Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “No, no,” stammered Fen. “That’s where it is, True God’s honest truth.”

  “I’m betting his sister has it,” offered Eddy as she came slipping in next to Sam and grabbed his arm to stop him from doing anything rash. “If you drop him, we’ll never find the money, and what will Time have to say about that?”

  Sam directed Fen’s captive attention down at the gurgling sewer-water near-on four stories below. “You’re lucky she’s here to argue for reason, buddy, or else I’d let the finslugs have you.” He then tugged the boy back towards safety and shoved him into the cluster of waiting boys, “Change of plans, Fenny-boy, you’re going to help us find this sister of yours, and recover that bag of loot, or it’s all over for you.”

  “You probably should have told me what was in the bag, Sunshine,” Ratter whispered into Fen’s ear as Sam ordered about his dull-eyed goons. Fen felt his temper flare at the sound of Rattigan’s prepubescent voice. “I would have helped you—you know—but you passed it all off as nothing, left me to split tail and run without knowing what I was running into…right into the arms of some whistlers. You know they brought me directly to Time, but Eddy helped me out so that Time cut me and the rest of the Bednest Boys a deal…a deal we couldn’t refuse, but a deal far better than what you was givin’ us, you disloyal two-face. He said we could be part of his special squad if we found out where you stashed that money.”

  Hearing Ratter’s admonishment fueled an explosive burst of anger, and Fen took a wild swing at its source. Unfortunately the small boy proved quick and deftly ducked away in time, but the cramped space sent him blindly colliding into Nickle and Shoat, and in a heap, all three boys fell to the ground. Meanwhile, Fen’s fist carried on and struck Beaut squarely in the nose, breaking it a second time with a wet crunch. His howl of pain rang out over the “Old Big River”.

  In the brief chaos that followed, Fen made a dash for it. His only thought was escape, and his guarantee was the hovel. The secret entrance, if he could reach it in time, would hide him away and give him and his sister the chance to come up with a plan. If she had the money, they could make a run for it, right to the sky-level, and that thought brought him renewed hope as he raced towards the border of the Pipeyard.

  As Fen slid down the axillary flow pipes towards Skitter Row, he knew he’d made it, and when he dropped into a trash pile and resurfaced again, it was to the familiar shuffle of pedestrians moving between the Pillars and Slag Town. A second later and he was rolling out amongst them, stirring up a commotion, but he hopped to his feet and bolted north before the locals got too rowdy. At last his salvation came when a cluster of steaming pipes appeared, set back off the road, and Fen’s heart soared with relief. He took one quick glance back to see if Time’s goons or the Bednest Boys were watching, and then he slipped into the steam.

  Normally Fen held his breath when passing in and of out the pipes, but today his breathless lungs heaved in rage. He couldn’t help when he sucked in a mouthful of sulfurous steam, and coughed himself ragged like a two-token a day smoker. He continued to wheeze as he dropped to his knees and crawled the three meters through filth and broken glass to the break in the pipe that would take him all the way to the hovel.

  Inside, he climbed to his feet and kept right on running till he burst into the shelter that he shared with his sister.

  “Fen Tunk,” she cried out, shocked, and an entire brewing-can full of rag-tea went spilling all over the scrounge she’d been sorting in peace only a moment before. “What’s gotten into you, you damn maniac,” she leapt to her feet, “barreling in here like some bloodtracker on the hunt!”

  “The money,” he wheezed breathless, “what did you do with it?”

  “With it…? Money?”

  Never had it been clearer that she had no idea what he was talking about. Not with her face flushed red in confusion, her eyebrows furrowed, and her mouth left agape like some balloon guppy inflating its air sac. At least, not at first anyway. If nothing else, Lydia was whip-smart and quick with an insight. “You’re not talking about that rucksack I told you to toss in the Drain are you? Fen…you didn’t do it, did you?” Her voice rose steadily in hysterics as her bright eyes widened, “you stupid, brainless, imbecile. You kept that money, didn’t you!”

  “Err,” Fen was reluctant to admit to the obvious.

  “Come on, I can see a light at the end of this,” a voice echoed up through the outside pipe and the Tunks turned to one another and locked eyes. “I think we found ‘em!”

