Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

6

It was the following Thursday when the news reached Varlan. It must have come in by special messenger to the palace some time during the night, the kind of news the Captain and his Council kept quiet about until the official gazettes could print clever sanitized reports that minimized the level of damage.

But when Slvasta walked into Rose’s Croissant Café, he knew something was wrong. Even the regulars were giving him disapproving stares, and the unguarded thoughts his uniform kindled in some were downright hostile.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked Rose when she came over to take his order.

‘You pay them no heed, captain,’ she said, her voice growing loud enough to carry across the café. ‘Everybody here knows you’re from the Cham regiment, and they do all right by their county. You’re not like those others.’

‘Other what?’

‘You might want to look at the Hilltop Eye.’

When she’d taken his order, Slvasta used his teekay to pluck the Hilltop Eye from the rack beside the door. The pamphlet was easy enough to find; the rack was stuffed full of them that morning. It slid through the air above the heads of everyone sitting at their table.

He was slightly surprised to see it was a new one; normally the pamphlet was printed every month or so, and the last one had come out barely five days ago. Also, this was just a single sheet. ‘NEST UNCOVERED’ was printed in bold across the top. With a growing sense of dismay he read down the report. Wurzen, the southernmost town in Rakwesh province, had discovered a nest. All the Fallers had been killed by sheriffs and regimental reservists from the town. No thanks to the authorities.

The nest had taken over the Lanichie family, some local landowners who had a grand townhouse. How long they’d managed to carry off the charade was unknown. Rumours had been rife for years – true, Slvasta knew, he’d seen classified reports of suspicions from the Wurzen sheriff’s office – but one of the Lanichie daughters was married to the Captain’s district governor; the county regiment’s commander was a cousin. The family employed hundreds of people in its estates, and half the businesses in the county depended on its patronage. Official reports into the disappeared, and qualms about the increasingly reclusive occupants of the townhouse with its strangely persistent fuzzing, had been quashed for years.

Two days ago, at one o’clock in the morning, a drunk group of sailors had waylaid a covered cart trundling quietly through the town. It had a brewery logo on the side, and they were hoping to help themselves to some barrels. What they found was two eggs. The Faller who drove it made a desperate dash for the Lanichie townhouse, with the rapidly sobering sailors in hot pursuit.

A ’pathed alarm surged through the town, and a mob emerged. Every mod-animal in Wurzen went wild, attacking the entire human population.

‘I knew it!’ Slvasta exclaimed out loud as he read that part.

But fear and anger had taken hold now, and the mods were swiftly killed by teekay assault, physical battery and pistol shot. Sheriffs and reservists, who had weapons, led the charge against the townhouse. What they found inside, after they killed the Fallers, was what everyone imagined Uracus itself would be like. Human bones, gnawed clean, filled every room. Initial estimates were that over three hundred people had been eaten.

The Wurzen nest was an atrocity on a scale nobody had even conceived of before. And it had all been brushed aside and kept quiet because the Lanichie family was of good stature – landowners, aristocracy, rich. The ruling class. Those rulers had allowed it to happen because they’d never dream of questioning their own.

Other houses and the town Council offices were fired as the mob sought revenge, a physical outlet for their horror and fury. Landowners, merchants, anyone living in a large house, government officials – they were chased out of their homes, out of the town, beaten, robbed, brutalized. The Captain’s district governor was supposed to have been lynched with help from his own sheriffs . . .

The mob still ruled in Wurzen, Hilltop Eye claimed, and the discontent was spreading to the surrounding towns and villages, where the families of the disappeared were taking up arms in search of vengeance.

‘Great Giu,’ Slvasta muttered. His dismay was tempered by a grim satisfaction. The regiments will have to change now.

