Chapter Three
Beyond the Walls
Agloff felt something warm in his hand. It moved, wriggled. But it wasn’t indelicate, quite the opposite in fact. He wanted to lie here forever, suspended between fleeting wakefulness and some splendid dream.
‘Mornin’,’ a deep voice growled, and the warm thing jolted in surprise.
‘Bloody hell, Oxford,’ Ariea yelped and Agloff’s eyes strained open. She snatched her hand free from his and leapt to attention, like she was somehow embarrassed.
Agloff’s head rolled over his pillow. He was in a hospital ward, but there didn’t seem to be any other patients. To his left, pouches of blood were stashed and tagged on silvery racks. He rubbed his hand by a puncture mark on his arm. What had they done to him? Am I dying? I don’t feel dying.
Then, he strained his head to the window opposite where a handsome man split the morning sun in two.
‘He lives! Take it easy. You been out two days.’ The man’s angular features buried themselves in a bushy mane and Agloff suddenly felt conscious of the few wisps of hair poking from his chin, plucking at them with his fingers. ‘You look like shit though.’
‘Thanks.’ Agloff rubbed his eyes.
‘Oxford Blue, Operative of the Underground.’ He offered a hand, which Agloff declined. He looked at Ariea.
‘Complicated,’ she said.
‘Drake said someone was escorting you to the Underground. I’m that guy.’ Oxford’s waves of matted hair flopped this way and that as he spoke and Agloff was weirdly captivated. ‘We’re leaving once you’re up. They have your stuff.’
Agloff blinked, his brain computing. ‘So, I don’t have winged fever? I’m not ill?’ His chest became tight. He searched Oxford’s eyes for any flicker of deception.
‘We don’t know how, but you seem to be immune to it. You’re the first reported incident of immunity in the entire Colony.’
‘Is that why Jask wants me?’
It seems hard to believe they aren’t connected. But how could he have known before Agloff did.
‘It’s… possible,’ Oxford said, but Agloff could tell he was reluctant to be drawn into answering questions. ‘Right now, we just need to get you out of here. Winter is moving west. Drake had word pilgrims were sighted not far from here. You turned eighteen at the right time. You’ll be safe at the Underground.’ How could Oxford possibly be sure of that?
‘Backwater will be safe, yeah?’ Agloff could hardly say he loved this place, but it had raised him all the same. And he was of no mind to let it fall to Winter.
‘As can be. Governor Fall of the Underground is sending Drake men and food, in exchange for you.’
It made no sense to Agloff. Why was he of such interest to the Underground, or to anyone in the Colony? With his immunity, it made sense. But this deal was struck before anyone knew. Jask wanted him before anyone knew. Why then, he thought. His immunity; his mother; Jask, the deal between the Governor Fall and Drake. There was an answer in the web these threads spun, somewhere.
‘Oxford,’ Ariea cut in, moving to sit at Agloff’s bedside.
The operative nodded and stood to leave. ‘Take it easy, Ashborne. They took a lotta blood.’ He vanished out the doorway, his leather coat tails flapping at his heels. Oxford’s words seemed to trigger something in Agloff. His head span, a numb pain throbbed against the back of his skull.
Ariea then leaned over Agloff. ‘Close your eyes,’ she whispered by his ear. ‘I got you something.’
Thoughtlessly, Agloff obeyed.
A moment later she nudged him to open them. A scruffily wrapped brown paper parcel plopped into his hands.
‘Happy birthday.’ She grinned. ‘Sorry I didn’t get the chance on the day.’
He tugged the ribbon, and the parcel unfurled and within sat a grand, leather-bound book, entitled Collapse of the Feng: A History of Humanity from the First Encounter to the Foundation of the Colonies.
Agloff smiled wider still, geeking out as he did. ‘You know I never get you this much, why do you even bother? Thank you.’ That year, all he had managed to find her was a book of sheet music for her violin, from this weird-looking collector up Riya Avenue. She embarrassed him sometimes.
Ariea shrugged as if to say the matter was of no importance. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said. The words seemed to fly over Agloff’s head: acknowledged but barely listened to. He was just happy she was here.
Agloff reached out an arm and hugged Ariea tight. ‘You’re the best.’
‘Nah, you are.’ The edges of her lips perked into a tender smile, and she watched as Agloff flickered through the pages of the book. But sooner than he had time to pore over them, Oxford returned, a flurry of shouts and snipes chasing his footsteps down the corridor.
