With most of his body obscured, it was an open question how exactly the gatekeeper responded to this piece of information. But the eyes, at least, clouded up with fear. “Who you be?”
“Someone who knows who to ask for.”
The peephole slammed shut. The Captain heard the sound of a bolt unlocking, then the door opened to reveal a massive porcupine in a fine suit, perfectly tailored to allow for his prickly pines, any one of which was half again the size of the Captain.
“Welcome to the Setting Moon Café, sir. House policy requires all weapons be passed over for safekeeping.” The bouncer’s thick patois had been replaced with an upscale accent, but a quiver broke through it, as if the mention of the Underground Man was an invocation sufficient to unsettle him.
The Captain handed over his revolver. It represented perhaps a solid quarter of his armaments, though if the porcupine realized this he was wise enough not to make it an issue. “Speak to the bartender, sir, about your business,” he said, then, breaking role suddenly, he set a hand on the Captain’s arm. “If you’re certain you want to be about it.”
The Captain shook off the porcupine’s grip and descended the stairs without responding.
It would have come as a surprise to the homeless and destitute creatures who eked out a miserable existence on the streets above that their block—indeed, the neighborhood—was little more than camouflage, rough casing for the subterranean organs below. Beneath the boarded-up row houses was a sprawling citadel of sin, decadent and opulent, beautiful and corrupt. Scantily clad females carried trays of liquor to powerful males, threading their way through poker tables and roulette wheels. In one corner was a stage, though at the moment it was vacant of any entertainment. In another a door led to a suite of back rooms, and the pleasures on offer there were always available, so long as you had coin to pay.
The Captain paid no attention to the decor, or the females, or their clientele. The Captain was singular in his single-mindedness. He took an empty stool at the back counter, far away from the few packs of revelers, and he waved down the bartender.
“Whiskey? Smoke? Something more satisfying?”
“I’ll take the first,” the Captain said, pulling a cigar from a pocket and lighting it. “And I’ve got the second.”
“How about the third?” the bartender asked with practiced charm.
The straight line of the Captain’s mouth didn’t waver. “I’m here to see the Underground Man.”
The bartender went wide-eyed and threw back the shot of whiskey he had just poured for the Captain. “She knows you’re coming?”
“Who knows what the Underground Man knows?”
“Who indeed?” The bartender poured himself another glass and drank that as well. “I’ll let her know you’re here. If she don’t wanna see you . . .” The bartender shrugged. “You probably won’t be seen again.”
The Captain didn’t seem impressed by that. The bartender disappeared into a back door.
It was a slow night or the guinea pig probably wouldn’t have bothered. The Captain did not seem desperate for company, though on the other hand, company was usually the reason animals made their way to the Setting Moon Café. So she sidled two seats over, drawing the Captain’s attention with her ample bulk.
“Not interested,” he said flatly.
She smiled. She was pretty, for a guinea pig, if you didn’t mind them heavy. If you did mind them heavy you probably wouldn’t go for a guinea pig. “Slow down a minute, sugar. No one’s asking for a ring. How about you just buy me a drink?”
“I’m not paying for this one,” the Captain said. “I could not pay for another.” He reached over the bar and grabbed a glass, then filled it from the bottle before sliding it to her. He had to stretch.
She recognized his courtesy with a quick bob of her head, then took a sip of her drink. Time passed. She fluttered her eyelashes and offered a coquettish smile. But the Captain’s shallow reserve of gentility was depleted, and he ignored the bait.
She decided to go for broke. “I could put a smile on your face,” she whispered, running the pink of her tail down the Captain’s leg.
“No, you couldn’t,” he said, and his one good eye didn’t look at her.
Another moment beside his ground-glass scowl and she decided he was probably right. As her hope for a transaction evaporated her demeanor changed, leavened into something more natural. “What’re you here for then?”
The Captain rolled a few fingers of liquor down the recess of his throat. “I’m here to see the devil.”
A flicker of fear, though she hid it swiftly. “I’m not sure I know him, stranger.”
The Captain poured another charge into his cup, disposed of it with one neat motion. “Everybody knows the devil. But not everyone works for her.”
The guinea pig swallowed hard. “I don’t know anything about that, stranger. I stick to my own business.”
Now the Captain did smile, though she found she wished he hadn’t. “Let’s hope that’s enough to save you.”
The bartender came out from the back then, shaking his head in wonder or fear. “She’ll see you, stranger,” he began. “Follow that passage to the end.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, perhaps to try to dissuade the Captain, but in the end he remained silent. The mouse did not look like the sort of creature who left a place with his aims unfulfilled. And besides, security had already marked him. One way or the other, he was going to see the Underground Man. The open question was whether he’d come back out again.
The Captain slid off his stool and walked into the back, without a word of thanks or farewell for the bartender or his erstwhile companion. The door led to a long corridor, and then to a second door, grim and featureless. He banged his tiny fist against the wood. It opened almost immediately, the dour rats behind it apprised of the Captain’s arrival.
