The Sunken City Trilogy Read online

  Someone cleared their throat, up above.

  He ignored it, passing the beer can to his right hand, then flung a stiff haymaker and took another swig.

  “Oh for God’s sake!” Holly finally erupted.

  Barton turned from the bag with a frown, finding his defiant wife staring furiously from the top of the short flight of stairs that led into the house. Too weary from the booze and the boxing to conjure the energy for surprise, he spread his arms in a mock welcoming gesture. He heaved a few deep breaths then said, “Did I wake you?”

  “You think?”

  Barton lumbered towards her, swaying on his tired legs. The severity of Holly’s disapproving glare cranked up to maximum as he dropped forward to lean on the banister, looking up at her.

  “You went out,” Holly said.

  “I got a message,” Barton replied, unapologetic. “Asking me to meet him.”

  “Darren, it’s almost dawn. We can’t go back to this. I won’t go through it again.”

  “You think I want to?” Barton snapped. Of course he was the one in the wrong. Having been forced to remember and getting stood up. It was his fault, like everything else. He pushed off from the stairs and walked unsteadily back through the garage. He took another swing at the bag as he passed, making it quake. He raised his voice, over his shoulder. “He didn’t show. Wasn’t there. So don’t worry about it.”

  “Yet you’re in this state, all the same.”

  Barton turned to hold his wife’s gaze. She let her arms unfold.

  “It’s a lapse,” Barton said. “I needed this” – he pointed at the punching bag, still swinging from his last blow – “from the moment his name showed on my phone. You think I’m happy?”

  “What did he want?”

  “Damned if I know.” Barton took another swig of beer. “He didn’t show.”

  “Darren.” Holly descended a step towards him. That was all the conciliation she was willing to offer, placing a hand on the banister to show it. “For your sake, for our sake, for Grace’s sake, it’d better just be a lapse. You told me this was behind us. I believed you.”

  “He didn’t show.” He said it one more time. “What else can I say?”

  “If he contacts you again?”

  Barton grumbled, “I owe it to his dad.”

  “After all he did for you?”

  His face fell at the sarcasm, eyelids drooping. “You never understood.”

  “I understand” – Holly’s voice took on a sharp edge – “that you wouldn’t want your daughter to see you like this. Would you?”

  Barton said nothing.

  “You can sleep on the couch. Then we can talk about it in the morning, or you can let it go. Your call.”

  With that, she left, and Barton let her.

  He put the beer can on the workbench and swayed on the spot. A door closed loudly as Holly made her way through the house. Barton leant on the punching bag, using it to hold himself up, then gave up. He slid down to the floor and sat in an unfocused daze.

  His mind was almost blank, but not quite.

  Somewhere in the haze, he could still see Apothel’s face.

  The hole in his head.

  Rufaizu screaming.

  3

  Pax Kuranes lived in Ordshaw’s student district, Hanton, the closest spot to the centre with even remotely affordable rent. It was lined with terraced houses, slightly more civilised than the tower-blocks that characterised the other impoverished areas. Pax’s apartment was on the top floor of a converted church, and she was surrounded by people a few years younger than her. They rarely disturbed her, as their night-long parties seldom outlasted her night-long poker games. On her return that morning, a banner flapped from a window reading Lisa’s Home!, but only a single lanky student held vigil on the stoop, hunched over a bottle of cider, red eyes vacant.

  It was not the sort of location you found men in smart suits, especially not at the cusp of dawn, yet here one was. His hands in his pockets, he flashed his poster smile at Pax as she kept her distance, a dozen metres down the path to her building.

  “I’ve got something for you,” he said, lightly.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and Pax took a quick step back. She held off from running, though. Granted, he had assaulted a young man and mysteriously vanished, but if it wasn’t a con then maybe he had a genuine grievance with Rufaizu. Was it insane to hope he had her money? She was tired and desperate enough to believe it wasn’t, and watched as he took out a piece of folded A4 paper. She caught a glimpse of something else under his lapel. A strap of leather. The unmistakable square of a gun handle.

