Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (40 page)

Another prudent check of the streets below, and they effected a careful exit from the office and workshop of one Double-A Finkle, watchmaker, deceased. Pete slid the security grill shut and locked it behind them. When he saw the looks both girls were giving him, he shrugged.

“I promised old Miss Finkle. And Cap'n Pete always keeps a promise.”

*   *   *

They removed themselves from the building with just as much watchfulness as they'd entered, moving no less easily with the small, but immeasurably valuable load they'd picked up. Back out on the street Jules swapped over her weapons again, sheathing the kukri daggers and taking up her military slingshot. She extended the arm brace, squeezed, and shook out her fingers a couple of times before loading three ball-bearings into the soft leather ammo cup. She checked her position against a mental map of the city and the actual map they'd just reviewed in the foyer of the building. They weren't far from the second objective, just a couple of blocks this way and that, the sort of distance she would once have walked in high heels simply to get a better cup of coffee. But in a city of the hungry dead those extra minutes could make all the difference.

Fifi took point. Pete covered their six. And Lady Julianne Balwyn watched the high places, ever alert for the telltale movement that would warn of an attack from the higher floors of the haunted skyscrapers that towered over them. Their path took them down through the legal district, away from the overgrown wasteland of Hyde Park and into the shadowy canyon of Castlereagh Street. Apart from the low moan of the morning breeze passing between the high-rises and through thousands of broken windows and the soaring steel cable lacework of Centerpoint Tower, their footsteps were still the loudest noise she could hear.

She never got used to that. She had grown up in London, studied in New York, partied in São Paulo, Bangkok, and Sydney. Or at least she partied until her father had utterly dissipated the family fortune. Quite an achievement that, pissing away all the wealth extorted from the peasantry over the better part of the millennium, and all in less than half a lifetime.

Still, she knew cities. Old and new, alive and dead, they each had their own particular . . . feeling. And this one felt wrong to her. She grew more anxious about it the deeper they pushed into the old abandoned central business district. It wasn't anything as simple as a sudden cessation of all background noise that would warn of predators moving through an area. It wasn't the way that their boots, crunching on years of grit and litter and broken glass, were the loudest noise she could hear. It was the uncomfortable pressure of silence. The way the creeping stillness and quiet of a great necropolis like this seemed to push down on your chest. As though the absence of life was a physical presence in and of itself.

She shuddered and shook it off, turning around to make light of it to Pete, and gasping in fright when she realized he wasn't there anymore. Her heart lurched, but he had simply backtracked to cover their path again. He reappeared just as she was getting her panic reaction under control, stepping back onto Castlereagh Street from some alleyway he'd used as a shortcut. He waved to her with his heavy club, signaling “All Clear.”

“Hey Jules, check it out.”

She almost ran into Fifi, who had pulled up just short of the entrance to another alleyway and was speaking in a low whisper.

The blond woman hung her three-pronged sai through a loop on her belt and used her free hand to pass Julianne a compact mirror. Fifi slid away from the corner, making room for Jules to take her position. She sensed her companion signaling to Pete to quiet down and approach them with caution. Julianne used the mirror to peer around the corner without exposing too much of her own body. It took her a moment to find whatever Fifi had been looking at, but she swallowed hard and took a slow, deep breath when she saw a thin tendril of smoke and followed it down to its source, a small campfire, the ashes smoldering within a rough circle of broken bricks, which were in turn surrounded by upturned boxes and plastic crates. That was enough for Jules. She handed the mirror to Pete and took up a firing position from where she could cover them with her slingshot, next to a burned-out people-mover.

Holder did as she had just done, surveilling the alley without stepping into it, but he took a few moments longer.

“Looks like it's been tamped down for an hour or so,” he said quietly as he joined her in cover. Fifi stowed the mirror and recovered her short, fighting trident.

“Y'all wanna deep six this?” she asked.

“Hell no,” said Pete. “Little campfire that size? Looks like a three or four man outfit. Probably freebooters. Maybe scavengers, not real salvagers. Jules?”