‘—When you offered Ashborne to Governor Fall, the deal was unconditional!’ Oxford yelled. ‘His immunity changes nothing.’
‘On the contrary,’ came the harsh tones of Warden Drake, ‘it changes everything. We need to hold him. We need to run tests. We have the chance to find a cure—’
‘With respect, I think that is for the Underground to decide. You and Governor Fall have a contract.’
‘I don’t think you give a damn about respect. I think you look down on the forts. Until he’s beyond those walls, Ashborne is still my citizen and until I decide otherwise, I will do with him as is in the best interests of this fort. You’re a kid, Blue. A goddamn kid. I have run Backwater for eighteen years—’
‘You’re running tests with no permission!’
‘The greater good.’
‘Warden.’ Oxford said it like a protest. ‘You don’t get to just change your mind. This contract is binding. You renege now, and Fall’s men won’t be coming here to protect you. Quite the opposite.’
The pair of them barged into the ward. Drake waved a hand for Ariea to give way and sat on the end of Agloff’s bed. Her narrow frame cast a long shadow. Gingerly, Agloff stood and looked at both of them. He had no care for their squabbles.
‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ he said.
Drake spoke, ‘Exactly, you don’t understand what all this is—’
‘But as I said downstairs, shouldn’t I get to decide what happens with my life?’ Agloff finished his thought. He was no longer wont for niceties, least of all for Drake. She was only his superior until he left after all. ‘What does staying buy me other than living as your lab rat?’
The Warden reached a hand to Agloff. ‘Agloff—’
‘If this is the only choice, I’m going to the Underground. You don’t get to kick me out and change your mind when it suits.’ He searched for the right words, as a light feeling rushed to his head. In leaving, he could fulfil his purpose now, to find Andromeda and Eron. It was a seed gestating in the root of his consciousness. And Marty and the Underground were the start of it. He wondered how he might leave that place too, but that was a bridge to cross another day.
Drake scowled, standing again. She hmphed.
Ariea looked up to Drake. ‘I don’t think you have any respect for us,’ she sneered. ‘Agloff is just an inconvenience to you. You did what? You sold us, hell to Feng. Tell yourself whatever you like, but I don’t think you’re any better than the rest of them.’ Ariea’s eyes twitched, as if she feared she had crossed the limit of Drake’s patience.
The Warden said nothing at first.
‘You have an uncanny propensity to sniff bullshit, Ariea. You tried sniffing him?’ She snapped a look at Oxford. She was a snake, thought Agloff. Like she might fall through one’s fingers and then choke them with her own if they didn’t hold their guard against her. Vulnerable but deadly. ‘You think Governor Fall will treat you any kinder than I will?’
‘And that’s your fault,’ Agloff said.
Drake’s hand shook at her side. Agloff wasn’t sure if it was rage or the years within them. Her hand ducked to her back pocket.
In a heartbeat, the air became still, and all sense of the world beyond the ward was lost. Warden Drake trained a pistol at Oxford.
‘I would do it, you know, for my fort.’
‘You pull that trigger, Warden, you declare war on the Underground.’
She shook her head. ‘No. I let him go, I condemn my world to fall, slowly, unendingly, day-by-day, as another soul and another and another ends up dead from winged fever. I knew the boy was valuable to someone. I didn’t know he was valuable to everyone.’
Oxford returned the compliment. He pointed his rifle at Drake. ‘Your hands are shaking.’
Drake looked down at them.
‘From ten feet, I’m not convinced you could kill me, Warden.’
Agloff caught himself in the moment. But it didn’t end. The passage of time seemed to wait on his decision. His eyes pivoted from Drake to Oxford, as their words sparred.
Could he really stay? But there was nothing here, he thought. Life as a strider maybe. Or more likely locked up below, a blood farm for Drake until she cured the fever. Was he selfish to not want that? Was staying a moral duty?
But leaving took him to everything else. Out into the Colony and beyond, to chase the words his mother wrote so long ago. And Marty was at the Underground too, Marty who Drake told him had the truth.
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‘If you stay, Agloff,’ said Oxford then, ‘you will never see the sun again.’
‘You could save a thousand lives,’ Drake pleaded.
Their heads turned to him, almost forgetting the enemy opposite.
‘At the Underground, you could be part of a people, a home,’ Oxford said. ‘And you could see Marty again.’
Agloff looked at Ariea. ‘What happens to Ariea in this?’ he said. ‘Where does she fit in your grand plans?’
