Vago flinched under the impact. Pain, awful pain. Something ugly blazed in his mind, a sudden, violent anger. But he was ashamed of that feeling, afraid of it. Each time he was beaten the anger seemed to be stronger, threatening to overwhelm him. He tried to suppress it, but it would not be kept down. It was something within, something primal. Something that he couldn’t control.
“That took me days!” Cretch cried. “Days!” He brought the stick down hard across Vago’s back, chipping it on the metal fins that ran down the golem’s spine.
Vago crumpled under the blow and tried to scramble away, but his attempt at escape was half-hearted. He knew that running away would only make things worse. The stick cracked across his metal skull and his vision went white and sparkled. Something was clawing up from within him, terrible feelings of hatred and fury clouding his mind. Cretch was ranting in the background, venting his frustration, and the stick was raised and swung again.
But Vago wasn’t there. All he knew was that someone was hurting him, and he reacted. He darted out of the way like liquid, grabbing the stick in one hand as he did so. With a twist of his wrist he broke it in half, and before the pieces had fallen the golem had Cretch’s throat in one hand, lifting his master off the floor, his wings outspread. Cretch gasped like a fish, eyes bulging behind black goggles, legs kicking feebly. The golem glared at his master with his one good eye, metal fangs bared, a soft clicking noise coming from his chest.
Slowly, those terribly strong fingers began to tighten.
It was Ephemera’s scream that stopped him. She had been attracted by the ruckus, excited by the prospect of seeing her grandfather dish out another beating to the poor freak that she was used to ridiculing. Now she found her grandfather dangling like an eel on a hook, and the golem was suddenly not so comical any more.
That shrill noise shook Vago back to his senses. The thing hanging in his grip was Cretch again, his master Cretch. The man who had taken him in and cared for him, even though sometimes he did beat him like a dog. Vago opened his hand, and Cretch fell to the floor in a heap, choking. Ephemera watched from the doorway of the laboratory, stunned.
“I hate you!” she shrieked, bursting out of her stupor. “I hate you!”
But Vago wasn’t listening. There was only one thing to do now. He dared not stay, dared not face Cretch’s retribution for what he had done. He pushed Ephemera clumsily aside and fled down the stairs of the tower, out into the city.
Vago had never been outside, as far as he could recall. It didn’t take him long to realize why.
He emerged from the gate at the base of Cretch’s tower and into the daylight. The gate was a massive mechanical thing set amid the thick bedrock that covered the lower third of the tower. It let out on to a street set into the side of a steep hill. The hill was utterly covered in buildings, a clutter of rooftops and alleyways and stairs.
He stumbled out on to the road. It was a grey morning, the sky thick with sea-mist. Carts and steam engines rolled along noisily. Between them darted riders on high-stepping gyik-tyuks, agile things that looked like a cross between lizard and bird. The gyik-tyuks squawked and hissed at each other, displaying the grey feathers at their neck to warn off any other gyik-tyuks that came near. Men and women shopped at stores all along the street, buying strange foodstuffs from the hydroponics farms up in the Agricultural Zone. They wore robes in drab colours, and they had curious ornaments around their necks and hanging from their ears.
Vago gazed at the scene in wonder. The clammy air tasted faintly salty and the breeze tingled on his wrinkled and puckered skin. For a long moment, he was paralysed by the sheer busyness of the street, overwhelmed by sight and sound, by the outrageous variety all around him.
Then the first of the screams came. A child’s shriek, reminding him of Ephemera. He turned towards its source, and there was a little girl staring at him. Her mother had gathered her close and was gaping at Vago. Heads turned at the sound and eyes fixed on him. There were more screams, and murmurs and exclamations from the menfolk.
He stood before the gate of the tower, feeling suddenly hunted. He wanted to duck back inside. But he couldn’t return to that place, not after what he had done.
