Hope and Red

by Jon Skovron

“Ah,” said Red. “Well, that’s that, then. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Hope, giving him a strange glance. “It is.”

  He nodded and kept walking, playing it as pat as you like. But underneath, his plans for conquest crumbled. The first girl who’d really captured his attention since Nettles, one he might actually give a cup of piss about, and he had to pick the girl sworn to celibacy.

  “It’s for the best,” he said. “Most toms talk nothing but balls and pricks anyway.”

  “Do you?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Come on. This way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Gunpowder Hall. Safest place in Paradise Circle. In a manner of speaking.”

  * * *

  Hope’s eyes grew wide when they entered Gunpowder Hall. Red could see her struggling to keep her comments to herself, but finally she burst out. “Those people are having sex over there! Right in front of everyone!”

  “Not all whores are pretty enough to get accepted by a brothel,” said Red. “Some have to just take a client where they can get them. Unfortunately, it’s not so safe if you don’t have someone like Nettles watching out for you. Never know when a client might turn mean.”

  “You talk as if you know a lot about it. Are you a frequent client?”

  “Nah. My dad was in the trade.”

  “Oh.” Her whole face turned bright pink, her expression a mixture of embarrassment and confusion. It was so awkward and honest, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Were you joking about that?”

  “No, my dad really was a whore,” he said.

  Her face got even redder and her expression even more embarrassed, which made him laugh again, even harder.

  “You find my discomfort amusing,” she said.

  “Yes. I do.” And he laughed again.

  “I’m glad you’re amused. Now, it’s probably time I—”

  “Hey, looks like Nettie’s off work,” said Red, cutting off what was likely an attempt for her to leave him. God help him, doomed though it was, he wasn’t ready to say good-bye to his angel in black leather quite yet. “We better go fill her in before she comes looking for us. That always makes her grumpy.”

  Maybe Hope wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye either, or maybe she’d just gotten used to him dragging her around. Either way, she let him pull her over to the table where Nettles was sitting, cleaning blood from her chainblade.

  “Saw some action tonight?” He nodded to the weapon in her hands.

  “Less than you, I’ll wager,” said Nettles. “You only just getting here now?”

  “Oh, uh…,” said Red. “I wanted to make sure we weren’t being followed.”

  Nettles glanced at Hope, then smirked as she coiled up her chain. “Sure, that’s it.”

  “An interesting weapon,” said Hope. “May I see it?”

  Nettles looked skeptically at her, then at Red. He shrugged.

  “Sure, okay.” She tossed the coiled chain to her.

  Hope caught it easily and held it up for inspection. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Part throwing knife, part chain mace. I hope I get the chance to see you use it.”

  “You do, huh?” asked Nettles, squinting at her like she wasn’t sure how to take that.

  Hope handed it back to her. “You take good care of it. As a warrior should.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Nettles, looking a little uncomfortable now. “It’s important to me. I take care of the important things. And anyway, you think this is strange, you should see what Red uses.”

  “Yes,” said Hope, turning to Red. “I saw one for a moment in the tavern. It looked like a throwing knife, except I couldn’t see the handle.”

  “That’s because there is no handle.” Red pulled open his coat to show the line of blades that went down the inside lining. He pulled one out. “Thought it up myself.”

  “With help,” said Nettles.

  “I think best in a dialogue,” said Red. “Anyway, it didn’t make much sense having a throwing weapon that was only truly effective if it landed on one side. I like odds that are better than half. So I replaced the handle with another blade.”

  “How do you throw them, then?” Hope was riveted by the throwing blade. Apparently all he’d had to do was start talking weapons to get her interested.

  He pointed to the ring in the center. “I just hook a finger in here. Watch.” He nodded to where a gray-haired wrink was sitting at the other end of the table, gnawing on a hunk of hard crust bread. Red snapped his hand, and the blade took the bread right out of the old man’s grasp and nailed it to the table.

  “Piss’ell!” The old man looked angry for a moment, then saw it was Red and eased back into mild irritation. “Come on, Red. Like to give a wrink like me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry, Nipper.” Red walked over, pulled the blade out, and handed the bread back to him. Quietly he added, “Just trying to impress the mollies, you understand.”

