held high, to claim their just reward.. only to find that while they’d been away, the city had surrounded itself with a twenty-foot stone wall, and locked the gates. When one of the tricksters marched up to the south gate, banged on it and demanded to know what the meaning of this was, he was rewarded with a brief, sincere thank you from the people on the other side, and also a receipt, posted through an arrow slit, for the thousands of tonnes of building materials and manual labour that their efforts had paid for.

The tricksters were stumped. They’d been thoroughly beaten at their own game, a game that they couldn’t turn back in their favour because there is very little one can do to manipulate a huge stone wall. And then, just to rub it in, Portruss dispatched a diplomat who suggested that maybe if they paid the city’s newly established naturalisation and immigration tax, they could come back in, and it’d be just like old times.

Some of them did it, bloating Portruss’s coffers all the more. Most of them couldn’t handle the sheer cheek of it, so stomped off in a huff. Said stomping eventually bought them to the remains of one of the towns they’d conned over the course of their adventures, and it was here that they decided to settle down and use what money they still had to build a new settlement. Unfortunately, in order to do so, they had to barter with the nearest major source of building materials, which was Portruss, a city that had really thought this through rather well.

“The result of all that is this lovely homely city,” Kendra said, as they strolled down one of Plumm’s claustrophobic, narrow streets. In actuality, they weren’t that narrow, but since most of the streets were filled with piles of rubbish, there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. Whereas Portruss enacted a ‘shove it to the side and clear it up in the morning’ approach, Plumm appeared to be going for more of a ‘pile it up, it’ll decompose eventually’ stratagem.

“It’s very beautiful,” Marcus said, carefully poking a nearby refuse heap with the end of his staff. It went ‘thwop’.

“Isn’t it? I hear the roads get prettier in the casino district, the posh part of town. More endearingly piled piles, or something. Which way now, d’you think?”

Marcus surveyed the area. “Left, I think. Over the dead badger. Are we going to the posh part of town?”

“Erm, I think so. The lights are still in front of us, right? Yeah, awesome. That’s where everyone with money hangs out, where they lose it, then win a bit back, then lose it all again, then win a bit back, then lose it all again..”

“Yes yes I get it,” Marcus said quickly. “The town’s a black hole for money.”

“It’s worse than that,” Kendra said, realigning herself to the tone of the conversation. “Remember all of those refugees at North Gate? Guess how many of them came from the north, found they couldn’t get in to Portruss, then came here to try and make enough money so that they
could
get in, and ended up with even less hope than the teeny amount they started out with?”

“How many?”

“Well,
I
don’t know, else I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Of course,” Marcus sighed.

They arrived at a crossroads; straight ahead the road curved into the heart of the light and sound. The road intersecting with theirs appeared to curve around this central area, and was just as full of rubbish as the road they were on. “Straight on?” Marcus asked.

“No no wait,” Kendra said, peering down the road to the right. Coming up towards the crossroads were a group of men in grey pinstriped suits, wearing trilbies and armed to the teeth with a variety of swords, clubs and knives. “What’s happening here, I ponder?”

They stood back as the group reached the crossroads, and the person who appeared to be in charge held up a hand. The rest of the group spread out, covering all four angles of approach. The leader stepped forwards towards a particularly large refuse pile, and casually rammed his sword into it. Since this action appeared to achieve very little, he pulled it out again, and stabbed it somewhere else. As Marcus and Kendra watched from the side of the road, the man carefully dissected the heap until he appeared satisfied. Frowning at his apparent failure to antagonise inanimate, decomposing objects, his eyes found something, and he abruptly reached down into the strewn debris, coming back with a long, hooked object in hand. A ripple ran through his assembled men as he held it aloft to study it.

“It’s been here!” he yelled. “Tricksters, be wary!”

“What’s that?” Marcus asked Kendra.

“Dunno,” she said with a shrug. “What’s that?” she called out to the man.

His eyes swung to her, and he assumed an expression of suspicious distaste that was replaced with a smile so quickly that Marcus almost thought he might have imagined it. “Nothing to worry about, citizen. Your safety is assured.”

“I should hope so, with a small army like yours wandering around,” Kendra said with a giggle. Marcus attempted to make himself invisible as the man’s eyes narrowed.

“We are here for your protection, citizen,” he said. “And protecting you is what we are doing right now. You would not wish to know more, so go about your business. Incidentally, Planet Plumm is offering a very generous exchange rate on Portruss dollars this evening. Go now, and beat the rush!”

He signalled to his men, and they formed up behind him as he chose a direction, passing Marcus and Kendra and heading down the street they’d just conquered without a second glance.

“Tricksters,” Kendra said out loud, with a wise nod.

“What?” Marcus asked, staring after them.

“They run the town, so they have to protect it, I guess. I like their hats.”

Marcus
pfft
ed. “Protect it from
what
? They’ve got time to patrol in large groups and attack piles of rubbish, but no time to stop and clear it up?
That’s
rubbish. I bet more people die from disease and infection than from.. whatever they’re meant to be protecting them from.”

“Oh, check you out,” Kendra said, showering Marcus with a big grin, “using your cynicism as an analytic tool. You’re totally right. Something is up. We should follow them!”

“What? No.. flashy lights..”

“We can see the flashy lights any time. No, we should totally follow them. Plus I might be able to get one of them to give me their hat. Yes, you’ve convinced me. Let’s go!” And she was gone.

Marcus stood and floundered for a minute, before resignedly turning his head away from the allures of the far corner, and trudging back down the dark, smelly street after Kendra.

Kendra had caught up to the tricksters by the time Marcus caught up to her, and was attempting to extract information from one of them. The man already had the look of the terminally harangued.

