by Tom Fletcher
‘They can be. They scared your mother enough for her not to let me back in.’
‘She said you chose to leave.’
‘She was right, in a way. I couldn’t see it then but I can now. I should have stopped before it got to that point. Before they threatened her. Before they threatened you. But I kept on causing trouble, breaking rules. That was my choice. And your mother did the right thing.’ Alan hugged Billy to him. ‘I’m sorry, son. I’m so sorry. I miss you. And I should be here for you.’
‘I miss you too, Dad.’
‘I’m drunk.’
‘You smell.’
‘Stupid wild animals do smell.’
‘You’re not stupid.’
‘Billy, I shouldn’t have told you all this.’ Alan had drunk too much. His judgement had been bad. His judgement had always been bad. And who was he kidding? He spent more or less the whole time having drunk too much. ‘You can’t repeat it. You can’t repeat a word of it. Don’t tell anybody what I’ve said.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Why don’t you and your mum come out to the Discard with me?’
‘I’ve already told you, Dad, we’re not doing that. It’s dangerous out there. There are monsters. I’ve seen them in the tanks … scary men with those horrible bloody horns.’
‘I’ve never seen them out here, Billy. It’s not like that.’
Billy spoke carefully. ‘I think you must have got some details wrong. You’re very drunk, Dad. The Arbitrators aren’t like that. It was probably Discarders who burned your town down, everybody knows they’re mad.’
‘No. Billy, no—’
‘Dad, I’ve got to go. The Arbitrator’s back, look.’
Alan realised he’d had his eyes closed. He opened them and saw a tall, masked figure standing in the shadows of the alcove. Billy had got up. Alan stood too, and embraced his son. He took a small parcel wrapped in hessian from his jacket pocket and gave it to Billy. ‘It’s not an Alchemist’s pendant,’ Alan said, ‘but it’s something. Happy birthday, Billy. And tell your mother I love her.’
Billy nodded, blinked rapidly a couple of times, then scurried away past the Arbitrator. He vanished into a shadowed hallway and was once more lost to the Pyramid.
‘You’ll be wanting your Benedictions, I suppose,’ Alan said.
The Arbitrator nodded. He was a good head taller than Alan and dressed in loose, red-brown cloth, with a highly polished bronze breastplate strapped to his chest. He wore a crested bronze helmet with a smooth, convex mask, completely devoid of features but for a horizontal slit across the eyes. Inside the Pyramid, Arbitrators did not carry weapons.
‘I don’t have them,’ Alan said. ‘I had them. I acquired them at great personal risk. I went far above and beyond this time, Tromo. But I don’t have them any more.’
The Arbitrator neither spoke nor moved.
‘But it’s the thought that counts, right?’
‘Alan. Tell me that this is a lie, or the beginning of some joke.’
‘Nope. The Mushroom Queen herself, she tracked me down and set her crazed thugs on me. They were undisciplined fighters and I defeated them, as you can see.’ Alan turned his face one way and then the other. ‘Not a mark on me. But alas, the vials slipped from my pocket during the tussle and fell into the deeper darkness. And to be frank, your wrath is less frightening than those depths and what may dwell within them. So here I am.’ Alan put a cigarette in his mouth. ‘With nothing to give you.’
‘I will need the Benedictions,’ Tromo said. ‘Monthly.’
‘Ha! Not likely, Tromo. Even Daunt doesn’t just have them all in monthly. That’s why she’s so mad about it. These were rare, difficult to come by, extremely high-value.’
‘I know. I know that. How dense are you? That’s why I want them, Alan. That’s why my associates want them.’
‘Can’t be done.’
‘You don’t have a choice.’
‘What? Don’t yank me about, Tromo. And take off that damn mask.’
The Arbitrator lifted the mask, revealing a lined, elderly face. Chinless. He sniffed. ‘It’s Troemius-Wylun,’ he said, ‘and you well know it. Given everything, you should pay me more respect.’
‘Refusing to use the stupid names you all have up here is paying you respect,’ Alan said. ‘It’s saving you the embarrassment of having to respond to “Troemius-Wylun”.’
