Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens

by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

  In this case, Fen didn’t think Time understood the meaning of lots, and so taking a deep breath he dared to pull out the full stack stuffed in his pants’ pocket.”

  Time’s colorless eyes went wide as he caught sight of all those Ludwigs and a smirk cut sideways beneath his waxed mustache. “Gord-O, you are just full of surprises.”

  Because of the quantity, Time wasn’t able to give Fen as many tokens as he would have liked, but it was still a haul, and after it was all counted out the merchant helped him wrap them all up so they wouldn’t jangle. “Now don’t dally in the passages,” he said, “get it home, and get it hidden. A burglar or troller’ll cut your throat for sure for a fraction of this hoard, so’t goes. Good luck, kid.”

  When Fen reached the door, he stopped. “What if I come upon more?”

  “More? What…you got some magic hole where Iron notes miraculously appear?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Well, you find more, you bring ‘em right back here and we’ll trade again.”

  “And should it be lots.”

  One of Time’s brushy eyebrows crawled halfway up his forehead in puzzlement. “You talking more lots than you just traded in?”

  Fen shrugged, not willing to spill it all right then.

  “Tell you what,” offered the merchant in a reasonable tone, “I might not have the token on hand to trade at the time you bring in this lots, so you got a couple of choices here on how to proceed. One, you can either tell me how many lots you intend to bring in, and I can have the token ready for you ahead of time. Or two, and if you’re feeling particularly trusting, you can bring it here, leave it with me, and I can get you the token after the fact.” Time brought a gloved hand to his chin and rubbed in contemplation. “I’ll let you decide on this one.”

  Fen rubbed at the back of his head, trying to make up his mind on what to do. Nowhere else was Fen going to find someone to hawk all his notes with, and everything he experienced with Time thus far told him the man could be trusted. Maybe old Art would have been disappointed in his son’s naiveté, even Fen’s sister might have smacked him in the back of the head for what he was working up the gumption to do, but if everything worked out, he could change in all those Ludwigs for tokens and live the highlife in the slum after that; bench-time every day, the freshest and choicest finslug eggs, and battery arc-torches for every room of the hovel. Lydia couldn’t be mad at him for that, especially when she stopped scroungin’ and started eating herself fat like the rest of her gals. And worse case, Time swindled him and he was out a stack, and with dozens more back at the first Sister that was a risk he could take.

  “I’ve one stack with me right now,” Fen finally confessed, feeling a rush of blood to his head. “I can leave it with you, and I have two more I can trade to you later.”

  Time threw back his head and laughed into the tent’s pointed ceiling. “Ah, now ain’t you a cunnin’ pup, doing a little of the both. Might you be testing me with a little to keep me honest, then takin’ the safer route with the rest? Could be I underestimated you, you little scamp. You’re just full of surprises.” Time grinned wide with his sharp, white teeth glimmering in the weak overhead lamplight.

  The moment of truth had come. Fen pulled the bundle of cash out from his jacket pocket and held it up to be seen. Time’s narrow eyes widened and he took to licking his lips. “Full of surprises,” he repeated at a murmur.

  Chapter 7

  With Time on his side the tokens began to flow. Fen started buying bench-rent every day, even on days that weren’t sunny, and he got around suspicion by noting the sunkeepers’ schedules and avoiding repeat business too often. The daily traffic helped. Hundreds passed beneath the Skylight, shuffling between the Exchange and the Claw’s Cradle so that no one took notice of him as long he kept his head down. He also made sure to sit near men and woman who might have been his parents’ age, so no one thought to inquire how a child could afford the light on his own.

  From the lightbringers Fen bought candle after candle after candle, stashing them in his room until he could figure out a way to use them without his sister growing suspicious. Lydia had already flipped-out over him quitting the scrounging business, but she just thought he’d gone back to running with his gang, so a few candles here and there was no problem, but in a week he had a pile under his blankets that amazed even himself, and that was bound to bring her wrath if discovered.

