They brought a chair and he sat staring in through the forged stone bars of her cell. Above him, a faulty licht bulb spat and fizzed in the black corridor.

‘You ‘ad to ruin it,’ he said eventually, shaking his head. ‘As pig-headed as your mam.’

She remained curled on her hard bunk, unwilling even to meet his eye.

‘After all I did, this is how you repay us.’

‘I didn’t do it for you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if you’re ashamed–’

‘Spoke up for you,’ he said. ‘Bastards wouldn’t listen. Polished my medals an’ all.’

She forced a smile and looked up. ‘Those days are long gone, father.’

‘It were your chance,’ he whispered. ‘Your only chance!’

He was crying, she realised. She hated it when he cried.

*

Four Days Ago

Ducking under a partially raised portcullis in West Gate’s Walker Tunnel Two, Officer Tiss left one city and entered another. A squally sea of shacks and hutches – made of wood, tarp, nails, whatever was to hand – stretched before her to the horizon. Only from the sentry spots on the wall, thirty feet up, could you see past Hutch city’s limits to the farms and hills. Beyond those lay the violent tectonic wastes from out of which the Scattered wandered.

A five hundred yard perimeter around the wall was kept clear by dozers which also cut paths through the camp. But with just minutes until West Gate was due to open, the perimeter had been overrun. Tractors hauling wagons laden with winter produce from the farms or slabs of stone and heaps of ore from hillside quarries idled outside the large central tunnel. Watchmen shared coffee by a pair of street schooners returned from night patrol.

Walker Tunnels One and Two were on either side of the Tractor Tunnel.  Outside Tunnel One fifty or so tired-looking Mandarins, guildsmen, citizen volunteers and some hard-to-place others queued to return home. The queue for Tunnel Two – dubbed ‘the sewer’ by those forced to use it – was hundreds long and snaked back and forth before the wall. A dozen of Tiss’s fellow officers walked along the line straightening out kinks and keeping order in the motley assortment of raggedly dressed Scattered. Occasionally a serial chancer was spotted, plucked out of line and sent packing with a kick.

Tiss walked down the line, her leathers creaking loudly. It was tense, like it was every morning as the hour approached. She exchanged greetings with familiar faces but mostly she was ignored or received sullen glares. Many Scattered wore their beggar rags with an intimidating pride and swagger. Shrewdly tattered, threadbare attire was tailored to extract maximum pity and coin from citizens fearful of the hordes accumulating on their doorstep.

‘Hoo thar, horriffice!’ called a grizzled, elderly man further down the line. ‘Git a clinker for a peer old beggamun.’

The men and women in line sniggered loudly but quietened when Tiss stopped beside the old man. She looked him up and down, fingering her baton. She saw how his rags had been carefully folded to keep out the cold.

‘Hecht,’ she said, ‘the amount they pay me to keep an eye on your sorry arse, I should be asking you for coin.’

The old man hooted and then gave her a salute. She prodded him in the gut with the wooden baton. ‘Getting fat?’ she enquired.

‘Laars,’ he said, rubbing his belly. ‘Beastie chill sun doon. Horriffice Tiss chattum sentries. Be comin’ oot sum fury. Nit likum Scatty fires.’

‘They’re making excursions?’ she asked.

‘Biffin noggins.’ He rapped his head with his knuckles in illustration.

Tiss nodded. She’d worked night shifts. Winter’s lengthy dark turned some watch into merciless thugs. Others, who believed those who’d emerged from the wastes were no longer entirely human, needed no assistance that way.

‘Officer Tiss!’

Corporal Hecketty, her round face red and puffy, came up, out of breath.

‘How’s it looking back there, ma’am?’

‘Pretty tidy, I’d say. But I got a party which requires your delicate touch.’

‘Beele?’

Hecketty’s simple face broke into a puzzled smile. ‘How’d you guess?’

‘Checked the night logs. Third evening running the patrols have gone out.’

Hecketty frowned. ‘Never care about the messes they leave behind.’

Tiss had already spotted Beele’s band. There were ten of them sitting in a close circle around a pile of flickering glowbricks. Most were young, just out of their teens. Beele herself had a decade on her followers. She’d come to the wall a month after Tiss’s first posting here and Tiss had seen how – unlike many Scattered who came to beg in the city and arrived agitated and angry but mellowed as they aged – Beele had grown more aggrieved over the years.

