by Jack Conner
“I’ll take her,” said Jack, of a young woman just walking past, hips swinging. Some of the boys chuckled.
“Ah, you wouldn’t know what to do with her,” Harry said.
“You wouldn’t, maybe. Nica has been giving me lessons.”
“Oh, I heard about her. She’ll do anyone for half a bottle of Gaz.”
“Really?” Nimfang said hopefully.
“Just don’t forget the penicillin.”
Hastings nudged Stevrin with an elbow, and Stevrin smiled gamely, as they were the acknowledged ladies’ men in the group. Stevrin supposedly earned most of his favors by running illicit errands for the Sisters, and although this was completely untrue – how he wished it were!—he encouraged the rumor to bolster his rep, such as it was. It was the most frustrating fact of his life that while he lived in a palatial mansion with scores of available and easily purchasable women at his disposal, he didn’t even have the funds to hire one. The gods could be monstrously cruel. Hastings, on the other hand, used his loan service money to pay off hall monitors and dally with the girls of the Virgin Vault.
“I find this all rather distasteful,” Vallie said. Then she brightened. “But most revealing. Do go on.”
Stevrin turned to her. “How’d you hear about us going out, anyway?”
She eyed him with her big, dark waif eyes, then sort of smiled shyly and indicated Hastings, who loomed among the boys like a mountain, huge and scarred and silent.
“Thanks,” Stevrin told him sourly.
Hastings shrugged his huge shoulders. He cradled a protective arm around Vallie.
“Oh!” Vallie said, pointing. “Look!”
Escaping Hastings, she rushed over to a food vendor, and the others followed. At the smells of frying meat and fat and spices, Stevrin’s stomach rumbled. He hadn’t eaten anything for dinner, saving room for the Market. A tall, somewhat weasely man with sun-darkened skin and gold bangles dangling from his ears fried curry-flavored meat on a grill and shoved the meat into long red peppers.
“Oh, I want one of those,” Vallie said.
“Looks spicy,” Harry said skeptically.
Hastings raised two of his thick fingers so the vendor could see it and gestured to Vallie, indicating that he was paying for hers. Stevrin wondered if there might be more to them than a client/prostitute relationship. Johns didn’t normally take their whores out on dates, after all. On the other hand, whenever Hastings wasn’t looking, Vallie shot covert glances at Stevrin.
“Yeah, I’ll take one,” Stevrin said, when the vendor looked at him questioningly. He threw down his cigarette and forked over five bits for the stuffed pepper, then bit into it eagerly. Instantly, fire engulfed his tongue, his eyes and nose burned, and he started coughing. Harry laughed. The pepper was good, though, and Stevrin was hungry and out five bits. He kept eating, hoping for some beer to wash it down.
“I dare you to eat that,” Jack was saying to Harry. They stood near a shabby-looking vendor, a stooped man grilling rats. The rats looked charred and horrid.
“I won’t eat it,” Harry said. “I bet you two bits you won’t.”
“It costs one bit.”
“Alright, then three bits. C’mon, I owe Hastings a lot.” Harry was an inveterate gambler. He would bet on anything, from the length of time it would take one boy to piss to how many johns a certain Sister could service in an evening. Unfortunately, he usually lost.
Jack eyed the revolving rats skeptically. Though not bad-looking, he was tall and skinny, and he could probably use the nutrition. He must have thought the same thing, for he bought one of the gruesome things and commenced to chew.
After about five bites, he doubled over and vomited—directly onto Harry.
“Hey!” Harry wiped at his chest. Then, after some thought, he added, “That still counts.”
“Best three bits I ever spent.”
As soon as Jack handed over the money, Harry passed it directly to Hastings, who signed, A drop in the bucket. All the boys had been forced to learn sign language years ago to communicate with the giant.
Harry shrugged. “Not my fault the Grim Gang rigs their games.”
They moved on, Harry cleaning himself as they went. All around them buzzed color and activity. The spiciest peppers from Zanshin, in all different sizes and shades, ale from Mitersburrow, belly dancers performing from Iyacai, an exotic menagerie run by a crew from Nirwal, featuring many illegal and dangerous animals—a tiger, a great horned slug, a bird that could spit acid—a firework stall boasting the brightest and loudest fireworks in the world, food vendors advertising the most succulent dishes from a score of countries (though don’t ask for your money back), carnival rides of questionable safety, peep shows, freak shows (the two owned by the same group and often mingling), and more, much more.
