Riven

by A. R. Knight

  “You going to stare that thing all day, or are you going to sit down and have a drink?” Bryce, my mentor and Chicago’s oldest guide, said to me from our table.

  Ezra’s wasn’t all that crowded in the morning. A few nights shifters drinking off their hours. A dozen more putting off the start of the day with some coffee and eggs. Bryce already had a pair mugs in front of him, each of them ceramic, the same color as the bar. I sat down, leaving my coat on. Bryce hadn’t taken his off either. He had, however, set his mask on the table. An emerald and white affair that looked like frost-kissed vines. I did the same. No need for the things in here.

  “You want to tell me where you were this morning?” Bryce said. The man spoke in tender tones, rusty at the edges from decades in the city. Despite the question, I could see in his eyes and his raised eyebrow that it wasn’t an interrogation.

  “Tracking an angry one. Took care of it,” I said. The steam coming off the coffee said it was just about the right temp. I lifted it up, took a sniff, that hot bitter caramel curling through my nose and a second later down my throat. Pleasure burn.

  “So you hit your quota?”

  “One over, actually. You?”

  Bryce grinned. It was a stupid question. The man carved up spirits like a runner carved up miles. Every single one another routine, something to be dealt with. The more he wrangled in a session, a single night in Riven, the better his score.

  Watching Bryce at work was fascinating. Sometimes he would line up angry spirits, lead them all to the same avenue, with them growling and yelling at each other, and then use that voulge of his to carve through them all in a single dash. If what I did was work, what Bryce did was art.

  “Glad you’re getting better,” Bryce said, and here his smile faltered. “Word is things aren’t always going to be so easy.”

  “Speaking of, I ran into Opperman this morning,” I said. “He hinted at some sort of controlling spirit. One that was keeping all these war casualties in line. Giving orders. You ever hear something like that?”

  Bryce took a long drink of his coffee. Then shook his head.

  “Ghouls come close. They’re terrifying enough, but they don’t make friends. They don’t lead. Did Opperman tell you anything else?”

  “I tried, but he wouldn’t give up his source.”

  “Maybe we’ll find out on the call.”

  The whole reason we were at Ezra’s that morning was the call. A chance to get our orders from up above. Normally only happened once a month, a couple hour-long breakfast chat about which region had the highest numbers, or if anyone had a new guide to introduce. A fallen one to remember. Lately, though, the war had bumped these up to every other week.

  “You ever have frequent calls like this before?” I asked.

  “Happens every so often. If there’s a big event and we need to step up the guiding, or there’s some new practices going into effect. Like when we first split the regions.”

  Riven wasn’t all that large. For a long time, the guides had all been based in London. Now, they were spread out all over the world. Recruitment happened in every area. Regions had designated times to patrol Riven. Guides worked around the clock to keep the spirit count low.

  “It was crowded back then, right?”

  “Every hunt, every night was a chance for disaster. And glory,” Bryce said. “All of us would go to Riven at once and we’d spend the night slaughtering spirits, catching ghouls that had pulled together during the day. It was harder, and we lost a lot of good guides.”

  “Still,” I said, glancing down in my coffee. “Wouldn’t mind seeing one of those someday.”

  “With what’s going on now? You just might.”

  Bryce pushed himself back from the table and I followed suit. We grabbed our mugs and headed towards a small door left of the bar. Our logo was pasted on the outside. Bryce reached into his pocket and pulled out a card with the cut out of the circle and lines. Slid it into a slot in the door and it unlocked.

  In the room sat a table and chairs. A gadget took up most of the middle of the table. A squat box with the speaker on top. There was only a single switch. When Bryce tapped it, the speaker rumbled with static as it connected to the line.

  Time to get our orders.

  Chapter 7

  A voice on the line was already talking, the rolling baritone of the guide leader, Piotr. I’d never seen the man, only heard his voice, but I imagined the body behind that much bass would have to be huge. Thick. With a thousand cigars consumed in the making of it.

  “With the continued disruption in our European region due to the war,” Piotr was saying. “Other regions will need to increase their quotas. This is on top of the increases made to account for the war dead.”

  Piotr sighed, audible through the line. In the background, hints of whispers made there way through. Bryce looked like he was listening intently, so I matched his expression. It was important information, sure, but hardly a surprise.

  “I was told by our Athens sect that a ghoul was sighted just hours ago,” Piotr said. “They did not manage to track it down, but it is evidence that we are not working hard enough. Riven is a dangerous place, and it only becomes more so as we let our efforts falter.”

  Piotr kept going, but I fixated on the ghoul. It hadn’t been caught. There was one in Riven right now. Ready for me to find and take. I glanced at Bryce, but he didn’t meet my look. Would probably consider it immature excitement anyway.

  “Lastly,” Piotr said. “Take care of yourselves. This is not the time for bravery, but for cooperation. Do your hunting together. I have had to replace five guides in the last month, and that is far too many.”

  That was news. Five guides. Now both Bryce and I looked at the empty chair on the far side of the table. Alec never came to these calls, preferring instead to spend the time hunting spirits or hunting love in Chicago’s dark corners. Bryce let Alec go, though, because the guide was absolutely vicious in Riven.