He dropped a few copper coins on the table and left. As he walked down Walton Boulevard, he grew aware of the unusually light amount of traffic for the time of day. At the same time, his ex-sight was gathering up the emotional atmosphere starting to engulf Varlan. That was the thing with ’path whispers. Given the right spark of gossip, they could spread across the city in a matter of minutes. Hilltop Eye wasn’t a spark, it was an eruption; shocked ’path conversations between families and friends overlapped, multiplied to streak along streets and canals at the speed of thought.

The city’s cab drivers, those masters of urban gossip and innuendo, understood all too well what the growing mood spelt, and turned to head back to their stables. Their absence added to the expanding feeling of anxiety; ire towards authority was building fast. Once or twice, Slvasta sensed individuals urging people to take their frustrations out on the government – fast sharp ’path voices that swirled for a few seconds amid the mental clamour, only to vanish again after a few seconds, untraceable even to the best psychic detective. But each little burst of encouragement was absorbed and disseminated, adding to the citymind gestalt.

Keturah was in the Regimental Council offices, radiating worry – a state shared by just about all the staff. Thelonious hadn’t come in yet. Slvasta sat behind his desk, not knowing what to do. The ’path babble filling the aether outside precluded any work. Everybody, it seemed, was waiting for something to happen. He told Keturah she could go home if she wanted, but she said, no, she’d ride it out, although she did want to go home early.

At nine o’clock, Arnice stuck his head round the door. ‘This is getting a bit beastly,’ he said.

‘I told you we should be taking those reports of the disappeared more seriously. And did you read about the mods attacking humans in Wurzen? I wonder what Major Rennart makes of that?’

‘Oh, come now, be gallant in your victory.’

‘I don’t think anyone has won anything here. Three hundred people!’

‘Humm. Don’t tell anyone, but it was probably closer to four hundred. The Captain’s police chief, Trevene, was saying the Lanichie family probably Fell five years ago.’

‘Five years? Hey, wait a minute, how do you know what the police chief is saying?’

Arnice winked. ‘Trevene is my sister-in-law’s uncle.’

‘Did he know?’

‘No, of course not. The idiot governor was too stupid to question anything.’

‘Bloody typical.’

‘Quite. Anyway, I’m off to change into my combat uniform.’

‘What? Why?’

Arnice pointed at the window. ‘You need to stretch your ex-sight. There’s a nasty little bunch of peasants congregating in Bromwell Park, fizzing with anti-Captain thoughts – as if he knew what was happening in Wurzen. We’re worried they’ll march on the National Council chamber, or worse, the palace. So the Meor regiment will deploy across Walton Boulevard and, shall we say, discourage them.’

‘Ah.’ Slvasta frowned. ‘Can they get here in time? Your men are all barracked on the south side of the Colbal.’

‘Not as of three o’clock this morning when the news reached us. They’re in various forward deployment bunkers, including the one under this building.’

‘We have a deployment bunker here?’

‘Oh, yes. But don’t spread the news around.’

‘Right.’

‘Don’t worry. The chaps train for civil disobedience suppression. We’ll crack a few heads, chuck some of the would-be revolutionaries in jail, and the rest will slink off back to their hovels and drink themselves stupid all night. And if the worst comes to the worst, well, we’ve got all the guns, haven’t we?’

Slvasta didn’t trust himself to answer; it was difficult enough to keep his shell solid. He’d never known regiments were used to keep order, let alone trained for it. But then the Meor was always regarded as an elite regiment, directed by the National Council. And . . . guns? Fired at civilians?

‘You can take me out for a drink tomorrow evening,’ Arnice said cheerfully as he left. ‘I haven’t seen you properly for ages. I want to know all about her – whoever she is. This girl you’re spending all your time with and ignoring your best friend in the city: your loyal friend, your drinking friend, the friend who showed you round right from the start, your friend who managed to get you laid a lot, the one friend who—’

Slvasta smiled sheepishly. ‘Bethaneve. Her name is Bethaneve.’

‘Lovely. And I’ve got some news, too. Tomorrow.’ A final wave, and he scurried out.

