Magpie's Song

by Allison Pang

  He cuffs me when I don’t move out of his way. My cap falls off into the dust, and my white hair tumbles past my shoulders in the guttering lamplight, the mere presence of which earns me another stinging slap.

  “Oy. A Moon Child. Raggy Maggy, is it?”

  I taste blood on my lips, but I keep my face down and my hands in my pockets. “Yessir.”

  He pushes my hair out of the way to check the brand on the nape of my neck, letting him know which of the three Moon Child clans I belong to. My clan, the Banshees, resides within the Warrens while the Spriggans have taken what’s left of the merchant districts and the Twisted Tumblers have the run of the Theatre Quarter. The rest of BrightStone is a no-man’s-land of uneasy truce and feigned ignorance, but it gives us the semblance of having power over ourselves. Getting caught outside your territory by an opposing clan, though, is usually grounds for a beating, often of the more fatal sort.

  I swallow, unable to keep from peeking up at him. If I’d run when I first saw them I might have managed to elude them long enough for them to decide I wasn’t worth the trouble of chasing down. But there’s no point in making a fuss now. He’s got real evidence of who I am and that I was here.

  Inquestor Caskers’s dark eyes rake over me with a familiar bent, narrowing when they see my sack. I let my mouth go wide and scared, making myself appear as harmless and uninteresting as possible.

  He grunts, fixing me with a hard gaze before tugging on the bag at my shoulders. “Seen anything worth reporting this evening? Anything untoward we should know about?”

  It’s asked in the mildest of tones, but the threat lingers all the same. It takes everything I have to simply stand there instead of jerking away. In the end, I simply shake my head. “Nothing,” I mumble.

  Caskers stares at me a moment longer and lets go of the sack. “Indeed. I don’t have time for you now. Get out of my sight before I change my mind.”

  I dart low to retrieve my cap as they shove past me. I still have a few moments before they discover the body and decide I’m involved somehow. Which they will. And I’m not going to stick around to see what happens when they do.

  I don’t dare glance up at where Sparrow might be hiding, but I start to hurry down the alleyway.

  “Hold up, Lieutenant!” one of the Inquestors shouts. “We’ve a man down here . . .”

  “That’s that,” I mutter, wincing as their shouts of alarm echo off the bricks.

  “Oy! Stop her!” Caskers orders.

  My sack bobs against my back as I run, the hard weight of the dragon slamming into my hip. A hand snatches at my arm, fingers curving like iron around my elbow.

  Bastards left a guard at the end of the alley.

  I snarl at my captor—this one slightly bowlegged with a face of jowled blubber. “Not so fast, girl.” A lightstick hangs from his belt, and he frowns when he sees my hand. “You’ve blood on your sleeve.”

  My heart sinks. Stupid, stupid, Mags. I reach into my pocket in desperation and fling the broken dragon parts at his face, escaping as he covers his eyes.

  I whistle shrilly as I pelt away, and Sparrow answers me with a whistle of her own. As coded messages go, it’s a rudimentary thing but it gets the job done. Easy to hear, hard for outsiders to understand, and for Moon Children, sometimes that’s the difference between life and death.

  I whistle again, looking for the best route. Which way?

  Two short blasts followed by a long hold in response. Two up, one over.

  I yank the hammer from my belt as I sprint the next two blocks, the heavy steps of the Inquestors pounding in pursuit. I leap upward, snagging a low-slung metal beam hanging across the street. It gives beneath my weight; the rusted edges wail as I whip forward so it hurtles from the brickwork, landing behind me with a clunk. A bang and a sharp curse follow suit, indicating my venture to trip my pursuers was successful, albeit only temporarily.

  The end of the street materializes in front of me, the brassy-gold shine of the lanterns reflecting off a drainpipe.

  Almost there.

  Heavy breath follows me, but it’s winded. If I can get to the rooftops, they won’t dare come after me. My fingers clutch the drainpipe, and I dig my boots into the mortar to shimmy up and up.

  My teeth slam shut hard, the vibration ringing in my ears, as I’m yanked sharply down. One hand on my boot and another on my bag, pulling it from my shoulder.

  Not the dragon!

