Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  ‘Alright. Please, Nathan. I promise you’ll like it, and there’s nothing to do until later anyway.’

  Between the two towers there was a great glass pavilion, and behind this there was a walled garden, divided like a farmer’s fields, into blocks of dull brown and green, rust red, olive, dirty yellow, some punctuated by trees and bushes, others left bare. Between each were narrow cobbled streets, along which various sightseers strolled, looking through high fences made of wire. In each block animals paced – maned dogs; huge, rugose, horned creatures; in the middlemost block, beasts that dwarfed all the others. It was to these that Prissy was pointing, the close-bitten nail on her finger rising and falling with each breath. ‘Do you see them, Nathan? The alifonjers? Aren’t they ginormous?’

  Even at a distance, it was clear that they were double or triple the height of a man, even when slumped on the ground. They were grey like dry slate in the summer, dusty like it too, but creased and ridged with the whorls of a fingertip. Their ears were like ragged scraps of tarp, torn and draped across their shoulders. From their faces their teeth poked out, curved spears, cutlasses of bone. Massed together they were a range of hills, or forgotten earthworks, and when one of them walked it made the cobbled street shudder.

  Prissy grabbed Nathan by the arm and pulled him closer.

  ‘I told you! There, see? That one on the edge? Its long snout? See?’

  He saw it and nodded.

  Prissy drew him to her. ‘If you take them an apple, they’ll use their nose hand to take it off you. Or a carrot. Have you got one?’

  Nathan didn’t have either, but at a stall nearby there was a vendor who had exactly the kind of things you should give a monster like this – bags of peanuts, iced buns, and, as Prissy had hoped, apples. Nathan went and bought several of each thing with a handful of copper coins and distributed them to the gang.

  Gam took an iced bun, but he ate it himself, leaning against an enclosure filled with miniature, furry men with long curvy tails. ‘Don’t see what all the fuss is about,’ he said, but the others rushed over and Prissy beckoned the alifonjers to come to her. It seemed as if they were used to being fed by passers-by, because they came over in no time.

  Joes fed them nuts, Nathan fed them buns, and Prissy put the apples on her head and one by one the alifonjers reached through the fence and took them. Each time Prissy screamed with laughter, like a toddler screams before it learns that there is any other reason for screaming. Even when one accidentally caught her by the ear and pulled it, she wasn’t angry. ‘Oh, Nathan, this is perfect. Isn’t it perfect? I wish we could stay here all day.’

  Nathan wanted to say that he did too, but all Prissy’s noise had attracted the attention of the people around, and one of them – a slender, horse-faced man in black – went over to a uniformed man, seemingly employed to police the animals, and indicated the gang.

  Nathan tried to let Prissy have her fun, waited until the last possible moment to lead her away, but even then she didn’t want to go. It wasn’t until Joes explained the problem that she turned her back on the place.

  Though Prissy walked slowly, reluctantly, with many glances over her shoulder, they were back in the slums within the hour.

  ‘We’ll go in through the roof.’

  ‘How? We going to fly up there?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s got a unicorn,’ Prissy said. ‘We can ride it into the sky.’

  ‘Unicorns can’t fly,’ Joes pointed out. ‘Especially not with all of us on their backs.’

  ‘Unicorns don’t bleeding exist.’ Gam got up from the table, took himself a cigar from the humidor, lit it on the range and came back. He took one long drag and exhaled it up into the coving. ‘So, mythical horses and whatnot aside, how are we supposed to get up to the roof?’

  ‘We’ll go down from the Glass Road.’

  Joes wrinkled their nose. ‘You’re dreaming. It’s got a hex on it. Master put it there. Only people who can get up there are the Fetches and the Master’s lot – we’d never make it ten yards up there. If you’ve not got permission, you can’t catch your footing on the glass – try to move up and you’ll slide all the way down.’

  But Gam was nodding. Nodding, and smiling. He took the cigar out of his mouth. ‘Hold on. Hold on! He’s clever this boy. You’re clever.’

  ‘What?’ Prissy said. ‘I always thought he was clever, but this sounds stupid – sorry, Nat.’

