The Last Smile in Sunder City

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The Last Smile in Sunder City Page 16

by Luke Arnold


  To the Opus Interior Task Force and associated departments.

  We are not your enemy. The letter of deterrence sent by your envoy is in direct opposition to the code of support signed by our leaders just last month. As stated in our previous correspondence, this situation must be dealt with and we are willing to comply with whatever means reach your standard of ethics in such matters.

  We must impress upon you that the potential risk to our people has become too severe and we will be forced to act alone if a negotiation cannot be reached. We will endeavor in every way to honor the alliance between our forces but not if it ensures the slaughter of our own men and women.

  Immediate action is essential.

  Standing by for your word.

  General Taryn HA

  Another…

  To the Opus and its accomplices,

  Your engagement with our forces on the plains of Ira will be regarded as an act of war unless they are followed by a negotiation that serves the needs of the HA.

  We have attempted to involve the Opus in this matter on repeated occasions. Instead of working with us on a peaceful solution, my team was met with a battalion of armed Shepherds intent on combat. It was only through the respectful diplomacy of my men that no lives were lost. Rectify your stance immediately or our next encounter will not be resolved without bloodshed.

  Taryn

  Then…

  Opus

  The blood is on your hands. Eran County is no more.

  The alliance you speak of is a farce. The unity you preach is a lie. It is clear now that a hundred Human lives mean less to you than the health of one wild animal. You have shown your true face.

  The next letter was on a different kind of paper with a large Opus letterhead.

  Dear General Taryn and soldiers of the Humanitarian Army,

  It is with a heavy heart that the Opus receives your report concerning the unfortunate events in Eran County. This was not an outcome we anticipated or hoped for. Our thoughts and prayers are with the souls who have been lost.

  Regarding your accusations of neglect, we must remind you of the Unification Treaty signed by all our representatives.

  The Chimera responsible for the attack is believed to be the last of its kind and is therefore protected under this treaty. The Chimera must be immune from all attempts at capture, abduction or interference. This item was included in the treaty as a direct response to previous attempts by the HA and the Opus to subdue endangered magical creatures. We have lost many species over the last decade to the expansion of Human cities and their encroachment on protected creatures’ natural habitats.

  Please receive the heartfelt sympathies of all at the Opus after this terrible tragedy, but know that our actions were in accordance with the agreement that we all vowed to uphold.

  If you would like to discuss this matter in a more formal manner, I am eager to meet with you on neutral ground at your earliest convenience.

  With respect and sympathy,

  Eliah Hendricks – High Chancellor of the Opus

  The last page was a dossier of casualties and damage from the Chimeran attack of Eran. Two hundred and twelve people dead. One survivor: Martin Phillips, age four.

  I’d peered out through the broken beams beneath my house and watched the blood drip from the paws of the beast. When the screams fell silent and the creature was gone, I dared not move till the soldiers swarmed in.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night, but somehow a card was slipped under the door without me noticing.

  We know where it is. Ready to be a man?

  Before I left Vera, I sent a letter to Hendricks informing him that I wouldn’t be returning to the Opus immediately. There was some personal business I needed to take care of. I didn’t tell him where I was going so I don’t know if he tried to reach me, or what his response might have been.

  I’d like to say that I wasn’t really lying. That, in the moment, I intended to return to him after this thing was done. But I’m not a strong man and I often take the easy way out. I knew I was never going back.

  Taryn and I met up with a unit from the Humanitarian Army and together we went out to the hills where the Chimera was hiding.

  We scaled the cliffs of Candora, hunting the beast, and after a day of tracking we saw it down below: a giant lion with a crimson mane. Sprouting from its back was the head and single leg of a black-haired goat. It was like the two animals had been trapped inside each other. The lion’s tail was as long as its body and covered in the green scales of a snake. It moved as if it had a mind of its own.

  I’d never seen anything like it before. A pure monstrosity, as big as a house, lumbering through the rocky terrain, pushing over trees like they were toys.

  We called it a hunt. Most would call it a massacre. From the safety of the high cliffs, we set fire to the bushes with flaming arrows and filled the beast with crossbow bolts and spears.

  The creature screamed. The soldiers cheered. I cheered too.

  It felt like it meant something. To kill the thing that killed the parents I didn’t even remember. Afterwards, someone even sewed the fur of the beast into my jacket as some kind of reward.

  When it was done, the General asked me if I wanted to stick around and I told him that I did. While we sang and celebrated, they painted a third ring on to my arm: a black pattern, thicker than the others. I was congratulated. I felt appreciated.

  I was a soldier.

  17

  Only three hours’ sleep and my eyes snapped open on springs. I could still taste the nightmares but I resisted the urge to wash them down with whiskey. I had work to do.

  Monsters look like monsters.

  Sure, maybe Rye was taken out by some vengeful Human or the effects from the Coda finally caught up with him. If that’s what happened, then there wasn’t anything I could do about it. But if the monster inside Edmund Rye had reared up again, then I needed to find him fast.