  I kick out, making contact with something soft as I wriggle out of the shoulder strap.

  Without bothering to aim, I swing the bag by the strap, hurling it up into the darkness to land on some distant rooftop. I catch the dull clank of metal against stone. Good enough. With any luck I’ll find it later, once I get out of this mess.

  Another pull and I drop farther down the pipe. I spare a glance below only to see Caskers emerge from the shadows, his face sputtering with fury as he commands my obedience. “You will attend me, Moon Child.”

  I should. Every instinct I have tells me I should turn myself over to them, but something inside me snaps. I spit at him and swing wildly at my captor with my hammer. My first attempt merely blemishes the side of the wall, but my second . . .

  A wet gurgle and a groan come from the Inquestor as the hold on my ankle slackens. I scramble away, the hammer slipping from my grasp. Above me, Sparrow holds out her hand. I grab it, and she hauls me to the first bit of landing.

  “Had to drop my fucking hammer,” I grunt.

  Sparrow’s dark eyes are wide pools of fear. “We’ve got bigger issues, Mags. Come on.” She dashes away, her feet slapping on the rooftop. I swear as I stare down at the scene below.

  The unfortunate Inquestor I just hit sprawls on the cobblestones, a red stain pooling around her head. Her legs twitch like a pipe beetle after it’s been lanced on a stick, but she’s got her hands clamped over an eye. Her lips are pulled back in agony, and I realize I’ve impaled her.

  Click.

  Now the pistols are drawn, aimed in my direction. My gaze meets that of Caskers, and somehow my hand rises to salute him. His brows knit in single-minded concentration, the report of the gun snapping off the walls of the alley, cement shattering right above where I’m standing.

  My ears ring as I flee. From behind me comes the rattle of the drainpipe, but I keep going. I skip over the tops of the buildings, my knees bent for balance. My lightstick is long gone, and it’s safer to take my chances in the fog without it anyway. I pause to get my bearings, and Sparrow’s form materializes beside me.

  “We should split up. Less chance of them tracking us,” she says.

  Another bullet whizzes by, and I duck beneath the buzz of it, fire blooming over the right side of my scalp. It only grazed me, but there’s a dark dampness on my fingers when I gingerly test the spot.

  “Go!” I give her a shove as the dull rumble of an air patrol roars to life above us, the engine fans thrumming like a half-mad metronome. Not a mere scout ship this time but an actual Interceptor. Sparrow lets out a squeak and tears across the rooftops. I take off in the opposite direction, away from the Warrens.

  I skid down a rough embankment made of half a toppled chimney, and I head for the old industrial quarter. My ears are pricked for the sounds of an alarm until the textile mill looms out of the mist, its familiar broken windows peering at me jaggedly.

  Inside, there are squatters, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. Most of the BrightStone citizens living in the Warrens are outcasts adrift in their own private hells. Some unfortunate animal roasts on a spit, and the scent of greasy meat roils my stomach.

  My hair is already becoming matted with blood, and I lean against the arc of a broken pipe, ignoring the dull throb of pain. If the flap of skin on my head is any clue, I’m going to need stitches.

  Out of habit, I run my fingers over my breastbone to the copper panel resting between the curves of my nearly nonexistent breasts. I let out a sigh of relief. My heart continues beating the way it always has, a
comforting tick-thump, tick-thump vibrating softly below my touch. But I’m not totally in the clear yet. Most patrols give up after a few minutes, but the last look Caskers gave me had been intensely personal, my eventual demise reflected in the depth of his beady rat eyes.

  “You’re a marked woman, Mags,” I whisper to myself. Rory might very well Tithe me for this . . . and that hardly bears thinking about.

  My thoughts churn, but I have to trust Sparrow has found her way home by now, or at least a good place to hide. My only consolation is that she wasn’t involved. Even if the Inquestors catch her, they have no reason to think she has anything to do with the dead Meridian.

  A cockroach scuttles over my face. I flick it off and crush it beneath my thumb. Hunching forward, I tuck my scarf in around my neck to soften the sudden chill creeping through my patched overcoat. My scalp burns as blood drips down my cheek. I need a bonewitch to stitch it before I do anything else. My ears strain in the darkness, but there’s no sound of a patrol, no gunshots in the distance.

