Magpie's Song

by Allison Pang

  “There was another one,” I say suddenly. “A broken one. Beside the dead . . . man I stumbled over this evening. I threw some of the pieces at an Inquestor.”

  A slow sigh escapes Ghost, and he stills. “Don’t suppose you’d let me have it? Not to keep,” he hurries on. “But I know someone who might be able to help.”

  “Not unless you’ve got a buyer in mind,” I tell him bluntly. “All I want right now is to sell it, preferably without any way of tracing it back to me.”

  “And then what?” he asks.

  “What do you care?” His questions suddenly feel far too intimate for my liking. I scowl at my hands, rubbing the rough skin of my palms. Blisters upon blisters beaten into a thickness from years of dancing upon the rooftops. “That’s my business.” I glance at Sparrow. “Our business, aye?”

  “All right, then,” he says stiffly. He crouches and sighs again. “If you’re serious about selling it, meet me atop the Conundrum in about an hour. I may know someone willing to meet those requirements.”

  “If you mean Molly Bell—”

  “I don’t.” Before I can ask him anything more, he leaps and the wiry muscles of his legs hurtle him into the darkness. I hear the slap of his feet against the far wall, the drainpipe swaying with his weight as he disappears.

  “Show-off,” Sparrow mutters.

  I snort. “Aren’t we all?”

  A tiny laugh bubbles from her and scatters her previous melancholy. “So what do we do?”

  The dragon is currently attempting to scale the chimney, cement crumbling beneath its golden claws. I stoop to give it a boost up, wincing when it jumps onto my shoulder instead. An odd little chirrup escapes it.

  Sparrow grins. “Well it certainly seems to like you, anyway. What are you going to do with it? We can’t stroll the streets with it on your shoulder.”

  “Tempting, but no. We’ll have to put it back in the bag.”

  She eyes the dragon dubiously but retrieves the bag from our feet. It snarls at her, loud in my ear.

  “Sorry—” I tug it off my shoulder “—but we can’t let you be seen.”

  It lets out another grumble, but I’m already pushing it into the sack. Pain lances through my thumb, and I jerk my hand away, ignoring the drop of crimson beading on my skin.

  “Ungrateful thing,” I snap at it, knotting the drawstring shut. “Be still,” I warn it. If it decides to shred itself a hole while we are at Molly’s . . . Shit.

  A sulky creaking rumbles from the sack, but it goes silent a few seconds later.

  Sparrow’s mouth curves into a smirk. “Next you’ll give it a name and let it fetch your wee slippers for you in the morning.”

  I stick out my tongue and slide the sack over my shoulders as we scramble to stand, the younger girl only a few inches shorter than me.

  “You think Ghost will come through?” she asks. She scuffs the roof, and I can tell she doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

  “No idea, but we should hear him out. We’ve got some time to kill, though. We’ll trade the chit to Molly Bell before we meet with him, but let’s snag a bit of shepherd’s pie first. I never haggle particularly well on an empty stomach.” I purse my lips at her. “And I’ve three coppers in my pocket that says I’ll beat you to the Cheaps.”

  “Deal.” Before I even officially start the race, she spins and launches herself off the roof, her hands snagging a jutting bit of pipe. With a twist, she vaults to the other side of the alley; her fingers scrabble the brickwork for purchase as she lands.

  “Cheater,” I call after her. She fades into the fog, and a moment later, I follow. The air drags at my coat as it rushes past, but I don’t mind. Sparrow and I both know I’ll win if I set my mind to it. At least this way it doesn’t feel like charity when I give her the money.

  Not that I won’t make her work for it.

  I speed up. My vision narrows so that all I can see is the heady mosaic of walls and roofs, brittle stairs and ancient lampposts. My hands are numb to the scrapes, the pull on my flesh as I grasp and release, the momentum of my body swinging me forward. I smile as I land next to Sparrow and we take off again.

  The copper shingles blur beneath our feet like the glittering waves of a metallic sea. For a moment, we fly.