As they got closer Corporal Hecketty dropped back until she was behind Tiss. The corporal was the first to admit she was no good at confrontations.

‘Morning, Beele.’

‘Tiss the Talker.’ Beele remained sitting and didn’t even look up, the tight curls of her long, blood-dyed hair shadowing her face.

‘You know you can’t do this, Beele. You’re ruining my line. My lieutenant back there wants it kept neat. She’ll be down on me hard if you mess it up.’

Beele cocked her head. ‘An’t ma problem, Talker.’

‘It is from where I’m standing. I don’t like being shouted at.’

‘A shame fir you, but I an’t shouting.’ A brown eye stared out of those curls.

‘Lieutenant Jaffe’ll do the shouting for all of us. And after, she’ll want me where she can keep an eye on me. Meaning by the wall, on a short leash.’

‘Spare us all a gander at you ugly puss,’ ventured a boy half Tiss’s age.

She met his smile with her own, her hand grasping the baton hanging from her belt. His face was spotty, the eyes dreamy. But that smile of his faded fast.

‘When I’m back at the wall, I’m not out here,’ continued Tiss. ‘And if I’m not out here Corporal Hecketty will have to draught in other watch. You’ve met officers Daimon and Grazt. You know they’re no friend to the Scattered and are always looking hard for trouble. You hear what I’m saying, Beele? They won’t turn a blind eye to petty infractions, like small gatherings or illegal glowbricks. They won’t ignore the little Loop dealing that sees you by.’

‘Can handle those two.’ Beele’s eyes flashed defiance.

‘Of course you can. They’re stupid. But when they cause havoc out here, how long do you think the sentries on the wall will give it before they charge up a steam kanon? Or Lieutenant Jaffe sends out the schooners?’

Fury and hate in Beele’s eyes now. Tiss held her ground though Hecketty seemed no longer to be at her back. She’d left Beele a dignified way out but the woman still wasn’t budging. Everyone was watching her and Tiss hadn’t a clue what she’d say if Beele wouldn’t play along. Talker indeed.

The silence was shattered by a siren wail. Portcullises rattled as they were raised. The line shifted in anticipation and Beele rose to her feet and led her band back into the camp without a word. They left the glowbricks behind.

Corporal Hecketty let out a breath. ‘Thought we’d had it there.’

‘Me too.’

Turning, they walked back along the queue checking passes and purses. Ahead, tractors rolled under the wall. Soon after, other vehicles came out: big-wheeled ration wagons and mobile Foundry recruitment stations.

An hour later both Hecketty and Tiss were summoned back to West Gate.

From a window in the Duty Sergeant’s Office, Tiss could see the palatial guildhouses by the river. The morning sun turned their pale stone a rich gold.

Sergeant Loass was sitting huddled by a feuer globe whose salamander coils of coloured flame gave off pulsing waves of heat and light. On a metal plate fixed across the top of the globe was a steaming pot of coffee.

Loass ruffled a thinning thatch of sandy hair and peered at them wearily. ‘It’s bad news,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant Jaffe is worried that our recent troubles could be the start of something.’

‘But it’s happening nights, sir,’ said Hecketty.

‘Yup. But she says it’s up to us, as the day watch, to instil a bit of discipline.’

‘They’re not prisoners or children, sir,’ said Tiss.

‘They’re under our care,’ said Loass. ‘It’s for their own protection.’

Tiss bit her lip. ‘What are we expected to do?’

‘We show them what happens if they step out of line. Any trouble, we come down hard. The lieutenant particularly wants any ringleaders targeted. We find out who they are and we lock ‘em up.’

‘Sir, that will just cause more resentment.’

‘It’ll be temporary.’

‘Right now it’s tough out there, sir. We push them–’

‘Lieutenant Jaffe thinks we’ve been too soft. They’re taking liberties. I’m in agreement with her.’

‘But–’

‘Remember ’62, Officer Tiss?’

She stared at him worriedly. ‘Sir, I hardly think it’s the same situation.’

‘Your father was on the wall,’ reminded Loass. ‘He stood tall when they rose up. He held his spot though most ran. How many lives did he save?’

‘West Gate still fell, sir. The Scattered still entered the city.’ And what had it cost him? she said to herself. Look what being a hero had turned him into.

‘I saw him once,’ reminisced Loass. ‘Came and gave a talk when I was still a corporal. Right here it was. He and his buddies held West Gate for four hours. North and South gates fell in minutes. Even the Scattered respected his efforts, refusing to kill the men who’d held them back.’

