Kzine Issue 18

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  He frowned, brow furrowed. “I don’t know you.”

  The door shut in Cedric’s face.

  “Wait,” Cedric called. He peeked through a gap in the boards.

  The man appeared from around a corner in a dark hallway. The hovel was deceptively spacious. “I told you, I don’t know you. I don’t take deliveries from people I don’t know.”

  “I’m not here with deliveries.”

  “Even worse. Go away.”

  “I’m here to volunteer.”

  The man froze. He took off one glove and ran his hand through thinning, gray hair. “Volunteer for what?”

  “I need work done.”

  The man came closer but didn’t open the door. He watched Cedric through the gap. “Who told you I work here?”

  “Renoir of the Abbey,” he said. “I’m the new lieutenant.”

  “Hm.” The man eyed him a moment longer, then moved out of view. The door swung open. “Come in.”

  Cedric entered and closed the door behind him. He followed the man back through a winding maze of dark hallways. Eventually they spilled out in the middle of a workshop. The ground was dry, something Cedric had thought impossible in the slums, and lamps hung from the ceiling. They probably burned more gas in an hour than he could buy with a month’s cut from the Abbey.

  A few wooden worktables stood in a triangle in the middle of the room, next to a rack of shining surgeon’s tools. The man hoisted himself up to sit on one of the waist-high tables.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, taking in the shock on Cedric’s face.

  “I’m just…” The place was too clean. It didn’t match word on the street. “You are a modder, aren’t you?”

  “A modder? I am the modder. Now what do you want? Because you and I might have very different understandings of ‘work.’ If you just want the best surgeon in the city to burn the warts off your prick, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “No.” Cedric blinked, banishing that image from his mind. “No. I mean real work.”

  “How much can you pay?”

  “Pay? I’m volunteering. That’s what I can pay. You modders fall all over yourselves for live bodies.”

  The man frowned and dropped down off the table. “Look, I work in this dump because the governor will hang me if he finds me, that’s true enough, but I don’t just sit here diddling myself until a drunk stumbles in. I have suppliers. I don’t need you, and you clearly need me, so you better find some scratch fast.”

  Cedric blanked. He needed more information. “How many live bodies do you get a year?”

  The man sighed and crossed his arms. He clearly regretted letting Cedric inside. “Half-a-dozen.”

  “I can get you more than that. At least ten.”

  “Ten breathers. Sure. They need to be unregistered. I can’t have police poking around my workshop.”

  “They will be. Unregistered, all street born.”

  The man straightened up. “Really. Ten.”

  “Ten. Maybe eleven.”

  “Where?”

  “High Judge’s Council,” Cedric said. “Tomorrow.”

  “No way.”

  “I have connections. I told you, I’m the new Renoir.”

  The doctor went quiet for a few minutes. He walked around to the opposite side of the table and leaned on it, wood creaking in the silence.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s talk. What do you want moved?”

  “I don’t want anything moved,” Cedric said. “I want additions.”

  “Hm.” The man drummed his fingers on the table. “That’s not something I’ve done before… Have a seat.”

  * * *

  Two nights later Cedric arrived at the Abbey just before midnight. He made his way to Abbess’ chamber, where he found Mercedes already waiting. Her eyes shot wide open at the sight of him.

  “Old crimson gods,” she said. “What have you been doing, Cedric?”

  Cedric felt worse than he looked, he could guarantee it.

  “Grace’s wake.”

  “For two days? Two days, Cedric? The conclave’s tonight, you sod.”

  “I’ll be fine.” He slumped into a chair along the far wall. He wore a dark gray duster over his shoulders, concealing a brace of four six-shooters rigged under his ribs. “Where’s Abbess?”

  “Speaking with reconnaissance. Conclaves are tradition, but she’s not one to misstep.”

  Abbess had already misstepped.

  “Mercedes,” he said. “Was she lying to me?”

  She glanced at the door, shut tight. Abbess had it soundproofed, as Mercedes was well-aware. “What are you talking about?”

  “Could she have saved Grace?”

  “Renoir was… he had a lot of pull, Cedric. More than I’ll ever have, and I know what the rumors say about me. Renoir really could have started his own Family, and he’d been with Abbess since the beginning. She knew he was erratic, but she controlled it.”

