Turning Pages (The Arbiter Book 1)

by Brhi Stokes

  A thunderous reverberation above almost scared the wits out of me, and I swiftly raised my head in time to watch a huge train hurtle across a set of raised tracks. The tracks themselves wound their way through the town, lifted high above even the tallest buildings by huge metal struts. Meanwhile, the train raced towards the walls of the castle in the distance as it spewed black smoke from both ends. Its roar was deafening as it throttled overhead, and I had to wonder how anyone here slept.

  Or perhaps it was their wake-up call, I realised, as people began to emerge from the tiny, packed dwellings. They peered at me as I stepped past in the darkness, several bearing antennae or elongated legs coated in bristly hairs. Their clothing was ragged or patched. Sometimes both. From the stench rising off the streets, I could not tell if I was in the slums, or if this was simply the general state of this place. It seemed so different from the last time I was here.

  Eyes continued to follow me until I had stepped through the tiny, grey streets. More oil lamps were being lit as people awoke despite the fact that it seemed nowhere near dawn.

  In fact, it was still dark about half an hour later, as I found the door I was looking for - a wooden sign marked with a crossed pen-and-dagger design - and knocked on it. After a few minutes of silence, I knocked again, louder this time.

  A grumbling from within gave me a few seconds warning before the flimsy door swung open and a pair of protruding black eyes stared out at me.

  “Wha’s th’ time?” a voice growled from somewhere near my ribs.

  “Er…” I had no watch that I could see.

  The eyes must have fixed on the burning oil lamp down the street, however, as the small creature started to grumble. “Light’s up. Fine. C’mon in, c’mon in….”

  As the shop owner turned away from me to ignite some oil lamps, I noticed that they were more bug than human. Fuzzy antennae arced back over their head, and a pair of soft grey moth wings straightened out as the shop owner fluttered themselves onto a stool behind the counter. I wove my way through shelves of miscellany to reach them. Everything from misshapen pieces of iron to buckets and a few spools of string lined the shelves. Junk, all of it.

  The counter was a fitting height for me, at least, so I expected that the shop owner was just much smaller than usual. I folded my arms and watched them expectantly while they shuffled through parchment on the desk.

  “I’m after a weapon,” I said, once a few moments of quiet paper shuffling had passed.

  “No weapons, nuffin’ illegal in this here establishmen’,” the moth creature told me.

  “I don’t think you understand,” I responded, leaning forward on the counter, “I am after a very specific weapon.”

  “No weapons,” the small one repeated, more firmly this time. “Nuffin’ illegal in this here establishmen’.”

  “Well, that’s strange, because I was specifically sent to you to retrieve it. I was under the impression that you were expecting me...”

  The creature eyed me sullenly and, for just a moment, I thought that might have been all the prodding they needed. Their lips pursed and I turned away with a groan as they repeated their line once more.

  “...in this here establishment,” I muttered along with them. “Yes, you’ve been telling me as much.”

  The conversation went on like this for some time until I finally gave in, leaning both hands on the counter. “I’ve been sent here to get some things done,” I told the creature bluntly. “I know you understand what I’m asking. See this?” I turned to give them a view of the sticky mess that was the back of my head and heard them make a displeased sound. Turning back, I saw they were leaning slightly away from me. I breathed a sigh of relief, though, as they disappeared off through a door behind the counter and began to rummage around. The sigh turned into a groan as they returned to brandish a cloth in my direction.

  “Can’t go ‘round lookin’ like that...”

  “That’s not what I-” I began, but they were gesturing at me so emphatically that I pressed the alcohol-scented cloth to the back of my head and cleaned the blood as best I could. It was only as I drew the cloth back to check the damage that I noticed it: amongst the gore and grime that covered the rag, some black lettering smeared across the cloth.

  O u t s i d e,

  D o l t

  I glanced up at the small creature, but they were already wandering through the door behind the counter. “Nuffin’ illegal in this here establishmen’,” they grumbled to themselves. Suddenly, I felt very stupid.