  Tick tock, tock tick

  The three blind mice are bound

  In wax and blood and an empty tub

  Trapped in darkness where I drown.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Cheaps aren’t much more than a series of tumbledown fishing shacks perched around the docks, but they are a good place for gossip and a constant source of drunken revelry. As a former port city, BrightStone had once been a major trading hub on the Merrow Coast, but with the rumors of the plague, the ships have long since stopped sailing into port. That and the embargo set by the Inquestors. Nothing comes in or out of BrightStone without their say-so.

  The fisherfolk here are allowed to ply their nets and lines a short ways out, but Inquestor airships keep a close watch on the tide. It’s a risky venture for the run-down boats, even so. These days the damn things might just as easily capsize as float, and dying in a rusted oil bucket ranks fairly low on the ways to go.

  My measly pennies buy us each a fish pie and a pint of piss-flavored ale that does nothing more than wet my throat. Not the lamb I’d been hoping for, but it fills the belly and that’s good enough. The two of us find a couple of empty casks to perch on, wiping our greasy fingers on our coats after we shovel the food into our mouths.

  I sip my ale slowly, but there’s nothing to savor about it. At least if you look busy, people tend to leave you alone. The flames in the streetlamps dance in the breeze, illuminating the docks in a hazy reddish hue that gives Bloody Bay its name—though the only blood that’s spilled is from sailors scuffling and the occasional gutting of some hapless drunk who’s been too careless with his coin.

  In the better parts of BrightStone, the streetlights are steam powered—real electric. But here no one can be bothered to maintain the mechanisms. And that’s assuming they wouldn’t be disassembled and melted into scrap within hours.

  The salt stink of the bay hitches a ride on the evening air, but it does little to eliminate the scent of the unwashed masses parading before us. Desperate people, clinging to a few moments of forgetfulness in the bottom of a bottle of ale.

  I pick a bone out of my fish pie and watch as a rat runs off with it. Mad Brianna saunters her swayback hips down the quays, snatching at hands and demanding coin for the promise of a future that doesn’t end in a gutter. As fortune-tellers go, I suppose she means well enough, but Sparrow and I roll our eyes anyway. There’s always at least one person who takes her up on it, but I’ve yet to see her twisted words become anything more than a passing fancy. I avoid fortune-tellers myself. I already know how my life is going to end.

  A steam-powered automaton clinks its way past us, its metal fingers tightly clutching a small, wax paper–wrapped package. It’s a base model, created with a rudimentary structure to appear humanoid, a walking skeleton made of copper and brass. Its cogs whir in a clear ball of a glass brain. Sometimes the BrightStone gentry in the Upper Tier will use them for deliveries, but tech of this caliber is difficult to come by, even for those who can afford it. Either way, it’s rare to see one sent to this part of town.

  This one stands tall, and its electric orbs swivel suspiciously over the crowd. It pauses, its metal brows furrowing as Mad Brianna wobbles her way in front of it, cane thrust out for balance. “Tell your fortune, Metal Man?”

  A steam-powered sniff whistles from its jaw. “Surely not . . . madam.”

  “So polite,” she cackles, but her mouth curves into a sly smile, one of her street urchins materializing from beneath her cloak to snatch the package from the robot’s grip. The boy yips in triumph and ducks into the writhing mass of people before the robot has time to react.

  It lets out a startled creak and cranes its head. “Thief!” It lurches into the crowd amid moc
king laughter.

  Mad Brianna might be blind and insane, but she also runs a well-disciplined thieves’ guild. The package will be handed off to a plant about ten seconds after the theft, and whatever is in that box will be long gone before the owner ever finds it. The real rub is when the automaton finds itself in a dark warehouse somewhere, only to be brutally dismantled.

  I should know. I was raised by her.

  Sparrow and I both were. We were orphans by chance, until whatever made us Moon Children awakened in our blood. Sparrow lost her mother when she was five, crushed beneath the wheels of a horseless carriage in an accident, and I don’t remember my mother at all.

  As the drama unfolds before me, I study the myriad children dashing about. Which ones carry the blood of Meridion? At younger ages, it’s hard to tell. Half-breeds generally look like their BrightStone mothers, until about the age of twelve or so, and then . . .

  I’m a skinny thing, all elbows and scabbed knees. A pair of greasy pigtails, torn trousers, and shoes stuffed with rags so they don’t slip off my feet.

