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allum admired the clock as it ticked away the seconds. It was a beautiful piece, its glassy, perfectly-round face set in gold plate. If he pressed his ear close to it he could hear the tiny gears inside, grinding slowly away.
‘Is sir interested in purchasing the item?’ a quavering voice asked him from the left. Callum turned and smiled indulgently at the well-groomed shop boy. It was obvious that he was just being polite; despite his youth the shopkeeper’s assistant was managing to look down his nose at Callum. And why not, the scruffy young man thought to himself, look at you. Tattered trench coat, stubble that desperately needs to be introduced to a razor, no money to your name. The clockmaker’s was a respectable place for the middle classes to shop; Callum didn’t fit.
‘Just looking,’ he told the child, placing the clock back on its shelf. The boy gave him a satisfied smirk which was almost arrogant, until Callum looked him in the eyes and saw fear. He held the gaze, daring the assistant to challenge him. Blushing suddenly and furiously, the boy turned, heading towards a gentleman wearing full coat and tails. That’s more your style, Callum agreed mentally.
For a moment he stared wistfully about the place. He found clockwork fascinating, and the ticking in the clockmaker’s set his head to humming. Callum closed his eyes, listening as every one of the hand-crafted devices chimed out the hour together.
Three o’clock they told him, with whistles and bongs and, in the case of the great, twisted contraption in the corner, a thunderous clashing of cymbals. The sound seemed out of place in the shop, too uncouth for the likes of the top-hatted fellow that the boy had gone to speak to. Callum loved it.
Leaving the clockmaker’s, he stepped out into the rain-slicked streets of Abethron. The cobbles were slippery, and he could feel water soaking through the thin soles of his boots. Gas-lanterns lined the streets; empty of flames for now, they stood like black guardsmen, arranged in neatly-spaced rows. Beneath them huddled people, eating and talking and laughing despite the rain, oblivious to the coated young man who watched them.
There were no houses here. The buildings on all sides were shops, glass-fronted and displaying wares of all kinds. Opposite the clockmaker’s, beneath a sign naming the establishment as C. Mortimer’s Fineries, were clothes from all about the world, silk scarves and cotton tunics, thick leather coats and delicate chiffon gowns. Built into the side of the building was a steel contraption, powered by a fragile series of weights and balances, in which a lone gentleman of the top-hat variety was ascending. He looked distinctly green from the experience of the rocking cage.
Callum smirked at the sight. The elevator came to rest at a balcony, which jutted out from Mortimer’s and across the alley. He couldn’t see the doorway to the second floor from here, but he knew the place. The women who plied their trade within were the prime market for the more diaphanous garments sold below. The man within the cage was either brave or foolish to be seen entering in broad daylight. Or, more likely, he simply had enough money and influence to quash any rumours of wrongdoing.
Putting questions of the unknown figure’s puissance to one side, Callum began to walk along the street, hunching his shoulders to try and ward off the pouring precipitation. One of the great steam-wagons trundled past, its wheels clattering on the cobbles as it belched smoke and spat boiling water from the rear. For a shilling he could have ridden on top of it, like the people who sat on its benches now. The wagons didn’t run where he was going, though, and the machines had always made him distinctly uncomfortable. Where the clocks were perfection, tiny gears ticking in harmony to measure the immeasurable—the very pulse of time—the steam-wagons were clunky and volatile. Only a week ago one had exploded in the middle of its run, killing thirteen people and scalding a further twenty-two.
Then again, he thought, you know why that was. The ghost of a smile flitted over his features, to be replaced almost instantaneously by a grim, neutral mask. The wagon passed him by and was forgotten.
Turning down an alley, Callum wended his way through dark passages and side-turns, cutting through the gardens of common people who grew nothing more than a few vegetables. He was soon far from the bustling heart of city, its shopping districts left behind. His route wasn’t strictly necessary to take, but it was quicker than going the “right” way and, when you went where he was going, it didn’t really matter how you’d gotten there.
One final dark passage between empty buildings and he was there. It was a wasteland; three square miles of broken factories and forgotten houses, half-ruined by wind and rain. The Desolation. No-one knew why it was like this; the western half of Abethron had simply ceased to exist as a viable place for reality. The settled world enjoyed in the eastern part of the city had up and vanished one day, to be replaced by this blasted reach of gang violence and wretched people, and no-one could quite explain what had happened.
