Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “No I’m not,” he bleated (unconvincingly at that), prompting Lydia to attack. At seventeen she was easily a head taller than Fen, and when she grabbed him around the neck he was helpless. As he struggled to free himself she drove her knuckles down into the mess of his hair and rubbed furiously, declaring, “Now, Fen Tunk, you tell me this very instant what you’ve got in that pack or I swear to the Enox Unon I’ll make you as bald as old Natty Hadd!”

  Fen tried to squirm away but her grip was relentless. “Someday I’m going to be bigger than you, Lyd,” he growled in impotent frustration, “and when that day comes you’re going to be sorry.”

  “Sorry? Yeah right, bony-bro, you’ll be nothing but a stick of a man for the rest of your life, so your empty threats don’t scare me.” She pressed her knuckles down harder. “Now out with it you miscreant! I think I can already see your shiny scalp through this patch I’ve rubbed clean.”

  The pain was too much to bear, and Fen snarled and growled, but ultimately surrendered. “Okay, okay, just let me go already!”

  Lydia’s vice-grip loosened and almost instantly Fen took the opportunity to slip away, but as he dropped she seized the pack and tugged it off his knobby shoulder.

  “Don’t be mad,” Fen found himself saying reflexively, not sure why he’d preemptively apologized, and when he wheeled around Lydia eyed him suspiciously. After that she peeled back the ruck’s flap.

  His instincts proved spot-on when Lydia froze. “What is this, Fen?” Her tone came out harsh and clipped.

  “I’d think it’s pretty obvious,” he jokingly muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

  Lydia, however, found him less than amusing and pulled a banded stack from the rest. When she held it up she looked like a younger version of their mother, all in a rage just before she used to yell daggers at them for one thing or another. “It’s full of notes, Fen! Where did you get this?”

  Folding his arms over his narrow chest, Fen turned and pouted. “Found it.”

  “Found it,” her tone dripped with sarcasm.

  “Yeah, ‘found it’…lying next to a trudger…as he had his back turned. Pissin’.”

  “Fen, this is full of notes—full! Ludwigs bound thick as my hand, Fen! There’s easily got to be thousands in here. Thousands!”

  “Could be…” Though the concept of thousands was lost on him.

  “You’ve got to get rid of it, baby brother, and pronto. This isn’t trudger loot, this is got to be rat lord or companymen money, and someone’s going to come looking for it, sure as death.” She dropped the stack of notes back down into the sack the way the Gutter Lady had dropped that dead rat to the ground. Then she took the whole thing and hurled it at her brother. He caught it in the chest and staggered back, coughing from the impact of all that weight. What he hadn’t the heart to tell her was how the whistlers had given him a hard chase through the slums already, and that it was only by happenstance and strange occurrences that he’d lost them at all. But he kept that to himself, because for some reason hearing her telling him ‘I told you so’ wasn’t exactly high on his priority list this afternoon.

  “Okay,” he surrendered, hanging his head down to his chest in shame. “I’ll get rid of it.”

  Lydia planted her hands on her hips, though narrow as they were, and hidden beneath the layered patchwork canvas of her scrounging pants, it was hard to tell where they might be. She stood firm regardless, looking down on him with stern reproach and occupying the room’s center like Emperor Peter’s own personal Nocshatten elite. “Make sure you do…go toss it to the Drain Line and let the Maw have it, and then let’s never, ever talk of this again, you hear? …No one else knows you got it right?”

  “Right,” he blurted in confidence, having completely forgotten about his run-in with Ratter.

  “This is exactly why you should come back and scrounge with me.” She unbuttoned her soiled coat, “me and my gals—”

  “You and the Dame Squad,” Fen threw his skinny arms in the air and waved down the notion as though driving back a bad stink. “No way! I’d never hear the end of it from my mates.”

  Lydia shrugged off the coat while her face turned sour. She scoffed. “That pack of rat pup losers…? Who cares? Besides, ain’t one of them a girl anyhow? That one you were real close with all those years back…”

  “…Eddy. Er…Edrika,” said Fen, noticing how skinny his sister was looking these days. The suspenders she was wearing barely held up her pants. “Well…yeah, I guess; but best not call her a girl to her face.”

