Chapter 17 - The Kraken Gate
Two constables arrived a short while later, summoned by one of my neighbours who’d heard the commotion. They wore pressed navy-blue service trousers with a black stripe down the seam. Their long, high collar constabulary, night-duty tunics were fastened with a silver chain across their breastbones. They removed their helmets as they entered my property. Their relief that the danger had passed was palpable, and they immediately began an officious bustling that was designed to resemble a purposeful efficiency. They searched the dead man. They needn’t have bothered. I’d already done it and there was nothing that would positively identify him; even the night-vision gadgetry might have been acquired on the black market. His features and dark skin suggested southern Nallia, but he would have looked equally at home in Lyhsten, Gulrei, Vareh or Mazat.
Done inspecting the intruder, the constables began bombarding me with questions, most of which would have been needless had they listened to the answers to previous ones. When they at last exhausted their list, they began poking around the house.
I’d lit the two gas lamps in the front room and a half dozen candles. My neighbour had seen fit to invite his wife and father-in-law, and all manner of distant cousins into my house, out of concern for me, so he said. The attention was unhelpful and unwanted, so I thanked them politely for their assistance, then shooed them all from my house. The constables were back soon with a new batch of idiotic questions, such as; “who broke the glass in the basement window?” I answered as politely as I could. They were just finishing up when one of them – surely destined to be a senior detective – finally noticed the bruising around my neck, and offered to summon a doctor. I thanked him in a croaky voice, saying it wouldn’t be necessary. I excused myself then and went to the bathroom where I locked the door, sat down heavily and began to tremble.
The shakes came on hard. If you’ve never been burgled or had your house broken into, it’s difficult to convey the sense of helplessness and violation you feel. An iron grip around your windpipe doesn’t do much for your confidence either.
A quarter of a bell later, I’d recovered sufficiently to greet Ankush who arrived at the same time as a coroner and two assistants. The latter were ferrying the two bodies out to their horse and cart. I’d dressed somewhat more appropriately, and with the help of several scalding cups of tea, I began to get myself back under control.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I rasped, when Ankush tried to mother me. ‘Just help me get my stuff out to the cab.’ I left my keys with the neighbours. I would have to write some letters when I got to Lannerville; get someone to clean up the mess. I would also have to write to Mr. Underhill, expressing my condolences. Three cycles of wages would be due to Mrs. Underhill’s family under her standard contract of employment. I had some savings I could dip into to make that up to six cycles worth. I felt guilty that I would not be able to do more for them, but it was all I could spare right now. Perhaps there would be more when the work for Director Harman was done.
Ankush waited until we’d got several streets away before he tried again.
‘Nallian,’ he said. ‘I looked under the sheet before they took the body away.’
‘The night-vision goggles don’t prove that,’ I croaked.
‘No, but I’ve seen enough of them. Plus, he had the tattoo.’
‘The All-Seeing Eye?’ Draxil’s Beard, of course I missed it! I’m in shock.
Ankush confirmed the mark, and where he’d found it; inside the man’s left bicep. It was the only tattoo the man had, and he’d deliberately placed it out of sight. Nallians believed that their eyes were loaned to them by their god, Nall. Their bodies were theirs, but their eyes were of divine origin. The most grievous offence you could give to a Nallian was by pulling his hat down over his eyes. ‘Could it have been faked?’ Thistles raked my throat and I was overcome by a violent coughing fit. When I looked up, Ankush shrugged, that way he had that said, you may think that if you wish, but you would be a fool.
I couldn’t speak, but Ankush knew what I was thinking.
‘Professor Renny.’
I nodded. He was in deep by the time we caught on to him. The Nallians would have extracted a lot of useful information. The gate itself was complex technology, not easy to recreate, but they’d have schematics of the complex at Winslow Hall, and probably a list of everyone working there, to-boot.
‘They want to slow down progress,’ continued Ankush. ‘Perhaps stop it entirely. To do that, they need to take us out, get rid of the security team.’ He was looking out of the cab window at the black brick factories and the steam belching from the mill chimneys. ‘Easiest way to do that is to take out the head.’
It made sense, but something wasn’t right. I pulled the scarf tighter around my neck. I’d chosen it to hide the bruising around my neck. Another bout of shivers hit me. Annoying! I thought I was stronger than this. I did my best to hide it from Ankush, but he was too observant. Out of respect, he said nothing.
