Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  “Ah, and there he is, as cautious as any rodent I see,” the voice observed, while Fen gawked at what could only be the biggest bed in all of Aethosphere. It was every bit as spacious as the Tunk’s hovel, and probably more so, with four posters at each corner that held up a fabric tent much like the one Conrad Time sold his goods out of. At the ends, the fabric had been pulled away, revealing a sea of blankets washed over an emaciated old man with flyaway muttonchops.

  Fascinated, Fen slowly crept around the corner while a stirring to his left revealed a dangerman guarding the room from an arm chair beside yet another lit fireplace. In his lap lay an imperial pistol. He watched the boy approach the rat lord with dark regard, and as Fen stepped further into the room, he lifted his gun.

  “Leave him be, Simon,” said the boss. “Come, come, boy,” Trask waved his skinny arms, impatient, “my earman won’t do you harm…unless you call upon it by doing something stupid.”

  Fen shook his head and approached the kingly bed slowly, but his fearful attention repeatedly fell on the earman’s gun. The rat lord’s reputation for despising children hummed in his ears, and he wondered, is this just some trick to get me close…? So Boss Trask can attack? The man looked old, no question of it. The rat lord’s face was as wrinkled as a hairless alley cat, and yet his eyes were still bright and calculating, unnerving. Beneath his roomy white shirt he looked skinny, but in the Warrens you couldn’t trust ‘skinny’ to mean ‘weak’. And as for the rest of the rat lord, he was hidden beneath the rolls of a thick comforter, so who really knew what to expect?

  The old man must have taken Fen’s hesitant steps and wandering eyes as an indication of wonderment. “Do you like my abode? Been in the family since before the second tier went up—something like three hundred years past. I must admit it has seen better days, but in this decrepit age who hasn’t, aye?

  “Anyway, come and sit down already.” Trask watched with an eager fascination until Fen seated himself in an arm chair beside the bed. “Good.” He smiled a mouth full of sharp, yellow teeth. “I’ve been told by my associate Mr. Weir,” he gestured with a long, skinny arm to the earman in his chair beside the fire, “that you trespassed beneath the Skylight; partaking in some of my light without payment—and on a bench no less. He also informs me that you attacked a bruiser, and while that happens quite frequently here in the Pinprick, the ferocity you displayed was…well, quite shocking to say the least. I believe one of my men likened it to a gargorul attack—how fascinating. And from one so small and young… Anyway, that’s all superfluous to what interests me most. Seems you’ve information on a barterman of mine, a gentleman that goes by the name of…” the old rat lord paused as he leaned over to a bed tray and pulled from it an open ledger. Dragging it onto his lap, he took a moment to scroll down its pages with a skeletal finger, “Ah, Conrad Time, a luxury peddler it seems, with a stall midway down the Boulevard.

  “Perhaps you’d care to elaborate on what you told my dangerman…after they pulled you off that poor bruiser. You know the butcher had to take the nose, and one of his ears as well? Too much damage to both he said; which is really of no consequence, the man learned his lesson about being lack, but now this Time, what do you have to say concerning him?”

  Fen looked down to his hands, laying in his lap, to the cuts and blood still crusted on his pale skin. They had to remove the man’s nose and ear, he wondered in bewilderment, flexing his hands and imagining them doing what Boss Trask told him they did.

  “Boy,” snapped the rat lord, “are you even paying attention to me?” Fen swung his eyes up and recognized anger in the man’s aristocratic features. He was sitting tall, leaning in the boy’s direction and leering, bug-eyed with intensity. “Speak, or so help me, my face will be the last thing you see. And that tongue of yours will stay silent forever.”

  No matter how much rage Fen felt towards Conrad Time, he couldn’t seem to get his mouth to betray the man; not even after his goons had grabbed his sister…might have even killed her when the hovel collapsed… Tears came flowing once more, sudden and too many to stop.

  “Crying!” Trask was filled with puzzled outrage, “why is he crying? Why isn’t he talking like I told him to, Weir? This is why I hate children. They never do as they’re told. Could you please come over here and cut out his tongue if he doesn’t start talking.” Then the old gangster paused a moment to ponder something else. “Do they stop crying if you take out the eyes? If so, do that too.”

