HIGHMARK
Jeffrey V. Johnson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter twenty-Five
Chapter twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter One: A chore and a door
1.
Mr. Ebensworth had called it a chore. That was how minor the task was. It was why a junior clerk was being sent, and even that was considered a massive squandering of resources. The instructions given to Abe had culminated in a gruff “and for god’s sake be quick about it” which had sent the young man hurrying out the door.
And hurrying back in to ask directions to the nearest entry to Underton.
“How in hell should I know that?” Mr. Ebensworth had responded. His grey mustaches literally twitched when he was angry, which was basically all the time. “Ask Roods.”
Abe was thrilled to have the opportunity to ask Roods, actually. Roods was something of a hero to the junior clerk as he was to everyone in the office... even Mr. Ebensworth would have grudgingly acknowledged that Roods was a highly effective agent, but to everyone else he was a great deal more than that. Tall and aloof and dressed more often than not in black, Roods favored tinted lenses and worked odd hours and was handsome and bold and had thrilling adventures the likes of which Abe could only imagine. He was the sort of man Abe would pretend to be to impress girls if he ever met any, and Roods would surely know how to get into Underton... if he were, in fact, unfashionable enough to be at work this early, which he was not.
So Abe asked Miss Starksby and Mr. Hawkes, and neither of them had the vaguest notion about which doors were still operational. This would have been unremarkable except that Ebensworth and Associates was a respected securities and investigation firm. The company prided itself on knowing absolutely everything about absolutely everything. The unofficial motto apparently only included Highmark proper, however, and did not extend to the seedier undercity.
Abe had been pointed toward a door which appeared to have been bricked over a decade ago, and that had begun a tedious, rain-soaked investigation into various sites of doorways both real and alleged. After hours of asking strangers and finding sealed door after sealed door, Abe finally spotted a pair of guardsmen who seemed remarkably unoccupied.
Not that guardsmen were in the habit of looking busy... but they at least preferred to stand indoors when doing nothing, especially on a drizzly and unpleasant day like this one. These two, though, were utterly failing to stay out of the rain or to do much of anything except stand beside a narrow doorway that appeared to lead into a kind of cellar.
The rain wasn’t doing much for their moods, though. No sooner had Abe slowed down to regard them than one of them said, “oi, move along, then.” The speaker moved the thumb that had been hooked behind his leather belt to the side of his wooden cudgel and raised his eyebrow as if asking whether or not Abe felt lucky.
“Can you help me, actually?” Abe was rather damp by now, of course, and not a fan of being casually threatened, but he was feeling somewhat hopeful that his little errand was finally moving toward completion nonetheless. “I’m looking for a working door into Underton, and so far all I’ve found are sealed ones.”
The threatening man seemed to entirely forget about his previous threats now, a knowing smile spreading (one assumes) under his dense black beard. “Is that all?” He seemed enlivened by having something to do (even more so than by having someone to threaten, which was also nice). “It just so happens that Officer Calssen and myself are standing nearly on top of one of the very things you seek.”
His companion – an older, smooth-faced man, who was more interested in getting further under the very stingy bill of his hat than in conversation – nodded agreement. Abe brightened. “Can I use it?”
“That depends,” said the bearded guardsman, “on the exact nature of your business, of course. And on whether you’ve got the proper documentation.”
Abe had been sworn to secrecy regarding his business, of course. It was standard procedure for all work at Ebensworth and Associates. In point of fact, no mention had been made about keeping this particular errand secret, but Abe was certain that it was implied. He’d heard that his predecessor as clerk had been let go for violating that very implied confidentiality, and Abe was rather desperate not to be fired. Not that it mattered, because he certainly didn’t have any documentation.
“I didn’t know there was any required documentation.”
“Oh, of course,” the other one, Officer Calssen, said. “Veritable mountain of paperwork.”
Abe sagged under the weight of this revelation as well as the sodden tweed of his poorly-chosen jacket. “Really? I’d thought it was just a matter of finding a door.”
The two guardsmen exchanged solemn looks that very quickly began to shed solemnity. In a moment they both appeared to be barely resisting smiles, and a moment after that the first guard was grinning broadly as he stepped toward Abe and pushed him jocularly on the shoulder. “Nah, you’re right, of course! We was just makin’ a joke, as it were.” He leaned in close to Abe now, speaking in a sort of stage whisper, “It’s all Calssen’s idea. A real card, that one.”
Abe followed his gaze to the other man, who had reverted to complete, stony gravity. Abe forced a laugh. “Yes. Very well done, gentlemen.
“So I can just go on down then?”
“Right you are, sir. There’s no problems going down.”
Abe was almost halfway down the stairs when it occurred to him that neither the two guardsmen nor Mr. Ebensworth had given him any information whatever about coming back up.
