Читать книгу City of Dust: Completely gripping YA dystopian fiction packed with edge of your seat suspense - Michelle Kenney - Страница 14

The grey air was oppressive in this part of town, the memory of the Great War clinging to the buildings like a shroud. We picked our way down the old road, avoiding the shelled buildings which felt like tombs after nearly two hundred years of desolation. Their scale could only mean we’d arrived in the city centre and we walked soberly, the way we might through Arafel’s graveyard. And although there were no visible human remains here, I could feel anguished faces staring out of every crumbling window and burned-out metal box Grandpa used to call cars and lorries.

Never before had I been quite so aware of the erasing effect of the Great War. A hundred thousand people had once lived in the bustling city of Exeter, and now it seemed even the scurrying ants avoided this place.

‘We haven’t come across any large life whatsoever, let alone the Prolet insurgents,’ Max muttered, voicing my thoughts.

I threw a glance at the sky, where a silent flock of vultures shadowed our progress.

‘Aside from baldies anonymous of course,’ he conceded with a quick grin.

I grinned back, grateful for our new ease, and immediately noticed the new bronze-edged angular weapon hanging over Max’s right shoulder.

I nodded. ‘What’s that?’

‘This old thing?’ he repeated airily. ‘Oh, just something I picked up back there.’

‘Back there, where?’

‘Er … in the museum,’ he muttered, faint colour creeping up his neck.

‘Max Thorn!’ I exclaimed, trying to prevent a laugh from escaping. ‘What on earth can a respected Arafel hunter pick up at a wreck of a museum that could possibly be of use in the Dead City?’

‘It’s just a keepsake – nothing to get excited about.’ He flushed, shifting the stolen item further down his back.

I made a grab for it.

‘OK, OK, it’s a cheiroballistra,’ he admitted, sidestepping deftly.

‘A cheiro-what? What in the name of Arafel is one of those?’ I asked.

‘A cheiroballistra. Y’know, a … Roman … crossbow,’ he answered as though it was the most natural item in the world to loot.

‘You stole a Roman crossbow from the museum?’ I repeated, this time unable to keep from laughing.

‘No! Well, not exactly … This has got to be a reproduction. A real one definitely wouldn’t be worth stealing! But this one is made of some other hard-wearing material I can’t really identify and … Look, it’s not like anyone was using it, or looking at it even!’ he defended. ‘I just thought it might come in useful, and, well, I’ve always wanted one.’

‘And now we get to the truth!’

‘Cool!’ Eli signed. ‘Get me one?’

Max shook his head teasingly as I smiled, aware it was the first time the three of us had shared a joke in ages. And maybe he was right. Its addition could hardly hurt, and besides which, it looked as though the ice between Max and I had finally thawed, which was worth all the looted crossbows in the world.

‘Just so long as your pockets aren’t stuffed with little tin soldiers too!’ I winked.

We walked for a while in an easier silence, our footsteps interspersed by the groaning breeze. Eli had dropped a little way behind to observe the vultures, or so he said.

‘Do you think there’s any chance Aelia could have got it wrong? About the Prolet insurgents hiding out here?’ Max asked after a few minutes. ‘I’ve seen no fresh water, let alone anything a group of sixty people could survive on for more than a day or two.’

‘Not sure.’ I glanced around, unable to deny the truth of what he was saying. The buildings felt as dead as the people who’d once lived in them.

And Aelia. What was her real motivation for stealing the Book? I recalled the glint in her eye when she talked about the Voynich, how I’d tried to navigate the maze of conversation about the Book of Arafel, without revealing the whole of Grandpa’s precious secret. And finally, there was August. And his stolen kiss.

I inhaled softly, trying to order my wayward thoughts.

I’d told Aelia about the cipher, even drawn it out for her, because I needed her specialist symbolic knowledge. And I knew the cipher was useless without the keyword. I also told her Thomas’s original research was destroyed. But I was obviously the worst actress in the world because she guessed it still existed, as well as where it was most likely to be hidden. Had she worked out the keyword already? She had a much better understanding of Latin and genetics than anyone I’d met before.

And finally, there was the question that spun harder than all the rest: how long did I have before she traded the Book for the Prolets? Or August? Or both? If any of them were still alive.

‘Look, just because Aelia drops into Arafel and steals the one thing she knows will create a reaction, doesn’t mean anything’s changed between us, OK?’ Max offered a little roughly. ‘And that goes for arguments too. It doesn’t change the fundamentals … At least not for me.’

He smiled at me and I nodded, painfully aware he was a much better human being than I could ever be. Then the full force of his words hit home. I grabbed his forearm.

The one thing she knows will create a reaction.

‘Actually, I don’t think Aelia has ever been wrong about much. Max, what if she didn’t steal the Book of Arafel to trade with Cassius, but as an act of deliberate provocation?’

He looked down at me in confusion.

‘A deliberate act of provocation? To who? To what end?’

A sudden chill, like winter ivy, coiled around my core. August had forbidden Aelia to use me as proof of an outside world, but now he was gone, and she was desperate to mobilize her threatened Prolet world. Perhaps Aelia wasn’t thinking of negotiation at all. Perhaps she needed a spark to start her Prolet revolution.

I stared up into Max’s darkening scowl. He suspected it too, I could tell.

‘To draw me,’ I whispered, as a heavy thud filled the silent night.

***

I turned as though in slow motion. The silhouetted road was empty. My breath was patchy and jagged. Eli had completely disappeared.

‘No!’ I gasped, my voice sounding oddly disembodied.

I forced my legs into a sprint back to the place I’d last seen him and whirled around, real panic clawing up my throat.