“Probably worth more than Gaddi’s boat, too,” Ivarr said. “That’s real gold they used for paint.” He pointed to a winding knot in the border that sure enough, shown when the light hit it. Real gold.
“Gaddi mightn’t like you giving me such a treasure.”
Ivarr shrugged. “Better in your hands than his. He wouldn’t appreciate it, and he’d just lose sleep over how to find a buyer.”
“Ever considerate of your employer’s comfort,” I said with a smirk.
He grinned back. “You like it?”
“Like it? Did you have a chance to look at it yourself?” I asked as I turned the page with as gentle a touch as I could manage. The lines of the saga covered the right side, save for the knotted border, and a scene with a boat in high waves covered the left.
“Every chance I got, which wasn’t as many as I’d have liked.”
“Let’s look at it now,” I said, and settled myself on his pile of blankets. Ivarr hesitated and then joined me.
~~~
I don’t bother offering myself to Ivarr anymore, on account of he turned me down the first dozen times I did. So I stayed for a couple of hours, just looking at the Elga, talking about the saga and the pictures with him. I reckon that’s what he likes most, and why he brings me books, after all—to have someone to share them with.
He had to lend me a burlap sack to carry them back with me. If I’d known he’d give me three, I’d have brung a bag of my own. But as it was, I’d be hindered a bit by the sack, since the Elga was so heavy. I’d have to take care not to find myself in a situation where I’d need to move right fast, especially climbing over rubble.
“You going to be alright?” he asked as I slung the sack over my shoulder.
“I’ll make do.”
“How bad is it these days?”
“Oh, you know. Keep to the quiet routes and I should be fine.”
He nodded, the lines in his forehead darker for the shadows cast by the fire now that night was falling. “You could stay the night,” he said, and for a moment I wondered if he meant he wanted me in his bed after all. “I mean, there’s plenty of blankets for both of us, and I gather no one’s fixed up the streetlights. You could get hurt out there.”
I shrugged, feeling an odd loss when I realized he still didn’t want me. But why let that trouble me? Ivarr’s the only friend I have who never asked for owt from me. I didn’t want that to change. “It’s not the first time I’ve crossed the city in the dark. I’ve got a glim.” I showed Ivarr the little electric torch I got from Spraki way back when I first met him.
“Nice,” Ivarr said, taking it and looking at it close. “I’ve never seen one so small. Where’d you get it?”
I shook my head. “Just found it in some rubble. Lucky it still works.”
He handed it back to me, raising an eyebrow but not saying he doubted my story.
I can’t go telling anyone about Spraki, though, and the fact I’d next be on my way to see him only reminded me of that more powerful-like. I headed for the window and the fire escape, and paused for just a moment on the sill, turning back to Ivarr. “Thanks for the books,” I said, raising the hand that held the sack.
“My pleasure,” he answered, giving me a wave.
His eyes had their usual sad look, but I thought nothing of it ’cause I knew it was just the way the lids look heavy.
~~~
Jarl Tafglæggi Spraki nearly died at the celebration for Tyrablót on account of his being convicted of treason alongside Raud Gríma. He escaped, like she did, but she left the city, wouldn’t you know, while he went into the Undergrunnsby to hide. I suppose he worked in the Machine all along. They say the reason they convicted him was he gave Raud Gríma his inventions to use for her aims; Spraki’s a right brilliant scientist, by the Eye. I never knew what the Machine was or who was using it and to what ends, leastways, not ’til after the city fell.
It’s hard to predict what you’ll find when you ain’t looking for it. Some months past I was making my way through the Undergrunnsby, trying to find a way cross a part everyone said was too wrecked to pass through, ’cause that’s how you come up with quiet paths, don’t you know. I come across the Machine and Spraki just outside of it. When he seen me he froze like a panicked cat what don’t know which way to run first. Lucky for me I had food to trade, and he had the glim he done give me.