  Everything I knew about the world told me it wasn’t possible. If he didn’t drink blood, why would he be a threat? Even if he wanted to attack January Gladesmith, how could he manage it with his old and brittle body? I didn’t know enough about the magical make-up of Vampires to answer those questions myself, but I knew someone who might.

  Like most members of the Opus, I’d avoided him out of shame. But a girl was missing. Perhaps still in danger. That sounded like a good enough reason to get over myself.

  I changed into my cleanest shirt and splashed some water on my unshaven face. My boots were still warm from the night before when they’d taken me out on the road. They needed fixing. A lot of things needed fixing. Today was the day to make a start.

  When the Coda hit Sunder City, the population aged in seconds. The magic fell out of their hearts, and all the days that had been pushed away caught up, bringing the months and years in with them.

  Before then, the retirement village hadn’t been big. Sunder wasn’t the kind of city that prided itself on welfare and civil services. If you couldn’t pay your way, it was probably best you got out of town. The only aged-care facility was overpriced and undersized. Most of the citizens never even knew it was there.

  After the Coda, it expanded to five city blocks. The old-aged homes enveloped three workers’ flats, a renovated office block and a row of small pubs. An entire region of the city had been taken over by the ancients.

  Within this Eden of tea and wrinkles, the Elves reigned supreme. There had never been an Elf in an old folks’ home before, but suddenly they were running the joint. They claimed the best flats for themselves and nobody argued.

  The Humans, for whom the burden of natural deterioration wasn’t anything new, had been relegated to rooms above the pubs and told that they were lucky to get that.

  In one of the flats, the Wizards, Witches and Warlocks were all grouped together. Some of them had followed the old traditions, venturing off into the woods alone to end their lives in nature, but many had moved past those romantic ideas of ritual. Th
e concrete blocks seemed as fine a place as any to stop breathing.

  The pensions were paid out of the coffers of the Opus. Some questioned the moral implications of the High Elves’ decision to spend the public savings on themselves, but what good was a magical alliance when there wasn’t any magic? The Elves funneled the money into the old folks’ homes so the newly aged races could live out their final days in comfortable retirement.

  Not everyone chose the quiet life of living in the compounds, but you couldn’t blame the ones that did. Even those of us with hard meat on our bones had a tough time keeping on.

  Chancellor Fen Tackman had never been an enemy and he’d never really been a friend. He’d led the soldiers of the Opus on many missions and Hendricks and I worked beside him a handful of times. Unlike most of his allies, he’d neither appreciated nor resented my place in his force.

  I don’t think he even cared when I defected. It was certainly only Hendricks that would have been hurt. To everybody else, it was exactly what they expected and they were happy to see the end of me. Bringing a Human into the Opus turned out to be a terrible idea, just like everyone anticipated.

  Tackman’s room was no grander than any other in the refurbished block of flats; one badly wallpapered dorm with a cloth curtain hiding the en suite that was nothing but a sink and an eternally running toilet. Single bed. Narrow bookshelf. A wobbly-looking desk over a kitchen chair. No photos on the walls, just a window sheered with thin cotton to take the edge off the already dim light.

  He held himself up on a dark, wooden walking stick with an ivory handle that had been carved into the head of a Dragon. His cloak had been pressed and laundered with a care that was unique to military men. The smooth, colorful outfit contrasted the gray folds of his skin.

  Tackman had always been muscular for an Elf. He still was. But those broad shoulders had become a hindrance and his wide torso weighed him down over the shining cane. His hair was all white and little brown scabs had formed on the end of his nose and bottom lip.

  Frailty had crept inside his body but his green eyes were clear. When they landed on me, I felt like a nervous boy again, ready to fall into line if the old man barked my name. There were never enough good leaders in the world and too many bad ones. Tackman was the best I’d ever known. When he saw me, he didn’t smile. He didn’t scowl. He just straightened his shoulders as best he could and asked me why I’d come.

  I skipped through the pleasantries and got to the juice.

  “A Vampire. First a missing person, now a potential suspect in another case. A girl has disappeared. She was a student of the Vamp and the two of them were close. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but the Professor had opportunity. I need to know if he had motive and means.”

  He nodded.

  “How old is he?”

  “Roughly three centuries.”

  “And how has the poor fellow been faring? Physically?”

  “Not well, by most reports. Standing on the welcome mat of death’s open door.”

  “Motive and means, you say? Explain.”

  I’d missed working with Fen. No need to sweeten the deal, just start lobbing the medicine ball back and forth.

  “I want to know if he still has the hunger and, if he does, whether he’d be strong enough to do anything about it.”

  Fen’s eyelashes were gone but the ends of his eyebrows were long enough to curl around and tickle themselves. When he sighed, they tilted outwards like a bridge opening for a passing ship.

  “Follow me.”

  Between the Elven flats and the office block, a patch of dead grass was scattered with picnic tables and metal benches. High buildings on all sides stopped the wind from disrupting the card games laid out on every table. Some patrons just sat and stared, either at the sky or at maybe nothing at all.

