by Storey, Rob
Bags’ free hand swiped around in an annoyed attempt to backhand him. Zroom had moved two steps away to avoid just such a lashing.
“Blood-stained Cortatti uniform on the ground isn’t much of a hint, is it?”
“Bags…” Kieler warned. “Anything you say gives him more ammunition.”
A rumble like a grevon growl sounded deep in Bags’ chest. But Zroom had moved to the medicine cabinet and was examining the contents with an appreciative look on his flabby face.
“Stop snooping,” Kieler said mildly. “Movus finds out you touched anything and he’ll have fifty of us fighting each other for who gets to kill you.”
Zroom turned and nodded. “My point made. If you succeed you get to be puppet EC. Movus jerks your strings. And fifty grevons fight over the scraps. What a country.”
Kieler winced despite the salve’s amazing ability to soothe even as it healed. He winced because though he knew that what he was doing was necessary, he did wonder how the end result would be better. Zroom had hit a nerve.
Interjecting for his patient, Bags asked through clenched teeth. “What do you want Zroom and how can we get rid of you?”
“I want to shape this world. You need my wisdom and the only way you’ll get it is if I cram it into your over-muscled heads.”
At this Kieler cracked a smile. “Why not use your irresistible charisma Zroom?”
Another snort. “That’s you’re department, Sparks. I know you’re smart. Bags less so but not entirely stupid. You should listen to me.”
“Why?” Both said simultaneously.
“Because not everyone agrees with the Coin. Because you don’t know what you’re doing. And because I know how to organize working systems. Profitable, organized, sustainable working systems. You two just know how to break stuff and blow stuff up.”
Neither responded to the muck-stained farmer. Bags was now sewing, and that did hurt.
Eyes closed, Kieler muttered, “I did break a lot of stuff tonight Bags.”
Even though he was concentrating on sewing Kieler’s wound closed, Bags replied, “and Caprice got to blow some stuff up…” Pretending to acquiesce to Zroom’s superior intelligence, Bags heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Well, you’re right again Zroom. You can go now.”
Through the condescension, Kieler noted with pride that Bags, despite his annoyance with Zroom, was quite gently sewing his shoulder while patiently bearing Zroom’s abrasive presence.
“Revolution requires forethought, during-thought, and afterthought. All those involve thought!” Zroom’s tone was acidic. “You just rush into action, stirring up the most violent house on Zotikas with no thinking about the result. We need to organize a government now. We need to practice governing now. We have the perfect chance to create a free-market system of equal opportunity down here now, and aside from the Coin, we’re in total anarchy.”
“A market system that allows you to make even more money, Zroom, without risking your neck smuggling,” Bags poked.
Color rose in Zroom’s face, making him look a little like the purplish truffles he sold. “Who else in this hell-hole knows anything about systems! Sparks doesn’t remember anything other than waifing around these tunnels trying to survive. And you, Bags are a bottom-beaten lackey who toadied for Telander until he woke you up by rap—“
So much for patience. Bags’ huge fist swung around like a runaway powercoach. Nevertheless, it was astonishing how fast the bedraggled looking farmer could move when he realized he had overstepped his provocation. There were no good-byes. Zroom ran for the door and out. With jaws so tightly clenched he could have ground off the tops of his teeth, Bags returned to Kieler, who was nauseous with the pain of having two stitches ripped out by Bags’ outburst.
Bags’ temper cooled instantly when he saw what he had done to his friend. “I’m sorry, Sparks,” he muttered. Instantly his eyes were wet. “I’m sorry. That prog— My Eznea—”
In silence Bags finished the rest of the procedure and bound up Kieler’s shoulder.
Kieler looked away from the operation now, his stomach not quite settled. He found distraction in a globe of Zotikas—their world—that Movus had evidently found in the depths of the rubble. The ancient globe spun perpetually but was not physically supported in its gimbals. Bemused by pain, he became simultaneously aware of the sheer mass of wrecked city around him. This private library, filled with ancient texts and artifacts, was itself surrounded by rubble; above, around and beneath.