When Ótti first wanted something to help her sleep, I didn’t know where to go. I wound up back at the Machine hoping Spraki would help me, seeing as how he was a genius scientist and all. Turns out he don’t know much about medicine, but one of the rebels what used to work with him did and left a nice stash to boot. Spraki agreed to trade me for the medicine, along as how he don’t care for leaving his hiding spot and getting seen. Likely everyone what once knew Spraki thinks he’s dead now, and he don’t want to clear up the confusion. Can’t say as I blame him, considering the botched execution and all. So when I see him I don’t just trade sex, but I bring food, as well, and that’s probably what Spraki wants more, when it comes down to it. It’s a cutter, though, ’cause then I end up having to go see another food-broker to get more food for my family.
No one bothers Spraki none on account of the tunnels seem like they’re impassable from the bombing all around the machine. They ain’t; you can find your’n way through if you’re careful-like. I suppose most people don’t care to try. Still, it pays to be cautious, ’cause you never know when a pack of slashers is going to decide to use some ruined part of the tunnels for one of their revels. So I set about crossing through quiet and slow-like, using my glim but keeping it close to my body and ready to cover it if the need arose. Crossing the city at night was sketch enough; crossing the Undergrunnsby at night was asking for trouble.
I reckon it’d have been wiser to go on home and wait ’til morning, but I didn’t feel tired and I’d no wish to see Ótti without her laudanum. The way to Spraki’s was the usual mess, but I never come across no one, so the going was nice as apples. No slashers, no toadies. I used a piece of rubble to knock on the door, making a nice ringing sound. I don’t know if Spraki gets many other visitors, but if he does I don’t reckon they knock like that, ’cause when he opens the door he always knows right off it’s me.
“Luka’s Chains, Ginna,” he growled, pulling the door open wide enough to grab my arm and yank me in. “You’ll bring the roof down on us, if you don’t call every ruffian in the Undergrunnsby here first.”
He shut the door, swinging the big wheel a few turns to lock it.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,” he said, raising his eyebrows at me. Somehow Spraki still gets his tonic, and his hair is slick and black from it. He dresses in a white coat, goggles perched on the crown of his head, black leather gloves what go up to his elbows. He’s not much older’n me, but he talks the posh dialect of the upperlings and it always makes me feel like I’m some stupid child come to bother her betters.
“I got some nice venison strips for you,” I said.
The eyebrows went higher. “Back for more laudanum already?” He turned and started through the maze of white panels what make up the first part of the Machine’s interior. “She’s becoming more dependent on it,” he said over his shoulder.
I shrugged, though he was walking ahead and couldn’t see.
“You might do better to stop procuring it for her,” he said as we come to the open area with the high walk covered in squares. Most of them were dark, but some—they were right strange, and the first time I seen’em I didn’t know what to make of’em. Images moved on them, in shades of gray. People, sometimes. Robots, other times, and that were something, ’cause most of the robots is broken now and don’t move round no more. Spraki explained it: these are like eyes on parts of the city, eyes made of glass and metal parts. They send what they see to the squares in the wall. If I never seen it myself, I would think it was lies if someone told me about it. But there it was. Most of the squares show inside what’s le
ft of the palace, and I reckon that’s ’cause quite a lot of it still stands. Right now, Atli’s faction lives in the palace, and I always have to look at the squares like maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of what he’s up to. Atli’s a nasty piece of work, and no mistake, and he’s at war with Styrlakker and just about every other faction leader in the city. Tonight none of the lit squares showed much of interest, save maybe one with a couple of Atli’s toadies in a bedroom giving each other some entertainment. Rather’n answer Spraki’s comment, I decided it’d please me more to watch the couple while he got his payment. I don’t care much for Spraki, but watching two men can be nice enough, so it was better to do it now’n later.
He was headed for the door in the wall what leads to the lab, and I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to me. He gave me another of his surprised looks, but I pulled at the buttons that line his shoulder on one side of the white coat, and he got the gist soon enough. The coat’s long so it’s an obstacle and he had to help me get it off him, which was further hindered by his black gloves. He never takes those off, though, and I can tell it’d be a bad idea to ask why. And I have to admit, there’s times I like the feel of them well enough anyhow.
