The Last Smile in Sunder City

by Luke Arnold

  “That would be a hell of a thing,” I said.

  “Yes, it would. Though it’s likely untrue. The false hope of desperate farmers wondering if the crops will ever grow like they used to. Waiting for a sign that nature will adapt.”

  Baxter wasn’t wrong. The stories we most like to tell are the ones we hope are true.

  “Have you heard of any other species evolving after—”

  “Never.”

  Of course not. It was impossible.

  “Baxter. What do you believe?”

  “I believe I gave you what you came for. It’s not new and it’s not magic but it’s…”

  “It’s something.”

  “Yes. It’s something.”

  A long pause let our eyes wander back up to the sad, hand-made vines that threaded through the wall. There was nothing in this garden that would get you up in the morning. No color that an artist would spend a lifetime trying to capture, or a flower to inspire a sonnet. There was nothing here to sing about. Nothing new.

  But, out on the plains, perhaps, Trolls were moving.

  26

  I came out of the museum, shaking. It wasn’t proof but it was just enough to act on if you were as desperate and foolish as I was.

  Of course, the idea that magic could leak back into our world should have pushed me straight back on to the case. I needed to find out what the mysterious creature was. I needed to know if Rye was aware of what the other Vampires had been asking him to fight.

  But the whereabouts of Edmund Albert Rye stopped troubling me. As did the little Siren and her mother and all the other things that really mattered. All I cared about was Amari. Dry and long-dead and not wanting anything from anyone.

  It was the same as the last time. When the Coda came. The world was on fire and the future was lost but nothing else mattered. Just her.

  A coda is the concluding passage of a dance or piece of music. The High Elves chose that name to label what happened next. The world had been singing a song since the day it was born, but that was about to come to an end.

  We all have our own account of what it was like when it happened. Stories of the Coda have been told and retold around campfires or to kids or into the ears of tired spouses every day since it occurred. I sometimes hear people say it was like a bomb going off. I heard a poet liken it to a lightning storm, and Richie once called it a thunderclap. It wasn’t like that at all. It was like walking into someone’s bedroom right after their funeral. It was the first Monday you didn’t have to go to school and knew there were some friends you’d just never see again. It was sitting in a bar in a bad town where no one knew your name and there was no one to talk to and it was too cold and quiet and you were all alone. It was thinking you’d already hit the last step till your leg slips through the empty air and every bit of your body tells you that it’s over.

  It was over. The world will continue to turn and there will still be jobs and seasons and kissing and chocolate; there just won’t be any music in it any more. We can bite the fruit and understand that it is sweet but not taste it. We will look at the sunrise and do our best to will some kind of warmth into our hearts and feel nothing.

  That is the Coda.

  And this is how it happened to me.

  Laughter. Some mad, hacking sound came bouncing down the hall. A chuckle at first. Then an echoing shriek that spoke of insanity.

  I sat back in my cell and tried to put it from my mind but another sound soon followed: a cracking from all around like the world was standing on thin ice. Something inside me panicked and a sharp pain hit my chest, dropping me back on to the mattress. I held my hand to my heart, managed to find my breath again, and wondered what the hell was going on.

  There was a shattering SNAP and the lights went down. The barriers went down too, opening up the roof so the sunlight filtered in.

  On the other side of the walkway, a Werewolf prisoner opened his mouth to scream. It was supposed to be a roar but the sound that came out was stretched in panic. His claws grabbed at his throat and when they came away, I could see where he’d scratched the fur from his skin. He pressed his skull between his hands and tried to crack it open like a coconut to let out whatever fire was burning in his brain.

  The magical doors had disappeared. We’d all been set free. I was surrounded by the most dangerous criminals in all the magical world but I was the only prisoner who had the strength to leave.

  I stepped out into a long hallway with cells on either side, and in every other room some poor creature writhed in agony. Blood poured from noses. Fingernails fell to the floor. Faces burst into flames and bones broke under their own weight.

  The laughter continued. In the final room, there was a man in old robes sitting in the corner with his back against the wall, cackling uncontrollably.

  His mouth was wide open and his eyes… he had no eyes. Drilled into the sockets of his manic face were two gray padlocks. The keyholes looked like long, black pupils full of nothing but darkness. I ran past him as fast as I could.

  At the end of the hallway, I stepped through another non-existent door and found myself in the operations room where the pretty Elven warden was on his knees. His long blond hair had come off in his fingers and he held the clumps of it out to me as if I could give him some kind of explanation. All I could do was stare into his eyes and watch the years, the centuries held back by magic, flood in. His cheeks formed little wrinkles that spread about his face and quickly carved out channels in his skin. The remaining hair turned white and his skin went yellow and then gray. His mouth dropped like a stone in water. Open. Open. Open in disbelief at the eternity that fled on his breath. His body died before he did. He was still screaming when the flesh dried on his bones and black sewage cascaded from his mouth. When his face hit the floor, it turned to powder and scattered over my feet. A corpse was lying where a man had been standing only a moment before and I don’t know if I screamed or cried but I certainly ran.

