“Don’t you dare bring my father into this!” Moa cried. She got to her feet and began stalking away across the boulders, up towards where the huts and shacks clustered in the distance and the shipyard beyond.
Rail caught her before she got very far. “Don’t you walk away!” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her around. “We’re having this out now. Because I don’t want to stay another day in this place. I can see what it’s doing to you.”
“Listen to yourself!” she replied. Her voice was harder than he had heard it for a long time. “You think you know it all. You’re thinking: poor little Moa, easily led, she’s fallen under the influence of this terrible town and I have to save her. Well, this time I don’t want saving. And I’m not going to pass up the only chance I’ll ever have of getting out of this city!”
Rail was about to respond, angry at her ungratefulness for all that he had done for her, but she cut him off.
“Think!” she snapped at him. “Think about where you are! Think about Orokos! Why would someone build a place that constantly rearranges itself? A place that creates things like the Revenants and then keeps changing around so that we can never be safe from them? And then to trap us here so we can’t ever get out! Why would anyone do that? Who built the Chaos Engine and why?”
Rail didn’t have an answer to that.
She dropped her voice to a more reasonable level and went on. “You can’t just think about what’s happening now. You have to think about the past. You have to think about why we are how we are. The Faded built this city and they disappeared. Why? Is it a punishment? If it is, we’ve forgotten what we’re being punished for, so there’s no lesson being learned here. Don’t you see? There’s something wrong with this city, and while we’re still here it won’t ever be right. You talk about a better life, but no matter how rich you get you’ll never be anything other than a ghetto boy; not with that tattoo on your arm. You’ll never find a doctor who can fix you so you don’t need a respirator, because they’ll not work on a ghetto boy. You could make all the money in the world and it wouldn’t be any better.”
“You want to run away,” he said quietly.
“No,” she said. “I want to start again.”
“What about me, Moa? What about my chance to fix myself, to be able to breathe the air again without this thing on my face? That’ll never happen if I leave Orokos.”
“Then stay!” she cried. “Stay, if you want! But I’m not going to be condemned here. There’s more than this, Rail! And I will find it if it kills me.”
“That,” replied Rail quietly, “is exactly what it’s going to do.”
They had nothing to say to each other after that. In silence, the two of them trudged back across the boulders to the paths that ran towards the shipyards, and Kittiwake found them there. She had been running, and she looked grim. Two guards were with her.
“I’ve been looking for you two everywhere,” she said. “Have you seen the golem?”
“Not since yesterday,” Rail replied.
Kittiwake stared coldly at them. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“He overpowered his guards. That thing, that creature you brought with you . . . he’s escaped.”
Far, far above where the secret town of Kilatas hid within the black rock of the island, the city of Orokos went about its business, and Finch went about his.
He had never been the kind of boy who gave up easily, and he was certainly not giving up on Rail and Moa and their strange companion, even after all hope seemed to have faded. But he was forced to admit that things didn’t look good for him at present. To all intents and purposes, his quarries seemed to have vanished.
He slouched at a streetside café sipping tuzel, and watched the passing traffic. Carts clattered over the cobblestones. Gyik-tyuk riders daintily bobbed above the heads of the people passing to and fro. Spicy aromas rose from food stalls, and colourful knick-knacks were laid out on rugs to tempt passers-by.
None of it interested him. He barely felt the faint warmth of the sun on his skin. The faces he saw were only marks to him, potential victims for pickpocketing or mugging. Even the beautiful ones, the girls with smooth faces flashing joyous smiles as they laughed and talked, even they did nothing to stir him. Finch didn’t have a soul that was capable of appreciating the finer emotions.
Twice now he had been bothered by Protectorate soldiers who recognized a ghetto boy and wanted to see his tattoo, but he sent them away by flashing the pass Bane had given him. It gave him a mean kind of satisfaction to rub his presence in their faces. Here he was, dirtying up their city just by being there, and they couldn’t do a thing about it. He could get used to being in the favour of the Secret Police.
He swilled the remains of the tuzel around in his mug and looked into it, obsessed with his own thoughts. Where had Rail and the others gone? How had they given him the slip? Their trail was easy to follow after he had pursued them out of the Revenant-infested district. They had stopped being careful, for they thought they had got rid of him. Though he was some way behind, he caught up fast. And then, nothing.
He had traced them to a bar owned by a man called Whimbrel, and there he had hit a dead end. Nobody had heard of them. Nobody knew where they went. Nobody had seen a golem. Finch could tell that they were lying, but they got angry at his questions, and they threw him out. Everywhere around here, it was the same. People kept their mouths shut. How very annoying.
