by Jon Skovron
“Twenty innocent people every pissing month?” asked Billy. “I can’t believe any of you are even considering this.” He looked at each of them in turn. They remained silent. “Forget the scary bedtime stories. The biomancers are just people. Flesh and blood like us. They control through fear, intimidation, and the idle gossip of idiots.”
“Billy.” Sig laid a large hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t the time for—”
“It’s exactly the time!” Billy shrugged Sig’s hand off. “We have to stop this now, before it goes any further. Before they destroy us all!” He turned desperately to the other leaders. None could meet his gaze.
“You misunderstand us completely,” said the biomancer, his low voice like an anchor dragging across coral. “You think us cold? Cruel? Unfeeling?” He shook his head sadly. “You were right before when you said that we are just people. We feel things deeply. We must. It is the curse of what we do. But while you only feel the small little corner of your small little neighborhood in your small little city, we feel the whole empire. We watch over it and care for it, just as it watches over and cares for you. Everything we are, everything we do, is given to this purpose. Can you not see this larger image?”
He placed his hand on Billy’s and squeezed. He had tears in his eyes, his expression pleading. Billy had clearly not anticipated such an impassioned response and stared at him in bewilderment.
“If you cannot see it,” continued the biomancer, “if you cannot feel as we do, perhaps it is you who are cold.” Then he turned away and walked back over to Drem.
The room was silent, the leaders all looking at each other uncertainly, even Big Sig. The only one who seemed unaffected was Deadface Drem. His expression was blank.
That’s when Red knew.
Billy suddenly shivered. “What is…”
His skin began to grow pale, the veins more pronounced—a spiderweb of blue that shot across his hands and face. His body grew rigid and shook. His eyes filmed over and turned to balls of ice. His black hair dropped from his head in chunks, and his fingernails dropped from his crooked fingers. He opened his mouth to scream, but his jaw cracked on one side so that it dangled from one hinge. His tongue was a dark frozen slab of meat that flapped up and down. Both jaw and tongue dropped to the ground and shattered. Guttural noises escaped from his mouth hole as his eyes slowly squeezed out of his sockets. The skin on his neck split, and first one arm broke off at the elbow, and then the other at the shoulder. Finally, his legs splintered and his body hit the floor, breaking into pieces. The chunks continued to shudder inside the clothes. Then everything was still.
Drem stepped forward, his face still expressionless. “We’ll give you a few days to think about it.”
* * *
“I’m trying to figure out the exact moment that my life went leeward,” said Nettles as she tossed a small crust of bread into the pond. Pale white fish with large, luminous eyes shot to the surface and gobbled up the bread. It was an underground pond and the fish in it didn’t often get bread crusts.
Red, Hope, Nettles, and Filler had gotten the all-clear knock from Colleen an hour after the Hammer Point leaders had left the room and someone had come in and swept up the frozen pieces of Thorn Billy. Red told Colleen he’d get in touch with Big Sig in a day or two. Then the four had returned to Paradise Circle.
It was Nettles who had suggested Apple Grove Manor. The place sounded lacy, because once, a long time ago, it had been. This was back when the city of New Laven was only uptown, and the entire downtown area was nothing but small farms and orchards. Apple Grove Manor had been the only building for five miles in any direction. A lone mansion in a sea of apple trees, all owned by the Bulmatedies family. But that had been centuries ago. The apple orchard was gone, the last of the Bulmatedieses dead. The only thing that remained was the manor house itself, a crumbling beauty allowed to persist as the cobblestone streets and ramshackle houses were built up around it.
Apple Grove Manor had been many things to many people over the years. A squat house for the homeless, a drug house for the addicts, a sex house for the whores. One optimistic businessman even tried to turn it into a respectable hotel and boardinghouse. That particular enterprise lasted only a few months. Customers complained of midnight hauntings and missing items, such as a left stocking or half the buttons on a jacket. The owner had even brought in a necromancer to clean it out, but it didn’t do any good. Within the year, the businessman gave up and moved back uptown to Keystown where he belonged.
