The Broken Harvest was holed up in a crumbling dormitory, in the wretched upper levels of the same city where Thrennikos lived in such luxury. It was a sprawling, heavily rad-shielded eyesore of a building, erected for the first constructor crews back Before. The blocks around it were slums, filled with those who couldn’t afford anywhere else. No hulking mercenaries patrolled these streets, and a thousand little gangs and fraternities formed and died there nightly. The Harvest itself was no major player on Tarekuma as far as Kris could tell. It was based within the Hegemony, a thorn in the shelly ass of the Essiel. Probably this ‘Aklu’ was not the actual leader of the gang – or sect or suicide cult or whatever they actually were. Aklu might just be their word for a branch manager. But even if Tarekuma hosted only a fraction of their power, she soon realized that still meant something on these streets.
When she and Rollo left their taxi shuttle, one of this Aklu’s people had turned up to meet them. She wore an unimpressive old tunic, bulked out with some sort of armour coating, but Kris stiffened when she looked closer. The woman’s armour was slashed down the centre of her back, revealing the articulated lobster thing rooted to her spine. Another Tothiat, like the murderous son of a bitch who’d stolen their ship. And weren’t they supposed to be rare? And this Tothiat carried an actual standard, a pole with an honest-to-god flag hanging from it. It boasted a crooked black sunburst on grey or else it was a figure with many arms poised in some manner of dance. Whatever its meaning, people crossed the street or dived into alleys when they saw that flag coming. This might just be the Broken Harvest’s fingertip, here on Tarekuma, but these streets were under the Society’s shadow.
Their guide was Heremon, she said, and Kris recalled that their hijacker, of unfond memory, had been Mesmon. There was no other family resemblance beyond the lobster. Still doesn’t have to get weird, she thought, as Heremon led them to that hideous concrete eyesore. Then they were inside, past a dozen humans and a couple of Hanni crowding out the atrium. They descended rough steps, still uneven and whorled where they’d been inexpertly printed, and came out into a big chamber, ranks of pillars propping up the ceiling. One wall was lined with desks of humans and Hanni at work, probably doing nothing more sinister than double-entry bookkeeping. Another wall was lined with armed guards: humans, and Castigar moulted into oddly proportioned humanoid bodies. At the far end of the room, however . . .
Kris blinked. It had got weird. At her side, Rollo swore softly.
Heremon stepped forward and her voice rang from the bare concrete walls, ‘The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook.’
There were actually two . . . entities coming forward. One was a Hiver frame like no other Kris had ever seen. Their torso was open as a birdcage, revealing the seething knot of biomechanical roaches that made up their composite being. Their head was a golden human mask, set into a contemptuous laughing expression. They walked on long digitigrade legs like a bird, waving six slender arms. The whole looked like a surrealist’s take on an ancient god. None of this was what had caught Kris and Rollo’s attention.
Behind the Hiver was The Unspeakable Aklu, without a doubt. It was gliding forwards on a great mechanized couch that curved in silvery wings either side of its occupant, held a half-metre off the floor by its own a-grav engine. Aklu was one of the Essiel – god-rulers of the Hegemonic cultists, lords of the Hegemony itself. And, apparently, a gangster.
Kris remembered the august Essiel diplomat sent to Huei-Cavor. It had possessed a string of titles too: revered this and wonderful that. They were human labels, she knew, but they were supposed to reflect some deep Essiel truths. So what did it mean for an Essiel to be Unspeakable, a Razor and a Hook?
Aklu was primarily shell, the two curved halves hinged at the base and overlapping for most of their three-metre height. They divided towards the top, cupping the motile parts of the creature. Its hard exterior seemed to be inscribed with complex, geometric runes, picked out in what looked like channels of mercury, constantly flowing in defiance of any native gravity A wrinkled holdfast projected from its base to wind around the couch’s projections and hold the creature in place. From the top of the shell a multitude of thin arms opened like a fan, bristling with hairs and pincers. Three eyes, like red pearls, moved at the end of jointed stalks, viewing Aklu’s visitors from all sides.
Kris was very afraid now and not entirely sure why. If it was a gangster, and the Broken Harvest a gang, this should be like any other negotiation. Except she’d never dealt with an Essiel before. Nobody she knew had. Human representatives of the Hegemony like Sathiel were the closest anybody ever came. Essiel were not supposed to be squatting in concrete bunkers, surrounded by desperados.