I smelled her first; strawberries barely concealing womanly body odor. And then I saw her.
“You’re lost, orphan.” Her lips didn’t seem to move enough, and I was struck by her lazy wardrobe. This woman clearly a fan of the ‘grunge’ look. Long AC/DC T-shirt, ripped jeans, mussed hair.
“How’d you know?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I just know things. Follow me. I’ll take you where you need to go.” With that she turned and started heading down the street. She had a funny way of walking. Neither hip-swaying like a woman, nor the heavy swagger of a man. It was more like she was a robot, or an angel, who hadn’t yet learned how to pretend to be human. Some impulse took me as I watched her, and I hurried to catch up.
“How do you know where I need to go?” I asked, breathless.
Another shrug. “Follow me, don’t follow me. You’ll find answers soon enough either way.”
Thanks, Mrs. Vague. “At least tell me your name.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Call me Anne. Anne Thrope.”
“Hi, Miss Thrope,” I said. “I’m Morgan.”
Charging up the street in her peculiar saunter, Miss Anne Thrope said, “Yeah, I know.”
Marie suddenly popped up on the walk beside the woman. A sour look crinkled her features. ‘What are you doing with this pillager? Drop her and go home, Morgan. She is not what she seems.’
What the flip was a pillager? Marie was from a time before I even existed, so I supposed it was only natural she’d retain a few idioms I’d never heard—it just hadn’t happened before.
“What are you looking at, orphan?” the pillager asked.
“Nothing,” I said. I got to remember to ignore the spooks when I’m around people.
This seemed to open her up as we passed underneath the light from a street lamp. “Some lucky bastards see things others are too blind to observe. These bastards would do well to use their gift to help others.”
Was she talking about my spooks? What did Marie mean by ‘She’s not what she seems’?
“This place I’m taking you to,” Anne Thrope said. “It like a fair. A place where they sell anything you can imagine, everything you could want.” She paused, scratched he booty through a nice hole in the blue jeans. “Three things before going into Vera City. Don’t take your money out until you’ve struck a deal. Don’t engage with the flying boy. And whatever happens, don’t do anything to piss off the King. He is a man, yes, but he is also something else.” She sighed and took another turn. Now I was totally flimflammed. “One day soon the King will come for you and your people.”
“Um, I don’t think I have any people.”
Anne Thrope laughed. “You have more people than you realize. You’re going to meet two of them inside the City in just a few minutes.” Another snort. “But you won’t like it.”
Not sure about the protocol for responding to a prophecy, I said, “Are we almost there, because my knee is buggering me something bad.”
Anne Thrope stopped and held a hand up. “We’re here. What do you think, orphan?” gesturing at a side-by-side pair of brick building.
“What do I think about what?” I said. “It’s just a couple of buildings. A funny set of doors between them, but it don’t look like anything special.” I rubbed my leg. Pain was spreading and I was lost, darn it.
Anne Thrope strode up the steps to the double-doors, peeped back at me. “You shouldn’t always trust your eyes, orphan. This city is filled with deception.” Then, straightening her grungy shirt, Anne Thrope rapped on the door using the lion head brass knocker; three rapid taps and then a fourth, softer rap.
I was leaning heavy on the stick by now, trying to steady my hand, when a panel on the upper portion of the door slid open with a whoosh. This particular stretch of street, far from Alpha Circle, was not blessed with a lamp, so I couldn’t make out the face behind the panel, but I could hear a booming voice. Hobbling up the bottom step, I squinted to try and see the man behind the door.
Anne Thrope nodded and then stepped aside. A whiz-bang beam of light streamed into my peepers. I snapped them shut and staggered back. “What the freak?”
“Relax, Dominic,” she said. “Put your light-stick back in your pants and open up.”
Dominic slammed the panel shut. We listened for a few ticks as he undid half a dozen locks. The bottom of the doors grumbled against the concrete stoop as Dominic shoved them open.
Anne Thrope entered. I limped up the steps after her into a small dark room.
