by C J Timms
The girl crossed her arms and pouted. ‘You smell.’
‘Good work, Swan.’ Gale gave her a thumbs up.
Larc piped up from her pocket.
Swan cocked her head to Gale. ‘Servant, you will speak when spoken to.’ Gale’s face went blank.
‘Now attend to this child, your betters have more important things to do.’ Swan thrust the child at Gale along with the dump truck.
‘Errr…yes…Lady Swan.’ Gale said. He picked up the dump truck. ‘Vroom, vroom?’
The little girl kicked Gale in the shins. Yip and Titus burst into laughter. Swan allowed herself a grin, there was no harm in the girl wanting a sword, she just couldn’t have one yet.
Larc trilled.
‘Jane!’
A pot-bellied man threw his arms up in greeting. Heartstrings was a bad looking forty, smoking and liquor had rung out his body like an overused dishcloth. He was carrying four infants in baby vests, two strapped to his sides, one to his front and one to his back. He wore a polo shirt emblazoned with the daycare logo, cargo shorts and sandals. His hairline was receding rapidly. Heartstrings was not the sort of man you’d leave your kid with unless you lived in Tideline.
‘I’m not used to seeing you with kids.’ Swan said, punching his arm.
‘What my little meatshields?’ Heartstrings said, burping, one of the infants. ‘I remember when you were this small Jane. You used to drag your brother off to play at being the hero? Somehow he always ended up playing the villain. Had the maniacal laugh down to an art.’
Swan grinned. ‘He was bad at it.’ She took a step back from Heartstrings. ‘I need to talk shop.’
Heartstrings sighed. ‘Ah, very well. To the office.’
Yip pulled a pen and pad from his pocket with a grin.
‘Titus, Yip, please watch the children for us. Gale and I shall handle the negotiations.’
Yip’s face dropped, his pen clattered to the ground. Swan grinned, that would teach him. Titus bowed low. He turned to the children.
‘Alright, who wants a piggyback ride.’ Titus said. Twenty hands shot up in the air and Titus started stretching out.
Heartstrings showed them into a back office. The walls were covered with posters, an eclectic mix of Rabbitohs footy team mixed with bright educational posters and Peppa Pig.
A solid lump of a guard sat back in a rocking chair, reading the paper. The paper’s front page had an artists rendition of the Blood Knight and a story about more blood coma victims found. The guard fanned himself with a pork pie hat as he read. Heartstrings took a standing position, rocking the babies back and forth.
‘It surprised us when you made the career change,’ Swan said.
‘Have you seen how much you can charge for childcare, I’m making more here than I do in my other line of work.’
A young kid, around seven, popped his head around the corner. The child had a notch carved out of his right ear, a healed over scar.
‘Hey boss one of the kids has a small red blotch on their arm,’ the kid said.
‘Slight hint of a rash? Better send them home to be safe.’ Heartstrings said. ‘Charge the parent accordingly for our excellent care.’
‘Yes Mr Heartstrings sir, thanks again for the job, sir.’
Heartstrings waved him off.
‘You never used to let anyone interrupt you during business. You’ve gone soft.’ Swan said.
‘Gerion’s a good kid, him and his sister. Useful too.’ Heartstrings pulled a bottle of milk and started feeding one of the infants. ‘Now what brings you to knock on my door. You didn’t pull another Sparkles incident did you.’
Swan shook her head, Gale cocked his. ‘No, I’m here because they’re charging us through the nose at the university. I’m here for a loan.’
Heartstrings roared laughter. ‘Do you hear that Rosco, they’re pulling on my heartstrings they are. A bunch of no-hopers, down on their luck students.’
Rosco rocked back in his chair and gave a low laugh.
Heartstrings wiped a tear from his eye. ‘Now what's in it for me. What's the collateral?’
‘What do you want?’ Swan asked.
Larc pecked at her brain.
Heartstrings pulled out a monocle in the shape of his company logo. He looked over Gale then Swan. ‘That thing in your pocket Swan…I’ll take that.’ Heartstrings said.