  I’d seen him carve up five spirits in a row, a group of enraged lab workers decimated in an explosion that morning, still in their coats. They had come at Alec as a group, and the guide had held up his hand, warning me back.

  Then he’d begun what Alec called his dance. Gauntlets made of serrated silver lined Alec’s arms up to the elbows, and with the same snap of the wrist that activated my lash, Alec set them glowing blue. The first spirit, howling, came within reach and Alec sidestepped the charge. Let the spirit blow by and, with a right backhand, smashed the spirit in the back of its head. At the same time, Alec’s left hand jabbed out into the second one. As the gauntlets struck, their edges ripped holes in the ethereal skin of the spirits, igniting their bodies with blue flame.

  Using the second spirit as a shield, holding onto it with his left hand, Alec forced the next two spirits to step around. The last one, though, felt braver than its fellows and jumped over Alec’s burning spirit shield. I was going to yell, but Alec saw the move and stuck his right hand into the sky. The leaping spirit impaled itself on the fist, while Alec let the burning body go from his left hand. That left a symmetrical moment, Alec with a spirit held in the air above, and a pair surrounding him on either side.

  As the two spirits lunged at him, Alec pulled his fist out of the spirit in the air and skipped back, landing three feet away on his toes. The two spirits collided in the space where Alec had been. Alec used their moment of confusion. Jumping forward, Alec brought his gauntlets together in a sweeping arc in front of his chest, collecting the spirit’s heads along the way. They met in the middle, bursting into blue fire and collapsing.

  A moment later all five spirits rose again, calm and dead-eyed, and began their last walk to the Cycle. Alec turned to me, tipped his wide brimmed hat, and—

  “You weren’t paying attention,” Bryce said, breaking me out of the memory. I noticed the speaker was silent, switched off.

  “I drifted,” I glanced again at the empty chair. “Wondering about Alec.”

  “I�
�d say he can take care of himself,” Bryce said, frowning at the space. “Except for Piotr’s warning. None of us should be out there alone until the ghoul is dealt with.”

  I nodded. “When, then, do you want to hunt?”

  Bryce looked at the clock hanging in the room, a black and gold piece on the wall. The carved yellow hands turned slowly against black numbers. Still early.

  “Two,” Bryce said, his face sliding into a frown. “I have to head to the Spire today. There are, unfortunately, some new members of our esteemed government that doubt the dangers of our work and would seek to reduce its funding.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Scare them. I’ve found the best way to teach new bureaucrats is to make them realize all they could lose,” Bryce said with a shake of his head. “Yourself? Any events today?”

  “Going to go for a long walk,” I said. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone around down here.”

  Telling Bryce about the woman on the train wouldn’t get me anything other than an inquisition. Either an admonishment that I was listening to non-guides talk about Riven, or a stern warning not to look into it without him along. Nothing against Bryce, but I didn’t need him for everything.

  “I’m envious,” Bryce replied. “One of these days, I’ll pass off the role of liaison to you, and then I’ll be the one enjoying strolls.”

  “Yeah, like that’ll happen,” I said.

  “One day,” Bryce said as we stood up. “One day, Carver.”

  Back out on the street, after Bryce had made his way off towards the city center and that tall black spike reaching towards the sky, I took out the card and read the address. Less than a mile away. Time to take that walk.

  Chapter 8

  The address wasn’t even a building. It was a building-to-be. Blocks and bars stuck out of the ground at the construction site. Workers were gathering, looking at the plans on a giant rolling board. Nearly eight feet high, the metal board resembled a series of overlapping drapes. Levers on the side raised and lowered sections, each one with a different level or diagram presented. I watched the shifting plans for a minute, then double-checked the card. This was definitely the place, only the place didn’t seem to exist.

  “Can I help you, sir?” a worker, this one’s uniform bearing the blue slash across gray cloth that indicated a foreman.

  I held up the address so he could see.

  “Oh, that’s over here. Beneath the site,” the foreman said, his face breaking into a confidant’s smile. “Didn’t expect someone like you to want to see them, but I’ll show you where to go.”

  “See them?”

  The foreman glanced at the workers, then back at me with a slight shake of his head, nodded for me to go along with him. We moved around the board and kept walking along the edge of the site into what would be an alleyway once the building was finished. The foreman leaned in as we went.

  “Being truthful, sir, these people are making our work here a pain. They’re a mess for morale. Nobody here likes thinking about the other side,” the foreman said. “You wouldn’t be, uh, planning to get rid of them, would you?”

  I stopped walking. The foreman took another step before he realized and looked back at me.

  “Be straight. Who lives here?” I asked.

  The foreman’s eyes brightened. A chance to make his case, no doubt.

  “The worst, sir. The worst,” the foreman said, moving closer to me and sinking his voice to a whisper. “You know the type. The ones who pretend to do your work.”

