Barker, Clive – Imajica 01 – The Fifth Dominion. Part 10

“And for another, we brought you here to find your pandparents, and that’s our first priority. Right, Mr. Zacharias?” . “What if you can’t find them?” Huzzah said.

“We will,” Pie replied. “My people know this city from

top to bottom.”

“Is that possible?” Gentle said. “I somehow doubt it.” “When you’ve finished your coffee,” Pie said, “I’ll allow

them to prove you wrong.”

With their bellies filled, they headed on through the streets, following the route they’d had laid out for them: from the Oke T’Noon to the Caramess, following the wall until they reached Smooke Street. In fact the directions were not entirely reliable. Smooke Street, which was a narrow thoroughfare, and far emptier than those they’d left, did not lead them onto the Viaticum as they’d been told it would, but rather into a maze of buildings as plain as barracks. There were children playing in the dirt, and among them wild ragemy, an unfortunate cross between porcine and canine strains that Gentle had seen spitted and served in Mai-ke but which here seemed to be treated as pets. Either the mud, the children, or the ragemy stank, and their smell had attracted zarzi in large numbers.

“We must have missed a turning,” the mystif said. “We’d be best to—”

It stopped in mid-sentence as the sound of shouting rose from nearby, bringing the children up out of the mud and sending them off in pursuit of its source. There was a high unmusical holler in the midst of the din, rising and falling like a warrior cry. Before either Pie or Gentle could remark on this, Huzzah was following the rest of the children, darting between the puddles and the rooting ragemy to do so. Gentle looked at Pie, who shrugged; then they both headed after Huzzah, the trail leading them down an alleyway into a broad and busy street, which was emptying at an astonishing rate as pedestrians and drivers alike sought cover from whatever was racing down the hill in their direction.

The hollerer came first: an armored man of fully twice Gentle’s height, carrying in each fist scarlet flags that snaked behind him as he ran, the pitch and volume of his cry undimmed by the speed at which he moved. On his heels came a battalion of similarly armored soldiers— none, even in the troop, under eight feet tall—and behind them again a vehicle which had clearly been designed to mount and descent the ferocious slopes of the city with minimum discomfort to its passengers. The wheels were the height of the hollerer, the carriage itself low-slung between them, its bodywork sleek and dark, its windows darker still. A gull had become caught between the spokes of the wheels on the way down the hill, and it flapped and bled there as the wheels turned, its screeches a wretched but perfect complement to the cacophony of wheels, engine, and hollerer.

Gentle took hold of Huzzah as the vehicle raced past, though she was in no danger of being struck. She looked around at him, wearing a wide grin.

“Who was that?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

A woman sheltering in the doorway beside them furnished the answer. “Quaisoir,” she said. “The Autarch’s woman. There’s arrests being made down in the Scoriae. More Dearthers.”

She made a small gesture with her fingers, moving them across her face from eye to eye, then down to her mouth, pressing the knuckles of first and third fingers against her nostrils while the middle digit tugged at her lower lip, all this with the speed of one who made the sign countless times in a day. Then she turned off down the street, keeping close to the wall as she went.

“Athanasius was a Dearther, wasn’t he?” Gentle said. “We should go down and see what’s happening.”

“It’s a little too public,” Pie said.

“We’ll stay to the back of the crowd,” Gentle said. “I want to see how the enemy works.”

Without giving Pie time to object, Gentle took Huzzah’s hand and headed after Quaisoir’s troop. It wasn’t a difficult trail to follow. Everywhere along the route faces were once more appearing at windows and doors, like anemones showing themselves again after being brushed by the underbelly of a shark: tentative, ready to hide their tender heads again at the merest sign of a shadow. Only a couple of tots, not yet educated in terror, did as the three strangers were doing and took to the middle of the street, where the comet’s light was brightest. They were quickly reclaimed for the relative safety of the doorways in which their guardians hovered.

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