Red Litten World

by Alexander, K. M.

  At the bottom of Lovat is the Sunk. It was said that it was once a great city itself but it flooded generations ago, during the Aligning. It’s now home to the aquatic races: the eight-limbed Cephels, the amphibian anur, the kresh, and the rarely seen bok. Near the top, on Levels Seven, Eight, and Nine is where the wealthiest citizens live. Anyone can visit—the lifts run from the Sunk to the upper reaches—but most don’t. The poor are harassed by the private security officers and the whole place is lacking in color.

  It also lacks the bustle of the lower levels. The vying for space. The adaptation. The culture. Up there, it’s clean and neat, everything in its place. But life thrives in chaos. Hell, life is chaos. I was a man for the subs, clearly.

  I’m not sure why I pocketed the card. Maybe it was the allure of a paycheck. Perhaps. Perhaps part of me knew I really had no choice. I left the Aklo scrawl on the table. I didn’t want to touch it again. The wasteland still moldered, hot in my memory. Better to let those words end up in a landfill.

  We paid for our meal and I said goodbye to Essie. We braced ourselves for the blast of cold, pulling our garments tight as we stepped out of Cedric’s. We made our way up from the entresol, our reflections warping and twisting in the frozen neon glow.

  It was good I kept Kiver’s card. I’d be needing it soon.

  THREE

  WE PASSED BENEATH DECORATED TREE BRANCHES that hung from the ceiling on gossamer strands of wire. Each was wrapped with strings of brightly colored lights and paper banners that read “Happy Auseil!”

  We walked south on Third Avenue heading towards Pergola Square. A crowd of pedestrians moved around us like a river of life flowing through the city. The lights from the shops and terraces painted their faces in shifting and sliding hues of gold. The buzz of a thousand conversations in a myriad of languages filled the air.

  The corner apartment I called home was situated in the Terraces and about an hour’s walk from Cedric’s. I wasn’t overly fond of the place. It was a single room, with a shared bathroom down the hall. When I moved in, it bore the unmistakable odor of wet dog. Now it smelled more like a sweaty caravan master. All my ten spot had bought me was a double bed with a thin mattress and a dirty old sink that ran brown. The heat barely worked and these days it was usually freezing. But it was home, at least for now.

  “I’m exhausted,” I said, rolling my neck and feeling it crack. “I have a shift first thing in the morning. I should hit the sack.”

  “How’s things at the wharf?” Hannah asked.

  I dreaded answering. I was glad to have work but it felt odd to be back at the docks. I was still sorting out my feelings about it. It felt like a step down and, with the knee as it was, I wasn’t exactly in peak hauling condition. The healthier stevedores ran circles around me and didn’t take a day and a half to recover. The harbormaster was a dimanian I had worked with years earlier, so we were friendly enough but I knew that I hobbled a dangerous line. Eventually I was going to get cut. I ached for the Big Ninety to reopen.

  “Slow,” I said. “Real slow. We haven’t seen the Gamble in months. Other boats aren’t coming as often as they should. When they do, we barely get them unloaded before everything’s snatched up. Hell, there’s enough folks lurking around waiting for food that we could probably just have them unload the boats for free. ”

  Hannah gave a sad chuckle, frowned, then sighed.

  “Any protests?”

  “No, most folk are scrapes like us. They know we don’t have much control over the wharf-masters’ deals.”

  She nodded and her frown deepened.

  “You want to meet up day after tomorrow?” I asked her. We paused to let a vendor push an empty cart across the street in front of us. Sold Out signs were plastered all over the interior of the cart’s glass. Nearby an old fourgon rumbled, belching black smoke into the air. Its driver yawned in the cab while a man in a pair of gray coveralls unloaded slabs of graying meat from the back and hauled them into a butcher shop. A pair of armed men in matching gray coats stood to one side, clubs in hand.

