by Jack Conner
“This is the City That Wouldn’t Die.”
“Something worse than normal, I’m afraid. I understand you were almost the victim of it earlier this evening.”
In his mind’s eye, shadowy shapes lunged for Stevrin. “You think the abductors are part of this ‘strangeness’?”
“I don’t know who’s doing it exactly, or what, but I suspect those who are abducted are being killed, and terribly. Worse, I know that these abductions are just the tip of what’s coming, the bit that we can see.”
“How?”
“I’ve eyes and ears everywhere, lad. With an enemy like the Guild, I must. What’s more, I know how to read the signs.” With an air of significance, he leaned in and said, “And I think someone in the temple knows, as well.”
Stevrin let that pass. He was too busy turning over the doctor’s offer. What would life be like in the Warren? He dreaded going over there, with all those horrors walking about. He couldn’t imagine living there. But the idea of having the Doc looking out for him, and teaching him, was strangely compelling. He had never known a father.
“What do you say?” Dr. Reynalt said, sounding as warm as Stevrin had ever heard him.
“I ... it’s just that ...”
Reynalt sighed. “So it’s a no, then.” He straightened.
“No, wait!”
Reynalt paused.
Stevrin took a breath. “It’s not that I don’t want to, doc. Part of me does. But the Sisters’ve been good to me. They took me in when I was twelve, y’know, a grubby little cutpurse, and they’ve fed me, clothed me. There’s even girls here was teachers once, and they give me lessons from time to time. Sure, I have to help out, but it ain’t a bad life.”
After a moment, Reynalt nodded. “Yes, I suppose it’s not, at that.” Amusement sounded in his voice as he added, “What’s more, I happen to know that you run errands for the Sisters, special chores that must remain a secret from Madam, and I have to wonder if occasionally they pay in the oldest coin there is.”
I wish. “What it comes down to is it’s my home.”
“Very well, then. The search goes on for my apprentice. But know that if you change your mind, my door is open.”
“I will, doc. I’ll ... think it over.”
“Good, lad. Good.” He scowled, and his eyes stared off into the distance. “And remember what I said. Something bad is beginning to brew in this city. Something big. Keep your eyes open and your head down. Meanwhile, I will investigate—out of self-preservation as much as anything else.”
“Good luck. Wish I could help.” Stevrin had said the words absently, not really thinking about them, but as soon as he spoke them something sparked in Dr. Reynalt’s eyes.
“You can, if you’re inclined,” the doctor said quietly.
Stevrin cursed himself. “How?”
“In the Hang Tree Market, there’s a man I sometimes filter information through. With the Guild’s close attention on me, I’ve been forced to communicate with my agents more indirectly, and he’s been helping. I need you to go to him.”
Stevrin restrained a violent expletive, then gave in. “Shit, why not? I nearly got dead tonight thanks to whatever’s goin’ on. I got as much to preserve as you. Plus, I’m goin’ by that way tomorrow anyway.”
* * *
Still turning over the doctor’s words, Stevrin mounted the musty, winding steps of the Roost, which rose from one corner of the temple. Sweat and grime caked his shirt to his back, and he wished the tower’s shower pipes hadn’t burst last winter; he’d love to wash himself before bed, and he wasn’t in the mood to go back down and beg the Sisters for one of their private showers—or worse, take a rinse in the public lavatories, having the johns ogle him while they were all soapy and naked. Oh, the Sisters had repaired whatever pipes needed fixing down below, but they’d suspiciously run out of funds when it came to the Roost. At least the privy worked. When he finally reached the top, or near-top, of the spire, he took a nice long leak in the filthy, graffiti-covered lavatory, then rinsed his mouth with a shot of Valeyan vodka he found sitting by the sink. He didn’t spit.
The Roost was the orphans’ tower, where all the boys and girls taken in by the Sisters lived. The orphans did most of the cleaning and cooking and such that went on in the Divinity, and in return they received food and a bed.
From overhead came the rustle, thump and stink of the pigeons. The tower was a ruin, with its very top floor exposed to the elements thanks to a half-collapsed roof. Just below that was Shit-Bird Hall, as the orphans called it—the aviary where Duncan kept the messenger birds. The birds came in handy in Upper Lavorgna, where the telephones only worked half the time, and few people possessed telephones to begin with.