Rats are not, generally speaking, friendly creatures, but even by the standard of their species the small plague rats were particularly menacing. They did, however, upend the age-old species stereotype of being unhygienic and ill-disciplined, in fact exhibiting a neat uniformity in dress and manner, clad in well-fitting black fatigues and scowls to match the Captain’s own. Or nearly, at least; the Captain was a hell of a scowler.
This time the search was thorough, and the Captain ended it without his irons or much of his dignity. The former concerned him more than the latter.
Two of the rats hustled the Captain down another wandering corridor, spending a long few minutes in silence. They were thorough professionals, and the knowledge that they might well find themselves firing their shouldered scatterguns at the mouse’s back precluded any misplaced cordiality. For his part, the Captain just didn’t like talking.
They came to a final door, ebony accented in rosewood, a centered doorknob of sterling silver. “She’s ahead of you,” one of the rats ventured. “And we’re behind.”
If the Captain felt any way about this, you couldn’t have told from his face. He opened the door and stepped inside.
The Underground Man’s sanctuary was a towering cylindrical chamber, as dissimilar to the rest of the Setting Moon Café as the Setting Moon Café was to the surrounding neighborhood. Its defining feature was the bookshelves that wrapped around the walls, housing thousands upon thousands of leather-bound volumes, a rolling ladder offering access to their wisdom. At floor level the concentric circles of an Oriental rug strangled a jet-black desk. A single gas lamp dangled down from a long chain attached to the distant ceiling. There was a small door opposite the one the Captain had just come through, which led, presumably, into the owner’s sleeping quarters.
In the center of this vast edifice of erudition, surrounded by a ring of the most jaded debauchery, encompassed finally by abject poverty, stood a fat mole in Eastern pajamas. She took a few steps toward the Captain, her blind eyes twinkling through bifocals. Her hands were crossed inside her wide sleeves. Her pink snout quivered in the air, inspecting the new arrival.
Behind the Captain the guards fingered their weapons, prepping for the kill.
“My old friend,” the Underground Man said, extending her hand. “My dear old friend.”
The Captain took it. “Gertrude.” He nodded to the books, or perhaps to the building that surrounded them. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
Gertrude shrugged self-effacingly at the surrounding splendor. “One has to keep busy. And you? How have you occupied the last half-decade?”
“I joined a nunnery.”
“Here soliciting donations?”
“Not exactly.”
“No, I imagined not. Now would be the time—the Capital rots, the country boils, the roads are awash in banditry and disorder.” She scratched her chin, settled her arms around a rotund belly. “Have you thought about how you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“Loquacious as ever.” Gertrude burped a laugh. “I assume it begins with the Elder.”
The Captain grunted.
“He should be easy enough to find. And if you’ve got everyone together, easy enough to get. But what happens after?”
The Captain shrugged. A silent moment dripped away. “I figured that was where you came in.”
“I suppose I might be of some assistance. Though that does raise another issue.” She went to the bar on her desk, filled two glasses with a golden liquid trapped in an opaque decanter, turned, and handed one to her guest. “What’s in it for me?”
The Captain sipped his drink, but above it his eyes didn’t leave the mole. “You could be the Lady of the Manor.”
“I couldn’t. And besides, I don’t want to be Lady.”
“Me, neither. But I wouldn’t mind whispering in her ear.”
“You say that, but I’m not sure I believe you.” Gertrude drained a few fingers of alcohol through her long snout. “At the bottom, I think there’s nothing in this for you but blood.”
“So what do you want?” the Captain asked testily. He was not a fellow who enjoyed having his mind probed.
Gertrude gestured casually at her surroundings, opulence flavored with refinement. “I have it. What we had hoped to gain collectively, I’ve taken on my own.”
“Would you do it for the sake of old times?”
“I rather think not. We are creatures little troubled by such extravagances as loyalty—and even still, your probable suicide mission would be stretching the bonds.”
“Then do it because we’re going to go for it whether you throw your hand in or not. If you stay out of it, and it goes our way, then you’ll be left in the cold. And if you stay out of it, and we fail . . . I imagine you might experience a brief twinge of regret.”
Gertrude smirked. “Very brief.”
A few more seconds drifted by, then Gertrude sighed and made a motion dismissing her guards. “It would be nice to see the Dragon again,” she admitted. “And of course, there is that lingering question of who exactly betrayed us.”
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” the Captain said, his visage more than usually terrible.
Chapter 11: Gertrude’s Arrival
Gertrude came in through the back door, looking very little like the criminal despot the Captain had spoken to some three weeks earlier. She had swapped her Eastern garb for a faded calico dress, homespun and homely.
Cinnabar leaned over to the Captain. “That’s everyone, then?”
“Not quite.”
Chapter 12: Elf
The crew was arguing. The crew spent a lot of time arguing.
“It was Harelip and Half-Eye Pete. How do you think he got that half-eye?” Barley asked.
“I had always assumed he was born with it,” Bonsoir said.
“You thought he was born with a knife scar running from his forehead to his lip?”
Bonsoir shrugged and made a popping sound with his mouth. “It was not an issue I felt compelled to contemplate.”
“We worked with them for two years,” Gertrude insisted. “How could you not have known they were lovers? Or that, when they stopped being lovers, Harelip cut out half of Half-Eye Pete’s eye?”