The police ventured here occasionally, attempting to bring some semblance of order; the City’s Peace as they called it. They rarely went far in. At most, a heavily armed and massively supernumerary force of constables would raid something, a small-time hashish-dealer’s or one of the two-bit extortion rackets which operated on the fringes of the broken streets, and call it a great success. The real problems weren’t even named, let alone battled against. Some things are too big to take on when it’s their turf you’re fighting on.
Callum was at home here. He stepped through the bricks strewn across the shattered cobbles with the ease of one who has spent their life doing so, not even breaking his stride as he stepped around the twisted metal of a battered bench. Corrugated iron slats formed shabby lean-tos beneath which huddled shadowy men, skulking away from the rain. These were the weak ones, living within reach of the easy pickings from the most unlucky of the civilized Abethronians; little more than scavengers and muggers who prowled out of the Desolation at night to prey on the unwary. Callum ignored them; he had nothing to fear from their attentions.
His journey was wandering and vague, passing along streets and then doubling back, dipping through alleys and then across to curve back around. There was method to his madness; if he were being followed, then the constant ducking and diving and fouling his own route would hopefully throw off his pursuer. Callum had no idea whether anyone was actually behind him. He found it best not to worry about such things and instead to simply assume that someone always was.
After an hour of this slow progress—he was sure it was an hour, he had heard the great bell-tower in the eastern half ring out not long ago—he finally arrived at the door to the building he sought. Casting one last glance about himself, his hand sneaking inside his trench coat to grip the handle of his flintlock pistol, he turned to the door. Ignoring the ornate doorknob, carved with designs of ivy leaves and idealised flowers, he tapped the knocker, one, two, three times in quick succession, then slower, once, twice. A click, and the mechanism which controlled the door lock slid out of place. Twisting the knob, he stepped through. The door clicked again as it shut behind him, the bolt sliding into place.
From the outside, this building was little more than another nondescript abandoned warehouse. Inside, at least on this level, it was much the same. Taking the stairs two at a time, Callum descended into the basement, pushing through a roughly-hewn door which hung by a single hinge.
Beyond the door, everything changed. A clock hung from the opposite wall, a huge piece in the shape of a stylised sun. Its hands were made of carved ivory, its face glittering gold inlaid with silver. All about the place were hung silks and furs of beasts from far-off lands, ostentatious yet no more remarkable than anything else in the place. From the roof hung a revolving chandelier, a cunning artifice lit by tiny, hand-crafted gas lamps which illuminated the room day and night. In a far corner, a strange bellows pumped, audibly wheezing even from the other side of the room. Its purpose was lost on him, but he knew it did something important.
The room was populated with dark figures, hurrying about here and there on their own business. Callum strolled on at a leisurely pace, taking in the headquarters of the Cult of Ahzesh with the same casual yet inquisitive appreciation that he always did. The place was an eclectic mixture of old and new. He could see the robed figures of the Anarcho-Priests huddled about some musty scroll or other, mumbling over the words in low voices; opposite them three flat-capped engineers sat, poring over schematics for another of their insane, coal-burning creations.
He had come to Ahzesh not long ago. Born to a drunken whore in one of the down-market brothels on the fringes of the Desolation, Callum had grown up with little structure to his life. Lawlessness was a constant feature of his childhood, his mother’s presence fleeting at best and alcoholic at worst.
The boy had been a member of various gangs of pickpockets and petty thieves for the majority of his life; sneaking into the markets of the civilized part of Abethron and cutting away the purses of merchants his primary occupation.
When he had briefly sought real work in a small shop selling mechanical parts to the steam-wagon companies, mostly at the behest of his mother in one of her few sober moments, the owner had run him out before he even had a chance to open his mouth. Callum had never again even attempted to make something of his life.
There had never been much satisfaction in simple robbery for him, though. The pattern of theft and hiding quickly became dull, and the predations of the gang leaders, who did little except for beat their underlings and take a slice of the profits, had quickly rankled the wild youth.
Fights with other pickpockets had seen him move from gang to gang on a nearly annual basis, and sometimes much less. Callum didn’t particularly mind the constant shifting; it suited his nature, and besides, there was nothing else keeping him with the group. The leaders were vicious but idle and the members were uniformly dull and unimaginative.
What Callum had truly sought was a mission, something to bring structure and discipline to his existence, and in the basement of this burned-out shell of a factory he had found something that suited him perfectly. The Cult of Ahzesh preached anarchy and chaos; not just out of lazy greed like those with whom he had thieved and stolen, but from a deeper, more spiritual conviction.