Julianne frowned as she swept up and down the street with the high-powered slingshot. Nothing. No movement, no sign of occupation beyond the cold campfire.

“Well, we know they're not here looking for what we're after,” she said. “Although I'm sure they'd be more than happy to relieve us of those watches.”

“Well that's not gonna happen,” hissed Fifi. “But they're welcome to get themselves killed trying.”

“I vote we press on,” said Pete.

He was not the sort of captain who just ordered people to do stupidly dangerous things. He rather expected them to agree with him that there was a balance to be struck between the stupid and dangerous choice, and the profits to be had from occasionally paying them less regard than they might otherwise deserve.

“Fuckin' scavengers,” spat Fifi, again. “Ass-feedin' cocksuckers don't bother me none. I'm for going on, getting our salvage, and if we find these assholes I say we kill 'em on principle. They ain't got no warrant to be working this city. Ain't right they're even here.”

“Jules?”

Julianne let the strain off the slingshot, taking it back to a half pull.

“Another block? Right?”

“Yep,” Pete confirmed.

She shrugged. “Well, it's the reason we came. Can't rightly show ourselves in Darwin without it.”

“Nope.”

“I suppose we best kick on.”

“And we should totally kill the scavengers too,” said Fifi.

“Totally,” agreed Pete, but in a tone that betrayed his lack of enthusiasm for the idea.

*   *   *

Fifi led off again. She'd been careful before, of course. The King of Darwin did not issue Royal Warrants of Salvage to any old asshole. The King of Darwin was a righteous dude who paid his bills and suffered no fools. Especially not the sort of fools who went into unlicensed scavenging, picking over the loot and plunder of the dead cities that rightfully, legally, belonged to righteous dudes like the King of Darwin and his official retainers or agents or Royal fucking appointees or whatever you called them.

Which was what she and Jules and Pete were, goddamn it, because they had a Royal Warrant and she would bet beans to bullshit chips that the worthless, scavenging cocksuckers who'd built that campfire back there did not. That meant they were not just stealing from the King of Darwin. They were stealing from her.

And nobody stole from Fifi Lamont. Nobody took anything from her she didn't feel one hundred percent like giving up.

So as careful as she'd been when leading them to the watchmaker's place, she was doubly vigilant now. Not because she was frightened of running into these worthless thieves, but because she was frightened she might miss the chance of running into them if she didn't pay attention. Pete and Jules, she understood, were a little more laid-back on this topic, a little more inclined to live and let live. They would be just as happy to avoid any encounter with the scavengers, to execute their Commission, and get the hell back to the boat. She respected that. But she had to be true to herself and if there was one truth you could say of Fifi Brianna Lamont, it was that she had never met a scavenger she had not taken the time to put down like a diseased dog.

Well, almost.

There was one. The one Pete had rescued her from. But that made it important she never let a chance slip by to settle up with every other scavenger asshole she happened across. So she crept through the wreckage and over the bones of Sydney, her sharpened steels before her, her senses alive and raw. She stepped ever more carefully, placing each foot where it would make the least noise. She breathed through her nose, sniffing them out, detecting the faint smell of burned flesh as they passed the open alley, almost certainly the remains of some rodent or possum they'd cooked up over the fire for breakfast or even supper last night.

She suppressed a smile at the thought of them being so stupid, gathered around a campfire, staring at the flames, ruining their night vision, probably passing a bottle, roaring and shouting at one another in the dark. If these clowns hadn't brought the Biter clans down on them, then the Biters probably weren't within miles of the CBD. It made sense. They tended to be nomadic, the tribes orbiting around one another in a slow dance that might take years to cover the whole city. That left Fifi free to deal with as many lowlifes as she could get to with her blades before Jules and Pete dragged her back to the
Diamantina
. She was cool with that.

But first they had the Warrant to execute.

She led them past the rear of some once grand hotel, around a small snarl of fire-blackened cars, and across the street to the address Pete had made her repeat to him a dozen times before they'd stepped off the boat. She could find it on a street map at a glance, and had known exactly the path she would take to lead them here before they'd even set foot on dry land.

