The Last Smile in Sunder City

by Luke Arnold

  “Thanks.”

  I wasn’t even the first customer. At the other end of the bar was a gentleman whose waist-length mane was a pattern of white, black and gray. An old cloak was draped over his slender body and his mouth was masked by beer-foam and whiskers.

  His right hand was working the air. Every few seconds he would flick his wrist in a new direction and his fingers would create some new symbol. Ditarum. I’d never seen much of it but I knew the process. He was throwing spells. Or the shadows of what spells used to be.

  I sat and watched his dancing fingers till Eileen dropped a whiskey down in front of me.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked. “Practicing?”

  “Testing,” she replied.

  “For what?”

  “To see if it works.” I looked up at her with a more condescending look than I’d meant to. “What, don’t you approve?”

  “Come on. He doesn’t really think one of the spells might still work, does he?”

  “What if it does?” It was hard to tell if she was serious.

  “It’s gone.”

  “Astute observation, Fetch. Perhaps we should call the papers.”

  She left me to my drink, deciding that the Wizard would provide more uplifting conversation. I opened up the envelope and tipped Rye’s mail out in front of me. The first papers were water damaged, but it didn’t seem to matter. They were just more editions of the same mundane newsletters I’d seen the first time. I gave each one a brief read, not sure what I was looking for, but just hoping for something that wasn’t a recipe or an op-ed about appreciating the old times.

  I could see why Rye, from what I knew of him, didn’t connect with these voices. They were all desperately clinging to the past, rehashing old stories and remembering old times, but without any real mention of what comes next. I flipped through page after page of beautifully printed stories that served no more purpose than going over the good old days. It annoyed me, for some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I downed my drink and signaled Eileen for another.

  “I have something else for you,” she said as she poured. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I told you I was doing a stock-take. Clearing out all the old volumes that we don’t need any more. Well, we’re missing a lot of stuff.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Just books. But, a lot of Edmund’s favorites. They’re not up in his room and they’re not on the shelves. I mean, plenty of books go missing so it’s not that crazy, but it’s giving me hope. Maybe he’s still out there, you know. Eating up everything while he still can.”

  She was right, it wasn’t much. I tried to draw something from it but my eyes kept falling back to the Wizard, who still hadn’t stopped his foolish game. He was annoying me too.

  “What would you do?” I asked Eileen.

  “What?”

  “If it came back?”

  She smiled and poured herself a drink. I must have finally made the conversation interesting enough.

  “I’d get back to the books and learn how to heal. Witches always made good medics. I didn’t think I had the stomach for it when I was younger but now, after everything I’ve seen, I don’t think I’d have a problem with a bit of blood and bone.”

  My eyes were locked on the Wizard’s fingertips, tracing lines in useless space. A long, intricate letter to no one.

  “You think you’d be happy? If it happened?”

  “Oh sure,” she said. “I’m not exactly wailing in the streets at the moment but it’s not a bad thought. Which is why I like to believe that there’s a chance.”

  I sipped at my second glass, reminding myself not to get carried away.

  “But it wouldn’t make it back the way it was,” I said, throwing a dismissive gesture towards the other end of the bar. “Old Boney there might be able to make a ball of fire and you might study your medicine but you can’t stuff the life back into things that lost it. Even if we started up the fires and buried our sins and lifted the Angels off the streets and put the Dragons in the sky, too many lights have been out for too long. I don’t care how much horseshit and optimism you rub together, nothing’s going to bring that spark back.”

  She hadn’t touched her drink. She hadn’t moved. She was looking down at me from across the bar and everything cheeky and happy-to-see-me had gone.

  “We don’t go back, Fetch. Nobody goes back. But where are you going to be when this world wakes up one morning and is ready to move on?”

  Where would I be? I used to know that answer: in a mansion on a hill waiting for a miracle. But Baxter was about to put a bulldozer through that dream, so where would that leave me?

  I didn’t have an answer. She didn’t wait for one. She went over to the Wizard and didn’t look back.

  I pushed my whiskey away and threw some coins beside it. I stuffed some of the newsletters back in the envelope but stopped when I saw a thin, yellowed piece of paper that was different to the rest.

  It was stuck to the wax seal on one of the flyers so I’d missed it when I’d first flipped through. I pulled it off and turned it over.

  Edmund,

  He is here. Just like I warned you. Dante has tracked him all the way to Sunder and we must act now before he does any more damage. My place. As soon as possible. We have a plan.

  Grimes

  Sydney Grimes was the owner of the teahouse, and Samuel Dante was his friend from out of town. Rye had been invited to be part of the planned attack. Was he there? Did he escape? Most likely, he missed it all together. I wonder if a third League member would have made a difference and kept Samuel and Sydney alive.

  “Eileen?” She held up a hand. The old fellow was in the middle of some long-winded, unending story but she was listening like he might be about to reveal the secrets of the universe.

  The sky cracked violently overhead and as I looked up at the clouds, I realized that I could hear water, rushing beneath me, splashing through the gutters and sewers. A lot of water, by the sound of it. I got up from my stool and stepped out into the street.

