Stray

by Evan Fuller

  13.

  Say Uncle

  The gateman put himself back together on the far side of the wall. He was sick to his stomach but it was no big deal—it was getting easier every time. To tell the truth, the goddamned taste was the worst part about it at this point. He felt around in his coat pocket and found his tin of baccy. While he was at it he checked to make sure everything else was still there. Yeah, he was getting better. Used to be he’d lose stuff along the way, but it was happening less and less now. He had a bit of a gift, he guessed. Some poor bastards who really screwed it up got their organs all in a tangle and that was the end of their magicking career.

  When he’d got his bearings and a pinch of chew, he crossed the lawn and rapped on the back door. It was a while before anyone opened it, so he tried the handle—locked, go figure. As if you really had to worry about anyone breaking in, in here. After about a whole damn minute that kid Oliver opened up. “How have you been, Green?”

  “Hangin’ in there.” The gateman’s name was name was Robert, but names are for people you trust. Everyone called him Green. “You?”

  “Kind of stir-crazy locked up in here like a beef cow in Fairmount, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s definitely a step above getting dissected by Yanks, right?”

  He seemed like an okay kid, but a bit creepy to be honest. He didn’t know Oliver’s history, but the kid was obviously from the Farm, you could tell by looking at him. Probably seen some screwed-up stuff. Green—he used the damn alias so much he mostly thought of himself as Green these days—followed him in. Oliver’s weird gray eyes didn’t scare the gateman half as bloody much as this house (Green’s eyes were gray too, but come on, look at the kid). He could get used to the kitchen, though. Really, who couldn’t? They’d let the pureblood know he was here, so he dug around the fridge to kill time. A lot of the food was odd, but damned if there wasn’t a ton of it. He was helping himself when the pureblood came in. “It’s good to see you again, Green.”

  “Oh, hey, kid. I was just—”

  “No, please, go ahead.” He pulled up a chair at the flimsy-ass glass table. That’s how you could tell this was Rittenhouse. Outside you were lucky if your windows had glass. “God knows there’s plenty more where that came from. Can I get you anything to drink?”

  “Water’s great, thanks.” Green threw bits of five or six different things onto a plate. He had no clue what half of it was. “How’s that new kid doing?”

  The pureblood sighed. He was looking even skinnier, if that was possible. Green really wondered how he did it, living in here. “Not well. He snuck drugs in, then threatened Oliver. I have him confined to his room until I can figure out what to do with him.”

  Green shrugged. “Told you he was trouble. Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. So. You find anything yet on this end?”

  “More leads than I know what to do with,” the kid answered, “but not a single thing that’s gotten me any closer to finding out who’s planning this shipment or how they’re moving it. Maybe you’ll know what to make of some of these.”

  Green listened as the kid went into it. He’d found three ways things were moving out of the city. The fishing ship trading with the Sunken Folk was new info, but it sounded like a dead end. Then the pureblood brought this dark-skinned little girl (who looked tougher than him) to explain the second way. Green had seen her and her scrawny brother at the palace a few days before they’d apparently shown up in here, and really, he had no clue how they didn’t drown in the sewers. A lot of the kids the king sent drowned, young ones in particular. The king had said not to tell the pureblood that.

  “This one’s news to me,” he told the girl, whose name was Lola or something. “But you said it’s in Viktor Kropa’s district?”

  She nodded. “Viktor something like that. I never met him or even that Duke Girard.”

  Green turned back to the pureblood. “That doesn’t match up with what I’ve found out so far. The protection’s supposed to be getting the shipment outside the west wall of the city, and that would put it way northeast. Jacob’s Ladder ain’t a box, it’s a road or pathway or somethin’ like that. Our inside person says the guys delivering the package to the escort will be coming through Jacob’s Ladder, so it’s gotta be big enough for people to get through in the first place. Tell me about your other lead.”

  The pureblood nodded, not troubling to ask who Green’s inside person was. He was easy to work with, that way. “It’s called Redemption. I’ve been working on this one for a while; apparently it’s how all the poppy I’ve found is getting into the city. The ship captain finally told me what it is: a giant bazaar selling gum, but also other contraband.”

  “Like what?”

  He squirmed. “Like people. Well, I suppose renting people is more precise.”

  It was the first promising thing the kid had found. If they were trafficking in people, the merchandise was definitely coming from the Farm, Zakarova’s breeding ground. “That’s the one you want, kid. It’s got Zakarova’s fingerprints all over it. Makes sense that his connects inside the city would send stuff out to him the same way he sends it to them.”