Gale cocked an eyebrow. Swan shook her head.
‘Tempting, but no, ask for something else.’
‘Its tough times Swan, people disappearing, found strung up, blood cursed. I gotta look after my own skin.’
One of the babies chuckled then vomited on Heartstrings shoes. Rosco didn’t look up from his chair. Heartstrings rolled his eyes and bent down to clean. Doing this with four children strapped in was an acrobatic manoeuvre that amazed Swan his back let him perform. Perhaps not so rung out after all.
‘What do you know about the Blood Knight?’ Gale asked.
‘I hear things, on the streets. When people drop their kids off, they talk. Why should I tell you, though? You stick your head out for someone it has a tendency to get cut off see? You want information you give me something to make it worth your while.’
‘Like what?’ Swan narrowed her eyes.
‘Well, see now there is something I want, there are all sorts of treasures in the university. Maybe I give you a list, and a few things fall into your pockets.’
Swan weighed the option. A debt to this man was going to bite them in the arse. They needed money though, they needed to pay rent, she needed to show her father her worth.
Swan looked at Gale. Gale was the only one who needed this as desperately as her. Both of them were being driven like driftwood before the tide.
What was their price?
Was honour really worth it? When the university threw them away like the guts of a skinned fish, would their honour keep them warm at night? Would honour have stopped her father? Would honour let her repay her family?
Gale’s head ached, had they made the right call? Any opportunity was what Yip kept saying. Titus would have told him to trust his manly instincts. He looked over at Swan, who held her arms folded. What was driving her so desperately?
What was she keeping in her pocket?
They returned to the daycare common room. Yip was fighting off hordes of children to organise the toy box. Titus had eight children hanging off him as he lumbered around the area.
‘We get a deal?’ Yip asked.
Gale and Swan shared a look. Gale slowly shook his head. ‘No.’
Yip’s eyes narrowed, but then a push-car ran into him from behind.
They left the shop without a clear plan. Gale needed to pay off his debt, to find the truth about his parents, to find out more about his history, to find Spur. Ironchurch was still in a blood coma, and he needed to find the Blood Knight.
The alleys of Tideline wound back and forth. A confusing jumble of paths and overhanging windows, clothesline stretched across with clothes weighing heavy on worn threads. Battered timbers pushed against one another, the currents of housing expansion running into each other. People built their houses up, down and sideways, wherever there was space. There was an ambition to that that Gale appreciated. Fences seemed to be a mere abstract concept in Tideline.
‘We’re being followed.’ Yip whispered to him. ‘Heartstrings sold us out.’
Large shapes blocked out the exit to the alley in front of them. More moved in behind them carrying cudgels, clubs and rusted knives. Many of them were gaunt, and more than a few showed patches of scale.
A man stepped forward and sniffed salt off his hand, cocking his head to the side. His pupils dilated, his Script shot
through with white and blue. ‘Bunch of fancy fracture smiths, we should lighten their load, we should.’
Gale looked at the others. They were boxed in, flanked, their odds were terrible.
‘Smash an avo.’
Swan roared, ripped a bench from the ground and hurled it into the group ahead of them. Team Lighthouse broke through the gaps charging down the alley. Titus’s clobbered two men in front of him. Yip fired his crossbow back behind them. They raced past twisting jagged alleys, losing direction in the maze that was the Tideline.
Gale slammed into the back of Swan.
Dead end.
Footsteps clattered towards them, too late to back out, the buildings cutting away any escape upwards.
Gerion’s head popped out from the wall. ‘Oh, just a moment.’ Gerion grabbed the four of them and pulled them through a solid wall. Gale fell onto his butt with his stomach-churning. Titus chundered all over the floor but held up a thumbs up. ‘Tactical spew, it's fine.’
Gerion poked Gale with a finger. ‘Heartstrings sent me to watch you, he’s taught me a few tricks. Protects his investments he does. A good boss and an upstanding citizen.’
Gale scanned Gerion’s Script, it was a series of tessellating pieces, grinding over one another. Like a Rubik’s cube where each block could move in any plane. An unfamiliar scent.
