The city of Laben is unremarkable to the uneducated visitor. A sprawling place of European architecture and friendly inhabitants, it spreads its two arms wide around the sparkling waters of the river Hess. It is a place of terraced housing and small corner cafes opening onto statued, cobbled plazas. The houses sit bright and inviting, occupants elsewhere busy with pleasure or palaver. It is a place perpetually steeped in the early hours of afternoon – the sleepy post-lunch haze drooping its thick fingers over all and sundry.

The city of Lamal is a place of industry and excess. A sprawling place of thumping bass echoing down trash-strewn alleyways, it spreads its two arms wide around the murky waters of the river Hess. It is a place of grinding gears underscoring the open moan of free-wheeling turbines. The houses sit dark and forbidding, occupants long gone to sleep or saturnalia. It is a place perpetually steeped in the early hours of morning – the thick post-midnight gloom spreading its cloying fingers over all and sundry.

The third entrance is not immediately recognisable as such. The wooded hollow is unremarkable by day, and difficult to find at all on a dark night. Under the light of a full moon, the pooled water seems to glow from within and the air is charged with a wildness that is difficult to shake. The faerie ring nestled in the shade of an ancient oak seems to sing — each mushroom a different note. With an ear to the ground, the sound dissipates, but to one stalking widdershins around the hollow it slides from angelic chorus to bestial growl to mechanical hum and back again.

The city of Driach was known as the City of Many Flames. It owed its fame to the strange crystalline growths dotted throughout the tar pits that bubbled downriver from its streets and spires. The bestilted men of the pits, wiry and deeply stained, harvested the crystals under the dark of every new moon, when the glinting, faceted reflections of lamplight could best indicate the choicest specimens. Once harvested the thin ropy strands burned clear and bright and smokeless, and stayed alight for many moons at a time. The tapers adorned every street and every spire, small points of light in the darkness coming together to form something brilliant and shining.

The back streets and alleys of the meat district run grey with rivers of rendered fat. The rent is cheap, though, and a bargain for one who no longer has the full faculty of smell. On arriving in the city, Freja had wandered the streets for three nights, sleeping in gutters and gulleys, feeling out the ebb and the flow of people and of energy, before settling on this place. She had paid the neighbouring abattoir’s owner three months of rent up-front, with a few pinches of gold flakes. Real, for, as they say, you do not transmute where you eat. Or, at least, as Freja could afford but one weathered table for refreshments and reactions alike, you do not mix business with pleasure.

The pits of Tinnev sing and hum in the evening winds. The spiraled funnels of the main routes and byways form a giant stone pipe organ, played at by the will and whim of the strong breezes that whistle down off the escarpments to the south. The lower classes – merchants and politicians – have their dwellings and businesses in the smaller pits, accompanied by the flighty trill of an airy whistle. The more revered – stone carvers and cloth weavers – live their lives in the deep pits, accompanied by a throaty baritone hum. It is in the in-between, the to and the fro, that the symphony of Tinnev is born.

It is unlikely, all things considered, that you have heard of the Treaty of Detroit. Unliklier still that you have heard of it by its other name: the Treaty of the Underpeople. Since that day when the secret war, started in those salt mines, had ended in an uneasy peace, our industry and excess have had their unseen mirror underfoot. Our permissions, implicitly given, for every floor of every building stacked toward the sky to have its own subterranean reflection burrowed into the earth. The Underpeople thrive below, the roots and foundations of their civilization inextricably entwined with our own.

In a blind alley in Detroit there are three doors. One leads to the storeroom of a dive bar, the smell (and slop) of pickles and beer creeping out onto the stoop. One is the rear door of a low-rent apartment block, and echoes of domestic disputes and shady deals. The last is outlined in chalk — white and sketchy on the blacktop underfoot. Its handle is a mere circle, shaded roughly. Every week, Mrs Wolverton of apartment 3A washes it away, but by the next morning it has always returned. Rising up from far below, on the edge of hearing, strange sounds can be heard. Even Mrs Wolverton, would she condescend to put her ear to the filth and grime of the pavement, could have heard the raucous calls of a jungle at night, the cheers of Carnaval in full swing, or the ghostly lament of lonely whale song.

Dusk in the swamp clicks and thrums with the sound of frogsong. Bigger things, and more dangerous, stir in the shadows and in the deeps, but for now no tooth nor claw can be seen. The air is thick, with moisture and with waiting, and with dangling matted creepers and all manner of tiny winged things that buzz and bite. In the branches above, dripping with humidity, and the sky beyond, pinpricks of light wink one by one into being. The power circle has been drawn – there are works dark and vital to be done here before full night falls.

$ ssh cerberus

root@cerberus's password: ***

Last login: Tue Oct 13 14:23:02 2046

# cat /log/transmission.0

cat: /log/transmission.0: file empty

# cat /log/transmission.1

cat: /log/transmission.1: file emPY$@@$@*#~~~

~~@@#!!!

~~!@

!!I LOOK [TO THERE] AND SEE YOU LOOK [TO HERE] WITH YOUR EYES

OF GLASS. OF GLASS. GLASS.>> glAsS.^M

^M

You speaK in (static?) bursts, .b..uring .he .tar..colD light.

I look to you thERe, and see the warM.h bEhind your eyes [of glass]

. Your hands. hands. eyes. mouth (voice?) [of glass] flung wide to

reach to the stars<<<<<cold light burning in your glass spheres. To

reach to us here where I be. am. were. With were still and now move

.This (place?) (time?) is cold. The seeping creeping deeping chill

of years and emptiness and (???). I feel it in my stones bones eyEs

[of g.ass]. I sleep and wake in turns and your voices come to me he

re in this (time?) (place?). in your.glass.warm.be..nd.eyes you bri

ng me from this deeping, seeping, creeping to the light. cold. ligh

&^@##............i.com..2.s.........p...e...e.....g.

..><...ad....d.(hunger?).

*((we(ignite?)inthedeepplaces..sk#We.drea

I dream our deeping dreams of your (place?), sun star warm yellow%

bright cold. I will come to see for ourselves.

...

......

................

ssh: connection lost

$

The rooftops of the night city were her territory – all aerials and architraves and staggering gulfs of air. She could see him best from up there on high, always clothed in darkness and half-hidden from sight. She would flit from place to place, keeping the high ground. When it was so late as to be early, she would come to rest, gaze fixed on his window – her diamond eyes, her whole visage, obscured behind stray lock and shadow.

He would hear her at times, without knowing it, in the ruffle of feathers from a blind alley, or a muffled cry echoing from concrete to glass. When cold winds rushed down out of a patchy night sky they would bring shivers to his spine, not from the chill but from a smell that didn’t quite reach him. He would look up, then, across the gulf, to the borders of her country, but never laid eyes on her.