The Cityborn

by Edward Willett

  Danyl drew his own blade, and it was a real sword: a Provost’s dress sword, in fact, identical to the ones on the hips of the Provosts who had escorted her from her room that morning. It gleamed in the dim light. “Let us pass,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Don’t worry,” said the first twin. “You won’t.” And then she charged, low and hard.

  Alania gasped and took a step back, but Danyl, moving faster than she’d ever seen anyone move, twisted out of the way of the woman’s thrust and drove the hilt of his weapon down onto the back of her skull. She crumpled.

  Her sister, already in motion, tried to strike while Danyl was preoccupied, but he’d clearly anticipated her attack. Her blade whistled over his head as he ducked under the stroke and drove his shoulder into her. She stumbled, tripped over her unconscious sister, and fell off the ledge. She shrieked as she splashed into the glistening pool and thrashed, a mindless scream of agony, but her struggles and screams lasted only an instant. Her clothing dissolved, her skin melted, and she sank from sight, curdled eyes staring sightlessly up from the sockets of her exposed skull as she disappeared.

  Alania turned her head, gorge rising, but a roar sounded from behind them, and she twisted back that way to see the big man with the spear jumping off the ladder and running toward them. Danyl grabbed her hand, and they jumped over the remaining twin and hurried on.

  Lungs on fire, eyes watering, she collided with Danyl’s back a minute later as he stumbled to a halt at the end of the ledge, where the tank joined the wall of metal. She saw a closed hatch, a lockplate beside it, and for a moment dared to hope that Danyl had a key to open it and let her back into the City. She’d find the elevators, ride back up to Twelfth Tier, turn herself over to Kranz, settle gladly into her new life as ward of the First Officer . . .

  But Danyl didn’t open the hatch. Instead, he turned to another ladder and scrambled up it. Alania climbed up after him only to find her guide standing frozen in place atop the tank wall, staring back across the liquid-filled valley they had crossed earlier toward the mound into which she had plunged. She followed his gaze.

  Cark stood at the top of the mound, rifle aimed. Alania glanced at Danyl and saw a red dot over his heart. “Nice try,” Cark said. “But not good enough. I didn’t want to waste ammo on you, but now I’m thinking I will.” His scarred face split into a predatory grin. “And just because you’ve pissed me off, after I’ve killed you—and properly initiated the girl into the Rustbloods—I think I’ll even waste another bullet on that old man you shack up with in that miserable hovel of yours. After all, he won’t want to hang on after his fuckboy is gone, will he?”

  Alania heard a noise behind her and looked down to see the big man who had pursued them staring up at her from the ladder. “Fun’s over, little girl,” he snarled, and seized her ankle.

  Alania reacted without thinking, half turning and driving her free leg back as hard as she could. Her foot connected with the man’s nose, and as blood splattered, he released her ankle to rear back, roaring in pain. Alania turned the rest of the way and stamped down on his fingers on the ladder’s top rung. He let go and overbalanced. His hand shot out in a desperate grab for the ladder, but he was already falling backward. She saw his eyes, wide and white and suddenly terrified, above his bloody nose, and then, with a hoarse cry, he vanished into the dimness.

  She turned away in horror, realizing what she’d done, and heard him splash into the liquid far below. If anything, his scream was even more high-pitched than the woman’s, but just as short-lived. Alania’s knees gave way, and she dropped to the top of the concrete wall, leaned forward, and vomited into the trash.

  “You’ll pay for that, you fancy little bitch!” Cark bellowed. “Right after I—” Suddenly, he turned to look behind him at something Alania couldn’t see on the other side of the mound. He stiffened. “Wait—” he began, but he got no further before the top of his head blew off, just like the head of the Provost who had been escorting Alania on Twelfth Tier. He fell backward and out of sight. A moment later, a new face appeared over the ridge of trash: an old face, brown-skinned, framed by gray hair peeking out from beneath a black cap.

  “Don’t just stand there, boy!” the new arrival shouted. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Erl!” Danyl cried, and the joy in his voice suddenly made him sound so youthful that Alania wondered if she’d misjudged his age and he was actually younger than she. He leaned down to Alania, still on her hands and knees, and held out his hand. “Come on!”