Her father loved telling the story but he never mentioned what came after. The days of torture which had broken his body and twisted his mind until he was unable to tell friend from foe, could no longer even recognise his wife.

‘The man’s an inspiration,’ declared Sergeant Loass.

Three Days Ago

Four hours after gate-rise Tiss broke for coffee and a snack. The mess – usually crowded by now – was deserted. Upstairs, she could hear raucous laughter. Taking her coffee, she trotted up past the armoury on the first floor. On the second, she was stopped in her tracks by the press of bodies spilling out of the Duty Sergeant’s Office. Tiss peered through the doorway but could see or hear little. A man had been talking, but now he spoke in whispers.

A sickly feeling had been growing in her gut, but when the speaker at last raised that unmistakable voice she still caught her breath. It was him, telling one of his damn stories. How many times had she heard it? She knew every phrase, every beat. Bet I know it better than he does, she thought.

‘When they come, they wasn’t armed, see. Well, who counts sticks with a few nails in? Easy to deal with, you’d think. But it were the numbers. Like damn ants. A swarm. Kept coming and coming. Air jammers back then was no use. You’d suffocate a few, but most crawled away. Ice kanon’d take out a score at a time.’ He paused, then whispered. ‘But they kept coming. It weren’t hundreds. It were thousands of ‘em.’ He snorted. ‘It were a tough winter, that’s true. It had killed a lot of ‘em off and those which wasn’t corpses was weak with hunger. Skin and damn bone. But you wouldn’t know it way they fought. I think the hunger gave ‘em an appetite.’

That got a laugh. It always did. And this audience was eager to lap it up.  She couldn’t listen to it and angrily pushed her way through the ranks.

Loass was sitting by the blazing feuer globe and on its other side, hunched in his chair, was her father. His scarred, stubbled face twisted in a rictus of delight on seeing her. But there was no joy in his eyes, just a glint of triumph.

There must have been nearly twenty sentries and foot patrollers, a quarter of the shift, gathered here and they were indignant at this interruption.

‘What,’ she said to Sergeant Loass, ‘is he doing here?’

Her father grinned. ‘Hello, pumpkin. Aren’t you going to give your old man a hug?’

‘Officer Tiss,’ said Loass awkwardly, ‘I invited Sergeant Tiss–’

‘He’s retired. He’s plain old mister.’

‘I invited Sergeant Tiss over to share his valuable experiences of working the wall.’

She stared at her father. He wore the medals he’d received for holding the gate. For hours six watch had held back thousands. It was undoubtedly an achievement to be proud of, worthy of the highest decoration.

‘As a veteran of ’62, what he has to say is–’

‘War stories,’ she said, ‘have nothing to do with our duties here.’

She looked from Loass to her father and saw disappointment and hostility. She turned on her heel, pushing her way through the frowns and mutterings.

Outside, she swapped duties with another officer to get as far from the wall as possible. She wandered among Scattered queuing at stand pipes and soup wagons. Mandarins were thin on the ground and she saw few other watch – they were all listening to her father – but it was quiet. The Scattered who’d worked hard to get this close to the city wanted order as much as anyone. Few would ever make a life in the city, even with a beggar pass, yet there was always the hope that their children might get lucky. A tainted kind of luck.

It had been months since she’d seen her father. Only when she forgot the agony of her previous visit did she ever return home. It rarely lasted more than an hour. His bitterness seemed to well up as soon as he saw her. He’d tell her what a disappointment she was, despite the fact that ten years ago she’d put on the uniform and gone to the wall, to please him. It hadn’t, of course. He said she was soft, having too much of her departed mother in her. It was unclear who he blamed for this apparent weakness.

Corporal Hecketty was examining vehicles when Tiss returned to the wall. She was excited. A tractor pulling three wagons of turnips had a compartment holding several pounds of vine root. This was Loop in its raw state and was unlikely to be bound for the Smyths working their forges in Foundry. Rather, it was heading for the lucrative blackmarket, where Loop’s narcotic properties were prized. The driver denied all knowledge of it as he was taken away.

Half-heartedly, Tiss inspected the – mostly empty – vehicles heading out. It was the middle of the day and there was little traffic into Hutch city.

She broke for lunch and found the mess heaving. Some of her colleagues wouldn’t meet her eye, others sniggered at her back. So she’d made a fool of herself earlier. After eating, she went up to have a word with Sergeant Loass.