People all around had come to a standstill, gawking at the golem. He was a mockery of human form, a repulsive hybrid of dry flesh and dull metal. A horror. Probability storms threw up all kinds of weirdness, and occasionally a person might be seen with three arms, or two heads, or a coat of scales or a forked tail. It could happen to anyone, at any time. That was why people feared the storms: because they reminded them how fragile their happiness was, how easily their world could be turned inside out. That was why people reacted with disgust and hate.
Vago saw the first stone coming, instinctively tracking the movement. A targeter in his mechanical eye calculated the trajectory faster than thought. He knew exactly where it was going to hit him. But he was still too surprised to get out of the way.
There was a sharp pain as it struck his shoulder. He whirled and stanced in a crouch, his natural eye fixed on the man who had thrown it, his metal fangs bared, his wings half-open. Like a predator, ready to spring. The man went white, and the crowd hesitated, some with stones ready in their hands. There was something in the golem’s reaction, something that told them this wasn’t some unfortunate thing that could be tormented and driven away, that he was dangerous.
But there were dozens of them and only one of him. The stones started flying.
Vago was pounded under a hail of rocks. They thumped into his flesh and clanked off the mechanical parts of him. He howled and tried to dodge, but the assault was relentless. The crowd were shouting obscenities at him, catcalls and hollers. He didn’t understand, didn’t know what he had done to merit this kind of abuse. He had harmed no one, done nothing but share the same street as them.
Oh yes! he heard Ephemera crowing in his mind. Ugly is what you are!
Fury blazed up inside him. He glared hatefully at the men and women and children who were stoning him, and he wanted to murder every last one of them, to pounce upon them and break their bones with his strong hands and bite their necks with his sharp jaws until they –
He caught himself, shocked at the primal viciousness of that thought. He had to get away, away from here, from all of this. And so he ran, springing away suddenly, darting through a gap in the crowd. He moved with a fluid grace entirely at odds with his appearance. The mob was too surprised to stop him, nor would any of them have dared. They had seen the killer in his eyes, and they were not willing to tackle him except in a pack.
He fled on all fours. He had never had to run before, but he naturally fell into a bounding lope that propelled him at great speed down the street. Screams and exclamations followed him as he lunged through the crowds, slipping between the slow, wheezing vehicles, cringing from the sight of the people that surrounded him. Everywhere he looked he saw faces twisted in distaste or fear, people pointing or scrambling out of his way. He wanted to hide from their eyes, but they were everywhere.
Into the alleys. That was the answer. Into the alleys, get off the street.
A clamour had arisen somewhere nearby now. A shrill, pulsing whistle, joined by another and yet another. He had heard that sound from high up in his tower before. It was the alarm call of the Protectorate soldiers.
He leaped over a cowering boy and plummeted down a set of steps, his wings tucked in close. He landed lightly on his fingertips and toes when he struck the walkway below. Stone buildings, shops of some kind, reared up on either side of him. Between them was a narrow throughway. He took it.
The buildings closed him in, screening him from the crowd on the street. He felt a desperate relief at being away from them. His skin crawled with reflected loathing. The throughway was empty. As he reached the end of it he slowed and looked back, like a kicked dog that wasn’t sure whether to return to its master.
“It’s here!”
someone cried in the distance. Vago tensed. If he ran, where would he run to? He was afraid of the city, and it was all around him.
Two figures appeared at the end of the alley. They were armoured in pale green, their eyes hidden behind wraparound visors that glowed faintly with the same colour. Both were shaved bald, and they carried with them some kind of devices affixed to their right forearm. Sleek metal shapes, with stubby muzzles that projected past their wrists.
“There it is!”
A sudden memory. Vago recognized these people. Protectorate soldiers. And the things on their arms, that they were now pointing at him. . .
Aether cannons.
He moved an instant before they fired. The cannons spat squealing globs of burning green energy, a moist slither of pure aether that fizzed and spat as it cut through the air. They struck the wall where Vago had stood a split-second before, spraying across it before disappearing with an angry hiss, leaving the stone unmarked. Aether cannons didn’t damage inorganic matter like stone. Nor did they affect organic material like flesh. Nobody knew how they worked, but everyone knew what they did. One hit from an aether cannon would blow your soul apart.