  Nipper chuckled and shook his head. “That I do, boy. Many’s a wag gone stupid for a bit of slice.”

  Red winked at him, then walked back to Hope and Nettles.

  “Shame on you for startling poor old Nipper,” said Nettles.

  “He’ll be alright,” said Red. “Even a wrink needs some excitement now and then.”

  Hope took the blade from Red and examined it more closely. “How do you not cut your palm?”

  Red held up his hands, still encased in the thick leather fingerless gloves. “That’s what these are for.”

  “Also my idea,” said Nettles. “He doesn’t really need ’em anymore, though. Now he just wears ’em because he thinks they look pat.”

  “They do look pat,” said Red.

  “About as pat as your mole rat jacket.”

  “Deerskin.”

  “Anyway,” said Nettles, turning back to Hope. “I’ve never met a wag with better aim than Rixie here. It’s uncanny.”

  Hope was still staring intently at the blades, but her eyebrow shot up. “Rixie?”

  “Oh, didn’t he tell you?” An evil smirk grew on Nettles’s face. “Red ain’t his real name. It’s—”

  “Nettie, I know where you sleep,” said Red.

  Nettles laughed. She’d given Red many opportunities over the past couple of years to regret telling her his birth name. Hope didn’t seem to be paying much attention, though. Her pale brow was furrowed as she held the throwing blade up to Red. “Have you…thought about putting another blade on it?”

  “Eh?” said Red, taking it from her.

  “Following your reasoning that the more blades, the better your chance at a perfect hit.”

  “Well…,” said Red doubtfully as he touched one of the empty sides of the ring. “If I put another blade on, it wouldn’t be balanced. And I don’t think it’d fit four.”

  “It would balance if you made it into a triangle shape.”

  Red held it up and squinted, imagining three blades evenly space around the ring. “Okay, that’s brilliant.”

  Hope’s face flushed as she smiled shyly. “I’m only building off your idea.”

  “Still, I’m going to have to talk to Filler about this next chance I get.”

  “Filler?”

  “He’s my best wag. We grew up on the streets together.”

  “Sort of,” said Nettles.

  Red gave her a sharp look. First the name, now this. What was Nettles playing at?

  “Filler,” he continued, “is a smithy. I come up with the idea, he makes it real. Did Nettles’s, too.”

  “You mean you actually have a friend with an honest profession?” asked Hope.

  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘honest’…”

  “Filler’s got a bit of a problem with the imps,” said Nettles. “He’s a great big sugar lump of a wag most of the time. But he don’t like the imps. If one even looks at him wrong, he’s like to punch him in the bilge, or worse. Makes it hard to hold down a respectable s
mithy job.”

  “So he works for the people now,” said Red.

  “Meaning, he makes illegal weapons for all the wags and gangsters in the Circle,” said Nettles. “That is, when he’s not helping Red here with his latest bad idea.” She turned to Red and scowled. “And speaking of which…”

  “Here we go,” said Red.

  “Henny’s right. You must have a death wish. Getting on the hit list for Deadface Drem?” Nettles shook her head. “That’s crazy, even for you. Only one thing I can think of that would make you be such a salthead.” She looked meaningfully at Hope.

  “Oh, now…” Red forced a little laugh. He needed a new subject, quick. His eyes scanned around and saw Backus picking his way through the hall, looking worried about something. “Backus! You alright?”

  Backus hurried over faster than usual.

  “Red, you got the new batch of medicine? Sadie’s…not doing so good.”

  “What?” Red’s gut suddenly went cold and tight.

  “She’s coughing real bad. Can’t seem to catch her breath. I think…this might be it.”

  17

  Hope was beginning to understand that a large city like New Laven was more than just a collection of buildings or a place that people called home. It was like a world unto itself, the neighborhoods like towns, each with their own rules and codes of honor. In this world, gang leaders were brutal dictators, whores were friends, and smug boys with red eyes were full of surprises.

