The day was going to end in guilt and misery, so my first stop was to acquire a salve to ease the pain.
Near my lodging house, down a side lane called Fox Way, there was a humble tobacconist’s, a small shop run by a simple man whose amiability hid a shifty side to his business. I was the only customer when I entered, a bell jingling to announce my arrival. The shopkeeper stood behind the counter. The shelves behind him were stacked with jars of cut leaf, paper packets of cheroots and boxes of cigars. Tobacco was the cheapest natural produce in Old Castle, affordable to all, but I wasn’t there just to refill my pouch.
The shopkeeper frowned towards the door as though struggling to see who had entered. Which he was; Dyonne had seen to that. Outside of a very small circle of friends, I practically had to wave my hands in front of people’s faces before they noticed me. Such was the nature of my position.
‘Good morning,’ I said loudly, approaching the counter. The shopkeeper’s frown turned into an easy smile as his eyes were finally able to focus on me. ‘A quarter of rum leaf, please.’
‘Certainly.’ The shopkeeper pulled down a jar from the shelf and began filling the leather pouch I gave him with dark tobacco using a set of silver tongs. ‘That’ll be one bit, sir.’
As he put the jar back on the shelf, I placed a single bit next to the filled pouch, followed by a ten-bit coin. ‘I’m also looking for something a little more medicinal.’
‘Medicinal, sir?’ The shopkeeper looked at the money before giving my face a long study. ‘Have you tried the apothecary’s?’
‘They couldn’t help.’ I came to this shop at least once a week but the shopkeeper struggled to remember me, so we had to go through this routine time and time again. ‘They don’t prescribe anything for bad dreams.’
‘Ah, having trouble sleeping, are you, sir?’
‘The war does that to survivors.’
‘Indeed it does.’
‘I was told that you can suggest an alternative remedy.’
‘Told by who, sir?’
‘Someone who knows I’m discreet.’
‘Hmm, let’s see.’ Some part of him must have remembered me because his smile returned as he decided that I had a trustworthy face, like he always did. ‘Maybe you could try my method, sir. Sends me right to sleep, it does.’ His eyes dropped to the ten-bit coin. ‘Two cakes, is it?’
I nodded. He scooped up the money and disappeared out back, returning a few moments later with a small package wrapped up in brown waxed paper. The manufacture of jenkem was technically illegal, but I’d never known anyone who had been arrested for using or selling it. As long as you could keep your mouth shut, a lot of blind eyes were turned in Old Castle.
Thanking the shopkeeper, I slipped the jenkem cakes into my jacket pocket along with my pouch of tobacco, left the shop and caught the under-rail at Tinman Station.
The instructions on Dyonne’s note were sending me to Keep Town, which was situated on the central edge of the city’s south side, not far away from the Fusion. The carriage was warm and smelled of hot bodies, but it wasn’t too packed. Unnoticed by other passengers, I staggered down the carriage and managed to find an empty two-seat bench between a woman dozing with her head against the window and a married couple with a young son sitting on his father’s lap.
The journey from Tinman District to Keep Town was less than ten minutes but it felt like an eternity lay ahead of me. I tried not to think about the immediate future, but a familiar nausea churned my gut all the same. Ing Meredith and Abdon Klyne would have to wait. Very soon, I wouldn’t be in control of my own body. On the window next to me, superimposed like a ghost over the rushing darkness of the rail tunnel outside, someone had scratched the words Fuck the Scientists into the glass. Personally, I’d have swapped the last word for Magicians, but each to his own.
I’d never describe myself as privileged, but very few people ever got to meet a Grand Adept of the Salem, not even the bulk of Magicians following their edicts. I didn’t suppose I’d get the chance to meet with Mr Sebastian again, and certainly not with the other four Grand Adepts in Old Castle, or learn their names. And if I did, it wouldn’t be for any good reason. But however secretive the Salem were, the Directors of the Quantum were more so. The chief Scientists – their names, identities and number were known only to a select few of their highest-ranking lackeys, and if I had ever seen a Director on the street, I certainly didn’t know it.