  But food, food was the hardest part, not necessarily for himself; he just bought what he wanted and ate it wherever, sometimes sitting up on pipes with his legs dangling over the foot-traffic, sometimes along the Drain Line staring at the water, and sometime in the Bartermen’s under the twinkling arc-globes. What was hard was sharing it with Lydia. Anytime he tried to pass her off a piece of food she’d wave it way, telling him she wasn’t hungry and that he needed it more than her. That was probably the most frustrating part; Fen standing there offering her food while he was stuffed-full near bursting, and her refusing while she wasted away to skin and bones. What good were all those tokens if he couldn’t even feed or provide light for his sister?

  But after a few brief weeks it all dried up anyway.

  “Sorry, kid,” said the trusted merchant one morning as Fen came strolling in, whistling jolly with a pocketful of Ludwigs, “Can’t exchange out anymore for a while.”

  “But why?” Fen protested.

  “Listen, Gord-O, tokens don’t just grow on the old Sentinel, so’t goes. I got to purchase them from the rat lord’s mint-master, and he’s starting to take note of the frequency in which I’m popping in and out. Now I’ve waylaid his suspicions thus far by telling him I’ve enticed a slew of wagies, and so business’s been a-hummin’, so to speak, but here’s the thing. There ain’t a score of workers in these slums who can bring what you bring in one bundle at a time, and you brought in four last week. You perchance see my dilemma now?”

  “Well…I guess,” replied Fen dimly, “but…ain’t there anything you can do, Time. See…I’m all out—”

  “All out!” Conrad roared, incredulous. “How, oh how, can you be out, Gord-O? I set you up with close on a half thousand—A half thousand, kid! And you blew through that in under a month? You’re just a half-pint, ain’t no way you’ve got vices that cost that much—not yet—so where did it all go?”

  Fen shrugged. “Sunkeepers, lightbringers, and food peddlers,” he admitted, unable to look the merchant in the eyes.

  “Sunkeepers, lightbringers, and food…” Time burst into an uproar of laughter. “That’s what you spent all those tokens on, Gord-O? No wonder you’ve grown a foot since I first saw you! And whatever corner you call a home must be bright as the sun with all those candles. Ha! The things a kid’ll buy… Well, I can probably toss you a couple tokens just to keep your face fed—”

  “Just a couple? No more?”

  “Guess you’ll just have to cut back on the bench-time, kid. Bench-rent…” Time shook his head in disapproval, “can’t believe you wasted money on that racket. Two tokens a sixth hour…and I thought my prices were steep. You must spend damn near every minute of daylight beneath the Pinprick. Enox Unon, I can’t say it enough; the things children spend money on.” Time took a moment to pace his shop, stopping to snatch a battery off the shelf so he could toss to from hand to hand like a ball. “Alright, I got a soft spot for you, Gord-O, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll work something out with the mint-master; cash in every single one of your notes in one big score.”

  Fen watched the battery, mesmerized by the way the merchant juggled something so prized as though it were nothing but a rock. “One big score?”

  “Yeah, Gord-O,” Time caught the battery in his left hand and pointed it at him, “it’ll be easier to explain it off that way. We can call it good fortune; we can call it a robbery; we can damn-near call it anything we want. The fact of the matter is, it’ll be a lot easier for the minter to swallow that cockamamie nonsense than us continually bringing him in a flo
od of notes.”

  The idea of handing over all his stash in one shot got Fen feeling nervous and Time seemed to sense it. Laying a comforting hand on the reluctant boy’s shoulder, Conrad toned his voice towards sympathetic. “I get it, Gordon, this is a big thing to trust another with, and I’d rather not push you into it. But this is the only way. I can’t continue to risk operating the way we’ve been operating, I just can’t. When you said you had lots I hadn’t expected it to be so much. Now you don’t have to do this deal with me, you can go out and try to find others to exchange with, but that brings its own sort of danger…need I remind you of the day we met?” Time lowered his head and probed the boy’s eyes.

  Fen shook his head, having to admit to himself his mentor had a point. His nose was still whistling from the beating he’d received.

  “Good,” approved Time. “Now it might take a while to arrange this, so you’re going to have to be patient—but, in the meantime, I want you to consider coming to work for me.”