An arm’s length in front of him, the vast lands of Zotikas passed in and out of view. Avertori came round into sight, sitting on the island in the center of the world; its unique position at the convergence of three continents and three seas. To the northeast, Ardan; to the southeast, rugged Coprackus; and to the northwest, the fertile plains of Govian.
But the place names on this globe were not the same. They were from a different time, long forgotten. And this library and the rubble around it gave testimony to the greater civilization that had once thrived here.
“Can you imagine how huge the city of the Dead Ones must have been?” Kieler mused.
Bags took a moment to reply. He was nearly finished playing surgeon and his fatigue seemed to be catching up with him as his emotional energy ebbed. “Hmm. Couldn’t have been much bigger than Avertori is now. Our city covers the whole island and more.”
Frowning, Kieler disagreed. “I think it was bigger—not in width, but height. Just looking at how much rubble there is, it must have reached far into the sky. It must have been a truly great civilization.”
Bags snorted. “Still fell. We live in their trash.”
Kieler shrugged. “Mmm. True, but those times had to be better than these. We’ve got to make this world better…”
Bags said nothing and Kieler guessed they were both thinking of past pain. They weren’t the only ones. Bleakness and pain seemed to be engulfing their world. Every person under the Plate had a story of heartbreak.
Kieler shifted his attention to the gimbals around the globe. Battered but functional, there was little left of the embossed inscription. In the flickering red light of the room, he read what remained: While we live, let us live. Movus had suggested it as the motto of the Coin, and the subtly rebellious message was quickly adopted by the underworld organization.
Slumping into a thickly padded chair, Bags closed his eyes.
Kieler rose slowly and turned from the globe to pace slowly around the library. He strode beneath the vaulted stone ceiling toward the center of the triangular room. All three walls were stacked top to bottom with artifacts of such a wide variety that he had difficulty imagining how Movus could have collected them all in one lifetime.
In a corner was a simple spear that bore no markings save a single inscription: Ride fast. Fly true. Spears hadn’t been used in nearly a thousand years. Where did he get that? On a shelf near the ancient weapon stood a cloudy frame with a three dimensional image of an island burned into the mist. That technology was a complete mystery, not of this era either.
Kieler stopped next to the most prominent of all the collected artifacts: a large glowing sphere of red luzhril on a pedestal. The sphere supplied light and some heat to the subterranean library. It was not as bright as normal white luzhril, but it’s rare, burgundy color probably made it even more valuable than the Cortatti’s library globe.
Turning back to the table they had commandeered as an operating slab, he shuffled through the two years’ worth of work that lay stacked and spread before him. Even now he resisted reviewing the documents one more time. The red glow of the sphere and something about the table and its one empty chair brought back a memory.
It was the memory of himself, sitting in that same chair; he must have been about sixteen or seventeen. He was looking up at Movus, who was doing what Kieler had just been doing, standing and staring into the swirling opalescence of the red sphere. Kieler had asked, “May I ask you, why did you have to leave the city above?”
Not r
eplying immediately, something between a smile and a grimace played on his face. “No, you may not,” Movus replied definitively. His jet black, straight hair reflected the deep red light, and his very light brown eyes, usually the color of sun-ripened grain common to those of Govian descent, shone with the sphere’s light. He looked down at Kieler. “Suffice to say I was treated horribly. I went from prophet to pariah, shunned.”
Though he said no more, Kieler could read deep pain in Movus’ light eyes, a pain he felt keenly himself. Never could Kieler forget the deaths of his parents, or the highborns who caused it. The reflected orb-light danced with the intense fire of revenge. The look frightened Kieler, though he was already a savvy young man.
Nodding, Kieler returned to the present, and realized he’d memorized every detail of the plan on the papers in front of him. It was the first major step of revolution; a revolution designed to end his world’s pain and bring purpose to his own suffering. Obviously it would bring some solace to his mentor’s hidden grieving as well. That the smelly, arrogant farmer Zroom wasn’t a privileged member of those making things happen—that was just as well.
