The Sunken City Trilogy Read online

  Pax looked at the odd book with a pang of guilt. When she got this thing turned around, she’d have Albie to stay for a few days. He’d love Ordshaw. Maybe after the tournament. If she could get hold of him without going through Mum or, worse, Dad. Pax shook herself out of it and fixed her eyes back on the book. Focus. There’d be nowhere to invite anyone to if she wasn’t careful.

  The book had brought her no closer to understanding what Rufaizu was about. What would a government Ministry of Energy want with him? Had he stolen from them, too? The card Casaria had slipped under Pax’s door bore the same insignia as the PO-42c, a lion crest with grandiose laurels. Both matched the Ministry of Environmental Energy’s website, which she’d checked on her phone. The website said nothing about what they did, though, it merely gave a list of nameless contact emails and stock images of models looking happy and important.

  Casaria was troubling, even without this mystery ministry behind him. His wandering eyes, attempts at a charming smile and suggestions of wanting a casual chat all hinted at personal advances. Which was an immediate no. He’d dealt with Rufaizu barbarically, for one, and there were things she clearly wasn’t supposed to know, for another. To say nothing of his edgy awkwardness, and the gun.

  She decided to contact someone else from this Ministry. If they really did have her money, they could tell her when she’d get it back, and what had happened to Rufaizu. Or they could let her know Casaria was nothing to do with them. She pictured the gun again and considered another call to Bees, and as if on cue her phone chirped, making Pax jump.

  She fumbled to answer, barely noticing the call came from a withheld number.

  “All right bitch-sticks,” a rough female voice shouted. “I know who you are and where you live – if I sniff a lie, I’ll rain on you harder than a brick bull. You working with them?”

  Pax held the phone a foot from her ear, too stunned to respond.

  “You hearing me, cock burglar?” the voice snapped. “You working with them or what?”

  “Who is this?” Pax replied.

  “Are you fucking working with them?” the caller exploded.

  “Working with who?” Pax answered almost as hotly, the hostility giving her a rise.

  “The suit salesman, the slick prick – we saw you.”

  “The government?”

  “Hallelujah, a ray of light in your simple skull.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I’ll come down this line and pull your tongue through your ear, you keep this up. Are you or are you not working with him?”

  Pax paused. She’d dealt with plenty of angry people at the card table, and the best response was usually no response. But the night’s events had her irate. To hell with the best response. She said, forcibly, “One, if you know who I am then you should already know if I’m working with them. Two, if you know where I live, then come say it to my face, instead of making threats through the phone.”

  Before the mad woman could respond, Pax hung up, as calmly as she could. Her hand was shaking, stung by the intensity of the caller’s voice, but she kept her composure. The phone started ringing again, again showing a withheld number. Pax waited three rings, then answered, holding the phone at a distance, expecting more shouting.

  The caller was beyond incensed.

  “Listen you tall sack of shit, if I tell you to talk you’re –”

  Pax hung up. Down this road, no rational conversation lay. She moved to the window. Her apartment gave a panoramic view of the sleeping street below. Curtains drawn in the windows, no one lingering in the street. Whoever was calling didn’t appear to be in the immediate area.

  She stared at the phone. There was someone else involved, apparently opposed to Casaria’s lot, and hinting, rather strongly, that he genuinely was from the government. This angry woman had her phone number but had, for some reason, referred to Pax as tall. They couldn’t actually know who she was, because 5’6” was hardly tall in anyone’s books. She was safe, wasn’t she? Besides, no one who wanted to hurt her would warn her with a crazed phone call.

  Still, it was weird, getting weirder.

  Pax returned to the sofa.

  The book lay open on a sketch of an Underground train surrounded by what looked like lightning. There were people in the windows, with shaded doubles of themselves lifting from their bodies, as though something was pulling their souls out.

  The evocative artwork made her frown. She read Rufaizu’s marginal comment: Minotaur’s Grasp. Does this even need explaining?