  “So if we can find Redemption—”

  Green didn’t want him getting ahead of himself. “Well, let’s say this Redemption is the market thing, and Jacob’s Ladder is the way from there to the outside. So you can find Redemption, yeah, but you still need to find the Ladder. And if you wanna find that, you might have to do some people-renting of your own.”

  The pureblood looked like he was gonna pass out. “You want me to—?”

  “Look, there’s nothin’ you people can’t get in here if you throw enough of those ridiculous money-stones around. And if you wanna get answers, you need to be spending so much they can’t ignore you.”

  “We’ll see if I can find Redemption in the first place,” the kid said after a minute. “I kind of botched the job with the connections I did have.”

  “Well, here’s the only other thing I’ve managed to find out so far: we got ourselves a deadline. Wherever this shipment is getting moved from, it goes down ten days from now.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try to find another way into Redemption, but at this point…” He stared at his hands through the table.

  “Well, if we screw this one up, there’s always next time, eh?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Kid was awful at pretending to look convinced.

  “Hey, kid.” Green didn’t know what to say. He was no good at this talk therapy crap. “It ain’t the end of the world if we can’t pull this off, okay? So we botch it and it’s a missed opportunity. We’re still doin’ just as well as we were before it came along, right?” He tried to ruffle the pureblood’s hair, which didn’t go over too well. “Right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just trying to say don’t kill yourself over it.”

  It looked like he was halfway there. “Yeah. Whatever you say, Green.”

  “That’s what I like to hear! Damn right whatever I say.” He grinned and tried to change the subject. “So how’s that school stuff going? I know you’re tryin’ to get all educated.”

  The kid didn’t answer at first. “I, umm.” He gulped. “I dropped out, actually.”

  “Atta boy. Stick it to those snotty bastards!” The king wouldn’t be happy to hear it, though. Should he gloss over that part next time they met, or tell him straight out? The pureblood was looking worse every time Green saw him. Maybe His Majesty would know what to do.

  Green liked the kid, he really did. He was scrawny and superstitious and way too easily riled up, and really if he tried to survive a month on the outside by himself he’d probably be digested and shet out by the end of it. But at least his heart was in the right place, and hell, he was doing work nobody else could do. Or at least, nobody else who was willing to. The king hated putting so much on the kid and Green was starting to see why. But unless they made some other pals inside, which didn’t seem very bloody likely, they di
dn’t have a whole lot of choices.

  Green was hoping he’d gain something valuable in the exchange of info, but when he left, it was with nothing more than he’d come—except, he guessed, all that fancy food in his belly and the extra he’d taken in his backpack. The news about these Low Doors was interesting but didn’t seem to be related. This “Redemption” might be their ticket, but all they had was a name, and it might not even be called Redemption out here. The purebloods had a different name for everything. Even the river mutts called the Vine was named the Schuylkill or Skull-kill or something if you asked a pureblood. That was what came of having a fat pile of books and not needing to use them for kindling.

  He always wanted to drift further than he had to, just to save time, but he knew he’d pay for it when he reassembled. He made the jump from the pureblood’s back yard and landed past the perimeter—if you really wanna lose blood, try reappearing where those scumbag Unity riflemen on the walls can see you—and headed home the old-fashioned way. It was still daytime, but even at night nobody in their right mind was going to mess with him. Even people who had no respect for the king knew better than to bug Green.

  It was more than an hour winding counterclockwise around the city before he got to First Baptist. Set against a web of overgrowth and collapsed buildings, the house could only be accessed from the front, which was exactly why he’d chosen it. A razor-wire fence forced anyone coming to pass through a narrow entrance with grinning skulls propped up on either side, to warn trespassers not to even try making the approach. “How ya’ doing tonight, Pete?” Green asked as he entered, stroking the skull on the right. Green had named him Pete posthumously, seeing as he didn’t know the guy’s actual name. He was one of the souls who’d wandered too close to the house before these warnings were in place. There wasn’t much Green guessed he could do to make it up to the poor bugger, but at least he got to try and warn other folks so the same wouldn’t happen to them.

  The house was an impressive one: he’d spent a damn long time rebuilding it. The cross on top of the steeple was missing an arm, but besides that it was a pretty good-looking building for being who knew how many hundred years old. He’d even managed to put glass in a few of the high windows, and the other ones had sliding wood shutters. They’d be bolted tight for a couple more months. Staring at the building’s face while crossing the twenty-yard field was probably why a lot of intruders didn’t see the traps. ‘Course, The air was also thick with hexes and wardings, and those either chased thieves off or got them so turned around they ran into a landmine. There were little markers on all the unsafe patches, though, if you knew what you were looking for. He’d gone over the path with Anthea a hundred times, but he still worried.