The aisles of the Market twisted here and there, winding and labyrinthine, sometimes forking, sometimes folding back on themselves, sometimes dead-ending in wide cul-de-sacs populated by the more illegal vendors. Vendors offered the boys all sorts of drugs and physical services. An alchemist apparently exiled from the Guild offered custom homunculi, designed to fulfill every sexual fantasy. Stevrin looked at their glistening black flesh with jutting breasts and carefully sculpted hips, then at their inhumanly blank faces, and he felt cold sweat trickle down the nape of his neck. You’d have to pay me.
Soon he located a spirits vendor and gulped down ale gratefully, cooling his burned tongue. Jack whispered in Nimfang’s ear as they passed a newspaper stand. Nimfang fell on the ground and flopped about like a dying fish, attracting shoppers’ attention while Jack swiped the evening paper.
“What’s with the reading material?” Stevrin asked when they were all up and walking again, Nimfang dusting himself off.
Jack slapped the front page. “Lookit this.”
SCIENTISTS NEAR COMPLETION OF SUPERBOMB!
“I’ve been hearing about it, but didn’t really believe it would happen. Says here the bomb could wipe out an entire city,” Jack said. “Some alchemical reaction.”
“Why?” Vallie asked.
“To stop a war, moron,” said Harry. “In case the Octunggen get up to their old tricks, this’ll back ‘em down. They’ve been talkin’ about it for a year, haven’t you heard?”
“Look at this,” Vallie said, pointing to an article further down the front page. TWO MORE GO MISSING IN UPPER LAVORGNA.
Stevrin eyed the words bleakly. That could’ve been me.
“How many is it now?” he said. “How many’ve gone missing all told?”
“Over fifty, I think,” Vallie said. “Maybe more. Didn’t it start during the summer?”
“Earlier, I think,” Harry said.
“Come on,” Jack told them, checking his rusty time piece. “We’re late. I think. We’re gonna miss the opening rounds.”
“I have one thing to do first,” Stevrin said.
Dr. Reynalt had told him what to watch out for, otherwise he might have missed it. But he was alert, and when he came on a certain series of stalls, he told the boys to hang back. He ducked into the middle one to see himself surrounded by shrunken heads in weird green-yellow fluid. It stank of formaldehyde and opium smoke. A hulking black man with livid, glowing green tattoos curling around every inch of his body stood in the shadows. A monkey scuttled up his thickly muscled arm.
“Thaddabui,” the man said, feeding the monkey a peanut. When he saw Stevrin, he lifted a glowing eyebrow. “Maelp’u, ‘addie?”
Stevrin puzzled over this, then shrugged and said, “Yeah, you can help me, I guess. You’re LeBon, right?”
“MistuLeBon’t’u, bui.”
“Yeah, right. Well, I’m a friend of, ah, a certain alchemist ...” Dr. Reynalt had told him not to use his name, in case anyone was listening.
Mr. LeBon smiled—his teeth were inked black, and even his tongue bore those strange, glowing, green tattoos—and said, “Yeasbui, Inuho u’r’talkn’bout. E telyu th’ passwurd?”
&
nbsp; “Uh, yeah. ‘Burnt foot’.”
LeBon pulled an envelope from the breast pocket of his woven vest and slipped it to Stevrin, who tucked it away without looking at it, though he was very curious at its contents.
“Thanks. I guess.” He scratched his cheek, looking around at the jars. “So what’s with the heads?”
But Mr. LeBon had returned his attention to his monkey, stroking it lovingly under the chin. Without even a glance at Stevrin, he said, “Thaddle do it, bui. Now b’off’withu.”
As Stevrin started to leave the booth, his blood ran cold.
Two men in suits walked toward him.
