The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Keth.” He waited, but no response came. He looked about, back towards the busy street. Nobody had stopped to see what the solitary figure was doing, standing alone in an alley, shouting. “Keth.” Louder now, a little more insistent, just a little panicked. “Keth, please!”

  Again he waited, and again there was nothing. Marius began to worry. What if Keth held the solution to his dilemma? What if she was the key to everything, and he had thrown her away in his fit of pique? What if his only chance at life had lain in that room, and now, with a few words, he had placed it forever beyond his reach?

  “Keth!” This time, the only sound that emerged was panic.

  Then, behind the thin gauze curtains, something moved. Marius stiffened, thoughts frozen in hope. The curtains parted and Keth appeared, a bed sheet wrapped around her so that she stood above Marius like some ancient pagan deity, albeit one with ice in her eyes and her face an impassive mask. Marius held his arms out at waist height, palms upturned, offering penitence to his cold goddess.

  “Keth…”

  Slowly, eyes fixed upon Marius, Keth leaned out of the window. She opened her arms, and grasped the edges of the shutters. As Marius gazed on in despair she leaned back into the room, disappearing once more behind the curtains. The shutters banged closed, cutting in half the world between her and Marius.

  A scene had been painted on the outside surface of the shutters. A field of yellow flowers, viewed through a framed window. A blue sky hung above, empty of clouds. A fat, tortoiseshell cat lay on the windowsill, staring down at Marius with the same impersonal disdain he had seen on Keth’s features. Marius knew the cat’s name. He was Alno, and he was the cat that Marius had promised to buy for Keth one day, when the grime and desperation of their lives grew too much to bear, and he had sequestered enough money to take them both away to an estate somewhere in the untroubled countryside. Nothing too big, he heard himself telling her as they lay cuddled together for warmth under the lodging house’s thin blankets. Nothing too fancy. But a place just for us, with fields of yellow flowers for picking, and an uninterrupted view all the way to the horizon. Marius closed his eyes. It was not the sudden knowledge of what he had lost that defeated him. It was the fact of the picture itself, that it was painted on the outside of the shutters, not the inside, that Keth had known his fantasy for what it was, had known this rift between them would open up, and had been so much more prepared for it than him.

  Slowly, he raised one hand and laid it upon the opposite arm. He clenched, digging his nails deep into bicep. He felt nothing. And now, he could not even taste his bile. Marius nodded, head bowed, then turned away and walked slowly back into the street.

  Keth had found him a ship, at least. With nowhere else to go, he turned towards the docks and began the slow walk down the thoroughfare. The Minerva, she had said, and if the size she mentioned was anything close to the truth it was more than large enough to take him to the end of any ocean he cared to name. Marius hunched deeper into his cape, thoughts tumbling around the image of Keth’s face, and the frozen, dead look she had given him as they parted. The crowds slid past him as he walked, oblivious to the myriad nudges and touches of close contact. His coins were well hidden, and should he have chosen to, he could have ignored the fluttering touch as a well-placed hand sought out his pocket, swiftly flitting in and out in the hope of dipping a coin or two. But Marius was not in the mood to play games with street rats. When the next casual bump arrived, and the bumper’s hand flitted into the inner pocket of his cape he grabbed the offending wrist, spun the startled thief around, and pushed them both into the mouth of the nearest alley.

  “What the hell is your game?” he snarled, leaning down so that his dead face filled the view of the child cowering in front of him. A girl, no more than eight or nine years old by the look of her. She looked just like any other street rat; dirty and dishevelled from a lifetime of begging scraps from whoever trod the cobbles upon which she slept. But Marius knew the signs. The dirt was just a little too carefully spread over her face, a little too effective at blurring distinguishing features. The scraps she wore were roomy rather than ragged, all the better for the multitude of hidden pockets they undoubtedly contained. The wrist he held had strength within it that spoke of at least semi-regular feeding.

  “Whose are you?” he growled. He grabbed her other wrist, held them both in one hand, and used the other to roughly push her sleeves up to her shoulders. He twisted her arms this way and that, examining the wrists, the inside of the elbows, her armpits. Not finding anything he reached out and grabbed her jaw, turning her head back and forth until he located a tiny tattoo just below her ear – a small fish with a hook protruding from its mouth.