  “Yes, it needs explaining, you dick,” Pax grumbled, turning the page to see if there was any more. He’d said minotaur as he was dragged from the bar, clearly a focal point for him. The next few pages showed diagrams of tunnels with no text, though. Crazy people upon crazy people, and somewhere in the middle of all this Pax’s livelihood was at risk, along with the life of an odd young man.

  The phone vibrated again, once. A text message appeared on the screen.

  WITHHELD: You are so fucked.

  5

  Barton took in Rufaizu’s apartment grimly. There were boot-prints in the dust that said someone had visited recently, but they looked too small to have been the young man come home. Whoever it was, they’d raided his hiding places. That left only one option, and Barton hated it. Dr Mandy Rimes. Holly would be furious at him for even contemplating calling her.

  It didn’t matter.

  He’d already breached Holly’s trust by coming here. She hadn’t cooled off when she woke him from his slumber on the couch, still dressed and smelling like a septic tank. She threw a towel at him and told him to go outside to hose himself down. Deadbeats don’t get to use the shower, she’d said. He sat on the sofa for a while longer, rubbing his throbbing temples, while Grace watched him from the adjoining kitchen. Cautious whispers passed between his daughter and wife; he could guess what they were saying.

  What’s going on? Your father’s an arsehole.

  The usual sort of thing.

  He could feel Grace staring, not venturing any closer. When Barton looked up, she ducked away, shaking her head, adopting the affected child routine. She wasn’t a child any more, though, she was at that age where you took pride in hating your parents. It’d bring her kudos: my dad is the worst.

  Holly got Grace’s stuff together for school and huffed that she guessed it was her turn to drive, knowing full well it wasn’t. Barton didn’t respond. He let them go without any kind of explanation, just sat there staring at the carpet wishing he could stick a spike through his skull to release the pressure.

  Holly slammed the door on her way out. Barton took it as a signal to finally get up.

  Climbing the stairs to the shower felt like a monumental struggle. Twice he slid to his knees and groaned at the world for being too difficult to live in. Somehow he found it in himself to keep going, and the frosty water partly woke him. He threw on some clean clothes and dragged himself outside.

  Struggling to keep his eyes open, swaying in his car seat, Barton suspected he still had more than the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

  It didn’t matter.

  Rufaizu’s apartment was a forty-minute drive away, on the other side of the city, but he managed it in an hour twenty. It was the city’s fault, not his; he’d taken the quickest route, using the ring road, but driving around Ordshaw during the day sucked at time like a leech. Damn Rufaizu for forcing him to travel. Barton had moved out to leafy Dalford to pretend he wasn’t part of the heaving beast that was Ordshaw. Year by year the city was getting worse; more crowded, spreading into new, more colourfully wretched neighbourhoods that had once been villages in their own right. More like London every day, only less important. Two million people combining to create a monster you couldn’t cross in under an hour.

  He locked the car six times before he was satisfied that it was secure. If there was ever a place for your car to go missing, this was it. Even his twenty-year-old Scenic was fair game – it’d stopped being scenic a deca
de ago, but a thief around here could get it started better than he ever could.

  Staring at the empty disappointment of Rufaizu’s apartment, after the effort it had taken to get there, Barton considered sitting and waiting, but his hangover was getting worse and his ability to concentrate was fading. It wasn’t worth it. Rufaizu was gone, not answering his phone, and it didn’t look like he’d be here any time soon. It was either leave it all to rear its ugly head at a random point in the future, or call Rimes to try and figure this out.

  Barton dialled and hoped, with each passing ring, that the doctor would not answer. It had been so long, maybe she had a new number. Maybe she was dead, who knew. Five rings. Six. Barton’s finger hovered, preparing to hang up. The phone clicked.

  “Citizen Barton?” Rimes’ raspy voice answered, at once tired and surprised.

