Untitled
an excerpt

He slid past Hugh, who still stood with his back to the grubby shingles of the warehouse wall. Once they were chest to chest, Thomas leaned slightly outward, bracing himself on Hugh’s shoulders to peer around the corner and into the avenue.

There were the usual drinking crowd: men with more money than occupations spilling from the open balconies of the bars onto the street, some clambering over railings meant to keep them away from the respectable street and leaping the gap. Foolhardy drunkards. In the moment he watched, Thomas saw one young man misjudge and only one foot landed on the streetway and for a moment he flailed, his face a comic mask of fear, arms pinwheeling to try and regain his balance before one of his contemporaries had the sense to grab him by the shirtfront and haul him forwards. The lad let go of his beer as he clutched at his friend and the glass fell, shattering into fragments on the edge of the road and cascading down onto the walkways below. The youth who had just escaped a broken leg or worse burst out into raucus laughter once he was safe and had realised he had successfully broken out of the bar without paying, and along with the four others who had jumped across from the balcony, linked arms and careened away in search of another establishment.

Further down the roadway was a merchants house, connected to the streetway by a small elegantly carved bridge across the gap, where light flooded from the door and guests took their polite leave of their host and hostess before strolling away down the road or turning to queue at the doors of the elevator for a lift up or down to another section of the city. This late at night, few took the stairs.

But those rich folk in their gorgeous velvets and silks were not on the run. Thomas and Hugh did not have the luxury of the time to wait for an elevator cage, nor did they want to risk being seen that much in the open. The stairs here, at the south side of this region of the city were a good example of their like in all but the very wealthiest districts: a rickety-looking but fairly sturdy and frequently repaired wooden spiral that wound up into the sky and down into the gloom. The rails changed every few rotations or so where someone else had paid for them, or repaired them, or donated the materials, and every few meters or so a walkway would turn off towards a back door or a corridor or street. It was the working classes who used the stairs, those who couldn’t afford the fee for the elevator and the tips for the gateman and the cageman. Even this late at night they passed others on the stairs, old ladies with umbrellas despite the clear, cold sky who paused to catch their breath on both the ascent and the descent, factory workers just clocking off at the end of a shift and hurry home, head down, thinking of their warm beds and their supple wives. Some businessmen too, either dodging the queue at the elevator or else closing a shady deal about which they did not want to questioned, others clouded in the perfume of their mistresses.

It was easy not to be recognised, not only because of the dark, but because not only was everyone else also muffled against the cold, but because few on the stairs paused to look at their fellow travellers. Each was in a hurry, some simply commuting, others deliberately wanting to be unrecognised or avoided.

The only moment of difficulty came as they passed the sixth level street turnoff, where a pair of marshals were standing in the turning well, handcuffing a middle aged man in a long black coat. Thomas’s heart stopped for a moment at the proximity of the officials – they literally had to squeeze past as the men were taking up so much of the stairway – but he continued, moving past in the steady flow of people, Hugh at his shoulder and barely a full pace behind. The marshals never turned, never so much as glanced in the direction of the fugitives as they passed so engrossed were they in turning the pockets of the thief they had caught. Just another night on the beat.

The stream of people thinned as they climbed, overtaking some ahead of them who had paused to catch their breath or simply moved less swiftly that two young men with justice baiting their heels. Not many frequented the highest points in the city, not at the south end anyway. Far to their north, had it been light, the men would have been able to see the domes and towers of the government palaces that sat on the top of the city like a glistening icecap in the sunshine, watching out across the city and down towards the sea, the jagged chunks of islands rising above the waves. It was a spectacular view, one reserved only for those who made the laws and ruled the people, and yet not so very dissimilar to the view that greeted those who climbed to the very top of the south end.

Few did though, living their daily lives deep in the tangled scaffold of the city or burrowing into the caves of the city wall from which they drew their support and which separated them from the land beyond, cutting off that land from access to the water, allowing the city of Faramond to control all the imports and exports and gather huge amounts of revenue from all those to the other side of the wall.

