Red Litten World

by Alexander, K. M.

  Madam Bonheur had been the easiest, though. She seemed to understand. She had smiled, gripped his hand in her boney ones and seemed to help him cut along her belly. As she bled out, she mumbled something. Words he couldn’t make out. But he knew they were his words. Words she set free.

  Eight was a male kresh, a servant. There was nothing special about him. He was old, quiet, but chosen. Odd he was selected. He had always considered the kresh a vile race. Something about those black eyes and fleshy beaks. He never accepted them as clients, and refused to hire them. Why the words resided in the veins of a kresh he’d never understand.

  “I just follow, Master. I follow and I obey,” he said to the lifeless room.

  He sighed. That was all of them. All except this one: number nine.

  Tracing his hand along the wall, he finished the spine of the last character and then cut it with the final swash. There.

  That was it. The final pharos was complete. His job was complete. He looked around at the stoic audience of stuffed beasts that lined the room. They made him shiver. Their empty gazes gave the place an eerie quality when it should feel wondrous and hallowed. The signals were now set. The barrier would slip. The gothi would make a mistake. Ashton would be free once again!

  He wanted to sign his name. Leave some mark indicating that he was the one, him all along! What would those elevated fools think now? What would LPD say? Nine sacrifices up the nine levels, each one a step in setting the signal. Pharos to pharos, from the blackest of shadows into the brightest red sunlight of the spires.

  With a weak breath he collapsed, and the world went black for a time. When his eyes reopened, he looked down the length of his body. His gray suit was ruined, the jacket open, and his shirt was stained and torn. He eyed the ragged gash he had carved into his own stomach. His knife lay in a pool of blood an arm’s length away. He felt light.

  Outside the room the band quieted and the voices of Auseil partygoers could be heard.

  His name was being called. His name...

  He poked his finger into the wound and pulled it out again, studying his blood, his paint. It glistened delicately in the light of the setting sun. A dark stain against his tan skin. The room around him glowed red. He squinted at his hand, it almost seemed like it belonged to someone else. So many times it had drawn the words along walls of stone, brick, plaster, iron, and even steel. Now, like him, it was finished.

  He wondered if Ashton would visit him. He hoped he’d see him again, one last time.

  The world grew fuzzy and warm. He shivered.

  Pain welled from inside. Sharp angry pain that sprouted from his stomach, crawled up his back, and slithered along his throat. It was tremendous. Suffocating. He wanted to scream. Cry out. The enraptured feeling that had blocked out so much was fading as his world darkened.

  Outside the band began playing a new lively number. It warbled in the background, a strange accompaniment to the gore-covered room.

  He heard his name again.

  The pain clenched onto the back of his eyes and squeezed. He tried to scream but no sound came. He heard voices now, growing louder. They’d find him in here, laying in this altar of his own blood. They wouldn’t be able to do anything. Lovat would be reborn.

  The door swung open and music spilled in. There was a beat, he heard laughter, and then a scream filled the room. A man’s. He turned his head and smiled, seeing an umbra in a tux, mouth hanging open, and next to him a maero in an evening gown gasped and dropped a full glass of shimmer.

  The umbra ran in, shouting something, sliding onto his knees through the blood. He leaned over the evangelist, his face a pool of shadow that drew him in.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” the umbra said.

  “Is that—”

  “By the Firsts!”

  “Someone call the police!”

  Voices rattled. The music halted. More people rushed in, their faces blurring on the edge of his vision. People he recognized: friends, servants, but where did that damned caravan master go off to? He should see this. He needed to see this! Hadn’t he been here not too long ago? Hadn’t he traded words with the others?

  “No! Please. Someone help him!” yelled the umbra’s voice.

  He heard another gasp—his own, his last—but it was too late.

  It was over.

  It had begun.

  ONE

  I HAUNT THIS CITY; I drift through its emptying streets like a cold wind. I’m the forgettable face in the crowd, the brief reflection in the frosted storefront. I linger around the food stalls, prop up its cheap bars, and slump in the seats of its monochrome picture houses. I’m not alone. In this city of millions, packed into nine levels, you’re bound to find others just like me.