  “A Salmon Streeter? Look!” He let go of her jaw and held his hand up, spreading his fingers so the webbing between thumb and first finger was visible. A tiny tattoo of a horse’s head nestled within the space.

  “Pony Lane boy from way back.” In reality, Marius had tattooed it there himself three years previously, part of a failed scheme to embezzle the street gangs around the old market districts that had led very quickly to his last exit from the city. “Tell Old Gafna to teach his brats better. Trip, dip, flick. It’s not that difficult.”

  He dragged the terrified girl down the alleyway and back into the street, stepping through the flow of human traffic until they stood equidistant from any path of escape. Marius let one wrist go, keeping a firm hold on the other, and let the girl strain to be free. People barged past on both sides. Marius stood still. Pedestrians stared as they passed, without bothering to intrude. Still Marius made no attempt to move. Then he saw a child across the way, indistinguishable at that distance from the masses of underage poor who choke the streets of any big city, except that this child most definitely did not glance at the unusual sight of the cowled immobile stranger and the urchin girl so obviously in conflict. He moved past, hugging tight to the wall, completely failing to notice Marius staring at him, before turning into an alleyway and disappearing into the darkness within. Marius pulled the girl towards him sharply, so that she stumbled and bumped her face into his hip.

  “Get,” he said, pushing her away so that she tripped and fell backwards into the stream of humanity passing them. As soon as she was hidden by the press of legs he stepped back towards the side of the road and strode swiftly away. Only when he had traversed several blocks did he stop, and step into a nearby doorway. He leaned against the doorframe, and slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jerkin.

  “Clever girl,” he said with a smile. The thruppence he had placed there during their altercation in the street was missing. He reached into a pocket slightly further down, better hidden by the stitching, and removed a small pouch. He counted out three tenpennies worth of coins, dropped the pouch into the street, and returned the money to his pocket. Good girl, but not good enough to notice her own victimisation. Old Gafna would correct her mistakes.

  Marius slipped into the street and continued on his way. Word spreads quickly, at street level. No more fingers troubled his journey.

  The Borgho City docks ran for several miles along both sides of the Meskin River, a mile-wide brown snake that had long ago been domesticated by regular dredging, tide-breakers, and a profusion of weirs and locks further upriver. The docks were a mini-city in their own right, with their own culture, their own language, and several customs that would appear bizarre to anybody who wandered in from even a mile outside the unofficial city limits, even if they had been a Borghan their entire life. There was no logical reason, for example, for a ship’s captain to throw overboard a corn dolly dressed like Severn Magnassity, the folkloric discoverer of the mythical port of Haventide, but you’d never find a ship that sailed out without having done so. Generations of families had garnered a tidy living from making dollies and selling them at dockside. Each such family had their own particular tradition when it came to folding the corn just so, cutting and tying arms and legs one way and not the other, sewing and
folding Magnassity’s uniform in one particular shade and not the next. As each distinctive style of Magnassity became associated with this plentiful fishing season or that devastating tornado, they went in and out of fashion, became famous or infamous in their turn. Fortunes waxed and waned, dolly families climbed and fell within their own unique caste system, marriages were made, alliances were broken, and woe befall the outsider who uttered the words “But they’re just corn dollies” in the wrong tavern. So the culture of the Borgho wharfs progressed, and drew the mismatched travellers and vagrants who occupied them closer together, until all who lived there spoke the quayside patois, where knowing the difference between a topreeb and a jibreeb makes all the difference, and no dictionary in the world can help you if you don’t. The Minerva was a massive ship, if Keth was correct – fifty tonnes of wood and leather that would loom over the surrounding area like a war tower – but the docks were so large that Marius knew it could still take him the better part of a day to locate it, longer if he had to cross one of the bridges upriver and explore the north bank as well.