  Fen winced as Lydia scowled and held up a threatening fist. “You’ve ruined everything!” She didn’t hit him though, instead she just shook her head, growled, and then rushed off to shove as much stuff in her pack as possible. “Well, don’t just stand there, you moron. Grab what you can. We’ll have to escape up through the roof.”

  But without specific direction on what to do, Fen froze. Suddenly there was too much to grab—to even think about—and as his sister ran from one side of the room to the other (adding to her collection a pick-trowel, some rope, her compound oculars, a satchel, and a can-lantern), Fen just stood in the middle of the room, slack and stupefied.

  “Come on, let’s go,” she barked after only a few brief seconds, in which she went from wearing just some baggy shorts and a tank-top to adorning full-on scrounger gear. Then she scampered up the ladder to the second floor.

  Without a thing to his name but the clothes he was wearing and the switchblade in his pocket, the stunned youth followed, wrapping his hands around the ladder rungs just as the first boy came skidding into the hovel. It was Ratter, and he turned his snarling face on Fen and screeched out, “I found him!”

  Off Fen went, scrambling up into what used to be his parent’s room, then Lydia’s, and now…whatever ratty eventually found his way here. The small room smelled pleasantly of clean soap and spicy scents, but it was gone in a flash to be replaced by the mildew and filth of Fen’s room as he climbed higher. In the gloom of Lydia’s torch, Fen saw her bounding towards the loft ladder on the opposite side of the room when her feet sailed out from under her and she went crashing down on her side. Candles clattered and rolled in all directions, having been freed from their hiding place under his blankets, and Lydia rolled to a sitting position and inhaled sharply in pain. Her hands snapped around her ankle and held firm as she sat there a moment, rocking.

  “Fen? What the crap?” She eyed the candles and snatched one up and shook it at him.

  Contrite, Fen tiptoed his way through all the jumble to aid his sister. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you…”

  “Well, you must have bought every damn candle in the Pinprick,” she said, tossing it to the floor as Fen moved to help his sister. They’d just returned her to her feet when from below more boys could be heard intruding into the Tunk’s abode. “Do you know he had a place like this,” Nickle’s voice rang out in accusation.

  “No,” Eddy replied softly.

  “We got to go, Lyd,” urged Fen in a horse whisper while Sam Time could be heard from below asking which way they went.

  With her arm over Fen’s knobby shoulder, Lydia explored her footing with a few tender steps, then pulled away, “It’s okay,” she whispered, though it was clear she was favoring her left foot, but how could Fen argue, especially when he heard people starting up the ladder. They didn’t have the time. So he tried just pulling her along, but like a finslug she slipped out from under his grasp and then urged him on with a shove.

  Fen stopped and stood his ground. He wasn’t about to turn tail and run while his sister gimped behind him, so he gestured instead for his sister to go first. Faced with her brother’s stoic refusal to move, she shook her head and smirked. “Chivalry doesn’t suit you, baby brother,” she chastised him, but at least she hobbled by.

  “Well, I don’t plan on making it a habit.”

  One at a time, they climbed up to the loft, first Lydia then Fen, and as he watched his sister struggle on the climb, he figured
she must have sprained her ankle good. Though tough as she was, Lydia made no complaints whatsoever and pretended at walking normally once she reached the landing. Piles of junk waited for them, cluttering the unoccupied room on the fourth floor; unoccupied because Art never got around to reinforcing it. So they had to step gingerly on their way towards the back corner, where a stack of sturdy construction debris lay piled halfway up to the ceiling. Their father had intended to turn this empty attic into a room for Fen, but motivation was the first thing to go, and after Diane left, he never gave it a second thought. So Fen shared his sister’s room, until she got too old for it and moved down into the common room.

  From below they heard the candles scatter once more, and the whole hovel shook when someone crashed to the floor yowling in outrage and pain. Sniggering and laughter followed, but a sharp order from Sam shut them all up. “Get it together and get after ‘em!”

  Up up up, Lydia and Fen climbed, and once they reached the ceiling, Lydia pushed aside a creaky tin panel. Fen squinted in the murky twilight, spilling down through the support joists in ghostly fingers as Lydia’s shadowy outline encouraged him up. “You’ll have to go first so I can lift you the rest of the way,” she said.