  He picked up his pace when he’d cleared the last of the mines. The big sign out front marked the end of the minefield. Most of the engraved letters had worn away, but the words FIRST BAPTIST were still there—they’d named the house after that sign. Green yanked a big iron key out of his pocket and jammed it into the keyhole of the massive wood door (if you somehow managed to get the thing open without unlocking it first, unlucky you). Almost before he was inside he was greeted by a shout of “Uncle Bob!” and the footfalls of a rambunctious eight-year-old galloping at full speed in his direction. “Anthea!” the boy called over his shoulder as all fifty pounds of him slammed into Green’s legs and stomach. “Uncle Bob is back!”

  “That’s right, Roger,” Green said, lifting the boy off his feet. “You been behaving for your cousin?”

  “Uh huh!”

  “That’s good.” He set the gray-eyed boy down and ruffled his unkempt hair—he liked it better than the pureblood did. “I’m too tired to whoop you tonight.”

  “Welcome back,” came a much calmer voice from upon the stairs. “Did everything go without a problem?”

  “In and out, just like that.” Green snapped his fingers. “I told you, Anthea, it’s really not that big a deal.”

  “That’s good.” Green’s niece was fifteen, tall and slight. Her eyes were green, her expression worried all the time even when she wasn’t actually worried. “I just worry, you know? Those purebloods are barbaric.”

  “Yeah, well. This one wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He laughed and added, “A fly might rough him up if they got into it, actually. And look what I got.” He threw his backpack on the ground—it landed with about the weight of a small corpse—and dug out the food he’d taken home. “Fancy pureblood dinner for the three of us.”

  “Yay!” Roger snatched the box and ran for the kitchen. “I told you Uncle Bob is the best dad ever!”

  The sun hadn’t set yet, but it was low enough that inside was getting dark, so they lit the candles on the table. Anthea fetched some forks—nice wooden ones, she’d whittled them herself—and Green put the food where they could all get to it. “You know about those cows they have in Fairmount?” Green asked Roger. “This is what they taste like.” The boy ate hardily enough. That was good. Green made sure Roger was the best-fed kid in New Providence if he could help it, but for all that he always looked skinny. Well. The pureblood was skinny and clearly not starving. But still, it worried him.

  By the time they were done eating the sun was setting. Roger and Anthea took Green into the woodworking room—the house might not be the pureblood’s mansion, but it did have more than enough space for the three of them—to show him some work they’d been doing. Roger was learning to whittle skewers. He held up a bandaged thumb where he’d slipped with the knife. “Remember,” Green said, “every cut makes you a bit tougher.” He should know.

  When the sun set and the lantern was the only light left, there was little to be done but go to bed. Green and Anthea put Roger down first. “Tell me a story, Uncle Bob,” he said.

  “Could you stop—” Green sighed. “Okay. Whatever you say, kid.” He sat down on the foot of the bed. It was an old spring mattress they’d dug up, and the springs were sticking up all uneven: one was jutting into his ass at the moment. He’d have to find something better for the boy. “There was this one time,” he began, “when a boy like you had to go underground to get something very important for a friend of his. He was a skinny boy, like you, a bit older, but not much use in a fight. Now, he knows there’s a lotta dangerous stuff in the old train tunnels—”

  “Tunnel people!” Roger blurted. “They’ll drag you off an’ eat your guts!”

  “Which one of us is telling the story here?” The boy relaxed. “Now, as I was saying, tunnel people. This kid knew about ‘em, but he’d never seen one before. He had a guide going into the tunnel, but there was an accident and he ended up alone. So he’s running around in the dark with nothin’ but a flashlight to try to find his way out, and you know, those tunnels are like a maze. So before long, one of the tunnel people finds him. The kid gets away from that one but he calls all his tunnel people friends, and do you know what he says?”

  “He says ‘there’s a kid in here, let’s go eat his guts!’”

  “No, he says ‘click click click,’ because that’s the only thing tunnel people say. But they get the idea and they all start chasing the kid. Now, the tunnel people got skin white as my eyes, and no clothes, and big old claws that can cut you right open. A whole bunch of them get him surrounded, and they’re just about to grab a juicy arm—” Green grabbed Roger’s arm for emphasis, and the boy jumped—“and do you know what happens next?”

