The Factory Trilogy 01 - Gleam (8 page)

Spider Kurt was bent over the soft, shining flesh of an ageing woman, bamboo in hand. From the end of the bamboo protruded a long, red-tipped needle of bone. The woman shuddered as Spider pressed it into her naked back. He’d split his greying beard into two and then tied the two ends into his long hair so that it didn’t tickle her. Through the open window came the distant sound of a deep, insistent drum beat and an accompanying chant.

The wooden floorboards of the long room were almost red beneath layers and layers of varnish. The white walls were just about covered with a mosaic of framed tattoo designs – skulls, flowers, devils, sirens, the planets, snakes, pyramids, crystals. The designs had a certain geometric aspect in common and were mostly made in red and black, but the frames were all different colours and shapes and sizes, some flamboyant and some basic. Various tattooists were at work, the studio quiet but for the music
coming in from outside. Each had a workstation with a bed, a stool, their tools and inks, and a display of their own artwork. On each of the beds a customer sat or lay, flesh exposed to the needles. Some of them appeared to be asleep. The room was warm.

The tattooists did not look up as Alan entered, or as he walked past them. There were six: four men and two women, and their concentration was total. The room was hot and three of the men were stripped to the waist, their bodies bright with intricate ink: flowers blooming, hot-air balloons crashing, mare-toads wearing crowns. The room smelled of antiseptic ointment and all of the surfaces were scrupulously clean. Spider always said that it was the cleanest place in the House. Jones wore a tight black blouse and short black trousers. Her hair was jet-black and cut severely straight across her forehead. She had black triangles tattooed on each cheek and a small silver stud in her nose. She primarily did planets and toads – she’d given Alan his last-but-one piece, a frowning yellow moon, top hat askew, on the back of his left hand.

He thought about stopping to speak with her as he passed her station, but she didn’t look up and so he hurried on.

Spider’s customer was getting a large beetle and mandala across her upper back. The beetle was splayed out as if pinned – Spider had rendered it in almost scientific detail. He was beginning work on the mandala now, a
symmetrical pattern that echoed shapes from the beetle. The woman was grimacing, Alan saw, fingers clutching at the soft leather of the bed. She was more elderly than he’d realised. She had long white hair and not many teeth.

‘Very nice,’ Alan said.

‘Thank you,’ Spider said. His voice was quiet and deep. ‘Take me the rest of the day, though. Come back tomorrow.’

‘I don’t want a tattoo. Not today, anyway.’

‘This’ll still take me all day.’

‘I only want five minutes, Spider.’

‘Well then. We’re due a break once I’ve finished these lines.’

‘Well then. I’ll wait.’

‘That okay, Lucy?’ Spider asked the customer.

‘Sure, okay by me,’ she said. ‘Getting tough down here.’

‘You’re a dream sitter,’ Spider said. ‘The spine hurts like hell.’

Spider Kurt, tattooist, used combinations of bamboo sticks and bone needle combs to make his art. The combs were complex, delicate arrangements used for long straight lines and shading; the bamboo sticks were handles for the combs. People who paid could commission designs, specifying figures and styles, but he would also tattoo people who couldn’t pay, on the condition that the design was entirely of his creation. These were swirling, abstract affairs that could take days to complete, often inked under the influence of vast quantities of strong
mushroom tea; the whole experience was more like some kind of meditative episode for both Kurt and the tattooee than a standard sitting. Alan watched him finish the lines of one half of the beetle mandala. His deep red shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, revealing a thick mass of black chest hair that his beard usually merged with. Visible today were a couple of thick gold chains. Above his big hooked nose, his brown eyes narrowed as he focused. The top of his head was bald, but the hair he did have was long. His fingers were hard and heavy with gold rings. What was it with older men and gold rings? Kurt was seated, but when he stood he was tall and almost spookily thin.

At a signal from Spider, Lucy sat up. She swung her legs so that her back remained to the two men and walked over to the window, where she stretched.

‘What do you want?’ Spider asked.

‘I’m going to Dok and I need a fighter.’

‘None too shabby with a chair leg yourself, if I remember correctly.’

‘You’re too kind. But I’m no Spider Kurt.’

‘You’ve got a Mapmaker, I take it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Payment, then.’

‘A share in any profits from the New Dok Trading Company.’

Spider smiled behind his beard. His eyes shone. ‘What about the Mushroom Queen? What about old Daunt?’