  You’ve seen us before: the displaced vagrants, the eternal wanderers, the gruff, trail-hard men and women planted at the end of the diner counter with a cigarette, a glass of beer, a plate of eggs, and a somber expression. We make small talk with the server, and pay in cash. Everyone knows our names. We’re the regulars.

  A swarm of people clustered around the coffee cart in a thicker crowd than I had expected. The vendor worked quickly to keep the hot, black brew fresh. Hot cups of overpriced coffee replaced the crumpled lira held in outstretched hands, claws, and tentacles. Was this to be the way of it? More and more my trips to the carts were becoming a small battle, the shove of shoulders, the press of populace. Eating from carts, usually convenient, was becoming an annoyance.

  I had been back for a few months now. Settled into a routine. With a job gone bad and work so dried up it’d take a monsoon to revive it, money had become difficult. I found myself living in a small tick-infested flophouse in the Terraces and working the odd shift along the wharf to make ends meet.

  I shoved my folded bill forward and watched the cart owner snatch it away quickly, replacing it with a warm paper cup.

  Lovat hadn’t seen a fresh caravan in six months. The Big Ninety, the main road leading east, was still closed. The military forces of Syringa and the constabulary of Lovat stared at one another across the Rediviva at the Grovedare span. Hunkered in their bunkers, pissing down frozen latrines, they kept their rifles trained at one another as they shivered against the wind.

  Shortly after the hostilities between Syringa and Lovat erupted, the road south to Bridgetown had been blockaded by the Purity Movement. The bastards. Conrad O’Conner’s church operated out of West Lovat. He preached a message of human dominance and intolerance towards other races and species. Non-humans were sub-human. Their demands were simple, and impossible: no non-human caravans could enter the city until the city was free of non-humans. The lunatics never think small. I sighed, sipping the black coffee. It was weak.

  All-human caravans weren’t common in the territories. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company running without a mix of human, maero, and dimanian at a minimum. You get further out it’d be rare to find a company without a bufo’anur or a lengish or two. You’d think an entrepreneurial sort would be able to work around their request, but the scumbags who kept the road closed made sure to keep out the food, too. It was a smart move on their part. You don’t bring about change, good or ill, by keeping people comfortable. With no steady supply of food Lovat was growing hungry... and quite uncomfortable.

  The occasional ship still came into port, rusted, barnacle-encrusted, and loaded with cargo. But they weren’t reliable and what fodder they did bring never reached those that needed it most. Wharfingers unloaded goods for cash and the food wound up on porcelain plates in the upper reaches of the city.

  Most restaurants were empty and shuttered. Lines formed for even the smallest promise of food. Yet still the mayor droned on. Urged calm. Promised that things would get better. No one believed it. After months of hearing the same speeches and reading the same op-eds in the paper folks had little faith in their elected officials. Lovat was up against an edge and it was peering over the precipice.

  The clamor around the coffee cart added to the noi
se of the street. I shouldered my way through the crowd, hobbling away, heading south on Pontius Avenue on Level Four. The cold played havoc with my knee, and it throbbed with each step. I was glad to be on a slight downslope. The buildings here were about four or five stories tall and butted up against the roof. Pale yellow light leaked out from behind apartment blinds and cast strange shadows on the ground. Glowing neon signs dueled one another as they dangled off the facades of buildings. They blazed messages for cigarettes, liquor, cafes, and cheap loans. The words were spelled out in various Strutten and Cephan styles; the two most common languages spoken in the city. Warm steam billowed from grates and sputtered from open pipes in great opaque clouds.

  My own breath traced my trail behind me in a cloud that dissipated slowly in the icy air. The paper cup of coffee worked hard to warm my hand. I stared down at the black liquid. I hadn’t had coffee in a month. You were lucky to get a cup of chicory, and you might still find tea, but coffee was growing rare. I slurped it, feeling the warmth and tasting the roasted beans as the liquid trickled down my throat and settled in my belly. The coffee was burnt, bitter, and piping hot.