“Nicely done,” said Julianne behind her. “Will you be okay, sweetheart? You know, with the scavengers and all?”

“Obi-Wan has taught me well, Jules. I am the path of least resistance girl now. Sure, if I see them, I will kill every motherfucking one of them. But if I don't, that's cool too.”

She smiled as innocently as she could with all of the old rage welling up inside her.

“Okay,” said Julianne uncertainly. “Just so we don't get distracted by all the killing and oaths of blood vengeance and everything. Again. We still have paying work to do here.”

She nodded toward another old building, this one of 1940s or fifties vintage. The facade and the ground floor were in much worse shape than the old Art Deco high-rise where Double-A had his crib. Probably because there was a cluster of sandwich shops and coffeehouses in this part of the street, and they had all been attacked by starving hordes a couple of days after the Blackout.

“Let's stick to doing the simple things well,” said Pete as he joined them after yet another backtracking exercise.

Since discovering the scavengers' campfire he had increased the frequency and length of his efforts to uncover any tail they may have picked up.

“Any sign?” Jules asked.

“Just the campfire,” said Pete. “You cool, Fifi?”

“Fuck! Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Because,” said Pete, “the last time we ran across scavengers, you rode a horse right at them screaming and firing crossbows and throwing ninja stars into their faces.”

“So?”

“Fifi,” said Jules. “You don't know how to ride a horse.”

“And the time before that . . .” Pete started, but she cut him off.

“Omifuckinggod just back the fuck off would you. I ain't like that no more. I done chilled out and cured myself of all that anger. And I've only got two ninja throwing stars with me this time.”

She held them up. “And no horse.”

Jules looked like she wanted to go on with the argument but Pete put a hand on her arm.

“Come on. We're here now. We can get the papers and be back on the boat before lunch. Be out the Heads and making sail for Darwin before cocktail hour. Let's focus. The King's Commission. Escape the city. Cocktails.”

That seemed to mollify Julianne, and Fifi let go of her temper.

“OK. I'm chill. Let's get 'er done.”

But as they stepped into the darkened vestibule she threw a look back onto the street. Just in case they were being followed by scavengers. Because if they were, those motherfuckers were totally getting a face full of ninja star.

*   *   *

Jules folded the brace of her slingshot away, and stowed the weapon in its holster. Her twin blades came out of their scabbards with a whisper as Fifi and Pete picked a path through piles of upturned furniture, long shards of broken window glass, and three shopping trolleys that had been loaded up with crap and then abandoned in the middle of the building's entryway. The dark space smelled of rot and old piss. One of the coffee shops had burned at some point, but the fire hadn't spread. She had no idea why. Perhaps there'd been a storm. The piles of debris and abandoned pillage made their passage difficult, but spoke of a building that had not been touched by human hands in many years, possibly not since the city died.

“Look,” said Fifi, gesturing at a small, scattered pile of bones and rags in one corner of the fire-scorched café. They looked human, but only just. Animals had gnawed at them and carried off most of the protein. Jules recognized a hip bone and maybe half a femur.

“I can see why the King of bloody Darwin was disinclined to pop down and run his own errands,” she said.

“But he's paying us handsomely to run them for him,” Pete pointed out as he put his shoulder to a piano that had somehow made its way onto the stairs at the back of the entry hall. It was blocking access to the upper floors, but threatening to topple down on anybody foolish enough to try to move it.

“Gimme a hand, Fifi,” he grunted.

The American was the stronger of the two women and put her own broad shoulders to the job while Julianne kept watch over them and the street outside. Her skin crawled at the jangling racket they set up, grunting and heaving the thing aside, but as before, they attracted no attention, not even when the enormous weight did suddenly shift and drop with a loud crash and the sudden discordant music of untuned strings. Jules was instantly thrown back to her teenage years, watching shitty horror movies that were all about the sudden noises and flashes of movement.