City of Dust Read online

  ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ Max added darkly. ‘All of you!’

  ‘Where’s Aelia?’ I kept my voice steady and slingshot high. At this range I could kill him, and Rajid knew it.

  He turned his head slowly to stare with panther-black eyes. In the shadows his bright blue Cerberus gleamed like a moonlit map, its three twisted necks reaching out like rivers.

  Our last encounter in the forest replayed through my head.

  ‘Just what is it that makes you so special?’

  I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Where is Aelia?’ I demanded again, my voice unwavering.

  ‘Well, your guess is as good as mine, but this isn’t the place for chat. Cassius and his guard will be here within seconds. If you like looking at the insides of your own eyelids, take your chances. Otherwise, this way – and best be quick.’

  Rajid disappeared back into the corner of the oblong room, and there was a discordant grating noise. Moments later his shadow was gone.

  I ran across to discover a rectangular hole in the metal floor, and a thick plate lying next to it. I scowled at Max. The choice was between Rajid or Cassius and his molossers. It could be a trap, but if Rajid was trying to help, he could be our last chance of finding Aelia. And perhaps Lake.

  Moments later I was easing myself through the exit onto the metallic support beam below.

  We were about fifty metres from the ground, balancing on one of the thick rusted tower beams that stretched all the way to the ground. The basilisk were still swarming all over Pan’s obscured form directly below us, and I forced hot bile back down my parched throat. He’d given himself to buy us precious time, and now it looked as though we were returning to the floor.

  Rajid was already halfway, climbing as nimbly as though he were an Outsider, and my head rang with a distant echo. It was something Max had said before we’d faced the guards and molossers in the laboratory.

  ‘Prolets take care of themselves.’

  I set off at sprint pace, despite the drop.

  The support was thin but sturdy, and the soft padding of Max’s footsteps gave me a sense of rhythm. Before long, we were approaching the ground floor at the rear of the Prolet market centre.

  ‘Basilisk,’ Max whispered as we came to a skidding halt at the base of the beam.

  I looked at Rajid, waiting nonchalantly, the way he might wait in a market bread queue. And yet, we needed to trust this man with the snake ink.

  His answer was a smirking grin, revealing his missing front tooth.

  ‘Basilisk fast … but we’re faster, yes?’

  His tone was mocking, as the air filled with the faint hiss of excited basilisk. And then there was something else, the echo of a howl. Molossers. Which meant Cassius.

  ‘This is madness; we’re trapped against the rock wall this way!’ Max exclaimed, panic-stricken.

  I glanced from him to Rajid’s smirking face. There had to be a reason why he was still here while everyone else had disappeared.

  ‘Lead on,’ I growled, ‘and let’s see how fast a Prolet can run!’

  Rajid’s eyes glittered and narrowed. He spun on his heel and sprinted directly towards the rock wall at the back of the cavern. Max drew level with me, gesticulating madly. I scowled, unable to provide reassurance. If Rajid had no back-up plan, we would be entirely trapped against the back wall, with no means of escape.

  We reached the grainy, red-ravined rock face breathlessly, and looked up. It had to be nearly two hundred metres high, and almost sheer. But Rajid seemed more interested in the wall itself, while the combined chorus of the basilisk and molossers was building, like the clamour of a nightmare just before dawn. A shudder passed through me as I recalled Pan’s submerged figure. We were running out of time.

  ‘We need to move!’ Max seethed through gritted teeth. I shot out a hand to stay him as Rajid ran his hands along the rock face at chest height, following the ravines as if they were old friends.

  Instinctively, we glanced back down the eerie deserted street. The first of the basilisk were just visible now, thick black bodies writhing with a thirst for fresh blood. My chest hurt with the effort of controlling my jagged breath, and just as I was beginning to wonder if I’d made the stupidest decision of my life, I turned to find Rajid had completely disappeared.

  ‘Where did he go?!’ Max exclaimed furiously.

  I ran my hands across the rock, my forehead clammy, only to exclaim when they disappeared completely behind a thick, concealed shelf of rock. Carefully I followed the camouflaged edge diagonally down to the ground and, stooping, peered behind. There was a slim dark void, just wide enough for a person to squeeze through.