  Motorized vehicles were rare in Lovat. The city doesn’t have a refinery of its own, so vehicles were always scarce, but fuel shipments had become increasingly rare in recent decades. Occasionally an old oil ship will pull into the port but in the in-between times most vehicles sit idle.

  “I can’t,” said Hannah. “I have another date.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Anyone I know?”

  “No, and it’s none of your business.” She gave me a friendly sock in the shoulder.

  “I’m up a level,” she said, pointing down a side street towards one of the massive lifts that carried pedestrians up and down Lovat’s levels. I still had a way to go myself.

  “Well, send me a ’gram when you have some time to get a drink or catch a show. I’ll be quicker now. I found a telegraph office near my flat.”

  “Yeah, I will. Take care, boss.”

  We hugged and she walked away towards the lift as I continued on to the Terraces. The city used to run a monorail going there, but budget restraints forced them to close the line. I passed under more Auseil branches and banners, and street-level window displays peppered with the Zann hymns of jubilant holiday revelers. As I walked, the lamps mounted in the ceiling above began to dim. Dusk in Lovat.

  When the engineers built this place they designed the lighting in the ceilings to mimic the cycles of light outside. Artificial night was beginning to fall and with it the temperature. My breath came out in thick huffs of vapor.

  In the dimming light, the neon signs cast the street in a gaudy glow. Liquor stores, pharmacies, shoes. It was all there, crammed behind narrow doorways. Vendors lined the streets selling secondhand clothes next to street mystics who entertained crowds with tricks prominently featuring fire. It was late enough now that the occasional pitch addict would wander through the thinning crowd. Faces hanging limp as they stumbled, lost in a world beyond. I stopped to rest my knee near a busker who was working an old saxophone in long, sad notes. The sound intermixed with the noises of the street, a perfect fit in this part of lower Lovat. I recognized the tune. An old song my mother liked to sing. A sad tune about lost love. I could still remember the lyrics and I could still hear my mother’s contralto as she sang:

  I strolled down to St. Angell’s infirmary, I saw my baby there

  She was laid out on a long white table,

  So sweet, so cold, and so fair...

  It was a dark song. I’m not sure how long I stayed there, listening, watching the crowd, shivering in the cold. There were so many things I did not want to think about. I longed for a lazy afternoon, a comfortable place of my own. Hell, how long had it been since I enjoyed an afternoon inside with a six-pack and a jai alai match?

  My stomach growled. I looked around and bought the last of some overpriced shrimp-stuffed dumplings from a dauger vendor with a bronze mask, and ate them as I continued towards home, and my bed.

  I was nearly there when I spotted it.

  Another solitary hooded figure. It passed like a ghost, moving among the crowds. Its dark robe billowed around it, graceful like the winter mist that settled in the nooks of the city. The figure moved with purpose, passing shoppers and addicts, buskers and laborers. My thoughts returned to the vision I’d had when I touched the copied Aklo script. The figure paused and I held my breath. It turned its blank, featureless face in my direction. Was it watching me?

  We stood there, facing one another across the crowd. The folk clustered near it either didn’t see the figure or couldn’t be bothered.

  Gargoyles in the streets and Aklo now appearing above a stiff. If they were here then there was something big coming and Carter’s cross, Kiver was trying to pull me into it.

  The gargoyle broke first. With a small tilt of its head, it gave me a slight nod before continuing on its way. It moved with a lyrical bob, like it was half-walking and half-floating. I watched it go until it disappeared around a corner.

  I kept walk
ing south, and tried to clear my head. To keep it clear. I only made it a few blocks.

  “Mister Bell.” A voice echoed from behind me.

  I jumped. The tension tightened in my shoulders. There was a slight accent but the vowels were perfectly enunciated. It was the voice of someone educated, someone from the elevated levels. I turned and saw a tall, well-dressed dauger standing a few feet away.

  “Who are you?” I said, hearing the wariness in my voice.