  “Mandy,” Barton said quietly. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been expecting your call.”

  Barton could picture Holly’s face. Her mouth and eyes screwing smaller like the narrowing points of intensely focusing lasers. She wouldn’t say anything, just burn him with her gaze, letting him know how big a mistake he was making. Silently saying you’ve ruined all our lives. Sometimes she gave him that look when he folded his trousers the wrong way after doing the laundry, mind. It would make a change to receive it for something serious.

  Rimes breathed patiently but loudly. Barton knew few people in the world who could so comfortably let a silence hang.

  “Expecting me why?” he asked.

  “Rufus got in touch. He said he had found something, but wouldn’t tell me what.”

  “For God’s sake,” Barton groaned. “Did you meet with him?”

  “Briefly. He told me to be ready. That your involvement would come first.”

  “I haven’t spoken to him. He wanted to meet with me last night. He didn’t show.”

  “That’s not good. Not good at all.”

  Rimes’ tone was completely neutral, but Barton knew well enough that her unemotional words could be taken at face value. He said, “What else did he tell you?”

  “Just what I said. He thinks he’s found the answer.”

  “To what?”

  “To everything. To kill the beast.”

  Barton paused, holding back from saying something he might regret. Another question, another sentence, and he might be drawn back in without any way out. If there was a solution, it was not something he could walk away from. No matter what promises he had made to his family. He replied, “Rufaizu’s been away so long. He was just a kid. What would he know?”

  “I hoped you might tell me.”

  “Are you still working?”

  “Mm.”

  He could picture Rimes in her laboratory, lights low and blinds down, examining some test-tube of luminous liquid through brass-rimmed goggles, even as they spoke. It was possible that the doctor had never left that unlikely hall of experiments. She might have been born there, for all he knew. It certainly felt like she would make it her grave.

  The idea that he could ever have cheated on Holly with her was so far from reality that it wasn’t even funny. It was borderline offensive. But Holly hadn’t known who the doctor was. Rimes was a lady Barton had visited in the dead of the night. On numerous occasions. In Holly’s eyes, those secret visits were a betrayal, no matter their purpose.

  Guessing his thoughts, Rimes asked, “Did you tell your wife everything, in the end?”

  “Enough to keep her from cutting my throat in my sleep,” Barton said. “Not enough that she’s any the wiser.” Just enough to leave a permanent look of distrust on her face. He sighed. “She got the point that I wasn’t having an affair, at least. Mandy, if you see Rufaizu again, let him know I tried to meet him. But it’s best he not contact me again.”

  “Certainly. There’s something else you might want to be aware of, though,” Rimes said. “I believe he wasn’t working alone. He said he had help. Friends.”

  “Well,” Barton said, firming his decision. Apothel had found friends, too, and look where it got him. Rufaizu was his father’s son. “Then I definitely want no part of it.”

  “Aren’t you curious, Citizen Barton?” Rimes asked, before he could end the call.

  “No,” he told her. “I can’t afford to be.”

  On the way home, Barton tried to convince himself that none of it mattered. There was no way to stop the minotaur, Apothel had been clear about that from the start. If he’d found a solution he would’ve told everyone, not disappeared up his own arse. And for Rufaizu to find something where his own father had failed was unthinkable. The boy was wayward, half mad.

  There was no way.

  And there were more important things to worry about. Holly’s anger. Grace’s trust. They needed him. Emotionally and financially. Even this impromptu day off would eat into their small buffer of disposable cash.

  When the Scenic sputtered, pulling into the faster-moving traffic of the ring road, Barton pictured their faces on seeing the car he’d been saving for. It was small, the new Civic, but it meant cheaper journeys and fewer breakdowns. More money for holidays. A tour of Scotland. A seaside jaunt. A Christmas market. It was all possible. Holly would soften, at least for a moment. Grace, more importantly, would offer him her smile. She had the most charming smile of any young lady. A heartbreaker. That smile would say her dad was okay. There had been far too many disappointed smiles.

