by Jack Conner
“She’s a witch, too, I guess.”
“An acolyte of the Order, rather. Tell you what, why don’t you meet me on the rear veranda in an hour?”
He scowled. “The rear? No one goes there. A dark, quiet place ...”
She laughed. Actually, and appropriately, it was more of a cackle. “Fuck you, Stevrin James Corckrin.” He wasn’t sure if this was his real name or not, but it’s the name she always used when she wanted to get his attention. “If I wanted to kill you, I could do it at any time. But I haven’t been grooming you with all these special errands just to have you killed.”
“No?”
“No.” She said it flatly.
“Grooming?”
She grunted, which didn’t tell him much. “Now let an old woman get the smell of shit and blood out of her hair and redo her make-up, and I’ll meet you in an hour.”
And so it was. Stevrin paced back and forth on the rear veranda, smoking furiously while he waited. The night was warmer than it had been recently, and bugs chirped in the bushes. Distantly, he could still hear the sounds of laughter and tinkling glass from the main parlor, along with the sound of music. Despite Agatha’s words of reassurance, hairs stood up on the back of his neck, and he found himself unconsciously hunching his shoulders, half expecting a blade to stick between them at any moment.
Finally Madam Agatha, freshly scrubbed, tall and regal in her mink coat and pearl necklace, and smelling of an overload of sweet flowers, strode boldly out onto the veranda, accompanied by Ria, who held aloft a silver platter bearing a bottle and two glasses. Ria was tall, sleek, with long black hair and almond-shaped eyes. She attended on her mistress and Stevrin both as they sat down at a table, and Stevrin found it a refreshing change to have a Sister wait on him. He grinned as she poured him a glass of white wine, then waited for Agatha to take a sip from her glass before taking a sip from his.
Agatha watched him with shrewd eyes. She smoked a cigarette on her long-stemmed cigarette holder, and its smoke wreathed her head and formed strange shapes.
“Well, Stevrin,” she said, “I see my trust in you was well-founded. You’re both aggressive and smart, after your fashion. Now, I have a very important task for you, the most important I’ve ever assigned you. I was debating on whom to give it to. I was leaning toward Carvin, captain of the Right Hand. Now I know better.”
Stevrin sipped his wine and tried to appear unmoved. It was difficult. Also, his drink was the most delicious—and surely expensive—thing he’d ever tasted.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Before I go into it all, I need to make something very clear to you, Stevrin.”
“Yeah?”
“This place means the world to me. I built this place with my own blood, sweat and tears. I watched friends die to keep the Divinity from the hands of the Bosses, and I risked my own life, too.”
“Sure, I know. You and your girls settled here when you lammed it from Winking John Mafray.” The story was legend. “A pimp under Boss Montague.”
“That’s right.” A ghost of a smile touched her face, and for a moment she stared into the night, as if at a distant memory. “I remember how it embarrassed Montague no end to have one of his men chasing a runaway crew of whores. Did you know, Winking John finally asked him for help?”
Stevrin said nothing.
“The last mistake John ever made,” she went on. “He was always a cruel one, Montague. Dead and gone these last twenty years, but I’ll never forget him. Had a thing for horses, I remember. He had Winking John drawn and quartered right outside the gates of his mansion as a lesson to ineffective pimps everywhere.”
“Good one.”
“It was. The girls and I had a grand party that night to celebrate. A toast to each of John’s four parts, as I recall.” She chuckled wistfully. “Well, Boss Montague would risk no further embarrassment for hunting for us, so we were safe, for the time being. And we continued our trade, right here—in what were ruins back then. Abandoned for half a century. Folk thought they were haunted by the old Hyalithins. Boys would dare each other to enter the grounds. Oh, those were wild times. Word got around about a pimp-less crew, a crew free from the Bosses. Whores in other crews came to us.”
“Bet the Bosses loved that.”