  I said nothing as I backtracked out the door and entered the small alley at its side. The alley led me to a miserable-looking yard that was strewn with stones and guarded on all sides by the walls of houses. I could only assume the moth person’s shop had ownership of it.

  A tiny oil lamp by the shop’s back door showed me what I needed: a small patch of grass that looked like it had been recently disturbed. I dug around in the dirt a minute before my hands came into contact with something hard. Pulling, I wrenched the small suitcase up from the ground and removed a tiny pistol. It hardly looked like much, except that it certainly had not come from this plane. It was far too sleek and made of a metal these people did not seem to have. Hell, it was a material even I had never seen before.

  Obtaining the weapon was only the first step, however, and I knew that finding my target was bound to be the difficult part. I had seen a picture of the woman and thought that, with her multi-faceted eyes and ivory skin, I would have no trouble spotting her. However, as I passed people with wings, antennae and other various insectile features, I started to second guess myself.

  Needless to say, I was rather surprised when the urge to look to my left came upon me and the figure of a woman caught my attention. I spotted her walking down the small gap between two tall, run-down houses that were so thin they might fall over were they not crammed against their neighbours. The tiny alley was too dark for the oil lamps to penetrate, but her skin glimmered in the distant light. I glanced cautiously around myself before stepping into the lip of the walkway, my back and the shadows shielding my actions from passersby. The sound of hooves along the cobblestone behind me was a momentary distraction as the woman stepped out into the courtyard behind the buildings, and I steadied the weapon.

  The pistol whirred in my grip, a soft beeping emitting from it as if it were charging. The sound echoed down the small path and the woman looked swiftly back towards me.

  Blast.

  She glanced at me for the barest second before dashing out of my sight on strangely shaped legs. I tore after her, thankful that the body I was inhabiting was small and lithe as I bounded through the thin gap.

  As I emerged into the courtyard on the other side, the woman was on me so quickly that I barely had time to react. Pain pierced through my shoulder, and I stumbled away from my attacker. She raised her arms, the chitinous spines which lined them catching what little light reached us. I stopped my approach, eyes locked on the sharp points that had torn through my skin. Ignoring the blood which flowed freely down my left arm, I raised my strange pistol again to keep her at bay. This time, however, I fired.

  I barely got the shot off before she rushed me again. With no physical weapons of my own, this would have been an unfair fight had I not been armed with the pistol. Of course, I was also the instigator of this fight, so I could hardly pity myself.

  Her body collided with mine, a heavy weight on my injured shoulder, but I managed to roll away before her spines could do more damage. As she rolled to her feet, arm-spines raised, I could see that the bullet had left a seared gash across her cheek but had failed to hit its mark. A small sliver of bluish blood ran down her face as I pulled myself up. I could not tell if her bug-like eyes settled on the gun or not, but she tensed as she stared at me. Then, in one swift movement, she threw herself back onto the wall behind her. It turned out that those forearm claws were good for climbing, too.

  I rushed towards the wall as my target pulled herself up it lithely and
disappeared onto the top of the building. Thankfully, the ramshackle construction meant that vines and misshapen bits of stone jutted from the bodies of the buildings like weapons from the corpse of a dead beast. I was suddenly grateful for the pistol’s light weight, no longer able to feel much of my left arm as I attempted to climb. It meant that I had to be careful where I put my feet as I scrambled up the wall as quickly as I could.

  I reached the dangerously decrepit roof in time to see my quarry bound away. Here, the roofs sloped sharply into points and the tiles were old and loose, several clattering to the ground as I tried to find purchase on them. It was not fear of the fall that had me cautious, but a drop to the ground would no doubt mean losing my quarry.

  From one roof to the next I clambered, slowing only to fire off another shot. Her desperate gasp emanated from up ahead; my aim was improving. Unfortunately, it only slowed her a little.

