by E J Frost
you I’m not for eating.”
“So he did, Lightfoot. And so too your
blood-brother. But the one you’ve brought us
is not your blood.” The rat-man’s snout turns
toward me, lifts, sniffs. “Although he does
smell of you.” The rat-man’s chuckle bares
too many pointed teeth.
“He has safe passage. He bought a ticket.
He bore the mark.”
“A Snatcher mark,” the rat-man scoffs.
“Tainted meat,” one of the others
sniggers.
“He bought a ticket,” Kez insists.
The first rat-man lifts his lip, baring those
pointed teeth again. “Show us the ticket.”
I bring it out of my pocket, held between
two fingers, a knife cradled in my palm. I
turn my palm over to offer him the ticket,
making sure the edge catches the light.
The rat-man tilts his head to the side.
“That is a fine blade, ticket man.”
“Like it?”
“Very much. Do you have others?”
“A few,” I allow.
“May we see them?”
“Sure.” I give him a grin that’s just as
feral as his, even if my teeth ain’t as sharp.
“Where d’you want ‘em?”
“Is that a challenge, ticket man? If I take
that blade from you, do I get them all? Do I
get more?” His wet lips pull back from those
pointed teeth.
“Wait, wait,” Kez interjects. “We bought
tickets. We bore the marks. Don’t the
Downers honor these anymore? Are the
Deeps closed?”
“The Downers are hungry,” the rat-man
snarls. “The upperworld riots, the Downers
starve. You have safe passage, but he has
nothing—”
“He has a ticket! And a mark!” Kez yells.
“If those mean nothing then the Deeps are
closed and you will starve!”
“You threaten us, Lightfoot?!”
“No, no.” Kez holds up her hands. “I’ll
pay. I brought him. I’ll pay. Blood, not
meat.”
I slant a glance at her. “Kez—”
She shakes her head and I shut my mouth.
This is her show. If the only way to walk
away from this is for her to pay my way out
in blood, and she’s willing to pay it, then I
can respect her choice.
I’ll make it up to her later.
“Blood for his passage.” The rat-man
nods. “One liter. That is a good exchange.
The box that you came for is extra. Nacht
says a thousand hard.”
Kez shakes her head. “Two hundred hard.
That’s the price I agreed with Penny.”
“The steel bitch does not speak for us,
woman. A thousand hard.”
“Three hundred hard.”
“You bargain with me? You come to the
Deeps with nothing to offer. You deny us
meat. You insult us by offering your tainted
blood, and you dare bargain with me?”
Kez gives the rat-man a hard, cold look.
A killing look. I didn’t know she had that
look in her. “You know what? Fuck you. I
bought the ticket. I endured the mark. I
agreed a price. If the Downers don’t honor
those things anymore then your word is
worthless. Come on, Snow. We’re done
here.”
“Right behind you,” I growl.
Kez begins to back out the way we came.
I hand her the bag I’m carrying so that both of
my hands are free. Wait for the first one to
make a move. The one who called me
tainted meat breaks first. He howls, more
like a dog than a rat. He drops onto all fours,
his claws digging into the sandy tunnel floor,
and charges after Kez.
I let fly with the blade that Rat One
admired and the charging rat-man drops to
the ground, my knife buried in one crusty
white eye. He’s not getting up again.
Something hits him a second later. A
writhing line of light that carves the meat of
his shoulder and back into red ruin. I don’t
have time to see what it was or where it
came from, because the rest of the pack is
coming.
Two more fall with blades through their
eyes before any get close enough to grapple.
One throws himself into the air, arrowing
down at me with his claws extended. I catch
him by the throat, going in under his claws.
Follow up with a slice to his belly that spills
his guts over my wrist in a hot, slippery gush.
Using his own momentum, I throw him, still
screaming, trailing intestines, at a pair of rat-
men who are hurdling the bodies of the fallen
towards Kez. The first hurdler goes down
with another of those lines of light slicing
through his throat. It carves all the way
through; his head rolls down his back to
bounce on the sand. Gutless sails over
Headless and tumbles into Hurdler Two,
knocking him to the floor. Kez pauses in her
retreat to give Hurdler Two a kick in the
head with her steel-toed boots. His teeth hit
the tiled wall like rolling dice.
“Stop!” Bellows Rat One. He grabs the
last rat-man by the throat and throws him
backward onto the sand when the rat-man
takes too long to obey. “Enough! Lightfoot!
Enough! Tell your Reaper Man to stop!”
Kez pulls herself upright and stands
hipshot, holding a twisting filament of light
in her hand, a very unfriendly version of her
mischievous grin curling her pale mouth.
“Hold up, Reaper Man,” she says.
