NINE

Tom's spirits were lifted by Kat, who had been in buoyant mood since the battle. Her confidence was infectious. Their mastery of the Rust Warriors, or rather his mastery, gave them every reason to hope that the worst might be over. Bone flu begat the Rust Warriors, and they were used to seize control of key areas in the city. That seemed to be the extent of the plan. If so, they'd now learnt to overcome their enemy's chief, perhaps only, weapon. All they had to do was keep sharp and focused and they couldn't fail. Tom wanted to get the core replenished as quickly as possible so that he could get on with the rest of his life, his new life, which would be lived on his terms. Yet a nagging corner of his mind worried that things couldn't be this easy – if the loss of more than half those sent to guard them could really be considered easy.

One thing that Tom was increasingly conscious of as they moved ever closer to the heart of the city was how pleasant the surroundings were. He recalled the dingy oppressiveness of the Swarbs' Row – the first of Thaiburley's internal corridors he'd had any real experience of – and this was a long way removed from that. Everything here was light, bright and airy. Since they'd entered the residential areas even Kat seemed to have forgotten her discomfort at being enclosed.

Tom wondered which Row they were actually in. The Heights, certainly, but which one? He recalled the levels verse – the rhyme that was supposed to enable a person to work out exactly where in Thaiburley's labyrinthine passageways they were at any given moment.

As if to emphasise exactly how pleasant life in the Heights could be, they stumbled into a virtual park, just a short while after the pitched battle in which Tom had frozen and so nearly died.

Due to the straight corridors, Tom could see the park long before they actually reached it. He could hear it too. Bird song. Tom had almost forgotten what that sounded like. Songbirds were a rarity in the City Below. Those few that had managed to establish themselves were likely to end up in the frying pan or the cook pot long before they reached old age.

The nearer they came, the more he was able to see of what looked to be a garden, and the more it struck him that those living in the City Below were provided with nothing like this. Once he would simply have been awed by something like this, not questioning why those up-City should have such luxuries when his own Row didn't, but he was increasingly coming to question such inequality rather than just accepting it.

The sounds that now washed over them reminded Tom of waking up beside the Thair to the feel of his cheeks gently warmed by the sun's early rays and the chorus of a hundred tiny voices raised in song as if to welcome the day – a celebration of the new dawn. People in the Heights really had no idea how lucky they were.

The open area the group then stepped into was much larger than the play park and had the added benefit of not being littered with dead people. On the contrary, everything here seemed very much alive, even when it proved not to be.

A small bright-breasted bird shot across the open square above their heads – a flash of brown and red. As it flew, the bird squawked out alarm at their intrusion, its strident call rising above the background chorus. The bird looked so realistic and yet…

A small brown creature – like a tiny rat but fluffier and somehow cuter – scurried across their path to disappear into the undergrowth. Kat laughed in delight, a child-like sound that surprised Tom coming from her.

The floor of the square was carpeted in close-cropped grass while around them bushes and even a few trees rose in a profusion of greens – bright, dark, glossy, matte – shades and shapes abounded. Here sat a bush of tiny leaves that veered towards yellow, there a bunch of spear-like grasses standing tall and straight and pale, while beside them was a plant whose long, pointed leaves were variegated and so shiny they might almost have been waxed. Where the grasses stood rigid with military precision, these leaves spread outward and curved towards the ground. Small low benches carved from white stone were dotted among the undergrowth, each one about the right size for two people, giving some indication of this small park's purpose.

One particularly tall flower caught Tom's attention, a single bud that stood proud at the tip; a rod-straight stem which emerged from a collar of spear-like leaves. He bent to examine it and as he did the bud rapidly opened to reveal a beautiful bright red flower, the petals curving upwards as if to suggest an elegant wine glass. At the same time the flower released a puff of air in Tom's face. He jerked back instinctively but needn't have worried. This was not an attack, but proved to be no more than a concentrated blast of what he assumed must be the flower's normal perfume. Sweet, floral, if a little sickly for his taste.

He reached out to hold the flower's stem, feeling the hardness of metal beneath the fibrous green. A device, not a living thing at all, despite the very convincing appearance. Curious to see if everything else was similar, he reached out to touch the broad, fern-like leaf of a taller plant nearby. His hand passed straight through its gently swaying form. A projection.

The entire park proved to be exactly that: an ingenious blend of the real, the artificial and the completely illusory; and much of the time it was impossible to tell one from another.

Tom knew what she meant. The park was doubtless intended to relax people, to ease stress and inspire feelings of tranquillity; a retreat for city dwellers who might otherwise never experience the outside world. Maybe under normal circumstances that worked for him, but not today. When you were moving through hostile territory, constantly looking over your shoulder and suspicious of every shadow, a place where everything was geared to fool the senses took on a far more sinister aspect.

"Gardens of Tranquillity, they're called," the lone surviving Council Guard supplied. So, Verrill wasn't the only one among the White and Purples capable of being human. "People come here to relax… Or they did."