  “Th-they eat his guts?” Roger said quietly, less thrilled by the prospect now.

  “They’re about to, but just then, the kid’s friend shows up. The kid’s friend is only one guy and there are a lot of tunnel people, but he has this special trick: he can breathe fire.”

  “That’s you, Uncle Bob!” Roger was excited again. “You’re the only one who can do that stuff.”

  “I’m not the only one who can do anything, and besides, this is just a story. So the fire-breathing guy breathes some fire and chases the tunnel people away, and in the end, he gets the kid out sa
fe and sound.” He grinned. “Now, what does this story teach us?”

  Roger thought about it for a long time. “Always have a friend who breathes fire,” he decided.

  “That’s right. No matter how good a person you are—and Roger, I want you to be a good person, I do. But in the end, being a good person won’t always get the job done. Sometimes you gotta spit some fire.” He leaned over, paused, kissed Roger on the forehead. “Goodnight, kid.”

  “‘Night, Uncle Bob.” He was snoring by the time Green left the room.

  “Damnit, Anthea,” he said as he closed the door behind him, “can you get him to stop calling me that?”

  “Sorry,” she replied. “He gets it from me.”

  “I know where he gets it from. I’m not mad or anything, it’s just—he’s the only son I’ve got, you know? A man shouldn’t have to be called uncle by his only son.”

  “I’ll start calling you Dad when he’s around and we’ll see if that works. Or Papa, or something.”

  “Anything but Uncle Bob.” He sighed. “You’re doing a great job with him, though. Really. I wish I could be around more, but… hey, you want a drink?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, as she usually did.

  “I want a drink.” She followed him into his room, where a bottle of whisky from Belmont Arbor’s distillery awaited on his tribute table. Stolen, of course. On principle. He’d never drink anything legally obtained from the Arbor—that just fed money back to Zakarova and his lunatic wife. Green took a swig from the bottle. “Anna hated this stuff,” he mused. “She was more of a wine lady.”

  “Yeah,” Anthea agreed. A few seconds later she ventured: “Is there anything that doesn’t remind you of her?”

  The memory of her was a deep red stain that had somehow got into everything and sunken in and stayed there. He grunted, shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t have to carry that around.” Anthea wasn’t normally this forward. Green glanced at her. Green eyes. She looked so much like her aunt.

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be the way it is. You should have your folks, and Roger should have both of his. Me feeling crummy about it is probably the fairest part of it all.”

  “I don’t think it’s any fairer than the rest.” The muscles in her jaw clenched as she swallowed a yawn. “You’re doing great for him, Uncle Bob. For both of us.”

  “I’m doing okay,” he said to the bottle. “I already botched the job on ‘great.’ Sleep tight, Anthea.”

  After she left the room he sank into his chair. The tribute table was covered in things he’d got bartering with people who needed favors from him, often as not people who just wanted him to do his bloody job and take them to the king. That wasn’t part of the pledge to His Majesty, and knowing that cut deeper than any of the marks on his arms, but it wasn’t the first pledge he’d broken. Besides, everything here was to help Roger and Anthea have a better life, and he owed them that. A lot of it was stuff he planned to trade again later, things that’d be more valuable to someone else, so he could get things they needed for the home. He still had a few of the batteries from that boy Timothy sitting there untouched—since he’d found out the boy had died, it seemed wrong somehow to use them. Other things were for later, like the little bow he’d teach Roger to shoot whenever he got a day free. Even the vices were for them, in a sad roundabout way. The chew kept his senses focused when he needed them most, and the whisky… well, the whisky helped him de-focus when he needed that, when he felt like otherwise he just might climb to the top of the steeple and see what a good nosedive could do. Between both of the kids, he’d already cost them three parents. He wasn’t going to take away the only one they had now, no matter how much he wanted to, some days.

  Occasionally he picked up a trinket he hoped would be worth something but then couldn’t figure out what to do with, and those ended up collecting dust on the desk. One of them was a mirror he’d traded some West Sink woman for a healing salve—for once, he’d come out worse in a bargain. It glared back at him, all yellow and deep red in the lantern light, hazy with drink. The bags under his eyes were getting deeper, and how many of those little hairs on his unshaven chin were gray now?

  He tried for a grin. “Hell, Green, the pureblood’s not the only one who’s looking half-dead these days.” His name was Robert, but names are for people you trust.