“Look, miss, this is official business, you
really
don’t want to know what’s happening.”

“Oh, fine,” Kendra said, and produced from somewhere about her person an ID card.

“Viaggiatori.. oh hell, another one? You’d better talk to the boss. Boss!”

The leader of the troupe, who had been heading the column, glanced back, saw Kendra and Marcus, and frowned, but he fell back anyway. “What the hell now?”

Kendra flashed him her ID. “Another one? Blimey. You too?” he directed this at Marcus, who just shrugged, but the man took this for assent anyway. “Three Viaggiatori in the city tonight, well well. Normally I’d have scorned the lot of you, but this is a big problem we’re dealing with, and if it’s a Mirrorline issue, then I’ll gladly hand it over to you. You know what’s happening, right?”

“Not a clue,” Kendra cheerfully admitted. “But I like your hat.”

“Ah.. right.” The man looked briefly bemused, before assuming an expression of complete neutrality – Marcus had to admire the power this man possessed over his facial muscles. “Well, here’s the gist of it. There’s been a series of attacks in town over the last few nights, bodies mutilated unlike we’ve ever seen. First we thought it was some deranged serial killer, since we do get a few like that who can’t handle losing – and you’d think they’d be prepared for it, this town doesn’t fund itself – but then your bloke turned up earlier this evening, told us it was something much worse, and set us all out hunting for it. Some sort of creature from the north is apparently stalking our fair city, and we’re out to kill the bastard. Thoughts?”

“No, sounds fun,” Kendra said. “Carry on!” For his part, Marcus thought that the most unreasonable thing that the man had said had been calling Plumm a ‘fair city’.

“Very well,” the man said. “I’m in charge of this troupe, my name is Boss. Please laugh now.” He waited, but Kendra just beamed at him and Marcus continued with his vow of silence. “This is what we found back there, but only because your man told us what to look for.” He produced that sharp, hooked item and passed it to Marcus, who passed it to Kendra, who peered at it closely.

“Do you have a magnifying glass?” she asked.

“What? No.” Boss scratched his head. “I’m going back to the front. Yell if you got anything.”

Marcus and Kendra were left to trail along behind the tricksters, carefully navigating their way down the road. As they moved by a small, feeble water fountain that they’d passed earlier, it gurgled in happy recognition and splashed them slightly.

“What do you think?” Kendra addressed Marcus, who didn’t reply. “This is so cool. You know, last time I had a layover on Earth, I spent the whole week watching your old detective television shows. I especially loved that short fella, the way he always got them with a last minute question.” Marcus continued in his silence. “Oi,” she said. He still refused to respond, concentrating instead on climbing over the remains of an art gallery. “Are you not talking so you don’t convince me to do something else silly?” He looked away. “Aw,” Kendra said, “You’re sweet. Face it, Marcus, you’re enjoying this a little bit. You’re not so depressed as you want to think you are. Want a hug?”

“
No
,” Marcus said vehemently, perching on a lost masterpiece and resolving right then and there to spill all of his mind’s venom out onto her. “Look, ever since I came to the Mirrorworld I’ve been pushed and pulled around in some great game between forces I don’t understand, a stupid puppet dancing on strings of destiny that I didn’t get a choice about. Eira desperately wants to believe that I’m going to save us all, and, no matter what, that’s how everyone else sees me as well. No-one cares what
I
think, what I might want. And look, if she’s wrong, then I’m off to the slaughter for no reason. And if she’s
right,
then this is just another thing in my life that I had no control over. So I am
sorry
if I seem a
smidgen
out of sorts about the whole thing, but either way it sucks for me. How am I supposed to feel about that?!”

“So basically,” Kendra said, “you
do
want a hug! No, sorry,” she added as Marcus opened his mouth to ravage her with harsh words, “I know, it’s not so good. But, oh, Marcus, you know we don’t always get to choose what we do, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get a say in
why
we do it. Your life is always your own, you know? That’s all I’ve been getting at, and I think you know it, really.” She punctuated her words with a smile, and in spite of himself Marcus felt his anger fade away. “We’re on an
adventure
!” she added. “Why hate it when you could enjoy it? Mm? Mm?”

“Well, maybe,” Marcus replied, feeling suddenly very tired and ashamed of his outburst, but before he could apologise, a deafening, high-pitched scream suddenly sounded out in the night, filling all of the available space between his ears and echoing on for far too long.

“Tricksters!” Boss called from up ahead. “To arms!”

They found the source of the scream as they rounded the next corner; on a doorstep stood a woman, presumably the screamer. On the road before her lay another human, although their prone form was obscured by the large, shadowy, inhuman shape that was bent over them. With a roar of rage, Boss sent a throwing knife from his hand, and it hit the creature, which shrieked in a manner far more terrifying than the first scream, leapt up and vanished into the shadows on the dark road.

The group ran up to the scene; Kendra made for the body, whilst Boss went straight for the woman. “What happened?” he asked, grabbing her by the hand as she tried to shrink away.

“Buh, buh, buh,” she said, and fainted. Boss cursed, and turned to Kendra. “Is he dead?”

“No,” she said. Marcus, who had been debating whether he wanted to get any closer, finally forced his brain to overcome his legs and strode up to observe the scene.

Whoever the man was, he did not look too healthy. He was a trickster, although his pinstriped suit had been stained crimson with the blood that had erupted from the huge hole in his chest, carrying away most of his previously internal organs on a tidal wave of gore. Several of the tricksters turned away at the sight, and the sounds of vomiting punctuated the horrified silence. Unbelievably, however, the man was indeed still alive. His eyes flit back and forth, observing his captive audience with the expression of one who knows that their remaining time will be short, brutal and painful.