The Stars Were Right

by Alexander, K. M.

  "Well, that's very kind of him, ma'am. Tell him thank you," I said. I had expected the bonus. I had also expected the trip to only take three weeks. Telling the client it would be four had set me up in a position to bonus. It was an underhanded trick but I had a feeling Wilem, Black & Bright could spare the extra five hundred lira.

  "Receipt?" she asked.

  "We'll be okay," I said, thanking the receptionist and shaking her hand.

  * * *

  "It's about time I go see my son," stated Wensem. He was getting fidgety. I couldn't blame him, when we had been told we'd have to come all the way to Pergola Square he had deflated. I forked over his portion of the payment, plus a little extra from the bonus. It left me with a little over fifteen hundred lira in my pocket. A decent wage and it would easily hold me over for the month I planned to stay in the city.

  "You take care of yourself, Wensem, and that little man of yours."

  "Little maero," Wensem corrected with a grin that followed the crooked line of his jaw. We started walking north. I was heading south, but figured I'd walk with my partner a little longer.

  "You settled on a name?"

  "Honestly? I was thinking Waldo, after you. Waldo dal Wensem," said Wensem.

  I sucked in a gasp, then beamed. "Are you sure?"

  "I spoke about the naming with Kitasha before we left. She felt it was an honor. You and I, we built Bell Caravans, and you're as much a member of my clan as any of my brothers. It would be an honor to give my son your name."

  "Well," I said, taken aback. "I'd be honored, my friend."

  "It's a good name: rare, noble," said Wensem as we walked down a caged stairwell from the ninth to the eighth level of the city. "The kind of name that a maero should feel pride in wearing."

  "Don't know how noble it is."

  "You make it noble," stated Wensem.

  We got in an elevator and dropped to the city's fifth level, passing out of the light and re-entering the murk of the sublevels.

  When we stepped out of the lift and in between two small buildings on the fifth level Wensem extended his big hand. I took it and we shook, his small black eyes flashing.

  "See you in a month," I said.

  Wensem nodded.

  "Telegraph me if you get bored," I chuckled.

  "Hardly. I'll probably be unreachable for most of the time. I intend on spending as much time as possible with him and Kitasha before I drag my ass back out onto the Big Ninety. We have a family ritual to perform, a bonding between father and son. It's long overdue already."

  "At least invite me over for dinner before we head out again. Let Waldo dal Wensem meet his namesake."

  Wensem grinned. "I'll see what I can do."

  I laughed and slapped his shoulder. "Get out of here."

  Wensem departed, moving in his long stride, arms swinging at his side as he disappeared down an alley and headed north.

  The smell of the street vendors was alluring. My stomach rumbled again. I needed a snack.

  TWO

  Hunger had set in. Before dinner, I had a few errands to run. The first of these, of course, was an evening snack. Priorities, right?

  I found a noodle cart on the fourth level of the King Station district. It was a comical little thing, boxy and rusted with a faded canvas umbrella of red and yellow. At one time it probably was mobile, but time had turned it into something a little more stationary. A line of stools and a small bar sat opposite the grill. It was currently devoid of customers.

  A pot-bellied man stood behind the cart, wearing a sweat-stained undershirt, gray trousers, and just the brim from a wide-brimmed hat. He probably hadn't shaved in days and it was impossible to tell the last time he had bathed.

  He whistled the first bars from Mother Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" as he seared a small mountain of noodles. At opportune times he would squirt various oils and sauces from a line of plastic bottles that stood in formation on the top of his cart.

  Settling on one of the stools, I ordered a bowl of the house noodles and a small glass of ruou de. The vendor nodded and worked at my order. Steam rose in wisps disturbed only by the passing pedestrians and the occasional bicyclist.

  "Rain's coming," said the cart owner, his voice thick with alcohol and an accent I couldn't place. He smiled a toothless grin and poured a small glass of foggy ruou de for me. I nodded along and took a sip of the rice liquor.