  Hot. That’s what I had really paid two lira for, not the taste, but the warmth it would provide. Exactly what I needed this afternoon. It did its job. Feeling warmer, I straightened, my back popping. I hadn’t realized how hunched over I was getting.

  Winter had set in a month or so after I got back. The coldest winter Lovat had seen in decades—generations, a few old timers claimed. Street mystics insisted it was a warning, a sign from the prophecies of the coming re-Aligning. Tales were spoken of walls of ice, taller than any building, emerging from the north and crushing everything in its path. Stories from the elevated on the sun-litten levels claimed they had seen snow. All we had down here was wind—wind and ice. Snow doesn’t make it down into the scrape and the span.

  Ice was everywhere. The cold air froze the trickles of water that continually dripped from the higher levels, creating columns along pipes and icicles that hung from the narrow gaps between street and sidewalk. The ice reflected the yellow glow of the sodium lamps and the garish light of neon and gave parts of the city the feeling of a twisted fantasy land.

  I hadn’t been lower than Level Three since my return, but there were stories from below of whole apartment blocks encased in ice. People who had to hack their way out of their homes with axes and knives. I wondered how cold it got inside. Would the ice freeze the inhabitants or would it work as an insulator?

  As I hobbled along I pulled my heavy coat tight around me, flipping the collar up. I was glad I hadn’t shaved. My beard had gotten long, and my hair longer, making me look like some mountain man, but in this weather my shagginess was working to my advantage.

  The rattle of holiday decorations added to the din. It was Auseil, sometimes called Bresh in the inner Territories. The month-long winter holiday, a time of feasting, drinking, celebration, and remembrance. Decorated five-limbed branches hung from ceilings or were mounted above doorways festooned with twinkling lights. Families wrote the lyrics of the traditional Zann hymns—ancient accounts of the Aligning—on long strips of paper and sealed them around doorframes with brightly colored wax. They were said to bring fortune and good luck, something Lovat could use these days. The strips of colorful paper moved and twisted in the breeze, giving the whole city a strange quavering appearance. They tore from their seals and danced down the street, creating a constant rain of inadvertent confetti.

  I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate much. My stomach rumbled. I had skipped lunch and I regretted it. Hunger sharpened the smells from the street vendors: the spices and pepper of the dimanian grills tickled my nose, the richer, more muted scents of the anur and cephel carts made my belly ache. Crowds huddled around what carts were open, shouting, complaining, and rushing off when they had procured what caught their eye.

  I paused and watched a throng bustle over a Cephel’s jalky cart. The whitefish rolls were common in the lower levels, and generally to be avoided, but even the fish supply had dwindled, propelling jalky to the rank of delicacy.

  A tall figure passed the throng. It was clad in black, its head topped with a tall sharp pointed hood. It drifted silent and unnoticed through the crowd, like a lingering shadow. Dark robes floated about its form like an ebony fog. Where a face should have been was... nothing. No eyeholes were cut into its hood, no outline of a nose pressed at the back of the fabric.

  I suppressed a shudder, slurped my coffee, and watched it pass. I had been seeing them here for a while. Months, actually. I’ve tried tailing a few, but that got me nowhere. On the Broken Road we had given them the name “gargoyles,” and it had stuck. Seeing those things brought back bad memories. An uneasy feeling rose and lodged itself in my guts. I tried to ignore it.

  “Wal!” shouted a voice, snapping me from the figure. “Wait up! Carter’s cross. Would you hold up?” It was Hannah Clay, my business partner and scout. Her echoing call snapped me from the figure. I turned and saw her push from the crowd huddled around the coffee cart. A steaming cup of coffee was clutched in her right hand. Carter’s cross, I had forgotten to wait for her. She stomped towards me wrapped in a thick black jacket that hung mid-thigh and with a knit beanie pulled low over her auburn hair, a sour look plastered on her face.

  “Thanks for just leaving me! You might have got your coffee, but I still had to pay the guy,” she paused and narrowed her eyes. “You know, for a fella with a bum leg you move pretty quick.”

