‘Know what?’ he asked in sympathy, thinking he could guess what was about to be said.
‘It wasn’t just my friend who used to do narnik.’
‘We all did,’ he said, a little too cheerily.
‘No, Slvasta, I had a real problem. It just took over. But I’ve been clean for a couple of years now. I’m never going back to that, not ever. It’s a dark place, and you don’t see it, not from the inside. And before you know it, the dark closes in and covers you. It’s like being buried alive, and the only way out is another wad. That’s when you think you can see the light again. But it’s not light, not really. It’s just the narnik lifting you, fooling you.’
He reached over the table and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry. But you’re clean now? That’s good.’
‘Yes. It was Coulan; he found me. He helped me see how bad I was. He helped me kick it. There’s not many people manage that, not when they’re as far gone as I was. But he knew what to do, how to help me. It was amazing, building up my self-esteem again. I owe him a lot. Everything, actually. He was so sweet, so generous. He didn’t have to do it, to help a stranger, but he did because that’s the kind of person he is.’
Just for a moment Slvasta could sense some of her memories, a few hazy images rich with emotion. He was proud of the way he kept hold of her hand. ‘You and him, then?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’s over. It has been for a long time. He’s with Javier now.’
‘We’ve all got a past in that respect,’ he assured her.
‘I know. But I’m still friends with him. Slvasta, I really hope that doesn’t bother you. It’s not in my nature to turn my back on someone who was so important to me. Without him . . . I don’t know where I’d be now. Dead, possibly, or just another house girl down at the bad end of Gamstak district.’
‘But you’re neither of these things. And I’m very grateful to him for that.’
‘Really?’ Her hand tightened on his.
‘Yes. Whatever you’ve been through, it made you what you are today. And that’s a very special person, Bethaneve. One I’m pleased I know.’
‘You’re so sweet. I can’t believe you do the job you do.’ She leaned over and kissed him. They’d kissed before – pleasant end-of-the-evening kisses when teekay strokes became playfully naughty – but not like this, not with this hunger. His shell immediately tightened round his thoughts, preventing anyone’s ex-sight from sensing them directly. Nothing he could do about the other café customers’ eyesight, though.
They moved apart, sharing the same knowing smile. It gave Slvasta real hope for the future for the first time since Ingmar’s death.
6
It was the following Thursday when the news reached Varlan. It must have come in by special messenger to the palace some time during the night, the kind of news the Captain and his Council kept quiet about until the official gazettes could print clever sanitized reports that minimized the level of damage.
But when Slvasta walked into Rose’s Croissant Café, he knew something was wrong. Even the regulars were giving him disapproving stares, and the unguarded thoughts his uniform kindled in some were downright hostile.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked Rose when she came over to take his order.
‘You pay them no heed, captain,’ she said, her voice growing loud enough to carry across the café. ‘Everybody here knows you’re from the Cham regiment, and they do all right by their county. You’re not like those others.’
‘Other what?’
‘You might want to look at the Hilltop Eye.’
When she’d taken his order, Slvasta used his teekay to pluck the Hilltop Eye from the rack beside the door. The pamphlet was easy enough to find; the rack was stuffed full of them that morning. It slid through the air above the heads of everyone sitting at their table.
He was slightly surprised to see it was a new one; normally the pamphlet was printed every month or so, and the last one had come out barely five days ago. Also, this was just a single sheet. ‘NEST UNCOVERED’ was printed in bold across the top. With a growing sense of dismay he read down the report. Wurzen, the southernmost town in Rakwesh province, had discovered a nest. All the Fallers had been killed by sheriffs and regimental reservists from the town. No thanks to the authorities.
The nest had taken over the Lanichie family, some local landowners who had a grand townhouse. How long they’d managed to carry off the charade was unknown. Rumours had been rife for years – true, Slvasta knew, he’d seen classified reports of suspicions from the Wurzen sheriff’s office – but one of the Lanichie daughters was married to the Captain’s district governor; the county regiment’s commander was a cousin. The family employed hundreds of people in its estates, and half the businesses in the county depended on its patronage. Official reports into the disappeared, and qualms about the increasingly reclusive occupants of the townhouse with its strangely persistent fuzzing, had been quashed for years.
Two days ago, at one o’clock in the morning, a drunk group of sailors had waylaid a covered cart trundling quietly through the town. It had a brewery logo on the side, and they were hoping to help themselves to some barrels. What they found was two eggs. The Faller who drove it made a desperate dash for the Lanichie townhouse, with the rapidly sobering sailors in hot pursuit.
A ’pathed alarm surged through the town, and a mob emerged. Every mod-animal in Wurzen went wild, attacking the entire human population.
‘I knew it!’ Slvasta exclaimed out loud as he read that part.
But fear and anger had taken hold now, and the mods were swiftly killed by teekay assault, physical battery and pistol shot. Sheriffs and reservists, who had weapons, led the charge against the townhouse. What they found inside, after they killed the Fallers, was what everyone imagined Uracus itself would be like. Human bones, gnawed clean, filled every room. Initial estimates were that over three hundred people had been eaten.
The Wurzen nest was an atrocity on a scale nobody had even conceived of before. And it had all been brushed aside and kept quiet because the Lanichie family was of good stature – landowners, aristocracy, rich. The ruling class. Those rulers had allowed it to happen because they’d never dream of questioning their own.
Other houses and the town Council offices were fired as the mob sought revenge, a physical outlet for their horror and fury. Landowners, merchants, anyone living in a large house, government officials – they were chased out of their homes, out of the town, beaten, robbed, brutalized. The Captain’s district governor was supposed to have been lynched with help from his own sheriffs . . .
The mob still ruled in Wurzen, Hilltop Eye claimed, and the discontent was spreading to the surrounding towns and villages, where the families of the disappeared were taking up arms in search of vengeance.
‘Great Giu,’ Slvasta muttered. His dismay was tempered by a grim satisfaction. The regiments will have to change now.
He dropped a few copper coins on the table and left. As he walked down Walton Boulevard, he grew aware of the unusually light amount of traffic for the time of day. At the same time, his ex-sight was gathering up the emotional atmosphere starting to engulf Varlan. That was the thing with ’path whispers. Given the right spark of gossip, they could spread across the city in a matter of minutes. Hilltop Eye wasn’t a spark, it was an eruption; shocked ’path conversations between families and friends overlapped, multiplied to streak along streets and canals at the speed of thought.
The city’s cab drivers, those masters of urban gossip and innuendo, understood all too well what the growing mood spelt, and turned to head back to their stables. Their absence added to the expanding feeling of anxiety; ire towards authority was building fast. Once or twice, Slvasta sensed individuals urging people to take their frustrations out on the government – fast sharp ’path voices that swirled for a few seconds amid the mental clamour, only to vanish again after a few seconds, untraceable even to the best psychic detective. But each little burst of encouragement was absorbed and disseminated, adding to the citymind gestalt.