The Fly Guild

by Todd Shryock

  Sands nodded once in acknowledgement but said nothing. Fist stared at him for a moment before speaking again. “Red eye told me that we lost three maggots last week, which is way more than normal. There were also a few reports of street urchins coming up missing, though to be honest, who can really tell when an orphan disappears for good or not. I’m not sure if they are related, but I need to know one way or the other. If they are, Wren is up to something besides killing off street scum. He wouldn’t need to be secretive about that. Sands, I want you to set up an overwatch in the warehouse district. I’ll have Red eye send some maggots down that way and you watch to see if these other gangs show up. If Wren’s working with them, it’s the perfect place to pick somebody off. There’s a minimal amount of foot traffic and lots of places to hide. It won’t be easy to set up, but if anybody can pull it off, it’s you.”

  Sands nodded in respect and replied, “Yes, master. I shall be ready first thing tomorrow.”

  “Good.” The tone of his voice told Quinton their audience was over. Fist was lost in thought as he turned to look back out the window. Quinton saw the large armored glove with the spike where the middle knuckle would be and shuddered to think what that would do to a man. Sands’ hand guided him to the door.

  The two walked down the narrow hall until they were out of earshot of Fist’s office.

  “I’ll keep you with me,” he said. “One, I need your climbing ability to help me out, and two, I don’t want Red eye picking you to be the bait.”

  Quinton gave Sands a confused look. Sands snorted. “Fist is sending out a few maggots tomorrow as bait to see if Wren and his boys take it. We’ll be watching to see if they do and figure out who they are if it happens. Once we know what’s going on, we report back to Fist. Odds are, whoever is bait won’t be making it back for the evening slop.”

  Quinton nodded in understanding. He was hoping Red eye would pick Lacoris and Vergoth, but they were probably too valuable to risk. More than likely he’d pick a few of the younger crew who didn’t know how to take care of themselves and would never stand a chance. Such was life in the maggot pit.

  “Come on, we’ll scout things out,” said Sands. “I’ve got a few ideas on how we can make this work.” They made their way through the winding streets and past the honest people, passing nary a glance to their mundane work or what mission they might be on. The sun was getting late in the sky when they finally arrived at a mostly deserted corner of the city near the wall. Sands looked down the street at the hulking blocks of the wall and the distant silhouette of the guards atop it.

  “At the base of the wall is a small sally gate,” he told Quinton while looking to the rooftops and scanning the street. “In the morning, the warehouse managers exit using that gate, as do some of the servants heading out on morning business on this side of town. It’s not uncommon for maggots, or even the occasional master, to use these winding streets to pick off a target or two first thing in the morning. If I were Wren, this would be a great spot to set up an ambush. No one would raise a fuss no matter what you did, and most of the warehouses along here have been empty for years, so you would have plenty of options as to where to set up a headquarters or rallying point.” He looked up at a small watchtower that rose out of one of the warehouses. “That’s where you’ll be. The owner built that so a watchman could see when the ships arrived at the harbor down at the pier. He would ring a bell, letting the workmen know to head to the docks. Tomorrow, you’ll be up there watching for trouble. I’ll give you a small mirror. If you see trouble, point the mirror at the sun and move it back and forth like this.” Sands mimicked the motion of holding a mirror and tilting his hand to and fro. “The reflection will tell me that something is up and I’ll move in.”

  “Where will you be, master?”

  Sands looked across the street. “I’ll be on the rooftops across the street somewhere. You won’t be able to see me -- I hope -- but I’ve got a vantage point where I can see the gate and most of the next street. That gives us a pretty broad area to watch and hopefully catch some action. If nothing happens in the morning, we’ll send the maggots back in the evening. If the guards spot them, and I’m sure they will, word will be passed to Wren, who may send in his boys late in the day to make a catch.”

  “What do I do if I spot someone -- after I flick the mirror, that is, master?”