‘We’ll be rivals. Nothing to worry about. A bit of healthy competition is good for business.’

‘They shouldn’t call you Wild Alan. They should call you Mad Alan. Snakeshit Crazy Alan.’ He coughed. ‘Stupid Alan.’

‘Are you in or not?’

‘Of course I’m in. When do we leave?’

‘Can you meet us tonight in the Cavern Tavern? Seven o’clock?’

‘I’ll be there.’

The House of a Thousand Hollows was a labyrinth, an old beehive, a crumbling ants’ nest. It was a warren of overflowing closets and empty attics, busy landings and dusty ballrooms, cobwebbed stairwells and torchlit chambers, forgotten hideaways and lively drinking halls. Corridors made their way through acres of abandoned rooms; they felt like tunnels winding through the earth itself. The House of a Thousand Hollows was a fat, round, stone tower that rose up out of the shadows and murk and kept growing; precarious extensions sprouted from its top, some of brick, the later ones of wood. They hung out over the dizzying drop below, threatening to fall. The House was already big enough to accommodate all those who wished to live there but, Alan reflected, people liked to have their space. Anybody moving into the House from outside might find the idea of sharing a corridor almost oppressive, and so they’d throw a quick shack up on the top. If there was one thing the Discard
had plenty of, it was space. Everything else was a struggle. Unless you’d hitched yourself to the right caravan.

There were two other Safe Houses in the Discard – Wha House, and the Hinning House– and all three were topside: big, strong, easily defended buildings. Officially at least, they were in alliance, sharing knowledge and the obligation to support each other in the case of attack from bandits or gangs. Alan didn’t know if there had ever been such an attack; generally, Discarders did not have the commitment or discipline for such a thing. It would mean great risk for relatively little reward. It was far easier to obtain bugs or food or liquor just jumping down from some shadowed scaffold and slitting a throat.

Anybody new to the House would get lost, and quickly, but Alan had lived there for four years now and he knew his way around most of it – the parts that mattered anyway: the pockets of inhabitation, the kitchens, the taverns. There were still floors where he’d never set foot, and passages he’d never taken. Nobody used the lower storeys for anything: across much of Gleam, the lower storeys had been given over to the swamp and the things that came up out of the swamp.

As Alan continued down the corridor, the route lit by small, clean torches, his footsteps were muffled by the faded red carpet. He wasn’t far from the Cavern Tavern here, which in turn wasn’t far from the Sleepless Pavilion or Maggie’s own quarters, so the ways were kept in good repair and the torches were replaced regularly. The rooms
he walked past were not all occupied, but those that were not were cleaned and left open to air, ready for the next transient, of whom there were many. As well as being a home to many, the House of a Thousand Hollows was a popular sanctuary for travellers: it was a safe haven in a dangerous place. It was food and drink. It was company and, thanks to Alan, it was music, at least for as long as he made Maggie her money.

You couldn’t just live in the House. You had to offer something; you had to have something Maggie the Red could use. Bugs were good, of course, but Maggie’s web was large and complex, and even Alan didn’t know what she got from most of her subjects. Sometimes he worried that his role and his skills were too obvious to everybody else; the House’s previous singer, Kate of the Corner, had won her place by knocking her predecessor’s teeth out. She was a good performer – certainly the best around, by that point – so Maggie had been happy to have her, whatever her methods for dealing with the competition. But Kate of the Corner had had her belly sliced open by a desperate transient in a rooftop dive-bar after she’d won the last of his bugs in a game of cards. Alan had been at the table that night; he’d wiped the blood from his eyes in time to see the other players turn on the transient and then vacated the scene in a hurry, taking the news of Kate’s demise straight to Maggie.

The Cavern Tavern was a great hollow in the western side of the House. A section of the exterior wall had at
some point been knocked through, or blown away – as to what by, and when, accounts varied – and part of the floors of four storeys had been destroyed, presumably by the same event. A crater was left in the vertical surface of the House. But for as long as anybody living could remember, this crater had served as a meeting place. A bar had been put in, with barrels of beer and bottles of wine stored in the room below. The rough-edged overhangs that looked down on the space had been turned into balconies. The gaping hole in the wall had been made safer – if not completely safe – by an ornate, cast-iron railing. It now provided a view over south-eastern Gleam, with the Black Pyramid dead centre of the panorama. An ancient honeysuckle curled around the metal. There was a low stage. The huge floorspace was filled with tables and chairs.

