The Scar - China Mieville [201]
He waited at home in one of the nondescript concrete blocks built beside the Drudgery’s funnel, directly in the asylum’s shadow. At eleven o’clock there was a knock at his door: his contact had arrived. For the first time in many days, they had something serious and important to talk about. Fennec walked slowly to answer the door, and his gait, his expressions, his demeanor shifted fractionally.
By the time he opened the door, he had become Simon Fench.
Waiting on his doorstep was a big, aging cactus-man, looking nervously about him.
“Hedrigall,” said Fennec quietly, in what was not quite his own voice. “I’ve been waiting for you. We must talk.”
In the jagged and obscure architecture of the moonship Uroc, the vampir were gathering.
The Brucolac had called a conclave of his ab-dead lieutenants, his cadre. As the light shifted from drab dusk to night, they settled as lightly and soundlessly on the moonship as leafs.
All the citizens of Dry Fall knew that their vampir were always watching. They wore no uniform; their identities were not known.
The bacillus that induced photophobic haemophagy—the vampir strain—was capricious, and weak, carried solely in spit and quick to denature and collapse. Only if a vampir’s victim did not die, and if the bite had been direct, mouth to skin so that some of the ab-dead’s spittle entered their prey’s bloodstream, was there a small chance that the survivor might be infected. And if they survived the fevers and the delirium, they would awaken one night, having died and been renewed, ab-dead, with a raging hunger, their bodies reconfigured, stronger and quicker by many times. Unaging, able to survive most injury. And unable to bear the sun.
Every one of the Dry Fall’s cadre had been carefully chosen by the Brucolac. The goretax was decanted before drinking, to avoid inadvertent infection. Those from whom the Brucolac drank directly were his most trusted servants, his closest supporters, to whom he gave the honor of a chance at ab-death.
There had been occasional betrayals, of course, in the past. His chosen ones had turned against him, giddy with power. There had been unauthorized infection and attempts on his ab-life. The Brucolac had quashed them all, sadly and effortlessly.
His lieutenants surrounded him now, in the Uroc’s great hall. Scores of them, freed from the necessity of disguise, allowing their serpentine tongues to unroll luxuriously, tasting the air with relish. Men and women and androgynous youths.
At the front, almost beside the Brucolac, stood the ragged woman who had watched Fennec in The Pashakan. Every one of the vampir stared at their master with wide, light-enhancing eyes.
After a very long silence, the Brucolac spoke. His voice was quiet. Had those in the room been human, they would not have heard him.
“Kin,” he said, “you know why we’re here. I’ve told you all where we are heading, where the Lovers would have us go. Our opposition to their plans is well known. But we’re in a minority; we’re not trusted; we couldn’t mobilize the city behind us. We can’t usefully speak; our hands are tied.
“However, things may be changing. The Lovers are banking on momentum, so that by the time their aim becomes plain, it’ll be too late to oppose it. And by that time, they hope, people will become willing abductees.” The Brucolac sneered, and licked the air with his great tongue.
“Now, it appears, word may be about to get out. A fascinating conversation was overheard tonight. Simon Fench knows where we’re going.” He nodded at the woman in rags. “Doul’s Crobuzoner dollymop, of all people, has worked out what’s happening, and she’s told Mr. Fench—or Fennec, or whatever he calls himself. We know where he lives, do we not?” The woman nodded.
“Fench is planning to put out one of his inflammatory pamphlets. We’d try to intervene if we could, to help him, but he’s a solo operator, and if he discovered that we’d identified him, he’d shun us and