City of Ruin

THIRTY

One of the hybrids had died in his absence, leaving Voland dismayed. He hunched over the corpse, a cat-like thing with a massive spiralling shell on its back, studying it carefully under the light of the lantern. It would only have managed to waddle, unable to cope with the bony weight of the exoskeleton. Two little brown paws now lay perfectly still, though even when it was still alive these were ineffective. With a pencil, he prodded it. There was no sign of wounding, no emission of blood. It was probably due to heart failure, he surmised – the stress of being alive had been far too much for it. Hybrids didn't always work out, didn't always live for very long.

Leaning back with a sigh, he vowed to bury it soon. He covered it with a cloth, gripped the lantern, and rose to his feet.

Upstairs now, old boy.

His chair was one of those battered old leather things, the kind that you didn't care if you spilt something on, intended solely for the business of relaxing. Which is what he wanted to do now. He'd had a hard day working and he just wanted to relax.

Cressets provided a warm light in his makeshift study. There were a few books here and there, scattered rugs and artwork on the green-painted walls. The room was rather pleasant, despite the odour that rose from below whenever the weather was bad.

He tossed his top hat on a side table, alongside a cup of whisky, then reclined into his chair with a sigh. He slid off his shoes and socks, and began to massage his sore feet.

'Oh not again,' he muttered aloud: the outer layer of epidermis was peeling heavily. Only one of his appendages was a human foot – the other had been claimed from a mega-magnus beetle he'd bought off a cultist trading from Ysla. After recovering from severe frostbite caught on an expedition twenty-something years ago, he was forced to utilize his skills in multi-taxa surgery on mending himself. Such procedures being a bit of a lottery, he had attempted the job with several different mammalian appendages until he had found sufficient benefit from the inert properties of a coleoptera. It had been painful and near-impossible to operate on himself, but with the help of his Phonoi friends he had succeeded in grafting the beetle foot onto the stump that remained of his leg.

He leant over to fetch a brush from under the table and began to remove the loose flakes of shell-skin. The result was a sound like raining toenails on his carpet.

A black cat suddenly darted out from under the chair and turned to regard Voland with utter contempt for his habits. Voland merely chuckled as the feline padded indignantly from the room.

Eventually he finished the task, rubbed his weaker, human foot for comfort, then settled into his whisky. On the table was an envelope from the portreeve, Lutto's embossed insignia bold even in this half-light.

So, then, who might it be this time?

He opened it and set the enclosed document on his lap. Names and addresses drifted towards his vision.

Deltrun, Shanties district, Third Street West. Bacunin, Scarhouse, causes organized trouble for Ferryby's, sleeps in the flat above the Workers' Union headquarters. Bukharin, causes trouble for Coumby's, Ancient Quarter, apartment three of the Tauride complex. Plekhanof, Fourth Street, Scarhouse, next to a nonprotected iren. Sedova, his wife, same address.

Random script filled the bottom of the page, notes scrawled by the portreeve himself. These were to be 'donations' to the cause, with the addition of 'May they be of greater benefit than they are now'. He wondered who these extra people might be, their role in the city's affairs, and why the portreeve had flagged them for attention.

His name was whispered through the air: 'Voland…'

Doctor Voland looked up from his chair as the spider came through the hatch in the ceiling.

'You're back.' He rose casually, as if a guest had entered for dinner.

'Yes.' The voice came as a slur of wind whenever it inhabited this state. 'I have… two more.'

'Grand! Where have you left them?'

'Down below, in the first section of the abattoir.'

'Grand.'

The transformation then occurred in front of him: the spider contorted, bulged a bit… then juddered into her natural shape. Voland walked over to a cupboard, drew out one of his mono-grammed dressing gowns, and handed it to her.

Nanzi said, 'Thank you,' and he noted with delight, as he always did, how she retained the two huge spider legs, those arachnid tendons that joined awkwardly but efficiently with her human hips. It was a wonder she could walk at all sometimes, a wonder due to his own craftsmanship.