  The boy screwed his face up in befuddlement, “Here?” He motioned to the shelves as though they held mysteries he’d never understand.

  “Here?” Time doubled over with laughter. “Kid, you’re something else! No, not here, you dolt.” He wiped away the mirthful tears from his smiling eyes and chucked the expensive battery aside, heedless of where it might land. “You know when I said I had kids working for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, do you see any kids here?” Time directed his attention to the empty shop.

  “No.”

  “That’s right, ‘cause I got them out there working.”

  Fen followed Conrad’s pointing finger towards the front door. Despite the gesture being made as a simple illustration it seemed important to look, though all he saw were a couple of shelves flanking a door of screwed together planks. The boy turned back. “Working, like how?”

  Time raised a well-fashioned eyebrow. “You know about mischief gangs, Gord-O?” He locked his piercing eyes on Fen before folding his arms across the lapels of his striped coat. As he waited patiently for a replay he tapped a covered finger on his narrow lips.

  Fen scratched at the back of his head and feigned ignorance. “Yeah…sure,” he said noncommittally.

  Time nodded. “Well this organization is sort of the same thing, only my kids bring back a wee little bit of what they take, and in return I take care of them.”

  To Fen, it seemed Time’s services were needless. The allure of a mischief gang was in not having anybody bossing you around like some rat lord. “Take care of them…how?” he asked, skeptical.

  Time lowered his head and tilted it to the side in a sly manner. “I bring them into the know, Gord-O.” A smirk crawled up from the corner of the man’s mouth.

  “Into the know,” Fen baulked in confusion, “what you mean?”

  But Conrad Time held back and gave his mustache a mischievous twist. “Ah ah ah, my little friend, for that you’ll have to come by my Sanctuary in the Barrows.”

  Fen’s face went slack. “The Barrows,” just saying it brought fear, “like where all the crypts are?”

  Time pivoted on his heels and threw a hand back over his shoulder dismissively as he walked towards the counter. “Unless you know of another.”

  “But…”

  “But what…it’s haunted!” Time jumped around and tossed his arms out wide. “Boo!”

  Fen startled, and then immediately clamped his mouth shut as he felt his temper flare.

  “Easy there, kid. You wear that anger of yours on your sleeve, and that’s bound to get you in trouble sooner or later. Now I’ve made my offer, and for me to trust you, you’re going to have to trust me. You see how we’re in this together? I scratch your back, you scratch mine, and in the process you might just discover there’s more to life than scrounging for tokens in the dark. So you in, or are you out, Gord-O?”

  Time’s directions to the Sanctuary were very specific; “Take the Suture north, pick up the Shambles, and make the turns at the landmarks I’ve laid out. Easy as mud pie,” and yet Fen still quaked as he crept through the narrow concrete passages of the Barrows, sure he was lost. The side tunnels whispered with a chill breeze like death’s breath, and the pattering of unseen things, distant yet altogether unnerving, sent his mind racing. Even the arc-torch he’d brought with him did little to sooth his growing fear. Most of the Warren denizens avoided the various slum barrows, more out of superstition than respect, so Fen didn’t think it was one of them making the noises that frightened him. With no other logical solutions, his mind instead drifted towards the macabre; to scare-stories of vapor wraiths and ghouls, and that pushed his heart to crashing in his chest. His nerves became livewires left exposed to the elements. At one point he freaked out so bad he fell on his butt, and that just turned out to be his own breath-vapors swirling up into his face after the winds shifted.

  Despite being alone, the humiliation drove deep, and Fen managed to gather his wits and steel his resolve, but more out of a sense of spite than anything else. He wasn’t going to let the dark get the better of him after all, but then the darkness of the Barrows tested him to the breaking. Even his torch seemed powerless, and the light it cast was pale and lacked in substance. When the scared boy turned a corner the dark slammed down like a wall behind him, and when he passed at an intersection it reached to swipe at him. There was only so long Fen could take it, and soon enough he just wanted his sister to be there, protecting him, and leading him along.