  I notice small changes at first: A few strands of hair here or there. A slight alteration in the tint of my eyes. A heightened sense of awareness. Shadows once too dark to creep inside become sanctuary, and before long, I am one of the top pickpockets in the guild.

  Mad Brianna’s mouth pinches when she sees me, but she says nothing. When the whispers start up, I ignore them, but it’s coming. Five others have turned in the time since I’ve lived beneath her roof, so I’m not surprised when I wake up one morning to discover I look like I’ve bathed in a moonbeam, and even less so when Rory appears a few hours later to claim me.

  Or my skills, rather. And a few years later, Sparrow’s.

  “Oy.” Sparrow’s voice pulls me from my woolgathering. She drains the last of her ale, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her faded brown coat, and tugs at her green crystal necklace with a nervous twitch. “Come on, then. Maybe afterward we can stop at the sweetshop? There’s usually stale pastries in the bins for a ha’penny.”

  “If we’re successful with our sale, I’ll buy us something straight out of the oven, aye?” I slide off the barrel, done with lingering. We slip into the crowd briefly but stick closest to the shadows. Our hair gives us away for what we are, though to most people, we don’t warrant a second glance. To see us is to acknowledge us, and that means admitting the realities they’d come here to forget.

  If the Inquestors have been looking for me, they haven’t seen fit to mention it to the general populace. Uneasiness fills my belly with flies until a hand snatches at my coat.

  “Rags. Mags. Come to visit?” Mad Brianna clutches my wrist tightly, her body rocking side to side.

  Sparrow sighs as I extricate myself from the madwoman’s bony fingers. The touch of her skin is corpse cold, and I shake myself to stave off the prickle.

  Brianna clucks at me. “Aw, no love for yer auld granny? I know what you are, lass.” She licks her shaking lips, her milky eyes peering at my sack. “I know what you carry. I can hear it with every step you make. Always could, you know.”

  “Do you now?” I ask with the raise of an eyebrow. The dragon hasn’t moved since we arrived at the docks, but no sense in taking chances. Besides, insane as she is, the woman has an uncanny way of seeing through me, blind or not. She’s been the closest thing to a mother I’ve ever known, too, so I tolerate her madness as best I can, though it’s clear she’s grown much worse over the last few years.

  She pats my chest, fingers tapping the clockwork heart panel. Inwardly I breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing about the dragon.

  “Secret, secret,” she mumbles. “Tick tock, tick tock, blind mice up the clock. Striking time and half past nine . . .”

  “We’ve got to go, Brianna,” I say gently. “We’re Moon Children now.”

  She blinks blearily at me and points up to Meridion. “But I know what you want. You’ll do more than get there, lassie . . .” Her mouth opens in a choking gasp that’s supposed to be laughter, but it’s the sound of dust inside a coffin and it burrows into me with barbed needles. “They’ve bred their own fate, Moon Child.”

  “Enough.” I tug on Sparrow’s scarf, and we immediately head for the nearest alley, drifting into the fog like ghosts. Brianna’s mocking voice escorts us for nearly half a block, squalling mad cat cries of doom.

  I hunch my shoulders against it. “They’ll kill her for saying such things.” There have always been those who proclaimed the collapse of Meridion, but whispering in the back rooms of a tavern is far different from spouting prophecy on the street corner.

  Sparrow sighs. “I don’t think she cares.”

  I shake my head against the thought. Nothing I can do about it anyway, and being this close to Market Squares means we need to attract less attention, so it’s just as well we leave her behind. Market Square itself is all broad streets and sharp edges, respectable businesses and crisp spats and top hats. There’s a faux air of sophistication, but it’s all a facade. The cut of the men’s suits might be sharper, but the clothes are a lie they tell themselves, as though shiny buttons are an indication of a kind heart.

  The cobblestone streets are cleaner than the docks, but the gutters are just as thick with shit. Sparrow and I get the occasional murmur of disapproval from the “gentry,” but otherwise we’re left to our own devices. There’s no law against our presence here yet.

  I keep my face pointed toward the ground as much as possible and avoid the more brightly lit storefronts. Bertie’s Stupendous Illusions. The Steamworks. Fashionable Fittings. Haberdashers and candlemakers and jewelers. Signs declaring the latest in Meridian technology beckon from the open doorways, but much are refurbished findings of the junkyards, polished up to look new and massively overpriced.

