by Luke Arnold
“What? Why?”
“I’m busy.”
“You don’t even know what the job is.”
“I don’t need to. I don’t work for Humans.”
He raised an over-plucked eyebrow.
“Well, that’s quite racist. Aren’t you…?”
“Human.”
“That’s even stranger.”
“Is it?”
“At least listen to what I’m offering you.”
“Okay, but I won’t do it.”
I poured myself a shot, heavy on the critters.
“Look. My house has been taken over. These blasted Dwarves have broken into my property and are refusing to leave.”
“Where is this place?”
“East Third Street. Steel district.”
“Right.”
“I was all set to rent it out to another family and start making my investment back. Now I’m losing money and the police won’t do anything about it.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because the police are all damn Magum. That’s why I came to you.”
I poured another shot.
“Maybe it’s because they see what you are.”
“And what am I?”
“You’re a parasite.”
He snorted. “Careful. I have a lot of money, and if you want to get your hands on some of it, you’d better learn some manners.”
I picked a dead bug off the end of my tongue and wiped it on the desk.
“Let me guess what happened here. When the steel mill closed and the Dwarves lost their jobs, they couldn’t pay their mortgage. But the bank was in no rush to kick them out. What were they going to do with another empty street? They were happy to give the Dwarves some time to find new employment till you offered to snatch up the properties at a discounted price. How many did you buy?”
He stared me down. He was proud to say it.
“Fifteen.”
“Wow. Got a lot of kids?” He held my eyes and didn’t bother answering. “No. Didn’t think so. You offered a bunch of dirty cash to the bank so they decided to move on the foreclosures. Now you want to rent those houses out but the Dwarves don’t want to go and the cops won’t help you because they think you’re a crook and they’re right. Now you want to give me some of that dirty money to fix your problem but I hate you even more than the cops do.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted.”
“Then you should have left when I told you. Get outta here before I do more than call you names.”
He stood up but didn’t want to leave.
“You think it’s charming? This drunken crusader routine? You’re a joke. That was obvious from the moment I came in. I just imagined you were in on the gag.”
He thought he’d won and I let him think it. My next answer would have come from my fist and I had a bad enough reputation without punching potential clients in the face. I listened to his footsteps on the stairs and finished the bottle, straining it through my teeth.
I tucked his business card into my wallet. There are some names you want to keep close by, in case you ever capture a wild tiger and are wondering where to send it.
Outside my window, sundown was signaling the creatures of the street to change shifts. The peddlers and pickpockets were calling it a day as the pimps and dealers took over. There was a hangover on the horizon, along with something else. Something sort of stupid.
A devil was sitting on my shoulder whispering the kinds of things that stopped working on me years ago. I was only in my thirties but I was old. You don’t measure age in years, you measure it in lessons learned and repeated mistakes and how hard it is to force a little hope into your heart. Old just means jaded and cynical and tired. And boy, was I tired.
But this whispering had heat. Young man’s heat. My jaw was so tense I could have chewed my own teeth.
Nail Gang.
Let’s find this goddamn Nail Gang.
8
Mid-autumn in Sunder is unpredictable. It’s a city that gets all four seasons but each of them works a little too hard. Winter wants to give you frostbite, spring force-feeds you hay fever, summer tries to boil you in your boots and autumn drowns you in drizzle and dried leaves.
None of them was ideal for a holiday, but all of them were useful for firing up your blood when you wanted to do some dirty business.
The smell of burning fuel covered the whole south-west of Sunder. It was named Swestum for reasons as dumb as its inhabitants, a particularly rough group of Humans. Nothing changed here when the Coda hit. The machines of steam and coal that drove the industry on these streets kept on chugging. The music kept playing. The drunks kept cheering. Some even say they cheered louder.
The noise that night came from a saloon on the corner that had once been a boxing ring. I guess it still was; they’d just fired the referee. A dozen men in leather jackets stood out front with pints of stout in their hands, in their beards, down their sleeves and all over the floor. Rowdy, rough drinkers who laughed from the back of their throats and liked to throw their empty glasses in the gutter.
I shuffled past the men outside as they scanned my body for secret signs of magic. You could tell they wanted it too. Nothing would have pleased them more than to catch a Magum weaseling its way into their Human-only bar. They each had the same devil on their shoulder that I did, and we were all spoiling for a fight.
Inside, the smell of coal got stronger, as did the sound of dry, dumb laughter. Laughter too stupid to know it shouldn’t be here. At least The Ditch had the common sense to be sad and quiet. This place wanted you to feel good. It wanted you to forget. It was an abomination.
Serving girls in tight tops were working tables for tips. A sign above the dartboard said that on Sundays they left their tops at home. If I ever started to feel sorry for myself, I’d only have to think of those poor girls, down to their skirts, dodging sweaty-fingered letches all Sunday night.
Because they delivered drinks to the tables, there were plenty of open seats at the bar. I tipped back the stool to pour off the puddle of stout and sat beside a fat Northern fellow with a bald head, white shirt and suspenders. How did you even get fat these days? Most blue-collar workers were lucky to buy the basics. Before the Coda, he must have been a monstrosity.