  Ah. That explained the woman’s attitude. Sneaks, we called them. Everyone called them. People who had the gift to go to Riven, but who either couldn’t be, or didn’t want to be, a guide. Constantly getting themselves killed by spirits they didn’t know how to deal with. Sneaks sold their gift to desperate people, ones looking to send a last message or, maybe, to hear one. Searching for proof that a missing friend might be dead.

  “Our work has nothing in common with a sneak’s,” I said. “We keep people alive, a sneak profits on one’s love for the dead.”

  “That’s what I mean. The worst people,” the foreman said. “You’ll find the stairs a little further ahead. They have the basement. I, uh, I must be getting back, you know.”

  I nodded and the man dashed away to his board. Sneaks. I squared my shoulders, went ahead to the drilled-out stairs heading down to a heavy door. There was a knocker, and a handle. I pounded twice. Waited. Pounded again. Still nothing. So I tried the handle. The latch clicked and the door swung open, revealing a short, dim hallway leading to a wide room. I walked in.

  On either side of the hallway sat a pair of shut doors that I ignored. The middle room appeared to be lit by candles, long ones stuck into the walls and a candelabra on large stone table in the center. In downtown there wasn’t a reason to go without electricity, so why were they using candles? Then, above, I heard the pounding start. The construction, of course. Perhaps they had no power here. As I went into the room, however, any curiosity about the candles disappeared.

  All along the walls, nailed between the candles, were thick canvas maps. Dark lines stood out, with plenty of lighter versions beneath that’d been partially erased. Developed as they’d gone along, then. The map’s method didn’t interest me so much as their contents, however.

  For the maps were of Riven and of its different regions. I’d never seen any maps like these before. The guides didn’t bother. The majority of the spirits were in Riven’s main crumbling city, so there wasn’t a need to venture outside of it. Here, though, Riven expanded into a world I’d never imagined.

  The city alone covered three of the maps, streets broken out in their wandering lines. The maps were covered with different colored markings. Red, blue, and yellow dots scattered throughout. Their placement seemed to be at random, as I couldn’t distinguish any pattern to them. Where our clock tower stood, there was a black star. I looked and found other guide entrances to Riven, marked with black stars as well. All of them. This group of sneaks wasn’t a bunch of fools, they had plotted out where we were most likely to be.

  I moved to the next set of maps. I’d never been outside the city walls, but close. A journey with Bryce to show me that Riven did not truly end at the city’s edge. On one side, a vast plain with waving white stalks of grain. Never harvested, always blowing for eternity in that dead wind. The map here had fewer dots, no stars.

  The next one covered the region on the city’s west side, a dense forest. One I’d never seen but, by Bryce’s account, a place to avoid. Angrier spirits stayed there, monsters we didn’t have to face to keep Riven in line. The Cycle stood beyond that forest, and the map dwindled in detail the deeper into the woods it went, eventually dropping into blank canvas.

  The third map on that side of the wall appeared to go beyond the plain, and it also disappeared into nothing. An outline of some buildings, but none of the city’s detail. No interior sketches. I’d never heard of a second city, but if it followed the same trend as the forest, then perhaps it was too dangerous to be worth exploring.

  The last wall of the large room was split by another hallway and had one blank map hanging in the available space. The Mountain written on it in deep black marker, but nothing drawn below.

  “A pity the guides are trusted with a world they do not even know,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

  Something hit the back of my head and thrust me into a world of darkness.

  Chapter 9

  I’d had hangovers before, but waking up to this headache was in another realm entirely. As if thought boulders were being thrown inside my brain, shattering against my skull. I didn’t even want to open my eyes. If I’d been at home, I’d slip into Riven. A different world, a different body. Easier to work it off over there.

  “We’re not killing a guide down here,” the woman’s voice. A familiar one. “Too many would have seen him.”

  Now I forced my eyes open, let the real pain bleed in. I was in a chair at the
table in the center of the room. On the other side of it, the woman I’d seen on the train that morning was talking to a shabby man. Mangy coat, dirt-stained pants. A scarf tied tight serving as a mask. Then I noticed the bar held in his right hand. Looked like it might’ve been pilfered from the construction site up top.

  “He saw the maps, Anna. He knows what we’re doing,” Scarf said, the cloth muffling his voice.

  I tested my hands. Found out my wrists were tied to the chair I was sitting on. Thick dark cable wrapping around the wood. More castoff from the construction site. I wondered if the foreman knew how much he was losing to these people.

  “Did you think of how he found this place?” Anna said. “I gave him the address.”

  “Why in Riven’s name did you do that?”

  “We need help, Laurence,” Anna said. “You know as well as I do that more of our targets are angry now. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Good to know,” I announced. “Thanks for the information. Mind letting me out?”

  The two of them started, then Laurence raised the bar. I stared at him through my mask, trying to communicate the many, many ways I would make him suffer if he hit me with that again. Then Anna pressed her hand to the man’s chest and pushed him away. She, still wearing her white mask, stood over me.

  “How’s your head?” Anna asked.

  “Got a show going in there,” I said. “But I’ve tuned it out for the moment.”

  I shifted my wrists. Tried to remind her that they remained shackled. Anna didn’t make a move.

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “You didn’t say anything interesting.”