He sold Moa’s glimmer visor for a handsome amount of money and got himself a room in a tumbledown inn for a few days. During that time, he made contact with the local thieves. Once he mentioned Anya-Jacana, they were willing to listen to him, even if her power didn’t impress anyone here. There were other masters and mistresses across Orokos. He made a deal with the local thief-master, an offer of a reward for information. The thief-master agreed to have his boys and girls keep an eye out for the golem. It made Finch uneasy: if they found the golem, they might find Moa and Rail, and that meant they might find the artefact. But there was no other way that he could see.
Still, time had passed, and there was no sign. It was like they had sunk into the ground.
He was seriously considering a little light torture on the owner of the bar where Rail and Moa had last been seen, when a filthy little urchin popped up next to him and gave him a gap-toothed smile.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You said you was lookin” for a golem?”
“That’s right,” he replied, his interest piqued suddenly.
“I seen a golem.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Where?”
“How much you offerin’?”
Finch studied him carefully. “You a thief?”
The boy shook his head. “I jus” heard about it.”
Finch thought about that. He made an offer of about one-tenth what he had promised the thief-master. It was still a fortune to a young boy. His eyes lit up. He didn’t even bother to haggle.
Finch got up from his chair. “Show me,” he said.
And with that, he was back on the trail.
They were after him. Somewhere in this maze of tenement slums, in the shadow of the colossal metal wall that surrounded the city, Vago’s pursuers were drawing nearer. He wasn’t sure that they had spotted him yet, but he had certainly spotted them. He recognized them, though they wore no official uniform or insignia. It was in the way they dressed and moved, their arrogant confidence. He couldn’t have said how he knew what he knew, but it made him no less certain. The Secret Police were coming.
But why? What did they want with him?
The sun was sinking in the west, behind the wall, painting the cloudy sky in tones of velvet and gold. He slunk through slowly darkening streets and tried to remain unseen. For someone his size, and looking the way he did, it was no e
asy task. But he had to find his maker. He had to find Tukor Kep.
The escape from Kilatas had been simple for him. What had been harder was making the decision. He had felt a small regret at abandoning his bird to the care of Kittiwake; but that seemed petty now. It was a child’s thing, and in deciding to seek out his maker he felt he had become somehow older. He didn’t need the bird any more.
But the real obstacle was Moa. He hated to leave her behind. She needed protecting. But this was something he had to do, for his own sake. And besides, a bitter voice in his head told him, it was Rail she wanted and not him. She might have been kind to him, but it was really pity: pity for his horrible ugliness. He would always be behind the boy in her affections. And the boy didn’t like him, wanted rid of him. Sooner or later, Moa would send him away.
Very soon, the boats would sail. Perhaps Moa would be on one of them. Perhaps Rail would not. Vago meant to be back in Kilatas in time to join her. She couldn’t send him away if they were on a boat together. There would be nowhere to send him to.
But in the meantime, there were answers that he couldn’t live without. He couldn’t leave Orokos behind without knowing who he was, where he had come from. This could be his last chance to find out.
And so he had broken free of Kilatas. They would never have let him go; he was a prisoner there. But he believed that, when he returned, Moa would take him back. Moa would forgive him. And if Rail refused to go with her, as Vago hoped he would, then she would be glad of a guardian on her voyage.
Did he believe in the land over the horizon? He didn’t know. But he knew that Moa was the only good thing he had found in this world since he had first come awake in Cretch’s attic.
Getting out of Kilatas would have been impossible for any normal person. The route up to the surface was guarded in many places. Secret paths wound through endless tunnels that an intruder could lose themselves in for ever. But Vago took the more direct route. He went up the outside.
Kittiwake herself had unwittingly shown him the way, when she took them to watch the baiting of the Skimmers. He had noted then how rough the stone of the island was, the flanks of the great plateau on which the city sat. The climb would have been suicide for anyone but him, with his endless reserves of energy and his long, strong fingers with their machine-assisted grip. That was why they didn’t think to watch it.
He disabled his guards with ease. Something in him – fear of Moa’s disapproval, probably – made him gentle, and he managed not to hurt them much in the process. After that, he went out to the ledge and began to climb. Bomber birds buzzed him, curious at this strange being with wings that crawled up the side of the island like an insect. A jagbat came to investigate, but he crushed himself into a fold in the rock until it went away.
He was moving at a speed many times that which a human climber could have managed, but it still took him hours to reach the top, where the great perimeter wall of Orokos began. He was forced to be careful up there, for there were soldiers; but the watchtowers were mostly empty and it was easy to clamber up the outside of them. The people had long ago learned that it was pointless watching the sea for enemies. Nothing ever came to Orokos. If popular wisdom was to be believed, nothing ever would. All their enemies came from within.
And so he had climbed up the city wall and back down the other side, making his way along the many rocky outcroppings and abandoned buildings that pocked its surface. That done, he had found himself in the urban sprawl once again. This wasn’t a wealthy district, but it was far from a ghetto: a relatively new housing project for factory workers, built on the ruins of the last.
