They Who Fell (5 page)

CHAPTER NINE

I
t felt like the sound had been turned off. Jana’s head was spinning, with little blotches of color marring her field of vision, floating into view only to disappear as quickly as they’d come. A muffled voice broke through the barrier in her ears, as the world gradually stabilized. Words began to poke through the fog. It was Nefta, and she was in ill humor. She was raging, going on about Rhamiel and Zuphias and the indignity of seeing a mere servant cuddling close to them like a common harlot. “We’d have turned you to salt in the old days,” Jana heard, before Nefta stormed off into her private chambers.

“You’re okay. A bit stupid, but you’re okay. Just sit still. You’ll be fine in just a minute,” said the woman who’d brought her into all these troubles.

Jana stuttered, mumbling noises and sounds until a word finally came out. “Why?”

“There’s no end to answers to that question,” the women said. “Depends what you mean by it. Why’d she hit you? Because you cost her face, probably. You can’t get in the middle of their battles. She asked you up here, and you dawdled. You went and talked to one of the others instead. Rhamiel was a particularly bad choice for that, if you didn’t want to offend Nefta. You have to know who’s who and what’s what if you expect to stay up here.”

“Stay?” asked Jana, feeling at a swollen welt on her temple as she gradually regained her senses.

“Stay,” said the woman, helping Jana to her feet. “You’re not going back. Nefta wants you here. With her. She saw something in you, or liked the way you looked, or was just bored. Who knows. But you’re a handmaiden, now. And you don’t really have much choice in the matter.” Most of the angels took personal servants under their wings, training them in their tastes and guaranteeing some consistency in how they were served. It was a comparatively good gig, if you were lucky with respect to whose chambers you ended up in. You were usually off limits to the passing savageries of all of the other angels, who preferred not to openly war with their housemates. And you commanded a certain level of respect from most of the other servants. If the wrong angel chose you, on the other hand, things could get very grim. Whatever neurosis drove them would become your own, defining your every moment as you pandered to their whims and hoped for the best.

“Who are you?” asked Jana, wiping a rivulet of blood from the side of her mouth.

“Now you’re suddenly curious?” asked the woman. “You walk for hours without a peep, get where you’re going, and then you start wondering how you got there?”

“I didn’t know if it was safe to ask,” said Jana quietly.

The woman’s countenance softened, and she licked her finger to clean a smudge of blood from Jana’s cheek. “My name is Cassie,” she said. “I’ve been in Nefta’s service for almost a year. I was outside before that.”

“I used to be outside, when I was very young,” said Jana. “Sam says it’s awful now. That no matter how bad things get in here, you don’t ever want to be out there.”

“That may be,” said Cassie. “That may be. Some people aren’t cut out for it. I don’t know that I was. I came to the gates, they let me in, and Nefta chose me. So here we both are.”

Jana looked around, taking in the room. There were a few scattered pieces of furniture, but they were simple and practical. There were chairs to sit at, tables to put things on, and lamps to light the way. Otherwise, the only decoration was the masks. There were rows and rows of them—hundreds, lining every open space on the walls. Each was a face, carved with a variety of expressions that seemed to cover every possible emotional state. They all could have been people, but she supposed it was just as likely that they were angels. They didn’t have the scars for it, but then, the angels hadn’t always had them either.

“She made them all,” said Cassie as Jana stared. “It’s kind of her hobby. Don’t disturb her when she’s doing it. If she wants you then, she’ll let you know. She’s really not as bad as you’re probably thinking. You just have to know the rules. She wants things a certain way, and if you make sure she gets what she wants then we’ll all be happy.”

“Who are they?” asked Jana, reaching forward to touch one of the masks before thinking better of it.

“I couldn’t tell you. And I wouldn’t ask. It’s fine to talk openly with me. But you have to be cautious when you’re talking to any of them, even her. If they want to keep something inside, you have to let them. If they want you to know something, they’ll make sure you know. Nefta can be… harsh. She doesn’t have the mean streak that some of them do. But she expects obedience, and she’ll punish you if she thinks you’re out of line.” Cassie put her arm around Jana’s side, gently guiding her away from the wall and leading her on a tour of Nefta’s suite.