Dour-looking men with unhealthy skin, they moved in calm, fast strides that hinted at some authority, and if one looked closely one could see raised gray-purple veins that criss-crossed beneath their flesh. Instantly Stevrin knew them for members of the Guild of Alchemists. Guildsmen commonly used alchemical substances to increase their lifespan, as well as to make them stronger, faster. The compounds changed them, too, when they took too much of them, and not in good ways.
“Shit,” LeBon said from behind Stevrin.
Stevrin knew this was about Reynalt. The Guild had found out about LeBon and had come to collect him, to deliver him to the black cells beneath their main building, where they would torture him for information they could use against Reynalt.
Stevrin debated with himself for an instant, then said over his shoulder, “You run. I’ll distract them.”
Without giving himself time to think about it, he walked out into the flow of traffic. Jack and the others stared at him in horror as he approached the Guildsmen. Eyes flat and gray, the Guildsmen barely even seemed to notice him. To them he was rabble.
He reached them, casually bumped up against one. It was just a touch, the lightest touch, and then he was away—
An iron hand grabbed his wrist. Jerked him around.
“Hey!” he called.
The dull gray eyes of the Guildsman became somewhat less dull. Tiny fires sparked way back in those flat eyes. “I have business, or else ...” the man said. With his free hand, he snatched back the wallet that Stevrin had been shoving into a pocket. Then, roughly, he knocked Stevrin to the ground.
Without another thought, the Guildsmen turned about and resumed their march toward LeBon’s booth.
LeBon and his monkey were gone.
Stevrin raced to Jack, Harry and the others, who were staring at him in disbelief.
“Run!” Stevrin panted.
They needed no encouragement.
* * *
After some time, sweating and out of breath, Stevrin and the others stopped running. Though it was clear the Guildsmen were not interested in them—they were still searching for LeBon—the youths had fled quite a ways. It never hurt to be sure. The Guild was notoriously brutal and there was nobody to stop them. Not only did they own half the factories in this state and others, they had a good portion of the government in their pocket, as well—and they had the rest cowed. All the country depended on their products, from their medicines, cosmetics, lanterns, homunculi, and more. From this fortune they’d amassed great power, and their influence was inescapable at any level of society.
“What was that about?” Jack demanded, flipping a lock of sweaty hair from before his eyes.
“Tell you later,” Stevrin panted.
“I mean, shit!”
“Why did you pick that Guildsman’s pocket?” Nimfang said. “And why did you screw it up!”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “You’re better’n that. I mean, no one should try’n filch a Guilder, not even Nim here, but you’re ... well, you know. Pretty good.” Harry would never admit that someone was better at pick pocketing than himself.
“I’m as fast as a blur-toad with a firecracker up its ass and you know it,” Stevrin said, to which Harry shrugged. “I wanted to get caught.”
Harry gaped. “Why?”
“Like I said, I’ll tell you later.”
“Those fuckers coulda done for you.”
“Harry’s right,” said Vallie. “No one should antagonize the Guild. And here in Hang Tree Market! Magnar! They named this place after the Tree, but what they don’t say is that it was usually the Guild that sentenced the poor sods to the rope in the first place.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “What she said.”
“And who was that wacko with the tattoos?” said Jack.
“I said ...” Stevrin started.
“Fuck you and your tell-you-laters.”
Stevrin shrugged, then made a point of looking around furtively. He knew Jack and Harry loved nothing more than a taste of intrigue.
“This ain’t the place,” he said.
Harry nodded slowly. “Alright. But you owe us.”
“Fair enough.”
Jack snorted. “We’ve wasted enough time. The fight’s on by now, or at least the pre-show. We’re missing Returners.”
The opening bouts often featured failed experiments of scientists and black-market alchemists trying to repeat Dr. Reynalt’s successes. Stevrin shrugged. He could live without seeing the Returner bouts, but Jack was right, it was time to go. He had Reynalt’s letter, and the Smasher was waiting.
