Trent Jamieson - Roil

“And it could have been much worse. By the time the Dolorous Grey reached the city they’d set the whole train alight, from engine to caboose. Nearly took Chapman with it. Not the best beginning to the Festival. But what can you expect with that so close.” The guard nodded towards the Obsidian Curtain. “And that was before we had the cemetery dead of the deserted suburbs come stumbling against the southern walls. Our cannon cut them to pieces, but I was in clean up duty. Sweaty, awful job, even with the cold suits, and not all of them were dead.” He made a disgusted face. “After the festival I’m out of here, I’ve a ticket on an Aerokin transport, one of the Blake and Steel line. Going to family in Hardacre. If the world’s falling to hell then I’m flying as far from the crumbling edge as possible.”

“What’s so wonderful about the festival that you’d want to stay?” David asked.

“You’ll know soon enough,” the guard said, sounding regretful that he was stuck out here. “It’s almost worth risking the Witmoths. Of course, the danger money they are paying us is extraordinary. Once I’m done here I should be able to live out my few remaining years very comfortably in Hardacre, free state and all, I hear it still snows up there.”

“Don’t you think we should try and fight it? Shouldn’t we do all we can to stop the Roil?”

The guard shrugged, and he spat upon the ground as though he had heard this argument one too many times. No doubt he had, surely some of Chapman’s troops thought it worthwhile to fight.

“Might as well try and stop a thunderstorm, all the people in Shale couldn’t do that. It’s a force of nature, not an army. Surely the Grand Defeat taught us that. Some people say it was our Industry that started it, warmed up the world enough for it to get a foothold; now it’s an engine that won’t be stopped. Greater cities than ours have fallen, what chance do we have? If the Council of Engineers can find some way of halting it then I’ll be happy, but I don’t think it’s likely, so we may as well live out the rest of our years as best we can. Who knows it may never cross the mountains. And if it does and a Quarg Hound bays outside my door, I’ll shoot it and the next and the next until my time is done.” The guard’s eyes were grim and hard, but they lightened for a moment. “Good luck, idealist. Enjoy the Festival.”

David considered the long line behind him and shook his head. When the Roil comes, it won’t wait in queue, he thought.

More guards armed with ice-weaponry stood at the gates, nodding as he passed through the thick outer walls and into the warren of streets that made up the city proper.

One of the oldest metropolises of Shale, Chapman’s stonewalls were sturdy and imposing, designed to keep out Cuttlefolk, they also kept out the light. Shadowy cobbled streets made their dank and musty circuit around the city. And everywhere was a heavy smell, fecund and earthy rather than Mirrlees’ metallic and hard odours.

However, for all its scent and shadows, Chapman was dressed up for the festival. Every available space on the street was covered with posters, advertising such wonders as “General Brown and his amazing balloon suit” or “Thrille to the throw of the Twins of Twig” or better yet “Mr Marcus the amazing Calculating Pig, let him calculate your future with the mystical power of Arithmetic. The smartest of our four-legged futurist friends”.

David wondered what kind of future anyone could hope for with the Roil just down the road, and what truly smart creature would ever find its way here?

For all its proximity to the Roil, the city lacked that ever-present sense of threat, of Government officials scrutinising every single thing. At every corner, soloists or bands played tin whistles and mandolins and sang about balloons or Roil beasts or working in the docks.

He waited for Cadell at the appointed place for an hour, then another hour, and the Old Man did not show up.

At last, as evening was coming on he gave up and began to look for the safe house.

THE NORTHERN SUBURBS OF MIRRLEES 214 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

The night passed without incident for which Medicine was truly grateful. Well, without too much incident; there were, what Medicine was soon to discover, the usual complaints: minor injuries, brawls and affairs. And each slowed the groups’ leaving. They did not get moving until almost ten o’clock. It took that long to get things packed back into the wagons.

Once on the horse, Medicine decided he needed to walk. Every step was agony, but nothing compared to getting back in the saddle.

“Was anything devised to torture a man more than a horse?” he asked Agatha, the head of the Council Guard.

“Bad poetry comes to mind first,” she said, her smile softening a hard face.

“My mother was poet. Not a bad one,” Medicine said. “She moved to Hardacre after my father passed away. A meddler, and I doubt she’s changed, there’s something of her style in that metropolis’ declaration of independence.”

Agatha laughed. “I’d have thought you’d come from good working stock.”

“Hardly,” Medicine said. “My father was a painter and an industrialist. But I had no interest in those things. I was a bit of a disappointment to him. And in families like mine disappointment soon becomes anger. I think I started my studies as a surgeon to annoy him, and then when I opened my surgery in the docks…”

He had never struggled harder than those first years. Respect was not easily earned. First he revelled in the terrible conditions, as a pure act of defiance. Then he made it his life’s work to improve them. He saw too much death, too many people’s lives ruined by the way their employers treated them, and the way the laws of the Council let them. It had been a natural progression into the Confluent Party. More study, gaining his engineering ticket and his Orbis. When he lost his fingers he’d thought he was finally making a difference. The violence had galvanised him to greater action, within and without the halls of government.

Now he worked for the Council. He had hated Stade almost from the moment he met him. Now he hated himself for working with the bastard.

We are damned. The pair of us.

But that did not matter anymore. The Roil’s reach extended every day and once the Obsidian Curtain closed, life as he understood would be gone.

What choice did he have?

He did not expect to live forever, nor hope to assume that even Shale had all that much time left to it. Everything ends, and every engine runs down or is superseded by another make; a different thing. But that did not mean he was prepared to lie down and let it happen. If it could be stopped then he needed to be part of that. He wanted to live as long as he could and he wanted to help as many others as he could. Though if a certain Councillor should choke on his own tongue…

As the highway passed through the Regress Swamps, creatures stared up at them out of the water. Huge eyed and, Medicine did not doubt, huge jawed. People peered over the edge of the highway to get a better look at the beasts.

Medicine pointed them out to Agatha.

“They’re called Factories. Don’t ask me why. That truth’s been lost a long time. Names have a habit of carrying on, long past the sense of them. Little’s known about them, no one’s done much in the way of study. But they’re big, bodies extend down a long way. How they move, how they mate, how they excrete, no one knows.”

“Not something that they write about in the travel guides. Are they dangerous?”