  We leapt and bounded across roofs that shed tiles and dirt like rain as we jumped to taller and taller decaying shells. Her leaps were impressive in spite of her injuries, and I could only watch as she launched herself swiftly to the right and entirely off the edge of the roof. Her leap carried her up and towards the thick rails of elevated train track.

  There was no way I could make a jump like that.

  Instead, I followed her along the rooftops below, keeping an eye on the tracks as they angled closer to the taller buildings. Finally, I spotted a jump I could make. Ignoring the strange sensation in my left arm, I waited for a place where metal pillars connected the tracks to the ground and, securing the gun between my teeth, I threw myself towards them.

  I missed the tracks completely, my numb left arm apparently useless. Thankfully, my right hand snagged at the maintenance rungs towards the top of the pillar and, with some scrabbling of my feet, I pulled myself onto the tracks. Up close, I could see that they consisted of two huge metal rails, connected crossways by smaller bars of steel. It had not quite occurred to me how big the train might be, but even the single rail on which I stood completely dwarfed me. The train that traversed it must have been simply enormous.

  My balance accounted for and the gun back in my hand, I looked towards the woman. She had stopped momentarily and was panting for breath as blood trickled down her back. At the sight of my weary form climbing up onto the tracks, however, she bounded away. Breathing heavily, I took aim again, the whir of the gun filling me with a strange dread.

  I fired.

  Another cry went up as the woman stumbled and fell, her strangely shaped legs twisting and catching beneath her as the bullet buried itself in her thigh. With no real joy, I began to make my way across the tracks towards her. She was close enough for me to make out her expression and, although I found it hard to decipher the emotion in her faceted eyes, I could sense the malice which dripped from her as steadily as her blue blood. With a final growl of defiance, she wrenched herself sideways and off of the tracks.

  Her body fell. It slammed into the thick gutter of the nearest building before toppling from it and tumbling all the way down to the streets below. Even from my height on the tracks, I could see that part of her skull had caved. A mix of grey, red and blue seeped onto the cobblestones around the body, visible under the light of a nearby oil lamp.

  For a moment, I watched the body as its fluids seeped out, wondering if her last act of defiance had been for herself, or simply to spite me.

  It mattered not. A thunderous growl from the castle’s direction told me what was coming. I knew there was no point in looking. Instead, I fished around in my pocket for a small roll of silver tape and wound it gently around my weapon. The rails shook as a deep rumbling shuddered through my bones, the roaring growing so loud that it felt as though my ears would burst.

  I was ashamed to admit that in the final moments as I turned towards the enormous coal train, I gasped in fright.

  **

  “You jumped,” a familiar voice said from somewhere above me. “Do you plan on doin’ me nut in, or didja just decide you wanted to be more of a stupid git?”

  I groaned as I felt my joints twist and pop painfully, along with the incredible itchiness that came with bones knitting themselves back together. I tried not to pay the sensation too much attention; if I did, I would be able to picture my insides twisting and warping as the damage undid itself. The thought, along with the physical evidence of shaping and tingling in my body, made me slightly nauseous.

  He was correct, though: I had jumped.

  It took another few minutes for my body to warp itself back into some semblance of humanity; all the while, the man watching me growled and swore. Smell returned first, bringing with it the pungent waft of bleach and medical-grade cleaner. I sneezed and my jaw rattled loosely in my skull. Finally, vision joined it and the grizzled face of the Irishman swam into view. It wore a mask of frustration, but I liked to think I could see some concern in there, too.

  When the ability to talk finally returned to me, I grimaced up at him. “Evening, Daniel.”

  “Evening?” said the man, though he held out a hand to help me from the morgue drawer despite his complaints. The surface was icy with refrigeration and I could see that the colour was only just starting to return to my hands. “It’s morning for starters, you bloody fool!” He tromped away from me in order to pull some clean clothes from a cupboard and thrust them in my direction along with a plastic bag; no doubt filled with my things. “And I nearly didn’t recognise you, so mangled you were.”