  Was it an escape tunnel? Or a trap?

  I glanced back into the cavern. The basilisk were fully visible now, a thick wave of hissing black lava, headed our way. Max nodded urgently, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the low light. There was time left and no other way.

  So, I closed my eyes, and crawled inside.

  Chapter 12

  I knew I was falling, just not how far. If I die, let it be as swift as Max’s hunting blade, I prayed. Let it be so fast that I am back in Arafel’s forest in a heartbeat, with the lazy sun in my eyes and whispering leaves at my back. Let Grandpa and Dad be there, in the wheat fields, waiting.

  But then I landed in something soft, something that felt and smelled remarkably like soiled animal straw. And the impact confirmed I was irrefutably alive.

  ‘Apologies for the used compost, I’m just rather partial to my bones,’ Rajid commented whimsically, as though falling ten metres into a latrine was an everyday occurrence.

  It was murky black, and a distant light shone down another dimly lit passage. I scrambled towards his languid hand, conscious Max was following. And sure enough, as soon as I hauled myself onto solid ground, Max landed amid a stream of blurred cursing.

  ‘For the love of Arafel, what is this stuff?’ he croaked, picking up a handful of the crumbling matter and sniffing it.

  ‘Excrement!’ Rajid called glibly, as he scaled a crude wooden ladder back up to the void above our heads.

  At the top he unwound a thick rope, and swiftly inserted a slim stone into the entrance until no light remained. Then, wrapping his feet around the ladder, he slid back down to the ground.

  ‘Old excrement, but excrement all the same,’ he clarified, as Max slid out of the pit faster than his tree-running personal best. At any other time, I would have laughed my forest soles off.

  ‘They can’t get through?’ I asked.

  ‘They haven’t so far.’

  Relieved, I looked around. We were in some sort of drainage tunnel.

  ‘It’s not much, but it’s home,’ Rajid quipped, his eyes mocking.

  Briefly I wondered if we’d simply followed a lonely madman into the Prolet latrines. Surely there had to be no lower metaphor, the toilets of the Prolet underworld. There was a delicious dark comedy to the moment, and Max’s pained expression said it all. I stifled a bubble of hysterical laughter.

  ‘Where does this lead, Rajid?’ I managed with some effort. ‘Where is Aelia?’

  ‘Soon!’ he called, walking away down the tunnel.

  ‘Rajid!’ I called, determined not to be put off any longer. ‘We know where the Prolet insurgents are … We know about the children!’

  This time he stopped abruptly, turned and began walking back towards us with an odd expression twisting his passive face. Was it hope?

  ‘They made it? To Arafel?’ he repeated incredulously.

  And it was all there in his tone. Arafel was a Garden of Paradise, a distant sanctuary offering a life in the sun, and protection. A blade twisted deep inside. These people had turned our valley home into a Mecca, a promised land, and Arafel had bolted the door before they’d even had chance to knock.

  I thought of Atticus willingly chewing the ear off a rat, and then of the tower the young ones were preparing as their substitute New Arfel home. And guilt bled through me like a riv
er of lead.

  ‘My brother Eli is with them,’ I added. ‘They’re surviving in the passages beneath the ruined city at the moment. They’re all safe – well, nearly all …’

  Rajid fixed me with a stare.

  ‘Lake, Pan?’ he whispered, and even though it was dark I could tell his face was full of new shadows.

  I nodded.

  ‘Atticus?’ he questioned, frowning.

  ‘Is happily feasting on raw rat!’ Max chipped in, now finally satisfied he’d removed every particle of human excrement from his person.

  Rajid chuckled drily, pursing his lips.

  ‘Then we can safely assume we have even less time,’ he muttered, before turning and striding into the darkness.

  I shot Max a tight grimace before setting off after him.