  She heard shouts from down in the tank: the surviving Rustbloods hurrying toward them along the ledge. Swiping the back of her arm across her vomit-fouled mouth, she grabbed Danyl’s hand, let him pull her to her feet, and then jumped with him onto the slope of rubbish. They stagger-stumbled down it.

  Erl, whoever he was, stayed put. Like Cark, he had a weapon: not an ancient slugthrower, but a modern beamer rifle, like the ones the black-clad attackers on Twelfth Tier had been carrying. He kept it aimed over Alania’s and Danyl’s heads. It flashed once just as Alania and Danyl splashed through the oily sewage they’d tobogganed into before, and someone cried out, though in anger rather than pain; the shot must have missed. The foul black liquid around Alania’s ankles seemed homey and clean after what she’d seen in the Hazardous Waste Holding Tank. They scrambled out of the pool and up the slope toward Erl. When they reached him, he snapped to Danyl, “Grab Cark’s rifle. We’re going to need it.”

  Alania glanced at Cark’s body, saw what was left of his head, and her stomach rebelled again. She leaned over, hands on her knees, and threw up the final sour contents of her stomach. Then Danyl, now with Cark’s rifle slung over his back, grabbed her hand once more.

  Mouth bitter with bile, eyes streaming, throat raw as sandpaper, stinking like a sewer, Alania Beruthi staggered with Danyl and Erl through the teetering, slimy piles of the Middens and promised herself that if she ever made it back to Twelfth Tier, she would never leave it again.

  NINE

  DANYL HOPED LIKE HELL Alania was as valuable as he thought she was, because she’d already almost gotten him killed four times by his count, and he’d only known her for twenty minutes. Now, covered in oily sewage, face covered with drying blood from the already-closed cut on her forehead, with a little vomit on her blouse for good measure, she didn’t seem like someone anyone would want to claim. But if she was telling the truth about being Lieutenant Beruthi’s ward . . .

  Time enough to worry about that when they got to safety, which for the first time he thought they might have a realistic chance of. The Rustbloods, thanks to Erl’s unexpected arrival with a weapon Danyl had never even had an inkling existed, had been decapitated. Almost literally in Cark’s case, of course, but with Burl and at least one of the twins gone as well, no one was likely to come after them. Not right away, at least. And probably not any time soon, either. The Rustbloods were going to be busy fighting each other as wannabe Cark-replacements jockeyed for position.

  Erl slowed soon enough. He was in his sixties, after all—although to tell the truth, he wasn’t panting much harder than Danyl and not nearly as hard as Alania when at last the pace eased. As soon as he had the breath to speak, Danyl demanded an answer to the first question on his mind: “Where the hell did you get a beamer rifle?”

  “I’m a man of mystery,” Erl said. “You should know that by now.” He glanced over his shoulder, and Danyl followed his gaze. Nothing moved among the mounds of rubbish along their trail. “I don’t think we’re being followed, though I’m not sure why. Cark is dead, but Burl would—”

  Danyl realized Erl hadn’t seen what Alania had done. “Burl is dead, too,” he said.

  “What?” Erl looked surprised. “How?”

  “I kicked him into the hazardous waste pool,” Alania said. She was trudging along, head down, and she didn’t look up as she spoke. Her voice sounded flat and strain
ed. If not in shock, next thing to it, Danyl thought.

  Erl barked a harsh laugh. “That would do it. Still, the Rustbloods will regroup and come after us eventually. And the Greenskulls might have been watching. With Cark dead, they might try a raid on this side of the Middens.”

  “At least we’re armed.” Danyl hefted Cark’s rifle, still sticky with the dead gang leader’s blood. “With this and that beamer rifle . . .”

  “We could hold them off for maybe half an hour,” Erl said. “And then they’d overrun us.” He glanced at the girl again. “You’re Alania Beruthi.”

  Danyl stared at him. “How do you know that?”

  Alania reacted more slowly, as if she had to surface from deep underwater. She looked up and blinked. “You know who I am?”