There was a look shared on their faces. A vacant look that said, ‘she didn’t.’
That was their greatest insult, he thought. He stood in his pyjamas, pulling Ariea to her feet as he did. How did he choose between them, he thought.
‘GUARDS!’ Drake called. She summoned their footsteps to her heels. They flanked her, guns trained, in their black uniforms. ‘Take the girl! If she stays, Ashborne stays!’
And there, he knew, he would never choose Drake.
‘I’m not staying,’ he spat. ‘Not for you.’
Ariea stepped out from behind Agloff. ‘You witch!’ she yelled.
Oxford covered them both, they shuffled backwards towards a second exit, as the guards passed Drake in their faceless guises into an arrow formation.
‘Go!’ Oxford said to Agloff. ‘Go! Go downstairs. Your stuff is there. Ariea’s too. Don’t ask. Just grab.’ He turned his look to Drake. ‘WE HAD A DEAL!’
‘Not anymore,’ she said. ‘On the contrary, what we have is a cure.’ She looked across at the blood pouches glinting in the sunlight, then at Agloff.
‘GO!’ Oxford bellowed. ‘I’ll follow you.’
Ariea grabbed Agloff’s hand, yanking him into the staircase at their backs. They scampered down the floors, two steps at a time, into a waiting area, where Agloff saw their bags bundled up.
‘What are we doing?’ Ariea looked at him beggingly. But she was the decisive one, Agloff thought. Possessed of an instinct, his mind snapped into focus. Something told him this was the right thing to do.
‘We wait for Oxford.’
Ariea didn’t question. She nodded. This wasn’t the time for an unplanned escape, thought Agloff. He could strategise his way to Eron later.
Then the air snapped by three gunshots. They were louder than Agloff imagined. Silence swallowed them for a moment before came three thuds. There was a rush of footsteps and Oxford leapt at their faces.
‘Go!’ He repeated his order, and they launched themselves into the light of day. Once they were out of sight of the hospital, they slowed to a walk.
‘Keep to the side streets,’ Oxford said.
‘Did you kill her?’ Ariea said.
Oxford looked back at her sternly. ‘I urged her to reconsider her decision.’
‘Oxford, did you kill her?’
He had the look of a killer, thought Agloff. Or someone who could do it if the moment demanded.
‘No, I didn’t kill her. I can’t say the same for her guards.’ He voice was cold, with sudden authority.
Ariea then dipped her head at Agloff. ‘Why does everyone want you?’ she said tiredly.
‘Because Jask and Winter want me,’ said Agloff.
‘And why do they?’
He paused. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Anyway, you got your wish.’
Agloff frowned. ‘Huh?’
‘You always hated this place.’
‘I hate it more now.’
Even so for everything she had said, Agloff couldn’t help but pity Warden Drake, which he was also sure was the last thing she wanted.
They turned into a larger road, led by Oxford, and Agloff thought a slow pace might lessen their conspicuousness. But their bags baited curious looks from passers-by. Common sense dictated that travellers were strange folk. Stranger than foreigners, and not to be trusted. Each fort in Colony Two was an island nation. To travel further than from one’s bed to their work was perverse to many. Even French Town, not ten miles over the valley, may as well have been on the arch of Cerberus.
Agloff looked down at his feet. Unease set into his body, at the thought of what was hidden below. Men and women marked for death by the stain of winged fever. Their brother, their sister, their mother, their other would never know what had happened to their loved one, unless the same fate befell them.
‘You okay?’ Ariea said.
‘Yeah, it just makes me weird to think about them. Letting her keep it a secret. We’re doing the right thing, right?’
‘There was no right thing to do,’ she said. Her conviction was his strength.
She pretended to be happy, but her face was reddened and raw by the days alone in the hospital. Every so often he caught a glance of her in a moment of loneliness and he saw the pain that caused it.
A minute later, they passed onto the farmers’ market. He, Ariea and Mr Finland came here every Tuesday. Now he was leaving, he was sure he would miss it. Fresh pastries and cut sandwiches perforated the air like lures for hungry customers. There were two dozen or more stalls, zig-zagging around the fountain at the middle of the square, each with their wares spilling their boxes to entice and entertain. Fruits, fabrics, knick-knacks.
They cantered up the cobbles of Main Street where the gates to the fort grew in their eyeline, a blot between the tilted stacks of half-made buildings. The gates were open for the loggers. People never went near the perimeter wall, and he was never quite sure why.