He beamed. 'Would you like a hot bath?' Voland suggested. 'The firegrain's been working particularly well this evening.'

'If it's no trouble.'

'It isn't. Not for you, my sweet.'

That soft smile of hers – one that he had fallen in love with long before he had revealed to her his affections – enhanced her natural charisma. She was many years his junior, but this age difference, among other things, generated in him the strong urge to protect her. Voland would have done anything to make Nanzi feel properly cared for.

*

Voland had first found Nanzi five years ago, both her legs smashed up under fallen masonry in the town of Juul, on the other side of Y'iren. It was a quiet place, with an ambience that came from a calm sea, the pungent odour of the fishing boats enhancing his love of that remote town.

Nanzi was lying there helplessly beside the harbour, constant drizzle pooling around her, a flower in her hand that she was taking to her mother, she explained, through gasps of pain. How could he have not fallen for her? A few nearby fishermen and dock labourers had helped him lift the masonry from the wall collapsed through neglect.

They examined her shattered legs as her screams erupted in quiet explosions.

But he then told her he could help.

Voland was a legend among the medical underground, and had even trained with the great Doctor Tarr in Villjamur for several years, before their ethical differences came to light. But what Tarr never possessed was Voland's ability to use other forces in this ordinary world.

Voland was not a cultist by any means: his feeling for relics was one of distrust. People seemed to look back at those ancient cultures with a longing, a sense that things had been superior to what they currently were; but Voland had more than once witnessed cultists manipulating these remnants of ancient technology for purely nefarious means. To him there was nothing great about such misdeeds, nothing great about such abuse of technology, and as a result he had decided to keep his eyes firmly on developing the future. It was still the way he saw the world.

In his youth he had tended to the dying needs of a girl from the Order of Natura, a lone worker and a collector of insects, she claimed. As she bled to death on his operating table, she had confided her wish was that someone would continue her projects – perhaps even this enigmatic young doctor who was struggling to patch her up. She died, however, and as requested he had investigated her belongings.

By scrutinizing her journal, he had very quickly learned the arts of the cultist.

His research became assiduous. He soon ascertained how he could enhance and graft insect parts onto living people. It was an inexact science. When purple light sparked and webbed, joining two organic surfaces in unnatural combinations, he did not know how it was done, only that it happened. And it was real.

His skills were at a peak when he had discovered Nanzi at the harbour. He had warned her of the dangers, the vagueness of the science he practised. She simply stared at the stumps that were once her legs, and accepted his offer.

And where she was broken, he had rebuilt her.

Blood had leaked everywhere at first, pooling in worrying quantities on the floor, so Voland calculated he would lose her, there on his operating table. For sixteen hours he worked on her, first extracting the flattened remnants of her legs with surgical precision, then attaching, generating and lengthening the ones originally taken from a spider. Two separate operations were needed before the joining of these new limbs. Sixteen more hours were needed to make sure the tissue connected satisfactorily, the tendons and bone intersected correctly, and that she would not ultimately reject them. With help from the Phonoi, he had applied his system thoroughly and diligently and lovingly.

In the milky light of dawn he had waited until she awoke. Long moments of time, those were, his arm propped against the wall as the warmth of a new day began stirring something primeval within him.

Yet exhaustion overwhelmed him; as if his entire soul had been put into reconstructing her.

A sadness crept across his face, then more concern, but… gradually her fingers began to move! Thanks to the power of that ancient race: the Dawnir, a people thought to possess far greater technology than was now known. He was left in awe of what he had done with their help, through this connection of minds effected through tens of thousands of years.

As Nanzi regained consciousness, she had begun to cry.

At first she remained febrile, and wept for days simply because of the pain. Voland was horrified. He had thought he had enhanced her mobility, but what a fool he was to assume she would be smiling from the off. How naive could he have been? While she slowly recovered, he cleared the operating chamber of all traces of blood, mucus, skin, fibrous tissue, hair, and slowly scrubbed the place raw until he felt himself purge the anger within himself.