“This room is for the cleaning,” said Cassie. Various garments were bundled in baskets around the room, and well-polished pieces of armor were strapped to a few wooden mannequins. The brushes, buckets, and washboards stored there wouldn’t have looked out of place a century earlier. The tower didn’t have much in the way of modern appliances. The angels couldn’t be bothered with human gadgets, and a few millennia of habits would set anyone in their ways. They didn’t particularly care about saving the labor of others, either, and were perfectly content to allow their servants to build character by scrubbing away at stains by hand.

Cassie led Jana to another chamber—a large supply closet, filled to the brim with a variety of different cleaning supplies and other materials. Some were manufactured before the Fall, still in their original brightly colored packaging. Others looked homemade. There were stacks of candles and soaps whose irregular shapes and bland colors marked them as having been created after society’s collapse. The angels employed a variety of craftsmen to make whatever they could, and their servants on the outside gathered the rest.

“Everything you could need to do your job is in here,” said Cassie. “Brooms, mops, soaps, rags. We store it all here, out of the way. You cleaned down there, didn’t you? Your quarters were a bit of a mess.”

Jana blushed. She felt ashamed and out of place, like she’d climbed too fast and wasn’t prepared to actually cling to these dizzying heights. People were dirty, when huddled together, and they didn’t have anything like this range of supplies down below. Even if they’d had, there just wasn’t time in the busy days to do more than make yourself presentable for the limited occasions when you’d be seen by one of the angels. The rest didn’t really matter. The angels didn’t care how the other half lived. But Jana was living with one, now, and everyone and everything up here was spick and span.

“We did dishes,” said Jana. “Making the food took most of our time.”

“That’s okay,” said Cassie. “You’ll learn. Just make sure you let me double-check everything. You’ll make mistakes, but I’ll fix them.”

They walked through a small, unobtrusive door in one of the hallways. It was out of the way, and not likely to attract the attention of guests. Inside was a cramped space with a bunk bed and a couple of storage cabinets. The bottom bunk was clearly Cassie’s. A few photos of family or friends had been stuck along the wall next to it, and there was a half-used candle and a few matches on the nearest cabinet. There were even some books, usually considered a frivolity.

“This is our room,” said Cassie. “I’m a light sleeper, so you’ll have to be quiet if you like to stay up. But I don’t expect I’ll have problems with that, will I?”

“No, ma’am,” said Jana, looking over the space. It wasn’t the homey, family-style atmosphere she was used to. She wondered if Cassie was one for stories or singing, but on reflection, suspected that she wasn’t.

“What do I tell the others? About what I’m doing?” asked Jana.

“You don’t tell them anything, unless you find someone going down there,” said Cassie. “And you probably won’t. Not for a while, I’m afraid. Once you’re up here, they tend to keep you up here. Things are a bit more intimate. The angels aren’t as guarded in their own homes. And once you know a few of their confidences, they don’t want them spreading beyond to the others. If they trust you enough, and they need something done, you might find an excuse to go down to the lower levels. But it’s not a regular thing.”

“They’re going to worry,” said Jana. “They’ll want to know I’m okay.” For all her friends knew, she could have been sent off to be punished for some perceived slight at the meal. They had little else to talk about, and they were probably coming up with some fantastical explanation even then.

“I let your boss know you were coming up,” said Cassie. “And that’s all any of them need to know.”

Jana frowned for a moment, and then by well-honed instinct her face turned impassive, masking her pain. She sobbed inside, knowing she’d probably never speak to any of them again. Even Sam ordinarily communicated with the upper levels via a series of messengers. He would talk to someone a few stories up, and they’d push things higher and higher. The angels didn’t like servants wandering around the tower, and could be testy and confrontational if they saw someone unfamiliar and unescorted. It offended their most treasured sensibility: that there was a place for everyone, and everyone in their place. She started to have a few desperate fantasies. Maybe she’d go down there again someday, like Cassie had. Maybe she’d find some chore that required her to visit from time to time. Maybe in a few years of service, she’d win Nefta’s trust and favor and be allowed to do as she pleased, within reason.

She was jarred back to reality by Cassie. “No more time to dawdle. We’ve got work to do.” They scrubbed and cleaned, then. There was no dust, but Jana dusted. The floors were pristine, but Jana mopped them, and then re-mopped them as Cassie found fault after fault. She polished doorknobs, and then was scolded afterwards for leaving her fingerprints on them. She poked the ceilings for cobwebs with brooms, organized foods in the pantry, and cleaned the undersides of furniture on the off-chance that someone might notice. It was an exhausting day.

