“I’m sure they are more than adequate, and you’ve made us most welcome,” Blue said. “Some of the finest restaurants fail to keep settings for us—we are touched,” Blue finished, his words earning him a beaming smile from the woman and curious glances from Letty and the Caspians, though he deflected these with a stiff, wagging finger, wordlessly insisting that his courtesy never be mentioned.
The old woman left their table as a pair of brutox entered the shop.
The team of mice had carried with them three of the needful carrots, though these were rather orange, as well as a few coins to pay for coffee and a plate of pastries.
Blue’s mouse associates looked rough, with patches of missing fur and the occasional bite mark. Watching the team of coarse mice sitting and drinking their coffee from miniature cups nearly made Letty laugh.
“That could have gone much worse,” Blue whispered, his eyes on the newly arrived brutox, who took a table at the far end of the shop. Blue ordered several mice to scout the nearby streets, and when they returned with no news, they paid and thanked the woman.
Blue angrily inspected Letty and the Caspians, making sure their eyes were in order, before leading them further onto the lane outside. “These orange carrots will have to do for now, but they won’t protect you for more than a few hours,” Blue said.
“We’re used to the dark ones,” Letty said.
“Well, there weren’t any on hand—but we need to remember not to let them lapse—” Blue paused, glancing upward. “We’re late!”
“For what?” Letty asked.
“Avera will chew my head off,” Blue muttered, directing them down the lane.
“Who’s that,” Staza asked.
“An old friend,” Blue muttered, between shouting clipped directions at them.
“Here, turn right, and head down there,” Blue said, pointing at a set of stairs that descended beneath a building.
Letty took the stairs and slowed to look at another, far smaller, set of stairs carved into the wall of the stair well. The mice, who were not far behind, took the smaller set of stairs to a tiny port door that opened at the sound of their knocking.
They waited for a moment before Blue cursed and leaped off Letty’s shoulder. He went through the mouse door, and they heard shrill arguing coming from the other side.
Letty tried the regular sized door’s handle, but it was locked tight.
A moment later, there was a loud click and the door popped open.
They stood in astonishment and looked in on dozens of mouse sized floors that filled the space on the other side of the door. It was a tiny, or, in mouse sizes, huge, multistoried restaurant and bar.
“It’s like looking at a model building, sliced in half. Look at all the levels and the little tables and stairs,” Quill said.
The mice were rapidly clearing the furniture. A few looked up at the awestruck humans and grumbled about their lunches being ruined. Once the furniture was gone, they pulled on chains connected to the floors. The floors split apart at the center and wound up, like rolling carpets, making vertical room for the humans to enter.
“Clear twenty cubic feet for them—I don’t know, somewhere in the back! Yes, they’re late—but who’s surprised by the tall and slows! And get the band back on, we have customers here!” A pink and red mouse, standing next to Blue, yelled at the working teams.
Letty, Staza, and Quill entered carefully.
“Close the door, please!” the pink mouse yelled at the humans. “It takes fifty mice to do what one of you can, so spare us the trouble!”
“Of course,” Quill said, closing the heavy metal door.
The mouse floors were unwound and laid back out as they passed, effectively locking them in. Mice replaced their furniture, returned to their drinks and dancing, and generally did all this while eying the humans.
“You should know better! Showing up late, but with them in tow, I can’t blame you!” the pink mouse said to Blue, who gestured widely to the humans.
“Letty, Staza, Quill, this is Avera, proprietress of the Thungile Alehouse,” Blue said, from a floor at about human eye level.
“Alehouse!” Avera repeated. “Did you hear that everyone? The daft paint-mouse says we’re an alehouse again!”
“So, what is it now? Besides a tasteless, cavernous, monstrosity?” Blue asked, clutching his robe tight and looking over his shoulder nervously.
“We’re a proper parcel now, with full representation in the Archatian registry. Thungile pocket-parcel, this is! See the plaza on the tenth level!” She pointed.
Letty looked, and saw, way in the distance, on the tenth level, a mouse sized stage, occupied by a pair of arguers dressed up as a Braid and a Greek.
“This way we avoid any wild law changes and the looting that brings,” she concluded.
“Nice to meet you,” Letty said, before immediately shrinking back under a field of annoyed looks.
“Now, now! No need to bring the rafters down, dearie!”
Letty rankled. I wasn’t even loud, but I guess this is their place.
“Quick now, make a path to the sewer! Let’s get this back in order as soon as possible,” Avera commanded.
The mice continued pulling up the floors and opening a path to allow the humans to travel further inside their little city.
“What are you looking at? You go off for years to live like a mercenary, and then you come back looking like a fool, and you expect a smiling face? How could you still be that stupid after so long?” Avera chided Blue, who was staring expectantly.
“Well, she can’t be that mad; she’s helping us after all,” Quill whispered.
“I heard that, you gangly human! Don’t think I won’t take a bite out of your ear!” Avera snapped, and Blue laughed.
As they slowly moved through Thungile, Letty listened in on the mice.
“And there’s some rogue Seer in town causing trouble, or at least that’s the rumor, nothing has happened in a while,” one mouse said to another, who looked aghast.