Surprises followed, eventually. As the pain subsided, there was silence. No clear indicator of her mood, but it seemed something more primitive had now taken control of her emotions. As he quizzed her daily, he feared that she might repudiate his work on her, but she did not. Whoever she had been before the transformation, it appeared she soon forgot. He never really did know exactly who she was before her accident, her family, or where she grew up. It was probable he would never learn.

When she first morphed into a dazzlingly huge spider, it nearly scared him to death. And then she rapidly became at one with her new self, and Voland grew used to her coughing silk from time to time, the occasional and uncontrolled shape-shifting. Even stranger, he felt a strong attraction towards her, partly a parental emotion due to the effort he had put into creating her new form, but something more. A bond. A genuine person existed beyond her unique exterior. She cared for him, too, perhaps out of a debt of gratitude but he didn't care. Normal rules for attraction did not apply here. A new psychology emerged from this relationship.

Did he feel as though he owned her? Wasn't that what many people incorrectly felt in their relationships? He did not. He loved her as his equal. She was not a form of capital to him, not merely some proof of his skills. His greatest fear had been that she might not mentally accept her physical state, but she assured him she was not scarred at all, had not been vitiated, and never for one moment considered things that way. No, she was a rebuild, a new woman. Her expression softened when she discussed how proud she was of her present form. She said she adored her new abilities, adored Voland for giving them to her. Her kisses peppered his cheeks. Her old life was immolated so as to allow her to love herself fully.

She might not be all woman – but she was no freak either. She insisted she was more content with who she was now, much more than ever before. So Voland had slept well thereafter, knowing his work was complete.

*

Nanzi entered the bedroom wearing a towel around her waist. It haeen a long night and she now awaited Voland's attention. He looked up from having thrown two extra logs on the fire, in the hope of injecting some more heat into the cold stone walls.

'My dear…' Voland took her hands in his. She was beautiful, this slender young woman, with her black hair shiny from dampness. Her breasts were small and delicate, the firelight making something defined from the neat angles of her face. 'That was quite a catch you made tonight. You are certainly a wondrous young lady.'

Nanzi always seemed to like such words, some extra confirmation from him, never really tiring of his compliments. Hands clutching his wrists, she led him to the bed and began to undress him, first his shirt, then his breeches falling to the floor. They kissed eagerly while she stroked his beetle-foot.

A flick of his hand removed her towel, and her modifications were now revealed: two long spider legs attached by fibrous tissue buried deep in her waist. He looked at her lustfully.

He lay down on the sheets as she kissed his chest, her emotions exposed raw in the air, her passions focused solely on his pleasure. His penis stiffened and she took him in her mouth, then, after a while, moved forwards to straddle him, with those two great black legs manoeuvring her torso with stunning flexibility. The hairs on her limbs were sparse, tough as a brush, as he glided his hands up them. She took him inside, naturally now, though it had been surprising the first time – surprising that there was anywhere in which to be taken, after the complications of the surgery. The stickiness enhanced his pleasure, she could tell, but it was Nanzi who came very quickly, a shuddering internal reaction, as silk leaked out of her. He didn't last any longer, releasing himself into her with short gasps.

Their fluids coalesced, which often made a mess. He reached down to pick up her fallen towel to clean them up.

A tender smile crossed her face, as she crawled up next to him, hand resting on his stomach. They lay there, in the warmth of the fire, their intimacy growing even in such silences. Unspoken conversations. He was vaguely aware that female spiders in their natural habitats were known to kill the male after mating, but fortunately she had not yet shown any sign of such intent.

Still, if I must die some way…

Tomorrow he would see to the corpses she had brought him. For now, he lit himself a cigarillo, and enquired further about her day.

'Fine,' she said. 'That investigator, he amuses me. He always wants to lecture me, but it isn't arrogant. It's rather endearing in fact.'

'You choose not to kill him then?' Voland tapped his cigarillo into an ashtray resting on the side table, while nearby the fire crackled, wood splitting under the flames.