The Cavern Tavern wasn’t quite busy yet. There were customers, huddled around tables or sitting alone up on the balconies, but the space swallowed their voices. The bar was being tended by one of the Pennydown twins – Quiet Diaz, Alan thought, though he still was never sure, even now. His brother would join him later, when it got busy.

‘Evening,’ Alan said, putting his elbows on the bar. ‘Diaz, is it?’

‘It is,’ Quiet Diaz replied. He betrayed no intention to move. His small eyes were steady and his little mouth flat. His features were all clustered in the middle of his
gigantic, pasty, hairless head, and they were not amused. He wore a long, loose black shirt that hung almost to his knees and stood with his arms folded, his hands hidden in the voluminous sleeves. He looked like the Black Pyramid itself, but with a big pale melon stuck up on the point of it.

‘What do you want?’ Diaz said.

‘As if you have to ask.’

‘Dog Moon.’

‘See? You already know.’

‘Stuff’s disgusting.’

‘It’s cheap.’

‘It’s whisky for tramps and idiots.’

‘The name’s Wild Alan.’ Alan held out his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Quiet Diaz’s mouth curved into a small, derisive smile, as if of its own accord. ‘You’re joking,’ he said, ‘but you’re bang on.’

‘Look,’ Alan said, leaning in and lowering his voice, ‘I like Dog Moon actually, and what I like about Dog Moon is that, although it tastes like shit, it burns like hell. The burn is what I want. I
want
the burn, Diaz. I am all about the burn. And, anyway, I don’t give a fuck what your opinion is on anything. Now serve me, quickly, and then we can stop talking to each other.’

The little smile on that giant face turned into a deep frown and Diaz turned away, his movements languid. Alan was sure that he was moving slowly just to irritate
him. Diaz took a glass from a shelf and reached for an open bottle of Dog Moon.

‘No,’ Alan said, ‘not a glass. A bottle. A bottle, man. What do you take me for?’

Diaz looked at him for a moment. ‘You don’t want to know,’ he said, before reaching under the counter for a full bottle of Dog Moon and plonking it on the counter. ‘How many glasses?’

‘Five. And make it two bottles, actually.’

Alan took the bottles and the glasses and deposited a handful of bugs on the bar, their shells iridescent in the light of the sunset. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and turned away.

He sat by the railing for the view, and for what little breeze there was. Gleam was either warm or it was hot, and tonight it was hot. Hot and humid. Steam rose up from the swamp, as did fireflies, small, skittish lizards and the smell of green.

Beyond the window, the air was alive with the buzzing of insects and the cries of birds. No human voices, though. The House was unusual in that it had space around it; most buildings in Gleam were at least squashed up against each other, if not actually conjoined. But the House rose alone. It was connected lower down, but only by bridges. There was some distance between the House and the closest structures, which were nameless, as far as Alan knew. They were round towers, like the House, but smaller, and they were swaddled in rusted
pipes. The setting sun turned them pink. Flocks of white birds flew around them, tiny in the distance.

Spider arrived first, as silent as ever, carrying his battered old violin case. He folded himself into the chair opposite Alan and nodded before taking a glass and filling it. He knocked the drink back, repeated the process, wiped droplets of whisky from his tangled black-and-white beard and spoke.

‘All right?’ he said.

‘Yes, thank you. And you?’

‘I’m all right.’ Spider entwined his fingers together. ‘Thought we could put on a show afterwards.’

‘Well, we’ve got to earn our keep.’

Spider raised his eyebrows. He was wearing a severe black suit that made his skin paler and the bags under his eyes darker. It was something that Alan, Spider and Eyes had settled on way back: formal wear at all times, but wear it how you will. He lit a roll-up and put it in his mouth.

Eyes arrived soon afterwards, preceded by the scent of his strong-smelling ointment. He clapped Alan on the back and threw himself into a chair. ‘Lads,’ he said. ‘Lads, lads, lads.’ He reached for the Dog Moon with a shaking hand and poured himself a glass, which he sipped. He wore a visor to keep the sweat from his eyes. ‘Is this Churr meeting us?’

‘Yeah,’ Alan said. ‘And the Mapmaker.’

Spider and Eyes looked at each other. Spider laughed. ‘A Mapmaker? Coming into the
House
?’

‘Yeah.’ Alan felt like he was shaking as much as Eyes was.

‘You ever met a Mapmaker, Spider?’ Eyes asked.

‘Not really.’