  All clear for now. With a sigh, I uncoil from my perch to creep along a narrow ledge and then downward, my fingers digging into the ancient brickwork for purchase.

  “Piss on me, piss on you. Piss on all the Meridians, too.” I singsong the familiar children’s rhyme, letting the words drift into the fog as I head for Surgeon’s Row, my bloodstained hands shoved deep in my pockets.

  Time’s heartbeat flickers faint

  To the cadence of the walking dead.

  Consuming all and producing naught

  Crushing my bones to make their bread.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Hold still, Mags,” the bonewitch orders.

  I wince as the needle slides under my hairline and stare out of the tumbledown shack that serves as the bonewitch’s surgery. The stool I’m perched on is spotted with rust, but the needles are clean and that’s all that really matters.

  Outside, the evening crowd shuffles past, but no one pays us any mind. Here on Surgeon’s Row, it’s better to not look at anyone too closely anyway. It’s located in the heart of the trade district, and its patrons wind around a haphazard display of vendors and a tent slum made of beggars and thieves who can’t quite bring themselves to live in the Warrens.

  The bonewitch tsks at me. She’s a stout teakettle of a woman, with fat fingers that have no right to be as nimble as they are. I’ve often wanted to ask how she ended up here, since she clearly knows what she’s doing, but there’s no point. Most of the bonewitches on Surgeon’s Row were doctors once—the real kind employed by the Salt Temple or private hospitals—but the Rot struck hard and fast when it first appeared twenty years ago and left its mark on victims and survivors alike.

  None of us knows where the plague came from, but we all know how it ends, contained in a prison of necrotizing tissue and putrefying organs and a brain that slowly loses its own sense until all that’s left is an empty shell. The Salt Temple priests like to preach about sin and punishment and the righteousness of a disease sent to cull the unworthy, but I’ve never really understood it.

  Undoubtedly, the bonewitch lost a family member to the plague, and once she was touched, no respectable patient would dare visit her for fear of being “tainted.” Moon Children are the least respectable patients of all—and more importantly, we’re immune to the Rot. Not that such a thing seems to mean much in the eyes of the BrightStone citizens. They still call us sin-eaters. Sacred scapegoats, I suppose, whose legacy is nothing more than to be viewed with superstition and fear. The salt priests claim we are a necessary inconvenience, absorbing the sins of the city and keeping the Rot from taking more than it does, but it’s always sounded like bullshit to me.

  Scared people are just easier to control, is all.

  The bonewitch gives me a sour look as she ties off the catgut. “How many is this now? Four? Five?”

  “What can I say? I like living dangerously.” I wink at her with a cheekiness I don’t quite feel.

  “Foolishly, you mean,” she retorts, irritation flickering in her narrowed eyes.

  “Same thing.” I squirm when she rinses the area with warm water. “Nearly done yet?”

  She grunts something noncommittal and pulls out a little tray of inks. “As soon as I leave my mark.”

  “Can’t we skip it?” My stomach rumbles with impatience.

  “Rules are rules, Mags. If you don’t like getting tattoos, don’t get injured so much. Might be simpler for you in the long run.”

  She squints in concentration as she lightly tattoos her mark beside the stitches. It’s a simple thing, a curved line with a dot below it. In a few weeks, no one will see it beneath my hair anyway. But the bonewitch is right. I’ve got three other marks of hers, one on my thigh and two on a calf. The former is courtesy of a slippery pipe, the latter due to a rather brief knife fight. Not that there isn’t a one of us similarly marked. The Inquestors insist all surgical doctoring be accompanied by a mark—the better to track who’s doing what to whom, even here in Surgeon’s Row. Not that everyone obeys, but every once in a while a bonewitch is reinstated to doctor status and I suspect that has a lot to do with the levels of compliance. If nothing else, the marks are a remembered history of my life.

  No markings accompany the heart-shaped panel on my chest, though, leaving its creation shrouded in mystery. But bonewitches come and go here, and I have no memory of when I got it, only that it protects the clockwork heart that keeps my blood flowing.

  “There now. Finished. That will be two shillings.”