  “I do. And you are not supposed to be down here.” There was a strange undercurrent to his words, and Danyl knew Erl well enough to recognize it: anger. But why?

  “No,” she said. “I’m supposed to be in Quarters Kranz.”

  Danyl stumbled a little as he jerked his head around to look at her. “Kranz? As in First Officer Kranz?”

  Alania nodded. “As of today, he’s my guardian. Provosts came to get me this morning from Quarters Beruthi. We were passing the Core when . . . someone . . . attacked. With beamers just like that one.” She nodded at Erl’s surprising weapon. “They killed one of the Provosts. They tried to get me to go with them, but some more Provosts arrived unexpectedly. There was more shooting, and . . . I panicked. There was a bunch of rubbish being loaded into a freight elevator. I ran into it, the door closed behind me . . .”

  “And you got dumped into our laps.” Erl shook his head, lips pressed thin.

  Danyl frowned at him. What is he angry about? “You knew that drop was happening.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t know she’d be in the middle of it. I didn’t even know she existed until today.”

  And there it is. That’s what he’s really angry about. But why? Why does he think he should have known Alania existed? And if he just found out she exists, how does he know her name?

  “Can you take me home?” Alania asked plaintively. Danyl, looking back at her again, found himself staring once more into eyes the same ice-blue color as his own. That startling similarity made him uncomfortable. He turned away and focused on the path.

  “No,” Erl said. “The last place I want you to go is ‘home’ to First Officer Kranz. And it should be the last place you want to go, too.”

  “I don’t understand.” Alania sounded as if she were about to cry, and Danyl felt a strange sense of panic, like he should do something, anything, to stop that from happening. How odd, he thought; but then, his experience with girls had been limited to trying not to be killed by Sara and Lora, which was unlikely to be representative of normal male/female relationships. If it were, the human race would surely have died out by now.

  “No, you don’t,” Erl agreed. “And I’m sorry, but I can’t explain it to you. You’ll just have to trust me.”

  Danyl felt a surge of irritation, some of it aimed at Erl, who had clearly kept even more secrets from Danyl than he’d thought—that impossible beamer rifle of his was proof enough of that—and some of it aimed at Alania. The whole situation frustrated him. She was the most valuable bit of salvage that had appeared in the Middens in his lifetime. She should have been his ticket to a City Pass. But it turned out she was too valuable. Ward of the First Officer? If what she said was true, the Provosts would come to the Middens for her, with overwhelming force. If they found him and Erl with Alania, they were as good as dead.

  Is that why Erl won’t help her get home? Because if she goes home and talks about us . . . ?

  He frowned. No, that was too simplistic. Erl might not have known she’d existed until that morning, but the fact he had shown up so fortuitously to rescue her had to mean he had somehow found out she was going to be in that Drop. Not only that, he’d produced a beamer rifle out of nowhere in order to rescue her. Alania said it looked the same as the beamers used by the men who had tried to snatch her from the Provosts on Twelfth Tier.

  There’s something else going on.

  “Home sweet home,” Erl said as they reached the rickety staircase that led up to the hovel they supposedly shared.

  Danyl glanced at Alania again to see what she made of it, but she was staring blankly at nothing much in particular, her face white. Who could blame her? She’d been in the Middens for . . . what? Three-quarters of an hour? And already she’d fallen three stories and been buried in garbage, threatened with rape, covered in sewage, held at gunpoint, and chased by armed thugs. She’d seen two nasty deaths and caused another. Moved by the same strange impulse that had made him want to stop her from crying, he put out a hand and touched her shoulder. “There’s clean water and clean clothes and hot food waiting inside,” he said gently. “Just a little farther.”

  She nodded, biting her lip, and let him lead her to the staircase.

  He climbed up first with Alania close behind and Erl, scanning their trail with his beamer rifle at the ready, bringing up the rear. Danyl opened the hovel’s unlocked door and ushered Alania in. Erl crowded in after her. “Still nobody in sight,” he said.

  Danyl nodded and moved to the back of the hut.