“I can’t believe it! I leave for a few weeks to our family farm in the Wreck, and the sky breaks, and people think Caspian is back. What the hell happened to the Secular Right?” the other responded.
Letty turned her ear to another conversation.
“The fighting in the sewers hasn’t affected our distributorship as much as the competition’s. We’ve been lucky as regards the advancement of the city wall around Third Gate. They just built a new segment over a few tenements. They sealed off the holes, but the pipes still go through. We’ve transitioned all of our commerce to this point, and completely cut out the sewers. The best part is, my wife doesn’t hate how I smell anymore!”
Letty chuckled as silently as possible, but was still met with flattened ears and twinging whiskers.
“So, the old mice—you know the ones from Sentinel’s Watch—they still won’t frequent any of the native establishments in the city. They turn their noses up when we go by and consider us traitors! We didn’t lose the damned ancient city!”
Letty sighed, remembering Titus and Taptalles.
“Delivery, from above!” a mouse called out.
Letty looked up and saw a pulley system of cords and clips wired to hang just underneath the ceiling. She spotted a rolled-up blouse being pulled along.
“There’s the target! And hurry up, this convoy is blocking up the delivery ports!” the mouse called out to the team who was working the rope system.
They unhooked the blouse and it fell unceremoniously onto Letty’s head. The blouse was followed by a blue skirt, socks, a pair of flats, and then clothes for the Caspians. The clothes were of simple, but local cut.
“Damned humans, can’t get away from them. Even in Thungile they’re clogging the roads,” a mouse complained, looking up from his table at the massive interlopers.
They finally cleared a path to the sewer entrance, which was fortified and covered in hundreds of mouse-sized locking mechanisms.
They
don’t want anything coming up through there.
“So,” Letty whispered. “What’s the plan, Blue? Do you know where we can find a portal?”
A few hundred mice shushed Letty.
“We’ll discuss the plan in a minute, but you had better put those new clothes on, you don’t want to be changing down in the sewers.”
“Not happening,” Letty said, Staza and Quill nodded in agreement.
“Oh hell. Everyone look away from the humans!” Avera snapped, loudly.
Letty heard a loud crack. It was the thousands of mice turning their chairs, tables, and faces away from them all at once.
They are weirdly organized.
There was silence, save one mouse, some sort of radical, still on the stage. “We will not be told where to look! This is systemic humanism, a failing trait of our species since it’s tragic—” the railing mouse was sidelined by his opponent, and the two struggled on the floor.
Letty sighed.
Well, my dress is huge. I can use it like a tent and get dressed underneath.
Letty and Staza had no trouble putting their clothes on under their dresses, and then pulling the large dresses off. Quill, on the other hand, looked away from the girls, but shook his head and refused to change.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Blue quipped. “Well, it’s more for the girls anyway, your only problem will be getting filthy or standing out in a crowd.”
With the embarrassing show finally over, the hatch was opened, and they climbed slick and grimy rungs to the sewer beneath.
“I’m glad we changed; those stupid heels and that baggy dress would have been hell on these rungs,” Staza said.
At the bottom, Letty produced a glow with her Argument.
The sewer was more cramped than she expected, and they all had to hunch. They listened as the latch was replaced and secured.
“Well, Avera will be glad to see us gone, the old bird. But look, you shouldn’t mention the plan in public, and, mouse company or no, you should be more careful about what you say, and when you say it,” Blue chided, climbing up Letty’s shoulder. “You, dark haired girl, I’m talking to you!”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” Letty replied, holding her nose shut and scowling.
“Get used to it! If you hadn’t gone on a diplomatic holiday we wouldn’t be in this literal mess!”
Everyone shrunk under Blue’s glare. Quill folded his arms guiltily.
“We are headed to the Sink, or the crystal shore, depending on who you ask. It’s that way, get moving,” Blue chided, and Letty started walking. “The Sink is the domain of the mer. They are the last robust, religious hold-outs in the city.”
“Why do you say domain? Are they independent?” Staza asked.
“No. They pay their due to the Exegesuits, but they do not tolerate the Archatian system in their parcels. Say the braids try to come in and debate in the Sink, they will find the plaza empty. If the Redvolutionists try anything—well, they drown as quickly as anyone else.”
“So, they violently keep the debates and law changes out of their area?” Letty asked.
“Yes. Think of them as a niche and simply distinct from everyone else. They are part of the city, an old part as well, older than the secular church. We are going to their streets. We must come appropriately. That means respect and courtesy. I trust you three more than the other two surfacers, but still, mind yourselves. The mer are a formal people.”
“Is it far?” Quill asked, cringing at the smell.
“We have a quick stop first, and if all goes well, we won’t have to return to the sewer for the second part of our journey.”
“What’s the stop?” Staza asked.
“We need to go see Dean, and quickly, before he’s placed under tighter custody.”
“Good idea,” Letty said.
“Well, the best part, you haven’t heard yet. My fellows have been keeping an eye on Emma and Dean. Dean has been succeeding in the debates, but the fool boy doesn’t realize that the Sici he wins are worth quite a bit. He has the money we need to secure the mer portals.”
Letty started laughing.
“What?” Staza asked. “Why is that funny?”
