City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [58]
‘Fucksake man,’ the other shouted, slamming his hand on the table, rattling cutlery. ‘Look at this place! Look at it. We’re pissing away money on wine and food and dancing while not two streets away a family makes do with a bowl of oats that must last them a week.’
‘You’re drunk again, you soft sod. Think of the success of our city and have some more whisky.’
Jeryd shook his head in weariness. How many of these rich kids would ever deign to pick up a sword once the war began?
A scream—
It came from near one of the exits, a woman’s voice. A murmur of dismay rippled across the room towards Jeryd.
He pushed his way through the throng, stepping this way and that, saying ‘Excuse me, pardon me’ as he squirmed under flickering candelabras and between chinking glasses to investigate, his instinct to investigate aroused. The cold air from the open doorway hit him refreshingly hard, and there stood a woman in a thick green dress and cloak, her hair pinned up ornamentally. She was sobbing into her partner’s robed shoulder, and both their masks lay discarded on the floor.
‘Investigator Rumex Jeryd, of Villiren Inquisition. What’s going on here?’ Jeryd reached beneath his garments to find the medallion, and clumsily displayed it.
The woman’s partner, tall and handsome in his black attire, simply shrugged. ‘I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with her. I just turned my back for a moment and . . .’
The woman, who wasn’t far off being just a girl, gestured towards the balcony, and Jeryd stepped outside, as a crowd gathered behind him. The starlight was obscured in patches by cloud, but you could see the harbour, an arc whose rim was defined by street fires and lantern light showing people sifting through the streets, and dogs barking above a wind that seemed to groan as it passed through the city.
And there it was, close to where he was standing, the same substance he’d discovered earlier that same day, a thick white mass dripping from the edge of the parapet up to the roof behind, slick and web-like. A few tables and chairs were laid out, and those nearest were covered in this mucus-like gloop.
He turned back to the woman, whose head was still angled away from him, and then he noted her bracelets and coloured nails, more brash than anything he remembered from Villjamur.
‘Did you see what did this?’ Jeryd pointed to the gloop.
She shook her head, and mumbled, ‘No, but something big was moving out there. I knew it as soon I came out for some fresh air. I felt as if I was being watched. Then . . .’ – a sharp inhalation of air as she choked back on her sobs – ‘then that white stuff just appeared from nowhere.’
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘Hardly anything!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you believe me? I know what I saw, all right, I’m not fucking pissed.’
‘My apologies,’ Jeryd said. ‘I meant nothing by it. I’m simply trying to build a picture of what happened. Please, you said you didn’t see anything.’
‘I could feel it. Something was watching me, as if waiting. I turned around and this stuff just materialized right by my shoulder – right there, look, as it is now. I may have heard some shuffling of stones, but I don’t know if that was because of anything else.’
Jeryd nodded nervously, believing what she said, and stepped over to draw a blade from his boot. He prodded tentatively at the mysterious substance. He knew in his heart that this was the same stuff he’d encountered earlier. He contemplated what kind of creature could produce something like this, and in such quantities.
Finally he faced the guests huddled in the doorway and for a moment wondered morosely how he’d ended up in a situation so absurd, with a bunch of pissed-up rich nobodies staring at him as if expecting some answers.
He said, ‘All right, back to your drinks now. There’s nothing more to see out here.’