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he reached for the glass of water by the chair. Tope stood in one corner of the room and Stade glared at him. He didn’t like the Verger seeing him in such a vulnerable state. Stade spat the bloody water into a bowl.
    He shivered. All that information, all those eyes. His skin crawled every time he entered that space, his teeth ground away at the inside of his cheeks. Old tech, it never really translated to these new situations. He’d caught flashes of other images, other spaces beyond the interface between him and the arachnids: a pyramid of skulls, a spherical particle accelerator, and his mother’s face.
    “David got away. The spiders are hard to control, always have been, too many of them, too many thoughts; they settled on the other one.”
    “Who has him then?”
    “Cadell.”
    Tope frowned. “Well, that is something of a challenge.” Stade spat out another mouthful of water, clearer this time. “Yes, chances are the Old Man will kill him before we ever find them.”
    “I’ll find them, and I’ll kill them both.”
    “You’ve Cuttle in your blood, Tope. But he’s an Old Man.”
    “I’ll find them and I’ll kill them both.” Tope left the room, shutting the door behind him.
    Stade laughed, he dug through the pockets of his coat for a cigar. “The thing is you really think you can, and you might just be right.”

Chapter 6
    Death, when it comes, is always unexpected. But a reawakening to something else, another shifting mental space, how peculiar that must be. When the churches speak of this, surely they do not mean the deathlessness of the Roil.
    The Death cults, the Birthers and the Renewal, their resurrection could not be thus.
    This was madness and hunger and dreams.
Deighton – Histories
    TATE
    “Stay where you are,” Sara said.
    “It’s me.” Margaret raised her hands above her head. “It’s me.”
    “How can I be sure?”
    “It’s me. What are you talking about?” She searched her friend’s face. Sara spat a little blood onto the ground. Her brow creased with some sort of decision and she lowered her gun. “Doesn’t matter now,” she said. “Dead bodies, coming back to life, I’ve seen them. You don’t want to stay here. You strike the heads from their shoulders. I die and you do that for me. Promise me now or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
    “I promise,” Margaret said.
    “There’s moths everywhere,” Sara’s eyes grew unfocussed, she clutched at her gun. “Even in their carriage.”
    “You saw them,” Margaret demanded. “My parents...”
    Sara shook her head. “Something happened. Whatever was driving your parents’ carriage wasn’t human.” She lowered her voice. “They’re dead, and if not, perhaps it’s better to consider them that way.”
    “I have to find them.”
    “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I don’t think you would like what you found. Margaret, believe me, what came through the Jut was no more your parents than the Quarg Hounds they guided to the wireway.”
    Sara rolled her head, towards the blazing heart of Tate. “But you can’t go back. There’s no way you can go back, there’s only death in the city for you now, for all of us.”
    “Get out of here, north, along Mechanism Highway. That’s an order. You might have a chance.”
    They let what they both knew was a lie stand there between them. Margaret shuddered, took great gulping breaths. Calm down , she thought. Slow your breathing down . She was her parents’ child. She was a Penn, and born of the city of Tate. Her breathing slowed, her mind stopped its flailing, she even managed a grin. “Well, you’re coming with me.” Finally, she had the comfort of her resolve.
    Sara stared up at her, silent. Dead.
    Margaret dragged the body to the side of the road, the trail of blood she left behind revealing the extent of Sara’s injuries. She brushed Sara’s face with her fingertips. The heat was already going from her flesh.
    She gripped her rime blade in her hands