When she got there, Loass and her father were tucking into a roast. Loass appeared tired and looked grateful to see her. Her father paused with a fork halfway to his mouth. ‘Come to say sorry to your old man?’ he asked.

‘Came to see if you’d gone.’

‘You know I like to keep an eye on you.’

She said nothing.

‘Out here every day, risking your neck. I know what it’s like.’

‘It’s not that bad, sir,’ said Loass. ‘We have it easier than your day.’

‘Don’t let ‘em lull you.’ He jabbed the air with his fork. ‘You’d be amazed how fast trouble flares up. Think you’re safe but you’re not. Never will be.’

Loass swallowed. ‘The Scattered are more amenable, these days. We talk.’

Her father leaned forward. ‘Big mistake,’ he said. ‘That rabble out there can’t be controlled. Don’t know where these invaders come from, or what they want. You let your guard down, they’ll be all over you.’

It was always the same. The hate vomited out of him like bile. He’d got like this after her mother had died, as if her passing had opened a hole in him and all the pain he’d carried inside had poured out. Yet he was drawn to the wall, had pushed her against her mother’s wishes to join up. Any invitation to visit the troops he accepted. It was as though he kept reliving that night over and over again. A veteran unable to stop fighting an old war.

Loass looked put upon but she thought to hell with the pair of them and returned to her shift at the gate. She was furious. Every day was hard enough without having to be reminded of the reason she was stuck here at all. Her requests for a transfer were always denied – few watch wanted to work the wall.

Not long before sunset and Tiss was watching the beggars return in droves from the city’s licensed zones. Passes were shown wearily. Most looked more authentically the part now than they had this morning, but few had any coin to show for their day’s work. The city’s pity was finite, its sympathy guarded.

She couldn’t tell if the despair she felt was theirs or hers. She turned away.

A guild recruitment wagon, hauled by a wheezing tractor, waited in line. A faded kite painted on its side indicated that it belonged to one of Foundry’s air guilds. Tiss walked up to it and banged hard on the side.

‘Open her up,’ she called.

The driver leant out of her cab. ‘We ain’t in the tunnel yet.’

‘I want to see what you’ve got.’

The woman muttered under her breath but a couple of suited guildsmen got out of the cab. ‘We got no complaint with you but–’

‘Open,’ she instructed.

The guildsmen swung the side of the wagon down. On the rear wall shelves held sealed jars of Loop samples and testing paraphernalia. On a bench below slumped three Scattered. Two were men in their twenties, glassy-eyed as they chewed at sticks of Loop. The third was a girl, mouth slack, drooling. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

Tiss stepped up and hauled the girl down. She was barely conscious, swaying on her feet. Blood-red pimples were forming on her cheeks, courtesy of Loop’s toxins coursing through her body.

‘This is a child,’ she said.

‘Says she’s eighteen,’ said the guildsman with a red beard.

‘She’d tell you she’s Queen of Hutch city for more of what you gave her.’

‘Let her go. We’ve the forms. She scored well.’

Corporal Hecketty came over. ‘Officer Tiss, I think we should leave this.’

She turned on her superior officer. ‘You gonna just let them take children and stuff ‘em in that factory of theirs?’ she yelled.

Hecketty stepped back as if struck. Tiss was aware of the sudden silence in the wake of her outburst.

‘Officer Tiss, I’m ordering you to let her go,’ hissed Corporal Hecketty. ‘Let them proceed into the tunnel and allow the officers to examine her there.’

‘It’s kidnap,’ said Tiss miserably. ‘She’s underage. This is slavery, bondage.’

The other guildsman held up a sheet of paper. ‘We have her signature.’

Tiss, holding the girl upright, leaned in. ‘Means nothing if she’s under age.’

Red Beard smiled. ‘And how can you tell? No records in Hutch city. Half of ‘em don’t even know their names let alone how old they are.’

‘You’re not–’

‘Officer Tiss!’

She turned slowly. Ten feet away stood Lieutenant Jaffe in dusty purple leathers. Her face was red and her hands were poised on her narrow hips.

‘You will release the individual you are holding,’ commanded Jaffe.

‘Ma’am, she’s a child!’

‘That is debatable. Has she signed? Was she willing?’

The guildsman waved his sheet of paper.

‘But ma’am!’

‘What law is being broken, officer?’ asked Jaffe slowly.