  Sands thought for a moment. “Run like hell back to the guild and don’t get caught. I’ll try to grab one of the other gang members and interrogate him.”

  Quinton knew that anyone caught and interrogated would meet an untimely end. Such was life in Star Gleam City.

  The two spent most of the night in Sands’ small room. Quinton was restless and dreamed of dark shadows pulling him into hidden alleyways, where there was no escape. He was in that in-between place of sleep and wakefulness when he heard Sands start to stir. He sat up, pulled his raggedy clothes around him and waited for his master.

  Sands sat up on the edge of his small cot, wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked at Quinton. “Good, maggot, I used to have to kick you to wake you up. If you learn to wake yourself up at the slightest noise, you won’t have to worry about someone slitting your throat in the night.”

  Quinton didn’t like the idea of having his throat slit so made it a point to make sure he woke up at any noise. Within a few minutes, they had finished their meager breakfast of stale bread and water that tasted as if it had sat in the metal pot too long. The boy was hopeful he could pick off something better on the way back to the warehouse district, but the hour was so early, he decided it was unlikely that anyone would even be about.

  A few minutes later, when they were out on the streets, his prediction was confirmed. It was too late for the revelers but too early for the workers. It was the most dangerous time to be out, because if you were out at this hour, you were looking for trouble. Murderers, thieves and deviants were prowling the cobblestones, looking for victims. The weak were quickly taken down and never seen again. It was a time that Quinton tried to avoid by being back at the guild with his nightly quota. This time, he was with Sands and felt safe. The man walked confidently through the streets, daring anyone hiding nearby to approach him. No one did. They quickly wound their way through the streets, even cutting through a few narrow alleys to shorten the trip, but not even the rats bothered them.

  When they arrived at the street they had scouted out earlier, Sands handed him the small broken fragment of a mirror. “Remember, turn it so it reflects the sun toward me if you see anything. Red eye said the maggots would be here early working the streets. It will be two of the younger maggots, so you’ll probably recognize them.”

  Quinton wasn’t entirely sure why Sands thought he would recognize them. He tried to spend as little time in the pit as possible, and when he was there, he wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to the many faces that came and went. Sure, there were the regulars who had been there as long or longer than he had, but all the others just blurred into a collective whole. In his mind, they were all the same little dirty face of a young boy thrown out by the world, each no different from the one next to it. When your clothes were mostly rags and filth, everyone looked pretty much the same.

  “Now get up in the tower and keep a close watch on the street when the maggots arrive.”

  Quinton nodded in acknowledgement and headed for the warehouse with the tower. The large wooden door was partly rotted and swung open with a squeal so loud he wondered if the guards at the end of the street heard him. Beyond the door was complete darkness. He had no light and only a vague idea of where the tower was relative to the front of the building to guide him. Hoping that no one was inside waiting, he stepped in. The air was cool and smelled of spices, which wasn’t uncommon. There were a lot of plants harvested in the surrounding area that had various medicinal or hallucinogenic properties that were gathered in large amounts and shipped back East, back to civilization. He touched the wall with his left hand, feeling the cool stonework
and used it to guide him along the front of the building as he took slow, methodical steps through the blackness. His eyes were closed, as there was nothing to see and he was concentrating on his other senses to guide him. Before long, he found the corner and turned away from the street. The entrance to the tower shouldn’t be too far from the front of the building, he reasoned.

  As he worked his way down the wall, he could hear the distant squeaks of rats. The small rodents had never bothered him as they did some people; he didn’t see their plight as much different from his own. Each was living a miserable existence trying to scratch out a living in the world. After a few more steps, Quinton felt the air temperature change slightly and stopped. The smell of spices wasn’t as strong and he thought he could smell the city -- that strange odor that was part stone, part smoke and part sweat. He must be close now. He took a few more steps and felt the wall pull away from him to his left, and he could feel the slightest of breezes coming from above. This had to be it.