  Squinting through the storm, I looked north, to the mountains, and saw that the storm clouds over my head were nothing compared to the deadly shadows hanging over those hills. I turned towards the slums and started running.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d freaked out after a bit of heavy rainfall. Amari had put the fear of it into me the first time we met and when an Elemental Faery warns you about the weather, you’d be a damn fool not to listen.

  I came out on to Main Street with the note from Sydney Grimes still in my hand. The questions about who they were trying to trap and how Rye was mixed up in it were stabbing the back of my brain like hot needles, but…

  I could hear screams. From the southern end of the city. It was just like she’d said.

  I let the Vampires vanish from my mind. I needed to find the fire brigade or the police force and I needed rope and rigging equipment but all I wanted to do was bring her back from the dead so I could tell her she was right.

  21

  Amari had been worried about the size of the slums before the Coda. That seems almost cute now. When the magic died, so did the crops and doctors and elders and the means of survival for many families. The fires under Sunder City had burned out but people around the continent still believed their salvation could be found in the community we’d created here. There was plenty of cheap scrap for making shelters and small pieces of land between run-off and rubble where you could put it up.

  The mills and factories had mostly fallen to pieces but the recycling plants and mending-houses soon replaced them. There were opportunities in hospitality, or entry-level jobs down The Rose Quarter. The refugees kept coming and the city expanded but the newest arrivals had to make their homes farther down the hill.

  The water was an inch-deep on Grove Street, still a block inside the walls. A manhole cover popped open beside me and the street coughed a geyser of brown wate
r on to the sidewalk. That meant the sewer running beneath Main Street was full. Shit. I’d run through those pipes more than once chasing lost belongings or pickpockets. It would take a hell of a lot of water to fill them to the limit.

  I passed the entrance to The Rose Quarter and watched the Kirra Canal kiss the ankles of the ladies and gentlemen of the night who stood on every doorstep. They were laying down curtains and cushions in a desperate attempt to keep water off the carpet. Half-dressed johns, caught by surprise in the middle of their session, joined the effort; building up barricades in nothing but their briefs.

  The sound of rushing water was drowned out by shouting as I came around the corner and into a crowd. On both heaving riverbanks, wet and desperate hands pulled neighbors and pets from the rising water. Families formed living chains and dropped themselves back into the torrent to rescue friends from floating rooftops.

  An excited group stood on the bridge and called out to an Ogre in many languages. He was running from the opposite end with a rope, pulled from the flagpole of the streetcar station. Once he reached the screaming party, he stepped up to the side of the bridge and threw the coil out as far as he could.

  He hit his mark and the crowd gave nervous cheers. Down in the water, gripped to the side of a swaying telegraph pole, was a grim-faced Kobold with determined eyes. One of his rat-like arms was wrapped around the post while the other clutched a screaming child from some other family, a furry little thing with hooked claws and pointed teeth.

  The Kobold let go of the telegraph pole to reach for the line. As his hand splashed desperately over the rope, the current sucked him underwater, along with the child.

  “PULL!” screamed the Ogre through dripping whiskers, and the surrounding men and women broke from their cheering to take up the rope as he fed it through his fists.

  The trailing rope slid beneath the surface at a terrifying speed. The Ogre pulled the cable back to the screaming crowd in desperate heaves, and every hand pulled the line past them as soon as they received it. By the time the rope reached the back of the group, it was stained pink from hurried, bleeding hands.

  The haggard fist of the Kobold broke the surface just as he was about to pass beneath the bridge. The crowd pulled him up with so much vigor that he rose as fast as the water had been carrying him. Somehow, he still had the child in his arms. The toddler’s screaming had been replaced by the painful expulsion of filthy water from its lungs. As the Kobold’s feet cleared the water, the telegraph pole he’d been clinging to came loose and passed beneath him, spinning like a wayward ceiling fan.

  Both recovered figures were hoisted up on to the rare piece of dry land and came coughing and crying into the proud arms of their rescuers. I didn’t wait around for the celebration. There were plenty more people who needed help; I just had no idea how to bring it.

  On the far bank of the growing river, a group of connected tents came loose from their pegs and floated out into the flood. Each new home had been built upon the flimsy walls of the one beside it till every street in the slums was one long, connected corridor. This avenue was stretched out and spiraling in on itself. Hidden among the tangled ropes and cracking posts were concealed bodies trying to make their way through the sinking neighborhood before the rip sucked it underwater.

  I landed on the other side of the bridge, boots sinking inches into the mud, and saw someone in uniform following me.

  It was the police. Great. Together we could—

  Oh shit.

  Simms.

  The scarf that was usually wrapped around her reptilian mouth was wet and loose about her neck. Her hat had been blown off somewhere behind her, revealing a cracked and reddened scalp that made me forgive the sharper points of her personality.

  Simms rushed up to help a young Gnome couple who came stumbling out of the tents.

  “How many in there?” she asked them, but they just collapsed in tears. Instead, she turned to me. “You saw more people?”

