Alarum duduks wailed along the walls of the fortress, as if Antissa was screaming. I shared the saddle with a guard who rode the Captain’s own horse at a canter to the Inner City. Militia was moving. Citizens were bustling everywhere, afraid, not knowing why. I didn’t care about that right now. I’d had no choice but to leave Rusper on the wall with Captain Mondric, hoping he’d get safely to a healer. I had been given an order.
We clattered over the flagstones towards the statue of the gryphon. Here in the courtyard, martial detachments were assembling out of the underpass roads: vortan soldiers in black uniform with leather tabards and greaves. Two groups were mounted, the front rider of each holding up the banner of his battalion; that three-towered symbol I’d seen on the reports, and on that phantom. Fortress Regiment. The High Commander had clearly received the news already.
As the horse swerved near the gryphon, I let myself lean with the motion and drop out of the saddle. My knees almost buckled on landing. My escort followed me down a lot more smoothly and acknowledged the High Commander now emerging from the ranks in a fluid stride. ‘Where’s the Viceroy?’
I volunteered: ‘At the northwest wall, he’s hurt.’
‘I was addressing the guardsman.’ Plamen didn’t so much as glance in my direction.
‘Boy’s right, sir. Northwest wall,’ said the guard. ‘The Honorary Caliph sustained an injury in confrontation with a Ratheine intruder.’ Plamen’s face didn’t change. ‘He’s bound for the citadel now with the Captain, ekharan.’
‘What of the intruder?’
‘Dead, sir. Dispatched by the Viceroy himself.’
Just a twitch of Plamen’s eyebrow but I caught it. Behind him, six mounted men rode through the courtyard, leading a much larger white horse by the reins. Plamen’s horse.
‘Please,’ I broke in, begging his attention. He sucked and held in a breath as if to show precisely how much time he’d grant me to speak. ‘I’ve orders from the Viceroy too. I’m to inspect the Hub Chamber.’
‘Be about it then. Guild duties have nothing to do with me.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said before he turned away. ‘The Rath are coming that way, through the Hub, through the broken arterial.’
Only now did he regard me. ‘I thought that problem had been dealt with.’
Again, unsure of how to answer that, I settled for: ‘Maybe not.’
‘Are you asking for men?’
‘Yes.’
‘Say again, boy?’ The jolt ran right down through my body and I felt my shoulders straighten. Until now, I’d only ever heard him raise his voice to the dog. Suddenly, with the regimental rank and file mustered behind him, I saw him as he was: a commander. Over the white robe and mantle, a hauberk of steel mail braced his chest; a finer mesh reinforcing the folds of his headdress. If only I could remember the titles when they mattered.
‘Yes, High Commander. Sir.’
‘Out of the question. I’ll spare no men until I know what we face at the wall.’
‘Nothing!’ I urged. ‘There’ll be nothing when you get to the wall. It wasn’t a scout. It wasn’t a real attack!’
‘Ten men are dead,’ said the guard beside me.
Plamen’s voice levelled. ‘You’re wasting my time, child. Guardsman. Escort the Viceroy’s hand to the entrance of the Deep. From there he may attend to his orders by himself.’
Quadrants of soldiers began to leave the courtyard, bound for the fortress gates. I was swung back into the saddle. Plamen mounted his beautiful horse and looked back at me, just once, as we rode left of the gryphon. The crunch of marching, blare of nasal duduk sirens and shouted orders fell behind.
In the shade beyond the Deeping Door, the guard helped me down and left me at the edge of the rubble shaft without a word. I went down quickly, returned the ruined fusil to the workshop, then made my way towards the Hub. I passed the sappers in the tunnels, but around the green wall, almost no one. So when I heard a pair of feet doubling my own behind me, I spun around—‘Who’s there?’ I snapped.
I was on edge, which figured. But something was there, in the passage. I unhooked a lantern and raised two of its shutters to see better.
‘Who’s there?’ I said again, holding it out.
He didn’t try to hide. Tiny eyes catching the light for just a second through the converging folds of flabby skin, he waddled into view and raised fat cheeks in a spongy smile. No sandrat with him today.
‘Were you following me, Hetch?’
‘Yes.’
Hard to say much to that. And I couldn’t just ignore him – couldn’t ever ignore him, he’d saved my sentenced finger. ‘There’s been an attack,’ I told him fast.
‘Casualties?’
‘Guards and watchmen,’ I said. ‘The Viceroy got hurt too.’
‘The Viceroy, indeed?’
‘Yes, the Viceroy,’ I nodded seriously, then made a show of my hurry. ‘Hetch, I have to see to something. Now.’
He made an ushering gesture at the tunnel ahead. ‘Of course, Naemian.’