  “I’ve only got one.” I pull my cap down over the sore spot. It stings, but the bleeding’s stopped.

  The bonewitch snaps her fingers and holds out her hand. “Two shillings, Mags.”

  I pull one from the purse tucked deep in my coat pocket. “You know I’m good for it.” I press the coin into her palm. “I’ll pay you the rest tomorrow.”

  She chews on her lower lip, rolling the disc between her fingers, and then nods. “Aye. And maybe if you find anything worthwhile in the slag heaps, you might consider bringing it to me?” She gestures to her meager tray of tools with a weary shrug. Medical supplies are hard to come by, but sometimes I find a battered syringe or a scalpel mixed up with the rest of it.

  “Well and good. See you tomorrow, Doc.” I bow at her mockingly as she shoos me out the door.

  Surgeon’s Row is packed this evening, but I catch the rhythm of it easily enough, slipping into the crowds without notice. It always seems to come and go in waves. Tension tends to build up in the worst parts of BrightStone, held in quiet check by the city guard and the Inquestors, but even they can’t stop pockets of violence from breaking out. Too many hungry bellies to feed, and with winter coming, it only leads to greater despair. But it gives the bonewitches work, so at least some good comes of it.

  My newly mended wound aches beneath the tightness of the stitches, and I fight the urge to rub it. Most people are too busy with their own issues to mind me much. Whimpers of pain emerge from one leaning shack, and the sound turns to a shriek that’s abruptly cut off.

  A shudder ripples through me. The only anesthetic here comes out of a bottle, and it’s rare to find patients who can afford that much.

  A fruit vendor huddles on the corner, hawking fresh apples from a wheeled cart, but they look pretty damned wizened to me, their skin wrinkly and brown.

  I eye the apples. Leftovers from Lord Balthazaar’s estates, most likely. The Inquestors might provide us with some of their stores from time to time, but most of our food is sold to us by Balthazaar, the richest man in BrightStone.

  I purposefully stumble on the cobblestones, catching myself on the corner of the cart. The vendor swears at me, but I only nod and apologize, pocketing two apples as I stand up. The old man continues to berate my clumsiness until I round the corner, and then it doesn’t matter anymore.

  The apples are wormy things, but they take the edge off what’s been a long evening and I scarf them down as fast I can. I wipe the
sour juice from my mouth with sticky fingers and head for Blessing Bridge.

  I’m sure it was named long ago; for all that the salt priests have a temple nearby, the only thing that’s a blessing about the bridge now is that you can use it to leave the Warrens. Sparrow and I tend to use it as a meeting place. If she’s managed to get away from the Inquestors, I’ll find her here.

  Before long I’m standing at the center of the bridge, watching the sluggish waters of the Everdark River drift below me. An oil sheen so thick I could probably walk on it ripples over the surface. Rumor has it the water is clean at its source in the Frostfell Mountains, but as it tumbles down the mountainside to cut a swath through BrightStone, it swallows everything in its path, growing swollen and black and full of corpses, only to finally vomit its guts into the sea at the mouth of Bloody Bay. It’s also caught fire at least once a year since I was ten.

  I lean over the rusting rail and spit, my heart sinking when I see no sign of Sparrow. Though I do catch a glimpse of another Moon Child scratching something into the rocks at the base of the bridge.

  Penny.

  I whistle a hello to her and she glances up, pausing in her artistic endeavors to wave me over. There’s a set of rusty pipes embedded in the column beside her and twisted into a primitive ladder, so it’s easy to clamber down. I grimace as the stink of the water hits me. It could knock a man over from ten paces; being this close to it is nearly unbearable.

  A rat floats by, gnawing at something fleshy, and I shove it away with a pole that was lying on the shore.

  “Oy. Just who I was looking for,” Penny mutters, pocketing her screwdriver as she finishes up. Penny’s short for a Moon Child, with fat calves and a thick waist, her pale hair braided to hang over one shoulder. With her ability to read and write making her an invaluable resource to our clan’s survival, Penny is Rory’s second-in-command. She’s a few years older than me, and though we tend to butt heads, even I have to admit she’s never been anything but fair in her dealings within the clan.