by Luke Arnold
“How’s his health?”
Her firmly held smile hit the floor.
“From the look of him, I thought the day he arrived was going to be his last. Somehow, he’s made it through the years, but these recent months have been the worst. His mind fights on but his body is failing.”
I took a last look around the light-filled room. Would anybody be surprised that Edmund Rye was dead? Of course not. The amazing thing was that he’d lasted as long as he had.
“I’ll see what I can find,” I said, “but it sounds like the lack of blood might have finally caught up with him.”
She tried to say something but couldn’t grasp the words. Instead, she turned her head towards the wide windows. I picked up the bag of tutoring files and a few other personal documents: notepad, passport, teaching certificate. At the bottom of the trunk, under the satchels, there was a thick stack of bound paper. I opened the blank cover and found the first of many handwritten pages, with a heading that read: An Examination of Change by Professor Edmund Albert Rye. It seemed that the Professor was writing a book of his own. I tucked it in with the tutoring files.
“I’ll take some of these, if that’s fine with you. I promise to bring them back when I’m finished.”
She just nodded, her body still facing the bright, afternoon sky. I pretended to busy myself around the room till she covered up her sadness and was ready to climb back down.
When we were back outside, I pulled a business card from the case in my jacket and passed it over.
“Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
She pinned the card between her slender fingers and tucked it into her pocket.
“Eileen Tide.”
“Thanks for your help, Eileen. I noticed his wine collection upstairs. Was there a particular bar he liked to frequent?”
“Jimmy’s. Third Street, above the tanners.”
I nodded and smiled, trying to pretend that this case didn’t look so hopeless.
“He could still turn up,” I offered, with all the comfort of a storm-cloud.
“I hope so. If you need me, I’ll be here every day while we make some changes. People are printing again. The Human way. New stories are coming in from across the continent, and revised editions of old volumes to reflect the new world. We have to clear out most of the pre-Coda publications.”
“Surely you can’t just throw away history.”
She shrugged. “I’m going through them all and putting aside the ones that still make sense. But there’s no point trying to pretend that the world hasn’t changed.”
Her voice was far away like it was coming down a bad phone line. She said goodbye, went inside, closed the doors, and I heard the bolts slide into place.
I passed Sir William on my way out. He was still smiling. Still drinking. I looked at the bottle in his hand.
“Oh, all right,” I muttered. “You’ve twisted my arm.”
4
Nothing had changed at The Ditch in years. Not the air. Not the layer of dried blood on the floor. Not big old Boris behind the bar. They all just seemed to get thicker.
It was a drafty square of cement a short stumble from my front door. The walls were full of unpatched cracks and they only lit the fire when they saw snow. Wooden booths, a couple of tables and a counter that was rarely empty.
Boris was a Banshee, now a mute (like all of his kind). He guarded an impressive selection of imported liquor, but most of his business was cheap ale, hard shots and moonshine.
The Ditch was short on ceremony but the orders came quick. You got a drink, you got quiet, and you got no unnecessary hospitality. It was perfect.
An elderly Wizard named Wentworth was holding court from his usual post; a metal stool that he dragged from table to table, insinuating himself into every part of the crowd. He was stick-thin and unshaven, with a mustache that drooped from his nose like a wet handkerchief. If he sensed that a conversation was lacking in his expertise, he would inflict himself upon the offending table. His hearing was all but gone, his wits not much better, but we all tolerated his soapbox. If you argued or tried to correct him, it only prolonged his stay. Best to nod your head, act convinced, and hope that he would get distracted by another table down the line.
I dropped two coins into a payphone at the end of the bar. The receiver was stamped with a steel badge that read Mortales.
When the sacred river froze up, all the magical technology failed and most creatures had no way to adapt. Dwarven forges went cold, the Giants were too weak to work, and the Elven sciences stopped making sense. The Gremlins and Goblins that made their fortunes inventing magical gadgetry were left with warehouses full of unpowered, empty, useless instruments. All that was left were the sparks, petrol and pistons of the Human factories.
The Human Army had won their war, but their victory destroyed the spoils. The magic they’d hoped to harness was gone, so they changed their name and moved their focus. The generals became managers and the soldiers became salesmen. They only waited a courteous couple of months after breaking the world before offering to sell their products to it.
Of course, no ex-magical business wanted to hand over their savings to the idiots who screwed up the future of existence, but what choice did they have? When Mortales started coughing up ovens and radios on the cheap, even the most vocal Human-haters had to crack.
The phones came next; bright boxes on street corners or plugged into post office walls. Once they’d rolled the lines down every street, we all stopped being squeamish about the moral implications and accepted their presence as a necessary evil. Even so, each coin I put into the slot still cut my fingers.
“Sunder City Switchboard,” said the voice. “How can I connect you?”
I asked for the police department and then for Richie Kites. He agreed to meet me when he got off work, which would be in about two drinks’ time. I didn’t even need to order. Boris had mixed me up a burnt milkwood and I took it to the corner and made friends with it.
At the back of the room, two swaying Elves played an endless game of darts on one of the special boards you only find in Sunder.