I moved on. And Hetch tailed me. Even well ahead of him, I could hear the shuffle of his sandals, did he really think I couldn’t? My lantern beams stroked freshly bricked passages, then from the southern access tunnel I stepped into the hallowed hall of pipes. Heart of Antissa. Where the Rath could slice up through her veins if I was right. There were lights on some bridges but none lower than fourth zone. Just below, on third, a metalsmith team was on shift. Ghulzar among them.
‘Don’t half like this room,’ murmured Hetch, beside me. ‘Goes a long way down.’
‘It goes all the way down,’ I said, not looking at him.
Our words were soft, but the Hub carried them. Ghulzar looked up. ‘You needing something?’
I called back: ‘Pintle. I’m looking for Pintle. Where is she?’
‘Repair work’s done.’ He shrugged his ball-like, branded shoulders. ‘No one working down there anymore.’
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Not good. ‘No one?’
‘Summat stuck in your lugs? Aye, no one!’ He shook his head and spat over the cantilever railing.
Not happy with that answer, I jogged to the midpoint of the bridge where a metal ladder had been installed to join Zones Two and Three. Careful with the lantern, I started down.
‘Here he comes, lads, look sharp,’ Ghulzar mocked me to his smiths. When I reached his bridge, he strode towards me with that huge hammer in hand. I leaned over the railing and looked down but it was impossible, even from here, to see anything of sixth zone. Just too dark. ‘Told you, no one down there,’ said Ghulzar, slowing his step as he looked up and frowned at Hetch clumsily navigating the middle rungs on the ladder.
‘I’ve to check on Arte-III,’ I said. ‘It’s urgent. There could still be something wrong down there.’
‘Pretty damn set on this overseein’ business, aren’t ya?’ said Ghulzar, and sniffed.
I widened my eyes at him. ‘It’s important. There’s been an attack.’
His face fell. ‘What kind of attack?’
I didn’t answer straightaway. As Hetch came down off the ladder, I simply yanked off my sandals and made him hold them. If he had to follow me around, then he might as well be useful.
‘Kid, what attack?’ growled Ghulzar, fist going tight round the hammer’s grip. Some of his smiths turned their heads.
I was aware of my mouth making some words about what happened, but couldn’t hear them. As I spoke, I tightened my grip on the lantern’s handle, slipped a first foot into the ropes and started to work my way down. Outside my head, I think, Ghulzar got some other pieces out of Hetch, then maybe sent one of the smiths to find out what was really going on.
The clicks and squeaks of the others’ work carried on, then; a little slower, eerily magnified by space. Ghulzar’s sniffs, echoing, took on the likeness of industrial metal scraping coals. Invisible water hissed through the intersecting pipes around me, but so much louder was the silence that ruled this place—big, fat, waiting silence that made me queasy—merely allowing worldly sounds to find half-voices inside it. Thirty feet down . . . forty . . . fifty . . . The nets worked their route around the fourth zone laterals. I bypassed the fourth zone bridge. A hundred feet, and colder . . . Laterals got fewer after that, and without their company to fill the Hub’s diameter, I avoided looking at the verticals I was left with: thin, ghostly trees standing in the void like staring strangers.
Guessing at something like two hundred feet below third zone, I stopped and steadied myself. And then leaned back off the ropes, reaching out with my light. Just as always, Arterial-III made me shudder. I breathed cold air deep into my lungs and let it pass. A little further down from here was the big new girder where the rupture had been. Forged around the circumference of Arte-III to withhold full channel pressure from the mains when it was reopened, it was whole. Undamaged.
Ghulzar called down: ‘Everything in order, ekhin Flint?’
I didn’t realise just how much fear my chest had been holding, squeezed inside, until that moment. I gushed a sigh that became a laugh, siphoning it out. ‘Yes!’ I called back up to him. ‘Girder’s alright!’
That queasiness gone too, I monkeyed back up the ropes towards the bridge.
At best, it would be a skirmish. We’d seen that distant group approaching from the erg, so maybe they would attempt a first assault on fortress walls. What had Rusper said, sixty? Eighty? Call it a hundred, I rounded up. They’d have reached the walls by now, I guessed. But so would Plamen and his detachments. The entire army Plamen commanded was right here inside this fortress. I almost couldn’t believe that I was really thinking it, but fine: let them. Let them do it! Let them have their first big push and see what happens! If the next stage of Vorth’s defence was to be that, a case of warding off Ratheine sapping from hilltop walls that they could never hope to breach ‒ a fortress armed with better artillery than their little poisoned black spears, not to mention the war machines and the chrozite ‒ I could deal with it. I could face them. We just had to get those fusils working properly . . .
The dwarf took the lantern while I slipped my sandals on again, not minding how the foundryman looked down at me, brooding. ‘Sure you don’t want to go looking for more holes, then?’ he gibed. But the gibe was hollow, I could hear it.