The male orphans’ quarters sat just below Shit-Bird Hall, and the girl orphans’ quarters (the Virgin Vault) occupied the next story below that, thus not only could Stevrin smell the birds’ offal, but he could hear the birds thumping around, constantly rustling and cooing. He’d been hearing their noises for so long that he found it hard to sleep without them.
He entered the large, circular room he called home, which wrapped completely around the tower, with the stairwell and the lavatory in the center. Bunk beds stacked four and five tiers high littered the room at odd angles, and moldy and unwashed sheets filled the air with a stink noticeable even over the other reeks of bird crap and cigarette smoke. Five dozen boys bunked in the room, half were down below about their duties, and a dozen more slept.
A handful of boys lounged in the bunks awake, or squatted on the floor playing card games. Stevrin noticed several of his pals, Jack, Harry, Nimfang and Danny among the gamblers.
A chagrined, half amused chorus of “oooohhh” rose from them, and Stevrin arrived just in time to see Danny shake his head as another boy claimed the small pile of pennies and half-pennies. Danny caught Stevrin’s eye, threw down his hand and say, “That’s it, lads, I’m out.”
“Thanks for the donation,” Drew said, smiling smugly. He was an infected boy, and half his face and neck glimmered with golden scales. Then, with a look and a wink at the others: “Keep it comin’, boys.”
The boys noticed Stevrin and waved or called “hey-yeah, Stev”, then turned back to the game. All except Danny, still shaking his head at his lost fortune.
“Goin’ to bunk?” he said to Stevrin. The two had been on opposite schedules lately, one waking when the other was about to go to bed.
“And how,” Stevrin said. “Gonna get in a last smoke, though. Wanna join?”
As they had many times before, they moved out onto the balcony extending from the high set of doors. The wind blew cold, but the boys were used to it, and Stevrin only shivered a little as he lit his cigarette and then Danny’s.
Before them sprawled the temple grounds. The grand minarets soared skyward, their stems white, their tips colored gold and ruby and turquoise, twinkling against the just-fading stars. The grounds were covered in trees and wide lawns, taking up an entire city block and surrounded by a high encircling wall. The gate was still open, and even as he watched Stevrin saw a horse-drawn carriage—there were still a few of them around—clatter through it and jounce away. A long U-shaped driveway looped around the columned façade of the temple and back to the gateway. Beyond the wall crawled the tangled, tenement-riddled sprawl of Upper Lavorgna, and far away to the south, on the other side of the Yangish River, marched the more orderly, stately lines of posh Lower Lavorgna with its ever-growing domes and skyscrapers of smoked glass. Fog still curled through the streets, but Stevrin knew the sun would boil it away soon enough. To the north and west stretched the turbulent expanse of the Atomic Sea, lightning blasting up from it and giant, aerial squid floating in a line far, far away, and to the west, Massul Harbor. Stevrin noted not less than three factories between the temple and the eerie sea, each belching their own columns of filth.
“Hear about the quake on Trelbly?” Danny asked.
“Quake?” That was new.
&
nbsp; “Yeah, they felt the ground rumble. Several shop windows broke, and one person was hit by stones when a ceiling caved in. Dead on the instant.”
“And they’re saying it was a quake?”
“Yeah. Ain’t that something? There’s no quakes anymore, not for millions of years, not here—that’s what the eggheads say. There’s no fault lines nearby.”
Stevrin shook his head. “Maybe that’s part of what the doc was sayin’, about strange shit goin’ down. It doesn’t make sense, but ...”
“What do you mean?”
Quickly Stevrin told Danny about his evening, and Danny’s eyes widened.
“I’m ... I’m glad you didn’t get abducted,” he said, sounding as if he’d been punched in the gut.
“Wonder what they’re takin’ people for? What would they have done with me?”
Danny took a breath. “Can it really have anything to do with the quake?”
“Seems off, doesn’t it? But if this quake’s tied up in the bad stuff the doc was talkin’ about, and the missing people are, too, then ...” He shook his head. “The quake was probably nothin’, though. Just one of those things.”