  The gangster’s advisor climbed heavily from his chair and trundled over with a side to side gait. As he stepped up in front of the crying boy, he offered a single statement of solace. “Nothing personal, son.” Then in an instant he was around behind the chair. Before Fen knew what hit him, an arm was pressed to his throat, while a hand crawled up and seized his cheeks, squeezing them together until his mouth was forced open.

  “This is going to be a simple conversation to begin with, boy,” Trask said in the meantime. “I’ll ask you a question, and you’ll answer it with a simple yes or no. First, this Conrad Time, he plots to depose me?”

  The hands at his cheeks let got, but Fen still couldn’t talk. He could at least nod.

  “Sufficient,” the rat lord clapped with approval, “seems a rat pup can be trained after all. Next, his hideout, this place you called the…what was it, Simon?”

  “The Sanctuary,” said the thug with a monotone delivery.

  Fen nodded again. He could taste blood where his teeth had cut into his cheeks.

  “Now this is becoming productive.” Boss Trask threw the heavy blankets aside. From beneath the hem of his long nightgown, the gangster’s legs stuck out like two boney snakes, fascinating in how the veins spider-webbed up and down his sallow skin.

  “I heard tell you stole a substantial amount of notes and was trading them in the Exchange for tokens. Is that true, you little scamp?”

  Fen hesitated to answer, and so Trask directed his piercing eyes up to the earman. Suddenly the arm around his neck squeezed tighter. Fen gagged, sputtered, and kicked out. He grabbed the arm and dug his nails into the fabric of the man’s jacket but the grip was relentless. This henchman was going to pop his head clean off!

  “Well, scamp?”

  Fen choked out, “yes,” between gasps and coughing, and the arm relaxed.

  “Now for my final question.” Boss Trask swung his emaciated form around on the bed to drop his legs out over the edge. Fen recoiled as the man scooted near him. This creature reminded him of a vapor wraith, a pale bloodsucker who fed off the living to feed its undead hunger. Trask even licked his lips while smiling with those sharp teeth of his. “And this money, where is it now?”

  Afraid he might be hurt even more if he said it was gone, Fen lied instead. “Time has it.”

  Trask inched even closer, until he was just a handful of centimeters away. He was so close now that Fen could smell the rat lord’s rank breath, and when the old monster reached out and laid a clawed hand on Fen’s shoulder, Fen shuddered in anguish.

  “Now about this Sanctuary you were talking about,” said Trask, “you’re going to tell me exactly how to find it.”

  Chapter 12

  After the rat lord got what he wanted from Fen Tunk, he threw the boy back in his dungeon, which appeared to have been some sort of bedroom maybe, but years, or decades, or even centuries of occupation by condemned men had turned the chamber into a horror. In that brief moment, before Fen was once more consigned to darkness, he saw long scratches in the rotted plaster, unimaginable filth caked into the floor’s wooden planks, and bugs by the thousands, crawling in waves away from the hallway lanterns.

  There Fen waited. In the darkness all he had were his thoughts, and his thoughts became images snapping here and there like photographic bulbs, to burn and vanish. He saw the day he stole the money, the way the trudger stood leaning back with his chin in the air peeing down a rusty drain. He thought back to the moment his sister told him to throw the sack in the drink, and
then to the sound of all those tokens as Conrad Time let them spill in a flood all over the counter. They’d laughed and picked them up by the handfuls, letting them spill through their fingers to clatter on the counter again. “This should certainly brighten your day, Gord-O,” the merchant had laughed, and that laugh echoed in the dark pit Fen had been left to wallow in; a pit every bit as dark as the one Lydia went falling into when the Tunk’s hovel collapsed. At one point he thought he could hear her screams, so he planted his palms to his ears and squeezed till it hurt.

  Between memories he cried, and between crying he slept, and when he woke it was to the memories, and each cycle pulled him further and further into the darkness. At times he contemplated pulling his hidden switchblade and ending it all, but when he finally did snap the blade open, his determination faltered, and he tucked it back away.

  When the door finally opened and a bruiser ordered him out, Fen had no concept of time, nor any tolerance to even look at the light. At first he was hesitant to do as told, he figured this was just another dream, more cruel than some, and yet not as cruel as others, but when the bruiser lost patience and yanked him out by his hair, the pain snapped him back to reality. When a fistful came out it hurt all the more, but by then Fen had no more tears to cry, and he sucked it back and gritted his teeth.