2.
The door was at the bottom of a flight of narrow stone stairs, and from in front of the door the weak light from outside – where the two guardsmen stood – was just a small patch against the dark. It was the only source of light, though, and Abe found it inadequate in even letting him see the door knob.
After a solid minute of fumbling with increasing desperation he learned that the door knob was so hard to locate because there wasn’t one. The door was perfectly flat without even a discernible hinge. It was either painted black or darkly varnished, and it was scarcely as wide as Abe’s shoulders. It was flush with the wall, which seemed to be stone, and appeared to be impossible to pull.
So he pushed.
Which was clearly the thing to do, as he felt it give immediately. It did not, however, give very much. It was as if there was some sort of netting or rope holding the door closed on the other side... some substance that would yield an inch or so but wouldn’t give.
It was tempting to take this as a sign that he should give up after his dreary hours of searching to find a door that was nominally functional. He knew that it could mean the end of his aspirations into detecting, however, and so before he resigned himself to that fate he threw his shoulder once more a
gainst the door. This time it opened.
There was a weird ripping sound as Abe stumbled forward through the door. His momentum carried him directly into the back of a rocking chair which immediately tangled with his legs. A girl’s voice screamed as Abe fell onto the floor, and he managed to kick through the crosspiece of the chair and launch it up against the ceiling and tumble to the floor all at once.
There was a moment of panic as Abe felt the heavy revolver he’d brought with him shift in his pocket. He imagined any jostling would make the thing go off. Feeling it settle without putting a hole through him was only a brief relief as he tried to get his bearings from where he sat on the cheap rug that covered the hard stone floor.
It was brighter than he’d expected after the dim stairway, and as his eyes adjusted, here is what he saw:
The walls were stone, rather cave-like, but appeared dry and radiated a pleasant level of light from them, so that everything was discernible and there seemed a dearth of shadow. The door had been in the back wall, and the difficulty in opening it had been because it had been painted over many, many times. Abe was rather chagrined to know that it had been half a dozen coats of paint which had given him such trouble and not, as he had imagined, some carefully mounted layers of chain mail or giant spider’s web (or a magical spell... This was Underton after all). The rest of the cave was a pleasant if rather low-rent sitting room. There was a couch and a few other chairs as well as a roaring fire in the fireplace. The only occupant of the room, aside from Abe himself, was a girl. Propelled by terror (or at least shock), she had cowered behind the couch when Abe burst in, and was now peering over the back of the couch warily. She did not look as scared as she might, and this was due at least somewhat, one imagined, to the large black crossbow she had aimed at Abe, her finger very close to the trigger.
“What the hell are you doin’ in my house!?”
Abe had always thought that the people of Underton would speak more... ‘old-fashioned’ seemed the word for it. He had been prepared for ‘thee’s and ‘wherefore’s. He had also not expected to hear such language from a little girl. Also, he could scarcely accept this cave being referred to as a house, and he could not fathom that a child of this age could under any circumstances call it her house, as she had. These concerns all seemed to fall away as he observed the very large crossbow bolt she was about to shoot into him.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said as he started to sit up. This was apparently too much movement and not enough explanation for the girl, who pulled the trigger.
Closing his eyes tightly and bracing for the pain, Abe had failed to observe that the bolt had not fired.
“Dammit all,” the girl said, and she pulled back the crossbow to examine it.
Abe had his hands out in front of him and was cowering behind the shattered rocking chair. Even after hearing her speak and realizing he was not shot it took him a second to open his eyes. When he did, he saw her standing at her full height and peering down at the top of her weapon. She was maybe twelve, with short hair that was some indeterminate shade of dark yellow or light brown. She was dressed in a sort of tunic that resembled burlap and looked fairly clean (at least compared to what Abe had expected from Underton, which is to say she was filthy).
“Oh, there’s a catch...” She said to herself, like a revelation, and she reached down and flicked a little hook on the crossbow, then pointed it back to Abe. “There, now. What are you doing in my house?”
Abe admonished himself silently for not grabbing his revolver when she was preoccupied. He felt sure that a more experienced investigator would have ‘gotten the drop’ on her. All he had managed to do was sit up straighter and look back toward the door before he was once more at her mercy. The door had swung shut by now, having bounced off the wall and settled back into the ripped paint to essentially disappear into the smooth wall. It looked as if there was never a door there to begin with.
Abe cleared his throat and tried not to sound frightened. It helped if he didn’t look at the bolt which seemed to have a wicked gleam to it... especially the pointy part. “My name is Abnerssen Crompton,” he said. “I am on an important mission.” He was too lost in his own head to notice the girl rolling her eyes. “A mission from the world above!”