‘Ever just,’ Troemius murmured. ‘Ever righteous. Ever ignorant.’
‘I do have choices,’ Alan said. ‘That’s what’s different about the Discard.’
‘Your choice, then, is this. Bring me what I ask for and see your son once a month. Or do not bring me what I ask for and let your son face the consequences of your actions. Again.’
Alan stared at the Arbitrator. ‘Blackmail?’ he said. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You can choose not to believe me, if you want.’
‘I thought you wanted to help me see Billy – to help Billy see me. I thought there was an element of compassion in this arrangement.’
The Arbitrator smiled thinly. ‘A naïve thing to think. I don’t have a particular interest in your relationship. It’s a means to an end.’
‘So you’re just squeezing me for all you can get.’
‘The risks I’m taking here are extraordinary and I owe you nothing. If anything, you—’
‘Spare me this sanctimonious horseshit, Tromo,’ Alan hissed. ‘You’ve made it clear that any risks you take, you take for yourself. And you didn’t just save my life back then out of some sense of virtue. It was a transaction, not generosity, and it was a vicious transaction at that. I owe you fuck all. And besides, I thought we’d agreed a price for these visits. I thought this arrangement was fixed and I thought we were being decent about this.’
‘We did, and it was, and we were. But you haven’t met the terms, have you? And besides, a brothel is not a fitting environment in which to raise a child. You parents did run a brothel, did they not? So I didn’t just spare you: I gave you the chance of a much better life by bringing you back into the Pyramid. So you do owe me for that opportunity, even if you went on to squander it. In fact, in rearranging our deal, I’m being quite generous.’
Alan bit his tongue. He had a knife at his waist and could almost feel it drawing his hand. He turned away from Troemius. As much as the man repelled him, he was the only weak link in the Pyramid’s defences, and so the only means by which Alan could see Billy at all. He couldn’t risk refusing him, or killing him, or he might never see his son again. He turned back. ‘Enough of this reminiscing,’ he said, his voice restrained. ‘We need to settle on new terms.’
‘Agreed. I’ll need what you were supposed to give me tonight, monthly.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘The Discard is very large, Alan, and mushrooms are plentiful.’
‘Not those ones.’
Troemius shrugged.
‘You’re a fucking monster.’
‘No. All the monsters live in the Discard.’
‘So if I deliver, I get to see Billy monthly.’
‘Yes. Or less frequently, should you or he prefer.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then I’ll think up something suitably swift and painless.’
‘I won’t be able to do this, Tromo. I can’t – it’s just not possible.’
‘Yes,’ Troemius said, starting to lose interest. ‘You are in a bit of a situation. But as they say, desperation is the mother of invention.’
‘Do they?’
Troemius shrugged again, smiled his thin smile once more and replaced the mask. He walked backwards away from Alan and disappeared into the Pyramid.
Alan swore. Tromo was a pig. They were all pigs, here. Cold-blooded and dead-eyed pigs. He hopped up onto the wall and looked down. The descent would take time – he would be reaching the bottom in daylight. Most of the way he could scramble and slide, but there were points where he’d have to climb and drop. It wasn’t t
oo arduous though, and he knew it well. The alcove where he met Billy was on one of the lowest inhabited floors of the Pyramid, so he was unlikely to meet any Pyramidders on the way. He put his hip-flask to his lips and was disgusted to find that it was empty. He needed to dull the pain of his thoughts.
He coated his hands in chalk from a small pouch at his belt, and began his journey downwards. Hand under hand, foot beneath foot, down the cool black marble.
6
Big Old Lash
Alan took his boots off and splashed cold water from a bucket across his face, hoping to dispel the glue stink from his nostrils. He picked Snapper up off his bed and ran a finger over the fixed neck; he’d done the job himself at Loon’s workshop, where there were clamps and glues he could use. Loon herself had been busy at one of the cauldrons, intent upon her own work. She had grunted acquiescence when Alan asked to borrow a bench and buy some glue, but hadn’t spoken another word to him. She got like that when she was busy, and she was always busy.
