The thought of mages had made the thin man pause. The sight of Pasha, with his Downsider pallor under dusky skin that to an Upsider meant “heretic” or worse, had him running away like Namrat himself was chasing him, wanting to eat his soul before he crapped it into hell. The man hadn’t escaped before Pasha had used his magic to lift the information from the man’s mind – a series of inexplicable events down here in the Stench. Inexplicable was what we were after, hence why I was down here trying not to breathe, in case it was possible to die from inhaling the smell.
I didn’t have much to go on – an image that Pasha had given me of the young man in the office, boy even. Dusky yet paler than he could have been, should have been, not unlike myself or a thousand others. Not the blue-white undertones of a Downsider who’d spent his life in the dark, but more like an Upsider from the wrong side of Trade, who saw the sun perhaps for a few minutes a day as it stood at noon and shone straight down, and for the rest of the time saw it only second- or third-hand, bounced down on mirrors and through cobwebbed light-wells. He’d been thin too, like we all were, and getting thinner. A man like thousands Under Trade – except for the smell of the Stench on him and in his mind the inexplicable events he’d seen – perhaps inadvertently caused.
A boom-shudder rattled the walls, made dust drift on to my face and stick to the clammy sweat there. Another reminder of why I needed to find this man, and soon. The sound had become part of the city over the last days, echoing along the walkways and haunting every level from the darkest depths of Boundary right up to the rarefied and sun-drenched air of Top of the World to rattle even the Ministry. And with every boom-shudder, you could almost see the thought run through the heads of everyone, Upsider and Downsider alike.
The Storad were at the gates.
The Storad were lurking Outside, waiting for their chance, and they had a parade of big, smoking machines that were making a creditable attempt at blasting the crap out of said gates. The boom was the machine firing what looked like enormous bullets. The shudder was what happened when the bullets struck the gates, a tremor and terror that vibrated through the whole city.
I reached the end of the vats with relief and, hoping I might be able to take a deep breath without throwing up, braved the echoing cavern at the end. The smell didn’t get any better. Instead it got worse so that my eyes watered. I’d have happily killed any number of people for a fresh breeze. Where the hell was this guy? Where was anyone?
A series of smaller tanks and vats filled the cavern, larger feeding into smaller, overspill running into a channel that carved its way down the centre. Greenish froth bubbled and steamed on the surfaces of some of the tanks, but the run-off looked surprisingly clear. The liquid – I hesitate to call it water except in the most generous sense – splashed down the channel with a cheerful prattle until it slid over a lip and out of sight.
I still hadn’t seen anyone and I was starting to get cranky. We had no time to spare, not with the Storad Outside, wearing down the gates a chunk at a time. Churning out Glow was wearing Pasha and me down a chunk at a time too. No time to spare and we needed every mage we could find, whether they knew they were mages or not. I tried calling out, tried poking around, but all I got for my trouble was more smell and green stuff on my coat. It was hovering around noon up at Top of the World, and I needed to be somewhere else as soon as I could. No time to mess about, and that made me swear because it meant I had to use my magic. I’d been hoping I’d get away with it. No such luck.
I found a wall that wasn’t dripping too badly, leaned against it for support and hoped like hell that this time I wouldn’t end up on my knees, because a ruined pair of boots was enough without ruining my allover too. I shut my eyes and pulled my nicely buggered hand out of my pocket. Usually I needed a prop of some kind, a link to whoever I was going to find, unless I knew them well. A lock of hair, a scrap of clothing, a picture. This time all I had was the face that Pasha had shown me, a picture in my head if you will, along with a name and being fairly certain the guy was down here. It might work. I hoped it would, because this was going to hurt and I don’t like to hurt, especially for no purpose.
My hand was slowly getting better since I’d completely screwed it, but pumping out enough magic to run the Glow lights and everything else over the last few weeks hadn’t really made it easier. The generator was helping, taking the magic and magnifying it, but Trade is a hungry beast. Purple-blue and swollen doesn’t even begin to cover how damaged my hand was, but it was a fact of my life. If I was lucky the hand wouldn’t drop off any time soon.