  “Then why didn’t she control it when I came to her and asked her to get Grace out of there?”

  “I don’t know. It was a bad situation all around, no way out. Are you still drunk?”

  He blinked as a spasm of pain washed over his abdomen. “No. I’m just…”

  “Angry?”

  “Sad.”

  Mercedes didn’t say anything more.

  At midnight Abbess entered and motioned for them to follow her. Outside, in the dark of a new moon, a dozen Abbey brothers and sisters waited. They walked through the empty streets, guided by skyline scouts toward the heart of the city. Slowly their guard melted away in twos and threes until it was just Cedric, Mercedes, and Abbess standing outside the High Judge’s Council Hall. They waited at the bottom of a wide, stone staircase. Cedric fought to calm the tendril of fear that snaked its way up from his gut. Usually the Families never set foot inside Judicial Ward boundaries.

  After a few moments a figure emerged from the shadows at the top of the stairs, standing beneath the great stone elephants on either side of the entrance. He waved them up, and as they ascended Cedric went slack jawed. He didn’t know the man’s name, but he’d seen him often enough—a police veteran who’d been busting Abbey jobs for years. A few of them had even been Cedric’s.

  The man nodded to Abbess, then smiled coldly at Cedric. He gave him a smack on the shoulder. “Cedric. Good to see you.” Cedric’s jaw tensed as pain flared like hellfire in his back and side. Tears sprung to his eyes.

  “Relax,” Mercedes whispered harshly in his ear. “This is the least of the uncomfortable secrets you’ll learn after tonight. I know you’re in a bad place, but suck it up.”

  Cedric nodded and bit down on his cheek. They followed Abbess through the cavernous Justice Hall and up to the towering doors of the High Judge’s Council. The doors were shut, and they entered through a much smaller side door concealed behind a wall curtain.

  Inside the council room, rows of curved benches took up most of the space. Four low-burning gaslights gave just enough illumination to see the Pedestal of the Accused in front of the High Judge’s podium, and it was on the pedestal that Milk Eyes waited. He stood flanked by Garrett and another, smaller man. In the silence a door creaked, and three more figures entered through another small side door. The Duke, who was actually Duke Chesloch’s wife. She was tall and fair, with a flat, expressionless face. Cedric had never seen her in person.

  “It’s been some time since I last held a conclave,” Milk Eyes said. His deep voice rolled through the room like distant thunder.

  “I called the last one,” The Duke replied. “Stop acting like you lead us around by the nose.”

  Milk Eyes nodded. “Fair point, Duchess.”

  The Duke’s lip curled. Calling her anything close to her real name was a grave insult.

  “Yet I am the one who called this conclave,” Milk Eyes continued, “and I’m sure you would like to know why.”

  “We know why.” The Duke exchanged a glance with Abbess and smirked.

&
nbsp; “Abbess of Blame and I are kicking you all up and down the shipyards. How many freighters call to port for you now, compared to last year? How much territory have you lost in just the last six months?”

  Milk Eyes clasped his hands behind him. “Yes. You have a point, although that is tangential. There is another, primary reason for this gathering.”

  “Which is?”

  Cedric shifted, inched closer to Abbess. “Are you sure you couldn’t have saved Grace?” he whispered.

  She glanced at him, eyes wide and stark against her dark features. No lieutenant would show such disrespect by speaking at a conclave, and Cedric was no idiot. He could see it on her face—Abbess knew things were about to crash and burn.

  Milk Eyes’ teeth flashed in the darkness. “Putting you in the ground.”

  Cedric shrugged his duster off, drew his first two six-shooters, and put a bullet through Abbess’ spine. She collapsed with a slight, breathy gasp, and Cedric wheeled toward Mercedes, turning his back to The Duke. He prayed she was occupied with Milk Eyes. Mercedes already had her gun on him.

  “You said it earlier,” Cedric shouted, over the hail of gunfire behind him. “A bad situation all around. No way out for me, Mercedes. But there is for you. Leave-”

  Her bullet tore through him. He gasped, choked, felt his heart convulse and stop. He collapsed, reeling from the pain, and put a bullet through Mercedes’ leg. She pitched forward, and Cedric pistol-whipped her at the base of the skull. She blacked out without a word—Mercedes always had let her gun do the talking.