The most recent tenant had been Jix the Lift, back before Drem used his innards as a cravat. Jix swore the whole time he and his crew were there, he never saw a single haunting or had the tiniest thing go missing. People said the house preferred a proper man of the Circle to an uptown lacy. It was easy to believe that. Like anything old and left too long on its own, the manor had grown strange. Among its many eccentricities was the fishpond in the basement.
No one knew how the pond got there or how it was filled with strange, ghostlike fish. Many muttered biomancer and steered clear, but many things were attributed to biomancers that probably shouldn’t have been. Some people didn’t like to think it, but the world was strange enough on its own and didn’t really need much help in that regard.
The basement was a large room, and the pond took up all of it. The only thing left above the waterline was the top row of storage shelves that were bolted to the walls. By dropping down from the hatch above on the ground floor, and sliding carefully along, one could circle the entire room. It was dark and damp and smelled like rotting algae. That, combined with the biomancer and ghost rumors, made it an unpopular spot to visit. Red and Nettles had come out of curiosity back when they were together. It became a special place for them during that time. Neither had been back since they split. So Red was surprised when she’d suggested it.
Now the four of them sat on the shelving, feet dangling above the dark water.
“Did my life go leeward when I met Red?” Nettles mused, tossing another bit of bread to the ghost fish.
“That’s when your life got interesting,” said Red. “But I see how you might confuse that.”
“Maybe it was when the angel slice showed up,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard.
“That’s a load of balls and pricks if ever there was one,” said Filler.
They all turned to look at him in surprise, even Hope.
“Why do you say that, old pot?” asked Red.
“What’s here ain’t none of her doing,” said Filler. “All she did was blow the dust off so we could see that there ain’t no Circle. Ain’t been one for a while.”
“You don’t mean that, Fill.” Nettles looked at him pleadingly. Like she wanted him to take it back.
“I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said in my life. I wish I didn’t, Nettie. But you saw the length of it. The biggest wag in Paradise Circle nothing but a pet monkey for the imps and biomancers. It makes me want to burn it all down. It would be better if it was nothing. Better than this lie.”
Red expected Nettles to argue. To disagree. But she didn’t say anything, so he turned to Hope. “What about you? You’ve been more quiet than usual.”
“It wasn’t him,” she said, staring into the black depths of the pond.
“Wasn’t who?”
“The biomancer. I hoped it would be the one I know. The one with the burn scar that knocked out all Big Sig’s teeth.”
“Why?”
She turned to him, then, and there were tears in her eyes. It took Red by surprise. Up till that point, he hadn’t been sure she was even capable of that kind of emotion.
“If there is one person in the world I long to kill more than any other, it is that man. The man who murdered my entire village.”
Again there was silence, broken only by the quiet splashes of the ghost fish sucking up the bread. Red wondered how the fish never fought over it. There wasn’t much to be had, and he was sure that many of them never tasted a single
speck. Weren’t they mad? Didn’t they think it was unfair? No, of course not. Because fish were bludgeon as they came. He thought they were probably blind anyway. So most of them never even saw when there was bread to be had. He wondered how things would be different if they could see. If some of the fish at the very bottom suddenly had a big light they could shine up.
“Still, you wouldn’t be opposed to killing this biomancer, would you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Hope asked.
“Make you a deal. You help me not only take down Drem but this whole biomancer scheme, and I will help you take down this scar-faced biomancer of yours.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “The biomancer I want may not even be in New Laven anymore.”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re getting ourselves a ship seaworthy as we speak.”
“Red, I don’t give or accept promises lightly.”
“You’re saying I do?”
Nettles coughed and raised an eyebrow at him. And Red had to admit that she had cause. He had a way of fudging things, of using the inevitable moral gray that came along with the hardscrabble life of the slums to his advantage. He generally liked it that way.