Oxford led them through, into the mire of boiler-suited loggers and their cart-bound loads heading the other direction.
There, Agloff took his first step into the rest of the universe. Each that followed now would be the farthest from home he had ever taken.
He took a long, hard breath, and smiled.
If not in the way he expected, he was here. He was free, if he had ever not been in the first place. His life was his own, at least between here and the Underground. And it was a big, damn world out here.
In eighteen years, Agloff had never felt the wind whisk through his hair, unbroken by the angles of streets and buildings, or belts of wild grass bend underfoot, every step soft and satisfying. The land instantly fell away from Backwater Peak, cascading in all directions. He had the urge to dive, and roll, carried by gravity into a band of trees that guarded a stream at the foot of the mound. The image had been richly imagined and yet still paled to reality. It was a scene lifted from one of his books. The land flowed in waves of patched grass and woodland to the horizon. French Town was a distant brown smear. From the stream, a dusty track ebbed out to Corten Bridge and marked out a path into the Colony beyond. It was like a thousand micro-worlds stitched together.
In the other direction was Lake Principia: the lifeblood of Colony Two. A thousand miles long and almost as wide. The rivulets and streams that fed it, fed the whole of the Colony. Every town and every fort rested within eyeshot of one of them. Even Eden, the seat of Winter’s power, sat proudly on the River Nanda.
‘Pretty damn cool,’ Oxford said, pegging his hair back into a ponytail. He laughed at the sight of them both. ‘Onwards,’ he bellowed and Agloff thought the wind might carry his voice all the way to Principia.
‘What’s your job?’ Agloff asked Oxford as they trudged down the hillside. For a moment, Agloff felt he might he tumble as his boots slid against muddy grass. ‘Like your job job?’
‘My job job?’ Oxford repeated. ‘Special Operative.’
‘But what does that mean?’
Oxford raked a hand through his ponytail thoughtfully, then tightened his raincoat across his shoulders to stop his bag straps from slipping. ‘I smuggle, or gather intelligence… on Winter, other forts and towns. I deliver supplies. I deliver people.’ He waved a hand to gesture Agloff and Ariea. ‘Whatever’s required for the Underground.’
‘So, you’re a dogsbody?’
‘If you like.’
‘I wanted to be a strider.’
Oxford laughed at this. ‘I’ve crossed paths with a few of those in my time. We have no need at the Underground. We use pneumatic tubes.’
‘And how many days will it take to get there?’ demanded Ariea as they reached the stream. Oxford ignored her for a moment to gather his thoughts. He pointed along the river, muttering to himself.
‘We’ll follow it lakeward, over Kimsy Bridge, through the trees, via March Town and then along the shoreline west,’ he announced. ‘And four days? Took me three when I got transferred here, but there was only one person I had to look out for then, so allow for a day longer.’
‘Excuse me!’ Ariea protested. ‘I- we are perfectly capable of watching out for ourselves.’
‘You ever gone further than that river?’
‘No further than the gate actually,’ Agloff quipped.
‘You do as I say, all’s good.’
Minutes eked into hours, passed only by Oxford’s ramblings. In particular, Agloff had discovered much about his fiancée, Alice Middleton. Apparently, she was a military instructor of impeccable renown (so he said), who was desperate to start a family; anything to keep Oxford at home. At every utterance, Ariea offered up a contemptuous ‘hmm’, while Agloff gave only frugal replies, thinking it was better to just let Oxford’s speeches play out rather than risk provoking they last any longer.
‘What is the Underground?’ Agloff asked at one point. For so long it had been little more than rumour, a vague myth of some great subterranean city. Ariea gave him a look as if to say, ‘why are you trying to punish us?’ but he ignored her.
‘It’s home is what it is,’ Oxford said.
‘Okay, but if we’re living there, we should know more than that.’
Oxford huffed. ‘It’s bunch of HabComs, habitation complexes- bunkers basically, built before the war. They were unused, so we showed up and moved in. We’re fully self-reliant. Folks ain’t fond of strangers though.’ That was no less true anywhere else, Agloff bemoaned. ‘Everyone folks meet, they’ve seen every day their entire lives. People don’t tend to come and go apart from sleepers and operatives like me. But keep your heads down and you’ll be fine.’
‘Why are we going?’
‘Because the Governor of the Underground paid for you.’
‘But why?’ Agloff pressed. ‘How did he even know who I was or that I was at Backwater? Or that Jask wants me? How’d he know I was worth anything?’
