Darkly Human by Laura Anne Gilman

Author:Laura Anne Gilman [Gilman, Laura Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2016-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

“Keep going.”

Dax was sweating now, bad. You didn’t go on the roofs. Bad as it was in the streets, bad as it was in the tunnels, and it was hell bad down there, with the wax always looking for you, the King downbelow claiming his tithe, the sky was worse.

He made it to the top of the ladder, his horn slung across his front to protect it, and swung his good leg cautiously over the edge. His shoe crunched against gravel, the rooftop flat and dry. Dax put more weight down, pretty maybe sure now he wouldn’t slip-side right off the rooftop, at least. He looked around, quick-like: a square of gravel glimmering faint and gray, and a figure waiting at the far end, the presence making Dax want to back down the stairs twice as fast as he’d come up, except the golem was climbing behind him, so that wasn’t no real option. He turned, looked the other way at the backdrop a thousand more rooftops, some flat, some peaked, some covered in shadows, while others shimmered with lights that made Dax queasy to look at.

So he looked up, instead.

Downbelow, it was all smooth and grey. Streetside, it was all electric lights that didn’t show worth a damn, and shadows that did far worse.

Dax had a vague memory of stars, a moon cool white bright, but it didn’t particularly surprise him no cool white bright hung over Mad Town. Thick and grey above as it was below, the fairylights on other roofs making it worse instead of better.

The golem hauled itself over the ladder-top, its skin worse for the climb. A long, bloodless tear crossed its square face, and another scored its bare arm. It showed no sign of noticing, as it turned to face Dax again.

“You’re stalling.”

A muscle in Dax’s cheek jumped, and the fingers of his left hand twitched, but the golem was right.

They walked across the rooftop, toward the waiting figure. Dax waited for something to flicker in the corner of his eye, some swooping nightmare or pack of paperboys running the night news. But this corner of Mad City stayed cool and quiet.

Quiet, when it should be chaos? Rooftop didn’t even pretend to lawfulness. Things that were out of tune were things to be wary of.

The figure was seated – slumped – in a throne-like chair, darkly-glinting metal in turns and spokes shoved into a shape you could almost sit comfortable in. But the figure in the chair was not comfortable. He shifted, and Dax took a step back, seeing what the shadows had obscured:

The figure was impaled in the chair, spokes through both thighs, and another in his chest.

“I don’t know you,” Dax said.

The major Nightmares came clear pretty soon after you landed, the ones with real power, the ones who could make hell seem like a better option. You learned and you walked low, and you doffed your cap and kept your tongue still when one of them was around. Lesser nightmares, the

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