Soon as the coat was off I turned around and watched the screen while Spraki fumbled behind me. I’d let him take me like this most times anyway on account of I don’t much like him and don’t want to look at his face. But tonight was better’n most ’cause the two toadies was kissing and moving their hands over each other, and I liked watching that. Then Spraki started putting his leathery fingers ’tween my legs and I could feel my blood start to rush.
“Spread them,” Spraki growled, pushing my thighs with his other hand, and I obliged. I leaned over the counter in front of the wall of squares and watched one of the men move down the other’s body, opening his britches and pulling out his cock. Spraki’s fingers rubbed me while his own cock nudged against my thigh. I bent forward some more, not too far, ’cause the man was wrapping his lips round the other’s cock now and I didn’t want to lose sight. His partner rocked his head back, mouth open. Luka’s Chains, I never wished more’n that moment for sound to come from the squares, but it never did, more’s the pity. Still, I could tell he was moaning. Spraki found his way and thrust in me. I grasped as I watched the two men on the square and felt Spraki’s fingers against me and him inside me, pushing in deeper. “You like it,” he gasped in my ear.
“Yes,” I answered, and he shuddered and gasped some more. I could almost ignore the sound of his voice, what with them leather fingers against me and the men above, and after another moment, I cracked. Spraki kept going a bit, wouldn’t you know, and soon enough I was just waiting for him to be done. Finally he got his kicks off too.
I don’t usually enjoy it with Spraki like that, and in the end it didn’t do me much good. Spraki’s a weasel if ever I seen one, though come to think of it, I’ve only ever seen the human kind. I’d not take him on at all but for Ótti, and on the chance we might need other medicine one day. I wish there was somewhere else to go, but though there’s other folks what sell laudanum and the like, they’re in parts of the city ruled by Ekkill or some other faction, and they know I’m with Styrlakker.
I was back to feeling sick-like, but I didn’t let it show. “Nice as apples,” I said to Spraki as he buttoned himself back up. He looked pleased as a dog. He led me back into the lab on the other side of the door in the wall. It’s a strange place, and I’d not even know what to call it except I read a book once called Kellhevatar’s Heresy, what had a scientist like Spraki who worked in a lab a bit like this one, only much smaller. It ain’t a true story, and the best ones usually ain’t, don’t you know. But when Spraki first showed me around and called the room a laboratory, I had an idea of what he meant. It’s got a dozen tables in regular rows, many of them have sinks attached and metal candles with blue flames if they’re lit. I’ve only seen one lit once and I don’t know what Spraki was using it for, ’cause they ain’t candles you use for light. Since the city fell not many of the electric lights on the walls work no more, so outside the lab Spraki’s got a bunch of glims hung up here and there. Inside, there’re strange things I’ve no names for, blazing coils of lights like the ones what used to glow in the tunnels and on the streets at night, only they’re no glass casings or shades on them, and they’ll blind you if you look at them long enough, I’ll wager. Spraki don’t have to hang no glims in the lab on account of them, but the light they cast is weird and don’t reach the corners, so the room is mostly dark.
Most of the tables in the lab have glass jars of all different shapes and sizes, some resting in simple metal holders or complicated ones with tubes moving liquid from one jar to the next. Then against the far wall there’s tall cabinets, floor to ceiling, with some glass doors and solid doors. That’s where the medicines are, behind one of the solid doors. Spraki’s got keys for the doors he wears on chains round his neck, and I always have to stand and wait for him to try half a dozen of them ’fore he teases out the right one. Today weren’t no different.
“You know to tell her not to ingest more than five drops, don’t you?” Spraki said, handing me a little brown bottle. “And honestly, that’s quite a bit. She’d best limit herself to three or four, that really ought to do the trick if she can’t sleep.”
I never answered, just pocketed the bottle and gave him a nod.
Spraki pulled out a flash watch and gave it a look. “It’s quite late, you know,” he said. “Dawn’s only a few hours away. Perhaps you’d best stay here until then.”