  It was too late to run, now.

  He said, “It’s a receipt, essentially, for the value of the money. A PO-42c. States that on completion of our investigation the private property that was confiscated will be returned. Assuming it was your money he took.”

  A dozen questions ran through Pax’s mind. She asked the most burning one: “What do you need a gun for?”

  “Shooting things,” he replied candidly, as though it was obvious. He added, “But I haven’t used it on a person in three years.”

  “Who’d you shoot?” Pax asked.

  “An Armenian.”

  Pax hummed. The answer did not help, and demanded another question. Why had he specified on a person?

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” the suit said. He moved a step closer and she took another step back, eyes on the gun bulge. “I’m sorry you had to see that, in the bar. I should’ve handled it better. He just – his sort irk me. But, please, take this.”

  He held out the paper. She stood rigidly as he closed the distance to her. She took the paper and unfolded it: a dense block of printed text dotted with legal jargon, headed with an important-looking crest and the title Public Ordinance Issue 42c – Confiscation of Goods. In the middle, the amount of money was written in bold: £3,235. At the bottom there was a printed valediction: Yours Sincerely, Gertrude Gossinger, Acquisitions and Inventory Secretary.

  “What the hell is this?” Pax said. “What’s this secretary got to do with my money?”

  “It is your money, then?”

  Pax gave him a challenging look. “How’d you know where I live?”

  “The population of this city gets a lot smaller when you’re filtering for nighthawks.”

  “Why are you filtering populations?”

  “My name’s Cano Casaria,” he said, holding out a hand.

  Without shaking, Pax rolled on, “Gertrude Gossinger and Cano Casaria? Your friends call you CC? Or KK?”

  He let her agitation sit in the air, his hand waiting. His smile wavered slightly when she didn’t shake. He said, “You’re quick. But I’d imagine something we’ve got in common is our lack of friends.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re both working unsociable hours when we needn’t be. And neither of us, I sense, suffers fools lightly.”

  “I suffer tons of fools,” Pax said. “You attack defenceless boys then stalk women outside their homes. Tell me again we’ve got something in common.”

  “I’m just here to do the right thing,” Casaria said.

  “And what’s the right thing that got Cano Casaria out in a dive bar at 4am dressed like he’s ready for a meeting, beating on a homeless boy? You want me to believe you’re with some kind of government agency? Please – no civil servant has the gall to dye their hair and whiten their teeth. You wouldn’t starch a shirt on Her Majesty’s account, would you?”

  His hand was still waiting to be shaken. The smile had barely faltered. She knew how to needle people, but he, in turn, clearly knew how to take it. Maybe he was a civil servant. He said, “I’m a field agent for the Ministry of Environmental Energy. The young man in the bar was a person of interest. And I genuinely thought he might’ve been bothering you.”

  Pax ran the unfamiliar Ministry’s name through her head, not sure if it was obscure or made up, or if she was just ignorant of g
overnment affairs. She said, “And what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Two things,” Casaria said, finally lowering his unshaken hand. “First, following up on what happened. When I returned to the bar, you were gone. I wanted to ask if you knew that young man. I saw you talking, but –”

  “Never seen him before,” Pax said. “What’s he supposed to have done?”

  “You not knowing that will make both our lives a lot easier. Bringing us to the second thing…” He nodded to the paper in her hand. “I hoped that my gesture of goodwill might buy me a conversation.”

  “I don’t know what your game is, but I read people for a living and I know you’ve got a game. I don’t want your conversation. Just my money.”

  Casaria paused. “It could take two weeks, maybe more. There’s a lot of red tape involved when property gets confiscated in the course of an investigation.”

  “Two weeks?” Pax exclaimed. “That’s bullshit – I –”

  “You’ll get the money back, I can vouch for that. I’d like to know who you are, though.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “If I’m honest,” he said, eyes running from her bulky coat and dark hoodie down to her loose jeans and boots, “seeing a young lady out at that hour, with all that cash, dressed like this, raises some interesting questions.”

