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.Nothing moved.‘Get on with it,’ Nomoru hissed.Kaiku gave her a disdainful stare and stepped up onto the plank.It was thick and solid, wide enough so that she would have thought nothing of walking its length if it were not suspended above a bone-breaking drop.Taking careful steps, she crossed the alleyway and stepped past Lon onto the next rooftop, which was similarly flat.The others followed without mishap, and then Juto and Lon hefted the plank between them and went to the other side of the roof.‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Juto grunted as he passed.‘We’re great improvisers here in Poor Quarter.’In that way, they began to head round the hill on its westward side.Juto’s preparations were certainly thorough.Though most of the rooftops were not flat but made of patchy slate, he had mapped out a route that meant there was always one adjacent roof or balcony that they could use.It was circuitous and indirect, certainly, but caution was needed over speed, and his method did not require them to touch the ground for the greater portion of their journey.The buildings of the Poor Quarter were crowded close enough that it was often possible to jump the alleys without needing the plank, and they began to spot other people doing the same thing as them, passing by stealthily in the distance.As they went, Juto explained how this kind of travel had evolved in response to the curfew, and was used all throughout the Poor Quarter, which was the only place in Axekami where there were enough flat roofs to make it viable.‘It’s a sort of truce,’ he murmured, as they darted quietly across another dark expanse littered with derelict shacks.Men idled there, watching them as they passed.‘There’s people who live in these buildings who’d cut my throat in the daylight; but at night, they give us free passage, and our gang will do the same for them.We might be dirty bastards, but we’ll be gods-damned if we’ll let the Weavers imprison us in our own territory.’‘Could we not have got closer to the pall-pits during daylight, and gone from there?’ Phaeca asked.‘We would not have had so far to travel then.’Nomoru snorted a laugh.Juto’s lips twitched in response.‘You don’t know the Poor Quarter,’ he said.‘Believe me, that dump where you met us was as close as any of our gang could safely get.The pall-pits aren’t far; it’s just slow going.’And it got slower, for the Aberrant predators were appearing in numbers now.More and more often Juto froze as if in response to some signal, and they crept to the edge of their rooftop or balcony to see the dark, sleek shape of a shrilling loping through the street below, its soft pigeon-warble drifting up through the night to them.Eventually Kaiku realised that the clicks and taps that she had thought were the sounds of boards settling in the night were being made by the men and women who lounged on the rooftops: they were lookouts, communicating in code, warning each other when Aberrants were nearby.She found herself marvelling that such a disparate group of antagonists could be so united in purpose against a greater enemy.It was like the battle for the Fold, when the people of the Xarana Fault had joined against the Aberrant army.Perhaps Juto was wrong; perhaps there was hope for an uprising, if the folk of the Poor Quarter were willing to put aside their differences and resist their new despots.Eventually they came to the great thoroughfare that delineated the western edge of the Poor Quarter.They rested on the rooftop, overlooking the wide street, a river of deep shadow separating them from the more affluent districts on the other side.‘That was the easy part,’ said Juto, hunkering down close to them.‘From here on in we have to go through the streets.We have to be fast, and quiet; and don’t fire your rifles unless you have absolutely no other choice.Understand?’‘Is that it over there?’ Phaeca asked, looking west to where an infernal red glow leaked into the sky, underlighting plumes of slowly roiling smog.‘That’s it,’ Juto said.‘We’re close.But it only takes one Aberrant to see us, and it’s over
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