by Sean Platt
The boy stopped in his tracks.
“Turn around or die,” Pascal said.
The kid ran.
Pascal scanned the area to see that most of the nomads were either in hiding or paralyzed, afraid to approach him.
He hopped on his horse and charged toward the forest, sheathing his blade on the way. He sensed someone coming from behind, then turned to see a large man aiming a crossbow at him.
Pascal fired first.
The man’s shot flew to the sky as he fell to the ground with a freshly fired bolt buried in his chest.
Pascal reached his fellow Rangers adjacent to the woods, yards from a creek.
They were dismounted with Stewart holding Kanjo’s head underwater before pulling the man above the surface and leaving him gasping for air.
“Where is the girl?” Stewart demanded.
“I … I ain’t seen no girl,” he cried out, trying to catch his breath.
Pascal made his way toward the pair.
Stewart pulled Kanjo up.
The man was small, with dark hair hanging over his dark brown eyes. His skin was sunburned and covered in tattoos, symbols of the Old Language, marking his life as a monk before his excommunication from The Order of The Ancients.
Kanjo raked Pascal with his petrified gaze. The monks had another word for people like Pascal. They called them The Touched.
“Stay away from me!”
He tried to pull away from Stewart and Campbell, who had grabbed both his arms to hold him in place.
Pascal ignored his pleas, thrusting his fingers tight around Kanjo’s throat, feeling his Adam’s apple bulge against his hand as memories surged forth.
“Where did the girl go?”
Kanjo tried to deflect, as trained monks could do, throwing his most painful memories at Pascal. Kanjo as a young man in shanty town, being sold and abused by men until he took his first life. The man was trying to make Pascal pity him or quit digging through his memories, but the Ranger didn’t care what made him the scumbag he was. He demanded answers.
Pascal choked him harder. “I don’t care. Show me the girl.”
Kanjo threw more memories at him, watching children being snatched by slave traders in shanty town.
“You grew up around all that and yet you help people murder and kidnap.”
“Fuck you,” Kanjo growled, his face turning red beneath the ink.
Pascal squeezed harder, deciding to shove some of his own pain into the man’s head. But love came first, the love he had for his wife, and for bringing a child into the world, love for how much he cared to keep them safe before losing them, before the world shattered his heart.
“Stop it,” Kanjo begged, shaking his head.
“Show me.”
So he did. Kanjo had seen the old man in the tavern at Jacob’s Inn. And he’d seen the girl all alone, feeding the horses, and knew he could get a good price from Hobarth in The Slums.
Kanjo went inside, got the man drunk enough to spill where he was heading. Then Kanjo went to a bar and was looking to see if anyone wanted to profit off an easy score. There he met the bandit with the fire hand.
Pascal relayed what he’d seen to the other Rangers, then met Kanjo’s eyes. “Who are these bandits?”
“I don’t know. I was only looking for one man, some muscle. I didn’t know he would bring others, or that they were Alts. They seemed eager for the job. And they didn’t even take any of the shit we stole off them. They did it to send a message. Seemed like an easy payday.”
“Selling a child into slavery?”
“I need the money. I’ve got …”
“I don’t care what you’ve got. Where is she now?”
“I sold her to Hobarth this morning.”
“And did these men have their way with her?” Knox asked.
“They tried, but I wouldn’t let them.” Kanjo smiled, as if that one good deed might buy a shred of grace from Pascal.
Stewart asked, “Where are these Alts based out of?”
“Fuck if I know. The Slums? The Outer Territories?”
“That’s not good enough,” Stewart said, his anger growing.
But Kanjo wasn’t scared of the captain, and laughed in his face.
Stewart unsheathed his sword and opened Kanjo’s stomach, then he spit on the man’s corpse.
Pascal said, “I’m going into The Slums to get her.”
Stewart shook his head. “We need permission from General McTaggart. Maybe we can get more Rangers to go with us.”
“Every second we wait is another second Charlotte is suffering. If Hobarth sells her, or one of the johns gets too violent …” Pascal shook his head. “We don’t have time for permission.”
“You can’t go!” Stewart said, standing in Pascal’s way before the Ranger could reach his horse. “We don’t need a repeat of the Hendrix Incident.”
“The general was seeking a reason to wage war with Slum Lord just last night. You were banging the drums louder than anyone. Now you’re afraid?”
“I am not afraid. But there’s a proper way to do these things. Protocols. Besides, we need to alert the general about the Alt connection.”
“Don’t talk to me about protocols.” Pascal pushed past Stewart and mounted his horse.
He was going to ask Knox or Campbell if they were going to join him, but didn’t want them getting in trouble on his account.
He could do this on his own. It would probably be easier to sneak in and out of The Slums if he wasn’t waltzing in with his comrades.
“Stand down, Sergeant.”
Pascal ignored the captain, turning his horse toward the road.
“You are disobeying a direct order!” Stewart shouted behind him.
“Then stop me,” Pascal said.
But no one dared to.