‘Maybe they’re not that scary,’ Alan said.

‘Aye, right.’ Eyes laughed.

‘What’s the plan, then?’ Spider asked.

‘Really we need to wait for Churr. It was her idea originally. We were talking about my visit to the Pyramid, and how Tromo wants more mushrooms than I can buy or steal. Churr has some kind of history with Daunt that I don’t know about, and she saw that we have a mutual interest in getting to Dok and stocking up, even setting up our own trade route.’

‘If it was that simple then everybody’d be at it,’ Eyes said. ‘Daunt has serious muscle.’

‘We’re going to start off small, though. Firstly, we need to just get to Dok and back, with enough mushrooms for me to see Billy and for Churr to make some bugs. Daunt won’t even know about it. Then I guess Churr will start ramping things up. Our involvement at that point is moot. I don’t know what she’s thinking, or what you’re thinking, or even what I’m thinking.’

‘What’s in it for the Mapmaker?’ Spider asked, making roll-up after roll-up and lining them up on the table.

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s probably something we should establish.’

‘It’s a friend of Churr’s.’

‘Mapmakers don’t have friends. It would be interesting to know how they know each other.’

‘We’ll ask her,’ Alan said. ‘So, Eyes, are you in?’

‘Yeah, I’m in. Dok might be hell, but it’s a hell I haven’t been to yet.’ He stole one of Spider’s smokes and lit it with one of the small candles from the middle of the table. ‘Besides, who knows what havoc we could wreak inside the Pyramid?’

‘What do you mean?’ Alan asked.

‘We could give them any old shite, Alan! They won’t know the difference. They say there’re rivers of poison in Dok. There’ll be all kinds of toxic mushrooms down there. Stuff that could cause them real damage.’

‘No, I told you, we’re giving them what they want. I’m not risking trouble with the Arbitrators. I’m not risking the safety of my family, Eyes. No. No.
No
.’

Eyes smashed his fist into the table. ‘Then fuck you, Alan!’ He hit the table again and glasses fell over, rolled, hit the floor and smashed. ‘This is
the Pyramid
we’re talking about! The fucking Pyramid! You getting to see Billy, yeah, well that’s fucking great, but what about everything they’ve done to us?’ He was standing up now. ‘We’re not aiming high enough, laddie! In fact, fuck Dok. Let’s aim for the Pyramid direct. Get Billy and Marion out. Get all the good ones out, if there
are
any other good ones. Kill the rest. But is Marion even good, now? Can you say that? Isn’t she one of
them
now?’

Alan stood up too, and back-handed Eyes across the face.

‘Oh, that’s rich,’ Eyes said, smiling through the nosebleed, ‘coming from you. Don’t tell me you still love her – not you, with a different squeeze every night, you. Who was it last night? You still into women, or are you back on to lads again? Might as well move right into the Sleepless Pavilion, earn your keep that way. You must be pretty good in the sack by now, whoever knocks on the door. What would Marion say if she knew? You think me questioning her allegiance is worse than what you do again and again and again? Aye, right.’

Every muscle in Alan’s body was tense; his hands were fists and his knuckles were white. Eyes was grinning at him, blood all over his wrinkly face. He looked completely mad, especially with those red eyes and the thick ointment around them. He
was
mad. He’d been mad ever since he came back from the Pyramid dungeons.

Spider carefully finished off another roll-up and refilled his glass. ‘Sit down, Alan,’ he said.

Alan sat back down. ‘I shouldn’t have hit you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eyes had the trembles badly now. Alan felt sick. What the Pyramidders had done to Eyes in the dungeons beneath didn’t bear thinking about. His eyelids had been only the beginning. It was no wonder the old man harboured such anger. He did well not to surrender to it wholly. And Alan owed him so much – his life and more.
But still. Times like this, Eyes’ words cut him right down to the bone. It was because there was truth in them.

‘I miss Marion,’ Alan said, ‘and yes, I still love her. I haven’t seen her in four years, but I love her, I love the Marion I knew. Maybe she’s changed, but there’s no reason to believe that she’s changed so much.’

‘Funny way you’ve got of loving a soul, is all.’ Eyes wasn’t appeased, not yet.

Alan looked at him levelly. ‘Eyes, Marion kicked me out. You know that. She doesn’t want me. Let me find what echoes of the love we had where I can.’

Spider had drifted off to the railing after sitting Alan back down. Now he turned around. ‘Are they going to show?’ he asked.