“If Dean and Emma turn out to not be as useless as I said they were—” Letty grinned painfully. “I’ll have to apologize like I’ve never apologized before. Blue, how much money? Exactly how wealthy is Dean right now?”
“Extravagantly,” Blue replied.
“And we’re going to rob him,” Letty concluded, before breaking out in more tragic laughter. “The poor guy!”
Quill and Staza became infected, but moments later they had blue tugging on their ears.
“Ow!”
“Be quiet, you idiots!” He spoke in a cross between a yell and a whisper. “There are gangs down here! And a war is being fought not too far away.”
“What’s this about a war?” Staza whispered.
“A surge of compelled brutox have been making incursions into the sewers. They are called compelled when they are led by ryle or queens. These look to be ryle led, considering the numbers. They are blocking commerce and continue fighting under the great walls and into the city proper. The builders, who know all the territorial gangs, believe that the invading force is inching towards the cisterns.”
“Why? Is anyone trying to stop them?”
“None of the gangs have the strength to oppose them. I’ve heard from smugglers that they’ve seen ravagers in the sewers too.”
Letty shivered at the thought.
“A ravager can bend its legs further than you would expect, but it would still jam the whole sewer! And you would have nowhere to go as it chased you down. But I don’t think one could fit in this sewer,” Quill said.
“Right, only the warriors fight in the service sewers like these, the larger tunnels, however,” Blue anxiously plucked out a whisker, “They are certainly after the cisterns. Those are the only way ravagers might slip silently into the city.”
“Well, besides the gangs, is anyone doing anything about it?” Letty whispered.
“Of course they are! But Degoskans are strange, they argue about everything. The church will deny it until there are ryle waving purple blades and ravagers in the streets. The Archatians can’t agree on what to do. The only groups that are working together, oddly enough, are the street gangs, the builders, the goblins, and the brutox queens.”
“Queens—what are they doing?” Letty asked, remembering her suit of plate armor.
“The queens, who escaped the ryle for Degoskirke, have the ability to control most brutox through the use of scent, or something of the sort; it’s all very mysterious. They have laws against the queens compelling more than one hundred brutox a piece, to keep them from forming small armies in the city. So, working together with the cobbled defenders, the queens are keeping the invaders from advancing any further into the city. The enemy commanders seem to understand the danger and have fortified their positions. They rely on the ravagers, and, oddly, on ychoron fighters to hold back the local repulsion—”
Staza reached out a hand and silenced Blue. Letty stopped and waited for Staza, who crouched low and reached for a dagger that wasn’t there.
Letty released her grip on the orb. They were shrouded in darkness.
Heavy footsteps splashed in the sewers nearby. The sound echoed off the walls. Letty felt Staza grab her arm.
“Be ready,” she leaned in and whispered in Letty’s ear.
The heavy footsteps paused, there was the sound of metal scraping on stone, and then silence. They all held their breaths.
How close is it? The sound in here is misleading.
Finally, the heavy steps faded, echoing into the distance.
“What was that?” Quill whispered.
No one answered, and they continued moving, silently at first, and then faster, as if whatever had made those noises might be right behind.
“Turn here. Left, no, the second left! Stay out
of the main sewer, we don’t want any company,” Blue said.
They saw light pouring in from the drains above. They had entered a room built around a large pipe that led straight down. In the spaces around the pipe, a few brutox had built themselves a little shelter. Threadbare mats lined the floor, and creaking shelves held belongings on the far wall.
One of the brutox jumped up at the sudden sight of them and readied a shoddy dagger.
Letty moved to fight, but Blue tugged on her ear. “Wait,” he whispered, and then spoke loudly for the brutox, “Please, we mean no harm. May we ascend through here?”
The group of brutox had a quick, click-filled huddle, and then, apparently, decided to let them pass.
“Thank you,” Letty said, before climbing up another set of metal rungs.
She pushed against the sewer grate and moved it aside before climbing out. Another group of brutox were sat there, staring.
“Pardon us,” Blue said, politely.
Looking around, Letty realized that they weren’t in the nicest part of the city anymore. The buildings here were shabby, crumbling, and in need of fresh paint or plaster. The roads were jammed with shanties, toppled carts, and piles of ruined or burnt out ornamental furniture.
Blue directed them towards the sounds of cheering and hissing, but they avoided the main streets, and found themselves climbing over piles of debris and through destroyed buildings, suffering collapsed roofs. Those tumbled roofs were full of soil and half-grown plants.
Black and red streamers linked several buildings, though these were often in tatters. Letty noticed a preponderance of brutox in the area.
“They come here, with the mien of a lord and would dare to tell you, people of People’s Parcel, that you have made a mistake! This stranger from a strange land, where they worship a woman and hold to her as a supreme ruler. This lotus eater! Opium smoker! Monarchist slave! Dares to come to the freest part of the freest city to tell you how to live!”
The crowd exploded in outrage.
Letty peeked around the corner of the alley and spotted Dean, surrounded by guards, who were trying to shield him from the rotted foodstuffs presently giving the People’s Parcel’s Plaza a new coat of paint.
The Immortal of Degoskirke Page 13