  He turned into the opening and his foot hit a step almost immediately. Relieved, he started climbing the circular stairway using his hand to guide him. His pace quickened and he opened his eyes. Above him, the slight grey glow of twilight was already painting the sky. There was no reason to slow, as the steps were stone and solid. If they had been wood, he would need to test every step, making sure it was steady before moving on. As he reached the top, the air changed completely, taking with it the smell of the warehouse and replacing it with the smell of the city.

  The top of the tower was a small square, with the stairs spiraling down the middle of it. There were four waist-high walls surrounding it, and from what Quinton could make out in the dim light, a couple of stacked empty crates on the side nearest the street that had probably been placed there by some other unfortunate watchman years ago so he could rest his weary body while watching the horizon for distant sails. The tower had a covered roof over it but was open on all four sides except for a support post in each corner. He walked to the side and looked down at the street below. He could see the dark shapes of the warehouses looming in the darkness, but it was still too early to see the wall or the guards on it. When the sun came up, it would be the perfect vantage point. He looked across the street and could make out the lower roofline of the buildings there, but nothing else. Somewhere out there, Sands was taking up his position, waiting for the game to begin.

  It wasn’t long before the twilight gave way to the first golden orange rays of dawn that stretched like an old man who had slept too long, reaching for the far side of the world. There was always something comforting about dawn, because every day brought hope -- even to a place like this. Quinton kept a vigilant watch for the young maggots, because all it would take would be a moment of inattention to miss them, and they would be gone before he could signal Sands. He looked down at the small piece of mirror in his hand and held it up to his face. He hadn’t looked at himself in a long time, and that was usually in the blurry waters of the river. What he saw surprised him. He looked much older than what he remembered. His dark hair was matted and dirty, his blue eyes carried a sadness caused by witnessing too much despair and his mouth was clenched in either nervousness or anger. He quickly put the mirror down. He preferred to think of himself from the days with his mother -- clean, smiling and happy.

  He threw glances down both ends of the street. No sign of the maggots, just a vagrant sifting through dead leaves and rotted sticks, hoping to find some scrap he could sell for a morsel to eat. The vagrant looked vaguely familiar and Quinton wondered for a moment if it weren’t Sands in disguise, but dismissed that idea because the man was too short. He searched his memory for some other place he might have encountered the man but couldn’t place him. The vagrants all looked the same, much like the maggots. If you had seen one, you had seen them all. Quinton watched the man make his way down the street in the early morning light, slowly working closer to the building he was in. He had a long walking stick and used it to flip over every leaf pile and probe every unknown item. Occasionally, he would bend over, pick something up, hold it up to the light, then satisfied it wasn’t worth anything, toss the item back onto the ground.

  Quinton glanced across the street to see if he could spot Sands but saw nothing. There was also still no sign of the maggots. As usual, maggots were proving unreliable, even on a good day. He sighed and looked over at the vagrant again. His heart stopped. The vagrant was holding another item up the light to see it. But this time Quinton noticed something different. The light was coming from the far end of the street where the wall was, but the man was holding up the objects in different directions each time. In some cases, his shadow was falling over the item, making it impossible to see any detail. He wasn’t examining anything -- he was using the motion as a means of slowly studying his surroundings, including the rooftops. Quinton wondered if he had already been spotted. The top of the tower was still shaded and dark, and he was not between the man and the rising sun, meaning he wasn’t backlit. He hoped he hadn’t been spotted but stepped back to the center of the tower to be safe. Had Sands spotted the man, as well? Who was he working for? Wren? This wasn’t something they had discussed. Should he use the mirror now?

  He decided to wait, keeping a close watch on the man while still waiting for the maggots. The vagrant was almost directly below him now, on the far side of the street. Quinton had to stand on his toes to be able to see over the wall of the tower. The man was looking up again, this time in his direction. Quinton could see the man’s eyes and that he wasn’t looking at the small stone in his hand; he was looking right past it to the tower. Quinton cursed himself for peering over with the man so close. While he was still deep in the shadows and doubted the man could see him, there was no need to take the risk. He decided not to move. He knew firsthand that movement gave away a position more than anything. If the man had looked up late, he would just be another part of the shadow and wouldn’t have noticed a change. The vagrant looked down toward the base of Quinton’s building, made a sound indicating he had spotted something good and shuffled off across the street toward his position.