*

The mob was over a thousand strong as it finally spilt out of Bromwell Park. Shared ex-sights allowed the whole city to watch as they started to make their way along Walton Boulevard. Jeering and chanting, they launched half-hearted teekay attacks at statues of historical dignitaries. The surprisingly large number of the protestors encouraged more hesitant people to join and make their opinion known to the arseholes in charge. A steady stream of fresh supporters swarmed in, bolstering the scale and determination of those leading the push up Walton Boulevard. Government buildings along the road were now locked and sealed. Teekay punches from the sneering crowd slammed into the windows. Blizzards of shattered glass began to rain down onto the broad pavements.

Troopers of the Meor regiment filed across Walton Boulevard, forming a resolute barrier, five deep, blocking the approach to the palace. The first rank carried long batons, as did the second. The third rank was made up of strong teekays, well practised in cooperative techniques, shielding their comrades. The fourth and fifth ranks were armed. Sheriffs and marshals scurried onto the road behind them, bringing jail wagons. Officers used strong ’path shouts to order the mob to disperse.

The two sides faced each other for several minutes, with the mob flinging taunts and the occasional teekay-boosted lump of stone. Then a clump of protestors broke off and started running down Cantural Street, shouting, ‘There’s the regiment offices, they’re all in there.’ More hate-inflamed protesters were pouring out of alleys and side roads – those who were genuinely aggrieved by the disaster and blamed the regiment for not stopping it, and others who simply fancied giving the sheriffs and troopers a good kicking, revenge for a life lived at the bottom end of society.

‘Oh, Uracus,’ Slvasta grunted as it became clear that their target was the Joint Regimental Council offices.

‘What do we do?’ a terrified Keturah asked as she ran out of his office.

‘Stay in here,’ he barked at her. ‘Lock the doors and don’t let anyone in that you don’t know.’

Officers were running out into the main corridor, the majors trying to shout orders. The chaos was ridiculous.

‘We have to coordinate our teekay to defend the building,’ Slvasta said.

Nobody paid him any attention. Cursing, he ran for the stairs. The building’s big front doors were shut and bolted, but the broad windows would be easy points of entry once the glass and shutters had been smashed down. They had to be reinforced. ‘Come on,’ he ’pathed to some of the junior officers he knew. They acknowledged his intent and started to follow him. Outside, the shouting was getting louder.

Four squads of Meor troopers came up the narrow stone stairs from the deployment bunker in the basement of the Joint Regimental Council offices. Arnice led them out through a small door at the side of the building. They came round the corner to confront the mob swelling across Cantural Street.

*

‘This has been declared a restricted area,’ Arnice announced, ’pathing as strongly as he could. ‘Disperse and return to your homes.’

The squads lined up in single file all along the front of the long stone office building. They were spaced wider than he would have liked, but then they were a reserve force. The main body of the Meor was still guarding Walton Boulevard.

‘Get some wagons here,’ Arnice ’pathed the local sheriff’s station. ‘We need to make arrests, show these bastards they don’t have free rein.’ He stood at the top of the stone steps, his back to the office block’s sturdy double doors, obviously trying not to let any concern filter out through his shell. Behind him, the teekay of the officers inside the building insinuated its way into the doors, strengthening the wood. On either side, more teekay was weaving into the shutters and glass of the windows.

‘We’re sealing it up,’ Slvasta’s ’path assured him.

Bolstered by the support, Arnice bellowed: ‘Go home!’ at the mob. ‘This is your final warning. I have been authorized by the police councillor herself to use force.’

That was greeted with a chorus of booing and obscenities. Stones began to fly through the air, accelerated and guided by teekay. Several were aimed at him. His own teekay batted them away. Just.

‘Stand by to fire warning shots,’ Arnice told his squads.

He was appalled to see women in the frenzied crowd, and even some children. All of them animated with hatred, letting loose vile ’path images of the Captain and First Officer.