‘They can’t just take–’

‘Take? The girl’s free. She’s touched by Loop. If she passes the training she’s a place in Foundry. She’ll be a Smyth. Made a citizen. She’s in.’ Jaffe stared at Tiss as if unable to work her out. ‘And you would deny her that?’

Tiss swallowed, staring back defiantly. She was still holding the girl up, holding her tight. The words, the truth of it, were on the tip of her tongue.

‘Officer Tiss, the paperwork will be checked. Now release her.’

They were all staring at her – Hecketty gaped, aghast – ignoring the girl she held. Tiss shook her head, releasing the girl, who was helped into the wagon by Red Beard, calling out his thanks repeatedly to Jaffe until she left.

The tractor’s steam dynamo screeched as it pulled the wagon away.

Two Days Ago

She arrived at the wall half an hour before dawn and immediately sensed the martial charge in the gatehouse. Leaving the empty mess, she passed two corporals inventorying the armoury on the first floor. They waved away her questions. In the Duty room she saw Lieutenant Jaffe and two other senior officers conferring over maps. Climbing higher she stepped out on to the ramparts. No one paid her the slightest attention. The sentries, strapped into kanons or studying optical instruments, diligently scoured the plain below.

Tiss stared down from the wall. It was still twilight but she saw armoured street schooners and chariots pulled by iron-draggon mechanicals occupying the perimeter. Beyond, standing in a line ten feet apart, were a hundred watch, wearing light armour and armed with licht rods. Twenty feet in front of the watch was a gathering of a few hundred Scattered. There were fires and a few makeshift barricades. She could hear the shouted obscenities from here and shook her head in disbelief.

‘Shits thought they’d have a ruck,’ said a nearby sentry curled into an ice kanon’s bucket seat. Frost glittered on her weapon’s barrel. ‘Sent a foot patrol to shut it down. They got pelted with rocks. Some are saying it was a ruse. Called in the Specials. Bloody stand-off. Been like this for six hours now.’

‘Any parley?’ asked Tiss.

‘Been told got till dawn to disperse. They don’t, gate don’t open today.’ The woman looked to the east. ‘Ain’t long now,’ she sighed.

Downstairs, Tiss found her entire shift had gathered in the mess. Nobody was talking much and she mutely watched the clock tick past the duty hour. At last Loass came down and stood before them, Lieutenant Jaffe at his back.

‘Here’s the story,’ said the Sarge. ‘It was a difficult night out there and right now we have a stand-off with a few hundred troublemakers. They’ve been told the gate won’t open unless they disperse but that hasn’t discouraged ‘em. We’re going out there to replace the night shift. The armoury is issuing licht rods for now. We’ll be running three-hour shifts and I’m told further support will be along later. We stay fresh while they wear themselves out.’

As Loass talked he kept glancing at Jaffe as if checking how he was doing.

Standing in line, in ceramic armour and helmet, a licht rod in her hand, with the Scattered’s ragged and ever-swelling ranks just twenty feet away, shouted and spat at, as stones fell closer and closer, Tiss wanted to break and run. Periodically Sergeant Loass walked up and down his troops’ line calling on the Scattered to disperse. ‘The gate won’t open,’ he insisted. When the Scattered threatened to break their line he’d retreat behind his sharpish.

After three hours, they were relieved and they crowded into the mess. It was a scrum. Tiss’s hands were cupped around a bowl of soup when Hecketty summoned her to the Duty room. She put her bowl down reluctantly.

‘What now?’ she asked on the way up but Hecketty didn’t answer.

Inside, she found her father sitting in the same seat as yesterday. He was warming his hands on the feuer globe. His eyes had an excited look.

‘What,’ she asked, ‘are you doing here?’

‘I seen what’s going on. Came to offer my advice, sweetie.’

Sergeant Loass looked pleadingly at her. He silently mouthed ‘Jaffe.’

‘You have to go,’ she said, ‘we can’t let civilians–’

‘You people have gone soft. Out there, they’re laughing at you.’

‘Sergeant Tiss,’ said Loass, ‘I’m not sure you appreciate the delicacy of the situation . . .’

‘But I do appreciate it. Your commanding officers have let it get out of hand, Sergeant. They’re too scared to let you knock a few heads together. Worried about the press, questions in Council. Them out there see your weakness.’

‘It isn’t how we do things now,’ she said, knowing it was useless.

‘Fear’s your problem. You’re scared of ‘em. Wrong way around.’

‘You’ve got to leave,’ she insisted.