  "There was sun earlier," I said. The liquor was good. The right amount of burn. It helped me forget about my blisters, and I found that with a bit of a buzz the mugginess of the sublevels was easier to bear.

  "How'd you go about seeing if there was sun earlier?" asked the vendor as he looked around the dimly lit street. King Station was southeast of Pergola Square and had no real view of the outside. It could've been months since he'd seen the sun—maybe years.

  "Just came into the city this morning," I explained.

  "Ah. I see. What do you do?" he asked as he handed me my bowl of noodles and a pair of pull-apart bamboo chopsticks.

  I dove into the noodles. "Caravan master."

  "Ah. A caravaneer. What do the elevated call you, roaders? Something like that. Could never do that work. Personally I don't like the open sky so much—feels too, I dunno. Open."

  "Not for everyone," I said with a nod.

  The cart owner nodded and turned the conversation back to the weather. "Mark my words. It'll be rain before too long. I can feel it." He tapped his elbow meaningfully.

  Rain. I didn't like that idea. It was hot, high summer in Lovat and rain only meant one thing: more mugginess. It brings out the worst in people, drives them mad.

  I shoveled noodles into my mouth and continued to make small talk with the cart owner. He did his best to follow along in his half-drunken state. Nodding at the right time. Asking a few questions about caravanning. I didn't mind, the ruou de had me buzzing and the noodles were good, spicy with a zing of citrus. We spoke of sports, politics, and the recent violence to the south in Destiny. It was the same routine I'd be having with cart owners all over the city for the next month. I was relishing it.

  I lingered at the cart longer than I really should have. My feet hurt, and sitting down and drinking a few glasses of the rice liquor went a long way toward making my blisters feel better. The cart owner matched me drink for drink, and though thoroughly drunk, was still able to resume his whistling of "Gloomy Sunday" as I walked down the street toward my next appointment.

  * * *

  You meet a lot of interesting folks on the trail. Scavengers, traders, and caravaneers like myself make up the bulk of the traffic, but you'll still come across lawmen, barristers, Road Priests, wandering judges-for-hire, and the occasional pilgrim. The roads of the territories are a great source of stories and an even better source for goods to trade. A week's supply of hardtack can mean life or death to a professional wanderer, so they're willing to let goods that would sell for a lot more in a city go for a pittance. This often works in my favor.

  Russel & Sons Optics was a few blocks from the noodle cart on Maynard Avenue. It was a small hole in the wall shop tucked between a seamstress and a small distillery that brews some of the worst gin I have ever tasted. I had known the proprietor for a few years now: an anur who claimed to have fourteen sons and eleven daughters from his first wife and six boys and eight girls from his second. Thaddeus Russel had inherited the shop from his father a few years earlier, and had made a decent little living selling spectacles to the poorer inhabitants of Lovat.

  You can get custom spectacles elsewhere, but it'll cost you dearly. So the rest of us make do with hand-me-downs, older pairs, and guys like Thaddeus to sell them to us. He has quite a collection and claims some of his stock is over a thousand years old. It's one of those tales you never question and it's what makes Thad's place unique among the eyeglass vendors.

  The cart man was right: a soft rain began to fall as I walked toward the spectacle shop. Rain in the sublevels is different. It doesn't fall in showers; instead
, it collects in pools in more elevated levels that eventually overflow. Then the water streams down in sheets, finding random paths, continuing down and down. Even light rains become torrents, running down the edges of buildings or between cracks in the road, creating waterfalls that pour from level to level until they reach the Sunk.

  Russel's shop sat behind one of these sheets and I had to charge through, soaking my hair and the shoulders of my shirt. It wasn't the smartest move, but it sure felt good. I looked forward to a proper bath later.