The girl shot him in the arm.
Chapter Two: The quest explained
1.
Abe woke up a few minutes later. He had passed out from the pain and he had woken up from it, too. Specifically, he had passed out when he got shot in the arm and he had awakened a very short while later when his assailant had pulled the bolt out.
“Aaah!” he screamed.
“Shut up,” the girl said as she stepped back and dropped the bolt onto the couch. It left a stain on the not-terribly-clean fabric, but the girl didn’t seem to care. Abe didn’t either, but the naturally fastidious young man was, in his defense, very distracted. Beside the crossbow on the couch was his revolver.
Nearly as smoothly as he had talked the girl out of shooting him, Abe patted his pocket and found it was indeed empty. The girl laughed. “Somethin’ missing?”
She sat down on the couch hard enough to bounce, and her feet didn’t quite reach the floor even when she settled completely. She picked up the gun which had always struck Abe as large but now looked positively massive in her small hands. She turned it over rather carelessly, pointing the muzzle the whole time in Abe’s general direction.
“You should really put that down,” Abe said. He wondered if he could manage to get it away from her before she shot him.
Again.
To his great relief she did at least lower the weapon. “You should really tell me what you’re doing here,” she said in childish imitation of his voice.
Abe put his hand to his arm where he’d been shot and was pre-wincing when he realized it actually didn’t hurt very much. There was surprisingly little blood on his hand when he pulled it away, too. This was what they called a flesh wound. All the same, he was light-headed and had already seen that his young captor was perfectly willing to shoot him.
“If I tell you, will you give me back my revolver?”
The girl held it by the butt between thumb and forefinger, holding it out toward him. “Ma-a-a-a-ybe...”
So he told her.
2.
Ebensworth and Associates was a private securities and investigation company that enjoyed a relative monopoly in Highmark. There were two primary reasons for this status: the first being that the company had been founded by and largely employed former city guardsmen who were vigorous in discouraging competition, the second being that Ebensworth and Associates was very, very good.
Abnerssen Crompton had been hired, as everyone who was not a former guardsman at Ebensworth had been, because he had a connection. Abnerssen’s uncle was what one would euphemistically call a ‘hanging judge.’ It was only accurately euphemistic because Abnerssen’s uncle favored firing squads.
Abe had come home from university thoroughly disenchanted with the law, and it so happened that when his father had asked what he would like to do (what he had asked was: “So, son, when would you like to start?” referring to his pre-arranged position as his uncle’s clerk), Abe had just finished reading an article about Ebensworth in the paper. Filled with dread at having to spend his days with his uncle (who was only marginally more pleasant with family than he was with criminals), Abe had expressed some interest in seeing some real investigative work before moving to the lawyering side of things.
“You want to become a guardsman!?” his father spluttered, spraying coffee and incredulity in equal measure.
“Absolutely not!” Abe slid the paper over and tapped the article.
It just so happened that his uncle was very popular with a number of the investigators, Ebensworth included (as well as most current and former guardsmen, who, generally, liked it when criminals were shot). All it had taken was a good word and Abe had been taken on as a clerk. The idea was that he would learn the rope
s and gradually be allowed to take part in investigations. In the meantime, he would be writing letters and taking dictation and running errands.
The meantime stretched and stretched, and it had been nearly a year by the time he was given his ‘errand’ that morning. In that year, Abe had found that his uncle-dodge was becoming more than that. The rough, capable, lawless life that many of the investigators seemed to lead was imminently more appealing than becoming a lawyer or judge. These men kept odd hours and did as they pleased, and the best of them, men like McCallister Roods, were being given generous bonuses from the bosses and swoon-y glances from the girls.
So Abe had put up with the tedium and pressed for a chance. This chore was the closest he’d gotten so far.
The chore was to find a girl. Mr. Ebensworth had been, when he was on the force, partners with a man named Richards. Richards had retired shortly before Ebensworth founded his company, and had worked as a consultant for Ebensworth and Associates until his death.
It had been over a decade since Richards had died, but apparently when his sister had come to ask a favor no one had batted an eye. She was a spinster who, in the autumn of her years had finally found love (or, in this case, perhaps just a younger man who was willing to share her last few years in exchange for a massive cash-in upon her death). It was very important to her that all of her family attend her wedding to Mister Charles Pierce-Winston, and it was in that particular that she needed some assistance.
Her great niece, Merry, had vanished from school and Miss Richards had reason to believe she was in Underton. There was speculation amongst the family, you see, that Merry had run off to Underton with a boy who was addicted to Spirit.
And even though Abe had never been to Underton and didn’t know what Merry looked like and didn’t even know what Spirit was, really, he had been handed the heavy revolver (which he also was unfamiliar with) and told to go and find the girl.
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