  Cedric stuffed a handkerchief into the bloody hole in his chest and staggered to his feet. The Duke was dead, draped over the back of a bench, and her remaining lieutenant took one of Garrett’s bullets through the eye.

  The echoing gunfire died, and Cedric’s ears rang. His vision swam. His side burned. Unnatural heartbeats pounded through his skull in time with the blood dripping to the floor.

  “Well done, Cedric,” Milk Eyes said. “We can leave. This will be cleaned up by morning.”

  “No.” Cedric heaved, his breath coming in shallow gasps. He was losing too much blood.

  “No?”

  Cedric raised his guns and fired indiscriminately. Milk Eyes’ lieutenants split, and the hulking man ducked swiftly. Cedric dove to the ground between two bench rows and nearly threw up as a fractal of pain lanced up his side.

  “I told you!” Garrett shouted. “I told you months ago this would happen!”

  “Yes, you told me,” Milk Eyes said, “now do your job.”

  Cedric glanced below the benches, saw nothing, and slowly peered over the top. Garrett peered back, not showing enough to shoot at. He couldn’t see the other lieutenant or Milk Eyes.

  “There’s three of us,” Garrett said. “Just give up. I’ll kill you quick.”

  Cedric stood, pistols at his sides. Garrett popped up, muzzle flash, and a second bullet punched through the same spot as Mercedes’. Cedric collapsed onto the bench behind him. He dropped his pistols, spent from their early wild fire.

  Garrett gaped at him from across the room. “Never thought I’d see the day that line actually worked.”

  Cedric slipped his third pistol from its holster. He surged to his feet, snapped it up, and fired twice. A bullet took Garrett in the gut, sent him tumbling over the bench behind him.

  Cedric dropped to his knees and crawled across the floor as quickly as he could. Garrett’s panicked cursing covered Cedric’s grunts of pain.

  Milk Eyes spoke over his lieutenant, laughing. “Did you go to a body modder? Where’s your heart, now? Did you have him shove it up your ass, Cedric?”

  Cedric laughed, and it quickly turned into a groan. “My heart’s right where it’s always been. Mercedes shot it out like a good abbey sister.”

  Milk Eyes stopped laughing. He was a clever man, and it wouldn’t take him long to figure out what Cedric had done.

  “You always were a slick bastard, Cedric. Wish I’d been able to recruit you before Abbess did. What did they remove to make room for your second heart? Liver? Kidney?”

  “All three.”

  Cedric rolled out into the main aisle and charged. Bullets tore into him from two directions and dropped him to the cold marble floor. He crawled forward, and out of the corner of his eye saw the second lieutenant creeping up for a kill shot.

  Cedric shot the man’s foot and when he fell pumped the last three bullets into him. He drew his last pistol. One of the grotesque, pulsing masses in his lower back had gone still. Two left.

  “You’re a freak now, you know.” Milk Eyes sounded like he was next to Garrett. Probably taking the man’s pistol. “Straight to damnation with you, no judgment.”

  “You think I care about that?” Cedric said. “You have no idea what you took from me, how bad I wanted to save Grace for once in my life.”

  No answer came, and then like a specter of the dead Milk Eyes appeared in the air, vaulting over four rows of benches. His pistol flashed, and then he was on top of Cedric, pummeling him with fists and gun metal.

  “You little gutter shit,” he seethed. “You think you can use my own tricks against me? I’ve been body modding since before you were born. You think I stopped at these eyes? You think I’ve only got one heart?”

  Cedric’s head snapped back, knocked senseless with a blow to the temple.

  “Doesn’t matter how many hearts you have if your brains are all over the floor.”

  Cedric’s vision cleared in time to look down the barrel of a pistol, and then a deafening roar shook the room. The pistol dropped away, and where Milk Eyes’ face had been was only a pulpy exit wound.

  Cedric rolled to the side as the man’s massive body collapsed in a heap. He struggled to his feet and limped toward the exit.

  “Mercedes?” he called.