Marie bamfed into existence beside Dominic. She was cringing and looking kookier than ever, the light of her essence like a sun in this dark room. I could barely make out the recliner behind Dominic. Other than that the room was a humdrum, a box full-o-nothing and a real disappointment. ‘Don’t go into the City,’ Marie pleaded.
Dominic shuffled to the back of the little room, set his meat hooks on the curtains to part them. “Hold up a sec,” Anne Thrope said. “He’s never been in before.”
She then faced me. I whiffed something odd: she smelled like a fine butterscotch candy and doojee all the way, whiz-bang and dynamite rolled in a grungy dish of ripped jeans and no bra; and me standing there famished, shaking, shivering and tired. They better have drugs in there.
“You with me?” Anne Thrope snapped her fingers. “Remember the three things I told you and you should survive.”
“Should?” I burst. “What the heck kind of place is this?” My pumper gushed blood into my ears. I could barely hear anything.
“This is a place where you can buy anything and find everything, a place beyond the reach of government, a place outside the law,” Anne Thrope declared with a smile. The next tick the smile vanished. “Such a place is naturally a den of thieves, cutthroats, swindlers and bastards scrambling over each other in attempts to become its lord ruler.” Here she gave me a penetrating gaze. “But don’t be fooled by their bull. There is only one King of Vera City, and he is not easily replaced.”
The whole time Anne Thrope was speaking, Dominic was staring at me, and Marie was pacing. “What do you mean? You think I want to replace him?”
Anne Thrope shrugged. “Do what you want. Just remember, I warned you about Arthur King. Now, are you ready?”
“Um, no?”
Chapter 12
Anne Thrope shoved me through the bead curtains. “Welcome to Vera City.”
She stayed behind with Dominic, leaving me to tour the kooky underbelly of Philicity alone.
What can I say about Vera City? Anyone who’s been there knows that it is unlike any other place in the world—a good and terrible thing.
An assault on the senses, sure as sure. The aroma of popcorn and sweat blended with the stench of dung, filling my sniffer. Hot on its heels were the harpings of laughter and arguing, the rabble of haggling and the shuffle of thronging bodies. Eventually my peepers adjusted to the onslaught of a neon-lit world. I could barely take it all in.
The doors we’d come through were stationed between two eight-story buildings, where an alley should’ve been. Great sections of the ground floor walls had been knocked out, providing plenty of space for vendors to set up their shops in a chaotic mélange of booths. I saw now that rising about twenty feet over our heads was a network of glass panels, lit like a rock concert, threatening to burn my peepers out of my skull. I cocked my head in awe. Booths and plywood stations stretched as far as I could see, their vendors keeping watch on their wares by night.
Every few feet a new aroma would attack my sniffer. Being in Vera City was like being high.
“Out of my way, pillager,” a man toting a large vinyl bag roared as he charged right past me, heading towards a booth covered in graffiti.
A fifteen-foot stand beside this tattoo parlor, filled with all manner of blades, caught my peepers. The yellow and red neon sign above the stand read THE KEEN EDGE and there was a brand beside the name painted red. It looked like a shield or a round table bisected by a long sword. I could feel
the heat from all the bodies whizzing by behind me as I stood gawking. So I shuffled out of the lane, closer to the booth. All the blades were caged behind locked glass, and there was enough stainless steel framed glass here to windowize an entire city block. Okay, that was hyperbole, but only just.
Jackknives and hunting knives, short swords and samurais and swords so long they looked forged for giants. Switchblades and those slamming butterfly blades I’d always wanted to try. Blades with wooden handles and blades with carved ivory hilts. I hobbled to the right, rounding a woman with a shaved head, to get to a glass case filled with a variety of cripple-sticks, gleaming and bejeweled.
“Ah yes,” the vendor, a man with more hair on his face than on his head, said. “I can see you need one with a little more . . . style, eh?” nodding at my plain-Jane cripple-stick.
“Yeah,” I drooled.
The bearded wonder nodded, clapped his hands. “I thought as much. I saw you and I thought ‘here’s a man who knows what he wants’. Now, you’ll want to try one out, eh.” He whipped out a set of keys and unlocked the cripple-stick case. “Ah, here we are. This is the one. I know it! Go on, try it out.”