The join in Snapper’s neck was ugly, but the glue was dry and it would hold. He’d replaced those strings he had spares for, but that still left him down two. No mind. It would have to do.
He went to the window of his room in the House of a Thousand Hollows. A gang of transients had accumulated around a bucket-fire on a flat rooftop down and across from him. He put his boots back on and went over there with a bottle of Dog Moon in each of his deep coat pockets and Snapper once again on his back. Maybe some of them recognised him, maybe not. Their reactions to his arrival were all shanked by the half-cut toad sweat they were passing around, but they were welcoming enough, especially when they saw the whisky he was carrying. Mostly they just carried on their conversations with each other, a low murmur of voices interrupted occasionally by laughter. One man, all beard, offered Alan a fat snail on a stick to toast, which he accepted. There were snails in every crevice: between the flagstones, in cracks in the walls, creeping over the remaining tiles on the nearby rooftops. Not just on this rooftop: the whole of Gleam was crawling with snails and they were a staple foodstuff for the transients.
Most of them there were topless in the Gleam heat, displaying scrawny and wasted bodies. They smeared the toad sweat into red gums with dirty, calloused fingers. Their skin was red-brown from the sun, and black in the creases. All but one were right gone on the sweat, but then, Alan judged, anyone living their lives under full Discard exposure should be forgiven for wanting to escape them, temporarily, now and again. He twisted the lids from the Moons and passed one off to the left, swigging from the other. The object was to get pissed, steaming, messed up. This wasn’t just drinking. This was drinking with intent, and it wasn’t as easy as he always made it look.
Above them all, the deep blue sky was made distant by small, pink-limned clouds that floated against it. Striped Satis looked just like a child’s ball that had been booted up there and caught fast by the blue; it appeared closer than the white sliver of moon, though this was an illusion. The rooftop on which they all stood was surrounded by other rooftops, most peaked and tiled, but with tiles missing and ivy weaving in and out of the resultant holes. From one ancient window stuck a silver birch, which Alan had often looked at from his own window but still didn’t understand the provenance of. Like the clouds the tree too shone pink.
This rooftop was one of several transient crossroads to be found in the environs of the House of a Thousand Hollows. Travellers met around the ever-burning bucket fires to find journey companions, exchange news, trade a little, imbibe a lot and hook up. They were welcome to use the facilities of the House itself if they could pay, but many couldn’t, living more of a hand-to-mouth life than House residents, and most of those who could pay wouldn’t, out of principle. ‘Might as well be the Pyramid,’ they said.
The bottle of Dog Moon was passed to the one soberish member of the group, a woman with short dark hair and black diamonds tattooed around her nipples, and she addressed Alan as she took it.
‘You can use that thing?’
‘What thing?’
‘On your back.’
‘Oh!’ Alan lifted the guitar over his shoulder. ‘Well, yes. Playing the guitar is almost the only thing I can do. One other thing I can do is sing.’ He took another slug from his own bottle and passed it on. ‘On a good day I can do both at the same time.’
‘Is today a good day?’
‘By no means whatsoever.’
The woman smiled. ‘What songs have you got?’
‘ “Black Sheep Shepherd”.’ Alan tuned the guitar as he spoke. ‘ “The Ladies of Liss”. “The Ballad of Modest Mills”. “The Pit and the Pyramid”. Do you know these ones? “Old Green”. Just say if any of these would fill the hole. Are those tattoos from Spider Kurt? I wrote a song about Spider Kurt, called “The Poker”. I have some very similar diamonds from him on my inner thighs. “Frogs and Toads”. “Rooftop Ruth”, also known as “Ruth of the Rooftops”. “Dog Moon Thinking”. That’s another of mine. “Mushroom Queen”. Any requests?’
‘ “The Pit and the Pyramid”, then,’ said the woman.
‘A good slow one for the sunset.’
‘Aye,’ the large-bearded man chimed in, his voice slurred. ‘ “Pit and Pyramid”.’
‘You’ve really been at the sweat, hey? It’ll be even slower for you, friend.’ Alan ran his fingers over the strings and then put the instrument down. He took his jacket off and rolled his shirt sleeves up. He should have changed his shirt before coming back out. His boots and trousers were still covered in the thick sticky-soft dust from the expanse around the Pyramid. He picked Snapper back up. ‘Okay. I’m called Alan, and this is “The Pit and the Pyramid”.’