Kieler turned and once again stared into the warmth and swirling luminescence of the unique red lamp, visualizing in his mind exactly how their plan would manifest.
The civilization of Avertori was ruled by the prime houses, dynasties that had hoarded power for generations. Kieler and Movus had worked out a plan to gain Kieler a strategic position amongst them, a position to strike from.
When House Ortessi had been destroyed twenty years ago in a “mysterious” fire, one body was never found: that of the child Orlazrus, the youngest son. Movus had used his contacts to drop hints that the now grown Orlazrus was planning his return.
Kieler picked up the sigil from the table and twisted it in his hand, his fingers between the points of the star. The Ortessi Sigil would give his claim great credibility. Only Feleanna Cortatti would know the truth and she wouldn’t be able to say anything without incriminating her own house.
Once rumors had spread, it had been relatively simple to get the other houses fighting over the “privilege” of introducing Orlazrus at court. But spreading rumors had been much simpler than his next task: showing up to the party alive.
“So where’s Movus?” Bags asked groggily, not opening his eyes.
“I never know,” Kieler replied. “Running the largest spy network on the planet; it’s probably best he stays invisible.”
“Even to you? But he practically raised you.”
Kieler shrugged and walked back to the spinning globe of Zotikas. “I never even saw much of him growing up. He showed up to guide me and teach me: how to observe, how to fight… to dance.”
Without turning, Kieler saw Bags crack open one eye. “To dance? Why?”
Kieler smiled. “If you’re a good spy captain, maybe he’ll teach you someday too.”
Letting out a grunt, Bags closed his eyes again. Within moments his breathing evened out into a light snore.
“We’re doing something, Bags,” Kieler whispered excitedly, not really wanting to wake him. “I’m actually point man for something that will make a difference in our world.” He reached out and put a hand on the globe to stop it, but the slippery sphere just kept spinning.
Chapter Four
It was a pit.
The nethercity was a big, dark hole in the ground where people had thrown the junk of an entire ruined civilization. Kieler stood alone atop an ancient mountain of debris and looked out over Karst. From this vantage he could see the dim outlines of the scattered dwellings below, thousands of hovels of arranged rubble lit by the faint glow of luminescent lichen. Very few were lucky enough to own even a splinter of luzhril. Jars of light lugs bobbed in lines indicating the movement of people through the ever-dark city.
Rising up from amongst the faint lights of humanity were darker shadows of various shapes and heights. Some of these “mountains” reached all the way to the underside of the Plate and indicated a portal through which those above had dumped refuse until they had literally piled it to the top.
The middle of the Karst Borough was interrupted by a gash of even deeper darkness. The enormous chasm, unimaginatively called the Abyss, separated the east side of the sunless city from the west. The only connection was a half-mile section of fallen tower serving as a bridge, though by going out of the way, one could skirt the ends of the gap.
Above, Kieler felt the oppressive weight of the Plate sealing the city like the lid of an enormous coffin. Spiking through the Plate at regular intervals, except for where the expanse of the Abyss dropped into nothingness, were dozens of immense, black columns. These pillars reached from the bedrock far below to the highest levels of the city above. It was these timeless structures, built by a civilization long gone, that formed the cornerstones upon which the great trade houses of the current era had fashioned their Rei-lit metropolis.
But the people below, subsisting on the shadowy plain beneath the Plate, were Kieler’s friends, outcasts, just like him. Rejected by the major houses, they fled here, or if they could make it, to some remote outland location beyond the reach of the Omeron. At least they weren’t criminals bound for Feleanna’s arena.
This city is reversed, he thought. The random specks of light and life below are like stars, and the unseen, shallow, metal Plate above like a reflection-less sea.
Curiously, as he looked up at the bottom of the Plate, in one area he saw faint but definite points of light, different from the weak aura of lichen. It was like a cluster of a half dozen stars. Odd, but not Kieler’s concern as he mustered himself to leave the dim underworld.