I spent the remainder of the ride trying to connect the attack with the incident with the horses in Poplar Square, which was a waste of time. Firstly, I’d already dismissed what had happened previously as an accident, and secondly, even if it hadn’t been an accident, it was entirely different to what had happened this morning. The first had a touch of deniability about it, whilst the second had been a direct attempt on my life by an enemy combatant. The first occasion was either an accident, or it had been arranged by a totally different adversary. One thing was certain; the Nallians were prepared to penetrate deep into Emberland to get the job done, and they didn’t care if their operatives were stamped with the symbol of their god. It didn’t bode well.
The driver pulled in at a cab rank on the edge of Freedom Plaza. I climbed down and paid the man while Ankush unloaded our bags. At the centre of the plaza, in effect a massive roundabout that formed the conjunction of Emberly’s largest roads in and out, lay the air-train terminus. The green-glazed, tiled dome towered above the traffic like the carapace of a fat, iridescent beetle. The giant iron girders that sprouted from its flanks, supporting the tracks of the air-train completed the illusion, looking like chitinous arms and legs, its tracks marching off to the distant corners of Emberland. Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling and criss-crossing, watching the Republic’s newest and finest testament to progress. Ankush saw me staring up at the terminus.
‘Emberland’s answer to Nallia’s airships, eh?’
I smiled. ‘Your Prince was enthusiastic when he visited, wasn’t he?’
‘Zhou-Anrah Drelahk, may the stars shine always upon his countenance, is unconvinced by airships. A grand construction with its feet upon the ground is more to his taste; it leaves more of a visible legacy.’
I laughed and gasped at the same time, bruised ribs reminding me of their existence. ‘You are a wonder Rah-Ankush! Philosopher-warrior.’ The Gulreimian gazed at me serenely and I wondered briefly if I had offended him, then he smiled.
A dozen monks from the Endarchine Collective were picketing the station entrance as usual. They wore loose-fitting robes of pale green cotton and coir sandals. Their heads were shaved down the middle with the sides grown out long and tied back over their heads, much like the handle you find on the lid of a tin kettle. I wondered, as always, whether they could be picked up by their coiffure. They waved placards that read “Progress is Sin”, and “Draxil’s Esteem, Not Steam”. Ankush and I turned down their offer of a leaflet and hailed a porter instead. Our man was stocky, with a mop of unruly brown hair that refused to be tamed by the air-train standard-issue peaked cap. His burgundy uniform with its twin-braid stripes down the seam of his trousers was a sharp fit.
‘You headed west?’ he asked, concluding that we, like so many others, were fleeing as far from Nallia’s incursion as possible.
‘Yesper.’ I put in, disinclined to provide more detail.
‘Beautiful place ma’am,’ he replied. ‘That’ll be on platform two. Have you taken the air-train before?’
‘No.’
I sensed he was about to launch into a monologue, so it was a relief when Inigo and Na-Su hailed us from the entrance to the cavernous Grand Concourse of the Republic. They were excited and their enthusiasm rubbed off on me. I had heard a great deal about the Grand Concourse of the Republic since its opening earlier this year, but this was the first time I had ever set foot inside it. The daguerreotypes in the broadsheets could never have done justice to such a lofty feat of engineering. I managed twenty or so strides into the dome before my legs stopped working, signals from the brain dried up as my impoverished imagination tried to comprehend the immense space I was standing in.
Na-Su uttered some Omolit oath and shook her head, as though trying to shake the vestiges of a dream from her head. I was tempted to lie down to better appreciate the majestic vault above me.
‘It is like standing inside a vast bell,’ marvelled Ankush. He seemed less overcome than the rest of us. He was right about the construction, although it could also have been described as a dome sitting on top of a cylinder, sitting on a much larger dome.
We stood at ground level with the sides of the immense, lower dome arching over our heads towards a horizontal ring, perhaps four-hundred hands across, that was supported by eight golden pillars. Through a series of ornate openings in the dome, we could just make out the platforms high above us, fanning out from, and across that ring. The platforms themselves were protected from the elements by the second stage of cylinder and dome, the latter of a geodesic construction of iron and vast glass panels, through which the light was cascading. Inigo looked sick.
‘You managed Freedom Plaza,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s different,’ he explained. ‘There, my points of reference are on a flat plane. This,’ he gestured at the structure above. ‘This forces me to accept the existence of a huge volume suspended above me. It’s horrible.’
‘Can we help?’
‘Can we get a move on and stop gawping at it?’
‘Sure. Come on, Ankush…Na-Su. Let’s get going.
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