  Pax kept her face neutral, making an effort not to respond to the young lady comment, recalling his earlier use of miss. He couldn’t have been five years older than her. She said, “What’s this actually about? The guy you assaulted, the money, or me?”

  “Let’s talk about it over a coffee.”

  Pax looked up the road. The nearest café was at least forty minutes from opening, and she had no intention of inviting this stranger into her flat. She was tired, feeling the chill of dawn and wary that if he wasn’t a government spook he had to be a psychopath. Either way, being the victim of a theft seemed like a blessing compared to this. “You say you’re government. That you just apprehended that guy. Nothing to do with me? How do you explain him picking my pocket while being abducted?”

  “He’s compulsive,” Casaria said. “Not rational. At all.”

  “Yeah,” Pax replied. Shady guy in a suit kidnaps someone unstable because he’s about to talk to a stranger. It screamed of a thousand possibilities she wanted nothing to do with. Yet she had to ask. “So why were you after him?”

  Casaria held her gaze. There was no chance he was going to tell her, and that, it seemed, was the point. There was something she was not allowed to know. But he still wanted to talk to her.

  “I’ve never heard of your Ministry of Environmental Energy,” she said. “And unless you’re gonna give me my money, right now, I’d like to go.”

  She paused, inviting him to respond. He let another smile fill the moment’s silence, then said, “Of course, you’re free to go. I’ve got one question, though. Where did you go after leaving the bar?”

  “This stinks,” Pax said, firmly.

  “I get that you might not believe me.” The smile escalated to a snigger, like this whole situation was a game to him. “But it is a matter of national security.”

  Pax stared, miffed at the contrast. His unprovoked attack on Rufaizu and his insincere smiles said one thing, while his suit, paperwork and gun said another. As if to punctuate it, he put his hands on his hips in a manner that pulled the jacket back, drawing attention to the pistol. National security was a perfect phrase, wasn’t it. Throw national security into the mix and you can get away with murder, that’s what he was telling her. Hesitating, Pax considered how best to answer him. She said, “People who work nights look out for each other. I asked my people and got a name, tried to follow it up.”

  For the first time, Casaria looked concerned. He shifted his weight from one leg to another and asked, “What did you find out?”

  The truth, Pax knew, was always the best frame for a lie. “Rufaizu was new in town, knocked over a game in St Alphege’s and no one’s been able to find him since. I checked the Nothicker Slums, figuring he might have a shack there.”

  “The Nothicker Slums,” Casaria said. Pax nodded. The homeless shanty town was close enough to Rufaizu’s place, if he wanted to check her travel route. He said, “What do you mean by a game in St Alphege’s?”

  “A game,” Pax repeated. “Poker.”

  “Ah.” Casaria’s face lit up, the penny dropping. “So you –”

  “You said one question,” Pax cut him off. “You going to leave me alone now?”

  “There’s more we could discuss.”

  “I’m going,” she said, keeping her eyes on him as she took a cautious step forward. He didn’t make a move. She took another step, then another, slow and deliberate. He rolled his eyes, giving up, and waved a hand, “Go on. I slid a card under your door. Call me, any time.”

  She hurried to her building and took the key from her pocket without looking back. As she let herself in, she sensed he was still watching her.

  4

  Pax threw off her coat and turned on the radio to try and restore some normalcy to her mood. The early morning presenters were discussing the bus crash. “Twelve dead – twelve – and three of them children. This guy should not have been driving, it’s as simple as that.”

  “He wasn’t drunk, Marty, he was doing his job same as ever –”

  “He fell asleep at the wheel! Unfit – who’s regulating these people – who’s –”

  Marty sounded like he was going to give himself a heart attack. Pax was happy to hear she wasn’t the only one having a bad morning. She kicked off her boots and paused to study her thinning left sock. It’d survive a few more washes, but she couldn’t wait until Christmas for new underwear. Whatever, socks were way down the list of things she needed that money for.