  “Yeah. At least two or three.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  She charged into the broken maze of rope, cloth and cracking wood and I followed fast behind. My second step went straight through the floor and into the slurping throat of the river. My elbows smashed into the log foundations that must have been the last thing holding the whole set of houses to the shore. The water, up to my waist, rushed against my legs and attempted to suck me under but Simms turned back and pulled the scruff of my shirt like an impatient headmistress.

  I crawled on to my knees and waited for the words of contempt that didn’t come. Just a –

  “You good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Step along the logs. They’re the only solid footing left.”

  We moved in a line, fingers tentatively touching the falling structures for support. Nervous yelps came from around the next bend, where the horned head of a Satyr bobbed in and out of the water between the debris. He’d been washed underneath the structure and was trapped below the sinking pieces of the slum.

  I pulled apart the boards that blocked his way and Simms took out her dagger. She swiftly cut the tangled ropes that were twisted around the old Satyr’s arms and neck. The creature never screamed. His eyes bounced back and forth with the lost, bewildered expression of a newborn baby. When the lines were cut free, Simms and I hoisted him up on to a log. He sat there, dumb as a teddy-bear until Simms shook him by the shoulders and roared into his face.

  “To the shore! Go!”

  The starry-eyed Satyr found the sense to nod and crawled back along the broken path to safety. I looked down into the hole he’d come out of and backed away. I was never much of a swimmer and this would be the kind of dive where you passed three neighborhoods before you found another breath.

  A scream like a fire-filled kettle brought to boil ripped through the tattered sheets around us. Simms was following the sound before the first shout was finished. Farther out into the ragged end of the block, whole houses had already been sucked underwater and the tips of clotheslines and antennas speared the surface. One last shanty remained; balanced on the already sunken rooms. Inside the battered tent was a woman up to her shoulders in water, wailing at the world like her voice would tear it to pieces.

  She was a feline humanoid with a garden of red hair plastered down her patched face. Her hands were gripped to a water pipe and in the gap between her arms was another elderly, heavyset Werecat man. He was passed out and sinking. It was a miracle that the pipe was holding his weight and an unbelievable achievement that the girl was holding both. Her clawed fingers were as tight as a sailor’s knot with her face clenched in fear and agony.

  Simms took position behind the redhead, dug her boots behind a board that looked stable and tried to slide her hands under the Werecat’s shoulders.

  “Take hold of him!” she shouted, the flapping of canvas cracking in our ears. I took the collar of the old Cat’s jacket in my fists and felt the weight of his body drag with the undertow.

  CRACK!

  Something hit our floating neighborhood, hard and fast, and two things snapped at one: the last beam over our heads and Simms’s left ankle. She’d jammed it so hard into the floor that the shock cracked it quick and easy. The Cat continued to scream but Simms just bit down on her flaked lips and moaned into her mouth.

  The old man dropped, and tried to take the weeping girl with him. I had him by his lapels, but the weight was stretching my tendons to tearing-point.

  We pulled his head back up into the air. Barely. It bobbed above the surface; just enough for me to see the unmoving, blue reality of his empty face.

  When Simms’s watering eyes found mine, I shook my head and she got the meaning. She let one of her pained hands slide forward onto the man’s neck and mouth. It didn’t take her long to realize that those cold whiskers weren’t working anymore.

  “For fuck’s sake, Fetch, then come help me!”

  I dropped him. The dead man’s head went back underwater and th
e woman turned her keening up a few more notches. I joined Simms in the fight to make sure the old guy didn’t drag the girl down too. Not that she helped. Her fingers dug into his body hard enough to pierce the skin.

  The room was shaking and the canvas was collecting on our heads and I felt Simms give up her part of the fight. There wasn’t time for tenderness. I put both hands into the woman’s thick hair and my left foot on the old man’s head. I pulled and I pushed and she screamed so hard I think I heard her throat bleed.

  I may have broken her fingers. I certainly broke her spirit. When the man finally dropped from her hands, I pulled her up into my arms. Without him holding her down, she weighed about as much as a bad memory and wrapped her legs around me fast. Not for protection or for safety, but to find a better purchase from which to administer her thanks.

  She kept her slices mostly to my back, which was kind of her. A couple of times, she took long lines of hair from my head, along with some scalp, and only once did she lean back far enough to land a shot across my face. It was fair, I suppose. I was just annoyed that she hindered my ability see the way to shore.

  The last logs were cleared of cloth, bouncing together like pieces of a large percussive instrument. I couldn’t help Simms with my hands full of angry Cat, but she managed to get most of the way back on her knees with her broken ankle dragging behind her.

  I ripped the raging redhead from my body as we stumbled onto dryer land. With nothing else to hold onto, she curled up into a ball and cried. The attack turned inward and somehow even uglier but I only had the energy to lie down beside her and look back out at the sunken slum.

  The shock of the first great wave had caught the slums unawares. Most of that was done now. Some had made it out. Some hadn’t. The poorest souls were either downstream or dead. The lucky ones were on dry ground, keeping watch over the water. Panic was turning to preparation. The group from the bridge was moving down the riverbank to search for survivors and whatever belongings they could save. Simms slid up beside me and waited for the feline wailing to falter and fail and turn into a quiet, broken sigh.