Someone with disturbingly strong teekay wrenched the glass oil reservoir from a lamp post, sending it arching towards the office. It ignited at the top of its trajectory and smashed against the stone wall just above the front door. Flames cascaded down. Arnice ducked, flinging his teekay around himself for protection.

The mob yelled its approval. More reservoirs were snatched from lamp posts.

‘Aim high,’ Arnice instructed. ‘Fire!’

*

Her name was Haranne. She was twelve years old, and jumping up and down amid the crowd in Cantural Street, enthusiastically chanting the new and wonderfully rude song about rich boys loving an egg up their bottom. She was there with her father and older brother, Lonnie, caught up in the excitement and drama of an extraordinary day. She stopped singing as the first flaming oil bottles went flying overhead. Pointing and going: ‘Look, look, Dad.’

The bottles from the lamp posts smashed against the front of the big office building, and bright flame went ripping across the stone wall. That drained the smile and joy away from her face. The sheet of flame was scary, with long streamers pouring down close to the regiment soldiers standing along the base of the wall. She was worried one of them might get burnt.

But they were all raising their guns in one hand. A volley of terrifically loud shots crashed out. Haranne ducked instinctively, hardening her shell around her at the same time as her dad snatched her and held her tight as he crouched down.

‘Go home!’ a strong ’path voice commanded.

She recognized the regiment captain again; he’d been telling them to leave as soon as he emerged. People in the crowd around her groaned and shouted in antagonism. An astonishing sensation of anger washed against her mind. There were more shots.

‘This way,’ Dad ordered. They started to run, hunched down.

‘Together now,’ a calm ’path voice commanded. And she could sense teekay slithering through the air, many strands combining into a tight bundle like some invisible giant’s arm. It lashed out at the regiment captain, knocking him sideways. Blood poured out of his broken nose and torn cheeks. Then one of the glass yalseed oil bottles smashed on the ground beside him; flame burst out.

Haranne cowered away from the brutality, retracting her ex-sense. ‘Daddieee!’

More shots rang out. They seemed closer, different somehow. Then the soldiers were shooting again, and they weren’t aiming up into the air any more. Her father pulled her along frantically. ‘Bastards, bastards!’ he shouted. ‘Out of the way, I’ve got childr—’

An incredible force smashed into Haranne’s side, actually lifting her off the ground for a moment before she crumpled onto the granite cobbles of the road. ‘Dad?’ She was completely numb, staring up into the warm sapphire sky, somehow removed from all the frantic activity churning around her. The angry voices and ’path shouts were becoming muffled. ‘Dad?’

His face slid across the sky. And the way he looked down at her was frightening.

*

Shock and dread hit Tasjorka as he stared down at his daughter’s wound. Blood was running from the appalling hole the bullet had torn in the side of her ribs, and her gorgeous eyes were dazed with confusion and trust as she tried to grab him.

‘Haranne!’ Adrenalin and terror gave his voice and ’path shout a power far beyond normal. Everyone within two hundred metres winced as the image of Haranne burst into their consciousness. A pretty girl with dark hair and rich olive skin, lying awkwardly on the cobbles, her dirty old green dress soaked with blood. More blood starting to glisten on the cobbles beneath her, spreading out. Eyes filled with uncomprehending tears. Breath coming in jerks as shock set in.

‘Help me!’ he commanded. ‘Help!’

The conflict along Cantural Street faltered.

‘Stop the bleeding.’

‘Put pressure on the wound.’

‘I’m a nurse, let me through.’

‘Help her breathe.’

‘You have to stop that bleeding – here—’ Tumbling memory images of how to apply teekay to human flesh.

Too many people crowding round. A hundred different haunting images of the shot girl rippled out across the city, the gifting passed from shocked mind to shocked mind.

‘A girl. They shot a little girl!’

‘I’m a doctor, damn you!’

Tasjorka, along with two others, was trying to staunch the flow of blood with their teekay. He was crying, his mind too frenzied to direct teekay accurately.

‘Let me through!’

‘Please.’