The members believed in disorder for its own sake. It was more than just an easy way to wealth for them; they truly worshipped simple entropy, the breakdown of all law and authority. Further, they were firmly convinced of the need to help the process along.
Callum had found their ideas intoxicating; the purity of their vision spoke to something within him, hidden beneath the callous exterior. Their leader, the Abbot, required nothing of him except that he do what was asked of him on the rare occasion that his presence was necessary; beyond those few missions he was free to do as he pleased.
The young man had thrown himself into reading about the cult’s philosophy, its goals, its view of the new world disorder that it sought to create. The Cult took no cuts, handed out no beatings, did little to crush the hearts and minds of those who sheltered under its wing. They were banded together in a brotherhood and yet no one member was obliged to another in the way that the gangs had made him believe they were; he realised now that when the pickpockets had talked about ‘solidarity’ what they had meant was ‘the men at the top steal from the children at the bottom.’ There was nothing like that here.
Everything he read had convinced him of the rightness of it all; in the span of mere weeks he had been transformed from the directionless, volatile youth he had been into the passionately dedicated footsoldier of Ahzesh that he was today.
His destination now was behind a bead-curtained archway, the entrance to a small chamber set back from the bustle out in the main hall. Unlike the rest of the place, it was candle-lit; monoliths of dripping wax burned about the enclosed room, lending it a shadowy air. On a beaded cushion sat the cross-legged figure of the Abbot, his eyes closed in meditation. The lids were huge beneath his small round glasses, lending him a goggle-eyed effect. The Abbot was balding and mild-mannered, but Callum well knew that appearances could be deceptive.
‘Did everything go as planned?’ the slight figure asked, barely moving his lips. Callum was unsurprised that his presence had been noticed.
‘It did,’ he replied.
‘Good. You were not seen?’
‘Of course I was seen, it was in the middle of the bloody shopping plaza.’
‘That is not what I meant, Callum.’
‘I know.’ It was supposed to have been a joke, but then, one rarely joked with the Abbot, especially when it came to something like this. ‘I wasn’t seen putting the packages down, no. Nobody’ll suspect a bloody thing.’
‘You are quite sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Well done.’ The Abbot’s eyes flickered open, and he smiled indulgently. Like a shark, thought Callum, showing off his teeth. ‘The charges are set accurately?’
‘To the second.’ The exhaustive questioning irritated Callum, but he knew that it was best to reassure the cult’s leader when he was taking a personal interest in something. Insubordination could see you dead. Idly, Callum reflected on the irony of an anarchist cult whose leader ruled with an iron fist. He was sure there was a paradox in there somewhere; best not to mention it, though.
He returned to reality as the Abbot said, ‘Very good. Will you be watching the festivities?’
‘Of course I will,’ Callum told him, ‘That’s the second part of the bloody plan, isn’t it?’
‘Quite. It is said that the guilty will always return to the scene of the crime,’ the Abbot said, thinking out loud, ‘Does that make you a criminal, then?’
‘I suppose it does.’ Callum laughed, a harsh barking sound, ‘Though it’ll be a lot more than one crime, if all goes well.’
‘How old are you, Callum?’
The personal question caught him off-guard. ‘Not sure,’ he said, ‘Twenty-ish? I don’t really think about it.’
‘So young,’ the Abbot said.
‘If you say so,’ Callum agreed, somewhat non-committally. He didn’t think of himself as being young.
‘Hrm.’ The Abbot closed his eyes again, seeming to lose himself in meditation once more. Long minutes passed as Callum stood there, unsure of whether he was supposed to leave. Growing more and more uncomfortable, he cleared his throat as subtly as he could.
‘Yes?’ the Abbot asked, barely a whisper.
‘May I leave?’
‘Of course. Chaos be with you, Callum.’
‘And you.’ Turning on his heel, Callum hurried from the chamber, his coat swishing against the stone floor. Meeting the Abbot always made him feel slightly out of sorts.
The barracks area was off to one side, away from the Abbot’s room. The beds were clean and free of lice, a rarity even outside of the Desolation. Ahzesh took care of his own, the Abbot said. Callum balled up his trench coat into a makeshift pillow, brushing off the dust as he lay down. There was nothing left to do now but wait.