After Ranamak was assassinated, a Sunder-born Human took his place. Governor Ingot was a businessman. In theory, that suited the population, but he turned out to be more concerned with selling Sunder to the world than looking after the current inhabitants.
The first piece of propaganda was a brand-new map. Not of the whole world, only our continent: Archetellos. All other islands were ignored. Archetellos itself was skewed and scaled in a way that brought Sunder into the center. While it was a novel idea, the effect was immediately offensive to anyone with a basic understanding of geography.
The posters were mounted onto thick board and handed out around town. The plan was to send them out across the world to convince other lands of Sunder City’s importance, but they were so vehemently mocked that production was stopped almost instantly.
Only a handful were displayed in local establishments, probably as a joke. One night, when the other dartboards were busy, a few drunken patrons got creative.
Sunder City, fudged to be the artificial center of Archetellos, is worth fifty points. Elven hubs like the Opus Headquarters or their home in Gaila are thirty. The eastern city of Perimoor and western cliffs of Vera are both twenty-five. The Dwarven Mountains that border the north are worth twenty but they guard the way to the Ragged Plains and if you land in those you lose five points.
Islands are ten points apiece, including Ember (where the Faeries come from) and Keats (where Wizards are trained). There’s no punishment for landing in the water but there are house rules, depending on where you play. In The Ditch, out of respect to Boris, the Banshee home of Skiros is worth thirty-five.
Human cities are worth zero. Weatherly, Mira and the old Humanitarian Army Base are all a wasted throw. In some bars, you even forfeit the game.
The drunk Elves were still landing most of their shots in the ocean when Richie arrived.
He�
�d put on a pound a week since joining the force a few years earlier. Ogres can be an unpredictable bunch, but Richie was a Half-Ogre raised in the city since birth.
Around his left wrist he had a single tattoo that matched one of mine: the intricate pattern that flashed green under firelight. Like me, he’d spent a few years of his youth working for the Opus. Back then, there wasn’t a problem his battering-ram hands couldn’t manage. Now he prayed in the church of paperwork. I tended to tiptoe on the boundaries of our friendship. Professional custom made us enemies but he could occasionally be counted on as my ear inside the establishment.
“Milkwood? You still drinking that sugary shit?”
I gulped down the last mouthful of my cocktail and gave Boris the signal to send over another round.
“Ale for me,” Richie called out as he sat down opposite, “because I happen to know I’m not a teenage girl. Now, what’s your big problem?”
Without mentioning any specifics, I asked Richie what he’d heard about the Blood Race.
“Vampires? Fetch, if you insist on digging around where you don’t belong, at least stay out of the cemetery.” Boris delivered our drinks. Richie took a long sip from the metal tankard and licked the foam from his lips.
“How many are still around?”
He shrugged. “Not a lot. Most of them are still living up in that castle in Norgari like they did during the days of the League. They call it The Chamber. I wouldn’t imagine there’re more than a hundred of ’em up there. In this city, maybe a dozen. They tend to hang out at an old teahouse off the piazza. The Crooked Tooth.”
I’d never heard of it. The piazza was the kind of a tourist trap I tried to avoid.
“You sound fairly well informed. Does that mean the cops keep tabs on the Vampire community?”
Richie looked at me out of one bloodshot eye. He knew he had to think twice before letting anything loose around my ears. He’d spoken too freely more than once and it always came back to bite both of us.
“Fetch, there’s been no reason to worry about the Blood Race in decades. They’re old. They’re harmless.”
I made a grunt of non-commitment and Richie took a sip of his drink.
“How do they die?”
Richie stopped mid gulp and put down his pint.
“In pain,” he growled. “They’re hollow shells. Vessels that can’t be filled. They dry out like old fruit and crumble into dust. In the old days, the sun would do it to them in seconds. Now it takes a few years, if they’re lucky.”
“So, they’re mortal. Do they still need a stake through the heart or could they just fall over, hit their head, and kick it like the rest of us?”
Richie chewed his lip. These conversations never got any easier. Everybody felt bad about the Coda. It even broke Richie’s bowling-ball of a heart.
“They’re less than mortal,” he said. “I don’t know what it is that keeps them going but it’s running out. One day soon, a breeze’ll blow them all away and we’ll never see their kind again.”
With that, he finished his drink, slid out of the booth and left me with the bill. He didn’t say goodbye. He must have known he’d be seeing me again real soon.
Sunder City began as a working-class town full of blacksmiths, miners and metal-workers. It wasn’t all honest work but it was the kind of thing I understood: digging ground or moving shit around. That sort of gig made sense to me.
The piazza, on the other hand, fostered the kind of hustle that made my skin crawl.
Fast-talking hosts that got up in your face trying to drag you into overpriced restaurants. Finely dressed crooks with fake accents selling tours to nowhere. Street performers who made most of their money serving as a distraction for the pickpockets.
Torches were lit around the little square to keep business turning over after nightfall. I passed through the fading crowd, my hands deep in my pockets, moving with purpose.
