the voice from the island. It was the first time it had spoken Hinter instead of the guttural language used during the meeting. The first time it had used his name. “Make sure you are careful on this one. Make certain you are extra, extra careful.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Naylor. He smiled and continued toward the platform where he crammed himself back into the tiny compartment and rode the banging lightless box back to reality.
CHAPTER 14
The brown many-tiered spires of Isca City slid skyward over a twisting baroque catacomb of lanes and streets. Glimbenders squeezed out of offal-piled nests behind glowing clock towers.
In the evening, they took to the air: mad droves of singular candent eyeballs stitched with fur and bat wings. They tumbled, gracile bits of blackened ash or street confetti into the sky; whirling out from belfries and cupolas and campaniles, searching for stray cats and dogs, quadrupeds of virtually any kind into whose brains they would drive their slug-filled ovum.
In Lampfire Hills, the buildings grew together as in other sections of the city: nine, twelve, twenty stories high. Dozens of flying buttresses and arches straddled the lanes at various heights, passing thrust onto and between buildings, shoring up the city with dangerous interdependence.
A clockwork shop on the corner of Tower and Mark displayed cuckoos and pocket watches, flickering with the bubbly green glow of chemiostatic fluid.
A deep-hooded figure slid past the shop, down Mark Street. It turned east on Seething Lane, left the pawnshops and clothiers behind, walking briskly for the derelict brewery that sulked in the shadow of Ghoul Court’s south side.
Miriam stopped under the huge decaying shingle whose paint had erupted in a rash of hives. She could barely read the name: VINDAI’S BREWERY.
She melted into the darkness along the north wall, shedding light like water.
A tangle of pipes extruded out and up from the brewery’s sides and roof like fingers come through a meat grinder. The dank alley surrounding the brewery was littered with glass and scuttling refuse that moved torturously in the wind.
She took hold of a sturdy elbow and mounted the wall, careful not to throw her weight in such a way that might buckle or snap the tenuous moorings.
There were faint sounds weltering through the shattered panes of glass. Coiling broken bits of conversation in Trade, not meant to be heard, rose heatedly into the deserted air.
The city was quiet here: only the drone of distant factories and the low, almost unheard hum of far-off conversations mixing with streetcars and footsteps and wind. The collective muffled roar hardly interfered with her ability to eavesdrop on the voices issuing from the brewery’s lightless interior.
“. . . got away. But not the others. Both dead.”
Someone answered. “. . . to be expected . . . not without a price.” The voices were passionate and tense as though discussing something monumentally significant.
Miriam’s fingertips were the only parts of her hands not covered by supple leather gloves. They searched the window ledge with expert care, feeling for blades of broken glass or loose mortar—any kind of dangerous debris. Her ears had tuned themselves to the conversation going on inside and she could now make out larger parts of what they were saying.
“Once this thing is stripped down I s’pose we’ll have the honor of carting it across town in chunks.”
The other voice muttered something indiscernible as Miriam found a handhold and pulled herself up into the casement. Her cloth boots had soft tacky rubber soles. They made no sound.
For a moment her body cut a lithe silhouette against the gray gloom of the alley while her eyes struggled to sort the murky shapes inside the building. Miriam had not carved her eyes. There was no way to tell whether the occupants would happen to look in her direction while she formulated her next move. All she could do was minimize her exposure by moving swiftly from conspicuous to hidden.
The element of chance was unavoidable.
Finally she made out a rusted tank. A great cylinder on its side. She leapt, lighted on its top, legs buckling to absorb her weight as soundlessly as possible. Even so, the landing produced a dull hum as the metal caved slightly and reverberated under her weight.
“What was that?”
Miriam opened her mouth and made a sound exactly like a cat. She tossed a shard of glass onto the floor.
“Some tom gone hunting,” said the other voice. “Where are you putting these?”
“Pile’s over there. Keep the fat ones separate. They go to the