  Hope watched him curiously now as she followed him across the hall, weaving in and out of people sleeping, drinking, playing games, and occasionally having sex. She did her best to ignore it and focus on Red. His whole demeanor had abruptly changed when the old man told him someone named Sadie was dying. All of his arrogance and forced charm had evaporated. Everyone is afraid of something, Grandteacher Hurlo had told her once. What a man is afraid of will tell you much about his character. The whole time Drem’s men had been chasing them, Red hadn’t seemed frightened at all. But what she saw in his eyes now was unmistakably fear.

  The old man lifted up a hatch in the floor and, single file, they walked down a narrow wooden staircase into darkness. There was a spark, then a glowing lantern appeared in Red’s hand. They were in some sort of underground basement hallway that stretched far beyond the lantern light. There were open doorways evenly spaced along both sides. Moans and coughs came from some of them. And from everywhere came the smell.

  That had been another thing New Laven taught her. That there were more unpleasant smells in this world than she ever knew existed. She thought between the fishy docks, the sewage in the streets, the ale-drenched tavern, the unwashed bodies and vomit at the brothel, and the combination of all those elements in Gunpowder Hall, that she had experienced every terrible smell this city had to offer. But the stench that now crept into her nostrils was at once terrible and familiar. It was one she had not encountered in ten years: festering death.

  This was a place that people came to die.

  As they walked down the long dark hallway, Hope leaned in to Nettles and quietly asked, “Who’s Sadie?”

  “Red’s mentor,” she whispered back. “His parents died when he was eight. If Sadie hadn’t taken him under her wing, likely he wouldn’t have lasted a year. The Circle can be a vicious place for those who don’t know its ways.”

  “So I’ve discovered,” said Hope.

  An orphan at the age of eight. It was a strange, sad coincidence that she and Red shared this misfortune. But that’s all it was. A coincidence. So why did it feel like more than that? Grandteacher Hurlo had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. That those who claimed to believe in it simply refused to see the underlying connection between all things. Captain Carmichael had once told her that anyone who believed in fate was too cowardly to admit that everything was chance and there was no real meaning in life. Which is it? she wondered. After all, they couldn’t both be right.

  Red stopped before one of the rooms. This boy who had laughed while thugs rained gunfire on them now had to muster his courage just to walk through the doorway. He stood there, his face tight and his ruby eyes wide. Then he tilted his head slightly so it gave a faint crack, squared his shoulders, and walked through. Backus, Hope, and Nettles followed behind at a respectful distance.

  Hope decided that if there was a worst place to die, it was this room. Dark, stuffy, damp, stinking, it was just an empty, unlit space with a dirt floor. An old woman lay on a rotting straw mat in the corner. She stirred slightly when the group entered. Judging by the shallow rise and fall of her chest, she couldn’t manage much else. Her bloodshot eyes rolled around in their sockets, pronounced in the emaciated face.

  “Oh, Red…,” she wheezed.

  Red’s face showed a smile, but it was so strained that it twitched.

  “Well, now,” he said gently. “I hear as how you’ve been complaining about your accommodations, there, m’lady.”

  “No jokes.” She paused to catch her breath. “Nearly time…to go…”

  “No jokes?” He suddenly looked angry, although his voice was still quiet. “Fine, then. Serious. You aren’t going anywhere. Keen?”

  She smiled weakly. “Nobody…tells me…what…to do…”

  “Please,” whispered Red as he dropped down to his knees next to her. He stroked her thin white hair. “Please don’t leave me.” A tear ran down his cheek.

  “There’s that…soft artist…,” said Sadie, laboring for each word. “Glad…I didn’t…beat it…all…out of you.”

  Hope wanted to turn away. It was too much. Too close to her own buried pain. This could be Carmichael, or Hurlo. She wanted to run away from this suffering. But she forced herself to keep watching, as she always did. To witness this, as she had witnessed every terrible thing.

  “The medicine!” Red fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small pouch. “This time it will work. I know it.”

  Sadie slowly shook her head but didn’t say anything.

  “Let me just mix it up for you.” He tapped some of the powder from the pouch into a nearby pitcher of water, and swirled the mixture around. Then he poured some into a small cup.