  ***

  There were dirty mesh-sealed jars, set at intervals, filled with strange moving lights. After a time, I worked out they were eyes. Somehow, strange resourceful Rajid had managed to capture a few of the deadly vampiric bats, and use them to illuminate the rough tunnel. It was genius in a way, but every time we passed one of the light stations a fresh revulsion washed through me. This tunnel was also oddly strix-free, although it created a feeling of waiting too. Somewhere in this dank, lightless world, a flock of hungry strix were lurking, and I couldn’t imagine it was too far away.

  From the gradient and direction of the slope, I could tell we were travelling north-west in the direction of the main Isca Pantheonite dome. I fought my dread by trying to work out how many hours had passed since we left the Dead City. The morning had to be well advanced by now, which meant the city of Isca Pantheon was fully awake. It wasn’t a good thought.

  Finally, after what seemed like an age, the narrow, putrid walls opened out into some sort of small square chamber. There was sackcloth in the corner and the remains of some half-eaten provisions; but it was the small rope ladder in the corner that drew my attention. It was fixed to the rock wall, and disappeared up what looked to be a narrow ventilation chimney. Any new hopes I’d begun to cherish, guttered instantly. Narrow corridors were one thing, but this chimney barely looked big enough to squeeze into, let alone climb.

  ‘Don’t tell me we’re going up there!’ I protested, my stomach turning over.

  ‘Where are we, Rajid? How is this getting us closer to Aelia and Lake?’ Max demanded, glancing at me.

  He understood, even though it was many years ago. He’d helped the search party when I went missing. I’d crept into the Arafel log store during tree-tag, and the door had become wedged, leaving me to shout ’til I was hoarse. It had started out a game, but ended a nightmare, and left me with a lifelong fear of small spaces.

  ‘It is the only way,’ Rajid responded, holding a finger to his lips.

  I opened my mouth to protest, and then I heard it. At first I told myself I was panicking, but one glance at Max’s ashen face told me he could hear it too. It was a sound laden with muted, repeated nightmares; and a sound I had grown to equate with nothing but carnage and blood. It was the sound of the Flavium, filling with people.

  My mind filled with images I thought I’d buried, bloodied images of limbs strewn all over the Flavium amphitheatre. And suddenly I could smell and taste the dusty air as vividly as though I was standing inside the arena itself.

  Cassius couldn’t have resurrected the Games so swiftly, could he?

  My head started to race, finding a million different reasons why the torturous arena couldn’t possibly be in use again, and yet with Cassius in control it could explain so much. The absence of the Prolets, perhaps the absence of the strix, and the curious excitement on Rajid’s face as he stared at us.

  Was he the only one to have escaped?

  I thought of the miscellany of people and creatures I’d first encountered in the Prolet commercial world, and my stomach dived. It was Octavia’s genetic rubbish dump, filled with the most curious mix of creatures, people and rejected genetic experiments. And yet, they were a people who had stolen my heart with kindness and intelligence. My head suddenly filled with Unus’s great pudgy face, and I struggled for breath momentarily.

  Max whistled softly under his breath, still looking a little pale.

  ‘So that’s his game is it?’ he muttered, striding over to the dirty rope ladder in the corner.

  ‘How far does this contraption reach then?’

  Rajid held his finger to his lips again.

  ‘Keep your voices low. The ventilation tunnel runs the entire length of Isca Pantheon. Basilisk have an acute sense of hearing and I, for one, have no wish to meet our hungry friends again.’

  I nodded, and forced my legs across the low cavern to join Max. The entrance to the chimney was no more than half a metre square, and went up much further than the bat lanterns would show.

  ‘But first we rest!’ Rajid announced jovially, almost as though we were waiting for a party. It was maddening.

  I looked at Max uncertainly.

  We hadn’t stopped since leaving Isca, but how could we even think about sleeping now?

  ‘The celebratory Ludi Games are this evening, and Aelia will be there,’ Rajid added as a rider, before settling down on his sackcloth bed. ‘Which beats her current position inside a fortified Flavium cell, guarded by a battalion of guards and molossers, in case you were wondering … Now rest. You’ll need all your strength and wits before this day is done.’

  I could tell he was serious.

  ‘What about Lake?’

  A silence pervaded the room.

  ***

  It was several hours later that we were shaken awake.

  ‘Is it time?’ I asked groggily.