  “Still, just think about it, okay. I worry sometimes, and this little stunt here’s stifled my ability to trust in your judgement.” She turned to a barb of metal on the wall and motioned to hang up her coat, stopping just as it hooked. There she held tight for a moment, motionless, with her back to Fen. He could see her undershirt was going threadbare, and in places he spotted pale flesh peeking through, and the bones of her back beneath that. “There’s been talk through the slum,” she added softly, “of mischief gangs disappearing, Fen, and I know your crew. There’s not an ounce of sense to found from the lot of you, and I don’t need to be losing you too.” When she turned back to him, Fen thought he saw tears in her almond-shaped eyes, but in the dim firelight it was hard to tell. It just might have been some reflection caught funny. “You hear me?”

  Chapter 4

  A half hour later Fen stood on a tangle of pipes stretching between the first and second Fat Sister, perched over the coursing green-brown waters of the “Old Big River” Drain Line. The stench happened to be manageable today. The Sisters had recently run through their monthly flush cycles and the raw sewage was fairly diluted for the time being. Only a hint of excrement, methane, and ammonia remained.

  In his shaking right hand Fen held the stolen pack by its strap, dangling it out over the murky waters. He loosened his grip a measure and the pack slipped just a bit, but he didn’t let it fall—couldn’t—not yet. The thought of all that cash being fed to the main drain (the one they called the Maw) was almost too much to bear. There were ‘thousands’ in the ruck, and that might buy a whole lot of sky-time he figured. Sure there were bound to be men looking for this treasure, but the Pinprick was a decent sized slice of the Rat Warrens, and Fen knew just about every nook and cranny (at least that’s what he’d thought before encountering the Gutter Lady). Still, to feed all that cash to the drink seemed a sin beyond redemption.

  He stashed the bag instead, shoving it up into a busted pipe in the Sister’s side, in a place where he had to climb a bit out over the Drain Line to get at it. He’d been worried at first about someone down at the tail end of North Scumside looking up and seeing him, but the area he’d picked had a lot of up-flow pipes and the shadows were pretty deep near the roof.

  After it was done he was huffing and puffing, but in a place crawling with people, he knew the more treacherous the hiding place the less likely its discovery. And as far as he knew, Nickle and Eddy were about the only ones in the Pinprick brave enough to make that climb with any confidence. Even Fen had felt the jitters as he pulled himself up that last meter and stretched his arm out. His heart had been knocking at the Sister’s thick steel encasement for sure, probably stirring up all the old clap-jaws repidiles rumored to be swimming around inside.

  About a quarter hour later Fen finished climbing down from the Sister with a pocket crammed full of notes, and with every intention of visiting the Bartermen’s Exchange. The lure was too great not to. Now he’d the sense not to bring more than a single stack (even splitting the bundle and rubbing it in filth), and his brilliant plan included going from barterman to barterman so as not to attract too much attention by dumping it all at one place. It seemed a solid plan, and he was feeling pretty proud of himself as he balanced on a pipe with his chest puffed full and his chin held high. He’d forgotten all about Ratter and his invite until he was passing by the Little Brothers and he heard his name (or rather his grating nickname), yelled aloud.

 
; “Hey, Sunshine!” Ratter squawked out first, and if it was only the scrawny mouse-faced boy, Fen might have just waved a greeting and kept on walking by. But when the whole Bednest Boys gang broke into a chorus of, “Sunshine!” he knew he’d have to stop or risk deep offense.

  Fen groaned as he altered course. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his mates, but having a pocket crammed full of cash changed a perspective mighty fast, and only reinforced the notion of how he wasn’t particularly keen on the prospect of sharing. Maybe if he could count on them keeping their yaps shut, or not sneaking off with an extra share when his back was turned…then maybe. But truth be told, he stole the backpack on the solo without a lick of their help and that made the haul strictly his by virtue of scrounging rights.

  Whatever his decision on the loot, he screwed up a cavalier grin as he came tiptoeing across the pipework. He hopped a break and climbed over a coupling then hollered back, “What’s up, you pack of losers?”