  He tilted his head slightly. A movement that reminded me of the gargoyle. He was as tall as a maero, and quite thin, with long arms and long fingers on perfectly shaped hands. His mask was simple, unadorned, and of a soft white color polished to a high, almost mirror-perfect, sheen. The mask lacked a nose, and two narrow slits for eyes stared out from under a heavy brow. The single, thin slit for a mouth gave his mask a stoic expression. His hair was tidy, jet black, and slicked back away from the edges of his mask. He had the air of a financier, a barrister, or a broker. It was the way he held himself: back straight, shoulders square, chest puffed out. He was immaculately dressed in an ash gray suit with thin stripes, under which he wore a darker gray shirt and a black tie with matching pocket square. He and Kiver could have traded style tips.

  Dauger are hominids like us humans. They look a lot like us as well: two arms, two legs, ten fingers, and ten toes. They’d pass as human except for one thing: their masks. Full face and specific to the dauger wearing it.

  The masks have a deep significance to all dauger. They are never removed in the presence of non-dauger. I’ve yet to meet anyone who can describe what’s underneath. It seems that being allowed to see a dauger without mask is a purely intimate experience. It’s rarely done even among family. Never among friends or strangers.

  They mix well within Lovat, but their own society is caste-based. Families display rank with the metal of their masks. The hierarchy is simple enough to follow: the more precious the metal is considered, the more powerful the family. That’s what made this dauger different from the others I knew. Most of my dauger friends were of the lowest caste, the base or noble families: Inox, Tin, Nickel, Zhelezo. This one was wearing a silver mask.

  “My name is Rulon Argentum. I’ve been trying to reach you for months. You and me, Mr. Bell, we have business to discuss.”

  We found seats in a small alehouse that squatted below a closed restaurant that claimed to serve dimanian comfort food. The scents of the spices from above had embedded themselves in the walls of the tavern, making my mouth water. The place was packed with a mass of noisy patrons, many of whom were singing Auseil hymns in loud drunken voices and spilling ale all over themselves.

  If food was in short supply, alcohol seemed to be abundant. Every bar in the city, from lowly two-seat alley jobs and popular warren taverns to the expansive dance clubs on the elevated levels that served thousands, all were crammed with Lovatines. Everyone trying their damnedest to make merry and drink away their hunger.

  “So, Mister Argentum. What can I do for you?”

  Argentum. Silver.

  It struck me as funny that a roadman like me, bearded and shaggy, wearing a weathered old jacket, blue jeans, and trail boots, had recently sat across a table from not one but two elevated. On the same day and less than an hour apart. Lucky me.

  Argentum said nothing, just studied me, turning his head this way and that. The slits in his mask were so narrow it was impossible to see his eyes. I half-wondered if he wasn’t blind. Most dauger masks had larger eye slits, allowing others to see more expression. Argentum’s narrow eye slits gave him a permanent air of suspicion. His posture and silence made me uneasy.

  He traced a circle on the cheek of his mask with the nail on one of his littlest fingers. It took me a moment to realize that the nail was nearly double the length of the others, and coated in the same silver as his mask. It made a tinny ringing sound as the metals scraped against one another.

  I shifted in my seat. The hairs on the back of my neck tingled.

  “Well?” I asked. “What can I do for you?”

  Argentum jerked slightly, as if I had roused him from a deep reverie, but then he settled back into his routine. Staring, scratching, and skeeving me out.

  “Okay, I’m not going to play this game,” I said. “I have a shift tomorrow morning. So if you just want to sit here and stare, do it on your own.”

  His shoulders bounced a few times as if he was laughing, but no laughter sounded from behind the mask.

  “I apologize for my silence,” he said finally. “These first meetings are always a bit strange and I like to ruminate on what I am going to say before I say it.”

  “First meetings? Will we be doing this again? I’m not exactly looking forward to another awkward stare session.” I moved to leave.

  “Oh yes, we will be doing this a few times. Until your debt is paid.”

  I paused, and turned to give him a long look. “My debt?”

  I slid back into the chair.

  “Mister Bell, what exactly happened to Margaret Shaler?”