  I passed terrified men and women, gripping to their last piece of life and begging me to help. But how do you force life back into something when it so desperately wants to leave?

  Outside, the world was crumbling. The driveway was lined with hedges and I watched the leaves lose their color and fall from the branches and then the branches creak and die and fall from the trees. The birds were wailing in long, dark moans of despair. On the grass outside the main gate, every warden was bent over gasping, vomiting or collapsing to their death.

  I stumbled uselessly past them, through failed magical barriers, unable to comprehend the horror around me.

  Then, something scratched my brain and I knew what was happening. The horrible truth about what I’d done and what it meant filled my mind in a terrifying instant and when it did, I knew there was only one thing that mattered.

  Her.

  So, I ran. Ran till my muscles cramped and my throat was gravel and my eyes were bloodshot and my feet were bleeding but I still wanted to kill myself for every second I slowed down or stopped to rest under some shelter. The blisters got so bad I threw away my boots and when the grass turned to cobblestones I shredded my soles but didn’t care. I felt the stitch in my chest and the ulcers on my lips but they weren’t the things causing me pain. Not the real pain.

  The trees were screaming. Trolls were stuck in place and fading from themselves. The skies were empty and the fields were littered with crying Wyverns whose wings had given up. I wrapped my feet in cloth and tried to fight back the fact that I knew. I knew what had happened and it was all my fault.

  The magic had vanished and the world that magic had built was tearing itself apart, beginning in the hearts of its most precious creatures. I passed families of Elves, huddled in train carriages, with bodies of their elders dead or dying in their arms. They watched me run past with eyes that were made to understand everything but now knew nothing at all. They looked at me for answers and they looked at me with accusation and they looked at me for help I couldn’t give.

 
Outside Sunder, a fallen rock blocked the road. When I got close enough, I could see that it was breathing. Barely. There was still some red in the scales of the Dragon but it was fading fast. I knelt before her open mouth and felt the breath coming out of her, hot and full of fear. She moaned like a hundred creaking ropes and her one open eye watched me with the same pleading tears and begging questions as every other creature I’d passed.

  “I don’t know,” I gasped. “I’m sorry.”

  Her breathing became short and cold, and then it stopped. Her scales lost their shine. Her eye shifted its focus to somewhere beyond forever and I shuffled onward into the city.

  It was six years later and I wasn’t any different. The world had changed again but all I cared about was one woman and how I could stop her from fading from the world.

  If there was a chance that my girl could see through those timber eyes again, then there was no way I’d let some cheesy property developer turn her into sawdust.

  27

  The excess water had drained out of the river and it was back to its usual size. Shallower, even. The dams downstream were broken and the banks had been widened by the flood, so the water was lower than I’d ever seen it. I made my way along the slippery bank examining the bigger pieces of debris.

  My boots sucked up mud like hungry dogs in a pit of peanut-butter. I fell over a couple of times, painting my ass, or sunk down in ditches with the shit up over my knees.

  I was only interested in the stretch of bank alongside the steel district. It wasn’t hard to find pieces of detritus: wagon wheels, old cloth, car parts and rope. It was hard to tell if they’d been underwater for years or if the flood collected them up when it came through town. I had to get right down into the water to find the piece I was looking for.

  Sticking out of the river was the rounded corner of a once-sharp piece of machinery. A huge mechanism with cogs and clamps that had clearly spent a few years underwater. I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t need to. I just needed to know who owned it. Clearing away some mud and moss revealed a branded stamp on its side: Dwarven Steelworks, Sunder.

  I spent the whole afternoon in the House of Ministers, talking Baxter round to my idea. I never thought I’d work so hard to get a folder full of legal forms. They even gave me a city photographer to take back down the riverbank and shoot off a few snaps of the debris.

  It took me another day to get everything in order. Then, with my files and my photos, I marched my way up to the address on the business card that the property developer had given me after he barged into my office. The one with the logo that matched the “condemned” sign at the mansion.

  It was a strange city block that I’d never seen before. I don’t know what it was before the Coda, but I know what it had become: pretentious. Modern buildings with white panels, stencil art and designer trash cans. Mixed-brick buildings with windows cut into nonsensical shapes. Each office had a cute little sign with the name of the business on it. I was looking for suite 7T. What horseshit.

  The offending doorway was a corner office made of more windows than wall. I made sure to remember it in case I ever needed to do a little looting. The blinds were thin and blue. The floor was marble, or maybe it was fake. The whole damned place was trying to pull a ruse. The lampshades were lying and the desk was a cheater and I bet the leather armchair had been trained to pick your pocket.