‘And who’s going to make me?’ He dug a flask out of his pocket. ‘I can see the headlines. Veteran ejected from gate he defended!’

She shrugged at Loass. What could she do? The man made his own rules.

‘You need some back bone round ‘ere,’ continued her father. ‘Take out their leaders. Make examples of them. We hung ‘em from the fucking wall.’

Downstairs, Tiss finished her cold soup and spied on the lines. The numbers of Scattered were still rising. The cold and the general scarcity of food over the last few weeks had made it hard out there. With the gate closed there were no Mandarins and soup wagons nor any other aid which came out each day and put a semblance of order and even civilization into Scattered lives. She knew most out there were nothing to do with last night’s trouble and simply protesting at the gate’s closure. But the watch wouldn’t make any such distinctions. They saw only a mob. Something to crush.

Her second three hours on the line passed as slowly as the first. There was hatred and fury on both sides and it scared her. Minor troublemakers she’d known for years appeared excited by the hostilities. Others – beggars she called friends – snarled obscenities. She avoided meeting their eyes.

She dallied after the shift and was late back to the mess. Her father, drunk, was standing precariously on a chair and telling more of his stories. Though most of his audience had heard them the day before they were rapt.

Other than her swaying father, the room was still.

One Day Ago

A Colonel Bundt from the Stockade had taken over the Duty room and when Tiss arrived Sergeant Loass was sitting alone in a corner of the mess staring at those under his command as if he no longer knew what to make of them. 

‘How long can it go on?’ Corporal Hecketty asked her.

‘It’s spreading,’ said a fellow corporal to Hecketty.

Tiss had heard that North Gate had seen disturbances over night.

‘Could be like Sergeant Tiss says,’ said another officer.

‘Says what?’ Tiss asked pointedly.

‘’62 all over again,’ she replied.

Tiss sat next to Loass. She asked him about the overnight reports, but he looked at her dolefully. ‘The brass are keeping ‘em to themselves.’

‘Like that, huh?’

‘Stockade’s taken charge. Jaffe’s furious.’

That could mean only one thing. She felt torn and sick and strung out. She wondered where her father had got to. It was his fault she was here at all.

Ten minutes later the armoury handed out slate shields, schistmail armour, carbines and licht rods. It was hardly battle dress but out there it was the closest thing. When they filed out, Loass was at the front, his armour looking even more ill-fitting than his uniform. They formed up directly behind the tired and tattered line of the night shift and made an orderly exchange.

A clear, crisp dawn after a freezing night. The Scattered had erected a wide barricade of wood and tarp – ripped from hutches? – that they stood behind. The barrier looked like it would hold the watch back only a few seconds and those standing behind it – appearing exhausted and fearful, but no less angry or committed – seemed to know it. Yet they were still dozens deep.

Stones were thrown and landed in the dirt. Behind the watch line the two iron draggons pranced up and down. Huge Foundry-forged mechanicals, they moved as sinuously as cats, metal rasping and shrieking unnervingly as they dragged their handler’s chariots behind. Glow-lamp eyes burned as they glared with a cold intensity down on watch and Scattered alike.

Tiss’s schistmail armour seemed to absorb the chill. The slate shield, curved and strengthened by Smyths at military-grade forges, was heavy on her arm. She’d asked to be issued with a licht rod rather than a carbine. Her aim with the latter weapon was worse than terrible.

Today there were fewer recognisable faces behind the barrier and the hurled insults and missiles seemed more desperate. But the watch, facing another day of abuse, were also demoralised. It was clear they were being used as a human wall. They were waiting. They were all waiting. Something was going to happen soon. This wouldn’t be tolerated for another day. Certain papers were pillorying the watch’s weakness and indecision, though they had no sympathy for the Scattered, seeing them as ungrateful scavengers and parasites. Tiss realised she had been naive to suppose that a lack of immediate action meant that the city’s response would be considered and moderate.

Looking across at the crooked line of Scattered, she found herself thinking of her mother. Tiss seemed only able to picture her in those final months when she’d return exhausted from a shift, her disfigured face grey and blotchy. Her father would hold her mother’s hair as she threw up in the sink, biting his lip hard. Tiss knew to keep quiet. By then he was angry all the time. Angry at her mother for having to work in a place that were slowly killing her. Angry at the watch for invaliding him out of the service. Furious at the Scattered who’d unmanned him. Tiss learned just how angry he could get while her mother was out at work. But around her mother he held it in, never raising his voice or hand. When she died, there was no longer any relief or refuge. The fury was unleashed and turned on those he believed had caused it all.