  Most of the offices were even smaller than the flats; subdivided into bedrooms with shared bathrooms down the hall. The central rows had no windows, just lamplit boxes where empty-headed husks drooled into their laps. Throughout the halls, radios played songs that crackled in from another time. In a corner office with a window towards the cloud-covered outline of the rising sun, a rusted wheelchair held up a hunchbacked Vampire in a hospital gown.

  Through translucent skin, I saw blue veins wrapped around a dried-up riverbank of bones. Tiny pupils floated in bulging red eyes bleached by cataracts. His mouth hung open wide enough for me to see the tips of his untarnished fangs. Hands, like lumps of crushed velvet, were folded on the blanket that covered his knees.

  “How old is he?”

  “Ten years older than yours,” said Tackman with a characteristic lack of sentiment.

  I knelt in front of the living skeleton and waited for his eyes to find me in their focus. They never did. I was just more empty space between him and some faded memory.

  “When did he start using the wheelchair?”

  “A week after the Coda. Collapsed on the street without the strength to get back up.”

  “Stopped talking?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “What did he do before that?”

  “He was an envoy for the League. Mind as sharp as Dwarven steel.”

  “What does he eat?”

  “Now? Air and water.”

  Breath rolled through his throat like someone dragging ice out of a freezer. The tips of those sharpened teeth glistened with dried spit. I took my knife from my belt.

  Tackman didn’t stop me but I could tell that he got a little tense. I stood up and held the edge of the weapon in my closed palm.

  The blade curved into my skin and I slid it through my fist with the deliberate slowness of a glacier. In the grand scheme of suffering it didn’t hurt at all. Besides, my attention wasn’t on my hand; it was on the half-dead face tilted at a rotten angle in front of me. I waited for the wide, pointed nostrils to flare with the scent. I waited for the rolling eyes to snap to attention. I waited for the dry, gently parted lips to rear back and flash those retired fangs.

  But nothing moved.

  I peeled open my palm and the blood stuck in strings between the blade and my skin.

  And nothing moved.

  My unclenched fist slid forward till it was atoms from his face.

  Give me something. Show me you want it. Show me you still want it.

  Behind his bottom row of perfectly white teeth, a gray tongue sat dormant like a stingray sleeping in the mud.

  And nothing moved.

  A liquid ruby fell from my fingers into the old man’s lap and landed in the puddle of drool that had been collecting there all morning.

  Tackman exhaled.

  “I believe this experiment is over.”

  We walked out of the room and Tackman didn’t stop till we’d left the building, crossed the square and turned down James Street, which was home to a specific group of pensioners: the Humans. It was a smaller block of buildings that was more run-down and crowded than the rest of the village. On this street, the pubs and bars were still dancing their old routine and the smell of hoppy brew wafted in the air.

  We entered the second building and approached the bar.

  “Glass of stout for me and a burnt milkwood for my friend.”

  I butted in before the bartender turned.

  “No milkwood. Just a water.”

  We took our drinks to a booth and I sat back to soak in the atmosphere. A dozen men and women were digging into beers or plates of greasy breakfast. We were only a few small steps from the shadows of the square but the mood was undeniably different. The music coming through the speakers was a few beats faster. The clientele looked just as aged and just as frail but somehow, they weren’t as broken. Everybody in the village had become old and gray. The difference here was: the Humans had expected it.

  No one had cheated them of their youth. They’d spent it of their own accord and the creases in their skin and creaking of their bones had arrived right on schedule. When Father Time knocked on their door, they might not have gre
eted him with open arms but at least they’d known he was coming. For the other poor suckers across the way, he’d snuck in under the cover of night and robbed them in their sleep.

  “You have a picture of him?” Fen asked.

  I took the photo of Rye out of my pocket and slid it across the table. He examined it without expression.

  “And the girl?”

  I handed him the picture of the smiling Siren and he laid them out, side by side. Fen looked at them in silence for a long while. I drank my water and he sipped his beer.

  “I see no way,” he said eventually. “These days, even a young Vampire is relatively weak. They’re starving, Fetch. A girl like this could fight off a dozen without breaking a sweat.”

  “It’s no act? You’ve seen one under pressure?”

  He looked like he wanted to hit me.

  “The vegetable you just played your little game with is named Joseph Henry Carmine. He broke a leg two years ago trying to take a piss. Perhaps you should shift your gaze back towards your own kind.”

  There was bite in that remark. So, the stoic Fen Tackman had feelings after all.

  “Don’t worry, I’m doing that. For the moment, how about you humor me? If they don’t want the blood, then we have no motive. Let’s focus on means. They’re not strong but they’re smart. Are you telling me it’s completely out of the question that a Vamp could make a young girl disappear? If he wanted to?”

  Fen twitched. There was something on his mind. I leaned in.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  He took a sip of beer that emptied his glass by a third.

  “The Blood Race is perhaps the highest order within our broken world. Before the Coda, there was no faction I placed more trust in than The League of Vampires and their members in The Chamber. They accepted their curse and managed it admirably.”

  “But…”

  His eyebrows tilted inwards like flippers on a pinball machine.

 

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