  The doorbell tinkled as I entered and the fat Anurian looked up at me from behind his paper. The anur are an interesting race, large tapered heads with bulbous eyes that stick out to the sides, thick throats, and wide mouths. If you imagined a human-frog hybrid, you wouldn't be far off. They live short lives; I've known Thaddeus for five years, and he probably only has another five in him. His own father is eleven, which is almost unheard of, but the old cuss doesn't show a sign of ill health. They make up for their short life span by breeding enormous families they refer to as "broods."

  "Wal!" Thaddeus declared, as he rose and waddled over to me. I could see the folds of skin shifting beneath his shirt, and he enveloped me in a musty embrace.

  "Hey, Thad," I said jovially. "How's the business?"

  Thaddeus smirked and shook his head, the motion sending his throat jiggling. "Slow, only sold a few pairs last week. I don't know where this sudden souring has come from. If I had half a mind I'd say it was due to that new shop up the avenue."

  "New shop?" I questioned, following Thaddeus to the counter at the far end of the shop. The walls of Russel & Sons Optics were lined with shelves and crammed full of boxes of spectacles sorted first by prescription and then style. They smelled of glass cleaner.

  "Aye. Some religious trinket dealer named Hagen Dubois. It has brought all manner of riffraff into the neighborhood. This used to be a quiet place. Didn't see any weirdos down here like you see up north. I mean, we'd get the occasional vagrant and the random street mystic, a few mindless pitch addicts, but nothing like those weirdos. Nope."

  "What do you mean weirdos?" I asked, laughing.

  Thaddeus leaned forward conspiratorially. "You know. Religious types. Monks and such. I can deal with the Reunifieds, but these fellas are fringe types. Fellas wearing robes and shaving their heads clean. I've seen Hasturians and even a few Deepers seeking their tentacled idols. Those tattooed types as well. All sorts. Scaring away my customers."

  "Hey!" I said, grinning and holding out my tattooed arms. "Do I scare away your customers?"

  "Don't be silly — you know what I mean. These are those fellas with head and face tattoos. Those cultist types. They wear those jumpsuits."

  "Sorry, drawing a blank on those types."

  Thad frowned.

  "Just yesterday a pack of them walked by and returned with an armload of cheap statuary. If you wait here I'm sure we'll see more of them. I see a few almost every day. Ever since that shop opened up they swarm like hornets."

  Thaddeus blinked at me and scratched behind his eye.

  "So, you interested in some new stock, or is business too slow?" I asked. This was a typical conversation with Thaddeus. Business was always slow and there was always something chasing off his customers. Last time it was the weather, before that he claimed people were scared to go out because the serial murderer the papers dubbed the "Lovat Strangler" had been apprehended. When I had brought up that "apprehended" meant he was caught, Thaddeus had said he believed people of Lovat feared a copycat. Either way, business was always slow and Thaddeus used that as a ploy to try to barter even cheaper prices for my goods.

  Thaddeus frowned and grumbled, "Let's see what you have."

  I brought out four pairs and laid them on a cloth pad that rested on the counter. A few wire-framed spectacles I purchased off a scavenger from the territories to the south, and a rimless pair I'd found on the side of the road that was unfortunately missing one of the nose pads. My prize this round, however, was a pair of mint condition Browlines spectacles I had bought off a trader heading to Syringa. I knew Thaddeus had a special place for Browlines and would love those in particular.

  For his part, Thaddeus didn't break his stride. He slid the cloth closer to him and puzzled over the four pairs, lifting them to one of his bulbous black eyes, inspecting their prescriptions, noting scratches, and mumbling to himself. Often he would stop and make notes on a ratty old notepad he kept near his register.

  "Well?" I asked after ten minutes of his perlustration. "Can we make a deal or what?"

  "Patience has never been your strong suit, Waldo, my boy."

  I gave a good-natured frown.

  "You smell awful by the way. You been swimming around in the Sunk?"

  "I haven't bathed yet. Came here right after collecting my pay for my last caravan."

  "Well aren't I lucky," