City of Ruin

F ORTY-FIVE

Nanzi, in her spider form, lumbered awkwardly over the rubble, deep into the city and deeper into the night.

With the clear sky, a chill set in, calm and suffocating. Fighting had come to a halt as the sun faded, and there were now only swift conversations in the dark, strategies being passed mouth to mouth. Or on papers carried via messengers, as their horses bolted into the distance. Swords remained unsheathed. Bows remained in position, rumel archers sniping from their high vantage points, waiting it out in the cold. Men and women of the Dragoons or Regiments of Foot stood alert by crude blockades.

Yet none of them would have been able to stop her.

And she had to do what she was ordered now – because otherwise Voland would die and she couldn't let that happen. How could these people not appreciate the good work they'd done together?

The first location: just behind Port Nostalgia. A heap of the dead lined the landscape, and she could sense the chemical secretions of human and rumel and alien corpses. Mounds of unidentifiable flesh littered street corners and alleys, armour and weapons lay shattered and idle. Buildings, too, had become corpses, crippled by whatever technology these new beings had brought with them.

But in between all this morbid mess there were fallen soldiers still alive, who still breathed this foul and rank air. Centring her vision, she crawled tentatively around a smear of decayed matter towards them. They screamed, either because of their wounds or the pain of seeing her, she didn't know which, but she had received her instructions and she sought out their wounds and dribbled silk into them, sealing the wider abrasions. Some fainted at the sheer sight of her, others regarded her with a total absence of emotion. Nanzi picked them up two at a time, in custom-woven slings, and hauled them back towards the fiacres waiting on standby a hundred yards beyond the front line. Two women on horseback were posted beside the vehicles, and they watched Nanzi warily as she crept towards them, absolutely terrified she might do something to harm them.

'We know what you are,' said one of them, waving a dagger in her direction. 'We've heard what you've done. Don't care if you're helping us now, you're still a bloody monster. Just hurry up so we don't have to look at you for too long.'

From there, the newly recovered injured were sped towards a makeshift military hospital underneath the Citadel, leaving Nanzi alone in the darkness.

*

Voland sighed as yet another consignment came in. Cries of anguish echoed in his head. A small team of men and women lifted the casualties gently from the fiacres. When another delivery appeared, Voland wondered if it would ever end.

How can I repair so many of them?

He rolled up his shirtsleeves further and tried to adjust the detonator-collar he wore, which Brynd had commissioned from a cultist. At first, Voland was livid at the indignity of having to wear such an object, but was warned if he did not do as instructed, the device would explode and shatter his neck, killing him instantly.

Staying alive, for now, seemed the preferable option.

Voland had been offered something near freedom in exchange for the benefit of his skills. He would have done almost anything to get out of the darkness of his cell, to get Nanzi out too. It was not an opportunity to refuse.

He had taken only two hours' sleep, meanwhile, while other doctors came and took over, eyeing him with caution, and noting the device on his neck. Occasionally a soldier would come to check on him as he worked. Some of the other nursing staff whispered behind his back, more than once he heard the word 'butcher' being uttered, and all the time he wondered if this was how the great Doctor Voland would spend his final days.

Eight rows of bedrolls were lined up before him, spreading far into the cavernous darkness. Lanterns hung from the ceiling and cressets threw light from the walls. Two other medical professionals, both female, and neither as proficient as himself, attended to the patients, their shadows falling across the injured like some stark premonition of death. A dozen or so volunteers also moved back and forth between the lines, seeing to their basic needs or following the doctor's direct commands.

Casualties were laid out according to the severity of their injuries. From broken or dislocated limbs, lacerations, abrasions, punctured lungs, up to severe haemorrhaging, the wounded soldiers were admitted and distributed according to probability of their survival. Minor injuries were confined to the far end of the chamber, while Voland's duties involved the almost-dead. It seemed futile at first, temporarily patching up wounds that were simply too severe, too brutal; they continued to arrive at a steady rate. He smiled at the sweet thought of Nanzi whenever he came across one whose wounds had been treated with her silk.

Nanzi herself would stagger back into the makeshift hospital in between her missions. In her human form, of course, she came to check on how effective the silk was at sealing wounds. The substance acted as a coagulant, was quite inert with regards to the human body, and she had undoubtedly saved many lives.

'But they look at me and say vile things,' she mumbled into his shoulder, trying not to cry. 'They really hate us. They hate me, the things they say…'

He knew it must be worse for her, being so rare and precious a design, and people always feared what they did not understand.