Vago was around the corner and into another alleyway before the soldiers had even realized they had missed. He heard the whistle of their alarms as they gave chase. They were answered by others. The soldiers were closing in fast.
This alleyway was cobbled, and a thin stream of dirty water ran down a gutter at its side. It was dense with rickety shopfronts selling strings of animal hooves and spices, cheap ornaments and medicinal concoctions. There was a heavy scent of cooking patties, aromatic smoke and sweat. Shaggy buta chewed handfuls of weeds: dim beasts of burden with dirty white pelts that hung over their eyes. Their curling horns were brightly painted and tinkled with little gold charms. They watched Vago pass without interest.
He bounded between the sellers and the buyers, scaring them as he passed. People cursed and fell out of the way, only realizing afterward that it wasn’t an animal but something else that had blurred by. He could hear the whistles of the soldiers, knew that they were ahead of him as well as behind. But he had to run. There was nothing else he could do.
Then the buildings on either side peeled back and let the sky in, and there before him was a long, curving bridge that arched over a massive canal. The canal was the West Artery, one of the main waterways of the city. It ran from the great pump atop a mountain near the centre of Orokos. There, seawater was sucked up and purified before being released from a colossal reservoir to flow back towards the ocean, travelling north, south and west along the Arteries. It had flowed east, too, until some time ago when the canal had disappeared during a probability storm. Most of eastern Orokos was flooded. Since then, those areas had become slums, and were plagued with Revenants.
Vago sprang out of the alleyway and on to the bridge. It went from one side of the Artery to the other with no visible means of support. He was terrified by the amount of space around him, by the misty sky and the sensation of great height. He could see the rushing water far below. There was nothing to stop him falling off except a low parapet.
Down the canal, he could see all the way to the edge of Orokos, many miles away. In the other direction, towards the centre, he could see the spires and rooftops of the city. There were cranes and derricks, and the rotted tooth of an occasional mountain shrouded in a white haze. Among them were the magnificent and obscure shapes of constructions left over from the Functional Age.
People were screaming again, and whistles pulsed. The men and women on the bridge scattered. Running towards Vago were three more Protectorate soldiers. He stumbled to a halt and looked back desperately, but he could see the two more soldiers pushing through the alleyway he had just come from. There was no escape there. He was trapped.
The soldiers levelled their aether cannons. The people cried out and cowered against the parapets. Vago took one step and sprang over the side of the bridge.
He had been hoping, perhaps, that instinct would take over, that he would spread his leathery wings and fly. He was mistaken. As soon as his wings unfolded, the wind caught them and the impact sent him spinning, flailing uselessly.
Hopelessly tangled, he plunged like a rock towards the water below. Calculations flickered through his head, judgements of distance and velocity. The massive canal raced up to meet him, unstoppably fast. After falling this far, the surface would be like concrete.
He hit the water at bone-shattering speed, and after that there was darkness.
The streets of Orokos went deep.
The city sat atop a plateau of rock in the midst of the ocean, and there was nothing beyond it. Over time, it had grown to cover every square inch of the island’s surface, except for the sides of the blunt, lonely mountains that thrust up into the sky here and there. They were too steep to build on.
When there was no more space on the surface, the people in forgotten days built upward. They constructed spires and towers and great obelisks of shiny black metal with thousands of chambers inside. But they also dug down, into the rock. They tunnelled out labyrinths of underground waterways, service ducts, and strange chambers whose purpose had long been lost to history. And there were streets down here, long corridors full of apartments, dozens upon dozens of levels. An old superstructure left from a departed time that nobody knew how to maintain.
But whether the city above was basking in the sun or pale under the light of the moon, the Dark Markets were always open.