  Fen was close to turning back when the Avenue of Remembrance appeared in his path. It was the second to last marker, and well within the Barrows. Time said once he reached it, he’d be closer to the Sanctuary than turning back for the exit. I can do this, he encouraged himself while trying to rebuild what little confidence he had left. So as quiet as a mouse, the adolescent tiptoed through the old antechamber, where decades ago people went to tie ribbons on the columns in honor of the dead. However, as the Barrows expanded, the room became swallowed into the system, and now the newest of the ribbons were faded and brittle to the touch and surrounded by human skulls.

  There were so many skulls here, it seemed enough for every person Fen had ever known, and piled one atop another into pyramids as tall as he was, with some so old they looked wooden or made of rock, and they all watched him pass with pitiless black sockets. He wondered briefly why only skulls until he remembered the day him and his sister dipped their father’s body in the drain line.

  Lydia had made mention of taking their father’s head to the crypt keeper and having him interred as the Church of the True God would have dictated, but neither wanted to do the deed of sawing off Art’s head, or carrying it off to the Barrows, so they’d just fed his entire body to the waters instead. They didn’t feel bad about it. Most disposed of their dead in the same way, a kind of ‘completing the circle’ ceremony they called it. The bodies would help feed the finslugs and the finslug eggs would help feed the ratties, and round and round it would go. Only the most devout Truists adhered to the burial customs anymore, and then only if they had the token to pay the church’s crypt keepers. Owing to their prices, the cheaper option was to just give over the head; and here they’d been piled, and in some cases right to the vaulted ceiling.

  A series of turns and a break in the crypt, where a sewer line flowed, reminded Fen he was on the right track and nearly there, but that didn’t help. He kept seeing flashes of things moving outside his light and hearing whispering that couldn’t be passed off as tricks of the wind.

  Could it be crypt keepers? He asked himself once, not sure if that made him feel better or worse. It was said crypt keepers had been priests sent into the Barrows as punishment, and that they were as vile as any dangerman or looter. But then it was also said that all the crypt keepers had been driven off from the Pinprick’s barrow once the Gutter Lady came moving in, and now she haunted the passages exclusively.

  Knowing he’d already run into her once, though, didn’t make t
he prospect of a second encounter any less terrifying, and he thought to turn around immediately and run back to his hovel after the concrete passages gave way to yellow brick arcades, thick with cobwebs and lined in shelves. On those ancient shelves were stacked bodies. Skulls had been one thing, but full bodies were another, and the ones which were shrouded were worst of all. He couldn’t help his mind from believing these unseen horrors were going rise up and come for him.

  Fen stopped and turned, unwilling to go any deeper, but as he did he heard children’s laughter not far down the way. According to Time’s instructions he’d only a single passage left, and the sounds he heard were less terrifying and did more to arouse his curiosity than sending him fleeing; mostly because he detected the giggling of numerous girls.

  Fen swept back his shaggy hair and arranged it into a passable style before straightening his jacket and braving what was supposed to be the last stretch. A kilometer in, and a few twists and turns later, and he stepped into a cavernous space lit-up in torchlight. It must have been an old theater or stadium (maybe from the original city that existed back more centuries than Fen could count), and from where he stood at the main entrance, it swept down into a bowl that ended at a stage. The whole thing looked be cut from yellow stone, but it had somehow melted into dripping formations that hardened to leave caves and cut-ins from which harrowing catwalks had been strung from wall to wall. It looked like a multilevel gymnasium, and all of it lined with kids at play. They ran across the walks, sending them shaking and swaying, all the while screaming in glee. They climbed up and down the walls and chased one another between the rotted seats. They gathered in numerous circles to talk or play games…there had to be a thousand rat pups, maybe more. It had to be every child that had gone missing as of late, all happily enjoying life in this secret oasis surrounded in death.

  Fen stood for a while dumbfounded until first one child took note of him and then another and another. It was like an infection of silence that went rippling out, and where silence fell, eyes followed. The children were aware a stranger had entered their midst and some looked scared, others curious, and some angry.