  “You’re looking at it, mate. So where you been off to this morning?” asked Nickle as he came leaping off his perch up on one of the Little Brother’s broken catwalks. He landed cleanly on a metal platform below, where Eddy, Ratty, and the others had already gathered to receive Fen. As Nickle approached, he pushed back the mop of his dreadlocks, which were so blond as to be virtually white. In fact, everything about Nickle was devoid of color, from his flesh right down to the faded patchwork clothing he chose to wear, and even for a Hierarch his eyes were white; the pupils appearing more charcoal than black.

  “Decided to do some poking around the North Walk,” explained Fen as he dropped down into their midst. Though nothing about them suggested they suspected he had a secret, Fen couldn’t help but feel like he was being scrutinized. The Goat had stopped rolling a toke to cast a black-eyed gaze on him while Beaut came rounding on behind him. Maybe the dandy rat pup is just shifting position because the gangway’s got crowded, but does he have to stand directly behind me?

  “For any reason?” pressed Nickle with a sharp smile.

  Does he know something, pondered Fen, or is this just one of Nickle’s little games? As the de facto leader of the Bednest, Nickle was always grilling them like some rowdy trash dog defending its little corner of crap, or else was scratching at everyone’s deepest inner thoughts like an alley cat wanting in. “Inclination,” stated Fen, adding a slight shrug as though the notion came out of nowhere, and went equally as far.

  “And you never thought to invite us along,” the gang’s leader feigned at sounding hurt, while Ratty slunk in beside him and snickered like the consummate little suck-up he was.

  “Didn’t think it was your style to scrounge,” replied Fen, suddenly aware of how close Durreem was standing beside him, “not when you can hide away in a dark corner and—”

  “I’da gone with you, Fen,” chimed in Eddy as she snaked her sinewy body through the press of young boys. Today she’d worn a hectic blend of leathers, chains, and fishnet stockings that set Fen to baulking. Since taking on womanly features her dress had become increasingly scandalous, and seeming less capable of containing the kilograms she continued to pack on with each passing week. But as Fen silently judged his old friend, Eddy stepped right up into his face to tease and pull playfully at his hood and collar as though nothing had changed between them.

  “Sure you would, Eddy,” teased the scruffy-faced Shoat as he watched Fen brush the girl away, “Get Sunshine all to yourself.”

  The girl spun on her heels and kicked at the boy with her knee-high boots. “Piss off, Goat.”

  “Ratty said you were being chased by the whistlers,” inquired Beaut, changing the subject, “even through the Crawl, I hear.” That got the ruckus to die down. All eyes were back on Fen, and he felt a frog lodge deep in his throat. “Up-level cops don’t normally do that…do they?” The gang’s resident pretty-boy turned his attention to Nickle, looking for confirmation.

  Ratty (the little rodent who was responsible for all this undue attention), piped in for him. “Yeah, ain’t normal at all. Right, Sunshine?” Fen wanted to wrap his hands around the smaller boy’s skinny throat and ring it hard. “So whatever came of that pack you was haulin’?”

  Fen locked his seething eyes on Ratter. “Had to ditch in the Crawl to lose ‘em,” he lied while trying to keep cool, but his temper was on the cusp of boiling over.

  “Oh, that’s a pisser,” Rattigan responded with a kick at the pavement, oblivious as to how close he was to getting decked, “did you get a look at what you snagged though?”

  “Never got a chance.” Fen was sick of Ratty’s face and he turned from the gathering to look out into the yard and its knotted pipework. Beyond the industrial fog he could just make out the Pillars. All the hovels piled up around the forest of I-beams looked like blocky trash shoveled up into piles, and its people like ants crawling over it all.

  Eddy joined him, leaning on the rusted railing. She even nudged him with the side of her hip to capture his attention. “Must have been something good for them to chase you into the Crawl.”

  “Only the accursed Nequam could know,” he muttered back.

  “Well, you missed a hell of a dustup with the Scumside Prowlies,” hollered Nickle, his voice ringing loud and true. It might even have carried right to the Axillary, just past the Pillars, with all the mist snaking through it. “And, we raided ol’ Gibbs hoard good this time ‘round.”

  “Again,” Fen shook his head and ran his hands over the railing’s rust chips, dislodging them and sending a grimy rain clattering down into the pipes below, “that old fart can’t have much left these days. You couldn’t have nabbed anything of worth. He hasn’t scrounged in years, and most his hoard is in newsprint all rotted to mush these days.”

