Trent Jamieson - Roil

DEAD OR ALIVE. Less life met with Largition.

The image ruined his mood. He finished his meal, strode two streets over and climbed the stony steps to the great circle wall.

He was sweaty, breathless and dizzy by the time he reached the top of the wall, but the dry wind stripped away the sweat and his breath returned to him.

From up here, you could see everything with almost as much clarity as Map Powder provided. Chapman was a city of circles within circles, split only by the fat River Weep. Well, a tributary of it; the Lesser Weep. the Greater Weep disgorged into the sea twenty miles north of the city. Where Mirrlees was undulate and coiled around the river, up and down and side to side, her streets like a nest of serpents, Chapman was an example of much more careful civic planning.

Everything was constructed around a central landmark: the Field of Flight. David could just make it out, patches of green through the balloon and Aerokin heavy sky. To the west of it was Chapman’s Tower of Engineers a smaller version of Mirrlees’ Ruele tower. With night just a few hours off, its twin searchlights were already lit, at its base would be the famous motto of the Engineers: “In Knowledge Truth. In Truth Perfection”.

From the Southern Wall where David stood, you could see the Deserted Suburbs. The gaudy wrap of the Festival of Float failed to conceal the poor condition of Chapman from even the most cursory of inspections.

The streets were empty. Only around the pubs and the buildings near the Field of Flight could people be seen in any numbers. And those areas were overflowing with crowds, few from what David could tell, actually locals.

David stood on the Southern Wall, staring into the city and then out beyond the wall to the Roil, alternating between two forms of dreadfulness, though one was by far the worst. Down south, past the lost suburbs there was little to look at… or too much.

Every time he glanced that way, a thrill of terror rushed through him. It was a visceral dread. Indeed, the mere sight of it gripped and damned and made every doubt come bubbling up like a sickness.

The Roil dwarfed his imagination; transformed Chapman to an insignificant scrap of human clutter. This close it, and its vast mute prophecy, was impossible to ignore. How were they ever going to stop that?

David had seen Cadell work his power over cold, he had seen the sky rain ice and the frozen remains of poor creatures caught in that furious boiling chill. However, impressive as it had been, the Roil made it seem like nothing. But then he saw, in the distance far, far in the heart of the Roil, the coruscating finger of light that was the Breaching Spire. Mirrlees was just too far away to see it, but here at last was revealed the greatest work of the Old Men, the diamond tower that breached the atmosphere. Then the tower dimmed, or a cloud passed across the sun, and all he could see was the Roil again.

A distant almost plaintive bell sounded out the hour.

He turned his back to the Roil, but could not escape its presence. It was there as much as the beating of his heart or the heat in his blood. Try as he might it would never leave his thoughts. He had seen the Roil. He had seen the end of the world.

The Dolorous Grey hadn’t even begun to prepare him for the Roil’s terror. He had expected to read about the train on every broadsheet in town but the papers had been silent on the matter, though the subject was broached several times on the street. People knew, they were just too afraid to admit they knew after the first few were arrested and hanged.

David was musing over this when he saw something that nearly had him jumping over the side of the wall. No more than a hundred metres away stood Mr Tope.

All this had begun with him, the knife swift and fast across his father’s throat. The Verger leant against the wall staring south, his face heavy and stern, weighted with worries. Had the Roil disturbed him too? David doubted that Mr Tope had spotted him, but it would not be long. The walkway was relatively narrow and besides the sentries at regular intervals there were few people up here. He couldn’t risk trying to walk past him.

There was a steep stone stair descending from the wall nearby. David ducked down there, choosing not to hide but flee, just in case the Verger wanted to use these stairs as well – a distinct possibility the way David’s luck was going.

David reached the ground and the road, and he ran, not stopping until he had put a few streets between himself and the wall.

Then he realised where he was, the map returning to him as a sort of flashback.

This was an inner deserted suburb, just a few streets from the Chadwick safe house. The thought of being alone here made him uneasy, but he reasoned all he needed to do was follow the road and it would lead him to the safe house, which by definition must be safe.

He closed his eyes and picked the most direct route. It took him through the dour and forsaken retail district that ran alongside the Southern Wall. Here businesses had failed months ago; he stared through broken windows at bookstores empty of everything but shelves, and curling posters for the latest histories. Some shops seemed half-stocked as though, one day, their owners had just locked the doors and never come back. No one had even bothered to loot them.

He looked around sadly, stared morosely through curtains of peeling newspapers and dust-choked webs, as though even the spiders had left this part of town.

A few more minutes of walking and he was there: standing before the burnt out husk.

David wasn’t sure what he had expected, but not this. Though he didn’t know why he was surprised. He stood there for a while, not knowing what to do. At last, he reasoned, his best chance was back in the city proper.

Once he’d had another shot of Carnival.

He scarcely noticed the woman until she was directly behind him, her face a ghostly reflection in the glass window front of a deserted millinery.

A Verger! He spun on her, his ice pistol out, and then faltered. She was like no Verger he had ever seen. She loomed over him, her eyes wild, her white hair a mass of knots and curls, pistols gripped in both hands, rifles and swords holstered all around her waist. He recognised the weaponry; it was similar to the ice pistols Chapman’s sentries brandished, but there was something about it; a precision, matched in the way she moved. Scars streaked her pale face, not all of them were old. What was she? Some sort of bandit?

She glanced at his pistol dismissively, and David had a sense that she could knock it from him before he could even pull the trigger.

“Step away from the glass, addict,” she said.

She’d seen him, she’d seen him take the Carnival. Despite the drug, he felt his face burn with shame. David raised his hands, but he did not let go of the gun.

“If that’s what you want,” he said.

“Down,” she said and aimed her pistols at his chest. “Get down!”

David dropped, as the window shattered behind him. He rolled onto his back, and found himself inches from a Quarg Hound’s flexing teeth – and in that moment of desperate clarity, David marvelled that the beast’s teeth really did flex and shiver and shift.

Keep moving. Keep moving. He shuffled back on his arse.

There were two loud shots. The Quarg Hound shrieked, its teeth gnashing as the force of the shots drove it to the ground.

Its legs shuddered, then the shuddering stopped. All at once the air stank of ammonia and cinnamon.

“You’re safe now,” the woman said.

“Thank you,” David said, feeling particularly less than safe because the woman had not lowered her weapons.

“Don’t thank me. I’ve been tracking that hound for hours. And when it came here, to a place I’d been told might be safe…” She looked back at the wall. “Don’t know how it got here, the walls are high and well guarded, but there’ll be more. There always are.”