Nine
Slum Lord
Slum Lord stood atop the hotel roof with an almost empty bottle of wine, staring out at the city and wishing he could be anywhere else in the world.
He came to the rooftop for solitude when he needed to get away from it all and clear his internal chatter.
Not that it was any quieter up here.
The cacophony of machinery, people yelling in nearby apartments or in the shops and streets below, dogs barking, babies and children crying — it all coalesced into a soundtrack he had long ago grown numb to.
It was still better than being stuck inside.
Smog from the coal-burning factories and power plant blurred most of the city in a reeking brown haze.
Miles upon miles of tangled black wires ran from one building to the next in a patchwork of power lines in constant need of repair.
A rat scampered along a thick tangle of wires running from one nearby apartment to the other. The rodent stopped in the middle, just sitting there, washing its face. He wondered if it would stop and chew the wires into another blackout.
He picked up a stone and tossed it hard, narrowly missing the rat.
It squealed and scurried away.
Slum Lord looked southwest toward Hope Springs. Though he couldn’t see it beyond his own city’s buildings and smog, not to mention the many miles of woods between locales, he imagined himself in that suburban paradise.
He’d never set foot in the city, of course. A place like that wasn’t for a mongrel like him. But he’d seen it from afar, and had heard tales from his lover.
Solar power, clean water, and cleaner people. A quiet hamlet with respectful citizenry. Rangers acted as cops with no need for brutal leaders such as himself, no gangs warring over turf.
He enjoyed being this city’s lord, but would still trade all the power and perks or his position for a quiet life of serene anonymity.
He thought of an old quote from some ancient play.
The heaviest head is that which wears the crown.
He knew the feeling all too well.
But, looking around the city, he also knew it could be worse. To the east was the shanty town, a place t
hat didn’t even have electricity. Where people lived on top of one another like animals in makeshift metal and wooden structures. A village of cards, waiting to fall.
At least his buildings were still standing.
Sure, they were packed, but it wasn’t too bad. People here had managed to rebuild society even after the shit. All things considered, they’d done fairly well. At least a few steps up from how his pre-industrial-age ancestors lived.
He cursed himself for thinking about paradise, knowing that was wasted time, being sentimental and romantic for a world that wanted nothing to do with him.
That wasn’t his life.
This was.
And the sooner he accepted that, the better off he’d be.
Slum Lord finished the bottle, his mood considerably more wistfully melancholic. He’d come up here to lighten up, but now only hated himself and his life even more.
He drew his sword from the scabbard at his side, but before he could toss his bottle into the air and obliterate it, he heard shattering glass in the streets below.
A window.
He ran to the edge and looked down from the rooftop at two skinny men, dressed in all black and standing in front of his hotel. One held a bottle with a rag on fire coming out the end. He figured that the second man had just hurled his through the lobby window.
They were trying to torch his place.
Slum Lord screamed, “Hey!”
They both looked up.
One man dropped his bottle and was swallowed by the flames.
As the burning man fell to the ground screaming, his partner fled north along the street.
He sheathed his sword and raced along the rooftop. Slum Lord was tipsy but still agile as he leapt over a metal pipe and kept racing toward the edge, gaining momentum and throwing himself off.
He crossed the chasm between the hotel and the apartment building across the street, which was three stories shorter than the hotel.
He hit the roof hard, praying he wouldn’t go straight through.
Instead he rolled perfectly before leaping back to his feet, looking down, and racing after the man in black from above.
As Slum Lord ran from rooftop to rooftop, his adrenaline pumping, wind in his long dark hair, he felt an old exhilaration like something new.
The hunt felt good.
His prey was no longer looking up because he had no idea that Slum Lord was nuts enough to follow him like a panther leaping from roof to roof.
He underestimated Slum Lord’s abilities just as he’d misjudged his thirst for justice.
The man slowed in front of an apartment full of squatters.
Most of the city’s buildings were owned by someone, some legitimately, others by force, but a few had proven so problematic that they were left to whoever wanted them most.
Those were the buildings where gangs took root.
Slum Lord stood atop the building across the street, watching his target survey the street before removing his mask to reveal a dark-haired young man, possibly still a teenager.
He entered the building.
Slum Lord smiled as he jumped from the roof to the fire escape and made his way down to the street.
He approached the tenement with his sword unsheathed.
A young dark-haired man stood guard outside.
He drew a blade from his jacket at the sight of Slum Lord approaching.
But Slum Lord moved faster than the man, and severed his hand at the wrist.
He looked down, eyes wide, mouth stretching into a scream before Slum Lord silenced him with a sword right through his eye socket.
“Lord!”
He turned to see Axl and Sasha approaching, alongside four of his men. Axl handed him the battle horn he used to terrify his enemies.
He blew loudly, letting them, and the rest of The Slums, know he was coming.
Axl looked down at the dead man. “Is that him?”
“No, he went inside.”
“Then let’s get him, boss.”
“Let’s,” Slum Lord said as they charged into the building.