Often, there was an art to my job. When I wanted to, I could turn on the charm or the attitude; play the informer or the ally. I could lead a mark down the garden path and turn a few words into a tripwire. I knew how to use a little tact when the occasion called for it, but the devil on my shoulder told me it wasn’t the time.
“I’m looking for a Nail Gang,” I grunted.
The hairless blob beside me stopped picking splinters out of the bar and made the muscles behind his neck flare up like a pair of angry whoopee cushions.
“Wha’ you say?”
A million smart-ass retorts danced on my tongue but I did my best to swallow them.
“Looking for a Nail Gang,” I repeated as I pulled up my sleeve. I kept one hand over the Opus tattoo, only showing him the others. The barcode closest to my elbow was similar to his own. “I hear there’s one in town. Just wondering if they need another hammer.”
He frowned. Inside that soggy coconut, his brain was struggling to suss me out. You might as well try to crank up a cinder-block and ride it cross-country.
“Wha’ prison’s that from?”
“Sheertop.”
That confused him. It didn’t seem to take much.
“Sheertop was where Magum kept their own criminals. It’s not for Humans.”
I leaned in, like I was telling him a secret.
“They make an exception when you really piss them off.”
He snorted into his pint.
“Come on then.”
He upended his glass into his fat face and shifted his weight off the stool. We pushed through the crowded room to a rowdy group of boys and a few girls posing beside the fireplace. They were younger than most of the client
ele, the boys with faces full of shabby sprouts that wanted to believe they were beards. Try-hard tattoos and little blades were on show for all to see. Sure, I was cheap, but at least I had the decency to know it. These guys were garbage with self-esteem.
Old Baldy whispered into the ear of one of the kids. A tall, speckle-faced redhead in a black leather jacket, white T-shirt, and pale jeans. The holes in his jacket had been skewered with Mum’s scissors, just so he could stitch it up with gaudy yellow wire. A sad attempt to rough himself up in the eyes of his friends. He must have been a scout or recon man for the gang: a kid who hoped that bringing in recruits would let him climb up the ranks. He looked me over like I was a john in a whorehouse.
“What’s your beef with the Magum, tough guy?”
Tough guy? This place had less wit than it did women.
“Enough to fill a slaughterhouse,” I said, ready to stir a little truth into the lie so it would go down easy. “The so-called sacred have locked me up or thrown me out of town more times than I can remember. I spent my life being treated as a sub-class and when I fought back, I was given a rip in my ticker to make me remember where I stand. The magic is gone, I know that, and I know it ain’t ever coming back. But this world has made its miracles before, so I don’t want to take any chances. I want to be damn sure that if it does happen, there aren’t enough of them around to put themselves back on top.”
They swallowed it like syrup and the pockmarked teenager gave me an approving nod.
“Gilded Cemetery, midnight tonight. Bring something big and blunt.”
I couldn’t have got out of Swestum fast enough. Once I’d left that stinking part of the city behind, I let my knuckles relax and realized that it was raining again. Just a sprinkle, but enough to give me an excuse. That’s all a drinking man needs to drive him back to the bar: a reason to get out of the rain.
I found a hole in the wall called The Roost with one long bench beneath an awning and a list of drinks you could count on your fingers. The stiff shot of strong southern whiskey came real quick. I threw it down my throat to feed the devil. He got the taste and wanted more.
“Another.”
I upturned the glass on the narrow bar to emphasize my thirst. The barmaid got the hint and brought over the bottle, putting it down in front of me with long, slender fingers.
“Careful, Cowboy, you still have a job to do, don’t ya?” the voice rolled over me like cool water. I looked up at Eileen Tide’s smiling face. A tank top revealed illustrated sleeves and a body that asked you to make mistakes you wouldn’t regret. The librarian poured another perfect shot. “Or have you already found my friend?”
I shamelessly straightened myself up and wiped my dumb mouth with my thumb and forefinger.
“Not really. It seems I’ve been fishing for herring so far. The red kind.”
Her eyebrow crept up her smooth forehead and her eyes were as smart as a lover’s slap.
Dammit, Fetch, don’t try to be clever with this girl or she’ll show you just how stupid you are.
“Doing the double shift?” I asked, throwing back my second shot.
“Library pays the rent but not much else. A girl’s gotta drink, don’t she?” She poured me another, along with one for herself. “I’m here three nights a week then back in before sunrise to sort the books.”
“Ah, the old Sunder five-to-nine.”
She raised her shot and threw it back like a pro. It would take more than moonshine to rattle those rosy cheeks.
She shifted her shoulders down the bar to serve a college-aged couple who stumbled in attached at the lips. I sipped my drink for a few minutes and listened to them talk. Then Eileen laughed, and it hit me right in my chest. There was nothing nasty or sharp or broken about it, and for some reason that felt strange. Why should it? What had I become, when laughter felt like a lashing?
It was my devil fighting back. He didn’t want to hear it. It hurt his case. He fed off the laughter of the Nail Gang at the tavern. He fed off the sad eyes in the starved faces of the people on the streets. He fed off the rich dicks in high-up houses and the old bones by the road out of town.