The market that Rail and Moa found themselves at, some time after they had fled their home, had sprung up in a cavernous Functional Age chamber with a barrel-shaped ceiling. Great branching pillars supported the roof, made of some black substance that was the texture of glistening wood but harder than metal. In between these pillars were dozens of yurts, tents of stiffened fabric that resembled beetles. They were pitched anywhere, and in no apparent order. One end was always propped open, to display the wares within. And in the Dark Markets, everything was for sale.
Rail and Moa trod carefully through the chamber. It was busy at the moment. Gyik-tyuks and rickshaws made their way among the foot traffic, and the noise of conversation echoed dizzyingly all around. Burning globes of sharp white energy fizzed in the air above. They hung unsupported in space, casting their light on the people below.
All walks of life met and mingled here, where the Protectorate soldiers didn’t come. There were rich folk, dressed in heavy, dull-coloured robes, for it was considered vulgar in society to wear bright colours or revealing clothes. With them went mercenary bodyguards with thumper guns. There were hooded Ghost Path devotees, who worshipped and studied the hated Revenants. They murmured between themselves, shunned by the crowd. There were victims of the cruel randomness of the probability storms, men and women with odd-coloured eyes or bizarre deformities. There were boys from the ghettoes, their hair and skin dyed in tribal fashions, representing gangs that they belonged to. And there was more, and more after that, endlessly.
Rail viewed them all with equal suspicion. He kept his hand on his satchel, watching for thieves, and made sure Moa had the precious artefact tucked away inside an inner pocket of her dungarees.
She had finally managed to get it off her hand with the aid of some engine oil they had found leaking from an old machine on their way through the tunnels. It hadn’t fixed itself to her as they had feared, it was just too tight. She had managed to slip the rings on to her fingers but been unable to get them off again. Once it had come free, the radiance had faded and it had become inactive. But now they treated it with awe, and she kept checking to make sure it was there in her pocket, as if it might disappear at any moment.
At the sides of the chamber were rows of bars and shops. Short, round-mouthed tunnels were cluttered with advertisements and samples of what lay within. Rail took Moa into one that had steaming vats of ribbonfish outside. A balding man in a smock was frying
grain-cakes on a griddle nearby. He glanced at them and then returned his attention to the food.
Inside was a low, circular room, hot and heavy with the scent of aromatic smoke. In the centre was a square bar where cooks took orders from the clientele. Rail ordered them both a heaped plate of shark cutlets and pumpkin mash. They arrived with complimentary mugs of cold tuzel, a fiery, spicy drink that Moa loved when she could get it.
They took their plates to a small booth and sat opposite each other. Moa attacked the food with an indecent appetite. Rail was forced to eat much more slowly, lifting his respirator between bites. He hated eating in public, but they both needed a rest and a good meal. It had been an exhausting journey.
“We can’t afford this,” said Moa, barely even pausing to speak before putting another forkful of shark in her mouth.
“Bit late now,” Rail said, with a grin that only showed around his eyes. “We’re loaded at the moment, anyway.”
“At the moment we are,” Moa replied, looking up from her plate. “That’s got to last.”
“You need to eat. Let me worry about the money.”
She let it lie at that. She was simply enjoying the taste of real food, and lots of it. Rail watched her indulgently. The times were too rare when he could afford to treat her like this. He knew what she thought of his dreams of becoming rich, of changing the hand that fate had dealt him. What he had never told her was that she figured in those plans as well. The rest of the world could take care of itself, but he would take care of Moa. Before anything, before even getting his lungs fixed so that he wouldn’t need a respirator anymore, he would see to her. He would ensure that they had a place to live, that they ate a good meal every day, that they didn’t have to scratch and scrabble just to survive any more. That was his secret dream. To make them a life where comfort and safety were not luxuries.
He looked around the chamber while she polished off her food, careful not to catch anyone’s eye. It was the usual weird assortment you might find in a Dark Market restaurant. They smoked elaborate pipes, drank their drinks and watched the other patrons.