As there number of people on the stairs decreased, so it was easier for Thomas and Hugh to pick up speed, taking the steps two at a time until a need to breathe slowed them back to one step at a time for a while. They never stopped though, merely varied their pace. And there was no need to discuss it, they were well matched in height at fitness, Hugh simply slowing when Thomas did and speeding up unquestioningly when his lover did the same.

At last they emerged at the top, where the staircase was topped by a tiny and completely unnecessary tower with three windows and a door beneath its conical roof. They stepped out and, for once, didn’t stop to relish the feeling of having nothing above them but open air. They took off at a run along the passageway, which by merit of being at the highest level had a solid fence higher than their waists instead of a simple railing despite the fact that a fall from many of the levels below would be as deadly. There weren’t many turnings off this path, as there weren’t many places to go this high up. Two lefts and a right later and they were scaling the gate of the airship docks, not having the time or inclination to wait for a night porter.

Once on the platform they wound their way through the buildings and across the open hangars headed for the Elaina who was docked, as usual, in one of the holding bays for private owners. Thomas cursed the fact that he had booked the same dock for months, even under a fake name. Moving the airship around might have delayed the marshals slightly. That said, it might have generated suspicion from the management of the docks, and leaving her in the public bays was the quickest way to have her wrecked by some incompetent pilot who couldn’t keep his ship level or straight.

The hangars were empty, the airships great curved giants looming in the dark. Thomas dared for a moment to hope: had they beaten the marshals here? Surely the marshals would have known where they were going? Surely they wouldn’t have started a raid on his house without further backup information?

Then the Elaina with her glorious red hull was visible, and the men put on an extra burst of speed.

She was barely beneath Thomas’s fingers when he heard the shot ring out. He ducked, instinctively, and felt the bullet ratchet into the door, making the airship shudder. The fools! Did they not know better than to fire their weapons so close to hydrogen blimps? He fumbled for the door now, in real fear for his life, not just his freedom.

“Thomas Riley, turn around.”

The voice was closer than he thought possible. Where had they come from? Had they been waiting for him? He glanced over his shoulder and then all hope left him and he was filled with an utter inconsolable despair.

The fight went out of him and he turned around. About fifteen uniformed marshals were clustered at the end of the gangway leading to the Elaina. Hugh stood with them and not one laid a hand on him.

He’d been betrayed and by such an unexpected source that the blow knocked the air out of him and he struggled to breathe the freezing air.

“Hugh,” he gasped, unable to form any other words. His lover looked back at him steadily, the teeth sunk in his lower lip the only sign of his discomfort.

“How could you?” The words became a snarl. They wouldn’t take him alive. He wouldn’t rust away for the rest of his life in a prison cave in the bowels of the city, unable to see the sky, unable to fly. He grasped at the handle of the undercarriage behind him, pulling at it, opening the door, all the time staring at the marshals in their stupid hats and navy uniforms.

“Don’t do it, Riley,” warned the chief, lifting his gun. “We’re cleared to shoot you if you resist. Come quietly. It will be better for all of us.”

As if Thomas would come quietly. He made a leap for the door.

The gun went off.

Thomas slammed the door behind him and hit the release control, then slid the valve as far over as possible, peering out the thick, distorting glass of the portal door as he did so.

The marshals were in chaos –it looked like someone had kicked chief as he was about to fire and the shot had gone wide, lodging in the end of the dock and allowing Thomas the time to go free. The man was doubled over and the others crowded around.

The airship was lifting away now and Thomas couldn’t see more than a mass of dark figures, Hugh indistinguishable from the others in his blue coat. Thomas almost dared to hope that it was his lover who had made the shot go wide, then he clamped down on the thought and let his anger simmer.

He turned from the door and walked through to the control deck, looking out the wide windows at the city dropping away below him. He felt none of the elation of flying, but empty, betrayed, hopeless. He looked out to the sea on his left and the last few heights of the wall on his right. Where would be go?