  “It’s off to the Sentinel for you, boy,” said the bruiser in a nasally whistle, and when Fen turned his eyes on the man he discovered he’d no nose, just two slights poking out from a carnage of inflamed red tissue. It made him want to laugh, but he didn’t know why. Fen tried to hold it back but it came out it gasps and snorts anyway, and the bruiser struck him across the face.

  “Leave him be, Hobbs,” ordered Simon Weir.

  It was in a bewildered stupor that Fen was dragged out into the node, and the crowds roared and cheered when he emerged. In the twilight of a cloudy afternoon, he could see them, every man, woman, and child he’d ever known, all gathered together. He thought he could even see his father, and his sister, and himself; even his mother sitting up on the train trestle high overhead.

  “My beloved citizens,” hollered an amplified voice, ringed in high-pitched feedback. “Today is a very auspicious day for us all!” When Fen turned to the Sentinel he found Boss Trask sitting in an armchair beneath the gnarled tree, in his hand he held a microphone, and when he saw the boy looking at him he offered a savage grin. “Call it a treat! Today we have two scamps and a traitor to judge. So let there be feasting and light for all on this day!”

  And the crowds went wild while Fen pondered who Trask meant by two scamps and a traitor; that is, until the nose-less bruiser dragged him off towards a platform setup beneath the old Sentinel like a stage. As Fen approached, Simon Weir turned his blocky form and stepped out of the way, and there beyond the line of bruisers and dangermen waited Conrad Time, shackles binding his hands and feet, and next to him stood Lydia.

  As soon as he saw his sister Fen fought to pull himself free, but the brute had a death-hold on his collar, and about all Fen managed was to strangle himself. Meanwhile, Lydia turned towards the hole made in the line of rat lord thugs, and when she saw her brother she cried out his name, but her words were lost in the tidal roar of the Warren denizens.

  “I ain’t afraid of your justice, Trask,” Time’s voice issued boldly, rising over the crowd, and as he spoke he began pulling off his gloves, letting them fall to the ground, one at a time, as he stared contemptuously into the gathered masses. “You had me five years ago, rat lord, but I keep on coming back.” Then he held up his hands, and he showed all those mangy ratties, gathered to watch this farce of a trial, just how much contempt he had for the rat lord and his domain. Two thumb-less nubs stuck out from both hands, and Fen knew then that this man was the very same one he’d seen all those years back. “You can try your punishment on me, Trask, but best do it fast, and you best do it right, because this is about the time your reign comes to an end!”

  “Enough!” Trask roared, the hidden speakers amplifying his shrill voice to ear-piercing decibels. “Begin the phase of punishment, and save the traitor for last. I want his agony to be slow and prolonged. Now bring up the first scamp!” And the crowds cheered.

  Fen watched in horror as they grabbed hold of Lydia. And while she fought, the bruisers dragging her to the block, Fen struggled against his capture as well. He kicked back at the brute’s shins, but a hammer blow to the back of the head sent a burst of light through his brain, and when he regained his wits Lydia was at the cutting block, her hands bound over the stained wood with the cutters poised at the ready in the butcher’s hand. He grabbed her left hand first, and she screamed and tugged, but the rat lord’s men held her firm.

  The captive merchant refused to stay quiet. “The time’s are a’changin’, Trask!”

  Snip, Lydia’s thumb fell to the ground like a dead leaf from the overhead tree. Her scream of pain pierced through the crowds’ uproar.

  How could they do that to my sister? Fen’s stomach turned in an instant and he vomited all down the front of his jacket. His head was spinning in dizzying circles and his vision had turned red. He wasn’t sure when he broke free, but he realized it around the time he leapt past the condemned merchant. By then he’d pulled the hidden switchblade free from his jacket.

  “Do it!” Time seemed to yell in his brain.