A circle of tough angry men had formed a guard around tragic Haranne. They parted with snarls as a young regiment officer pushed through. He was carrying a fat satchel with a red cross on the side. He fell to his knees beside the girl.

‘Stop doing that,’ he said. His teekay reached out, and flowed over the wound. Pinching and squeezing in clever little pulses. His ’path voice spoke quietly and calmly to Haranne. She managed a brave smile. He opened the satchel and dressings rose out of it like a slow-motion explosion, hovering in the air. He began applying them to the wound. The nurse arrived and helped tie them properly. A phial of amanarnik was broken under Haranne’s nose, and she sighed as the narcotic hit. Her eyes closed.

*

Along with most of the city, Slvasta watched through other eyes as Haranne’s travails were gifted openly. How the mob parted for her, using combined teekay as a protective umbrella from the stones and firebombs arching overhead. How the Meor regiment blocking Walton Boulevard opened their ranks so she could be carried through to the Captain’s Free Hospital on Wallace Road. How the hospital staff clustered round and transferred her onto an iron gurney. He clenched his teeth, his thoughts riding in tandem with Tasjorka’s anguish as the surgical team elbowed everyone away from his precious daughter, now desperately pale, her breaths coming in short gasps. A father’s fright as needles were slipped into arteries, and foreign fluids started to seep along veins.

Then the hospital’s senior doctor hurried in, snapping instructions, and the entire building fuzzed, giving Haranne her rightful privacy.

Every Varlan resident not involved with the riot waited anxiously for news on Haranne’s progress. They endured three fraught hours while the battle of Walton Boulevard raged with escalating violence. There were dozens of further injuries and even two deaths, but it was little Haranne’s plight that had captured everyone’s heart.

Finally, Tasjorka emerged through the fuzz around the Captain’s Free Hospital, and announced in a shaky ’path that Haranne was out of the operating theatre, and the doctors were confident she would recover. He thanked everyone for their help and support. ‘And please, no more violence. No one should suffer as she has.’ With that, he turned round and walked back into the hospital.

The clashes reduced after that, flaring sporadically throughout the afternoon before people finally drifted away as the sun sank below the horizon.

*

Slvasta stayed on at the office that night, helping to clean up and secure the building. The deployment bunker was now serving as a triage post for regiment troopers who’d been injured, which was most of them.

Oil lamps hanging from the bunker’s brick arch ceiling cast a pale yellow light and filled the air with fumes. Slvasta ignored the groaning as he walked along the line of cots, trying not to flinch at the troopers with bloody bandages. Arnice was lying motionless on the cot at the end, his head swaddled, leaving only narrow slits for his eyes and mouth. The white linen was stained crimson in several places. Slvasta’s ex-sight probed below the bandages, revealing the disturbing extent of burnt, ruined skin, the missing part of his lips. A drip bottle hung above the cot, a rubber tube snaking down to his arm, where an intravenous needle had been taped in.

‘I was wondering where you were skiving,’ Slvasta said, keeping the tone just right, the joshing bluster – nothing wrong here, no allusion to the disfigurement and thick scars Arnice would be left with even if the surgeons did a good job.

Arnice didn’t reply. His shell was tight, allowing no emotion to show.

‘The girl’s all right,’ Slvasta said. ‘Haranne. The Free Hospital staff are sending out general ’path reports every hour, reassuring people. It’s helping, I think.’

Arnice stiffened, his muscles tensing up. ‘We didn’t do that,’ he ’pathed. ‘My squads are good men; they wouldn’t shoot into the crowd. Not a girl. A child.’

‘I know.’

‘That’s what everyone’s saying. I can hear them, the whole city felt her, they saw her through her father’s eyes. They knew a father’s pain. And they blame us. Me. They hate me for giving the order.’

‘You didn’t give that order. We all know that; your last order was to fire into the air.’

‘And who’s going to remember that?’