Dropping his gaze from the wispy light, Kieler wondered if he would ever see this shadow-city again, his home for most of his life.
After the raid on the Cortatti compound, he had napped, packed, and finally donned his disguise to climb to this point. Behind him, away from the slope of rubbish leading down to Karst, stood a heavy stone arch, marking the beginning of the main path out of the nethercity.
Years ago, Kieler had made this trip in reverse with his father. In self-imposed exile, his father had led him through the Dragon’s Gate, down the crumbling, pillared path and under the Arch of Darkness to dwell in the city of night. Most, like his father, never saw the light of Rei again.
Kieler remembered the fear of that moment, standing in this same spot, a child of eight, clinging to his father’s side. His fear now was just as real, but this time it was a result of his own choice to leave.
Growing up here had been a depressing adventure. Kieler couldn’t just sit by and watch his father work obsessively on his processes and engines. So he explored. He knew this place. He knew more of this labyrinth of tunnels, passages, crawlspaces, sewers, nooks, hideouts and boroughs than almost anyone alive. This had been his perpetually gloomy playground.
More than once he had become lost deep down below Avertori, to the point of thinking he would never find his way back.
Yet he always had. And he had made a life for himself here. After his father was killed, Movus gave Kieler opportunity and direction through the Coin, despite the infrequency of his actual presence. Kieler had striven for advancement and risen quickly in the ranks.
Now he was leaving his life underground and taking on a new life above, a life not his own, and the life, he thought wryly, of a supposed dead man.
He was point man for a revolution. Most people, below and above, had little hope or purpose in their lives. He had both, and it made the prize worth the risks.
He took a last look at the faint sparks of light below, lights that represented people he knew, and cared about. That he was fighting for them, and the respect of Movus, made him proud.
Given it was a pit—it was still home.
Kieler turned and stepped through the Arch.
Before him lay a low-ceilinged subterranean road that led to the Dragon’s Gate, a portal between the cities of light and dark that opened to a public square
in a rough part of Avertori. As the most well-known entrance, those who lived in the light often threatened their small children with it. “You keep up like that, young man, and I’ll send you down the Dragon’s throat!”
Kieler didn’t want to use this gate. He would have preferred to sneak through one of the most hidden access portals, but he knew he probably wasn’t the only one to know even that entrance. And now, as Zroom had pointed out, they had sparked the wrath of the Cortatti’s: every gate would be watched. It would be better if he exited into a public place. At least he’d have a chance of getting on his way and shaking off sure pursuit.
The road upward must have been grand thousands of years ago. The fluted columns, now mere stubs, lined the pebbled path every few steps. What esteemed property it had announced, Kieler had no idea. Everything below whispered of something lost long past.
He passed a splintery wood counter to the right of the path between two columns. Behind the counter, in the gloom, was a shadowy crack where the proprietor of this strange general store lived. Al, who Kieler now knew well, sold necessities to the exiles as they filed down this wrecked promenade to their new home.
On that very counter, Al had thunked the first jar of light lugs Kieler had ever seen, frightening them into light. They were a necessity to be sure, but they were also a rampant pest, easily caught once you knew what you were doing. Kieler’s father had paid a premium price for those bugs many years ago.
But now, the fact that Al wasn’t tending store at the moment made Kieler’s journey up even lonelier. He took a deep breath and continued climbing the desolate road toward Avertori and the light of the fading day.
The broken columns on either side of him echoed with greatness and disaster. Beyond the columns lurked dark niches and a shadowed silence—deep and heavy. As the road climbed toward the surface, Kieler could feel the Plate pressing down on him.
His confidence and resolve hardened as he strode up the path through the rubbish-packed landscape. His first identity was Geren, a street-wise magal loader. His face was hidden in fake, unkempt facial hair and he wore rough work clothes. It was a persona he’d used many times in his dealings for the Coin.