“Indeed. Those were grand days, Stevrin, but dangerous. Business was beginning to boom. Meanwhile the Bosses wanted to either incorporate us or destroy us. We were in the Commons, disputed territory, and—well, we got disputed. It got rough. People died. Friends. More than friends. We played one Boss against another and finally had to hire outside muscle to protect us. At last they let us alone. That was fifty years ago, and now the Divinity is near as much an institution in the Uppers as the Bosses themselves.” There was no small amount of pride in her voice as she said this. “But the truce between the Divinity and the Bosses has always been a thin one, Stevrin. Now to satisfy my goddess I’ve endangered that truce. I’ve killed the Bosses’ men. It doesn’t sit well with me, not at all. Everything I’ve built is at risk.”
“We’re getting to the point, I guess.”
“I need you to know how important this is, Stevrin. I would risk everything for this, my whole life’s work, what so many have died for, this one patch of freedom in the Uppers.” She let that sink in. He said nothing. At last she said, “I need to tell you something, and I don’t care if you believe it or not.”
“Is it about witchery?”
She frowned. “Don’t use that word.”
“Sorry.”
“But yes, it is about what I have just divined for my Order. For weeks I have been trying to divine what I was instructed to, but without success. Something was blocking me, and I’ve had to break through it, little bit by little bit. Each time I saw the night sky, shimmering, all the stars spinning. Night after night, with each killing, and divining, I saw the same thing, but every night the stars seemed to spin tighter and tighter, at last congealing. Tonight, finally, they congealed into a single shape.”
“What?” he asked. He was hardly aware of himself leaning forward.
“An eye,” she said. “A single eye staring out of the palm of a human hand.”
“But that’s ... that’s the standard of the Guild of Alchemists.”
She nodded, sipping. “Just so. I saw the vision just before you interrupted me.” She smiled unpleasantly. “If you had interrupted me a few seconds sooner, Stevrin, there would have been two corpses on that floor—or perhaps three, if that really was a gun in your pocket. Ria would have carved you up as soon as you’d gotten off your first round.” He swallowed nervously, and Ria smiled sweetly down at him. Agatha went on: “My divination didn’t give any details, but somehow the Guild is involved.”
For a long moment, Stevrin was silent.
“Do you believe me?” she asked.
He started to shrug, then stopped himself. “I guess. It’s not that. It’s ...” He frowned, unsure how to phrase his thoughts. “Well, involved in what? I mean, are we talking about the same thing here? The quake, the gas? All those disappearances, more and more every day? It’s like the whole city’s gone mad. Well, is that what your vision’s about? Is that what the Guild’s involved in, what your goddess warned you about?”
Agatha pulled a face that suggested grimness, and weariness, but did not suggest answers. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not for certain. But it must be. How can it not? All I know for sure is my goddess senses something powerful rising—something malevolent—and she fears it. It threatens to destroy us all. Are these other things related? I can’t say.” She leaned forward, and her voice was stern. “That’s what I need you for, Stevrin. That’s what I need you to find out.”
He stared at her. The candle on the table flickered in the wind. At last he said, “You want me to spy on the Guild?”
“Yes.”
“The Guild? The bastards that tell the Governor where to squat and shit? “
Agatha returned his stare. “I can alwa
ys ask Carvin to do it.”
For a moment he was tempted to let her. Then he thought about three more years of menial labor, the time left till he hit the Wall, as well as Carvin’s unintelligent face. What hope was there that that ox could figure things out?
“No,” he sighed. “I’ll do it. Shit.” For a moment he slouched there, and bugs chirped in the bushes. Then he set up straighter. “Wait a minute, I have something that might help.” Sorry, Doc, but if it helps ... He pulled out the envelope LeBon had given him and held it up to the light. “Got this from one of the doc’s spies. I think he’s been looking into things, too.”
Agatha’s eyes lit up. “Let me see.”
Stevrin handed it to her. “Make it look like it was never opened.”
With deft, experienced hands, she held the envelope over the candle, letting the wax seal warm up, then she carefully opened it and extracted the single sheet of paper inside.
“What does it say?” Stevrin asked eagerly.