  Sleep had come unexpectedly, and the uneven floor had somehow wedged Max and I closely together, our exhausted arms strewn loosely over one another. It wasn’t the first time, but a new frost had crept in since watching the projected image of August, and we detached ourselves awkwardly.

  ‘Nearly, yes. But first I show you something. Something to help you understand.’

  I nodded at the wiry, inked man and wondered how it had come to this: standing with the last Prolet to escape detection, and having to trust everything he said.

  Two minutes later we were travelling along a tunnel adjacent to Rajid’s hideout, that smelled suspiciously like another latrine drain. The narrow rocky path, built on a gradual gradient, stretched on for what seemed like for ever and I thanked the distant stars for whatever luck was holing up the strix, however temporarily. Finally, the tunnel forked and Rajid walked towards another worn ladder clinging to the mouldy walls.

  ‘Does that thing even work?’ Max asked suspiciously.

  Rajid grinned. ‘Maybe … and maybe there’s only one way to find out!’

  He stepped forward and scurried up the ladder as swiftly as though he were a squirrel monkey, barely pausing when he reached a small hole at the top.

  ‘Just like home?’ I muttered, glancing at Max.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ I added, before I could change my mind.

  I scrambled up as quickly as I dared and pulled myself into the black box at the top. There wasn’t much room, and I fought my instincts as Max’s athletic bulk squeezed in beside me, pushing me up tight against Rajid.

  ‘Not all that keen on sardines, mate!’ Max grumbled, just as a vertical shaft of light pulled our gaze through a tiny window into a bright, sterile world.

  We were crammed into a metal unit no bigger than Jas’s bed.

  Silently, Rajid slid the thin door back, extending the vertical shaft into a fully open window. For a moment we stared in blank confusion at the grey sterile units and sinister-looking equipment. And then I realized. I sucked in a hoarse breath and shrank back against the metallic back wall of the unit. We’d climbed right into the heart of the scientific laboratories!

  I scanned the room. There was no one around but it had to be noon at least. Was it a trick? Surely it was the worst time of day to come here? I turned, eyeballing Rajid furiou
sly.

  ‘Hey, ease up on the wildcat … Pantheonites take a siesta on Ludi,’ Rajid crooned. ‘It’s a day of celebration, for them.’

  ‘Let’s get this over with then,’ Max said, pushing through and out of the unit so he could stretch his cramped limbs.

  ‘The cameras?’ I hissed, reaching out to pull him back.

  ‘No surveillance in siesta,’ Rajid responded, climbing out languidly. ‘No one to man them.’

  I stared at him. His skin glistened under the bright lights, but it didn’t make much sense for him to lie. Much.

  I forced my legs out and stood up, grateful to be out of the dark tunnels and cramped space, even if the trade-off was standing in Pantheon’s macabre experimental heart.

  Rajid gesticulated towards a shimmering screen in front of an exit door. I recalled the last time I’d encountered one, and August’s amusement.

  ‘It’s an infection screen, perfectly harmless … unless you’re a virus or bacteria.’

  It was just after he kissed me, to protect me from Cassius, he said. I stiffened at the memory. At the time I’d believed it all an act, and now? Who knew? Perhaps he didn’t even know himself.

  Rajid took the lead, stepping through the fluid, gelatinous screen, and I followed. It was just as I remembered, an ice-cold mist of adrenaline, barely perceptible to the eye yet capable of setting every nerve ending haring. I gasped at the sudden tingling across my skin, and then once again when I opened my eyes. It was just as my nightmares painted it. The laboratory stretching away up towards a distant domed ceiling, with every space between filled with scientific tanks and suspended cages.

  I looked around, and memories of the manticore scattering molossus hounds as easily as skimming stones reached back through the formaldehyde-thick space.

  Max pulled his forest tunic up over his nose. ‘This place smells like a three-day-old breakfast.’

  A bubble of hysteria crept up my throat and I forced it back down. Now was not the time to lose it. Rajid scurried over to a large container on the right-hand wall. And, within a breath, he’d scaled the side and was climbing the wall of the laboratory, using the containers and tanks as foot and hand holds.