Alan watched the transients as he played. They were watching him back. Most of them swayed in time. He knew what toad sweat was like: the sense of interconnectedness, the feeling that they had to move. Everything would seem slower to them than it did to him, as well. It was not an unpleasant intoxicant, and it conferred a peacefulness, mindfulness and warmth that he felt many people could benefit from sometimes. But it was not really a social drug. These travellers were more or less rooted for the night, and there would be no real party on this rooftop.
After the song was done, the group applauded and he drank some more whisky, spilling it down his chin. He started playing another song, feeling like maybe he’d do three before moving on, when he realised that everybody was shouting and pointing to the low wall running around the edge of the rooftop. He looked over and there was something strange poking up beyond it: some kind of long tendril, like the shoot of a new plant. Except it was much larger, the size of a human arm, and it was moving from side to side. Then another appeared, grey-green and shining in the last of the daylight. They looked wet. It took him a moment to recognise them. They kept growing or, rather, more and more of them became visible as their owner neared the lip of the rooftop. This was some specimen.
Soon the horns were towering over them all, bending and swaying as they looked around. They were joined by two more shorter, fatter ones, and then, suddenly, the bulky mass of the snail’s body. As it slimed up from the wall, its mouth was briefly visible: a downturned crescent lined with tiny sharp denticles, the only feature on the otherwise blank, smooth underside. Alan had seen some giants, but never one this big. He ran to the wall and looked over.
‘Fuck me,’ he said.
‘Must have come up from the real depths,’ the woman said. She was at the wall too. ‘It’s got a saddle hanging off it. Swampies use them to get around. Some of the traders down there have whole caravans of the things.’
‘What’s your name?’ Alan asked.
‘Churr. Look at its shell.’
The snail, now crawling over the wall and onto the roof, had a long shell coiled unevenly to a tip that pointed backwards. It was covered with moss and lichen, and colonies of smaller, ordinary snails were nestled into the dips between coils. Discernible beneath all of the growth and the grime was an intricate pattern
in white and red-brown. Beyond the snail, the side of building they all stood on stretched away, a pale yellow expanse vanishing into shadow. The snail’s mucoid path glistened: a trail coming up from out of the darkness.
‘It picked the wrong rooftop,’ Churr observed. ‘This’ll feed us for weeks.’ The group had been swollen by newcomers carrying weapons.
‘It’s drawing quite a crowd,’ Alan said.
‘What’s it got that you haven’t, eh?’ Churr said.
‘It’s that lovely shell. I should acquire one.’
‘It’s true. You’re just a grey old slug. Give me that whisky.’
Alan passed her the bottle. ‘I don’t want them to kill it,’ he said.
‘You don’t strike me as the squeamish type.’
‘It’s not that. It’s just … I bet it’s old. It must be so old.’
The snail was crawling along the edge of the rooftop. A long-haired woman with a cruel-looking hooked spear was shadowing it, as was a man with a long, curved knife. The sky was darker now and the snail lit mostly by fire. Its flesh was translucent, glowing orange with refracted firelight. Tubes could be seen within. There were shouts and sounds from nearby rooftops and windows as onlookers gathered. Parents were waking their children and bringing them out, wrapped in woollen blankets.
‘You transients must see all sorts,’ Alan said. ‘You must go down deep sometimes.’
‘Not swamp-deep. Really, we stick to established routes. We go where the trade is, or where we know the pickings to be rich. We survive by foraging, borrowing, buying and selling. I do a good business collecting and selling toad sweat. Easier to do all that by staying up here where the people are.’
‘You don’t explore?’
‘We might be tough, but we’re not suicidal. This is the Discard. I mean, do you?’
Alan considered. ‘I take your point,’ he said. ‘So this kind of creature is unusual?’
‘Yes, but not unknown.’ Churr turned to face him. ‘I don’t believe you haven’t had this kind of conversation with a transient before. About where we go, what we do.’