Reading aloud, she said “‘Sorry to rush this. They’re coming for me, I know they are. To take me to their black cells. I have time only to scribble a line or two, drop the letter in the usual place, and then—to the razor. I will not end up like the others. I WILL NOT. To hurry—it is as we supposed. I have seen the proof of it with my own eyes. They are in league with some outside party, and it is THEM who have instigated this whole affair. I still don’t know who. I do know that it goes all the way up. Even B himself is involved. Now—there is no time. Farewell. It has been an honor.’”
Agatha stopped reading. Disappointment filled her face. The night seemed to grow colder, and even the bugs seemed to quiet. She passed the note to Stevrin, and he scanned it, then slumped back. “Well, that sucks. Sucks for whoever wrote that, and it sucks for us. It’s as helpful as ten turds in a bowl of piss.”
Without a word, she stuffed the piece of paper back into the envelope, then used the warmth of the candle to melt and renew the seal. It looked as if it had never been tampered with. Agatha was an old pro at more than one thing, apparently.
“Actually,” she said, “we learned something significant.”
“What?”
“Well, from my vision we know the Guild is involved. We can infer that they must be the ‘they’ the writer speaks of. Mention of the black cells confirms it.”
Stevrin nodded. “Explains why the Guild is hunting the doc’s people. They’re up to no good and he’s trying to find out what.” He scratched his cheek. “So B must be Barnes.” Archminister Barnes was the head of the Guild, infamous and feared.
“Exactly. Thus now we know the Guild is in league with some other party, and it is surely them who is responsible for all the strangeness recently. That should provide your search with some direction.”
He nodded slowly, musing on it. “Finding out who they’re meeting with—spying on the whole damned Guild—I’m gonna need some help.”
“Take a dozen boys with you. I’ll make sure you’re supplied with whatever you need.” She let her eyes linger on his. “Good luck, Stevrin. If the Guild is allowed to complete whatever they’re doing ...”
“What?”
The skin around her eyes tightened. “I can’t say, not for certain, but I fear ... the end of it all.”
* * *
Mind whirring, Stevrin trooped up the stairs of the Roost into Whack-Off Central. The familiar aroma of pigeon shit and unwashed bedding hit him. “Where’s Danny?” Stevrin asked Drew, who was hosting another card game. Stevrin was eager to talk about everything. Agatha is the Johnstalker!
“That weepy fag?” Drew said. “He’s on the balcony.”
“Fuck you,” Stevrin said, and strode outside. It had been warmish on the veranda, but it was cold as a Boss’s prick on the balcony, cold enough that Stevrin shivered in the breeze. The wind rustled Danny’s blond locks, but the other boy didn’t seem to notice. Hunching in his jacket, Danny stared off toward the still-dark horizon. His green eyes were wet, just as Drew had said, and he was shaking.
“What gives?” Stevrin said, pulling out a pack of smokes and offering one to Danny. Danny ignored the offer. Stevrin lit up.
Danny sniffed, wiped his nose, and looked at Stevrin. He smiled, but even his smile trembled. “Sorry, Stev. I look like shit, I know.”
“You really do. What’s up?” Stevrin blew out a column of smoke. The wind tore it away instantly.
Danny sniffed again. “I should be happy, I guess. It will be a whole new life.”
“What will be a whole new life?” Inside Stevrin thought he already knew.
Danny looked at his feet. “I said Yes.”
Stevrin felt as if someone had punched him. “Holy shit.”
Danny nodded. A tear ran to the corner of his lips, then trickled down and gathered with some others on his chin. It shook there for a moment and then fell off. “I thought of you and what the Doctor offered you, and what I said about how we should leap at any chances we get, and well ... I went to Agatha. She said she didn’t intend for me to join the Four Floors till I was older, but ... but I told her I wanted to. She didn’t say no.” He wiped his eyes and forced a laugh. It came out weakly.
“Magnar pricked, that’s news ...” Stevrin shook his head.
Danny revealed a flask. After taking a sip, he passed it to Stevrin, while Stevrin passed him the cigarette. The contents of the flask burned Stevrin’s throat. His chest warmed, and he realized it had been hours since he’d eaten anything. Somehow he couldn’t concentrate on any of that, though.
“Shit,” he said, again. He was having a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept for some reason. “Why aren’t you happy about it?”