  The radio host decided it was time to play some music, and Pax agreed. Better not to dwell on how shitty life was. Ignore her patchy socks, and the fact that a bad driver had cost a bunch of people their lives. Block out the thought that this apartment needed paying for. A pop song came on about love or dancing, or love of dancing, or some other banality. Much better.

  Pax settled onto her sofa and spread Apothel’s Miscellany out on the cushion. Its coded language had been scrawled with black ink in fits of emotion, surrounding pencil sketches of mechanical devices that combined pipes, tools, blades and arrows: creative ideas for modern medieval weapons. Then there were occasional floor plans of winding tunnels and mazes. There were strange, fantastic creatures. How did a creative kid with interests like this get into the spooks’ crosshairs? What would it take for Albie to find himself on the same path? It didn’t make sense. Then, this might be something completely different to his board-game miniatures. Maybe if she spoke to him more than once a year, she’d have a better idea.

  Pax put that thought out of her mind, to study a creature drawn in different poses. Some sort of biped, the rough shape of a gorilla, with no head and an extra limb rising over one shoulder from its spine. Where the head should have been was a set of mandibles. Patches of alternating scaly and flat rocky textures covered its skin and lines ran between its panelled flesh like veins. The ends of its long arms, which hung just above its flat, elephant-like feet, had three angular claws.

  This Apothel was a talented artist, Pax appreciated that. Someone of considerable imagination. It could have been concept artwork for a fantasy comic or a computer game. The annotations gave the same impression, written in that cryptic language. The symbols were a lexicon, repeated frequently and systematically. Occasional notes in the margins, scrawled in handwritten biro, in English, hinted at a translation. Pax ran a finger from one or two of the comments to a few of the underlined symbols.

  The monster’s name, at the head of the page, appeared to be translated directly.

  Glogockle.

  The title in symbols had the same number of letters. Another entry at the bottom had a comment, What?! Seen one OUTRUN A MAN, next to the number 13 and t
hree symbols. Presumably those three symbols gave a speed: mph or kph. The word before 13 was five symbols. Speed?

  Humming along to another irritating tune on the radio, Pax took a pad of paper and a pen from her side table and started to make notes. The cypher was simple, worthy of the man who had tried to lock his door with a piece of string. It substituted English letters with symbols. She made a list of the letters of the alphabet and started matching them to symbols. This was perfect. A mindless task to clear her head, to help her calm down before plotting her next move.

  Deciphering the text, Pax ignored the sun rising. When only Q, Z and X eluded her, she started to translate sections of writing, starting at the back where a set of short paragraphs were surrounded by brainstormed words. She’d hoped there might be names or addresses, but the first lines suggested they were more likely to be nonsensical riddles. The seeping sour flower rests before the needle of two days... Pax flicked away from that nonsense. Back to the glogockle, might as well check something interesting. A series of short instructions annotated the pictures: Always approach from behind. Soft spot in central abdomen. Feeds on small animals. Max seen speed 13mph. There was the X.

  The Miscellany was a colourful and creative project, no doubt about that. A labour of love and the result of painstaking hours of work. And it wasn’t Rufaizu’s work. His comments in the margin almost offered a conversation with the author. Going back to the beginning, Pax translated the title on the first page, finding the book’s name repeated with an epitaph: Apothel’s Miscellany: Essential tips for mastering the Sunken City. She sat back.

  The radio presenter had started raving about something new. A problem with a construction site that people were worried might collapse. He claimed the people of Ordshaw were lazy and cutting corners. They needed a wake-up call. He yawned as he said it, though. Tired of his own vitriol.

  Pax turned the radio off.

  Checking back through the comments in the margins of the book, she imagined Rufaizu interpreting this nonsense with the same merry enthusiasm Albie had showed when he chattered at her about a race of greenskins when she’d walked him to a model store in London. That must’ve been over ten years ago. When she was a teenager. She’d ignored him to make mental plans for the £20 her mother had paid her to take him. It seemed Rufaizu had been even more neglected than that.