Magicians, with their simple gowns and shifty mannerisms, were easy enough to spot. Scientists, on the other hand, looked like regular citizens, surrounded by the bulk of Old Castle’s population which went about life accepting the Scientists’ rule. Were the Directors of the Quantum the same? Did they look like me, us? There was a rumour that, like the Grand Adepts of the Salem, the Directors had found a way to give themselves unnaturally long life. So maybe they had grotesquely mutated over centuries and pulled the city’s strings while hiding in dark and secret places, barely human now. The truth was known to but a few, and all citizens accepted that the Quantum knew everything that went on in their city; that they saw all.
But was that true?
Sycamore often wondered why the Quantum of Old Castle hadn’t come looking for him. Once, he said, ‘They must know I am in their city and who is my host.’ Perhaps they couldn’t see everything. Perhaps they could and didn’t care. As long as they left me alone, I chose not to think about it. Dyonne Obor already gave me enough to deal with.
As the train approached Keep Town Station, it came to a standstill and the lights in the carriage blinked before switching off. The moment of darkness lasted long enough for worried murmurs to arise from the other passengers. The child in front of me whimpered and his mother soothed him. When the lights flickered back on, many in the carriage shared suspicious glances, but no one said anything as the train trundled into the station.
A portly platform supervisor opened the carriage door and announced, ‘Last stop! Everybody out.’ He was flustered, eyes full of concern. He dampened the few groans of complaint by explaining, ‘By order of the Scientists,’ which meant that this disruption wasn’t due to train malfunction or a problem on the line. Ether power to the under-rail was being cut, reserved for the city’s defences. It meant something bad was coming from the wasteland.
Feeling detached from my fellow travellers, I followed the horde off the train and up the wide stone steps that led out of the station. There was some consternation on the streets. Cold rain was falling. The wind had picked up and the rusty taste in the air was more pronounced. Citizens walked hurriedly to be out of the rain, while others clustered beneath shop awnings, pointing at the darkening sky.
The storm which had apparently resulted from the explosion at Alexria hadn’t altered course or dissipated, and it was much closer to Old Castle than when I left the Tinman District. A roiling black, streaked by orange lightning, was coming fast out of the wasteland, blocking the sun and shading the late morning with twilight, swirling towards the city.
I reassured myself that if the storm really was that big a threat, then the city shield would have activated by now and the siren would be blaring. The Scientists had reserved Old Castle’s ether power as a precaution, nothing more. Had to be. Still, it was hard to ignore the doomsayer talk coming from the groups of people I passed as I followed Dyonne’s directions through the rain. I was sopping wet and miserable by the time I reached a deserted back alley.
Shaking water from my hands, I approached the rear door of a bathhouse at a cautious pace. The door didn’t lead to a typical kind of bathhouse and it wasn’t a public amenity; it also provided masseurs and steam rooms and a private lounge, all for the price of an expensive membership fee. Sycamore’s client was waiting for me outside.
I could smell the ghoul – that unmistakable stink of the wasteland – before I saw its darkness slithering under the doorstep, and I kept my distance. You never rushed into these situations – Itch You Can’t Scratch had taught me that much. I steeled myself.
‘I can see you.’ My throat was dry in the rain. ‘Tell me your name?’
The darkness oozed from under the step as an oily puddle before rising up to form its shape in the alley. I could never guess how a ghoul would appear to me. Sometimes they remained as puddles; other times they took on monstrous forms. This one appeared as she must have in life. A woman wearing drab ragtag clothes, her colours washed out to dreary monochrome. She was younger than me, too young to have seen the war. The sadness on her face was matched by the anger in her glistening eyes.
‘I’ve been looking for you.’ Her voice rustled and crunched like sun-baked dirt under army boots. Sycamore stirred inside me, preparing. ‘My name is Miranda Nhils.’
The ritual of invocation immediately overpowered me with a harsh fatigue that dragged my consciousness down into my being. It felt like drowning only to discover that you could breathe underwater. A sensation of slow falling, drifting into a place where my eyes couldn’t see the light any more, where Old Castle faded away and there was no air with which I could speak a single word. But I could hear him, sighing as he rose to take control of my body. And with my voice, Sycamore said, ‘Sing me your Song, Miranda Nhils. Show me how you died.’