The room was dark and lined with bodies. Water dripped in the corner, and the stench of humanity filled the room. Scattered windows let in a measure of light.
‘Where are we?’ Gale asked.
‘The Weighing.’ Gerion replied. ‘Last refuge of the Scaled. When even Tideline rejects them.’
Gerion lead them through huddled groups of Scaled. Many showed wounds and bite marks. Splinted limbs and patched dressings.
‘What happened to them?’
‘The Blood Knight.’ Gerion said. ‘The papers ain't telling half the story. Charlemagne’s been pushing em to keep it down. Things are getting worse.’
Gale said, ‘Why don’t they heal?’
‘They’re burnt out, they don’t have the Script to heal.’ Yip said. ‘None interested in treating the Scaled.’
A flicker of Script caught Gale’s eye. He paused in front of a hunched over woman in her mid-forties. The woman was a wreck, her body wasted and her breaths ragged. She seemed detached, her eyes glazed over. Gale leant in, the woman’s hands were pressed to a wound on her chest.
In the Vibe, the woman’s Script floated above her, like burned parchment, holes throughout it. The edges slowly burned inwards with hints of embers, ash breaking off. Off the edge, trailed a ghostly anchor, weighing it down. Fainter still, if he strained his vision, he could see a ghostly blue hand gripping the Script, overlying it. Gale glanced at the next Scaled, and the burnt parchment was visible but no anchor nor blue hand. Why was one Scaled’s Script different to others?
On her chest, a white blinking light showed in the Vibe. Gale reached out to adjust the woman’s rags. A pendant of bone-white coral, just like Ironchurch’s, hung around her neck like dog tags. He could just make out words on the woman’s pendant, ‘Stitch-up’. Her nickname? He turned it over and read ‘The Dredgers.’
Gale went to take it, and the woman shrieked. She lashed out with a stick-thin limb and knocked Gale back. The woman’s hands went to her head, and she slammed it against the wall, shook it back and forth. Slowly she sat back down. Rocking back and forth, she muttered to herself.
‘Dredge the depths…stir things up…’
The dog tags were the same as Ironchurch’s, the same as Liam’s and Squall’s. He needed to save this woman to find out what she knew. If she’d known his father. Who the ‘Dredgers,’ were.
Stitch-up’s wound was visible with the hands repositioned. A shard of metal had lodged itself in her chest, likely injuring a lung. It had been driven with considerable force, it had broken through the overlying scale. There was healthy skin beneath it for about a thumbs width. Gale could pull it and try to heal it, but with no magic of her own, it was fifty-fifty whether she would survive. Gale prodded Stitch-up’s Script with his own and tried to stir it into activity. It was a void that sucked energy in. He tried to pull his Script back and felt resistance. Like the Scaled’s Script was feeding off his.
Gale fed a steady stream of Script into the void, but there was no change. He used his Script to examine the scales overlying her. They were hard, jagged…but not empty?
He flagged Swan over and got her to kneel down beside him. She examined the shard in the woman’s lung and nodded, reaching out to grab it and getting ready to pull. Gale cleansed a cloth, superheating it with raw energy. Gale held one hand and counted down.
Three.
Two.
One.
‘Breathe in deep.’
Swan pulled, the shard tore out, and Gale slammed a rag over the wound. He felt the blood pumping out, it soaked through the cloth in seconds. Shit. An artery.
He threw his Script into the wound, desperately trying to seal the artery. His Script just siphoned off into Stitch-up’s negative void. Stitch-up’s breathing becoming more ragged and skin become cooler, her peripheries shutting down.
‘No…I…want…answers…’ Gale said. Gale’s raw Script ran dry, and he reached for the Deep. A flood of power rushed down his arm into the wound. Gale’s chest tightened, and he threw Script at the injury.
Swan grabbed his arm. ‘Stop Gale. You’ll burn yourself out, this isn’t your fight and you ain’t getting paid to do it.’
‘I can do this, just a little more and I can save her.’