  My words immediately clogged my throat and I felt my cheeks warm. Shaler had been my employer on the Broken Road. She had been taken by a creature. Tortured. Killed. We buried her near Methow, next to a member of my own company, a greenhorn named Ivari Tin who was killed in a similar fashion. Outside of my crew and the family no one should have known about Margaret Shaler. Especially not some dandy dauger from the upper reaches. I searched my thoughts for something to say.

  The revelers around the bar started in on a new tune and for a while it was too loud in the bar to know if Argentum was saying something. We sat there looking at one another. Finally, when the song died down and the singers moved to refill their ale cups, I answered. “She was killed. Killed along the Broken Road.” He made no indication of having heard me. “A few weeks into our trip, she disappeared. We found her dead outside of Methow, along with most of the town’s citizens.”

  “Ah, yes. My clients know that much. They want to know how. How did she die?”

  His clients? Who was this guy? Upon our return to Lovat I had wired her family, explained the situation and offered to do what I could. There was no reply. The response from the Shalers had been silence.

  I stuck to the official story. “She was murdered. Some loon had been terrorizing the town. A fellow named Cur—er... Boden was responsible. He had been killing people for years.”

  “Yes, the article written about you in the Ledger said as much, but it was as light on the details as you are right now. I want details, Mister Bell. Specific details.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why exactly are you here? If you wanted to ask me questions about Shaler you could’ve wired me. A personal trip...”

  I didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I’m working for William Shaler.” A clammy moisture crept into my palms. The bar had been chilly when we entered but now it felt hot and oppressive. The revelers’ songs, so full of joy when we walked in now seemed dark and sinister. I wanted to leave. “He contacted the Society, filed an official petition for recompense and received no response. After the allotted time they contacted their local chapterhouse and placed a writ of collection. The price was set. I have been assigned as the collector.”

  A damned collector. Carter’s cross.

  The Society of Collectors work in large part with banks and brokers. They assume the role of repo men, making sure debtors pay what they owe. It gets darker when they can’t. Collectors have been known to take the debt any way they deem necessary. Even with flesh. Aboveground organ sales are legal and common in Lovat but they fetch incredible prices on the black market. If a collector was assigned to the Shaler case, then it had been approved. It was all above-board. That wasn’t good.

  “What does the Society want with me?” I asked. A dribble of sweat trickled down my back.

  “The Society wants nothing with you, truly. It’s William Shaler you wronged. You owe him recompense for what happened.”

  “
I don’t understand. Bell Caravans sent a formal apology. We refunded the full amount paid and we’re planning to garnish profits for the predetermined amount. The contract has been followed to the letter. Legally, we should be settled.” I could hear the waver in my voice.

  Argentum nodded slowly and ran his long fingers through his hair. “Recompense has been set. You still owe a sum of twenty-five thousand lira. While this won’t adequately cover the life lost, Mister Shaler believes it will be a suitable punishment for your... er, mishandling of the situation.”

  “Mishandling?” I paused. “Wait... did you say twenty-five thousand?”

  He nodded his head again.

  “We all know the value of a life, Mr. Bell. Mister Shaler’s demands are, well... quite fair.”

  Carter’s cross! I tried to come up with words to spit. I wanted to reach across the table and throttle him but I also felt my own throat tightening. Twenty-five thousand? I hadn’t ever seen ten thousand, let alone twenty-five. It was an impossible sum. Argentum’s posture seemed to imply he knew that. I knew what was coming next.

  “As with all Societal contracts, failure to pay on time will result in the process moving forward. Something I know neither of us wants. It’s messy work, organ extraction.”

  So, that was it. William Shaler wanted me dead. This was no fair request. This was a revenge-collection. Usually debtors approach the creditor and work out a payment strategy before calling in the Society. He hadn’t done that. He’d bypassed dialog and went directly to them. This sum was chosen precisely so I would end up under a bonesaw. My insides squirmed at the thought.