Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

It wasn’t all bad, here — being sheltered by the caves, it was warmer than the outer city. And things were starting to change. People had more food these days, and money didn’t matter with the exchange irens operating without coin. Caley marvelled at how he could simply trade things without scraping around to find the money. People were in better spirits.

That was because of Shalev.

But he needed to let Shalev know of what had happened to Rend — they all stuck together, they were all one community. If someone was caught, they would have to deal with the issue. Shalev had made a family of these Caveside dwellers.

He sauntered half a mile deeper into the caves, across the border of what the Emperor was now labelling as Underground East and Underground South, in an effort to map out the urban sprawl. He headed through what was locally known as Blacksmith Plaza, Sahem Road, Mudtown and Carp Alley. There were passageways and routes here that few knew about, and through which even fewer had travelled, dirt tracks and alleys with hundred-year-old graffiti. A couple of old guys were playing a complicated board game on an upturned cask of beer, whilst somewhere inside an old pipe was whining out a folk tune. A dog trotted up alongside him briefly, then vanished into one of the alleyways.

He palmed hand-slang with a few of the kids he knew. The citizens he passed all knew him in one way or another, and that was good — because otherwise they might have killed a stranger, such was the level of secrecy around here. He saw more than one person instinctively reach for a weapon, these underground soldiers, these comrades without uniform.

Two of his brethren stood guard with fat sabres beneath their cloaks in front of a recent excavation into the cliff face. He nodded to them and entered. It was a magic-blasted route, a damp-smelling, claustrophobic passage, and, standing tall, he continued with one palm gliding against the smooth rock, focusing on the single spot of light in the distance.

Just as he reached it, a hand grabbed him by his shirt and he was yanked forward into the chamber beyond and sent sprawling across the floor.

‘Hey,’ he spluttered, rubbing his chin, ‘it’s me, retards, Caley.’

A row of swords were pointed towards him, glinting in the candlelight. Seven men and three women were staring down, and Caley squirmed under their glare.

‘Let him through,’ a female voice commanded.

As they stepped aside, Caley stood and brushed himself down, nodding to them all.

The room was spectacularly decorated in mosaics, echoing patterns Caley thought came from far-out islands — not that he’d been to any. There were bookshelves and workbenches and row upon row of relics and a fire in the grate. And there, perched on the end of a desk, was a woman with no hair, and bright-blue eyes. He was unable to guess her age, but placed her in her forties. She had a round face, not unpleasant, and her nose appeared slightly squashed, as if some invisible force pressed lightly on it. Wafts of incense floated around the room, and whether it was that, or the way she controlled the mood in the room, he felt utterly at ease.

‘What is it, brother?’ she asked.

‘I needed to see you, Shalev. Rend was taken when we was out nicking stuff from this rich woman. We got a good haul, look…’ He thrust his hands into his pockets, then offered Shalev a scoop of gems and necklaces.

Shalev smiled crookedly. ‘A good haul indeed, Caley.’

He loved hearing her talk — her tone was rich and rounded, her accent heavy and exotic. She invited him to dream of a world far from his own existence.

The others in the room began to stir, moving towards Caley’s hands, but Shalev asked a question out loud.

‘Do you think’, she declared, ‘it is right to be tempted by such trinkets? These are the things that separate them out there from you down here. The trinkets are obtained by forcefully removing their materials from other islands, often by slaves who have been forced to submit to the labour. And they are now used to keep you out of the newer houses, out of real daylight. Just you remember that. These are what repress you.’

Caley got a better look at the folk gathered here, most from the old unions, the smiths, or some who made a career scavenging the old mining deposits for remnant ore, and who somehow scraped a living. There were a couple of scholarly types, too, who went around as intellectuals, filling the back rooms of taverns with their theory. Still, they were good sorts. And all could not take their eyes off the contents of Caley’s hands, so he placed them on the desk behind Shalev to rid himself of the burden.

‘Good, Caley. You’re learning well. So, tell me — what happened to Rend?’

‘Give you one fuckin’ guess,’ Caley retorted.

‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ someone behind him said.

Shalev waved the comment away. ‘I’m not your superior,’ she reminded them.

‘ ’Xactly,’ Caley muttered. ‘You ain’t no real Council.’

‘They are our temporary Central Anarchist Council though,’ Shalev corrected, ‘and they have a role to play in regenerating this underground society before we can spread out power evenly. Once we have established ourselves in the city and created a more equal society then we shall dissipate naturally. So we should treat each other with great respect, Caley.’ She regarded him with such a powerful gaze he thought he might turn to ice. ‘I am going to hazard a guess that it was the Villjamur Knights who took Rend?’

‘Yeah, the female one. She ran across the damn walls of the buildings to get to us!’

‘The Villjamur Knights,’ Shalev breathed, more to herself than anyone else. ‘They are becoming annoying, are they not?’

‘It ain’t safe out there any more. We can’t just go around nicking shit without one of ’em waiting in the shadows.’

‘Absolutely.’ Shalev pushed herself off the desk and towards the grate, whereupon she studied the flames. For a while no one said anything, and Caley shuffled his feet waiting for something to happen.

Suddenly Shalev had an answer: ‘The creation of the Knights is simple: to promote fear in those who challenge the Empire. A popular strategy. So if they are after such a campaign, we will use the same technique, too. It would be a good idea to target more obvious symbols like them. We will target the military, perhaps, the city guard who patrol the streets and we will kill them publicly — moreover, fewer guard will make it easier to take back more purses or more items from shops, which feeds into our greater purpose. And the aim of our more vicious attacks is simple: to remove the structures of power and authority. It is power over another that prevents there ever being a fair society, and the Emperor will not have a clue that our aim is a complete deconstruction of Villjamur.’

She turned and ruffled Caley’s hair and examined the gathered body of men. ‘Are we agreed, brethren?’

A chorus of ayes.

‘But I moot that we do not kill all of those in authority,’ she continued. ‘First, we bleed them of information, since we need more knowledge about the Knights — these may present a severe problem for our movement.’ Shalev picked up a copy of the People’s Observer and gestured to the front page. ‘This vicious filth and hate-spreading propaganda suggests they are invincible, but we know better than to believe what we read, don’t we? They must have weaknesses, and we will find them. These walking weapons must somehow be disabled.’

*

Mid-evening, no later than nine, Lan returned to the streets and teamed up with Vuldon on a small bridge over a hefty drop. One of the distant spires, towards the front of the city, was churning out thick smoke. Skies had cleared, presenting the smoke cloud as some horrible shadow-creature, leering over the first and second levels of Villjamur.