‘There’ll be an inquiry. There’s got to be one. You were struck by the mob’s teekay well before the shot was fired; I’ll stand in the witness box myself and swear it. Everyone will know you’re completely innocent.’

‘Officially. That’s what it’ll be: officially vindicated. And we saw today what everyone thinks about official, didn’t we?’

Slvasta gripped Arnice’s hand. ‘We know the truth. That’s what matters. I know. Your friends know. You know.’

‘Slvasta, you’re a good friend. Thank you.’

‘You don’t have to thank friends. Ah, here are the ambulance wagon fellows. Can you walk?’

‘I’m not sure. These damn drugs. I hate them. But there’s not much pain now, thank Giu.’

‘Would you like me to come with you? Or shall I go get Jaix?’

‘No!’ Arnice lifted himself from the cot, and created a thick fuzz around himself to deflect any ex-sight. ‘No Jaix. She can’t see me, not like this. Please, Slvasta, promise me, you won’t let her see me.’

‘Yes. All right, I promise. I have to say, I think you’re underestimating her, though. She’s a lovely girl; she’s not going to be turned away by a few scars.’

Arnice clenched his fist and started hitting it on the side of the cot. ‘Scars? Scars? You moron, I have no face left! I’m going to be a freak. I’m going to be a fucking freak! I can’t live like that. I can’t.’ His voice rose to a frantic shout. ‘What is there now? I shot a girl! I shot her!’

Slvasta tried to grab his fist as it pounded the cot. ‘You didn’t! You didn’t shoot anyone. Nurse!’

‘She’s dead!’ Arnice cried. ‘I’m dead! I can’t live like this. I’m a monster. A monster without a face!’

‘Nurse!’ Slvasta bellowed.

The doctor came running down the aisle.

‘They hate us. Everybody hates us! Kill them. Kill them all. I’ve Fallen, Slvasta, I’ve Fallen! Kill me. Somebody, please!’

Arnice started to thrash about. Slvasta had to use his teekay to pin him down on the cot as the doctor fiddled with the mechanism on the bottom of the drip bottle. It took a few moments, then Arnice subsided. Slvasta looked on in anguish as his friend began to sob.

‘Slvasta. Don’t leave me! Don’t . . .’ Arnice sank back, unconscious.

The doctor patted Slvasta on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. It’s the drugs talking. I’ve seen it a hundred times. He won’t even remember in the morning.’

‘Of course. Thank you, doctor.’

‘They’re taking him to the Hewlitt Hospital now. I know some of the surgeons there, good chaps. They’ll fix up what we can of his face. Damn savages, doing that to him.’

‘Yes, quite.’

*

Slvasta watched Arnice’s unconscious body loaded onto the canvas-covered ambulance wagon. The driver was an ordinary cabby, volunteering to help out. ‘Don’t you worry, gov, I’ll get the major there okay,’ he assured Slvasta. ‘I haven’t lost one today.’

‘Thank you.’ Slvasta hadn’t realized his shell was so flimsy that it was allowing his worry to show.

Keturah hurried across the rear courtyard. ‘Captain?’

‘Why are you still here?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Because you are,’ she said.

‘Oh, Giu, Keturah, you should have gone home hours ago. I’ll get a trooper to escort you.’

‘That’s very kind, sir. But there’s someone here to see you. Says she’s a friend. She was very insistent. The building guards are holding her in the main entrance.’

Slvasta sent his ex-sight out into the building’s main entrance hallway. It was Bethaneve sitting on the bench between two suspicious and tired guards.

‘It’s fine,’ Slvasta told the guards as he walked across the marble floor to her. ‘I know her. Well done for being vigilant. Dismissed.’

Bethaneve hugged him as the guards went back to the front door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, sniffing and clinging tightly, ‘but I didn’t know where else to go.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m okay, yes. I managed to dodge the Meor troopers when they were beating the crowd.’

Slvasta gave Keturah an awkward look. The woman’s surprised gaze darted between him and Bethaneve.

