The battered mirror above the cleanser is laughing at me, the scars upon its metal face a mocking reflection of the ridges upon my own. Been a long time since I looked myself in the eyes, a long time away from mirrors. Not sure I like I what I see now. Can't blame the Man for that, though Throne knows I want to. Emperor damn him.
So here I am, me and my reflection. Beaten down again by years and what the Man demanded from me. Still standing. Still got the job done. Still coming back to the City. I don't punch the mirror like I want to, like some kid would. Instead I splash the water on my face, turn on the heat unit. Make an effort. Damned if I know who for.
Sibellus. City without end, layered hive of mankind, asylum for billions struck ignorant and mad by its walls. I've been gone a long time, to far, sickened places. Five years by my ticking clock, and twenty by the booming beat of the hive. Long enough for me to forget – if I had wanted to. Long enough for a generation of newborns to be crippled, struck dumb, made sinners. But the City has its hooks into me, just as it does them. So I remember everything.
The Man sent me away, and now the Man brought me back. He thinks he is the one whose hooks and claws have the hold over me – but the City is a cruel moll, and she wields the sharpest implements of all. No man can ever forget Sibellus, not in his heart, no matter how much he wants to.
I look out upon the hive from this dizzying mid-Spire vantage, lit lho-stick dangling half-dead and dying, swapped between lips and my clicking, metal off-hand. Those invisible hooks set firm in my flesh, unseen puppeteers tugging like the demented. My feet are upon the edge of a precipice, hard-shod in the Magistratum gray I have no right to wear, up against the buzz of the imagefield that cloaks a jutting landing platform. The field denies the winds that would drag me to the same fate as awaits the lho-stick; I chew it over, look down. Long fall. Very long. Plenty of time on the way down to think about how it will end.
Beneath and beyond spreads the crying citytop, as far as can be seen, its artificial hills and valleys draped in chemical fog – a hopeful shroud for the massed mad wished dead, pierced only by towers and gigantic statues of forgotten paragons. From this height they look like beaten-down men, small and insignificant in a misted landscape. The sun struggles with the haze, a dull yellow glow somewhere near the horizon. Left and right, above and below, run the walls of the Spire, baroque with saints and gargoyles, their scowling faces and the Spire wall-plates that support them gilded in this half-light.
I flick the lho-stick, the ash drifts slowly beyond the field - and is torn from sight in a heartbeat by the spire-gale beyond. A sudden end, unexpected, without warning. No shroud for the spire. It isn't cold within the field, but I pull my plated shot-coat closed and hold it that way. Too many memories trapped down there in the asylum. Sibellus. I work at killing the lho-stick.
The spire-moll is beside me, sudden, soundless. I lose the lho-stick, flip it outwards as a benediction to the city below. The moll is out of her high-caste gown and trail assemblage now, dressed instead like a joygirl murderess: sleek, gaudy, knife-edged, dangerous. Blades upon thighs and across her back. It fits her better. She walks away along the landing platform edge now that she has my attention, fingernails of one hand out over the abyss to brush ripples in the imagefield. Each careful step sliding her supple form in ways that cry out.
I try not to notice, and fail. Think instead about the hooks the Man has in her, and what rots inside her heart in mirror to my own.
In a heartbeat, the moll turns, flickers. My metal hand in front of my face to catch what she threw before I'm past my own thoughts. Getting old, too easily distracted. It's a lho-stick, Moross Below sigil upon the yellowed paper. The bitter scent of it stops me, trigger to an ambush of memories; I realise my flesh hand is under my shot-coat, on the grip of my 17-Cal. I let it go. The moll half-smiles, a brief twist to the face of a fallen angel of the Emperor, perfectly poised upon the edge. I passed.
I fumble for my flamebox, light the Moross Below. Take three steps back from the abyss, turn my back on it. Ask the moll her name.
The lift-wing breaks from the sun-glow chem haze, floats into the landing. Noise of burning engines and hot wind breaking through the imagefield like a roaring wave. Wings shifting like it wants to clutch at empty air, red eyes of the machine-man pilot glowing bright behind the front glass. Another place, another landing wells up unbidden – a betrayal, the chug-crack of wing-cannon, a man burst in tumbling pieces. Memories. I tell myself they're just memories. Force my face to relax, my flesh hand to unclench.
Ve, a moll dressed for murder, stands on leg and a light touch of the other foot, perfect hips tilted, balanced like the lift-wing downdraft is nothing. Doesn't move back. Makes red-eye dance the wings and set down where he didn't want to, closer to the edge. I decide to like that. The last wind-rush of landing kills my second Moross Below. I drop the smoking remnant, grind it under a heavy boot. A distraction to kill a few heartbeats, doubting I'll much like what comes next. The seal on the lift-wing cracks, the hatch and stepway peel out like an insect's opening shell. The fatman, Falis, emerges, damp and dead-faced in his creased, spire-wrought finery. I'm right. This I don't like.
"Cehallan! How perfectly repulsive to see you again!" The fatman doesn't false smile to match the false cheer. His pallid, fleshy lips work the words like he's rehearsed them, and the skull-drone floating behind him clacks its pict-device as through possessed.
I feel the fatman's diseased presence, even twenty paces away in the engine backwash. Like a scar in the heart that itches to beat him bloody and dead. Maybe I'd give in and do it this time – if I didn't know he'd enjoy it. Would mean he'd won, he'd got to me. Instead I grunt, scowl, cover up what the fatman's presence does to everyone. Wrap the shot-coat tight against the hot wind, and head for the lift-wing. Might as well get this over with.