  Not Mercedes. Abbess clung to the back of a bench with one hand, Mercedes’ pistol in the other. Cedric brought up his own, but neither of them fired. Only ragged breathing filled the chamber and a steady drip-drip-drip from Cedric.

  “Did you really go to a body modder?” Abbess couldn’t keep the disgust out of her voice.

  “Yeah.”

  She recoiled and made a warding sign across her forehead. There was a good reason they called her Abbess. “All this for Grace?”

  “I killed Renoir for Grace. This was for me.”

  Abbess’ expression hardened, but her finger stayed loose on the trigger. “How did you kill Renoir?”

  Cedric dropped his gun. It didn’t matter anymore. “Milk Eyes arranged it.” Cedric grimaced and lowered himself onto the nearest bench. He slumped, facing away from Abbess, speaking into the darkness. “But I came to you first. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “And I’ll ask you again—was there really no way you could have saved her?”

  The sound of a pistol falling to the floor. A body collapsing onto stone. Abbess’ voice, faint and breathy, whispering through the room. “Of course there was a way. It just wasn’t worth it.”

  Finally. Cedric’s mind fogged, and his gaze drifted up. He focused on the weights and measures over the judge’s seat, and then he faded. Thought fled from him like smoke through grasping fingers, and in the end his mind did not turn to Grace, or Mercedes, but the mod doctor. The man would be disappointed. Cedric had promised him ten live bodies. But it wasn’t his problem anymore.

  Nothing was.

  SEWER STREET

  by Mark Rookyard

  Seventh Day, Third Circle

  This is my first entry. Well, really it’s my second entry, but Father read what I wrote the first time and tore the page out and threw it into the water. It floated there, staining brown and dirty before it sank into the darkness. Precious paper gone to waste. I thought I was in trouble at first. I looked at Father, trying not to cower, but he was smiling at me. His eyes looked sad but he smiled, and then he was gone into the darkness for a moment, the candles flickering as he passed.

  W
hen Father came back, he had something wrapped in a ragged cloth. ‘This is very precious,’ he said. It was a book. Not just any book, Father said. A dictionary. I’d never heard the word before, but Father said it was a book about words. Now, if I don’t know how to spell a word, I have to look in this dictionary. Dictionary. That’s a hard word to spell, too.

  I have to look after this dictionary, Father says. He showed me some faded writing in the book, it was slanted and full of loops. ‘That’s your mother’s name, son,’ he said. ‘That’s her writing.’

  He put his hand on my shoulder, he never does that, and he told me to look after the book as though it was the last fish that I was ever going to have. I wrapped it in the cloth and hid it behind a loose brick in the wall. I’ll only take it out when I write in this book. I have to keep it dry, too, Father says.

  It’s hard to keep things dry here, the brown water gets everywhere and things are always sludgy.

  Tenth Day, Third Circle

  Father was very pleased with my writing after he gave me the dictionary. I’d spelled precious correctly, and dictionary, and wrapped, and a whole bunch of other words too. He patted me on the head and smiled. His smiles look sad these days. He used to have great big-toothed smiles.

  He’s been arguing more with Joe lately, though. Joe is the leader down here. I don’t know why, or who chose him, or if he chose himself to be the leader. He always has the first choice of the females, and he always chooses who goes upstairs. I wonder if that’s why Father has been arguing with Joe lately. I hear my name a lot when they fight. I just asked him, he’s here with me cleaning the sludge from his boots. He said he’s always argued with Joe and it doesn’t concern me.

  Joe was one of the first of us. His skin is thick and grey, hard. His eyes are darker than any of ours, almost black. Joe remembers better than any of us what life was like upstairs before the Ship came. He doesn’t tell us many stories though. Father is the one for stories. He tells us what life was like before the Ship came.

  I just asked him how old he was when the Ship came from the sky. He said six summers. I wonder what a summer is.

  Sixteenth Day, Third Circle

  Father says not to read my dictionary or write in my book when the others are about. None of them can read or write, he says, and they might get jealous if they saw me. He says they might steal the precious books. People get jealous when they can’t do something right, he says. Especially us living down here in the dark away from the sun, we hate those who live upstairs and we steal from them. They surrendered to the Wizards from the Ship and we hate them for it, but we are jealous, too, we wished we were there with them in the sun.