The rain had stopped sometime after five. Puddles glittered in the light of gas-lamps as water dribbled away between cobbles. A broken-down steam-wagon sat in the middle of the street, blocking it up as smoke hissed from a breach in its engine. The people atop it were swearing loudly at the driver, who cursed back at them in a foreign tongue. Callum took in the view from a rooftop, on the corner of the thoroughfare. He had a commanding position up here.
Tonight was the first night of the King’s Anticipatory. A two-week event, the Anticipatory was a celebration of the King’s imminent arrival in Abethron. It was a dedication to the rule of the Kaisarov dynasty, a fortnight of street parties, athletic competitions and dances. The shops along this road stayed open late, taking advantage of the chance to cash in on the bustling masses of people who thronged the streets.
Callum could see the clockmaker’s, a hundred yards down from him, just past the broken-down wagon. It was obviously doing a brisk trade; top hats were bobbing in and out, accompanied by more mundane people taking advantage of the two-week celebration as an excuse to buy the luxury trinket they had been saving for all year.
The hive of humanity seemed unrelenting. People were packed in tight, and here and there he could see some of the common folk pushing and shoving. Police constables were quick to rush in and break up the encounters, but they couldn’t dispel the undercurrent of tension that always accompanied so many people being forced into so small an area. The alcohol flowing out of the pubs in the working-class quarter, from which many of the more belligerent shoppers had stumbled, wasn’t helping.
Callum crouched down, his hand closing around the rifle which lay at his feet. Compared to this, his pistol was an old thing, a flintlock well-worn from use. Depending on how damp the day was, it had a good chance of not firing at all—the rain today was unlikely to improve its condition. He had acquired it from one of the less reputable small arms dealers on the fringe of the Desolation. Acquired was perhaps a strong word; one of the constabulary raids had managed to kill the dealer but failed to find his stash. Callum had shown up later and taken his pick.
The rifle was new. Breech-loaded, it was far more reliable than the flintlock, especially on a day like this. The gun was a gift from the Abbot, given to him to aid him in this particular task. If he succeeded, it was his to keep for as long as he could hold onto it—and Callum had no illusions about whether or not such a coveted weapon would bring him the attention of the more vicious elements of the Desolation. If he failed, it didn’t matter anyway.
He slotted a bullet into place, listening to the click as it chambered. The mechanism fascinated him—no fussing about with muzzle-loading, priming with powder or careful slotting and poking. Instead there was the simple, clean insertion and then a readiness to deal death. He liked it immediately.
Raising the rifle, he held it to his shoulder, steadying himself. There wasn’t much time now. He closed one eye, not sure if he was doing it right or not. He’d never fired something like this before. The Abbot had told him how to do it; Callum recalled the calm, clipped tones of the balding leader’s voice. ‘Slow, deep breaths,’ he whispered to himself.
Sighting down the barrel, he felt almost ridiculous. It wasn’t like it was going to be hard. Easy does it, he thought, training the rifle on a top hat. Not quite time yet. He kept the barrel pointed there, following the progress of his chosen gentleman. A young lady walked on his arm, some rich filly with more money than looks. She was wearing a dress, rich and red, a beautiful creation which did nothing but make her look even more ugly against its charms.
Now. He could feel it, this was the time. His mouth was dry and his hands trembled as he clutched at the rifle. His trigger finger was slick with sweat. Callum swallowed, steeling himself, breathing slow and steady like the Abbot had told him to. No more time left to waste. He pulled the trigger.
The top hat’s face was a bloody ruin. The frog-girl on his arm was standing there, dazed, staring at the place where her escort’s head had been and where nothing but a broken mass of flesh and bone now remained. For a long moment she was agape, then she was screaming and crying, flailing her arms about. Callum calmly reloaded, swinging the rifle around and aiming down into another section of the crowd.
He pulled the trigger again, the recoil jamming the weapon into his shoulder. The shot wasn’t as clean as the first, taking a commoner’s stout wife in the stomach, but it was enough. Blood spurted from the wound as she shrieked in pain. Other people were turning around now, seeing the sudden death which had come from nowhere. Callum fired again; further away, taking a loitering youth in the leg; now closer, another gentleman; closer again, a fat merchant swathed in silks.
The crowd began to bellow and scream. From Callum’s vantage point they sounded like terrified, bleating sheep. Panic was spreading through them, a release of the tension which had been building all night. People fled into shops, down alleys, desperate to get out of the street. He saw men trample children as they fought to push through doorways; women slapping and scratching at those barring their paths; a tall, white-haired gentleman in tails and tight trousers batting the low-born out of the way with his thick cane.