  The imagined scenes of his happy family consoled him for the journey, his spirits lifting and the misery of his godforsaken hangover drifting into the background.

  Life wasn’t so bad.

  Rufaizu’s lunacy could not be allowed to ruin everything. Barton had the strength to ignore it. He decided he’d go in to work today, after all.

  6

  Pax had not slept. Years of enduring poker games that stretched into oblivion had taught her you could always find a second wind if you waited long enough. Or a third, or fourth. Rather than struggle to rest, she studied Rufaizu’s book while she waited for the Ministry offices to open. After reading about glogockles and surveying tunnel layouts, she decoded notes on other unnatural creatures, taking satisfaction in solving the puzzles. She decoded the headings for The Drummer Horse, Invisible Proclaimers, and Tuckles before focusing on the entry for the Sickle in detail. Its image was a thing of nightmares, a humanoid torso atop four canine legs, with long, curved claws instead of hands. Its face had no eyes, just a jagged-toothed jawline that ran from top to bottom rather than left to right. The short misspelt paragraph curating it gave her the idea that Apothel was not exactly a scholar.

  Sickles patrol on set lines. Strongest sense is touch; they look for vibrashans from movement. No eyes, no nose, no ears. Stay still and quiet, they mite not know your there. If cornered by a sickle, get the back legs, they lose balance easy. Sickles are very fast. Teef and claws rip flesh. Avoid – do not fite.

  In the margin she found a clue to another person’s involvement in this strange enterprise. A triumphant addendum read: Tell that to Citizen Barton!

  Pax leafed through the book, looking for other names. She reached a long section with no images and a single solitary note in the margin: Probably inaccurate. She translated the title, Layer Fae. One to come back to. Following that was a list, with pictures of different containers: jars, cylinders and an elaborate flagon that gave Pax a yearning for a medieval banquet. Nothing like the object she’d taken from Rufaizu’s place, though.

  Continuing, she found a couple of pages stuck together and peeled them apart. She hadn’t seen this one before, when she’d been looking for clues to the cypher. The image made Pax pause.

  A full-page sketch depicted the insignia from Casaria’s business card. There were symbols around it, passionately thick and underlined. It seemed Rufaizu, if the annotations were really his, wanted whoever found this book to know what this page had to say, because he’d already translated each block of text in small lettering:

  Do not t
rust the Ministry of Environmental Energy. Investigations are baloney. Agents are dangerous. Spies everywhere. Protecting the labyrinth. In with the enemy.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pax said. She turned the page, but there was no more information. The book devolved into the half-dozen pages of short riddles, then, with their scattered words around them. Apparently Rufaizu had been trying to solve them.

  And there ended the book.

  Pax sat back and stared at the leather-bound tome. It was pure fantasy, except that it had thrown doubt on her plan of getting in touch with the Ministry. She wasn’t sure what else she had hoped to find. More names, an address? There was nothing.

  She bit her lip. Whether Rufaizu was half mad or the victim of an overactive imagination, nothing in what she’d seen suggested he deserved to be disappeared. In all likelihood he had no one looking out for him. He’d been squatting there alone, after all. Pestering night-time weirdos and squirrelling away bizarre books and devices.

  Pax turned her attention back to the odd cylinder she had stolen.

  Half glass, half brass, it looked like part of a Jules Verne machine, waiting to be filled with a magical fuel that could be used to travel through time. For example. Pax turned it over and found a fine set of markings on the underside: a symbol similar to a precious metal’s hallmark. It was too small to make out clearly. The mechanisms at one end had cogs finer than a Swiss watch. She thumbed back through the book, searching the sketches for a page that might explain it, but none of the objects resembled this one.

  Setting both items aside, she hummed to herself. Her eyes rested on her coat, hanging by the door, with Rufaizu’s notepad poking out of a pocket.