  “Man’s got rats in Maze Town he breeds on the regular for the butchers,” offered up Ratty in eager glee.

  Fen turned and glowered. “You went after his livestock?”

  “Live-stock?” Nickle slapped his knee and grinned around to the other boys, “Live’s a misleading word after what we done.”

  “Done?” said Fen in a low voice. “What did you do?”

  With pride, Nickle slapped Rattigan on the shoulder and the smaller boy beamed, grinning from one overly-large ear to the other. “Ratty here worked up a boomer and we used it to blow nearly the whole lot to hell. Snatched up a feast in dead rat before the smoke cleared.”

  “You just…blew them all up.” Even by Fen’s standards that was harsh. To steal a couple rats was just good fun, but to senselessly kill a man’s whole herd, and an old man near the end like Gibbs, was taking it too far. Fen lowered his eyebrows and clenched his jaw in a scowl. He swept his eyes through the gang.

  Most of them looked away, Eddy looking especially guilty, but when he locked eyes with Nickle, the boy just laughed. “Ain’t you a soft-hearted Joe, Sunshine. You act like they was your family, or some crap. They were just a bunch of rats.” Nickle turned and strolled to the platform’s edge, to where a nest of pipes ran parallel to the guardrail. Leaning over, the gang’s leader dug around in the pipes. “But here, if it makes you feel better,” he finished at his task, and then tossed a charred rodent into Fen’s hands, “eat up and it won’t be a waste. Ol’ Gibbs had his run anyway. Time for him to retire proper in the Drain Line and free up that hoard of his. Ain’t proper for the old to linger ‘round, holding out on the rest of us. Right, fellas?”

  “Right,” the boy’s said in unison, though Eddy stood silent.

  “Thanks, chum,” said Fen, holding up the rat corpse and examining it. “But I already ate today, and this things ruptured and the meats gone tainted.” He tossed it to Nickle’s feet.

  “Yeah,” the albino shrugged, “unfortunately that’s the case with most of them…but hell, it was a wicked sight to see them go, right Ratty?”

  “Real neat.” The boy nodded eagerly. His head looked like some valve cover let loose and flapping uncontrollably in the escaping steam.

  Fen began to walk aw
ay.

  “Where you goin’, Sunshine?” shouted Nickle.

  “Got errands to run in the Node…for my sister.”

  “Errands for your sister…?” Beaut crudely adjusting his pants, “Oh, I can help your sister out for you, alright.”

  Fen turned on the pompous ass in a flash and clocked him square in the nose. A torrent of blood came pouring down the boy’s acne-riddled face while he howled and clutched at the wound.

  “Where will you all be later,” Fen asked as he rubbed out his bruised knuckle and turned towards the stairs, eager to be gone.

  “Around,” replied Nickle indifferent to it all, but as Fen walked away, Edrika grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t go away mad, Fen,” she said knowingly. Of all the mates, she was the one who seemed to possess a keen insight into his mood, but then of course she would. She’d known him since he was six.

  “I ain’t mad,” he lied, but the girl just smirked back at him through a face painted grim with makeup. Though her watery eyes betrayed her tough façade by glistening with genuine concern. “You and the art of lying just don’t see eye to eye. Stick with what you’re good at.”

  Walking away after that, Fen made a show of nonchalance for the sake of appearances, but once he hit Skitter Road he was off at a bound, dashing up the crowded byways, and then shoving his way across the Axillary Line’s bridge towards the Node, happy to leave his mischief gang behind. Nickle creeped him out, and the rest of the boys were steadily becoming more irksome than entertaining. It suddenly occurred to him that if his fortunes played out, he might never have to see them again, and that didn’t upset him in the least. Of course, there was still Eddy to think about, but then would he really miss her either? They’d been pals since six, sure enough, after she’d found him crying lost in Maze Town and grabbed him by the hand and lead him to her shanty on South Scumside, but the years since had changed her. A year back, when Edrika became Eddy, she turned too edgy, and seemed to take keen interests in the vices of men, even beyond a snifter of gutter gin or a mug of tank ale, and her devilish looks were only the newest hurdle thrown down between their friendship. Fen found it hard talking to a face painted up to look like death’s bride, or to even take her seriously for that matter.