  “I can make that climb up myself.”

  “You? You got pettily little-kid arms, Fen, so stop arguing and come on,” she squared herself beneath the hole and cupped her hands together in preparation of hoisting him up. Her face was nothing but grim determination in shadows. With little choice, Fen did as she bid and in no time at all he was on the roof, looking out over the snarled mess of the Pipeyards.

  Fen positioned himself over the escape hatch. “Alright, now you,” he said stretching his arms down to pull his sister up, all while carefully balancing on the overlapping metal panels.

  She barked a laugh at him, “Just move out of the way—”

  But as Lydia reached up she grunted and then fall into darkness. In horror Fen stared down into the gloom, hearing items being kicked around in amongst muffled screaming.

  “I got his sister,” yelled Nickle, and Fen could just make out the pair struggling in a tangle. The albino boy’s arms and legs were wrapped around his sister from behind, leaving her staring up at the ceiling with Nickle beneath her. He had one hand over her mouth as she tried to scream out, and when Fen and his sister locked eyes, her expression told him to run.

  An instant later and Sam Time’s leering face appeared in the hole. With a quick swipe he reached out and grabbed for Fen’s collar, but Fen fell back, kicking out with his right foot even as his rump struck hard and dented the roof. Impact. Crunch. Howl. The satisfaction Fen felt when his heel met Sam’s face tickled inside his stomach like a sweet treat, and that hard crunch filled him with an unexpected glee that rocketed his head into the clouds. But when the goon fell back and took most of the fourth floor with him in a horrendous crash that rocked the beam, Fen’s satisfaction turned to panic as he envisioned Lydia tangled up in the destruction he could hear pancaking down through the rest of the hovel. Fen probed inside, circling the hole in a tizzy, but the dust kicked up made it impossible to see anything, so he hollered for Lydia instead, but she never responded.

  Chapter 11

  Fen ran as fast and hard as he could, scrambling over the jumbled roofs of the Pillar shanties, thundering down refuse cluttered alleyways and crowded catwalks, sometimes slipping, sometimes crashing down on his sides, and sometimes tumbling head over heel. But none of that mattered, the pain, the dark looks from weary passers-by, none of it. Through the tears and the bawling this dark world became a blur of shadows. He’d lost everything, his parents, his friends, his home, and now his sister Lydia. What was he supposed to do? Where was he supposed to go? Thousands of other kids wandered the Warrens as listless ghosts, was he to become one of them?

  Fen’s legs continued to take him on their own hidden course, less frantically as the hours passed on, until the pain of fatigue and injury pushed him to rest; to crawling into tight corners or beneath shelves of concrete, anywhere he could find that didn’t already hold a ratties nest. Days marched on, trumpeted by the whistles and horns of the Sisters but Fen heard only his own soft crying, the snuffling as he sucked back the snot. He might have curled up and died in a small dark shaft, in amongst the centuries’ old garbage, but hunger finally drove him out; hunger and the need for light.

  Staggering into the Node, squinting blindly in the Pinprick’s brilliance, Fen shuffled past the chalk line without a second thought, and then planted himself on his bench; the bench where years back he and Lydia and their father had enjoyed a rare moment of bliss. Sure, it had cost a man his thumbs, but in the Rat Warrens, even free came at a price, and if one person wasn’t willing to pay it, someone else certainly was.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all when a sunkeeper came thundering up, hollering and cursing. “You! You damned rat pup, off that bench this instant!” But Fen wasn’t about to move. Instead he closed his eyes and tilted his head up to the skylight to feel the kiss of the sun on his face.

  A rock-hard fist smashed his cheek in an instant, knocking him clean off the bench. “You be in big trouble now, sonny-boy.” Someone new clinked his tongue, and from the cobbled ground, Fen cracked open a bloodshot eye to discover a bruiser standing next to the sunkeeper now; both lording over him.

  For whatever reason it sent Fen spiraling into a rage. Tears burst from his eyes as a roar burst from his mouth. He was up on his feet in an instant, then jumping, and before he realized it he had the bruiser by the ears, clawing and biting at his face.