The group talked loudly as they left the Market and made their way along
Oceanside Avenue to the Charnel House. This was the warehouse district, and the Charnel House was a particularly large warehouse building that had been converted into a staging area for boxing. Formerly it had been a place to sort and process fish, and Stevrin always imagined he could still smell a lingering fishy trace. At the moment, it was also filled with the smells of sweat, blood, smoke and roasting peanuts. People packed the place, wall to wall. Stevrin and the gang had to shove their way through it, and in this Hastings helped tremendously. The seats near the arena were all taken, and the boys couldn’t afford them anyway, so they gamely climbed to the nosebleed section. Someone bought some peanuts and they passed them back and forth. Normally the buttered peanuts, just lightly sprinkled with cayenne pepper, were one of Stevrin’s favorite snacks, but he hardly tasted them. He kept seeing the approaching Guildsmen. I nearly died for that letter, and I haven’t even read it. Jack was in luck. As they sat down, a gong sounded, announcing the second round of a five-round bout between Returners. The dead things below possessed no stealth or strategy. They just flew at each other, biting and ripping like dogs that had no sense of pain.
“Look at ‘em go!” Jack said, crunching a wad of peanuts happily, then passing the bag to Hastings.
Hastings shrugged and ate a fistful. His loud crunching drowned out a comment from Harry. The bruiser passed the bag to a pale-faced Vallie, who shook her head, and Stevrin loved her a little, just for that.
“Man, that’s disgusting,” Nimfang said, when one Returner ripped the ear off the other and stuffed it in its mouth, but he didn’t turn away. Stevrin couldn’t tell if the ear-ripping caused the victim any pain, but the creature didn’t seem to like it any. It roared and launched itself at its opponent, tearing out fistfuls of flesh.
Stevrin winced. When Dr. Reynalt failed to bring a patient back successfully, he destroyed it; Tollie was probably already gone. Others, though—black market alchemists and doctors—unable to Awaken the dead properly, sold the results of their failures for use as slaves, guards, gladiators, even prostitutes. This didn’t earn the sort of money Reynalt made, but it earned enough to ensure a steady supply of faux-human monsters. The methods by which they procured their specimens were widely speculated on and were another reason to be careful when wandering alone in Upper Lavorgna.
Mercifully, the fight ended in the fourth round when the one-eared Returner gnawed through the throat and spine of the other. In triumph, it howled in glee and then proceeded to devour his enemy’s innards. Even Jack had the good grace to blanch at this. The handlers jumped into the ring and used their electric prods to subdue the creature before it could incite mass vomiting, then dragged it away in chains.
&n
bsp; A brief intermission followed, while the mess was hosed off, and pretty girls strutted around flashing their flesh for general amusement. Stevrin was not immune.
Finally the main bout came, and the crowd roared. The enthusiasm in the air was thick and sweaty, and Stevrin felt some of his revulsion start to fade. Despite himself, he grinned, and even his appetite returned.
“The Smasher!” he said, crunching a few peanuts.
He and Jack shared secret smiles. “This is gonna be intense,” Jack said.
“Fuckin’ aye.”
“What’s so special about this Smasher anyway?” asked Harry, unimpressed.
“Only that he’s the best fuckin’ boxer in the fuckin’ Uppers,” Stevrin said.
Harry rolled his eyes.
Hastings grunted and pointed to himself with a smug smile. Vallie laughed sweetly and patted his arm.
“I’m sure you could take him,” she said, and he nodded in agreement.
Horns blared. The audience stood, cheering and throwing things—half-pennies, flowers and cigarette butts mostly. Handlers cleared an aisle from the dressing room and Samuel “Smasher” Haylen strode out into the main room, bold as life. Huge, with short, curly red hair and a face covered in scars, a nose destroyed and rebuilt many times, he was a sight that made Stevrin laugh in glee.
“He’s gonna crush him!” he said.
“Hell yeah,” Jack agreed.
Indeed, the Smasher made a good accounting of himself, and his opponent Riken “Widowmaker” Frescal was staggering by the sixth round. By this time, Stevrin had loosened up and had lost himself in the fight. Even Harry seemed to be enjoying himself.
The fight never got past the sixth round, however.
Dr. Reynalt had been right. Something bad was beginning to brew in the city. Something very, very bad.
Halfway through the sixth round, the Charnel House shook violently. The metal walls rattled, and dust drifted down from the ceiling. A loud rumbling issued from the ground. The stands trembled.
Stevrin and Jack glanced at each other quizzically, much as the Smasher and the Widowmaker were glancing at each other below.
