Menagerie - Martin Day [4]
Occasional windows glowed through the myopic fog.
The other massive building was known as the Furnace. It was some distance away from the castle and seemed to avert its face from the fortress, retreating into the dark hillside as if too heavy and bloated with water to support itself. It was a squat edifice of dull brown brick topped with blackened chimneys, from which flowed a constant breathing cloud of steam that merged with the fog, occasionally giving it a poisonous tang. Groups of black-coated men wearing simple cotton masks walked the area, leading huge horses tugging at sledges containing wood and coal. Inside the main building cavernous furnaces were fed, flames occasionally leaping out of the boilers with a spit of soot and flame. Steam hissed and escaped as huge turbines moved in groaning agony, smaller pistons pounding with fragmentary bursts of power.
In the city itself even the shuddering percussion of the engines was lost to the constant wash of the rain.
Defrabax emerged from his darkened house, extinguishing a candle in the window, and cursed the incessant downpour. Squashing a floppy hat over his thinning grey hair, he stared at the twin extremes of the city
— the Furnace to his left and the castle to his right — and seemed to snarl at them both, before setting his course and moving out into the streets.
The houses he passed were clumsy wooden constructions, leaning at crazy angles and seemingly close to collapse. The last great storm had thrown odd tiles down into the street; young boys had combed the refuse, and were already attempting to sell them back to the populace.
'Lovely roofin' slates, perfect for your storm-damaged
'ome.' A group sat in the gutter, laughing and joking with the passers-by. One lad ran in front of Defrabax, carrying an example of his wares, his face full of desperate pleading.
Defrabax stopped, his eyes gripping the boy as surely as a strong pair of hands.
'Do you not know who I am, lad?' The man's voice was like the whisper of ancient pages turned by an inquisitive hand.
The boy began to shiver, but was just able to force a shrugging signal of ignorance. His friends looked on in silence.
'I thought not. If you knew who I was you would not dare to trouble me with such pilfered garbage!' His left hand passed twice below his gnarled chin, fingers flexing in arcane gestures, and then both hands came together, squeezing gently.
The boy, freed from his terrible paralysis, ran into the shadows, choking and unable to scream. The slate dropped just in front of Defrabax's boots, and shattered into a hundred pointed shards of grey. The other boys ran silently from the roadside, taking the piles of slate with them.
'Superstitious apes,' breathed Defrabax.
Moments later he passed an infamous local inn, and seemed drawn to its bright windows. Square bulbs of light hung from the ceiling, spinning gently. He peered in, and saw rows of tables and bottles of drink. The room was crowded, oaths and arguments providing the unintelligible lyrics to the surging apocalyptic tune played by the man in the corner. The musician was oblivious to what was going on around him, his sightless eyes staring through men in earnest conversation who drank and threw knuckle bones.
The state of the musician's soul was communicated only through the dexterity of his fingers as he played the instrument in his lap, holding down strings, creating strident chords from a looping bass rhythm, then collapsing into stuttering, chasing individual notes of sadness.
A puzzled look crossed the blind man's face — one sometimes didn't need eyes to see Defrabax — and the old man moved on, past the beggar with one leg and the sleeping drunk slumped against each other in the doorway.
Defrabax smiled as he spied a group of women standing at the corner. They immediately covered their immodest red dresses with shawls as they saw him approach, and shrank from his path.
Defrabax doffed his hat to them. 'I could have