  Nathan wasn’t concerned. ‘The Fetch will take us up,’ he said. ‘When we get to the roof we’ll go on a little way, slip out, then go back down – the hex won’t set off as long as we aren’t going up. When the Fetch is out of sight, we lower us in one by one. We do the job, and by the time the Fetch gets back from dropping his load off, we’ll be long gone.’

  ‘What if the Fetch won’t take us?’ Joes asked. ‘He’ll never take Gam after the last time.’

  ‘He’ll take me if I pay him triple up front. He’s a greedy old sod.’

  ‘And if the Fetch catches up with us on the way back, then what? He’ll stripe us red.’

  ‘Every job has its risks.’ Gam picked up his coat, heavy with equipment stashed in its lining. ‘Speaking of which, we’re running low on supplies. Anyone fancy a stroll to the Entrepôt?’

  No-one volunteered, but there was nothing suspicious in that – Gam often went to do minor jobs alone – and he left, closing the door softly behind him.

  When his footsteps faded to nothing, Joes went to the door, opened it a crack and peered through. They nodded and came back, twitching about the face, smoothing down their arms, straightening their waistband. ‘We’re worried about him,’ Joes said. ‘He’s been acting odd.’

  Prissy nodded vigorously, making her chair creak. ‘Me too. What was that in the palace, Nat? And why won’t he front up to it? He always tells me when he’s done something wrong.’

  Nathan shook his head. He didn’t know what the matter was, and he wasn’t willing to guess. ‘All I know is that anything could have happened back there. Anything.’

  Joes came over and sat as close as they could to the other two, conspiratorially, and when they spoke, they whispered, looked sidelong, cupped a hand around their mouth. ‘It’s Padge, we reckon. Given him orders, but he won’t say what. We asked him, and he clammed up.’ They wiped their sleeve across their face, bit their lips. ‘It’s not like him.’

  Prissy went over to Joes and put her arm around their shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Joes. Whatever it is, Gam’s still Gam. He’ll be alright.’

  Joes nodded, but they didn’t seem convinced. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

  XXXII

  The Fetch stoked the lead horse’s neck, his cheek almost resting against the beast, whispering into its twitching ear. ‘You’re my beauty, ain’t you? My proud beauty. So soft. Worth a thousand of anyone’s money.’

  He ran his wizened fingers down the muzzle. The horse put its head back, as if it was flinching. ‘There, there… is it a carrot you want then? A lovely big carrot? Sweet and crunchy?’

  The Fetch reached into his deep coat pockets and brought out a paper packet. He carefully unfolded the crimp at the top, pulled out a carrot, reverent, as if it were made of gold. He pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, held it in front of the horse’s eye, turning it slowly. ‘Best carrot they had. Full of juice: stiff and firm. You want it? Of course you do. It’s yours.’

  He ran the carrot across the horse’s lips and then held it in the flat of his hand so that it could take it. ‘There! Who looks after you? The Fetch, that’s who. The good old Fetch.’

  When he turned away, he was startled, just for a moment, to see the boys in front of him. ‘What do you vermin want?’

  Gam stepped forward. ‘Please, sir, Mr Fetch, sir,’ he said, taking his cap from his head and holding it, wringing it in front of him. ‘Might you take us to the Master tonight?’

  The Fetch came into the light, so that they could see clearly how old he was, how shrivelled, how mean in spirit. ‘I re
cognise you, you little roach. You stiffed me of my fare last time, and you was turned down to boot. I ain’t taking you nowhere. And your dungheap rats can forget it, too. No run tonight – my horses need their beauty sleep.’

  Gam looked at the toes of his boots and twisted his cap so hard that it looked like he might tear it. ‘Please, Mr Fetch. My dad says he’s had enough, and if I don’t get taken tonight, he’s going to have me put down and sell my bones to the glue man.’

  The Fetch came even closer, so that they could smell him now – horseflesh and rotting straw, mildewed wool and gin. ‘Is that right? Tell your father I can provide that service, if he hasn’t the heart for it himself. Nice and neat and no damage to the goods for onward sale. You go home and tell him. Two brass.’