‘Ah, right,’ he answered, then cursed himself for his own cowardice. ‘Come on up to my office.’

‘There’s no time. They’ve arrested Javier, Slvasta. The sheriffs beat him terribly and threw him into one of their jail wagons.’

‘Crudding Uracus. When was this?’

‘About five o’clock. They took him to the Ganuzi Street Station. There’s a judge gone there already. They say the judge is using suspension powers to pass sentence.’

‘What’s suspension?’ he asked.

‘The Captain can order suspension of civil laws in an emergency,’ Keturah said. ‘The order came through from the Captain’s Palace this morning. It allows the Meor to use armed force against whoever the local commander believes is threatening the state.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a copy on your desk. I put it there.’

Slvasta just stood there. Too much was happening. He didn’t know what to do or say.

‘They’ll sentence him to the Pidrui mines,’ Bethaneve said. ‘And there’ll be no appeal allowed because the sentence was issued during suspension. Slvasta, he’ll never get out of there. They won’t even admit he’s been taken there. Uracus, they won’t admit they’ve even arrested him.’

Slvasta wanted to ask what the Pidrui mines were; he didn’t like the way there were so many things he was ignorant of. ‘All right, can we get a lawyer? A civil rights one?’

‘There are no civil rights under suspension,’ Keturah said. ‘That’s the whole point of it.’

He gave Bethaneve a desperate look. ‘Then what can we do?’

‘I don’t know. I thought you . . .’ She struggled against her tears. ‘You’re an officer.’

Slvasta tried to think. One thing he knew for certain: Javier wasn’t going to be freed using any legal means. He turned to Keturah. ‘This suspension order, it allows any Meor officer to do what he wants?’

‘More or less, yes.’

‘Can you find that copy for me?’

She took a moment. Her shell flickered, allowing him to sense her thoughts, how much she hated the day’s events, her contempt for the organization she worked for, the haughtiness of the officers. ‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. Please bring it to the back courtyard.’

Keturah gave Bethaneve a quick timid smile. ‘Good luck.’

‘Where’s Coulan?’ Slvasta asked. ‘Did he get arrested as well?’

‘No. He’s outside, fuzzed. We thought I had more chance of getting in here.’

‘Good call. Now, listen: he has to get us a cab. Do either of you know a driver who’ll be sympathetic?’

‘Probably. Coulan knows a lot of people.’

‘Good. Now go and tell him to arrange it, fast. And tell him I’ll meet him on the corner of Enuie Alley and Conought Square in fifteen minutes.’

‘Okay. What are you going to do?’

He gestured down at his filthy uniform. ‘Get spruced up.’

*

In the end, it was so much easier than Slvasta had expected. The mildly fuzzed cab, driven by Coulan, pulled up outside the Ganuzi Street Sheriff Station – a strictly functional four-storey building with three underground levels containing cells. Set back from the road, it was built from a dark brick, with narrow barred windows. The sheriffs inside maintained a constant fuzz, adding to the forbidding atmosphere.

There were five sheriffs standing guard outside, watching keenly when Slvasta’s cab drew up. He didn’t get out, simply stuck his arm out of the door window and beckoned.

One of the sheriffs went over. ‘What in Uracus do you want?’

Slvasta leaned forward so the pale light from the streetlamps revealed he was wearing the uniform of a major from the Meor regiment. Arnice wasn’t quite the same size, but the fit was good enough for tonight, with little illumination and some strategic fuzzing. The sheriff couldn’t even tell he only had one arm – that would have been a complete give-away.

‘Tell your station commander I want to see him.’

‘Uh . . . sir?’

‘You heard. Get him out here now.’

‘But—’

‘Now!’

The sheriff wasn’t going to argue. Not today. He hurried into the station.

A few minutes later the station commander came out.

‘He looks happy,’ Coulan ’pathed privately to Slvasta.

‘What is this?’ the commander demanded. It had been a long bad day, and it was far from over. He clearly didn’t need any further complications.