I leaned mine against the booth to grab the silver cripple-stick. The top was a heavy-duty eagle-head with red peepers. I backed up to try it out, walked right into a behemoth.
“Oh don’t mind Naaman,” Bearded Wonder said. “He’s just going to make sure everyone plays nice and doesn’t walk off with my googs, eh.” He then turned to address Shaved Head Woman. His peepers zipped back and forth, reminding me of Pellinore.
To Naaman I said, “It’s dynamite. But what is a cripple-stick doing in a knife emporium?”
He reached out for the stick. I released it and took up mine. Naaman twisted the eagle-head, as if he were trying to decapitate the bird, and then yanked on it. A two foot sword slid out of the shaft.
“Whoa, that’s sick!” I sounded about ten years old. “Man, I wish I could afford it.”
BOOM! Naaman rammed the sword back in place and stuck the cripple-stick back in its glass case. Bearded Wonder appeared opposite me, inside the booth.
“You come to my store, try out my wares and you got no greenbacks?”
I stumbled back a smidge, got knocked down by a zipperdick in a rush. “Watch it.”
“I have paper,” I declared. “Just not enough for that. Maybe something a smidgen smaller?” I said, because it seemed wise to purchase something.
Naaman, the Eighth Wonder of the World was hovering over me. The DT’s returned.
Bearded Wonder nodded, played with his gray face bush. “Less grand, eh? I think I got something like that. Maybe,” with a smile. He bent down, came up with a book-sized glass case.
“Pens?” I asked.
He unlocked the case, plucked up a purple pen. Bearded Wonder raised it up to my face and twisted the halves. In one swift move he drew the top off, revealing a mini blade. He peeped around, leaned in close. “The blade and the pen itself are made entirely with plastisteel. You can take this through any detector in Philicity without setting it off. A Jackson and a Lincoln, and it’s yours.”
I doled out the money and fingered the penknife. “Ah, you made a great choice, coming to see me, eh,” Bearded Wonder whispered. “The King himself buys his swords right here at the Keen Edge.”
“You don’t say,” I said. “And what a king, huh?”
“The once and future, indeed,” Bearded Wonder boomed. Then, stroking his disgusting beard, he added, “Tell you what. I like you. I have a sixth sense when it comes to customers.” He leaned down behind his booth and came up with a plain gray case. He opened it up and lifted a small tool that looked like something an insane dentist might use. “This will pick any lock, anywhere. I’m giving it to you.”
“For free?”
“Yes,” he said, “well, nothing’s free. Tell you what. One day I may need a favor. When that day comes, you’ll grant me my boon, eh?”
“Eh,” I said, not knowing what a boon was, and doubting I’d ever see this kook again.
“Now go on, and don’t try out any goods without you have the money.”
I nodded and started wandering down the aisle, alternately checking out my penknife and searching for Anne Thrope. After depositing the thing in my flannel pocket, I took my moula out, counted it. I was checking to see if I still had enough to purchase a few ounces of doojee, just in case I stumbled on a pharmacy in here.
Thinking it wise to get out of the main flow of traffic (didn’t anyone sleep?) I hobbled over to an alley and paused to steady my jittering hands. I was slammed to the ground real slap-dash like. My stick flew away as I landed on my knees. Agony shot through limbs-torso-head as I crumpled to my face. Greenbacks floated down to the ground. They didn’t linger long; hands shot out of nowhere and the bills vanished. When I scrambled to reach for the Grant lying a few feet away, a black boot stomped on my arm. I screamed.
Oh yes, I screamed and then screamed a little more.
The pillager (I was starting to get the hang and terms of this place) scooped up the Grant and then kicked me over so that I was face up. My vision blurred from pain and withdrawal symptoms and the megabomb annoyance of all this. I’d escaped the school to find out what Sanson was up to and here I was in this insane neon world getting my ass handed to me.
This pillager was a young woman with dreadlocks, sporting blue tats along her forearms and denim cutoffs on her booty. It would be too cold outside for her getup, but in Vera City, the temperature was a good twenty degrees warmer. This sister bent down, put her face to mine. She smelled of tuna fish and java. “Don’t you know the rules?” Without waiting for an answer, she kicked me in the ribs.