'No, I believe he knows little about the missing persons. I suppose I could kill him but…' There was tension in her voice. 'But I really think he's of some use, for the moment. All the same, one of the bodies I fetched in a while ago was a soldier, which may have raised a few questions.'

She looked at him again, clearly suspecting that he was unhappy with this selection, fearing it would draw unwarranted attention.

'It's quite all right.' Voland was indeed a little concerned, but didn't want her to know that. 'Please, go on.'

'Well, his commander, a Night Guard from Villjamur, has asked Investigator Jeryd to investigate. I feel if I remain close to him, I can keep an eye on things. Several eyes in fact.'

A smile each, a shared joke.

'I can also gain information of military movements and Imperial missives,' she said, 'if it would prove useful. If there is a war about to begin, I may know about it early. I doubt I will have such access if the investigator is dead.'

'Is there any further news on the military front, incidentally?' He wanted to be informed as soon as any combat began, then they might have to take their leave of the city.

'No. The soldiers have occupied much of Port Nostalgia and Althing, so they'll have a front line for defence of the Citadel. All those who've been displaced were moved to apartments further back along the Wastelands. They're requesting citizens to fight, too, so more and more are joining up every day. Still not the street gangs, though, which worries them – they need experienced fighters. This is the sort of information I can get – so maintaining the access really is useful.'

'Are you sure, my love, that you're not simply looking for reasons to keep him alive?' Voland asked. Inhaling from his cigarillo, he got up and put on his dressing gown – the one she had made him from her very own gossamer – and peeled back the curtains to gaze out at the city. A shaft of moonlight sliced across his face. He turned to face her continuing silence.

Nanzi's expression was filled with woe. 'He is rather endearing, I will admit. He actually wants to do good – and there are too few people within the Inquisition, too few people in this entire city, who want to put some good back into things.' She spoke with a keenness, a fresh energy. 'Because of who he is, he can allow me into very privileged places. Besides, I can follow his investigations closely, and I will know the instant things turn sour.'

'All these extra soldiers pulled in means', he announced in a measured tone, 'that there are many more mouths to feed.'

'You wish for me to go out again tonight? I was beginning to think that the presence of so many soldiers might make things more awkward.'

'To obviate any risks, why not fly over to Scarhouse and Shanties, to see if there are any… strays like there were the other night. But that can wait; the wind is too strong tonight, and we are settled here nicely.'

'And about Jeryd?'

'Do not dispose of him just yet, not if he still offers us access to information. I'd much rather a chap like that is kept alive, where he can be of use to us – but I'd advise you stay very close to him, and continue to shadow what he does. That way, he'll suspect you less…' He came back into the bed.

'I understand.' Nanzi snuggled up against his chest, the warmth of the fire adding to another perfect moment between them. He could feel her spider-hairs bristling against his legs.

'I love the smell of tobacco on your moustache. I feel strangely safe right here.'

Voland smiled and breathed deeply. How lucky he was to be in love with a woman like Nanzi. So caring and delicate and smart. He would do absolutely anything for her.

*

The next morning, Nanzi left him again for a day's work with the Inquisition. Voland didn't mind her choice of career, realizing she wanted to do her bit for the greater good. He could understand her motivation – here was a young lady who saw the bigger picture, and there was something to be said for that. It was why she so clearly understood that keeping the city fed was essential – also part of the bigger picture. How many people had they kept alive by now? Hundreds at least would have starved if it wasn't for her nocturnal activities.

Garbed in his long-sleeved undershirt, a white shirt, black breeches, and a leather apron, Voland strolled down to his abattoir, lighting wall-mounted flambeaus along the way. There could be no heating system here like in much of the rest of the city: it would make the meat reek as it went off.

As far as private workspaces went, this was a large area, perhaps fifty strides wide. Before Voland had moved in, it was utilized for housing livestock – that was before the meat supplies ran out as the encroaching ice crippled surrounding smallholdings, followed by the larger, industrial farms who were not supported by cultists. That had meant the abattoir was a cheap property to purchase.