Cassie turned out not to care much for stories or singing at all. They both went straight to bed, but Jana couldn’t shut things off. The day had simply been too much to process. She imagined her friends, and then flinched away from the images, trying to distract herself. Her thoughts were drawn back to Rhamiel, and why he had singled her out. He must have been interested, at least somewhat, or he wouldn’t have called her over. He wouldn’t have been staring at her. But there was interest in games, and there was real interest, and a vast gulf between the two. Still, someone like that offered real protection. Nefta could say what she would, but she’d never value Jana as anything more than a servant. Rhamiel was strong, and seemed to have the respect of most of the others. If he was interested, he wouldn’t let an Ecanus torture her. He wouldn’t let Nefta keep her as a slave. She ran things over and over in her head, until exhaustion took over and she slipped into slumber.

She woke from a shove. “Get up,” said Cassie. “And get dressed. Not in your rags; in this.” Cassie opened a drawer in one of the cabinets, pulling out a fashionable robe favored by many of the upper caste servants. It wasn’t flashy enough to upstage the angels, but it was elegant enough that they wouldn’t be embarrassed, either. It was more fancy than anything Jana had ever worn. A soft red silk that called to mind a kimono, its hand-sewn needlepoint depicted angels in various scenes of glory.

“Nefta wants us to go with her,” said Cassie. “To the Conclave.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Y
ou bastards get in, and you do it quiet,” said the ferryman. Holt nodded, and the others boarded his boat. Dax stumbled on the way in, shaking the boat from side to side as he lost his balance. But Thane grabbed hold and steadied him, saving him from more than a few dirty looks from the ferryman. Dax sat down sheepishly, started to blame his lack of coordination on the darkness, and then thought better of it. They were on the shore, just south of the old city. Without all the lights, it was surprising how black things could be. The buildings were just grey silhouettes against the night sky, noticeable mostly by the way they blocked the view of the stars. They were invisible before, but now the sky was lit with constellations that no longer had to compete with the constant glow of urban life.

“Pay me,” said the ferryman. “I don’t risk my ass for free.” He’d worked with Holt for months, but didn’t trust him or anyone else. He was an old drunk, when he could be, but booze was in limited supply. He had a thick grey beard, an ideal mask to obscure the perpetual ruddiness of his cheeks. He was crotchety and disagreeable, but he hated the angels, and he knew how to row. He wasn’t willing to risk his own skin in combat, but he’d tolerate the comparatively smaller risk of silently moving people and cargo in and out of the city at night. Holt liked him despite his orneriness; the elderly learn to own their faults, which makes them easier for others to bear.

Holt handed him a small bundle—a collection of dried meats and a few pieces of fresh fruit. It’d keep the man going for at least a few days. Food was the only currency anyone much cared about these days, and it was the perishable things that had value. Most ordinary goods were functionally worthless, valued only as much as the labor needed to get them to you. The death toll had far outstripped the physical destruction, and it was the urban areas that had presented the most tempting targets. But once you got out into the suburbs, enough warehouses, stores, and private residences had survived that there were generally more things around than people to use them.

There had been looting, of course. But there’s only so much you can carry, and only so much you need for yourself. They were still coming across hoards that people had stashed away in their now-abandoned homes—piles of shoes, once trendy clothes, or useless boxes of electronics. Those things could last for decades. But when the food and medicine had run out, all the stolen televisions in the world didn’t do their new owners much good. Industry and transportation had broken down, and without a way to replenish things, people were left to feud and fight until their time simply ran out. The survivors had mainly been those who’d managed to make their way to rural areas. They could grow food there, and had more of it than they needed. Only trickles flowed outward to places like this, far away from any fields of grain.

Holt thought it was all funny, in a sick kind of way. Before the Fall, everyone had envisioned the apocalypse in whatever form it came as a brutal wasteland and a constant battleground between the survivors. It had been that way in some places, but only for a time. If the world resembled anything now, it was less of a battle and more of a frontier. It wasn’t that there weren’t dangers, because there were many. The angels still roved around inflicting depravities, but mostly at random. The Vichies could well attack you, especially if they found themselves at a clear numerical advantage. But people still interacted and still dealt with each other, even if it was with more suspicion and less trust than before. They tended to live apart, tried to keep their distance from large groups, and weren’t exactly trusting of strangers. It was still a risky life, and a shorter one than people were accustomed to, but not much more so on a daily basis than it had been for isolated settlers in centuries past.