“I’m saying,” said Hope, her blue eyes sparkling, “that if we agree to this, and you break your promise, I will kill you. And I don’t want to kill you. So please, only make this promise if you truly mean it.”
The truth was, Red hadn’t been sure before how far he’d go with Hope on her quest to kill Drem. To be sure, she was the most fascinating molly he’d ever laid eyes on, celibate or no, and in theory, he’d agreed with her cause. But in the end, if things had gotten too hot for his liking, if it had come down to dying, he probably would have slid. He could admit that all to himself now because it wasn’t true anymore. The muddy gray was gone, and the choice before him was crystal.
“You heard the biomancer. Twenty true neighborhood wags every month just to start. And once they get that number, you don’t think they’ll bump it up to twenty-five? Thirty? Fifty people getting done like Thorn Billy every pissing month? There won’t be nothing left of us in a year, and they won’t even care.”
Red stared at the ghost fish and thought about shining a light into dark places.
“Bleak Hope,” he said finally. “If you help me save the Circle, I will follow you across the Dark Sea if need be.”
* * *
Red knew there were only a few places where one could talk to a large number of people at once. The biggest and most obvious was Gunpowder Hall. What he didn’t know was how to get everyone in the hall to stop eating and gambling and thieving and drinking and dropping coral spice and bending pricks and stretching cunts long enough so they would all listen to him. The chaos of the place made the idea laughable. Fortunately, Gunpowder Hall was not the only place neighborhood wags congregated. There was the Rag and Boards.
The Rag and Boards was not a tavern or gaming hall. It was a theater. But a theater as only Paradise Circle could make it. In Silverback, theaters were luxurious buildings that had seats with velvet cushions, chandeliers with gas lighting, majestic balconies, full orchestras, and the finest performers in the empire. The Rag and Boards, on the other hand, had no seats or balconies. The smoky torchlight made it difficult at times to even see the performers. That didn’t stop the drunken, rowdy audience from shouting criticism and advice. At the Rag and Boards, such behavior was not only allowed but encouraged. Often the performers would even instigate it. The curtain, or rag, rose at six o’clock daily and hosted a rotating program of plays and performances until midnight. Stories, folk dances, juggling, and clowning. For a fiveyard, it was possible you might see just about anything. But Red was sure no one had ever seen something quite like the night he took over the program.
It only required the right amount of money and knowing the right people for him to get a last-minute slot in that evening’s program, especially after Bullnose Nelly and her dancing bear suddenly fell ill. Finding one of the lead “performers” proved to be tricky. But once he recruited Handsome Henny and the Twins as extra muscle, even that difficulty was resolved. The hardest part was convincing Hope that her small role was not simply important, but essential. Finally, with only minutes to spare, everything was ready.
Red let the audience wait until they were properly worked up and chanting, “Hoist that rag!” When the curtain finally did come up, and it was only Red standing on a bare stage, they instantly fell silent. Red was known in the neighborhood for being a top-notch thief, a devious scoundrel, a tom with the mollies, a brutal stones player, and more recently, wanted alive or otherwise by Deadface Drem. This last one, he suspected, was what made the audience go quiet with equal parts awe and incredulity. It was a bold move. He could see a few people in the back shifting around, their hands slipping to sheathed knives or clubs, thinking they might slip around to the stage door and try to collect on Drem’s price. But as he’d hoped, they didn’t do it. Not yet, anyway. He’d have to talk fast.
“Toms and mollies! Neighborhood wags! Sorry for this last-minute substitution. I know you were all wanting your fill of bear dancing this night.”
“Bet you dance like a bear!” someone called.
“You flatter me, sir.” Red beamed. “Anyway, I’m sorry to say, something of a bit more serious nature requires your immediate attention.”
“Spit it out, Red, you lacy ponce!” shouted Handsome Henny from the crowd.
“Henny, you never were one for long speeches,” said Red. “Very well. The length of it is this: The Circle has been betrayed.”
