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are in
    the Void Beneath.’

    THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 242

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    e don’t know exactly what happened,’ said Tom, perched awkwardly on a squat driftwood chair, periodically swigging from a second bottle of clear water. The first had gone in one long draught, as though he hadn’t drunk properly for days. He had removed the outer layers of his robes, exposing a knee-length sky-blue tunic that looked almost new, and taken off his leather boots. His toes were long and clenched at the sandy floor of the workshop with instinctively sensual motions.

    Shilly listened to the story of what had happened to Highson Sparre, Sal’s genetic father, with acid pooling deep in her stomach.

    ‘This is what we do know. Highson left the Haunted City one week ago. He chartered a ferry to the town of Gunida, on the coast. The captain of the ferry remembered Highson, even though he travelled under a false name. He brought a large amount of materiel with him, so the ferryman assumed he was a trader. In Gunida, he unloaded the boxes with the help of a local by the name of Larson Maiz. Maiz was known to be a member of the underground economy, a shady type who would do anything for money.’

    ‘Was?’ repeated Sal. ‘Would?’

    Shilly had noticed the ominous use of past tense, too.

    ‘Maiz was found dead the next morning. He’d been killed several hours earlier, after meeting your father.’

    Sal nodded, his face closed tight as it always was when he was most upset.

    ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Tell me why you think my father killed him.’

    Tom looked startled. ‘We don’t think that at all. That is, we don’t think Maiz’s death was deliberate. It was an accident, a side effect. He was unlucky, probably.’

    ‘Do you know where Highson is now?’

    Another shake of his head. ‘Those who know him best have looked, but we can’t find him anywhere. He appears to have vanished.’

    Vanished. The word dropped into Shilly like a stone down a well.

    ‘Just tell us what you know,’ she told Tom, catching Sal’s eye and making sure he understood. ‘You’ve come a long way to give us this information. We won’t interrupt any more. I promise.’

    Sal nodded. Tom looked relieved.

    ‘At the second hour of the morning, one week ago,’ he said, as though he had rehearsed it many times during his long trip to Fundelry, ‘Gunida was woken by the sound of the world tearing open.’

    * * * *

    Sal listened to Tom’s account with mounting alarm. A tear in the world was exactly what he had been feeling on the beach. Not an explosive event, as Tom described it, but as a growing feeling of wrongness. It seeped into him from the edges of his life and crept slowly to his heart.

    The residents of Gunida had staggered from their beds that night a week ago, terrified. The western sky was bright with light — a flickering, perfectly white glow so bright it cast shadows from chimneys, trees and outstretched hands. A few brave souls dared to follow it to its source, thinking it lay on the outskirts of town, but it was in fact much further. Barely had the intrepid group travelled two kilometres through dense scrub and low, anonymous hills when the light went out. A thunderclap rolled across the land, shaking trees, knocking off hats and sending dogs cowering under verandahs. A terrible silence fell in its wake.

    The night was utterly black. The stars and moon hid behind clouds. The group had little hope of finding the source of the explosion, but still they tried, spreading out and beating through the bushes, hoping to flush out more than the occasional startled rabbit.

    Only one more event marked the stillness of the night: a distant scream that could have come from a man’s or a woman’s throat. One witness described the sound as the most awful thing he had ever heard, a cry so full of fear it melted all resolve to find its cause. The group immediately turned back to Gunida, there to wait for dawn before recommencing the search.

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