  “That’s why I left the message…” I tried, folding out the jeans and shirt that I knew would be my size.

  “Not at my phone every blasted second, am I?” He ran a hand through his grey stubble and scowled darkly at me. “If I wasn’t in charge here, they woulda carted you off. I told you that I only service a specific area, but no, you go jumpin’ wherever you please. Left me in a pickle trying to talk that sergeant into letting me do the autopsy. Keep up this nonsense and I’ll come good on my threat to go back to Belfast, I will.” His speech devolved into grumbles as I changed into the clothes and stretched out my aching body.

  “Sorry I scared you,” I said as I laid a hand on his shoulder, attempting to move past.

  He scowled at me. “No, you’re not. I bet you don’t even know how sorry feels, McAlaster.”

  “There’s a bottle of Powers John’s Lane waiting in your office.”

  “See!” Daniel threw up his hands as he followed me to the door. “You’d decided to jump and ruin my day beforehand. Leaving me a bottle of nice whisky’s not compensation, you know.”

  “Actually,” I told him, sliding awkwardly past a uniformed woman in the hallway, “I was going to leave you that as a general thanks. But I am sorry.”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “Well… I want to be?”

  Daniel narrowed his eyes at me as we reached the reception area of the morgue. It stood in its own building, across the road from the hospital, but it was much less friendly. The reception was as grim as the refrigerators - sterile white walls with minimal furnishings, though I supposed you were hardly meant to feel at home in a morgue.

  The girl behind the counter was staring at me with a strange expression on her face, and I was caught between ignoring her gaze or offering her a disarming smile. I settled on glancing briefly in her direction with my lips twitching, before looking back at Daniel. In my unique situation, it was hard to tell what Daniel had said to his staff; if he had told them anything at all. I had definitely seen this girl before, and I just had to hope she did not look too closely at the bodies as they were brought in. If she did, she might have started to wonder how I seemed to leave the place frequently without ever walking myself through the front doors.

  “That’s not true either,” Daniel said resignedly, after a moment of eyeing me carefully. “Just give me better warning next time, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, knowing it might very well have been a lie. “I’ll take you out for a beer the next time you’re free, at a
ny rate. I owe you that, and maybe an explanation while I’m at it.”

  “I’ll just take the beer,” Daniel said. “Your stories always give me a headache.”

  “Then I’m doing them justice,” I told him drily as he walked back down the hall without me.

  I flashed the receptionist another awkward smile, ignoring the twitch of her mouth that told me she was going to ask me a question. Instead, I fled out into the daylight, groaning as the bright light seared a violent headache into my skull.

  **

  I returned home feeling like I had been hung out to dry. Despite having six months of practice under my belt, the return trip had never gotten any easier. My ears felt as though they were stuffed with wool, and my head pounded as flashes of memory played behind my eyes. I shook it off as I dug around for my keys in the plastic bag Daniel had given to me. My flat was just how I had left it, lights on despite the bright morning sunshine that filtered through the windows.

  An icy breeze whipped at my hair and clothing as I hurtled down from the roof I had been standing on…

  I saw the woman fall, her skull splitting open on the ground. And then I was the woman, staring back up at myself - the blonde girl on the train tracks, the body I had occupied - as I plummeted to the ground…

  I tripped over something as I tried to walk up the stairs. The strange pistol I had used in the other plane sat neatly inside my front door. The tape around it was gone, but I had gotten used to that part. As I plucked it up and headed upstairs, I dug around in the plastic bag until I could confirm the roll of tape still remained. Placing the gun on the counter, I found myself leaning heavily against it while my head swam.

  The train loomed over me, its dull grey exterior pocked and worn. I was close enough to see that it had no windscreen, just a round metal panel that shone in the moonlight. It hurtled into me, crumpling bones like paper, pain permeating my very being…