Callum was more methodical, now. He fired into groups, watching as blood spattered the faces of people as they were forced together. The heat of it against their skin drove them further towards terror, intensifying the crushing fear. He could see the police constables, brandishing billy-clubs as they pushed through the crowd. The sight of the so-called officers of the law fleeing as meekly as the tiniest children in the crowd inspired morbid amusement in Callum. This was what the Cult existed for, to show the weakness of these authoritarians, these tiny tin gods who thought they ruled the city.
He could hear the bells, now. They chimed out from the clock tower, rising high above the city centre, once, twice, counting down the seconds to eight o’clock. Bong, bong, bong. Callum smiled cruelly. It was time.
Inside the clockmaker’s, people huddled fearfully. A tall lady sobbed into her lordling husband’s shoulder as dirty factory workers pushed up against her. Whether she was crying from terror or simply revulsion was unclear; nobody was inclined to ask. They simply crowded there, terrified. The streets outside were mostly clear now, aside from the corpses and the moaning forms of the injured, those who had been trampled in the rush to safety or who had been fired on by the unseen attacker.
The clocks ticked and chimed and whistled, and the great old one in the corner clashed its cymbals together, once, twice, thrice. A child, her face hidden in her mother’s skirt, whispered softly, ‘Is it safe now, mummy?’
The little clock, gold-plated and round, ticked once more. The final second to eight. A cacophony of noise erupted as the clocks chimed the hour together. Almost instinctively, the terrified people held their breath. The chime ended, and suddenly the world was on fire; the shop exploded, scattering people and glass all over the cobbles outside. All along the street, the same scene was repeated—burned limbs and faces and corpses blown to pieces, shattered windows glittering in the moonlight. Smoke filled the air, pouring from shop-fronts, billowing out into the evening air.
Callum watched it all, unmoved. The plan had been simple, and effective. The rifle was the instrument of Ahzesh, sowing the seeds of chaos. It had been like herding sheep; spook them into running where you wanted, then unleash the coup de grace. The Abbot would be pleased. Callum began to dismantle the rifle, placing its parts in a nondescript leather bag, the same bag it had travelled here in. It would help no-one if he were seen to be sporting such a weapon as he left a scene like this one.
A strange, hollow feeling filled him. Was this it? Was this all the Cult did? Explosions and discord and terror in the night? Had he somehow missed something? He had spread the word like the dedicated follower he was, painting slogans onto walls and handing out pamphlets, listening to the Abbot talk about what Ahzesh meant and how he, Callum, could help forward the cause.
With the utmost of dedication he had helped plan and prepare for this, the show of defiance that precipitated the Cult’s great campaign to wreak havoc on the King’s Anticipatory, the hated event which marked the celebration of monarchy and subservience. Everything since he was first shown the burned-out factory, months ago, had led up to this point.
The books he read had talked about the coming of a new age, where men could walk without fear of some arbitrary law devised by a hereditary king; they spoke of the breakdown of classism and snobbery. The Abbot had given great speeches to the assembled cultists, telling them that this was their time, that now they would bring about the age of Ahzesh and anarchy.
Instead it seemed very much like murder and arson for their own sake. Callum had expected something more; what, he wasn’t sure, but he knew there was supposed to be something. A sign, some great uprising, the people overthrowing the shackles of their oppressors. From here they had just looked scared, no, terrified of the man on the roof, wielding the rifle. Callum was supposed to have been the agent of their salvation, not . . . whatever this was.
The hollowness was overcome by nausea; a sick feeling that rolled around his stomach in waves. In that moment he felt like a child again, his mother screaming at him about how pitiful her life was and how it was, somehow, his fault. Then as now he had been without purpose, adrift on a sea of anger that lacked a target. Callum wondered dully if he was simply going to be stuck this way; if he would forever be broken and meaningless.
He had a sudden longing to be back in the clockmaker’s, the one he had just destroyed; even through the haze of anarchistic thoughts there was something about the simple, ordered nature of the clockwork that had appealed to him.
The billy-club came from nowhere. It hammered into the back of his skull with wild force, knocking him forwards. Callum landed on his stomach, hard, tears springing from his eyes as he cracked his jaw on the edge of the roof. Dizziness swam through him, turning his legs to jelly and sending his gut into spirals of nausea. Another sharp blow, and all was black. His consciousness receded, leaving questions of philosophy and his own acts behind it. No time for that now. |
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