The ferryman rifled through his bundle, sniffing at the fruits and taking a few exploratory bites. He muttered to himself, grousing about the lack of proper provisioning these days, but he ultimately was satisfied enough to take up his oars and push away from the shore. Thane helped row with a second set, and they slowly moved away from the edges of the city and out onto the open water.

It’d been hard going to get there. The angels they’d fought had been in a fury, wrecking as much as they could before eventually tiring. Holt had still insisted that they wait until well after dark before making a run for another building. They’d moved from block to block, keeping their progress slow to ensure their safety, until eventually he and Dax had been able to reunite with Thane and Faye. Then it was a long, hard trudge to the outskirts to meet the ferryman.

They kept things silent the entire way. They’d have been hard to see, just a fleck in the vast waters. But the angels made people paranoid. Maybe one flying by could hear them—who was to know? They could do strange things, sometimes, and had been divine instruments for so long that it was unclear to mere mortals where their power ended and God’s began. If they could get into your head, then perhaps they had other ways of finding you from a distance, too. None of them were sure, so they just passed the time quietly as best they could. Holt and Faye scanned the night skies for signs of movement, while Dax was lost in himself. Thane just rowed.

After a time they arrived, approaching another shore and then running aground. Staten Island. It was far enough away from the Perch that there weren’t constant overflights. More importantly, it had forests. In the cities, there was nothing overhead to block their view, and movement stood out. But animals still roamed around the island, and they acted as a sort of chaff, preventing the angels from simply assuming from a distance that they’d found someone to harry. Most people had still moved on to greener pastures, having little reason to even take the risk. But there were small encampments here and there, and for men like Holt it was a godsend. Without this line of supply, he’d never be able to operate inside the city proper.

“Get off my damned boat, and next time bring me some hooch,” said the ferryman as they exited.

“I will, if I can find some,” said Holt. “Stay safe. We’ve been tossing rocks right at the hornet’s nest, and they’re going to be buzzing around here soon.”

“Fuck ‘em,” said the ferryman, cackling and pushing off in his boat. “Don’t have any place else to be, don’t really care if they come. Just let me spit in their eyes before I go.” He rowed off into the darkness, leaving them there alone on the shore.

They hiked inland, sticking to the sides of buildings when they could. From time to time they had to cross open roads, which was fraught with danger. They went on detour after detour, looking for places that were packed with abandoned cars, and then crawling among them for cover until they were safely to the other side. After a while, it was into the forests and into relative safety. The greenery had run wild since the Fall, extending outward as far as the remaining structures of man would allow. Holt led them with a compass through the woods. There weren’t paths, exactly. There were barely enough people here to make them, and only fools would walk along an obviously well-worn passage anyway. But there were marks. Little notches carved into the trees, or rocks that looked out of place. Hobos had used these same kinds of signals decades before: symbols that were unintelligible to the uninitiated, but meant something to Holt. They directed them onward and inward, until they finally arrived at Marv’s Colony.

Marv was an eccentric—a rough, tough New Yorker who’d been too old and too fat to join the feeble efforts at a resistance after the Fall. He was slimmer these days by necessity, but maintained the healthy gut that men his age just couldn’t seem to get rid of. He was balding on top, with hair running wild at the back to compensate. He’d worked blue collar jobs in the city for years, but when the angels came he fled to the island. Unlike a lot of others, he stayed, retreating with his family to a relatively isolated area of wilderness that had once been a communal farm of some sort. Now it was just buildings and trees, including a sanitarium that had been out of use since long before the Fall. Rumors were that the place was the scene of various brutal murders and child abductions, though no one had ever offered precise details. Those seemed like heinous atrocities then, keeping anyone but the indigent far away. Now such stories would be routine, more to be expected than to be horrified by. Marv wasn’t afraid, and he was the one who had discovered the basements, a series of rooms and tunnels under the old sanitarium that served as the home to a half dozen families who survived by setting up a way station for humans passing through the area. You had to be in the know to find it, but Holt was certainly that.

Holt approached the sanitarium slowly, leaving the others some ways behind. Marv could be jumpy around people he didn’t know, and while Holt had been there a number of times, the rest of the cell was less familiar. They’d stopped here on the way in, but who knew whether Marv would remember them? Even if he did, it was normally the older children who were stationed somewhere in the upper levels to watch the approaches. A larger group might give them cause to shoot first and tell their parents later.

