by Martin Kee
Upon entering the pantry, and climbing up the wooden ladder, Skyla wondered what sort of guest would actually fit in the “guest bed” which was simply a four foot straw mat and a sandbag for a pillow. She moved some sacks of flour out of the way and found she could barely fit as long as she didn’t stretch out her legs completely. Lying in the loft, she could almost touch the ceiling when she stretched her arms.
Orrin had found a rafter a few feet above her bed and was preparing to settle in for awhile. As he rested directly over her, Skyla wondered what sort of bowel control a sleeping raven possessed.
“Do you think he’ll let us stay longer?” she asked.
Orrin uttered a croak.
“You think we should keep moving…”
“Pree-cher.”
Skyla sighed. “You saw how big Marley is. He would crush the man.”
Another croak and a click.
She reached a hand out and petted his soft feathers. Orrin closed his eyes, yawning.
“Customers!” bellowed Marley from the front.
*
Sitting at a table near Dale were a couple of patrons that, by the looks of them, had already been drinking long before they arrived. The woman cast a hazy gaze at Skyla, then cracked a yellowish smile. Skyla grabbed a full mug from the taps and delivered it to them while Marley greeted newcomers from behind the bar.
“Well, look at you!” said the woman, overflowing in all the wrong places from her corset. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Skyla,” she said, placing a dolphin-shaped mug in front of the woman and another in front of the man.
“Very nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Marley! You start hiring any younger, you’ll have to deliver them straight from the mother’s wombs yourself!”
Marley walked back to the counter and waved her comment away. The woman released a high-pitched cackle.
“You must be new!” she said to Skyla.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ma’am!” The woman gave a wry grin and elbowed her date. She leaned closer and said, “I could tell from the school uniform. You’re a Bollingbroker?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“My great uncle was too, you know. Back when times were good.”
She was speaking now with a lubricated nonchalance. Skyla noticed her nose was red, and her breath smelled of whiskey.
“That’s what they do up the hill, you know,” she said. “If you ain’t got money, you ain’t got a place in Bollingbrook.”
By the time people began to stumble home, Skyla realized that it was nearly sunrise. Her mouth was dry from introducing herself so many times, her head spinning with so many new faces. Some people were asleep in their chairs as the last conscious patrons left, waving and staggering. Marley hefted one of them out the door, suggesting he sleep against the wall outside. He threw them out, one by one, all except for Dale who was passed out at the bar, a small puddle of drool forming around his shallow beard. Marley polished the counter around him.
“Why do you let him stay?” she asked Marley. She was sitting a couple of seats away from the sleeping man. Her ears still rang from the evening’s noise.
“He’s had a bad run of luck,” said Marley, leaning onto the counter. “Used to be lookout crew. Guarded the docks.’
“What happened?” she said. Dale muttered something in his sleep.
“He lost a bet. A big bet.”
“What was he betting on?”
Marley polished a spot close by on the bar for a long thoughtful moment.
“He bet on me,” he said, then straightened to his full height and threw the dishrag under the counter. “Hungry?”
Marley disappeared behind the wall as Skyla looked at Dale’s shadow in private. She had seen men like him in Bollingbrook, one violation away from being jailed or banished from the city. She supposed a lot of them ended up here, assuming they didn’t find themselves on the business end of a scout’s crossbow. As Dale snored, his shadow spread out behind him. It was lonely and broken, reeking of disappointment and bad decisions—otherwise harmless. There was a hint of the handsome man he had once been beneath that beard.
Marley returned with a pair of plates garnished with pickled yams and bread. Skyla made quick work of hers and saved a piece for Orrin.
“Why did someone call him Half-Dale?”
Marley grunted between massive bites, his walrus mustache wiggling as if he were about to eat the plate as well. He wiped his face.
“He owed some money,” Marley said. “The arm you don’t see, there’s a reason for that.”
Skyla’s mouth made an O shape and she glanced back at the sleeping man. Marley yawned and stretched before extinguishing the few lanterns in the room. She was headed back to her loft when Marley cleared his throat. She turned.
“You uh… you did really good tonight,” he said, standing sheepishly at the entrance to his room. “If you’re up for it... I mean if you want… I could use the help tomorrow… weekends and whatnot.”
“Sure,” she said, trying to hide her excitement.
“I mean… I understand if you are just passing through,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “We get a lot of folks who are just—”
“No, I can stay,” she said beaming, surprised at how good it felt to say the words.
He nodded, said nothing more and disappeared behind his door. Skyla climbed into her loft and placed the spare food out on the end of the rafter for Orrin’s breakfast. She stroked his sleek feathers.
I could make a home here, she thought. A home where I don’t have to hide from the world, where strangers don’t look at me funny then turn away, where I wouldn’t have to run anymore. I wouldn’t even have to go to Rhinewall.
Too tired to struggle with the decision, sleep overtook her before she even finished the thought.