I wheezed, curled up into a ball.
Blue Tats laughed and her pillaging friends joined in. “Betcha don’t count your money outside a booth again.”
“Bet you’re right,” I moaned. “Still, you might have told me the rules and avoided the hassle of beating me up.” At least the throbbing of my ribs distracted from the agony in my knee.
“And miss out on all the fun and free dough?” she laughed. She then looked at her friend, an ugly dude with a silly goatee. “You know, Titus, I don’t think our friend here has learned his lesson.”
“I would have to agree,” Titus said. “Perhaps he requires further teaching.”
“No thank you,” I groaned. I could’ve really used that cane-sword right then.
Without further absurd dialogue, Titus and Tattoo went to town on my hide, beating and kicking and punching the piss out of me. I screamed, but this took too much effort and I soon left off. It was only after I was sure one of my ribs had been snapped-crackled-and-popped that I remembered my gift.
Ash would’ve used the Mesmer before being attacked.
I crawled away during a lull in my ‘lesson’.
When Blue Tattoo came at me, I sat up and grabbed her face, yanked her so close that my peepers were mere inches from hers. We were locked on now.
“Hey! Whatchu doing?” Titus asked. He came forward, started kicking my legs. I ignored him. Other senses become dull during a Mesmer. It’s just you and the victim. I had Blue Tattoo. But Titus, no doubt desperate, called out for help. Soon I was surrounded by tattooed goons. I drew the girl tight to my body, using all my strength to keep her pressed close.
I could feel one of them trying to yank her out of my grasp, while another was busy pummeling me. But I could sense Tattoo now. Her name was Lindsey and she’d run away years ago, been living in Vera City ever since, pillaging and pulling all sorts of mayhem.
And Lindsey was terrified. She feared more than anything being known, being seen as a scared little girl.
“Make them stop.” I said, releasing her. Pain returned slam-bang.
“Leave him alone!” Tattoo screamed. She was standing over me, pleading with her confused pals. “Let’s get outta here. Come on!”
They weren’t going anywhere. If anything, her sudden change of atti
tude made them more determined than ever to fit me for a pine box. I curled up again while Tattoo screamed and her pals pummeled.
But then, some real kooky sounds began filling the alley. Grunts and cries of pain and what I could only assume must’ve been the sounds of a body being torn apart limb from limb. Nightmare sounds. Haunting, tearing, ripping noises.
Followed by silence.
I slowly uncurled and peeped through my fingers. “Who are you?” I moaned to the two people standing over the bodies of my attackers. One was a gingersnap, a short red-headed dude sporting a maniacal grin; the other was a girl/woman as small as Ash. She was dressed in skin tight black jeggings and a pink sleeveless t-shirt hugging her toned upper body. Wild black hair tied in a braid flowed down her back.
The gingersnap casually stepped over the body of one of my ‘teachers’ and offered me his hand. “Are you okay?” he asked, beaming.
“Actually no,” I said. I spotted the cripple-stick lying on the pavement under an arm. There was no body attached to the arm. My jitters returned. I felt like retching. What the heck had I gotten myself mixed up in? “I need my cripple-stick there, please.”
The gingersnap lifted me, held me up as I groaned. A pink blur flashed before my peepers. Suddenly the little woman was standing in front of us, my cripple-stick in her hands. Gods she moved quickly. “How did you do that?” I asked, grabbing the stick. It was smeared with gore.
“Don’t bother,” the gingersnap waved dismissively. “I’ve been asking that question for years and she still hasn’t answered me. By the way, I am Faustus the Magnificent, and the little one covered in other peoples blood is Kana. Her nickname is tiny, but don’t you call her that; she’s like to cut out your eyelids.”
He noticed the blood smears, and said to Kana, “Clean that off for Pete’s sake. We don’t want the poor kid thinking we’re a couple of savages.”
Too late.
“Um, thanks for helping me. How did you guys beat them so fast?”
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