Walking towards the entrance, Holt stopped near a pile of rusted gurneys and other assorted medical artifacts from another age. Regular guests knew that it was both polite and prudent to await an invitation inside, and this was the appointed place. It wasn’t long before he saw a figure in the darkened doorway at the side of the building—Marv, beckoning for him to come forward. Holt gave a signal behind him, and the others slowly approached as well. They walked together to the door, then jogged the last bit as Marv became visibly agitated at the amount of time they were spending out in the open. Manners were nice, but New Yorkers were never much for those anyway, and once their peaceful intent had been signaled it made little sense to tarry where anyone flying overhead could easily spot them.

“You survived!” Marv said with a laugh. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you bastards again. Not tubby for sure.” Dax squirmed, but said nothing. He was used to insults, but they paralyzed him with indecision. He’d fume inside, and spend a few hours boiling and plotting revenge. But he never quite had the stomach to fight back in the moment, and thus was ever a promising target.

“We almost didn’t,” said Holt. “But it was worth it. We bagged one.”

“No shit,” said Marv, his voice a mixture of awe and skepticism.

“No shit,” said Thane, holding up the scabbard of the sword he’d retrieved.

“Well, fuck me,” said Marv, eyes widening. “Can’t believe you idiots actually got one. Can’t believe. Me, I swore you’d be dead. You know, you wanna sell that thing, I can find you a buyer. Lotta people would pay a lot to get one a those.”

“Not for sale,” said Holt. “We just need a night’s room and board. Then we’re heading inland for supplies, and for some business I’ve got to conduct. We’re not stopping with just one of them.”

“Every one of ‘em is gonna be dead,” said Thane. “Every goddamned one.”

“Okay, killer, you get on that,” scoffed Marv. It wasn’t that he disagreed with the sentiment. Far from it; Marv was one of the biggest partisans around for the cause of exterminating angels. But he’d seen a lot of would-be guerilla fighters come and go. A scalp was nice, but it was just a start. There were hundreds of angels in the Perch, and it was just one of a dozen such towers scattered around the world. Still others of their kind preferred solitude, and were living on their own in whatever isolated location they fancied. The task was a near impossible one, and while Marv supported it where he could, he wasn’t quite as enamored with the idea of the kamikaze approach.

“In the meantime you get in here. The girls have a soup goin’. Squirrel and potato, I think,” said Marv. The families there caught what they could, and grew what they could without tipping off anyone who happened to wander by to their presence. Mushrooms were a core staple, as they could be cultivated indoors. For the rest, they simply scattered things around the greenbelt, hiding them in patches of other plants to avoid detection. There were plenty of animals wandering around, but Marv had a strict rule against hunting them. Too conspicuous, he said, and so their meat came mostly from trapping. They stuck to smaller animals, using snares that could be easily disguised and making sure to place them far from the Colony. Marv had come up with a number of clever contrivances to make things easier on the families there. He was always going on about a plan to breed guinea pigs, and pestering Holt to bring him some if he could find them. Holt didn’t think it was likely that many had survived, as they weren’t the type of creature you’d expect to flourish if left to their own devices. But he always promised anyway, and it seemed to make Marv happy just to make the plans even if they’d probably never come to fruition.

Marv led them into the basements. It was dark through the first part of the tunnels, until they came to a makeshift door made from corrugated metal. He’d pulled it off the side of a shed somewhere, and used it to mask any light from the exterior. He unlatched a wire clasp and pulled it outward just far enough for them to squeeze inside. Past the door was a homey living area for the guests, furnished with mismatched items that had been hauled in from the closest houses, miles away. It was surprisingly well-lit. Marv had installed a generator, and made sure that the place had almost every modern amenity. There wasn’t much more hardship than you’d have found at a luxury campsite a few decades before. He’d even managed to cobble together a hot shower in the corner from spare pipes and an old water heater.

They sat together on a cluster of couches and recliners that Marv had pulled together in the center of the room for entertaining the people that passed through. The other families crowded around to hear the story of the angel’s death, and of their narrow escape from his vindictive comrades. Holt even let Thane pull the sword out, which awed children and adults alike. They’d never seen one up close, and most who did never survived. Marv and Holt talked shop for a while, sharing news and gossip. There were other cells, and some had even passed through the Colony recently, but they tried not to talk directly. The theory was that if they didn’t know each other, they couldn’t betray each other. It worked on that front, but it also prevented coordination and limited the size and scope of their operations.