Shouts came from all over. Red let it go awhile before he held up his hand to quiet them down. “I could tell you the whole thing myself, of course. But then it’s just me up here talking, and we all know how I like to talk.” A few chuckles in the audience. “Plus, you paid your coin to be entertained, and I’d hate to deny you one of the few pleasures life has for us here. So instead, I’ll have this old boot tell you.”
Red signaled offstage to Filler, who took one of the fly ropes and lowered a man slowly down to the stage next to Red. His feet dangled just above the boards. His hands were tied behind his back, and a dirty handkerchief was tied across his mouth. The shouts began again, some of them angry this time, some of them frightened.
“Judging by reactions,” said Red, “I’m guessing some of you wags recognize Brackson, chief boot for Deadface Drem. I thought to myself, who better to break the news than someone who was partly responsible for it? Of course, he’s a bit embarrassed about what he’s done, and most like he’s reluctant to speak of it. So I brought along a friend to loosen his tongue.”
Nettles walked out, her boots clacking sharply on the wooden boards of the stage.
“What tom wouldn’t be a bit more talkative for such a lovely molly, am I right, wags?” said Red.
A few hoots and catcalls came from the audience, but those were silenced by one cold look from Nettles.
“Would you do the honors?” Red asked her.
Nettles nodded. She unhooked her chainblade from her belt and loosened the coil. Then she snapped her wrist, sending the blade out to slice off the gag and a fair amount of cheek, as well.
Brackson screamed, “Damn you all to every hell! Drem will have the lot of you for this!”
“And what will he do with us?” asked Red.
“Kill you in the worst ways he can find!”
“Will he really kill all of us?” asked Red. “You sure he doesn’t have another plan?”
“What?” said Brackson, brought up short. He looked confused by the question.
“Thought he might want to, oh, I don’t know, give some of us over to someone.”
Brackson’s face hardened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he could have learned a thing or two from his boss, because it was plain to Red—and probably to everyone in that theater—that he was a terrible liar.
Red nodded to Nettles, who snapped her chainblade a second time. Now both of
Brackson’s cheeks dripped as if he were crying blood.
“Next one takes an eye,” said Red, no longer playing the smiling entertainer. “Now, tell us all, nice and loud, what does Drem do with the ones he doesn’t kill?”
Brackson looked first at Red, then at Nettles, who was carefully cleaning his blood off her chainblade. He looked to the audience, pleading. But Red knew he’d find no pity there. The wags of Paradise Circle were many things. Starry-eyed and innocent were not any of them. They seemed to be getting a sense that this was serious and affected them all.
Finally, Brackson dropped his head to stare at the boards beneath him. “He gives them to the biomancers.”
The theater exploded with a roar of shouts and curses. Red waited while they got it out of their system. It took several minutes before he could get their attention again.
“Now, let me make sure I have this right,” said Red. “Currently, he gives them one true wag of the Circle every month. Yes?”
Brackson nodded, and the curses from the audience rose again. People threw rotten fruit at him that they’d brought for the dancing bear.
Once things had settled down a bit again, Red said, “I wish I could say that was all of it, but it’s not. It gets much worse.” He told them everything he’d heard at the meeting, including how the biomancers were demanding twenty people a month from Paradise Circle, Hammer Point, and even Silverback. The shouts grew less raged and more panicked. Red knew he had them.
“Make no mistake, the uptown lacies and their biomancers have declared war on the poor folk of downtown New Laven. They have decided we are no better than a shoal of fish to be caught and cooked. Circle or Hammer or Silver, they don’t care. They mean to chew us all up until there aren’t any left. And I ask you, do we accept that?”
“No!” shouted the audience.
“Of course not! Now is the time to lay aside old grudges with Hammer Point and join together to bring down the betrayer Drem and kick the biomancers out of our neighborhoods so hard they’ll be pissing blood for a week. They need to know that we won’t lie down for them!”