  All time seemed to slow, but even slowed, Fen couldn’t stop himself as he buried the tarnished blade into Boss Trask’s chest. The collective gasp (of what seemed like every single person in the Warren’s), sucked all the air from the world, and in the vacuum that followed, Time could be heard howling with laughter. Fen looked down to his own hands, hands painted red with blood, as the rat lord gargled for breath and coughed up foamy crimson. Feebly the old man took a swipe at him, but Fen staggered back, and then turned to the crowds, almost pleading to them. When his eyes caught movement a dozen meters off, he found the Gutter Lady lingering beneath the hanging chains of the Chimes Way. She stood like a phantom, observing, but when Fen’s gaze fell on her stygian veil, she raised a hand and pointed in his direction.

  All hell broke loose.

  From every alley, side road, and access way children came flooding in, and each of them wearing skulls for masks, and all the while Time howled and cackled in glee. Scores of children streamed in; hundreds; thousands; and though gunshots followed, they never slowed. What dangermen stopped to take a stand and shoot were trampled in the stampede, and though little Syndicate troopers fell in droves, more just came streaming in behind them. Someone had unleashed a tide, a swarm, and it swept aside all the gathered men and women; all the bruisers and dangermen; all the Warren trash like flotsam. Fen caught a brief, final glimpse of Trask, as he and his chair were both trampled to a pulp underfoot.

  “Don’t leave a single one of them breathing,” hollered Time, now freed and standing in a throng of death-masked children. From behind the Sentinel, Simon Weir and a meager handful of bruisers were backing down the alley towards the rat lord’s manor door, but a tide of rat pups were near to washing over them. “Not a single one of them,” continued Time, and when he locked eyes on Fen Tunk he added with a sideways grin, “and bring that one to me!”

  From somewhere in the rumble, above the screams and the yelling, Lydia’s voice rose up above it all, piercing the chaos like a ray of sun through the mist of the Rat Warrens. “Fen, run!”

  And for the first time in his life Fen did as his sister told him. He booked it south by instinct, seeking the familiar route home, while behind him a score of rat pups geared up for pursuit. About halfway down the access way another pack of Syndicate pups cut him off as they came streaming north and so he cut west, winding his way through Maze Town. From there they chased him right to the putrid shores of the “Old Big River”, and over and around the rickety shanties of North Scumside. More pups seemed to appear with every meter, and by then the chaos of the Node seemed to have spilled all throughout the Pinprick slum. Whistles blew shri
ll for a brief time, but were quickly silenced, and as Fen blundered past bewildered bruisers, he looked back moments later to find them plowed under by herds of skull-masks. The mob proved relentless, and Fen sucked and heaved for breath while the stitch that had slowly been building in his side threatened to tear his chest apart. Still he ran on, hitting North Walk and cutting west as the muscles in his legs seemed to burn to ash. He’d wanted to go east, but Syndicate minions could be seen down that way piling atop a handful of bruisers making their final stand.

  It wasn’t until Fen hit the Suture and turned north towards the Shambles that he started to slow from exhaustion. By then the noise of pursuit had died down to a trickle; to what sounded like a single set of footsteps pounding up after him, and fast, faster than he could outrun anymore. But one, Fen could handle, one just might help quell the rage bubbling within him, and with just one, Fen stopped. With fists at the ready he turned to face his pursuer. But his pursuer was ready for him, tackling him full on, and together the pair went tumbling into the wet dirt.

  “Got’cha,” blurted Eddy in a breathless husk as both her and Fen, all in a tangle, rolled over one ancient train track then another.

  “Get off me!” Fen managed to twist around and brace his knee against the girl’s chest. With a savage snarl he kicked her away, and she went tumbling back onto her butt.

  “Owe, you stupid oaf, that hurt,” she shouted back while sitting splay-legged in the mud and rubbing at the spot where his bony knee had thrown her off. “What gives? I’m here to help you.”

  “Help me?” Fen flashed his snarling teeth. “How? Did you see what they did to Lydia…what all you Syndicate goons did—”

  “What we did…? What we did was free the Warrens, Fen, and besides, you’re the one who killed Boss Trask.”

  “I…I…” but Fen had nothing to say about that. It had all happened in such a blur of frantic activity that it was more akin to a dream than to reality. “What do you want, Eddy?” He changed topics and locked his seething eyes on the girl; on all her obscuring makeup and garish clothing. She seemed to grow timid under the scrutiny.