  I scowled. Hannah and I had worked a lot of runs together and she had become a good friend. She was the kind of woman everyone underestimated. Big bright-green eyes, heart-shaped face, a playful smile. But those looks hid a sharp edge—an edge that over the last few months had been further sharpened. For a while—after Methow—I hardly saw her. Then she telegraphed me. Wanted to get a bite to eat. See what was available. Since then we had been spending more time together. Two veterans of the road, tired of drinking alone. I was happy to see some of her sardonic humor had returned, but she was more reserved than before, quicker to anger, always ready for a fight.

  “Just saying. You could have waited,” she said, annoyance in her voice.

  “Lost in thought,” I admitted. “I didn’t think it’d take you so long. I—I didn’t think. Sorry.”

  Now it was Hannah’s turn to frown. She absently shoved her wooden left hand in her jacket pocket. She had been doing that a lot, hiding it. She’d lost the hand recently, while on our last job—long story. It’s amazing what you don’t realize will be affected by something like that. Minor things like pulling out a billfold to pay for a cup of coffee had to become a new skill and she still fumbled. I wasn’t used to considering how long it took her. I probably should have offered to help.

  “Look, let me make it up to you. You want to get something to eat?” I asked, trying to change the subject. The smells of the carts had worked their magic and it was hard to get my mind off food.

  “My treat,” I smiled.

  Hannah’s frown turned into a chuckle and she nodded, then shivered as a blast of cold wind whipped through the street. “Let’s find someplace warm. Get out of this damn cold.” She narrowed her eyes at me and smiled. “Cedric’s?”

  “Cedric’s,” I agreed.

  In the entresol between Levels Three and Four sits Cedric’s Eatery. It’s not a place visited by tourists or non-residents of the cafe’s warren: Denny Lake. It’s also buried.

  The long-dead engineers who designed Lovat's superstructure made its massive floors and ceilings hollow. A lot of these hollows are crammed with the things that make a city livable: sewer pipes, air ducts, electrical lines, generators. Others are empty intermediate spaces. Some are occupied with shanty towns packed cheek by jowl, some are filled with trash, some harbor narrow mushroom gardens, and a small number have become storefronts. Cedric’s operates in the latter. An in-between place for in-between folks.

  We found the stairs leading to the entresol in the al
leyway between a laundry and a rundown automat. A glowing yellow arrow that read “Cedric’s” in bright cursive Strutten lit the alley and pointed down. It was only one story, but my knee popped as we descended into the low space between levels and kept aching as we made our way to the floor of the entresol.

  We passed piles of garbage, ignored a pair of giant centipedes fighting over a dead rat, and finally made our way to the narrow storefront that is Cedric’s diner. From the outside it looks like any street diner: big windows line the outer walls, the same cursive Strutten hanging from the ceiling spelling out “Cedric’s” in glowing yellow letters. Instead of facing a street, Cedric’s faces a wall of disabled vents that once billowed exhaust from the energy plants buried somewhere in the bowels of the city. A few drunks were passed out and leaning against the opposite wall. Their outstretched legs lay across the entrance, an annoying barrier for my stiff knee.

  A dauger patron in a copper mask was leaning by the entrance and smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. He nodded to us as we pushed through the door and into the warm diner. Long unfurled scrolls decorated the doorframe and waggled in the soft breeze, tickling my head as I passed beneath them. I never liked the holidays much. Even ones that were celebrated with feasting. Seemed like a waste of time in a gray world like Lovat.

  The inside of Cedric’s looked like something out of a monochrome. A row of high-backed, lacquered wooden booths ran the length of the long window that looked out at the wall of vents. They’re tall enough to give each table a bit of privacy.

  Opposite of the booths sat a long counter with a row of wooden stools half-occupied by regulars. An open space in the wall behind the counter allowed customers to peer into the kitchen where the eight-limbed Cedric worked his magic as fry cook.

  The place slung typical lowbrow human fare: breakfast all day, burgers, scrapple sandwiches, tamales, deep-fried fish, and piles of salty golden fries. These days, the menu was more limited. Things came and went. Cedric worked with whatever he could get and his work was cut out for him.