There’d be slashers banging on the walls of the Machine and I still might think twice about hanging about with Spraki. I shook my head. “No thanks. Kind of you to offer, but they’ll be wondering where I am.”
“Suit yourself.”
I set out again through the tunnels. Some of the ones closest to the Machine aren’t so bad, but there’s a spot after those what’s more wrecked than any other passable ones in the whole city, near as I can figure. I was making my way through those, nearly to the other side, when I heard voices. I cut the glim and crouched down in a gap just big enough for me among the broken slabs of concrete.
Someone was wailing, and it sounded like a woman, which was no good to hear at all. Slashers or toadies, sure enough, and though they’d found a plaything already, they’d likely be happy to find another. I shoved myself as far back into the gap as I could, and then light cast a shadow off the slabs that hid me. They were right behind me.
“Please,” the woman begged, and I wanted to tell her it was useless, she was right fucked.
They were laughing and making jokes, and based on the way they weren’t worried about what time it was or nothing, I knew they must be slashers and not toadies. Toadies got a boss to answer to, but not slashers, who’re just stupid boys what lost all sense of all that’s right when the city fell. Some of them used to be rebels and fought the robots and the royal Guard and the Officers of Tyr, but when the fighting ended they found they had such a taste for it they didn’t want to stop. Others are just nasty young men what had nowt better to do, I suppose. ’fore the city fell the Officers used to patrol and if they’d come on a pack of young men they’d have netted them and dumped them in Grumflein, no worries about what they were up to or not. It’s not something anyone worried about at the Tyrablót or after when they was all fighting, I can tell you—what would happen when the Officers was all dead and the royals run off. Maybe if Raud Gríma were here they’d listen to her—leastways the ones what started off fighting for freedom might’ve—but she run off like the royals did, so she was worse than useless. She brought the city down, but she left us with the mess and now this poor woman was going to pay for it.
I heard them rip her clothes off and closed my eyes. The sounds she made got worse and worse, ’til I was pressed back into my hole, jagged edges of concrete digging into my back and sides. I flinched with each new scream and groan. A smell come creeping to me, awful and telling, first blood,
then piss, and sometime later, shit. The slashers kept up their commentary and laughter, but soon enough all I could hear was the woman. She begged for Frigga, for Alfódr, but no Gods helped her. I sure didn’t.
It went on and on. I don’t know how long. You know how it is—something so bad makes time drag, and you can’t be sure if it’s been a minute or an hour. After—who knows, maybe an hour, maybe two, she stopped making noise, but I could hear the shuffles and taps of her body hitting the floor as they kept using her, and the smell just seemed to get worse. I stayed where I was. I kept my eyes closed. I even tried to block my ears, but I had to stop because what if one of them was coming closer? How would I know? I settled on holding a knife in each hand and reciting the first five verses of the Hálfdanar Saga over and over in my head. It tells the story of a prince in the old times, sailing away to escape an attack, and it was the only thing I could think of.
When I hadn’t heard nowt for a time I opened my eyes. The light was gone.
Still I never moved. Not for a while. I listened hard as I could. No sound, though sometimes I thought I heard something—you know how it goes. I stayed hidden. I listened some more and had to admit I’d imagined it. Then I did hear something, but I knew what it was. Or who. She was waking up. When no laughter come, happy shouts and sick jests, I knew she was alone.
Even though I knew it, I found it hard to move. I kept the knives in my hands, my knuckles straining I held them so tight. I shifted my way out, silent as a shadow, stopping, listening. Just the sound of her… wet moans, sounds like sobs only not right. I kept going, careful as before.
Once I was all the way out of the gap I straightened up and forced one hand to shove the knife it held back in the sheath at my waist. I kept the other out. With my free hand—stiff and achy though it was—I got out the glim again and turned it on. Her moans come faster, and I heard a shuffling. As I forced myself to go around the slabs of concrete I’d hidden under I realized what she was doing. She was trying to escape me. She thought I was one of them.
After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2) Page 3