On reflection, he should have made his escape at night. But time was short if he wanted to return in time to join Moa, and he couldn’t afford to waste another day waiting for the sun to set. Perhaps if he had been more patient, however, he might have avoided being seen, and maybe the Secret Police would not be after him now.
But no, it was hopeless. He was impossible to miss. The city was just too crowded for him to travel in secrecy, night or day, without the kind of street knowledge that Rail had. Everywhere he went he would be met with fear and panic and revulsion.
And yet still he was determined. He would find the man who made him. The man whose face he remembered behind the glass window of a containment tank. Though he had no plan and no idea how to go about it, he would find the answer to his own being, somehow.
First, however, he had to get away. Darkness would hide him, but it would still be an hour till true night. He had to evade his pursuers until then.
He had stolen a tarpaulin from a cart and wrapped it around himself, but it did nothing to hide him from the eyes of the citizens. The buildings here were all inhabited, so there was no help there. Eventually, he went to ground in a vast rubbish dump. It was a huge enclosure where heaps of discarded devices and household filth were picked over by scavengers for parts that they could sell to Coders. The scavengers ignored him, and from the highest heaps he had a good view of the surrounding area. He burrowed in among the junk and waited. It was just as well that he had no sense of smell.
With his telescopic vision he tried to keep track of the movements of his pursuers. They were stopping people in the street, talking to them, asking them what they had seen or heard. Already rumours of the monstrous thing that prowled their streets had spread throughout the Territory.
He was hunted. Perhaps he would always be hunted. That was why he had to get away from Orokos. There was no place for him here.
Darkness gathered, but his vision cut through the gloom. The glimpses he caught of the Secret Police showed that they were getting closer. They would find him eventually.
When the last glow of the sun had left the sky and all but the most desperate scavengers had gone home, he spotted them sneaking through the gate of the rubbish dump. The time had come, he decided, to make his move.
He emerged from the heap of junk that had concealed him, and headed for the opposite end of the dump.
At ground level, the refuse piles rose around him like mountains. There were no arclights here. The only illumination was that which glowed from the cloud-scratched moon overhead. He prowled on all fours, wings half-open as if in anticipation of flight. It was deathly silent, except for the distant scrape and curse of a few late-night prospectors.
The Secret Police would be spreading out across the dump, searching. He had seen the telltale bulge of thumper guns under their coats. After his incident with the Revenant, Vago was no longer sure that he had anything to fear from aether cannons, for aether didn’t appear to harm him. But thumper guns fired explosive pellets. He didn’t want to try his luck against them.
Something moved to his right with a clatter. He whirled, crouched to run or to attack; but it was only a piece of junk which had shifted loose. Carefully, he made his way onward, moving ahead of the Secret Police towards the high concrete wall that surrounded the dump.
He reached it without seeing anyone. He listened for a moment. Nothing. Let them search the whole dump for him, he thought. He would be elsewhere.
He cleared the wall in a single leap, landing catlike in the street on the other side.
Right in front of one of the Secret Police.
The man was as startled as Vago was; but Vago moved quicker. As he tried to pull his gun, the golem grabbed his wrist in a bone-breaking grip and threw him aside. And then suddenly the street around him was swarming with figures in black trenchcoats and jackboots, guns levelled. He bunched to spring –
“Don’t,” said one of them, who had the thick muzzle of a thumper gun zeroed on him. “You wouldn’t make it.”
He was surrounded, backed against the wall of a rubbish dump in the white glow of an arclight. Six of the Secret Police stood in a rough semicircle, their weapons trained on him. He crouched like a dog at bay.
They had herded him. They had let themselves be seen closing in on him f
rom one direction, knowing he would go the other. And he had fallen into their trap. He saw now, in the deeper shadows of the street, the lurking shape of Finch, the thief-boy who had followed them all this way. Now it made sense. The boy must have called the Secret Police.
Vago snarled, his lips pulling back over his metal fangs. He had a purpose, and not even the Secret Police were going to stop him.
“Don’t!” the man warned again, seeing Vago’s intention. But the golem didn’t lunge forward as the Secret Police had expected. Instead he sprang sideways, leaping from a crouch to sail over the heads of his attackers. One of them fired his gun in surprise, blowing a hole in the concrete wall, peppering them all with tiny, stinging shards of stone and raising a cloud of dust. There was confusion for a few seconds. By the time it was over, Vago was gone, swallowed by the alleys.
“Granpapa!” Ephemera squealed. “Come quick!”
“All right, all right, child,” Cretch muttered as he shuffled in from the other room. “What are you shouting about now?”
“It’s Vago!” she said. “Look! Vago’s on the panopticon!”
She turned the periscope-like viewer of the panopticon towards her grandfather, who put black-goggled eyes to the screen. He fiddled with the focus knob until it suited his failing vision, and there he saw an artist’s rendition of his former assistant, a sepia-coloured sketch of the golem. Beneath it, words appeared and faded. They were too small for him to read easily.