The Broken Isles

TWENTY — FIVE

The military were packing up for the final time. People were bustling through the corridors on each level, carrying supplies, blankets, armour, swords, food — everything that said something big was about to happen. Fulcrom found Brynd surrounded by clerks and piles of paper.

‘You look busy,’ Fulcrom commented.

Brynd didn’t reply for a moment, simply staring at the papers before him on the table. ‘It’s war this time, investigator. This is it. This is the big campaign.’

‘Will you be gone from the city for long?’

‘I’ve no idea. It could be over pretty quickly. It could be a more sustained campaign but I bloody well hope it isn’t.’

‘Where’s the conflict?’ Fulcrom enquired.

‘It’s looking like the coast of Folke, if the surveillance is correct. There’s another coastal invasion being planned. If Folke falls, so does the rest of the Archipelago.’

‘I hope it goes as well as these things can do,’ Fulcrom replied.

‘Thanks, but I take it you didn’t come here to discuss that.’

‘No, I’ve found out who acquired the corpse of the monster in the iren, and why.’

‘That was quick.’ Brynd gestured to the chair opposite.

Fulcrom sat down to reveal his findings, from his dealings with the youths at Factory 54 to the meeting in the Partisans’ Club. ‘Those kids were probably quite innocent in all of this I believe. The girl — Jeza — felt pressured by Malum. She probably regrets ever having met him.’

Brynd had kept calm while Fulcrom related the information, but as soon as he recalled the threats that Malum had made to him months ago, his temper began to show.

‘You know who Malum is, I’m guessing,’ Fulcrom ventured.

‘I certainly do.’ Brynd sat back in his chair, made a steeple of his hands and contemplated his fury. ‘He was a vicious gang leader and used to be a powerful man — for his position. He tried a few tricks on us. If I’m honest, I hoped he’d died in the war, but I knew there were still a few issues with the gangs in some districts. It’s the gangs who rule the streets in this city, investigator — or so they’d like to think.’

‘What do you think of the meeting at the club?’

‘I’ve not got time to deal with it so I’m going to entrust this to you — but be careful. The man was once capable of great evil. Because of that, I’ll release what few guards we have left at the Citadel to be at your disposal, but tread carefully. I’ll see if we can spare fifty newly enlisted soldiers and have them patrol the streets, but that really is a maximum.’

‘Of course,’ Fulcrom said. ‘How many soldiers from the city are going with you?’

‘Nearly all of them — it has to be that way. We really do need every fighting man and woman for the battle.’

Fulcrom nodded and rose. ‘I’ll do my best, commander.’

‘I want to repeat: be cautious,’ Brynd replied. ‘Malum isn’t your typical criminal.’

The rumel smiled. ‘I’ve dealt with more than a few unusual criminals in my time, commander.’

*

‘Hey, Malum,’ the kid said, stirring Malum from his slumber.

Malum recalled his surroundings: he was sitting in a plush chair in an empty underground tavern. Everyone had gone home. The party had ended. It was just him and the embers of the fire, and the empty lager bottle that lay by his feet. He breathed deeply, trying to clear his head.

‘What is it?’ Malum tried to locate the kid’s voice, and his blurry vision eventually located the doorway, in which a blond kid was standing.

‘JC told me to tell you that the army’s leaving.’

‘What? Say that again,’ Malum demanded. His head didn’t pound these days, but the kid’s voice was dulled slightly.

‘The army is vacating the city.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re going to war, JC says.’

It took Malum a while to process this.

‘Tell JC to get the Bloods together, in here, tonight. What time is it anyway?’

‘Mid-afternoon,’ the kid said.

‘Fucksake,’ Malum muttered. ‘All right, let JC know that. Get them all here real quick. Tell them to sober up, too.’

Later, the tavern was rammed with his core gang members, a good few hundred of them. These were the remnants of the war — not that many, but enough to get the word about. They were his brethren, the people he could trust. They would do anything, kill anyone, if he asked it of them.

Malum stood on the bar and regarded them all. Like he had done on stage, he waved for silence and it duly came. ‘It’s come to my attention that the military is leaving the city. I thought there’d be a thousand or so soldiers in the city — turns out there are less than a hundred left. I’m sending out scouts to confirm this, but this new situation changes my plan somewhat.’

‘We sending out raids on the aliens now then?’

‘No,’ Malum said, ‘not immediately. We’ve always sought for this to be a free city from the Empire. Only when it’s free of military and Imperial rule will we get to do what we want. We get control then, and we can only do that if the people want the same thing. We’d hoped to start doing this across the city after the war, but it didn’t really happen like that, did it? No, because the military got there before we did. Effectively, there’s one place we need to occupy to make Villiren what we want.’

There was a stony silence in the tavern. No one knew what to say.

‘The Citadel,’ he concluded. ‘With all the soldiers heading to war, this leaves the Citadel unguarded.’

‘It won’t be completely unguarded though, will it?’ someone called.

‘Probably not, no. There are most likely going to be a few units on the streets too. But we’re never going to get a better chance to take the place, are we?’

‘What, we just take it?’

‘We just take it. Like a repossession, break things down from within. Without the same level of defence, it’ll be like walking in. Any soldiers on the streets, we’ll slaughter — we’ll overwhelm them. It won’t be that easy, obviously, but if we’re ever going to do it, now’s the time. Once we’re in the Citadel we can loot the place and burn what we can’t take.’

‘But that Jamur lass is still going to be there, isn’t she?’

‘Probably, unless she’s going with the military,’ Malum said. ‘If she is, we could keep them hostage, or hang their body parts on the outer limits of the city — like the old days. Either way, they’re not going to provide much of a challenge against a few thousand of us.’

‘Where are we going to get a few thousand from?’ came another voice. ‘There’s barely a thousand of the Bloods left.’

‘We put the word out. We make offers of sharing the spoils of the Citadel with the people — whoever would like to help us. They’ll accept that. Tell everyone that the aliens will soon be coming. We unite what’s left of the gangs under one common aim: to reclaim Villiren while the commander’s at war, to take the city for our own, to stop aliens coming in. Who knows, the commander might die while he’s at it, meaning there’ll be nothing to trouble us afterwards. And when the military does decide to come back — depleted after the fighting — there’ll be nothing here for them. The people are already on our side.’

‘We doing this for the people or for us?’

‘For us, of course. We need the people to be on our side so we can take what we want. But everyone wins, think about it. This is the chance to make the city ours. To free it from the Empire, let people do what they want, make their own rules. Meanwhile we can live like kings and make sure there’s no aliens at the same time.’

The lads seemed to like that. They hollered and cheered. They banged tables and shook their blades in the air.

That’s more like it, Malum thought.