It had been designed for animals to enter at one end then flow around narrow, curving passages, so they could never see what lay ahead of them or be able to turn around. Those complex lanes now stood empty, with only the echo of a smell to remind him of some poor animal shambling here dumbly towards its fate.

There had been a separate area for slaughtering the beasts. During exsanguination, channels and gullies had carried excess blood into external drains, which in turn exited via a natural slope into the sea. Pullers were fixed to the wall for removing the hides. There were areas for collecting solid waste, which would be taken to the pig farmers south of the city, and a couple of large cauldrons for plunging carcasses to make the skin easier to remove. The coldest room of all was separate and deep, well away from the external walls, so that any bodies stored for a day or two might not rot too quickly.

Nanzi's latest haul lay waiting on the entrance table in the first room he entered. No sooner had he stepped into its cube of darkness than the Phonoi appeared. The Phonoi were his reward for a successful operation on the daughter of a landowner on Blortath. That place being near the cultists' island, Ysla, Voland assumed they were based on some relic. The father had been a traveller and explorer, but never once said that the Phonoi were anything to do with the ancient technology. He had said folklore suggested they were simple spirits, from another time entirely, perhaps even another dimension. They would serve the owner of the lead box in which they travelled, now Voland, and upon release they would do whatever he wished of them, as if interpreting his thoughts. But he preferred to keep them free, surfing the air currents, in case anyone should venture down here and discover his activities. He could only imagine what damage they would do to intruders.

'Good morning, Doctor Voland,' they now said. The shapes swirled like the constituents in a drink being mixed, never really taking form unless they needed to.

'Good morning,' another cooed.

'How are you?'

'Grand, thank you,' Voland replied.

'Wonderful!' they said.

'Lovely!'

'A lovely morning, too!'

Voland said, 'I haven't looked outside yet. Is it snowing?'

'No, doctor, no. The skies, they are clear today. It is as if the ice age didn't even want to be here.'

There was some wisdom in that. Voland, ever a practical man, could not accept the ice age – a strange phenomenon, and one that didn't sit right with him. Sometimes there would be a warm current of air that felt more natural, as if that was what the weather should have been. Then it was beaten away by chill force.

'Would you help me', Voland enquired, 'with the latest two? Nanzi brought them in last night.'

'Of course, Doctor Voland, of course!' The Phonoi assumed vague definition against the darkness of the room, only a fraction of light penetrating from outside, but it caught their form, their fabric. Now like wraith-like children, they swooped down on the corpses, a man and a woman, unwrapped them from Nanzi's silk, then transported them, so that a less keen eye might think they floated across the room of their own accord.

As they accelerated around the innermost room, the Phonoi's energy heated the cauldron, flames rapidly bringing the water to the boil. The two corpses were dropped in, momentarily, then hauled out again while Voland selected knives from the wall. They were both hung up from the ceiling, and Voland began his work of removing their skin, extracting the organs and offal, then choosing the finest cuts of meat. The most dangerous incision was the first, through the chest and downwards, because if you were not careful there was a danger of the blade slipping into a vital artery in your own thigh. With such an injury, many a man had bled to death on an abattoir floor. Attentively, he set to work.

Two hours later, Voland had stored enough meat to feed an entire street for the week to come, off-cuts and steaks and offal all placed into separate containers. Once he had scrubbed the chamber and spruced himself up, he set out towards the iren. There, he would provide the traders with something they could sell cheaply. For the people. All via that young Malum character, of course; he was the main buyer, had contacts all over the city, methods of ensuring that this meat was sold to the needy. Voland would have felt better if he didn't know about Malum's other dealings. Drugs, protection from so-called tribal raids and other gangs, widespread theft, unnecessary violence. Distant rooftop executions. It was indeed very uncivilized, but all Voland could do was think about feeding the poorer sort, and maybe helping them to live for longer.

He himself was doing a good thing.