  Marius had friends who worked the ships. People like Marius had friends everywhere. It’s harder to do the kind of business Marius did without the right sort of introductions from the right sort of people, and Marius had been doing that kind of business for long enough to build up a significant web of contacts. The only problem, such as it was, was that Marius’ kind of friends invariably didn’t recognise him without money passing between them first. Thankfully, the streets were crowded. Within half an hour, he was able to stop in the shadow of a tenement at the western fringe and distribute several tenpennies worth of coins into various hidden pockets, as well as two wedding rings which had probably been on their way to a pawn shop.

  By common consent, the docks did not tolerate dips. There were a million ways for a foreign sailor to lose his money in a city like Borgho. The most interesting ones were illegal, or at best, highly immoral, even by Lower Scorban standards. It was mutually agreed, in an unspoken pact going back centuries, that what the city guard did not see it could not close down. And too much money fed too many people in the area for anyone to want that arrangement to go bad because the wrong sailor got dipped before he could lose money to his satisfaction. It was not a case of one bad apple ruining a whole bunch, so much as the whole barrel being rotten but the customer not needing to know until they’d already bought it and carted it home. Besides, an off-duty guard’s money was as good as a sailor’s, and nobody wanted to dry up a regular source of revenue. So: no dips; no footpads; no knives dug into ribs and sudden visits to side alleys. Marius knew the rules, and at what street corner they started to apply. As soon as he passed the end of Fishwife Lane and turned onto the wide street known to all as The Pipe Barrel, he left his fingers in his trouser pockets, and walked without caution past the crowds that milled about the endless stalls and displays of the city’s most determinedly honest criminals.

  Remmitt Paschar looked like a corn dolly made flesh, his sun-baked skin having been flogged so often for so many civic misdemeanours that it had taken on the scarred and wizened aspect of the dried corn husks. Like a true Borghan street man, however, he had turned this impediment to his advantage. Decked out in whichever style of blue uniform was in favour amongst the dolly families this year he paraded throughout the docks, offering the discerning new arrival slivers of the genuine decking of Severn Magnassity’s sloop the Tidy, or lucky charms folded from the original pages of his map book, and even, should the sailor in question look especially noble or discerning, at a price that was killing Paschar, and he wouldn’t even be thinking of this if it weren’t for his children not having eaten anything but dumcabbage broth for the last week, the complete sextant with which Severn Magnassity himself calculated the exact position of Haventide. As Paschar himself would tell you, it’s not thievery if both sides receive something from the deal, even if one side doesn’t always get exactly what they think they’re getting.

  He was just taking the weight off for five minutes, sitting on an upturned crate in the space at the back of a mussel-fryer’s stall, trying to light a fresh snout from the butt of a dead one, when Marius slid past the stall and stood over him.

  “Hello, Remmitt.”

  “Ach!” Paschar leaped backwards off the crate, banged the back of his head on the wall behind him, and fell back to Earth. “God damn it.” He scrabbled across the grimy cobbles until he recovered the bent snout and jammed it into his mouth. “Look what you made me do.” He looked up at Marius, letting his gaze travel his entire body before settling somewhere around the arc of jaw visible beneath the cloak’s overhanging hood. “Are you in need of a genuine relic of the rich history of our city, friend? I can see you have a keen appreciation–”

  “Your mouth.”

  Paschar raised a hand to his lips. “My mouth? What about it?”

  “Close it.”

  “Hey, now friend. I’m a friendly fellow, but–”

  Marius reached down with one hand, and grabbed Paschar’s shoulder. He hauled the trader to his feet and slammed him against the wall in one strong, fluid movement. Paschar gasped, then began choking.

  “My snout…” he managed.” Swallowed… God….”

  Marius waited, effortlessly maintaining his grip. Paschar eventually subsided, drawing his breath in a heavy wheeze, his eyes streaming tears. When he was at last able to breathe without hacking gobs of tobacco-flecked spit onto the ground, Marius used his free hand to pull back his hood.

  “Remember me?” he said, in a friendly tone that wouldn’t have fooled a child. Paschar stared at his pallid, cracking face for several seconds. He made one attempt to swallow, then another. Finally, he gathered enough saliva into his mouth to attempt speech.

  “Helles?”

  “In the rotting flesh.”