Oxford stopped, stooped to look at Agloff. ‘Listen, friend, you’re asking questions I ain’t paid to know the answer to. I don’t know what Fall wants with you. I can only guess.’
‘Then guess.’
‘I’d rather not. Forts and towns do favours for each other all the time. I’m just the muscle that’s paid to carry them out.’
‘So, I’m just a favour for Drake?’
He sensed Oxford’s patience wane. ‘You’re immune, right? If she could use you to make a cure, she would have had leverage over the other forts. She would no longer have to rely on them. She coulda made them work for her. I’m guessing Fall has similar plans. You happy now?’
Agloff knew Oxford was right. Guessing was pointless and pouring over the whats and whys would only make him more anxious. He would see when he got there, he told himself over and over. For now, he should just enjoy the journey. Or try to.
They were led on upstream and the sun sank into their eyeline. The squelching mud of marshland licked the soles of Agloff’s boots, and all he could think about was how much he really, really wanted a hot shower.
When the last glimmer of daylight dipped below the horizon, Oxford ordered them to halt, casting the stack of bags strapped over his shoulders into a tangle of shrubs. He said they should be safe here. Backwater was as far west as civilisation went, and to the south were the untamed Scourgelands; arid land, travelled only by vagrants.
Oxford pulled a small flask and a knob of string from one of his pockets. Agloff and Ariea too dropped their bags, and Agloff collapsed to the ground, spread his limbs like a starfish.
‘Ariea, come here’, Oxford said softly, crouching between bent-over flower beds nestled on the banks of the stream.
Agloff perked up his head to watch as Ariea followed his steps, stride-for-stride. She squatted beside him. Reaching a hand into his pocket, Oxford pulled out a small square of parchment. He lay it flat against the ground and buried a hand in the topsoil, producing a handful of dirt. He funnelled it through his fingers and onto the parchment.
‘When you live in Underground, you live within the soil,’ Oxford whispered. His voice was something tenderer than Agloff had heard before. ‘The earth provides for us, so that, when we die, we return you to the soil, to sustain those who come after us. I didn’t know your dad, Ariea. But we can return him to the earth, in spirit. He should be remembered.’
Ariea looked at Oxford, and Agloff caught the glint of her eyes in the twilight glow. She mumbled something in reply that Agloff could not hear.
Oxford unwound the knob of string, tying the soil into the parchment by its corners and then doused it in fluid from the flask. With one hand, he lowered the parchment into the stream and with the other he produced a small lighter. As he let one hand go, the other clicked, and the parchment alit in an amber blaze, carried gently by the current downstream, on to Lake Principia.
Oxford guarded Ariea by his arms and the fire swallowed them in silhouette. She turned to hug him. Agloff began to walk forward but then thought better of it. Was he allowed to share in this moment?
He restrained himself and watched the pair of them from a distance, wishing he had done something too. He knew her pain. But he was too awkward to help it. They hadn’t even spoken about it. The man who had raised Agloff was gone and yet he felt cruel nothingness.
He watched. Was he… jealous of Oxford?
But what could Agloff have possibly said that would have made her world seem any better? It was as if he didn’t know how to act towards her. And instead, he let Oxford do the things it should be him doing.
His train of thought ran. I should just ask Ariea if she likes me.
Yet, such was his fear that she would say no, he thought it better to avoid the question altogether. He could fantasise in the idyllic uncertainty that not-asking afforded him.
Soon, the tinge of the package bobbed out of sight, and Agloff summoned the courage to sit beside Ariea on the riverbank. He wanted to talk about something, anything else, but his mind circled back to the one topic that seemed somehow inescapable.
‘You okay?’ he said, and Ariea nodded. ‘After I saw Drake, I never told you about the letter from my mother.’
‘Oxford and Drake told me when you were asleep. Pretty insane,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wonderful if you find your parents.’ There was reservation in her voice though that suggested it would not be entirely wonderful.
‘You think it’s a wild goose chase?’ Agloff asked. Why couldn’t he think of something other than himself to talk about? He should have just said how pretty the river was, or the stars, or something otherwise irrelevant.
Ariea gave a shameful nod. ‘I don’t know, maybe. I mean, I do agree with you. It’s just if there’s a chance… why wouldn’t you take it… I guess.’
Agloff said nothing. There was nothing else to say. He bowed his head, quietly ashamed, and saw her outstretched hand, bedded against the grass. For a moment, he wanted to reach out and hold it. He paused. But what good would that do, he thought.