The feature that most drew Tom's attention was the waterfall, though his initial impression was anything but favourable. The falls burbled down one wall – a dozen or so small pools in a descending series from which water bounced and tumbled, one to another, the whole set among rugged grey stones topped with mosses and tufts of grass. Tom might have been more impressed if he hadn't seen so many examples of the real thing during his time in the world outside. This seemed no more than a crude and clumsy imitation by comparison. At least, it did until he stepped to one side and was suddenly granted a view beneath the surface of the rock face.

A succession of small containers, like oblong buckets, were being carried on a conveyor belt to the top of the falls, where each tipped and deposited a basinful of water into the uppermost pool before heading back towards the ground on the opposite side of the belt, to be immediately replaced by the next container in line for a repeat performance. Huge toothed wheels turned ponderously in the background, keeping the buckets moving at a constant pace.

Tom took a step backwards and the rock wall appeared solid and rocklike again. Forward and it became translucent, like tinted glass, once more displaying the fall's inner workings. He repeated the process several more times, backward and forward, marvelling at the transition.

Kat was like a small child, running her hands through illusory leaves at different speeds to see how much disruption it caused the projected images, sniffing at the scent-laden flower mechanisms – which were scattered throughout the park.

One of the things he'd always admired about Kat was her maturity. It wasn't simply that she was a year or two older than him, she had about her a sense of having seen and experienced things far beyond his ken. More than once it had made him feel like a fumbling child in comparison, yet in this environment she was the one acting like a child. It was a side of her he'd never really seen before. He doubted whether many people had.

The Blade moved across this contrived pocket of the outside world unperturbed, walking through the projections as if they weren't there, causing Tom to wonder whether they could actually sense them at all. If so, they clearly weren't fooled by the pretence and could differentiate readily between the real and the illusory.

The educational element made perfect sense to Tom. Why else would you have artificial flowers puffing out exaggerated concentrates of perfume in such extravagant fashion? Kat had now triggered so many that the place was starting to smell like the sweetest apothaker's shop in the world. Tom could just imagine some aged sage instructing a group of attentive children on the colours and perfumes of the various blooms. Of course, if the kids in the Heights were even remotely like those in the under-City, the "attentive" part was never going to happen, but it still conjured up a comfortable image.

One patch in particular drew Tom's interest: long spindly stems growing taller than he stood, bedecked with broad, flat, serrated leaves which resembled opened hands. Why this apparently innocuous bush should appeal to him so strongly he wasn't sure, but there was something in the way the leaves gently danced, as if marking time by shifting from one delicate tip to another, and the burnished redwood stems bent grudgingly forward and back, that he found enchanting. He stepped forward, straining his neck and pushing his face in among the insubstantial stems as if seeking a whiff of elusive perfume.

What was the old crone going on about? Then he remembered the meadow of flowers in the mountains above the Jeeraiy. He'd had no notion that his actions were being influenced then, could something similar be happening now? Once alerted, he found the intrusion, sensed the presence seeping into his thoughts. The hypnotic plant, he realised; somehow this invasive presence was leaching out of the projection and into his mind.

He did. He flexed his power, destroying the insidious tendrils of attempted control before following them to their source, to the very systems that generated the virtual elements of the park.

A dark form appeared at his shoulder, towering over him. A black lance shot out, punching through the illusory plant, through the floor and into whatever circuits lay beneath. There was an arc of energy, the acrid smell of burning and a wisp of smoke. The willowy plant disappeared as did the presence which had attempted to invade Tom's mind. In fact, all the projections flickered out across the entire park, which suddenly seemed reduced and less magical as a result. The lance withdrew to reveal blackened and broken circuits. The Blade turned and walked away without saying a word.

It had been a trap, just as the goddess claimed. One not triggered by the Blade or by Kat or the Council Guard, but only by him. The realisation shook Tom. Up until now there had only been the Rust Warriors to contend with, but it was obvious their enemy was adapting, that it could utilise other tools when needed, and that they couldn't relax for an instant.

The broken park was now behind them and they continued through the bland, bright, and eerily empty corridors of the Row. It had been a while since they'd seen any bodies, and Tom wondered whether the citizens of this section at least had received enough warning to evacuate.

It didn't have long to wait. A force of Rust Warriors appeared in the corridor ahead, half a dozen or more. Three of the Blade quickened pace and moved forward to meet them. Glad of this now familiar enemy, Tom didn't hesitate. He reached toward the Warriors with his mind and struck with bludgeoning force. The first two imploded in a shower of russet petals, and those behind followed in quick succession. By the time the Blade were able to engage the enemy, only a single Rust Warrior opposed them, and the trio made short work of that one.

He was almost willing to believe as much himself and laughed along with her, though he did so more in relief than anything else. The close call in the park had shaken him, and he worried what else might lie in wait for them.