  Sparrow lingers beside the sweetshop with a hunger that has very little to do with actual food. I pause beside her, and we both stare at the confections behind the great glass window, all coated with fancy icing and powdered sugar.

  The scent is overpowering, and my mouth waters. Sparrow squeezes my hand hard, and I know she’s remembering her mother again. I envy her those memories sometimes. Mad Brianna hadn’t had time for sweets, and the best I usually managed was found in the trash bins out back. But when Lord Balthazaar’s wife, Lady Lydia, was found to be with child, he drove through BrightStone in celebration, tossing pennies and sugared almonds from the windows of his carriage. There’d nearly been a riot in the streets as we fought for a handful of either. Balthazaar hadn’t cared, just smiled and waved, heedless of the chaos he left in his wake.

  My chest tightens, thinking of the dragon and how much jingle we might get for it. “If we sell . . . it, I’ll buy us one of everything in this whole damn store,” I murmur. “Just us.”

  The fact that such a thing might be possible makes my head swim. Candy is beyond a mere luxury; to buy something so frivolous feels somehow obscene, let alone in the amounts I’m imagining.

  “Out of the way, sin-eaters!”

  I stumble into Sparrow as a broomstick cracks me in the face. “The hells?”

  I blink back a wash of tears, my eyes burning as I squint at the shopkeeper. Flour coats her apron, and her dark hair is pulled back in a severe bun.

  “A simple ‘move along’ would have sufficed, aye?” I say.

  “Customers won’t come in if your sort is about.” She makes a warding-off sign. For all her brave words, this woman is terrified of us.

  Another poke, this time in my ribs.

  Sparrow gives her a dirty look, helping me to my feet. A quick feel of my scalp tells me the stitches haven’t ripped, so there’s that at least.

  When we don’t move fast enough, the broomstick lowers again, but this time I catch it and shove it away. The shopkeeper’s face pales, but Sparrow tugs on my sleeve and it’s enough to make me back down.

  We’re drawing a crowd, and the last thing I need is another run-in with an Inquestor. I pull my cap down a little tighter, and th
e two of us retreat to the far side of the square.

  “I’d like to burn that place to the ground,” I snarl.

  “But then who would make the cookies?” Sparrow gives me a small smile, but she’s as hurt as I am. We’d just been looking, after all. “We’ll just buy her out, like you said.”

  I nod, but imagining the place on fire is far more satisfactory. For now we have other business to take care of, though. Keeping a lower profile, we aim for a nondescript door with a rusty cog spinning aimlessly upon it.

  The Conundrum.

  Part gentlemen’s lounge, part tavern, the Conundrum perches on the square like a jewel in a crown made of tin. It’s gaudy and loud and winks at everyone who passes by, inviting them to take a gander at the wares inside.

  The muffled sound of raucous laughter vibrates from the other side of the door, and merry shadows dance in the dancing lights through the brindled glass windowpanes. There’s a scraping sound on the stone steps as the door is thrown open. A man staggers out, his face red with drink, and his hair a mass of greasy decadence streaking over his stained waistcoat. His mouth curves into a sneer when he sees us.

  “Sin-eater,” he slurs, spittle foaming upon his lips. He makes a halfhearted attempt to squeeze Sparrow’s backside before wobbling his way into the street.

  “And good eve to you,” Sparrow says snidely, kicking the back of his knee so he stumbles. He grunts something and tips his hat before tripping on the sidewalk, his body heaving into the gutter.

  I give Sparrow a sharp look, but she shrugs as he rolls onto his side and immediately begins snoring. “He’ll be happier there anyway, I suspect.”

  The sweet scent of tobacco drifts past us, reminding me gently why I’m here. I pat the sack at my hip to reassure myself it’s still there. “Come on. Let’s see if we can do this quickly.”

  We cross over the threshold into an intoxicating scene of whispered secrets and furtive glances, a whirlwind of delicate dresses and polite chuckles. There’s an odd sense of intimacy in the air that I’d never be welcome to. The sweet smoke lingers in the air, but it only masks the scents of sweat and wine. The lust here is tinged with the same flavor of desperation as on the docks. It’s just hidden better.