Danny took a drag on the cigarette. The tip glowed, then faded. He shrugged. “Why aren’t you?”
An uncomfortable silence passed. Stevrin took another pull from the flask, grimaced, and exchanged it for the smoke. “This is stupid,” he said. “We should be celebrating. You’re gonna be the fuckin’ star of the Div!” Forcing some cheer into his face, he clapped Danny on the back, making the other boy choke on his sip of whiskey.
Danny smiled weakly. “Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he meant it.
“Godsdamned right Yeah,” Stevrin amended. He wrenched the flask back and held it up to the stars and moons. “To new fuckin’ beginnings, and fame and fuckin’ fortune! May the Divinity bless this new venture and so on and so forth and many happy fucks!” He took a long pull this time and passed it back.
Laughing, somewhat sincerely now, Danny took a sip and repeated, “Many happy fucks.”
Stevrin tried to block out the picture of Danny being repeatedly used every night, without even any friends to talk to. Hopefully he would befriend the few male whores below. “Remember me when you’re famous,” he said. “We orphans get treated like shit for the most part. If we have a star Brother stickin’ up for us, things’re gonna change around here.”
“Here here.”
“Maybe we can even get the fuckin’ plumbin’ fixed, right?”
Danny nodded judiciously. “I’ll make it my top priority.”
“See that you do.”
They talked for a bit more light-heartedly after that. The night paled, and the stars faded overhead. The contents of the flask grew low. Finally, Danny sighed. “I’m gonna miss you, Stev.”
“Fuck, we’ll still see each other.”
“Yeah, but you know ... things will be different. I mean, how many times have we stood out here and shared a smoke?”
“Loads. Look!” Just then, a thin red disk was heaving itself over the polluted horizon to the east. “Here’s to you, fat-ass,” he said to the sun, and took another sip. Turning to Danny, he said, “You were saying?”
“I was saying, you moron, that I’m going to miss this.” Half-smiling, Danny shook his head. “Well, anyway, enough about my fucking problems. How was your day?”
Stevrin shrugged. “Same old same old.”
Chapter 5
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br /> Rain glistened on the black, baroque façade of the Guild of Alchemists, and Stevrin watched it and frowned. Massive and encrusted with countless ornamental arches, gables, statues and gargoyles, it crouched like a dragon along the south side of the imaginatively named
City Square. Facing it on the north side reared the Governor’s Mansion. On the east stood the Parliament Building and on the west Ulsric State Bank. The square was an immense place with Hatters Park smack in the center of it—a sprawling, hilly park filled with trees, bushes and undergrowth. Though police patrolled it regularly, it was perfect for careful riff-raff to hide out in. Stevrin perched on a hill under a tree, trying to stay dry, but rain still managed to drip on him from the limbs overhead. It was a live oak and had kept its leaves, otherwise he’d have been soaked. He was still wet and cold, and his belly growled in hunger.
Struggling to keep his cigarette lit, he stared at the Guild building and shuddered. He’d been here eleven days and it still gave him the creeps. Water slicked off the façade, rushing through pipes and spitting out the mouths of stone demons, or gushing out of cunningly-devised fountains. Legend held that many of the gargoyles and grotesqueries that jutted from it were homunculi—alive and watching, and connected via alchemical means to human minds inside the building. Stevrin was constantly aware that though he might be spying on the Guild, the Guild might be spying on him. The eyes on the wall, the boys had come to call it. And somewhere under that building were the Guild’s black cells, where they held their enemies for torture, experimentation and death, not necessarily in that order
Stevrin swore. The charm of posh Lower Lavorgna had worn off days ago, and he just wanted to be home.
Huddling in his jacket, rain dripping off him, Jack slouched in from the cold and sought refuge under the tree. Shaking the water off him, he stamped his feet and eagerly accepted the flask of whiskey Stevrin passed him. He looked even thinner than usual, but days spent under the sun had tanned him.
“Any news?”
Jack shook his head. “I’ve just gathered the reports from the boys along the east an’ south. Nothing, really. A few comings and goings. Only a few faces we recognize. That Members Directory Nimfang nicked was a real godsend.”