I shake rat-guts off my hand and move to
stand next to her. Take stock of the six dead
or dying rat-men on the ground. The two still
standing. And the dozen or so pairs of
glowing eyes that flicker in the dark beyond
Kez’s circle of light.
“You got a proposition for me?” Kez
asks Rat One.
He’s panting, his white-furred chest
heaving, even though he stayed back from the
fight. “You bring a Reaper to the Deeps?”
Kez glances at me and smiles. “Looks
that way.”
“You don’t ever come here again, Reaper
Man. The Deeps are closed to you.”
I shrug. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t know
they existed.
“Lightfoot, you, too—”
Kez shakes her head. “You don’t want to
go there, Mister. The Pack may be hungry,
but I know the rules. You pissed on the
Underlaw, not me.”
“You bring us nothing!”
“I brought hard credits, as agreed. You
want them? They’re still on offer. Three
hundred hard for the box and what’s in it.
Going once, going twice . . .”
“Five hundred. And a liter of blood. To
appease the families of those who fell.”
“Done,” Kez says, a little too quickly,
and I realize that, Reaper Man or not, she
didn’t think we’d make it out.
“Fletch, get a bucket,” Rat One snarls at
the other rat-man, who is still picking
himself up off the ground, clutching his
bruised throat.
Kez points at one of the bags over my
shoulder. I unsling it and pass it to her. She
unfastens it, takes out five wrapped stacks of
octagons and places them on the sand. She
closes the bag, but not before I see several
more wrapped stacks in the bottom of the
bag. She could have paid more. She expected
to. She drives a hard fucking bargain.
She pulls off her backpack and takes a
handheld scanner out of it. Passes it over the
stacks of credits and holds it out to Rat One.
Showing him the credits are validated,
unmarked, un-fucked-with. He nods.
Fletch-the-Rat returns with a small jug. It
has markings up the side, tenths of a liter.
Ten marks. Thinking about what’s about to
go in it, the jug suddenly looks much larger.
Kez holds out her arm and Rat One
extends a long, black claw towards her pale
skin. I hear Kez take an unsteady breath.
I brush Rat One aside and pull a clean
shiv out of my wrist sheath. If she’s going to
bleed for me, I’ll do the cutting. I nick her
forearm, quickly, cleanly, catching the ulnar
vein but avoiding the artery and nerve.
Fletch-the-Rat shoves the jug under Kez’s
arm as a thin line of red begins to run from
the cut. I take the jug from Fletch, pull Kez’s
back to my chest and hold her with my arm
across her body while she bleeds. A liter,
fast, will make her lightheaded, and if she
loses her balance, I don’t want the rat-men to
see her weakness.
She bows her head over her arm. It’ll be
hurting, now that the initial shock of the
injury has passed. She’ll start feeling cold,
and right on schedule, I feel her shiver. I pull
her a little closer so my body heat offsets the
chill. I put my mouth to her ear, whisper to
her, “Spread your feet. Even out your
stance.” She does, balancing her weight. The
smell of her blood rushes up to me, fresh
copper cutting through the miasma of opened
bowels and rotting meat that fills the tunnel. I
turn my head a little, bury my nose in her
dreads, and fill my lungs with the sweet soap
smell of her hair. “Half-way there,” I tell her
when the red liquid reaches the fifth mark.
“Snow,” she says quietly. “There’s a
spare shirt in my backpack.”
“I’ve got it.” My new life ain’t so
different from my old one that I don’t carry a
tube of newskin and a couple of rolls of
bandages in my pockets. “We got sixteen
minutes to get back, by the way. An’ it took
ten to get down here.”
She nods. Bleeds in silence until the jug
is full. As soon as the blood reaches the tenth
mark, I hand the jug to Rat One and press my
thumb hard against her wound. I can’t hold
her steady and fish the bandages out of my
pocket, though. “Put your thumb over mine,”
I tell her. She does. I shift my thumb out of
the way and she clamps down on the cut. I
retrieve the bandages and after a quick
rummage through my pockets, the tube of
newskin. She moves her thumb when I point
the newskin at her arm. A bead of blood
quickly wells up and I squirt it with the
sticky spray. Twenty-four hours and the
wound will be completely healed, maybe
without even a scar since it was a good,
clean cut, but we have to keep it closed until
the newskin cures. I wrap her arm quickly,
tie it off and tuck the ends under. “C’mon.
Tick-tock.”
“Other bag,” she whispers and sinks to
her knees. For a moment I think I’ve lost her.