Danny looked at him soberly. He was a comely boy Stevrin’s age, with blond locks and blue-green eyes. His build was somewhat athletic, and his facial features tended toward the delicate. His good looks and easy mannerisms had earned him many doting admirers among the Sisterhood, but Stevrin was aware his tastes leaned more in the fraternal direction. In a quiet voice, so that the other boys wouldn’t overhear, not that they were trying, Danny asked, “So—what do you think? About joining the Doctor?”
Stevrin smiled around his cigarette—a technique he’d painstakingly perfected. “What do I wanna hang around with a bunch of fucking corpses for when I’ve got the Four Floors of Whores right below me?”
Danny’s eyebrows converged in concern. “Yeah, but ... the Doctor ...”
Stevrin rolled his eyes. “Look, he’s just a guy.” Taking another drag on his cigarette, he stared at the horizon, willing his face to be as cool as he wanted it be.
Danny continued to stare at Stevrin. At last he shook his head and said, “So, what, you gonna do this forever—wash cum-soaked sheets at a whorehouse? That and clean floors and plates. That’s all you’re good for, you know. You’re a terrible cook, and you can’t make a bed properly to save your life. You really want to hang around here? You have an opportunity to do better than this.”
“Back at this, then.”
“Damn right.” Danny’s voice sounded stern and not at all feminine, though with a trace of mother hen.
“If we’re gonna talk about this, I need a drink.” A bottle of cheap beer stood in the corner between the railing and the wall. A bit of newspaper had been wadded in the top, and someone had put their cigarette out in it, but Stevrin stuck his finger in the opening and with a wet pop fished out the stub and flicked it away, aiming for the nearer, greener moon, now hardly visible.
The beer tasted vile, but it complimented what the vodka had begun. He offered the bottle to Danny, but Danny made a face and said no.
“How many of us get a shot, eh?” Danny said. “How many of us get to climb another rung on the ladder? Well, Stev, you’ve got that rung offered to you. I should brain you if you refuse. And with the Wall coming up in a few years ...”
Stevrin nodded. The Sisters didn’t play mom forever; they kicked kids out when they turned eighteen—kicked them out or employed them. He downed another ashy sip and grimaced. It really did taste like piss. Yet he was growing pleasantly tipsy. “So what are you gonna do, then? You’re giving me a hard time, but do you have a plan?”
“That’s just the point! Opportunities are hard to come by.” Danny sighed. “Besides, as it happens, I do have one.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded glumly. “Agatha’s asked me several times if I wanted to ... move below.”
Stevrin choked on his beer. Some of it came up through his nostrils. The stale beer and cigarette ash stung his sinuses, and his eyes watered.
“You’re shitting me,” he wheezed.
He must have been a comical sight, as Danny smiled. There was sadness behind that smile, though. “They’ve only got a few male whores, and none of ‘em as good-looking as me, she says. I could be rich, if I wanted. I’d be the Divinity’s new star.” His said this proudly, but, Stevrin thought, a touch dismally.
“Damn.” It was all Stevrin could think to say, until: “Well? What’d you tell her?”
Danny blew out an elegant plume of smoke. “I said I’d think about it.”
Stevrin punched him on the shoulder. “Damn, man, why didn’t you tell me earlier? That’s major news! We should rouse the boys!”
Danny chuckled once and shook his head. “No. I don’t want them to know. I don’t want anyone to know.” He looked at Stevrin significantly, and Stevrin nodded.
Again they settled into silence, only this time Danny accepted the bottle of beer and took a swig. Instantly he spat it out. “Magnar impaled!” he cried. “How can you drink that crap?”
Stevrin laughed. “If you can’t swallow that, I don’t think you’ll be any good as a whore.” Instantly he regretted the statement, as Danny looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I take it back.”
“No. No, you’re right.” Danny handed the bottle back, a little shakily. “It’s all the more reason why you should go with the Doctor, Stev.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll stay here.” With a glance at Danny, he said, “My friends are here.”