  Alania, meanwhile, was staring around in obvious horror. “You live here?”

  “No,” Danyl said. He put his hand on the biometric scan plate hidden behind one of the boards of the wall, and the camouflaged inside door swung open. “It’s our front porch.” He stepped through the door into the smooth reddish stone corridor beyond, then turned and held out his hand to Alania, who was staring open-mouthed down the long tunnel. “Please come in.”

  She took his hand again, and he led her forward. Behind them, Erl closed and secured the door.

  They paused at the side room for Danyl to strip out of his scavenging coverall, leaving him feeling much cleaner. “I’ll go ahead,” Erl said. “There’s food cooking.” He went on down the corridor while Alania hung back, watching as Danyl hung up the heavy synthileather garment and tucked away the gloves and goggles and boots, the tool belt, and the backpack. Then he picked up Cark’s rifle again and led her the rest of the way to the main living quarters.

  As Erl had promised, Danyl could smell something good (although it would have smelled better without the overlay of sewage from Alania’s filthy blouse and pants): probably stew made with vatmeat and whatever Erl had traded for at the Last Chance Market. Danyl still remembered the real meat he’d had after the trashslide when he was twelve; he could count on one hand the number of times he’d had it since.

  “First things first,” Erl said. “Get the docbot. Those cuts on Alania’s forehead and cheek need attention.”

  Alania put a hand to her forehead as if she’d forgotten she’d been wounded. “It’s already closed,” she mumbled. “I heal fast.”

  Danyl said nothing; he would have expected any similar wounds on his face to close just as fast.

  “I see that,” Erl said. “But we should check them out just the same.”

  She nodded.

  While Erl led Alania to one of the chairs at the dining table, Danyl leaned Cark’s rifle against the wall beside the entrance, then went down the hallway to the metal cabinet containing the docbot. As a kid, he’d never questioned their possession of the thing, yet in some ways it was the most surprising item in their dwelling. Erl claimed he’d obtained it by bartering salvaged items at the Last Chance Market. Certainly Erl roamed the Middens solo, just as Danyl did, and so he could have discovered salvage Danyl knew nothing about, but finding anything valuable enough to trade for a docbot—even an old one—and keep it stocked with supplies seemed . . . implausible.

  Finding something valuable enough to trade for a beamer rifle seemed downright impossible.

  Danyl’s current theory was that Erl had f
ound a very unusual stash somewhere, perhaps a crashed aircar. When he was younger, he’d briefly convinced himself that Erl had found his way into one of the mysterious Cubes, but he knew better now. If there were any way into those things, they would have long since been emptied.

  The docbot, a simple sphere about twenty centimeters in diameter in its dormant state, was far heavier than its size would suggest. Danyl carried it into the dining room, set it on the floor, and activated it. Its spindly legs sprouted from its sides, and the glowing blue scanner orb extended and turned to Danyl. “Please select a function,” the docbot said in its girlish voice.

  “First aid,” Danyl said.

  “Please identify the injured person.”

  “The only female present,” Danyl said. The scanner orb surveyed the room, and then the docbot click-click-clicked across the stone floor to the table, where Erl was using a napkin he’d wetted in the kitchen to clean some of the blood from Alania’s forehead. Sure enough, the wound had closed, but the flesh around it still looked red and puffy.

  “Please remove the patient’s clothing to permit diagnosis and treatment,” the docbot said, and Alania’s eyes widened.

  “Unnecessary,” Erl said crisply. “Examine head only.” He stepped back from the table, and the docbot click-clicked into the space he’d vacated.

  Alania blinked at it. “It’s so . . . old-fashioned,” she said. “We have a docbot in Quarters Beruthi, but it’s nothing like this one. It’s a full-body cabinet I have to climb into.”

  “Trust me,” Erl said. “This one works just fine.” He glanced at Danyl. “Danyl also heals fast, but he’s still needed some fix-up work over the years. Not to mention regular checkups.”

  “I get them every six months,” Alania said.

  “So do I,” Danyl said with a grimace, remembering being poked and prodded by the docbot while standing naked in a cold stone chamber.