But this weightless, vibrant laughter, a mile wide, rich and untethered – it made the devil close his eyes.
No. I need him tonight. I need him strong.
I threw a few coins beside the empty glass and slunk off without a goodbye. Youth and happiness had bloomed in that bar but I was going to the other garden where the weeds and shit were lying thick. I just needed a tool to cut my way through.
9
If you draw a circle around the city and throw a dart in the middle, you’ll hit the hospital. Not the old medical center crammed between sewerage canals downtown, but the one they built a few years ago.
They dropped the central block of Yorrick Park to make way for it: a new facility surrounded by green leaves and optimism. Hell of a job it was too. I helped cut down the trees, bulldoze the earth and lay the foundations but there wasn’t anything for me to do when the real construction started.
It was finished right before the Coda came. For one glorious fortnight, it was the brightest star of the city. We’d lost the magic, the fire and too many friends, but the hospital was still fresh and clean like a newly unwrapped present.
The blast happened before sunrise. The debate about what caused it still continues. Perhaps it was some problem with the new technology or a build-up of gas beneath the foundations. Most Sunderites thought it was a deliberate act of violence. Why? No one could guess. Not because it seemed unlikely but because the weeks after the Coda were a firework display of violence from all angles: lootings and revenge plots and lost souls lashing out. It was nearly impossible to pin down the source of any explosion.
The city didn’t even bother to clean it up. The shattered slabs were left out in the rain like rotting corpses. Concrete, glass, wood, sweat and good intentions all gone to waste. I walked across the carnage, putting my trust in the thick soles of my broken-down boots. The whole thing had been picked clean of brass, copper and any debris big enough to build into a shelter, but I just needed something simple.
The twisted steel bars were ripped open at all angles like snapped fingers. Most were still embedded in chunks of concrete but a careful search in the weeds revealed a broken bar, almost straight, just over a foot long. I slid it up inside my sleeve so it sat sharply against my bicep with the other end resting in my palm. I tucked my hands into my pockets and headed to the meet while the devil smiled in the moonlight.
Graves only scare you if you’re afraid of death. Now, they just make me sad. The Gilded Cemetery was built for the High Elf community of Sunder and was therefore quite small. Nobody anticipated that many members of the High Race would come to the end of their long life while slumming it down in the fire city.
The Coda had handicapped the Elven lifespan, so more of them were being caught out in their last moments. The Gilded Cemetery was filled with unfortunate Elves stuck far from home. As I walked under the brass archway on the grounds, it felt overcrowded. Not just because of the souls tucked up in beds of dirt, but also those livelier ones that were packed into a crypt chattering like children.
The Nail Gang had arrived.
The crypt in question was the largest on the block, shaped out of black slabs of polished marble. There were no bouquets and no letters and no evidence of anyone coming to pay their respects, other than the invading idiots who’d borrowed it for the night. As I crossed the garden of forgotten gravestones, I could see a family crest engraved above the doorway.
Oh no. It’s the Hendricks crypt.
The Hendricks crypt was constructed by Governor Lark, as a way of telling his friend, High Chancellor Eliah Hendricks, that he would always have a home in Sunder.
Eliah Hendricks had been my friend too. No soul in the world had ever treated me so well, and I never treated anyone worse.
I never asked whether they’d found his body or whether they’d been able to bring it home. He mi
ght actually be inside there already. I doubt anyone would have told me if he was. Either way, there were pests and parasites in the Hendricks crypt and you couldn’t have asked for a more willing exterminator.
I stepped inside the vault and bowed my head in respect. More than a dozen men were waiting, and there was room for two dozen more. I leaned against the wall, hands still in my pockets. The candelabras had been lit and most of the men carried torches. All of them carried clubs or knives. The only face I recognized was the orange-topped teen who’d recruited me. I got comfortable and waited for the real leaders to arrive.
At the back of the room was a stone sepulcher, complete with a closed coffin. Was Hendricks’ body inside? I couldn’t tell. If the coffin was empty, that didn’t mean anything at all. Eliah could have easily been buried elsewhere, or not at all. But if it wasn’t empty? Well, I still wasn’t ready to see that. Even if the room hadn’t been infested with uninvited guests, I didn’t have it in me to open it up and check.
The young men chuckled and boasted. I looked around the room, seeing if I could make out which members of the group might give me the most trouble.
Damn, some of these kids are young. Two gang-members beside me couldn’t have been over fifteen. The devil didn’t like that. What was a Nail Gang doing recruiting children? I suppose when you’re taking potshots at old ladies and cripples you can’t get too picky about the company.
No one else arrived for a few minutes, so the redhead stepped forward.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “thank you for answering the call.”
He pulled the neck of his shirt down to reveal a pink scratch on his sternum about three inches long. Was it meant to symbolize a nail? Was it drawn with a nail? All I knew was that it looked infected. Every other member followed suit and presented the same scabby line on their pubescent chests.
“We are here tonight to put into action the work of our people. In the years before the Coda, we were the sub-class of Sunder. Left to eat shit and suffer while those who called themselves sacred stood above us. Now it’s our time at the top and we will clean these streets of the garbage that remains.”