  “What on Earth happ… you’re looking…. How are you?” Paschar smiled, a weak attempt that gave up and died instantly.

  “You know something? I’ve been better.”

  “Shame.” Paschar nodded in sympathy, stopping when it became apparent that if he didn’t intervene now, he’d probably not be able to stop it for at least several minutes. “I’ve always wished the best for you, Helles, you know that. Always felt–”

  “Shush, now.” Marius shook him gently, so that only his teeth rattled, and not his whole skeleton. Paschar shushed. “I’m glad you feel that way, Remmitt. I really am. Because I’ve got a way for you to prove it.”

  “I’d love to, Helles, really I would.” Paschar found enough courage to reach up in an attempt to prise Marius’ fingers from his shoulder. Marius clenched. The fingers found flesh, and Paschar quickly gave it up as a bad idea. “It’s just, I’ve got these kids to feed, see–?”

  “You have two children, Remmitt. They live with their mother in Jarsik Way, you’re allowed to see them once a month as long as you’re accompanied by a special constable, and last I heard, the oldest one is training for the priesthood because he heard you’re allergic to churches.”

  “Well, you know kids. Always playing tricks on their old man…”

  “I need information, Remmitt.” Marius reached into his pocket, and removed a tuppenny piece, which he held before Paschar’s eyes.

  “Ah, well, I’m sure I don’t know anything about it, Guv.”

  “You don’t know what I want to know about yet.”

  “Yes, well,” Paschar looked from the coin to Marius’ face, swallowed, and decided it was better to focus on the coin. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know anything. Not for that price, you know what I mean?” He devoted the last of his courage to another smile. It wasn’t quite enough. Marius refrained from sighing. He drew out another penny.

  “That’s enough.”

  “I’m not sure–”

  “It wasn’t a question.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well, that’ll do nicely.” Paschar reached up and took possession of the coins. “How may I assist your enquiry?”

  “The Minerva.�
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  “Oh, yes. That’s a lovely pub, that is. Other side of the city, I think you’ll find. Next to an undertakers, not that I’m recommending–”

  “It’s a ship, Remmitt. A very big ship.”

  “Oh, that Minerva. Right.” Paschar swallowed. “Got you.”

  “Fifty thousand tonnes. Must have lots of crew. I’m sure some of them would have been interested in a genuine sliver from the Tidy. I bet some of them would even like to talk to the fellow that sold it to them. I bet they’d like to ask just how big the Tidy was to hold so many genuine slivers.”

  “Hey now, I offer only authentic… north west docks, over by Meanside,” Remmitt squawked as Marius tightened his grip. Marius smiled, and let go. Paschar slumped to the ground. He shrank away, pressing the back of his head hard against the wall. Marius crouched in front of him and leaned forward so that their faces were inches apart.

  “I’ll remember how helpful you were, Remmitt,” he said softly. “If you were helpful enough, I won’t have to find you again, will I?”

  Paschar nodded, shook his head, nodded again, and finally settled for remaining perfectly still.

  “I’d say goodbye,” Marius patted him on his shoulder. Paschar did his best not to wince as Marius’ stone-hard hand struck. “But you ain’t seen me, right?” He rose, and stepped quickly past the mussel fryer, who had resolutely faced streetward during the entire exchange. Only once he could no longer see Marius in his peripheral vision did Paschar draw a single, painful inhalation, and begin to curse his tormentor.

  Half an hour later, as he was in the process of reluctantly parting with Severn Magnassity’s very own sextant, just so his poor children could eat some real meat for the first time in months, Paschar stopped and stared into the distance. All of a sudden, a realisation had hit him. At no time during his encounter with Marius – not when he was talking, not when he was holding him against the wall, not even when he leaned down and shoved his awful, awful face into his – could Paschar recall his assailant breathing. As his discerning client began to protest, Remmitt stepped away from his stall and slowly walked, then jogged, and finally ran up the Pipe Barrel towards a bag he kept under a loose floorboard in a rented room of the Lodger’s Rest Hotel. Within a week he was knocking on the door of a monastery in the heart of Taslingham, begging for sanctuary.