“Hello, friends,” interrupted the creature who appeared then from the darkness.
Cinnabar had a revolver out and cocked almost instantaneously, and a second thereafter Bonsoir kicked his chair from beneath him and came up with a length of steel. Gertrude shifted behind Barley, who had assumed his full height menacingly, and Boudica went for the holdout piece she kept in her boot.
Only the Captain remained in his chair, unruffled, sipping from his jug. “Hello, Elf.”
Elf was small for an owl, barely taller than Bonsoir. Her feathers, once smooth and tawny, had grown mottled and spare with age, but the cold horn of her beak seemed keen as ever. Her eyes were sulfur-yellow and wide as saucers, and they seemed not to blink, nor even to shudder. She stood indifferently on talons sharp as the scorn of a lover, the weight of her body tilted with curious asymmetry. Some earlier injury had shattered the bone of her left wing, and it curled up against her body and contorted her posture.
A long moment slipped past as the crew resumed their resting positions. Once seated, they did not fall over themselves in excitement to greet the new arrival. Cinnabar nodded. Barley allowed himself a brief grunt.
It is generally not possible to determine, from their expression alone, what a bird is feeling—a beak can tear, rend, or peck, but it cannot smile or frown—so it is possible that Elf was terribly offended by this lackadaisical welcome, and simply unable to show it. It seems unlikely, however.
“Why don’t you have yourself a seat?” the Captain asked. “Reconquista can find you something to drink.”
There was something very much like a collective gasp of discomfort from the seated assemblage.
“No, thank you, Captain,” Elf responded in her quiet monotone. “The trip here was long, and I much prefer the stars.” She ducked her head in a nod, once to the mouse, once to the rest of the group, then turned toward the door. Belaying the utter quiet of her approach, her exit was loud and slow, claws rapping against wood. “Oh, Captain,” Elf began again, head swiveling backward, “if the rat might find a bowl of milk for me, I would be grateful.”
“Of course,” the Captain responded amiably. “I’ll have it sent right out.”
Elf nodded the full moon of her backward face, then swung it forward and hobbled out into the night. The silence filled with apprehension.
“God of the Gardens, Captain, what the hell is she doing here?”
“We’ll need her before the end.”
“I was sure she was dead.”
“She can’t even scout for us anymore, with that wing.”
The Captain growled, more of a squeak really, but it had the same effect. “We’ll need her before the end.”
The crowd quieted and turned back to their drinks. The Captain had given the word, and if you didn’t trust the Captain to take care of his end, then there wasn’t any point in being there. But still, no one looked happy.
Chapter 13: The Plan
“So that’s the plan,” the Captain said, although actually it was only part of it.
Boudica took her hat off, looked at it a while, then put it back on her head. Gertrude twittered her snout. Cinnabar smoked a cigarette.
“What about when it’s over?” Barley asked. “What do we do then?”
Bonsoir chittered suddenly, his oblong body shaking with mirth. “‘When it’s over?” He laughed again, louder and longer, till his fur stood on end; he seemed convulsed with glee. “We are planning on facing the entire might of the Gardens with only the seven of us, and you are worried about your soft retirement? Do not worry, my friend, we won’t be around to enjoy it!”
The good humor spread back to Barley, who smiled sheepishly. Gertrude offered her meaningless little smirk, and Boudica was grinning anyway. Lizards don’t exactly have lips, but Cinnabar seemed vaguely happy all the same. Even the Captain smiled.
Sort of. It was close. It
counted for the Captain.
Chapter 14: Later . . .
“What happened to the Captain’s eye?” Bonsoir asked Barley while getting steadily drunk in the corner.
“That day when—”
“What day?”
“That day.”
“Oh. That day.”
“Yeah. Anyway. Remember Alfalfa the hare? Said pistols bored him, liked to do his work with dynamite?”
“Sure. He still owes me money.”
“I wouldn’t expect to collect. Mephetic turned him, I dunno how. Once the trouble started he lit one of those boom sticks. Captain put him down, but . . .” Barley shrugged his swelled shoulders. “Not fast enough. The explosion took out the Captain’s eye, and it did for that half of Reconquista that isn’t there anymore.”
“I always liked that half.”
“I imagine Reconquista was partial to it as well.”
Chapter 15: And Later . . .
“I don’t remember her being so crazy,” Bonsoir began. Bonsoir often began things wiser members of the company preferred to leave sleeping.
“She was always off,” Barley said. Slurred, really.
“She was always off, but she was not always like this.”
“You can’t trust a bird.”
“You can’t trust anyone.”
“She took the betrayal hard.”
“I didn’t like it any more than she did,” Bonsoir responded. “But I didn’t let it drive me mad either.”
“You didn’t lose your arm,” Barley growled.
“It’s not the wound,” Gertrude chimed in. “It’s the one who made it.”
“You mean the Quaker?” This from Bonsoir.
“Can you remember how they used to be together? They refused to be separated. Not in camp or on a job, not sleeping or waking. When Elf toileted, he used to coil outside.”
“I remember.”
“One thing to be betrayed by a friend. Another entirely to be betrayed by a lover.”
The Builders Page 3