Tiss never understood how love could turn so easily to hate.

Half an hour later two draggon chariots and half a dozen street schooners with Special Assignment markings came through the tractor tunnel and took up positions behind the line. Their arrival rattled the Scattered. A barrage of stones clattered against shields. Loass, walking up and down, held the line firm, though his barked commands had risen an octave.

‘Horriffice Tiss!’

Hecht was peering over the barrier. The old man had climbed up and was frantically waving. He grinned toothlessly at her when she saw him.

Go back, she mouthed, shaking her head.

‘Hurtum,’ he called. ‘Nil goot.’

She nodded. The watchmen to either side glanced her way.

Hecht kept talking, complaining too loudly about the closed gate, cold and gangs. The man to Tiss’s left bawled at him to shut his mouth.

‘Hecht,’ she called. ‘Go back. Go deep. This is not the place to be. Not today.’

‘Feelie feer,’ he said. ‘Draggie cummen.’

Tiss couldn’t argue. The draggon mechanicals even terrified the watch.

‘Officer Tiss, you will refrain from talking,’ screeched Loass in her ear.

‘Sir,’ she said.

He stood behind her for a time and then moved off. Hecht had disappeared.

Ten minutes later he was back. ‘Clinker?’ he called.

She smiled and knew then that she didn’t care. ‘What’ll you spend it on?’

The watch to either side snarled at her to hush. But she was done with them and their damn duty. They’d have to haul her out of line. They were going to move soon, they all knew it, but she wanted no part of it.

‘Tattie pie,’ said Hecht and giggled.

She heard Loass striding down the line. She didn’t want to be taken back to the wall. She was already its prisoner, trapped there to please a father who’d never hidden his disappointment at who and what she was. She stepped forward, dropping her licht rod and shield, reaching for her armour’s clasps.

‘Officer Tiss, return to your position!’

She was halfway between the lines and afraid they were going to grab her. The armour fell heavily to the ground. She stared at the wood and tarp barrier, at the wary and angry faces behind it.

Hecht was standing there, eyes wide. She removed and dropped her helmet.

‘I’m coming over,’ she said and walked forward hesitantly. She locked eyes with Hecht. ‘You want that coin you’re going to need to earn it.’

The man was shaking his head.

Loass was shouting for her to turn back. She put a foot on the barrier. Hecht tried to haul her up but he was pushed aside and rough hands yanked her up and over. She fell. Something sharp stabbed her leg, a blow to her side. She tried to protect her head. In moments she was kneeling in the dirt, arms pinioned at her back. Her head was jerked up and a bearded man spat in her face. ‘Hurtum, witch?’

‘Leafum be!’ croaked Hecht, sounding far away.

‘Do her!’

‘Curm over. Askie fir it.’

She hadn’t thought this far ahead. Alone, bound, she stared at the tight circle of her murderous captors. ‘Take me to Beele,’ she heard herself say.

‘Do her now.’

‘Take me to Beele,’ she repeated, clinging to the words.

‘Shut it, unifor’!’ A glass shard was waved in her face.

‘I’ve a message for Beele,’ she persisted. She couldn’t see Hecht.

‘We an’t Beele’s, unifor,’ said the bearded man.

‘Tell to us.’ The shard pressed against her cheek.

‘Her ears only,’ she said, trying to control her shaking.

‘Beele nit speak for all.’

‘And what happens when she finds out you didn’t bring me to her?’

They argued fiercely among themselves, ignoring her for a moment. She breathed deeply, unsure what the hell she was doing. She looked over her shoulder but could see neither Hecht nor the barrier. 

A decision having been made she was pulled to her feet and led a hundred yards further back to a domed tent. The Scattered who’d dragged her there bunched around her while the bearded man went inside. After a couple of minutes he came out and left with his comrades, giving Tiss a filthy smile.

Inside, a dozen people were sitting in a circle round the tent sides. Tiss knew all of them by sight, and most by name. They led gangs of one sort or another, responsible for activities and crimes as varied as there were opportunities out here. She was forced down on to her knees in the dirt in the circle’s middle.

They stared at her expectantly. She swallowed. What was she going to say? But when had she ever known what to say in her dealings with the Scattered?

Beele shook her head. ‘It Talker,’ she told the assembly. She leaned forwards. ‘Words not save you now, Talker.’

