City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [55]
Irens cropped up all over the place, using any corner they could find. From cooking equipment to clothing, it seemed you could find anything on the stalls scattered about here. Jeryd made his way through one of the larger markets.
‘What animals do these come from?’ Jeryd innocently asked one meat trader, a slender, bearded man who constantly rubbed his hands together.
He responded with a shrug at first. ‘Got all sorts, mate. What y’after?’
‘I’m just browsing for the moment,’ Jeryd replied.
Temptation plagued him. A good steak goes a long way in satisfying an investigator.
Once he had cleared the huddle of irens, the city became quieter.
So, once more: why were people disappearing from relatively prosperous streets? Was it simply because the poorer districts didn’t bother reporting their losses, or was there something shared by these people that made them targets?
He made a note to make enquiries in the Wasteland district, a loosely applied name that covered the endless shacks and crudely constructed shelters spreading to the south of the main city.
An external stairway led up to the top of a range of houses, whereby you could walk for some distance along the outer edge of the roofs overlooking the districts of Scarhouse, Saltwater and Deeping, which were to the north of the wasteland, but where the old southern boundaries of the city were to be found. Jeryd decided to go up, if only to discover what the view offered. His ascent wasn’t particularly dignified, since the stone steps were very slippery. Luckily, a handrail stopped him from falling off in complete embarrassment, and he gripped it like a drunk holding on to a friend.
He sighed with relief as he reached the top. From up here he could see more of the roofline and many of the defined landmarks: squarish Jorsalir churches, multi-storey tenement blocks and, on the other side, over towards the Ancient Quarter, columns of smoke indicating street vendors busy cooking, and a clutch of mixed architectural styles displaying history heaped up on itself. Rising up amidst this cityscape were several vast and blandly built towers. As he studied them he was exposed to the wind and had to hold on tightly to his hat to stop it from being gusted across the city.
What was he looking for exactly?
Suddenly something caught his eye.
Along the walkway where two streets intersected, something weblike seemed to be dripping from the handrail. He approached it cautiously; the stuff looked utterly alien to him. White gloop drooped thickly, like frayed rope, from one surface to another. It was everywhere around. He took a small, blunt blade from his boot, then prodded at it. Opaque and viscous, and with a confusing texture, it was firmly attached to the metal rail. What the hell creature could produce something like this?
Jeryd thought immediately of cultists, as he so often did when he found no rational answer for something. He twirled the viscous substance on the blade, spinning it, lengthening it, testing it for consistency. It was nothing he knew of, and why would cultists devise something like this? He took a handkerchief from his pocket, smeared a thick globule of the gunk inside it, then placed it back in his pocket. There was nothing else around to arouse much thought; one or two smashed masks lying further down the walkway, but they could be found everywhere in the city.
*
Jeryd spent his lunchtime chatting with the commander, eating a seafood platter that was very agreeable, while the albino spoke intensely of troop movements, of statistics and probabilities. The two voiced their dislike of the eerie-looking masks that people in Villiren hid behind. What was that nonsense all about? They were seated in the canteen of the Citadel barracks, a dreary granite building that rang