  ‘I will tell him, Mr Fetch, promise I will, ’cept he’s given me two brass up front already, and he says I’m not to come back until I’ve given them to you for my fare.’

  ‘Me too, me too!’ the others cried, clutching the brass coins in their hands.

  The Fetch frowned, his fingers moved across the beads of an imaginary abacus, his tight lips mouthed the sums. ‘And all of your fathers want shot of you, too? That’s a nice bit of work for the old Fetch, and good carrots don’t come cheap. But still…’

  The Fetch turned his back on them and went to the horses.

  Joes followed him, took a bag from their pocket. ‘Our mum said to give you this for the journey.’ In the bag was gin in a clay flask, pipe tobacco in a pouch, and apples for the horse.

  The Fetch reached for the bag, but Joes pulled it back. ‘Only if you take us.’

  The Fetch rubbed the stubble on his sunken cheeks. ‘What do you think, ladies? Is there time for one more run?’

  The horses said nothing, champed silently and kept their own counsel, but the Fetch seemed convinced. ‘Wait here then, you dogs. I’ll get my bell.’

  The mournful tolling of the Fetch fell flat in the brine mist that rolled cold and thick from over the Sea Wall, but nonetheless in minutes there were twenty boys, damp and bowed of head, lined up along the wall of the Fetch’s yard. Nathan and the rest of the gang, Prissy included, were at the front of the group. If they held themselves with nonchalant confidence while the Fetch rounded up his passengers, when he came around the corner they were as cowed and grey and pitiful as the rest of them.

  ‘Listen, you shitehawks! This here is an extraordinary delivery, and so the fare is double. There’s no room in the cage for all of you, so if you ain’t got two brass, then get out of my sight. If there’s two brothers and only one coin each, then pool it up and send the youngest – Master likes them young – more vigour in ’em.’

  Some of the boys left at this, their eagerness to go only tempered by the thought of the beating they would get when they got home.

  ‘The rest of you, into the cage! And don’t rattle the planks and set them to creaking. It puts my horses’ teeth on edge.’

  The Fetch’s cart clattered through the streets without stopping or slowing for anything. Mothers, their children held out urgently in front of them, urging him to stop, were ignored. Old men sleeping off their drunkenness in the road could look out for their own legs as far as the Fetch was concerned – their bones would not impede the huge wheels and their pain on breaking would be left behind – he wanted to be out and back in the shortest time possible, and so make the most profit for the least effort.

  Nathan, Gam, Prissy, Joes and the rest were rocked here and there in the back of his cart like coins locked in a collection box when the parson shakes loose his booze money.

  Nathan paid no attention to the others – except to the close press of Prissy’s thigh on his own perhaps – and kept his eyes on the road.

  ‘Give it ten minutes,’ he hissed to Gam, ‘then jemmy the cage door.’

  ‘Why don’t you Spark it?’

  ‘Don’t want to attract his attention.’

  ‘You won’t, he’s driving the horses like a charioteer. He needs all his attention for the road.’

  Nathan acted like he hadn’t heard, and Gam got to his feet and gestured to the boy at the back. He was a spindly specimen, with arms as thin as straw, and a big head that bobbed about with every jerk of the cage. ‘Get up, skinny, that’s my seat.’

  He got up, and Gam barged past to sit near the lock to the cage. From his jacket, he slid out a bar of iron and put it up his left sleeve. Some of the boys frowned at this, but Gam stared their frowns off their faces and soon it was as if nothing had happened.

  When the cage hit the Glass Road, Nathan signalled to the gang that they should prepare for the off. The same hex that prevented undesirables from making their way up the road made it possible for friends to travel quickly up the steep incline, and the Fetch had permission to travel whenever he wished.

  The road looped around the base of the mound on and in which the Manse was constructed, circling through all of the districts of Mordew, and though Nathan tried to keep his mind on the job, it was hard not to peer back down at the places that went past below him. One area was free of houses altogether, laid to trees and grass, with a lake like a kidney set in the middle.

  ‘The lungs of the city, they call it,’ said Joes. ‘See that there’ – they pointed out a domed palace in leaded glass – ‘it’s got plants like you’ve never seen in it. Spikers that’ll prick you like knives, huge flies with wings like rainbows, trees with bits you can eat, sweet as treacle.’