Chapter 9
To:
Father John Thomas: Rt. Rev. Millstone Parish, sub domain, Archdiocese of The Western Territories
The Vatican is aware of the pending investigation. I urge you to cooperate with Reverend Inspector Summers not only for your own sake but also for the sake of The Church. If contact is made with the girl, do not approach her, but instead report immediately to The Reverend Inspector Summers. He is to be given full access to any relevant records, which might help him speed his investigation along and result in recovery of the girl.
Dark times may be upon us.
Treat this matter with the utmost importance and urgency.
Sincerely,
The Right Reverend Christopher Boroughs, PhD, ThD, Archbishop of Bollingbrook and the Western Territories
PS – My hands are tied on this one, John. If you need to talk in person, you know where to find me. – Chris
Father Thomas fumed as he read the message again. The top portion had the practiced handwriting of a Church scribe, the postscript in the archbishop’s own recognizable chicken scratch. He hadn’t seen Chris in years, but he had known that handwriting for decades.
Three days I wait for him to get back to me and he sends me this.
He threw the letter into an open drawer and slammed it shut. The past few days had been filled with lackeys arriving, their arms filled with document requests from Summers. After days of messengers barging into his office with their petty, time-consuming demands, he was beginning to fall behind in actual work. But that wasn’t what really bothered him. It was the pace of the Reverend’s investigation. Every unannounced visit felt forced, contrived, a needling distraction. He began to suspect that they had the sole purpose of disrupting him, keeping him in his place.
There was another knock and John pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
“What now?” he said.
He heard the door open, followed by a young female voice. “Father?”
John lowered his hands and blinked at the girl. She was in her teens and remarkably attractive. He fished in the back of his mind for her name as she entered the room. Her face sagg
ed with concern.
“Hello… Sarah,” he said. He stood and offered her a chair.
She wore a flowing yellow dress that swayed seductively despite her self-conscious attempts to appear modest. She perched on the edge of the seat, hands in her lap.
“What has the Reverend Inspector put you up to today?” he said. “An inventory of sacramental wine storage? How about a roster of the deacons, their names and addresses… again? Or last week’s sermon copied in triplicate perhaps?”
Sarah ignored him and looked at the ground as if trying to remember all the lines of a song before a performance.
John cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?”
“Father,” she said. “I’m wondering…” She looked around the room nervously then leaned forward, her voice low. “I’m not really here on the Reverend Inspector’s behalf today.”
“Alright…” he said, bracing himself for unseen traps.
“I… I’m wondering if it’s possible to forgive sin… preemptively?”
John sat upright in his chair. “Well,” he started slowly. “According to scripture, that was the entire point of the crucifixion. It was a sacrifice to forgive all sins. That includes past, present, and future.”
“So, God knows all the sins I will commit even before I know?” She gave him a troubled look, and John felt the back of his neck prickle with concern.
“That’s one way to look at it. But in all fairness, He does know everything.” He smiled despite his discomfort. “In the end, we do have a choice, Sarah, free will and all. God might know very well what will become of us based on those choices, but He gives us the choice to change it nonetheless.”
She thought about this for a long time, her forehead in a knot. “But, if God knows that I am about to sin, and forgives me anyway, why can’t I just choose not to sin?”
“Like I said, free will—Sarah, is someone making you do something you aren’t entirely comfortable with?” He leveled his gaze on her.
She gave a shy smile, her blue eyes resigned to whatever decision she had made. She shrugged her shoulders as if attempting to squeeze out the next question, her eyes drifting to the crucifix on the wall.
“What if I’m doing it for The Church? Then it’s not really a sin is it?”
John shifted in his chair. “What are you planning to do, Sarah?”
“Nothing, yet,” she said, twisting a piece of her dress with a nervous hand. “I’m just curious.”
“That’s good,” said John. “I hope you don’t. In fact, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You do understand that right?”
She nodded earnestly, her golden hair lapping over her shoulders.
“I understand, Father,” she said, standing up. She started to the door and then stopped, looking at the floorboards, her head half-turned. Her hand rested delicately on the handle.
“Father,” she added. She began to say something and then seemed to change her mind. “You’re a really great listener. Thank you.”
And with that, she ducked out of the doorway. A few moments later John went to the door to ask more questions, but she had gone. A great listener, he thought, and yet completely impotent when it comes to protecting a flock of one.
This whole situation was getting more and more ridiculous. First, there was the fire, then the delays, and now this? The archbishop’s letter was a warning for sure, but his friend’s invitation was clear. Maybe Christopher would have some answers. He called for Julian and informed him that Father Gladwell would be needed to cover the service that night.
“I should be back tomorrow. I have a meeting with the archbishop across town and I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
Julian gave another wide-eyed nod and dashed off.
*
While walking through the city John thought of his mother, who died of pneumonia when he was ten. He thought of coughing and blood, of religion and magical cures. He thought about the money he had stolen from the church coffers to buy a potion from the friendly salesman in his red and gold carriage. The potion was nothing but water, some bits of dandelion floating in a white cloud at the bottom.
It had done nothing but make him feel better—and maybe that was the point. As a child, John wanted the comfort more than he wanted the truth, even if the truth stared at him every night wrapped in red stains on white bed sheets. No gilded gates, no harps and wings.