Five paces. The fatman works for the Man, sees things I can't imagine. His dead eyes watch me. Ten paces. I eye the moll sideways, once. She's hiding the urge well. But I can tell. She wants to gut the fatman, throw him into the abyss – and that idea's like hard drenn buzzing in my veins. I keep it circling another ten steps, grab the airframe at the hatch, haul myself into the velvet luxury inside. Smile at the fatman like I'm going to tear him limb from limb. Then there's nothing to do but sit back on cushions that are too soft and yielding for my taste, pour a double of amasec uninvited, and wait for the punchline.
The moll and I had time to talk on the landing platform, before the lift-wing. Said her name was Ve, chose her words the way she chose her steps, each a right choice perfectly placed. She asked me my story. The Man, the City, I said. Shrugged. Tough guy act. She arched an eyebrow, not buying it. Didn't give me anything in return. So we sparred a while, word by word, telling each nothing. Classy dame.
But no-one's talking in the lift-wing. Only the crackle-hum from red-eye up front to compete with the muffled engine-noise. The City whips by, a million stacked lives come and gone in a heartbeat. To the left, corroding structures built into an impossible hill, to the right a vast statue of a forgotten saint. The flyer cants, banks about a lesser spire where machine-men crawl and build. That's outside. Pretty and ugly by turns.
Inside, now, it's a tomb waiting to happen, a plush wake with overstuffed finery – two real people and one sweating animal pretending to the role. The fatman's eyes are all over Ve, close as her joygirl bodysuit, never missing a movement. The skull-drone clicks off another pict any time we breathe deep. Easy wager that the moll's dreamed up ten ways of cutting up the fatman before he knows it, laying it out in her head, move by move. Maybe the fatman thinks she's crazy enough to do it, and that's why the silent treatment. Never turn your back on a dame with a blade.
I think about all of that while the amasec warmth spreads out a way from my gut, liking the vision. Putting off thinking about where we're going. The Tricorn. The Invisible Bureau. The Pit.
I took the key to the Pit from the lift-wing just like I took the fatman's amasec; it was there, and I could. The difference: the pledge key was intended for the moll and I. But the fatman wasn't going to offer it. Drop us in the Court without a key, then a dead-face pretence of amusement amidst plush finery, watching in ascent while the gauntlet shredded us to blood and tatters. The end, curtain closes, fade to black. A way out, a way to damn the Man. But I took the Key, a device-box and saint's pict, prayers on parchment ribbons. The fatman said nothing, stroked his damp, fleshy fingers, kept his empty eyes on Ve.
Landed and hatch open, roar of thrusters deafening again, and out into the chem-laden night air. Like a bad lho-stick, alchemical, harsh on the back of the throat. I put some space between my hands and the fatman's murder-itch, the moll doing likewise beside me, blade-laden and beautiful. The lift-wing roars as it ascends, thruster heat whipping my shot-coat, the moll's jet hair, making the prayer-pennons of the Key dance. Scribed by a dead man, telling me how to live a good life, lashing at my arms and chest. There was a kid a long time ago, a cold stone bench in a City shrine. He listened to the catechisms, but didn't hear them. Throne knows it's too late for that good life now.
Instead this: the Court, the landing zone, the gauntlet. Myself, the moll, and a hundred weapons pointed at us, enough to shred the landing deck and every last living thing on it. Stab-lights, bunkers, glowing markers, the waiting squad backlit at the yellow paintline, the machine-men turned into weapons, crawling and clinging on tall stone cathedral ruins. The saints in ancient lumen-alcoves, chem-worn faceless, accusing stares without eyes.
"Been here before?" I ask the moll. She gives me the look, the one that says I'm just a dumb enforcer, a walking muscle, I know nothing about how it really is. An array of small, dark Magistratum rooms, a parade of joygirls across the table from me. The look from each of them. Memories. I shrug it off, tell myself it doesn't matter. We go to meet the real walking muscles, squinting against the roving stab-lights.
The squad is black on black, masked faceless as the saints above, armored. Every weapon pointing at Ve. I guess that she has been here before, that it wasn't pretty. Might as well be a walk on the avenue, a common crowd, for all she shows. I hold up the key for the head faceless, but it's not for him. He just needs to see it - the machines in his head need to see it. He makes a sign and they frisk us: a bad joke, a rebellion.
They don't care about us, they're not even men. To be a man needs choices, thoughts the machines can't hear. They're cogs in the Black Legion, each looking for a way to be something that isn't a cog for a few heartbeats. So they frisk us, and take their time with the moll, hoping that makes them men. So one tries to keep my flamebox: iridium, sigils, and a gift from someone worth a hundred cogs, far away and gone now. I close my metal hand over his glove and flesh. Squeeze, just enough to get two hellgun snouts pressed right up close against my chest, and a kick-rush in the blood like bad drenn. I look at the head faceless, ask him if he knows what happens to guard-raques that bite the wrong gangers in the low City. Thin lectoknife, behind the left ear, stir things up, makes the raque settle right down. That needles him. Faceplate up, a scarred snarl and white surgery lines. I get punched in the gut, hard, the cogs get to feel like men, I get the flamebox back. Everyone wins. I get up, pained. No big deal. I've had worse.
The machines in their heads tell them to let us go, to feed us to the gate into the Pit. The marker-lights glow on the path, and Ve is already walking, lithe and ready like it was nothing. I follow, and enjoy the view while I can, while the blood's still buzzing.
Linear Mode