  The boy was stuck. He didn’t dare peer over the wall, as that would give him away for sure. But he also didn’t like the idea of not knowing where the man was. If he got into the building and the stairwell, he would be trapped. He moved back toward the wall nearest the street away from the stairs that descended into darkness. If the man came up, he could try to scramble down the wall and get away before he could catch him.

  Quinton looked down the part of the street he could see. He immediately spotted the two young maggots rounding the corner. He watched their faces to see if they would give any indication of the vagrant’s presence below, but they were staring straight ahead, chatting away.

  Stupid maggots, he thought. Not paying attention to your surroundings was the quickest way to get a permanent dip in the river. If they saw the vagrant, they gave no indication, which told Quinton that the man was probably below him in the building. Just then, he thought he heard a shuffling below him, like rats scattering about, but he wasn’t sure. His heart was pounding and he wasn’t trusting his senses. To make matters worse, Quinton saw three men, each with greasy long hair tied behind him in a ponytail, round the corner the maggots had just came from. Their faces were grim and their eyes set straight ahead on the boys, who were unknowingly about to be taken.

  Quinton took the mirror, aimed it in the air and pointed it across the street. Nothing happened. He looked again and realized that the shadows from the tower roof were still too deep. He couldn’t reach out far enough to get the mirror into the sun. He cursed again. This time he heard a laugh coming from downstairs.

  “I’m coming to get you,” came a voice, the last word echoing on the hard stone walls of the stairwell.

  Time to go. Quinton wrapped the mirror shard in a small pocket to free up both his hands, ran to the edge of the wall furthest from the street and climbed up on the edge. He grabbed at one of the wooden
posts supporting the roof of the tower and nearly tumbled over the wall as a large piece of wood broke off in his hand. The post was dry rotted and filled with the hollow tunnels of insects. He regained his balance and stuck his foot over the wall, searching out a place that would support him. His foot searched around but kept slipping off. The tower was made up of beach stones that were rounded smooth from years spent tumbling around at the bottom of the sea. The narrow mortar lines weren’t wide enough for him to get a grip, and the stones were far too smooth to climb on. Maybe Sands could climb down something like this, but Quinton knew that with the man coming up the steps, he didn’t have much time to learn.

  “I hear you,” called a hollow voice from below. The man was much closer, probably half way up the steps by the sound of his voice.

  Quinton looked up. The roof of the tower had a slight overhang that he thought he could reach. Using one arm looped around the rotten post, he leaned out and was able to get a solid grip on the edge of the roof. With his feet on the edge of the wall and his body leaning precariously out over the forty-foot drop below, he unslung his arm and grabbed the roofline with both hands. Rocking side to side, swung one foot up onto the roof and used that to pull himself up onto the roof, grabbing and clawing at the broken tiles all the way. Once safely up, he moved up to the center of the peak and waited. With any luck, the man would think he had climbed down the side and escaped.

  After a few seconds, he heard the man make the same noise of surprise he made when crossing the street. It was more like a cry of happy discovery than anything else. Quinton held his breath, then remembered the maggots below. He felt around the folds of his clothes, found the mirror shard and held it out to the light. He aimed it across the street and quickly flicked it back and forth, hoping that Sands had seen the signal before it was too late. Then he heard the scraping. The man was feeling around the roofline, his large dirty hands searching out a handhold. The boy watched as the fingers felt around, looking for a hole or bump they could claim as their own. It didn’t take long to find one. The man made the noise again, the roof rocked slightly as he pulled himself up on the edge of the wall, and just like Quinton had, the vagrant started searching with his other hand.