‘I’m not the one needs saving,’ she replied as coolly as she could manage.

There was laughter. It was derisive but also a little forced.

‘Threats?’ said Beele. ‘Had bellyful of threats.’

‘Beele, what are you trying to achieve?’

‘We hurting,’ said Beele.

‘This’ll lead to more hurt.’

‘Pushed around too long,’ added a black-haired man named Reeve to nods and muttered agreement.

‘You can’t win this way.’

‘We losing your way,’ said Beele.

‘Hurting them in there,’ said a young tattooed woman. ‘Not get food. Guilds not get harvest.’

‘But it hurts you more,’ said Tiss. ‘And North and South gates remain open.’

‘Not have shut West gate,’ Beele protested.

‘The watch must protect the wall. It’s their duty. It’s who they are.’

‘Hate us,’ said Reeve.

‘They fear you.’

‘Why an’t you scared?’ asked Beele.

‘Should be,’ leered the tattooed woman.

‘I know the truth.’ She had their attention now. They watched her closely. ‘The wall doesn’t keep you from the city. It keeps the city from you.’

Beele laughed. ‘Wall’s for our protection?’

‘Sick joke,’ said Reeve.

‘The city wouldn’t suffer the camp without the wall,’ continued Tiss. ‘The wall allows the citizens to sleep secure. Security creates tolerance. They leave you be. They even send out food. That’s the wall’s gift to you.’

Rolled eyes, shaken heads, dismissive laughter.

‘That you message, Talker? We be thankful, go back to hutches?’

‘I’m not finished,’ she said slowly. ‘The city charges a price for its wall. Your young are sold a dream of citizenship. You let them be signed up and taken into the city as its slaves. How many guild wagons are out each day? How many Loop-susceptible are harvested? And you let this happen. All of you.’

‘Made citizens. Made free. In a year bring in families.’

‘And how long will they last in Foundry? Ten years? Five? Two? Loop gives Smyths the sight to operate the forge but it poisons their bodies and minds.’

They stared in incomprehension. They looked restless, bored with her.

‘I’ve seen it up close,’ she said desperately. ‘Look, you can’t win a fight with the watch. They’ll hurt you and everyone around you will suffer. But think. Without Foundry the city can’t manufacture its marvels or its weapons. It can’t trade. Foundry needs Smyths. The guilds need their harvests. Think!’

They dismissed her before she’d finished and she was led outside where she waited, watched closely. It seemed to her that there were fewer people about than when she’d gone in. Eventually the dozen emerged and vanished. Beele was last. She spoke to one of her followers. People were leaving, quickly.

‘I can help,’ said Tiss, standing.

Beele looked at her and shook her head.

‘I want to stay. I can’t go back.’

‘Talker got to go.’

‘Why?’

‘Talker stay, watch come.’

‘You didn’t take me, I came willingly.’

‘You theirs,’ she said. ‘Always watch to them.’

And she knew it was true. You couldn’t choose your side.

The tent was already being dismantled and by the time she’d walked back to the barricade it was completely unmanned. She stood looking over it at the line of uncertain watch and beyond that to the street schooners and restless iron draggons with their gleaming hides. Her side.

She crossed over and it was Sergeant Loass who cuffed her with a pair of clay binders. No one spoke to her as he led her back to the wall.

*

Shadows danced in the cell as the defective licht bulb flickered its icy light.

‘Please stop crying,’ she said tiredly.

‘Only wanted to protect you,’ said her father.

‘By having me work the wall?’

He wiped his eyes. ‘Couldn’t bear it if you was to follow your mam.’

‘Into Foundry? I’d never–’

‘It were my fault. If I’d cut an’ run . . . They’d not ‘ave . . . If I ‘adn’t been messed up so bad your mam’d not ‘ave gone back.’

‘She didn’t have to return to the forges. You’d made her a citizen.’

‘We’d no money. What choice ‘ad she? She were Scattered. Had no numbers or letters. All my fault.’

‘It’s different now and I’m never–’

‘Not so different! What choice you gonna have after two years in a cell? Who gonna give work to an ex-watch with a stretch? You’ve Scattered blood!’ He was weeping again. ‘I can’t watch Loop take you like it did her.’

She looked up at the fizzing, spitting bulb and remembered the girl shut up in the guild wagon and the swelling red spots on her cheek.

Like a constellation of angry stars.

(c) Colin Brush, 2016