Slum Lord sat outside the hotel’s basement interrogation room listening as Axl and Kiril went to work on the two young men they’d dragged out of the building. Both were tied to chairs, blindfolded, stripped to their underwear, and now covered in bruises and cuts.
So far, neither of them had given up their employer. Unless he counted curses and cries of pain, they hadn’t really said much of anything.
Sasha stood beside Slum Lord, staring through the two-way glass. “Who do you think is behind it?”
“I was hoping you might have some idea. Who would make a move on me, in broad daylight, no less?”
“I don’t think they were making a move on you so much as making a statement.”
“Why?”
“Some people think you’ve gone soft.”
“Who?”
“Just word on the street. Nobody’s looking me in the eye while they’re talking, but Jackie’s pissed that you’re not doing more to stop the new dealers from shanty town flooding her streets with cheaper alternatives.”
“She can’t handle that herself?”
“You’re the head of The Six; I’m guessing she thinks you should be taking care of it.”
“How can I take care of something she’s not asked for help with? Is she complaining to the rest of The Six?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
“I’m not getting involved in every little territorial dispute. They can work it out among themselves.”
“Well, clearly they’re not working it out themselves, and now these interlopers are provoking you. I tried to warn you that things were getting—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Slum Lord said, snorting the Entiome and feeling the immediate rush. And with it, a flare of anger that had been simmering since this morning’s attack.
“Don’t ask my opinion and then tell me to shut up when I give it to you.”
He bit his tongue, trying not to take his anger out on her. If he started speaking his mind, he might start using his fists. And Slum Lord might be many things, but an abuser he was not.
He fixed his gaze on the two young men. “Do we know who they are?”
“No, but my money is on shanty town. That’s where most of the young dealers are coming from. People know you’re soft on the kids, that you don’t punish them the same.”
He continued to glare, hating that his kindness and empathy were being used as weapons against him.
“I thought you liked that I had a soft spot for kids.”
“Kids, yes. But … not little savages like these. They have no respect for life or our rules. No regard for what came before them.”
Kiril entered, shaking his head to indicate the nothing he had.
Slum Lord raised his voice. “So, there’s a drug war going on and the first I’m hearing about it is a fucking arson attempt?”
“I tried, but you dismissed me. Said it wasn’t your problem, that Jackie could handle it.”
Slum Lord didn’t remember that exchange. He might have been high when Kiril came to him. His regular escapes had grown ever more frequent.
“What do you suggest?” Slum Lord asked Kiril.
“I think we need to nip this in the bud.”
Sasha nodded.
Slum Lord strode into the interrogation room, seething.
Kiril followed.
Slum Lord snatched both of their blindfolds.
They looked at him, but showed no fear, or much of anything at all.
“Are you too young to understand the seriousness of your situation? Or how truly terrified you both should be?”
Neither responded.
The boys looked similar, both with dark hair and pale skin. Frail little hood rats, who’d probably seen more than their share of pain. Probably done more than their share of terrible deeds.
“How old are you?” he asked, doffing his blazer, careful not to get it dirty, before removing
his shirt and pants. Stripped to his boxers, Slum Lord handed his clothes to Axl. “Please put these in the other room.”
“Yes, sir,” Axl said.
“You fuckers already ruined one of my suits today.”
The young men stared at him.
“I asked you a question. How old are you?” He leaned down, inches from the older one’s face.
They didn’t answer, or even meet his eyes. They were doing their best to feign bravery, but he could smell the percolating fear inside them.
He looked at them carefully, estimating around fourteen years of age for the kid on the left, and sixteen for his companion.
“I’m going to give you one last chance to tell me why you did this or who put you up to it.”
The older one glared, then spit on his chest.
Slum Lord yanked the kid from his chair, dragged him to the wall, and smashed his face into it, hard enough to knock several bloody teeth from his mouth.
They clattered onto the floor as he screamed.
“Now yer talkin!” Slum Lord laughed as he smashed the boy’s face against the wall again and again, as blood and bones crunched into a pulp, coating the surface and Slum Lord’s body.
He dropped the dead boy to the floor, then leaned in closely. “I really, really don’t like hurting children. But … when you come at me I can no longer see you as a child. Not when you declare war on me and mine. If you’re not gonna tell me who paid you, coerced you, or whatever … then I’ll assume it’s you and your dead friend, and that poor fucker that caught fire.”
Tears ran down the boy’s face and piss drenched his legs.
“Last chance before you join your friends,” he whispered so close to the kid’s ear that he was tempted to bite it off and spit it in his face.
“Y-yugo,” he finally sputtered.
“Who the fuck is Yugo?”
“Fr … from shanty town. He’s the prince of shanty town.”
Slum Lord laughed. “Prince, eh? We’ll see about that.”
He walked toward the door.
“What do you want me to do with the kid?” Axl asked.
“Kill him and put both their bodies in Town Square to show the people what happens when you fuck with us. Make sure you don’t mess up his face. I want everyone to see how young he is.”