  I didn’t want to be there. Walking into the office felt like someone extracting my spine. When he’d come to my place, trying to get me to screw over the Dwarves, I’d had all the power. Now, I was on his turf. I wished there was another way.

  The deep-voiced developer with the cheesy smile was inside with his feet on the desk. He was wearing another silk, pinstripe suit that still couldn’t keep him from looking cheap. His hair was too shiny and there was a red spot on his neck where he’d cut himself shaving. He turned his head when I entered and looked up with as much indignant nonchalance as his weak chin could handle.

  “Well, look here. It’s the joke who takes himself too seriously.”

  I took the small seat opposite him and choked down my disgust. The shoe was on the other foot and it didn’t feel too comfortable. I threw the folder across the desk and waited for him to open it.

  “What’s this?”

  I made a meaningless motion with my hand and looked up at the ceiling. Eventually, he got the idea and opened up the folder. He spread the pieces out on the desk, side by side: five black-and-white photos and fourteen pieces of paper.

  “The photos are what you asked for,” I said to the ceiling fan. “A way of getting the Dwarves out of your apartments so you can rent them or break them down or blow them up or whatever it is you want to do. I don’t care.”

  “How?”

  “You’re looking at irrefutable evidence that the Dwarven smelters were dumping garbage into the canal. Affidavits from witnesses who saw them do it before the flood, and photographic evidence of their equipment. The larger document is a report from an insurance company that already concluded this kind of dumping was a major cause of the flood becoming catastrophic.”

  “Everybody dumps garbage into the canal.”

  “Perhaps. But not everybody has photographic proof of them doing it. The Dwarves can become the scapegoats of this tragedy in under a day. The Mayor is on board because he and his ministers are getting hit on all sides. If these pictures get into the hands of the press, the authorities will be forced to find these Dwarves and lock them up. I explained the situation to your unwanted tenants and they’ve agreed to find alternative accommodation.”

  He flicked through the photos, wary of becoming too pleased. He sensed a trap. If I’d been a little smarter, I would have set one.

  “What’s this?” he asked, picking up a yellowed certificate.

  “An opportunity.”

  He sneered, and it took all my will not to slap him.

  “I make my own opportunities, Mr Phillips.”

  “Too bad. The piece of paper in your hands is a deed to some of the most high-level land just outside the city. A huge, undeveloped piece of real estate at the top of Amber Hill.”

  “And why would I want that land?”

  “Because that’s where everyone who lost their homes in the flood is going to live.”

  “So, it’s a slum.”

  “Not for long. Not after you fill that lot with affordable housing.”

  He laughed. “Mr Phillips, I’m surprised to say that you have greatly misjudged my moral character.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’re just the kind of man who would know a good deal if it was dropped into his lap. This building plan is fully subsidized and tax-exempt. The Department of Land and Housing was already working on a version of this project – check with Baxter Thatch, they can verify all this. I twisted the department’s arms to make sure you were involved. This will be an ongoing economic investment that will never falter, never be in need of a tenant and cost you next to nothing to get started. All it needs from you is your insight, your equipment and your expertise. The Mayor’s office is ready to begin as soon as your company signs on.”

  He flipped through the pages, searching for the practical joke. When he didn’t find it, he sat back in his extravagant reclining chair and looked me up and down.

  “Okay, gumshoe, I bite. What’s the catch?”

  Time to drop my other muddy boot.

  “The mansion. You don’t develop it. You don’t touch it. You never go inside that place again.”

  “That’s a good piece of land.”

  “Not as good as the spot I’m offering. Along with the homes you’re taking from the Dwarves, you won’t miss it.”

  “The Dwarves don’t own that anyway. I—”

  “Shut up!” My voice bounced around the brick walls while I swallowed my temper. I looked back up towards the sky. It was safer that way. Stare at his face too long and I wanted to forget the whole thing. “You might have legally owned those buildings but y
ou never would have had access to them without me. Don’t pretend it’s any different.”

  I was relieved that he didn’t argue the point.

  “Why?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “It doesn’t matter. You sign that last piece of paper and you still own the land but you and your people don’t step inside the building ever again. With the money you make from the government you’ll be able to buy a similar lot somewhere better in under six months.”

  “But why?”

  I didn’t answer. I just waited.

  He looked over each letter three times and then he brought in his partner and they called their lawyer and they checked with the Mayor and the Minister of Land and Housing and by late afternoon they’d signed the papers to the simplest deal they’d ever made in their lives.

  When it was all done, and they handed me back the folder and thanked me for all my help, I was finally able to take my eyes off the ceiling.

  I took the forms to Baxter and everything was settled but they were still pissed. Sure, they’d had plans to rehouse the people in the slums but it didn’t involve kicking an extended family of Dwarves out of their homes, signing an overly generous deal with a private contractor and leaving me with the deed to a derelict mansion. There was a way to get it done that would have been better for everyone, but I twisted Baxter’s arm so that the whole operation suited me.