Gale threw his Deep Script against the Scaled’s. He unleashed a river of salt-stained power. Deeper and deeper Gale dug, the river became a flood emptying into a hungry void. He scraped the bottom of his reserves, felt the tang of salt fill his mouth, his breathing become ragged.
A single scale grew over the artery and sealed it.
Gale collapsed.
‘Nailed it.’
Yip moved through the crowd applying bandages to the injured. He adjusted rags, meticulously bringing them into perfect order. Winding a bandage around a man’s bicep, he caught something beneath the scales, tribal tattoos.
Gale’s Script surged nearby. The man and many other heads turned to stare. Not one of them had moved when he cleaned their wounds, but now their eyes were focused on Gale. He slipped into the Vibe.
‘No, no freaking way’ Yip cursed.
Nausea filled Yip’s stomach. Amongst the burned parchment Scripts of the Scaled, he saw volcanic mounds, outrigger canoes, resume’s lined in coconut oil. Their Scripts were interwoven with salt lines like an infection. Like infection running septic through a body. Bits of their Script spontaneously broke away into salt flakes.
‘No…these are…these are Volkstorm Islanders.’
‘Only some of us,’ said the man in front of him, hacking up phlegm.
‘How did this happen,’ Yip asked, placing his hand on the wall to steady himself.
‘My name is Bernard, I was the leader of the refugees who fled here. After the flooding of Volkstorm, things…did not go well. They offered us the lowest of jobs, but any work we were glad for. Jobs that needed Script to make them workable. We started using our Script more and more. We took on the tasks that none others would. Salt started turning up on worksites, in the refugee camps. People started using it to keep their families fed.
Then we started burning out.
We found ourselves discarded, driven out of the camps. Now even those who aren’t burnt out, reside mixed in with the Scaled. So low they do not even notice us amongst the lepers, nothing but flotsam. Driftwood on the Tideline.’
Yip slapped the man in the face.
‘Never use that word. We are better than that.’ Yip said.
Yips eyes went to Swan. ‘How much?’ He said, clenching his fist. Swan stepped backwards.
‘How much money does your father make flooding the market with salt. How much is it worth him to create….th
is’. Yip said.
Swan slammed her foot down, ‘I am not my family!’
Yip spat at her feet and turned to go back to the lines of refugees. All of the Volkstormers however, had kept their eyes on Gale’s collapsed form. They whispered the same phrase under their breath in unison.
‘Salt-born.'
Gale - Tempests
So sweet the siren’s call, onto rocks our ship did fall.
Fragment of text found in Greek shipwreck in Oreheim.
Asking for a spot is never a sign of weakness.
Lifting Great Weight, By Ronald ‘Ironchurch’ Haematos
Their debt paid for their second semester, now they had to pass the Splinterpoint Gate. Gale lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, twirling a gold-encrusted spoon. Titus had used a ruby jewelled fork to eat two-minute noodles for the last 3 days. The amount of cutlery embedded in them had even left a small residual fund.
His inability to sleep for once was not due to debt, it was about the Splinterpoint itself. Splinterpoint was dangerous, people had burnt out taking it. Even died.
The others would be fine. Swan was strong and would clobber her way through. Yip was crafty, stealthy and armed with his spreadsheets. Sterling had aced the entrance exam, and Titus was the embodiment of the phrase ‘she’ll be right.’ Gale was the weak link.
In Locomotyr, Fiore had thrown him around like a rag doll. He was meant to be a terrifying hunter of the Deep, and an eight-year-old had kicked his butt. Gale fiddled with the golden spoon. He needed to get stronger. He hadn’t been able to show his face to Blush since the picnic on the beach. There was only one other person who could help him get stronger in time. Hopefully she didn’t kick him around like a rag doll too.
‘Damn it,’ he said and pulled out his phone,
I need to talk, can we meet?
Fine but you owe me, I paid last time.
Deal
And you’re picking where we go, I went to all the trouble of picking something cool to do last time
Okay
Pick wherever you want…but I hear that there is a fantastic pastry shop in the ….