And I also felt my smile die on my lips. Chest closing, squeezing on that fear all over again, the queasiness washed back in. Hetch peered into my face, folding and unfolding the great lumps above his eyes. ‘What’s the matter with you, Naemian?’ And then, ‘Talk, kid,’ from Ghulzar.
‘More holes . . .’ I murmured.
Hetch made a show of looking at the pipes. ‘In which one?’
‘Kid?’ said Ghulzar. Impatient.
I rounded back to the railing. Now that he’d said it, I couldn’t look away from the logic. One major channel had been ruptured, why not a rupture in another? Below that girder in Arte-III, the Hub continued to descend another fifty or sixty feet before the floor. Anything could be down there, in any one of the four arterials, where the pipes were still submerged in all that water from the flood. I’d have to go again and check—and this time all the way down to the bottom.
Wait. Really, did I?
Not caring who saw it, I pulled my sleeve back from the torque and flipped the lion-face lid open. When he saw what was encased and mounted on my forearm, Hetch gave a little gasp—delight: I saw it in the mirror. Shut up or go away, I thought. And concentrated. Brushed the mirror with a finger, just to test, then snapped the lid shut on it. In an instant, the blue glow peeped through the cracks. I closed my eyes, gripped the torque-lever and pulled it.
Tingling coolness. My lungs opened. Force flowed and shook my body like the vertigo sensation the arterials always gave me, only so much stronger. The Sight opened up around me: far too big, ungraspable; as if, while swimming in the sea, the water underneath my legs had gone clear right to the seabed. My awareness floated in it, tiny, just like Ghulzar and his smiths and little Hetch.
Follow the pipes. Water coursed through them, I saw! Tamed cascades that tumbled, twisted, looped and climbed. It looked so free, and yet it was only by the will of iron, I supposed, that . . .
Focus! I pinned that focus to Arterial-III and followed its column, downward. Its insides made me tremble even more than its body, but still I plunged; reached the position of the girder. Closed my awareness on the barricade sealing the rupture—intact, just as I’d found it. Passing the curve where the Hub narrowed, I delved down further into whatever lay in wait below the floodwater. Thirty . . . forty . . . fifty feet . . . Light and dark meant nothing here: I knew the space and only space. Drunk on it almost, it became harder to be sure of what should be and what shouldn’t. But I saw what wasn’t: in ugly, splintered, flaking lesions—another haemorrhage in Arte-III, ten feet above the base floor of the Hub. Through it were movements. Flitting, darting, swimming movements. Swimming up.
And swimming fast.
I jammed the lever, cut the Sight. Finding the solid shape of Ghulzar, I spluttered out ‘Another one!’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Another hole in the arterial—under the water—down by the floor—broken from the inside like the first!’ I swallowed hard. ‘They’ve been trying to get in all this time and now they’re coming. They’re coming up!’
But I could tell by his face and the way he kept glancing at the torque he’d helped me make, not knowing why, that he didn’t understand. And how could he? ‘Slow it down, kid, take a breath, you’re not making any—’
‘Rath!’ my voice cracked. ‘High Commander’s got to know!’ I set my hands to the ladder’s rungs to start climbing, but then froze. Ghulzar turned sharply to the darkness and Hetch took a backstep from the railing. Some of the smiths stood from their work.
We’d all heard it, the splash, and I saw Ghulzar clench his jaw. ‘What the . . .’ Another splash. Pipes didn’t make noises like that. ‘Bastards!’
The bolt of dread shot me up the rungs. Hetch dropped the lantern in his panic and grabbed my foot. Afraid he’d pull me off, I kicked, and the sandal came off in his grip. I flung the other one off too. Metalsmiths hurried in behind him as a guttural echo flew up clearly, then more splashes from below. Hetch kept on grabbing at my ankles, coming up behind me so much faster than he’d gone down. But no sooner did he scramble up onto the second zone bridge than he was shoved aside by the smiths fleeing for the tunnel. He stumbled forward while I rounded on the railing of Zone Two.
Ghulzar hadn’t followed. Not moved an inch. Completely still, he stood with his huge hammer in hand and stared down darkness.
With a winded bleat, Hetch ran towards the tunnel but I lunged and caught him by his swathes. ‘You’re Plamen’s messenger, aren’t you! We need soldiers in here right now!’
‘They’re at the gates, Naemian!’ he whimpered.
‘They’re needed here!’
He squealed, pulled free. I let him go.
Down on Three’s bridge, the hammer’s head slapped into the foundryman’s palm. He was crazy. ‘You can’t fight them! We need to get out!’ I pleaded.
He growled low, ‘Then get out.’