  ‘You might want to pay less attention to sightseeing, and more to your plan,’ Gam snapped, ‘or it’s all going to go belly-up. Isn’t that the rooftop in question, hoving into view to starboard?’

  Nathan looked, nodded, but put up his hand. ‘Hold it for a minute.’

  ‘Why? It’s right there.’

  ‘We need to go on past it, so that we can edge back without setting off the spell by going up.’

  ‘You really have got this all worked out, haven’t you? We’ll make a thief of you yet.’

  Nathan smiled, and it all happened in a flash. Gam made light work of the cage lock, the gang got to their feet and slipped, one by one, off the back of the cage, slapping onto the glass like wet fish onto a chopping block. The cart trundled off on its way, rounding a corner and dwindling into the distance.

  ‘I reckon we’ve got half an hour until the Fetch comes back from the Manse,’ Gam whispered. ‘If he doesn’t get the Master’s cronies onto us, that is. If he tells, then who knows how long the gill-men will take to get here and clear the scum off their nice shiny road.’

  ‘He won’t tell them.’

  ‘Course not. Risk getting himself in trouble? Risk the Master finding a new Fetch? What’d he do then? Who’d buy his beauties carrots? He’d be eating horse steaks before the month was out, wiping the tears from his cheeks with their tails.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Jerky Joes took the rope from under their coat, where it had been posing as a hunger-swollen belly, and they edged on their hands and knees to the edge of the road.

  The Spire was a little way away, perhaps a hundred yards. The glass was flat and polished but was dry up away from the mist. They could make their way down the road without slipping as long as they went hands first, the grip of their palms providing enough friction to counteract the general tendency to move downslope. Prissy slipped off her tights and jammed them into her pocket and the boys did the same with their socks and shoes, lacing them together and draping them over their shoulders, and they moved like spiders until the roof of the jeweller’s house was below them.

  ‘Is this going to be enough rope?’ Joes asked. ‘It seems an awfully long drop.’

  ‘Dangle it over,’ said Gam, ‘and see how far it gets.’

  The rope snaked over the edge, swaying in the wind. The Spire, from the roof, looked like it was flat, a drawing on a piece of paper, an outline of a place and not a real place at all.

  The rope ran out ten feet above the highest chimney stack.

&nbs
p; ‘Nice work, Joes. You couldn’t find a longer rope?’

  ‘It was the best I could find in the den. It’s not a bleeding rope shop.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Nathan said. ‘Tie it around your waist, Gam, and Joes, hold onto his legs. Whatever you do, don’t let go.’

  ‘Anything to help.’

  Prissy came to the edge. ‘It’s not going to work. How are you going to stay on the roof when you drop down? It’s all slanty.’

  ‘I’ll go first, then you can come next, and I’ll catch you. Then you, Gam. Joes, you wait up here until the job’s done, and then pull us back up.’

  ‘Right you are, boss! Good job there’s two of us, or we wouldn’t have the strength. Or anyone to talk to.’

  Nathan sat with his legs over the side of the Glass Road. He took the boots from around his neck and put them back on his feet; up above the city they floated oddly beneath him, two black clouds and him above them like a crow riding high on the wind.

  ‘Are you going to sit there all day?’

  He knotted the rope around his waist, not so tight that it wouldn’t come undone when he needed it to, but tight enough that if he lost his grip it might hold for a second until he found it again. Prissy stood behind him, bare-legged. He turned and he could see up past her knees. He let his legs slip over the edge until he was resting on his belly. When he looked up, he could see her thighs. He let himself drop until he was holding on by his fingertips.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ Gam said, ‘and if he starts swinging, pull back a touch.’

  Nathan dropped and began to fall. It could only have been for the blink of an eye, but he thought that they had let him go, as if they had taken the opportunity to get rid of him, and that now they were all up there, Prissy too, laughing themselves sick. But the rope went taut, sending a shock wave of pain from his arm that threatened to make him faint. He gasped, but above him was Prissy and he bit it back, breathed through the dizzying pulsing, and then, inch by inch and foot by foot, he made the journey through the air.