  “He’s gone feral!” screeched the sunkeeper. “He’s going to kill, Hobbs! Someone get some more bruisers…or the dangermen; someone!”

  Fen struck out with teeth and nails until a blow to the side of the head dislodged him, and sent him crashing to the ground. A flurry of kicks kept him there, and when they finally stopped not a piece of Fen was left that didn’t feel like a bag of crushed gravel. At that moment everything came spilling out his mouth in a blubber of crying and yelling; he confessed all; about the bag of money he’d stolen, of trading it in for tokens, of Time, and of Time’s plan to take down the rat lord. Before Fen knew it he’d attracted a host of the rat lord’s men, and they dragged him to his feet after he fell silent, carrying him off to a dark place. It didn’t seem like they’d gone far, but Fen couldn’t tell. The minutes had intensified the pain of every cut and bruise he’d received, and there wasn’t a part of him that didn’t have at least one or the other, and most had both. In the dark it was hard to be sure of anything, and the place he’d been taken was darkness complete.

  There he lay, curled in a ball for hours, or days, or months, Fen had little concept of time. Lost and forgotten, with nothing but his pain to keep him company, he did little else but cry into the sooty floor, but eventually a mechanical clunk and the rusty groan of a heavy iron door opening pulled him into the present. A flood of light followed, leaving Fen squinting in a daze. It might have only been the guttering glow of a gas lamp, but to Fen’s atrophied eyes it roared as brilliantly as the sun. He grimaced with the effort of lifting his brutalized arm to shield his eyes.

  “Boss want’s to see you, boy.”

  “What boss,” husked Fen, but the bruiser just chuckled.

  “You going to behave, or do I have to bind you up?”

  “I won’t fight.”

  Fen stepped towards the bruiser and when he’d reached the cell’s threshold, the blocky brute laid a heavy hand on his shoulder to guide him. They walked side by side through a hallway of peeling paneling and moldy wallpaper, and Fen felt his first pang of fear. “Where am I,” he asked, trembling.

  “Boss Trask’s manor.”

  “The rat lord’s lair?”

  The bruiser snorted. “Best not call him that when you see him,” cautioned the bruiser as he guided Fen down the hall, along a floor that was rotted and mushy. In places the tall bruiser had to duck where the ceiling plaster sagged like the
arm flaps on an old woman. They walked forever, Fen limping along corridor after corridor, up creaky stairs and then up more creaky stairs, and all of it in shambles. The only exception was the rat lords ‘apartment’. There the doors were made of old wood, weathered to dusty gray, and cracked, but not a spot of mold was to be found, and when it opened the hinges swung free of any telling creaks. From the chamber beyond came the heavy smell of cigar smoke and a dry warmth that could only come from a fire.

  “Mind your tongue in here, boy, least you part ways with it lickety-split.” The bruiser shoved him forward and then closed the door. Fen didn’t realize he was alone until the latch clicked and he turned to find nothing but intricate carvings staring back at him.

  “So you’re the rat pup with the interesting story to share.” The refined voice filled the chamber, and when Fen turned he found a room unlike any he’d ever seen. He could only imagine this was what every room looked like up on the sky-level. Rich furniture, and lots of it, with velvet cushions and lace sashing, filling a broad space accented by clean rugs and fresh wallpaper, and all of it in floral designs. To the right, on the wall, sat a massive fireplace lined in brick with a white mantle full of carvings. To the left stood a grandfather clock taller than Fen, ticking away next to an open entryway that revealed the room was bigger than initially thought.

  “Don’t linger, boy, I don’t have forever,” the voice urged him on. It seemed to come from everywhere and yet nowhere all at once, and Fen’s mind turned to spirits. This place was too surreal to begin with, and he had a hard time even imagining a real person living in such wealth.

  He shuffled forward as bidden, his eyes darting around the room; up to the crystal chandler that gently swayed in time to the constant tremble of the Rat Warrens, casting prismatic colors that danced upon the wall and dark shelves like ethereal wisps. When Fen reached the threshold to the side-cubby he stopped, choosing caution as he leaned over to peek around the corner first.