I make my living from peddling delusion, he thought.
The Reverend Summers seemed one far more interested in selling mirrors and miracle cures. There were big profits in marketing the afterlife.
The sound of burnt wood crunching beneath his feet brought him to an abrupt halt. He looked up, surprised to see the charred ruins before him. In his wandering, his feet had carried him unconsciously to a street corner in the Industrial Wedge—the Gutter Wedge, the Nameless Wedge. The factories had been firing up one by one. An airship hung, bloated on a leash, tethered in the air above one smoky building.
Jagged ruins that had once been walls sprouted up like skeletal fingers. He had known it was here, everyone had, somewhere in their minds. But this was the first time he had actually seen it.
The remains of Skyla’s home sat in a lush green yard scattered with tires and old cans. It didn’t look quite as “burnt to a crisp” as the Reverend Summers claimed.
He stepped across the charred floor, feeling the damp charcoal crunch and squish under his feet. Nothing burned forever; the evening rains and mist saw to that. Now what remained was a sort of blackened swamp.
The stairs had not completely collapsed, but it looked as though the upstairs room had fallen into the kitchen. He approached the first step and noticed a ragged gash along the wall of the stairwell. It looked as though someone had dragged a pickaxe across it.
It took something big to do that sort of damage. Apparently the Reverend Inspector hadn’t been lying about that. According to Lyle, Skyla’s mother had been immolated, but John saw no evidence that a body was, or ever had been there; nothing to suggest a body had been removed either.
Why would he lie about this? Is he just trying to buy time? And enough time to do what?
Something caught his eye, a cigarette butt on the ground. The stub was crushed and damp, but intact. John picked it up as he noticed the unmistakable tire tracks of a car.
He’d have me believe that he came here as the house was burning, parked his car at the front door, just feet from the flames and had a smoke? Does he think I’m stupid?
The police wouldn’t be investigating any of it, not with The Church involved. Half the town wanted her dead after that day in the chapel, probably even before that. John picked up the spent cigarette and found another, on the charred floor, burnt and black, held together by the moisture alone. He grabbed that one as well and wrapped both in a handkerchief. Maybe the archbishop knew about all this, even authorized it. John knew that Chris could do that if he wanted to—but would he?
John turned and walked back up the street, the house fading from his mind as it drifted into the distance and out of his periphery. Fondling the cigarettes in his pocket, lost in thought, the priest failed to noticed the flier that blew past him. It stuck to a blackened board, held in place by dew. On it was the picture of a missing girl. She was roughly Skyla’s age, with wavy hair and a quizzical smile. Beneath the picture were the words:
MISSING: MELISSA MONTEGUT—DAUGHTER OF HAROLD AND FRANCINE MONTEGUT
Chapter 10
She sat above Marley, her feet dangling from the bunk. It had only been a couple of days, but she was already antsy to get out and see the city.
“You said ‘no’ yesterday,” she said, looking down at him.
“The answer is still no,” said Marley. “Not without an escort anyway.”
“Well, then escort me.”
“I have a pub to run,” he grumbled, shuffling something in the pantry below her mattress. “I don’t have time to whisk little girls off into the city.”
; Skyla considered bonking him on the head with her heel. She leaned over and grabbed what was left of her shoes and showed him. They looked more like small dead animals than shoes anymore. To drive the point home, a buckle fell off and rattled on the floor. Marley paused to look at it.
“If you really need new shoes, I can have someone fetch you some.”
“I can go alone,” she said. “I can defend myself just fine.”
Marley cracked a grin. “You can, can you?”
She glanced at the rings that encrusted his hand and felt sheepish.
“I can handle myself.”
“I’ll bet you’d kick the snot out of any ten-year-old.”
She thought for a moment, and then her face brightened. “Dale can watch the tavern.”
Marley laughed so loud she felt her bed vibrate. “Sure, I’ll just invite the thieves’ guild to look after my safe while I’m at it, maybe grab a stray dog to guard the pantry.”
“Well I can’t work for you barefoot,” she said. “Between the exposed nails and the broken glass it’s a miracle that I haven’t caught some disease. Don’t you have to go into town anyway to get supplies?”
“We get a supply cart once a week.”
“So tell them I need shoes,” she said. She tugged on the torn fabric of her school outfit. “And clothes? All I have is what I’m wearing. I’m starting to look like some of your customers… and smell like them as well.”
She was right. Marley knew she was. His broad white mustache shifted up and down as he thought about what the patrons might think. It certainly didn’t look good keeping the girl around like some slave.
He grumbled as he scratched his chin. “I suppose the delivery would never get here in time… and you’d have to try them on, of course.” He let out a great sigh.
He dug a hand into his pocket, pulled out a coin purse the size of her fist and plopped it into her open palm. It was more money than Skyla had ever seen in her life.
“And you’ll want this.” He grabbed his finger with the opposite hand and pulled. One of his enormous silver rings slid off, leaving a pale indentation below the knuckle. “You wear this on your thumb or on a string or something. Keep it somewhere people will see it.”