A couple of Kobolds watched me from the shadows. They weren’t from this part of the continent. Kobolds have a kind of chameleon skin that changes, depending on their environment. City Kobolds are gray and hairless, but this pair were rock-pool blue with thick manes of fur around their necks: recent arrivals from the wild far north. Two more lost souls hoping to hack off a piece of Sunder for themselves. I flashed them my brass knuckles and gave them a stare I wouldn’t be able to back up. It seemed to do the job. They turned their yellow eyes back to the darkness and I slipped into a side street.
I found the sign for The Crooked Tooth on a building that had once been an apothecary. I used to frequent it when I first moved to town, running errands for an arthritic old Witch who warned me that I’d better watch myself if she ever got her hands on a potion-of-youth. I thought she was kidding but after the Coda I heard she’d poisoned herself with a concoction of black-market herbs in a desperate attempt to reverse the aging process.
Tar Street was empty but there was a glow in the window of the teahouse that spilled on to the sidewalk. I’d seen places like it before: tiny cafes that catered to a particular crowd of elderly gentlemen. They’d play ancient tile games all day long, consuming sweet black tea and not much else. More of a social venue than an actual business.
I knocked loudly but there was no response. The door was bolted and the light inside was dim. A handful of candles had almost burned to nothing at the back of the room. I walked the perimeter, pushing lightly against the windows, searching for movement but not finding any. The rear wall of the teahouse backed on to a narrow alley so I stepped across the cobblestones searching for an entrance.
I slid one hand along the wall while the other reached inside my jacket and pulled out my lighter. With a few flicks of my thumb, I summoned the flame.
The alley contained little of interest, just a pile of rotten-smelling garbage and a wide door that served as the storage entrance for the teahouse. I knocked loudly and got nothing but silence. The handle was locked but loose; latched on the inside.
I gave the door one hard shove with my shoulder and it gave in. The whole thing did. The doorknob came off in my hand and I stumbled into the room, landing on all fours.
It was the worst entrance I could have made if anyone was waiting for me. Luckily, I was alone. I had to be. There wasn’t a creature on the planet who could have waited around in such a face-melting stench. The smell outside wasn’t garbage; it was a gentle warning not to fall headfirst into the place unless you wanted your stomach climbing up your throat.
I covered my nose with my collar, which was like trying to hold back the ocean with pepper spray. My lighter was still burning so I moved the fire to a candle on the pricket by the door and waited till the wick took the flame.
It was a bare cement garage with packing boxes in the corner and chairs stacked beside them. Those were the only objects in the room I could identify on sight. Everything else was a mystery.
The stench was coming from a pinkish substance that had slid down one of the walls and settled in a puddle on the floor. It was a thick, oatmeal-looking goop filled with large chunks of flesh. On either side of the room were two piles of brown sand littered with scraps of cloth and metal.
I kept my shirt over my nose and ventured over to the mess, which was filled with pieces of hair and bone. I couldn’t look for long.
When I raised my head, I was surprised to see stars. There was a hole in the roof. A huge one. Half the ceiling had been smashed away. Whatever battle had gone on here, it had actually blown the roof off the storeroom.
One strong support beam remained, and there were two chains wrapped around it, right above the mysterious puddle. Lying in the liquid was a sharpened metal pole as big as a man, the purpose of which I couldn’t determine. It was polished smooth with no markings, plain steel that came to an imperfect but deadly point.
The sand was a fine brown ash, split into two separate piles. The breeze from the open door had already scattered it around the room, revealing something white and shiny buried beneath. I dipped my fingers
into the soft grains and retrieved the object. A pebble? No. I held it lengthways and moved it to the light.
It was a sharp and hollow, perfectly pointed tooth.
The cops had beef with me for all kinds of reasons. In particular, they didn’t like the fact that I called them to a crime only after I’d scoured every corner of it for my own means. For once, I did the right thing and sent word to Richie straight away. He swore at me for waking him up till I told him about the scene I’d stumbled into.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“I haven’t. As soon as I realized what I’d found, I left and called you.”
“Bullshit.”
The line went dead. So much for trying to do the guy a favor.
I waited patiently on the curb for him to arrive. I’d hoped that by playing ball with the police, I would learn more than if I went treasure-hunting in the teahouse on my own. Those hopes were cut into confetti when the scaled face of Detective Simms arrived on the scene.
I preferred her in the old days when she was just an angry beat cop with a chip on her shoulder. She made detective right before the world fell apart. Being a member of the Reptilia, her heightened senses helped her solve crimes faster than any other member of the force. Now, her bright green skin was a faded brown and patches of scales had broken off, letting pale pink flesh shine through. She covered herself in a black trench coat, scarf, gloves and weathered trilby, wearing the same outfit no matter the weather. Her thin eyes glistened from the darkness like the last hot coals of a campfire. She hated me. Always had. I shouldn’t have had those cocktails.
I waited in the alley while they made their examination. Three other cops accompanied the senior officers, dutifully bagging, tagging and lagging behind. It wasn’t long before they came out into the night air to catch their breath.
Simms lurched over to me, pulled the scarf down from her mouth and held out a gloved hand.
“Tooth,” she said. I pulled the fang out of my pocket and dropped it into her palm. She lifted it up to her torch. “Vampiric. Put it with the others.”