Shortly, he retired, climbing to his bed on the second tier of a five-tier bunk, ratty and covered by unwashed, moth-eaten sheets. Pictures of girls in various stages of undress looked down from the springs of the overhead bunk; the girls nestled side by side with pictures of Stevrin’s sports heroes, mainly boxers. Prominent among them loomed the Smasher. Stevrin looked forward to seeing the man himself tomorrow night at the Charnel House. He and some of the other boys already had plans to attend the bout—after he ran that errand for Dr. Reynalt, of course.
Stevrin had pounded his rock-like pillow into submission so many times it was lumpy and irregular, and half the time he woke up with a neck ache. Hastings snored like thunder two bunks above him, and from the floor a few bunks over Stevrin could still hear Drew and the others playing cards. Over it all, the pigeons on the floor above rustled and thumped and cooed and stank. With their familiar noise in his ears, Stevrin closed his eyes, but instead of sleep he saw Tollie charging the Sisters, then stopping short as Agatha confronted him, her cane raised high.
He found sleep hard to come by.
Chapter 3
Wind gusted down the lanes of the Hang Tree Market, papers flapping like bats in the breeze, and flung a fistful of spice from a nearby vendor into Stevrin’s face. He sneezed.
“Bless you,” said Harry, runty and wild-haired, who walked beside him, along with several others.
“You owe him two bits now,” Jack told Stevrin. “Harry charges for blessings.”
“Do not,” Harry said.
“You should start. Maybe then you could pay Hastings back.”
That was true enough to sink Harry into a sulk, and he crossed his arms over his narrow chest.
Hastings, a hulking bruiser of a seventeen-year-old, laughed his weird, tongue-less laugh. He’d been raised in some cult or other before he’d escaped and found sanctuary with the Sisters, and in addition to ripping out his tongue the cultists had branded him with tattoos all over his body. He compensated for his freakishness by running a loan service among the boys of the Roost, and when his steep interest wasn’t paid he doled out his displeasure with his unnaturally large fists.
Vallie, the girl who had found the body in the solarium, had come with the boys despite Stevrin’s pleas to the contrary, and she strolled arm-in-arm with Hastings. The big man looked quite pleased with himself.
Stevrin sneezed again. Between the shabby stalls and peaked tents of the Market, he could still
see occasional glimpses of the Hang Tree itself—the huge, blasted old oak perched like a monster on its hill, skeletal limbs clawing at the sky. Here not so long ago the residents of the area had come to witness criminals being hung, and it had been quite the social event. A festival and then a market had sprung up around the executions and eventually grown into a permanent affair. Vendors still sold candies shaped like hanged men or pretzels shaped like nooses.
Twilight deepened into night, and a cool breeze blew off the Atomic Sea. They were close to the docks—many sailors and whalers wandered about, enjoying the sights—and Stevrin had to hunch in his ragged jacket to stay warm. The press of the other boys helped, and the excitement. It had been a long, weary day cleaning floors and emptying ashtrays at the Divinity, and he looked forward to the release of seeing the Smasher break some bones.
He rubbed his hands together as they passed through the old Market Gate, built before the market had spread—a big, wrought-iron affair with the words HANG TREE rendered somewhat ominously, right beside a depiction of a tree occupied by a dozen dangling corpses. Tides of people wandered the aisles, some dressed in finery, some in rags. Stevrin passed a man that smelled like a tanner, another with oil on his fingers that might be a factory worker, a Boss’s man in an expensive suit, and a hunched old woman that made Stevrin think of a Sygran witch.
Several were infected by the toxic waters of the Atomic Sea and bore the aquatic elements to show for it—fins or gills or fish scales. Some were completely transformed, having become fish-men and -women or lobster people or having the shells of tortoises or so on. Those were rare, though. Lavorgna had powerful processors to resist the fumes of the Atomic Sea and more to cleanse the seafood caught from it. Only by eating that food, dipping in the waters (or breathing in too much of their fumes) or swapping bodily fluids with someone who had could someone get infected. If that happened, though, the change could just as likely kill a person as mutate them.
“I’ll take one,” said Nimfang when Stevrin lit up, and Stevrin proffered him a cigarette.