  Hope frowned. “What’s he doing?” she whispered to Nettles.

  “Weren’t you listening? He’s giving her the medicine.”

  “But that’s not…”

  Then she saw him lift Sadie’s head up. He was about to have her drink it.

  “Red, stop.” She said it louder than she’d meant to.

  “No,” he said without turning back to look at her. “I’ll do whatever I can for as long as I can.”

  “But you’re giving it to her wrong.”

  He froze, the cup at Sadie’s lips. “What?”

  She knelt down beside them. “May I see the powder?”

  Red looked confused and frightened and suspicious and ever so slightly hopeful. “Why?”

  “It’s your turn to trust me,” she said.

  Reluctantly, he put down the cup and handed her the pouch.

  Hope opened it and inhaled deeply. “This is marsh blossom.”

  “Eh, yeah…,” he said. “That’s what the gaf said I’d need.”

  Hope laid her ear on Sadie’s chest and listened to the rattle of her breath. Then she pressed the back of her hand on Sadie’s forehead.

  “Stick out your tongue,” she told Sadie.

  Sadie opened her mouth, and Hope moved the lantern to shine light down her throat.

  “Tunnel lung,” she said at last.

  “That’s what he thought it was,” said Red. “So it’s the right medicine?”

  “It is,” said Hope. “But he didn’t tell you how to give it to her? What kind of apothecary is he?”

  “There aren’t any of those in the Circle. He just sells the stuff. He knows some of the symptoms that match up with the medicines. That’s about it.”

  “No apothecaries in the entire neighborhood?” asked Hope.

  Red shook his head.<
br />
  “Why?” asked Nettles. “Do you know about medicines?”

  “All Vinchen warriors must learn how to heal as well as kill. Only then can they achieve balance.”

  “So what do I need to do?” asked Red, his ruby eyes intense.

  “First, if she has tunnel lung, this is the worst possible place for her. We need to get her out in the air, as high up as possible.”

  “It’s awful cold, though,” said Backus doubtfully.

  “We’ll need to keep her warm,” agreed Hope. “Wrap her in blankets. But the cold fresh air should open her throat up a bit. Make it easier for her to breathe.”

  “I know a place we can take her,” said Red. “What else?”

  “We’ll need a thick cloth, like a towel, a pot, and something to heat the water to boiling.”

  “Boil the medicine?” asked Red.

  “Yes. That will turn it into steam. This is a lung ailment, so she doesn’t need to drink it. She needs to breathe it.”

  * * *

  Hope wondered again at the shift in Red. Gone was the carefree charmer, but gone too was the fearful tender-heart. Now he seemed consumed with a calm, yet implacable determination to bring Hope’s plan into action. He had ordered Backus and Nettles about like a ship’s captain, and they scrambled to comply without hesitation. Nettles had gone to find a towel and a pot. Backus had gone to find Filler.

  Hope and Red went ahead, with Sadie on Red’s back. He led them to an unused church that had been left to crumble. Hope had been in the temple on Galemoor countless times, but never a proper church of the empire. It was much larger, able to hold hundreds of people. She knew from books that in an imperial church, worshipers knelt throughout the service on cushions or blankets they brought with them, which explained why most of the space was empty. The only piece of furniture was on the high altar far in the back—a large, chipped, high-backed stone chair that loomed over everything. A few squatters lurked in the corners, but they seemed to know Red and allowed them to pass without comment.

  There probably had once been tapestries depicting the early history of the empire on the walls when the church was in use. But the only evidence that they had ever existed was a slight discoloration in rectangular shapes on the stone walls. There would also have been stained glass windows, but those had all been broken, and the tall windows stood empty, letting in a cold wind from the sea. As she stepped, she felt a piece of colored glass crunch underfoot. It reminded her of sea glass, and her mother telling her that they didn’t need such fancy northland frippery. The memory left a sudden hole in her chest. It amazed her that she could still hurt so much from something that had happened so long ago. She didn’t know why it had recently become harder to push those feelings down. She wondered if the wound would ever heal. Perhaps once all the biomancers were dead.