She’s fainted and I’ll never be able to carry
her and her fucking box out of here before the
Snatchers begin peeling strips off her
brother. But then she shakes herself, drags
the third bag over with her uninjured arm,
unfastens it and pulls out a foam-wrapped
bundle. She peels off the foam, revealing a
blocky machine. She flicks it on with a blue
haylon hum. I hand her the last bag off my
back, help her unpack a twin machine.
She looks up at Rat One. “The box,” she
says.
“You have honored—” he begins.
“Mister, I don’t want to be rude, but I
have absolutely no time. Give me the box
right fucking now or I take Reaper Man off
hold.”
Rat One’s long pink nose twitches. He
disappears into the darkness and I’m too
close to Kez’s halo to see where he goes.
“Fuck,” Kez whispers.
“Thirty seconds, we gotta go.” I use the
time to rub my hands along the sandy floor.
Gooey skin equals unpredictable grip. “Box
or no box.”
“Aye-firmative,” Kez says.
Rat One is back in twenty-five seconds,
dragging a metal crate. I hear Kez start
breathing again. She opens the cover in a
puff of vapor, nods at the contents, then shuts
it again. Slaps the boxy machine against the
side of the crate. I follow her lead with the
second machine. With a whir, the box lifts
off the ground. Kez clips a line to it and rises
unsteadily to her feet.
I take the line, wrap my arm around her.
She struggles and I release her. Is she too
proud to accept my help, or scared of
appearing weak in front of the rats? Neither,
it turns out. She snags her backpack, tucks the
two empty bags into it, and staggers back to
my side. Practical kitten.
“Can you run?” I ask her.
“How long until Penny starts skinning my
brother?”
“Eleven minutes, thirty seconds.”
“I can run.”
“Say goodbye to your little friend. Time
to go.”
“Mister, it’s been a real nightmare. Hope
I never see you again.”
“Nor I you, Lightfoot,” Rat One says.
“The Deeps stay open?”
“That’s our deal. Bye.”
“Goodbye, Lightfoot. Goodbye, Reaper
Man.”
Before he’s finished his goodbyes, I drag
Kez away. Back down the maglev tunnel.
Knowing where we’re going makes it faster,
and this time I don’t pause to admire the
artwork. We reach the station and I hook Kez
around the waist, toss her up onto the
platform. She doesn’t weigh much more than
fifty kilos herself. I vault up after her. It’s
easier now that I’m only carrying the money-
bag, which is maybe half as heavy as it was
before. The box floats serenely after me.
Kez struggles to her feet on the platform.
I catch her around the waist again, drag her
through the hanging plaz, through the
branching tunnels, to the cistern room. I
hammer on the painted balloon.
No answer.
I check the burn on the back of my hand.
Two dots remain. “Kez, we got a problem.”
She shakes herself out the stupor she’s
fallen into. “Fuck, Tank! Tank! Stop wanking
off and open the goddamn door!”
The panel doesn’t move.
“Want me to go through it?”
Kez shakes her head. “It would take an e-
bomb. Have one handy?” When I shake my
head, she fumbles at her right wrist. Puts her
touch-screen together, scrolls and taps until
she gets an image of five crossed blades. The
screen buzzes. Once, twice.
“Hello, Kezzy.” The monster’s dark
treacle voice.
“I’m here, Penny. I’m at the front door.
Where’s Tank?”
“I believe he’s using the gentlemen’s at
the moment. Arc, is Tank in the head?” she
drawls. Someone murmurs in the
background.
“Penny, not to be a bitch, but couldn’t he
have held it for a couple of minutes?”
“Well, when Nature calls, honey . . .”
“Penny! I’m at the goddamn door. If I’m
late because Tank is taking a piss—”
“Shouldn’t you have given yourself
enough time for such an eventuality? I
warned you, Kezzy. Beware the lastminute
—”
“Angebot, yes, I got it! Stop fucking with
me, Penny. I am seriously not in the mood.
Send someone to open this door so I can
collect my goddamn brother.”
“Or what?”
Kez reels on her feet, her head lolling
back against my shoulder. She slams her left
hand against the wall panel, shakes herself.
“Or nothing. I don’t make threats, Penny. You
know this about me. Now stop fucking
around and open the door.”
“Ah, well, I’m terribly sorry—”
“Hey,” I interrupt. “She may not make
threats but I do. Open the fucking door now
or I’ll tear it down and start carving off bits
of metal until I hit something that bleeds.”
“Mister, Snow, is it? Do you have any
idea who you’re talking to?”
“Yeah, you’re the ones who don’t know
who you’re fucking with. Stick the name
Halemano Hauser into your orrey and see
what comes out.”
The touch screen goes dark. After a long
moment, the panel slides to the side.
I drag Kez into the Snatchers’ palace.
Stop in front of the clock. Twenty seconds to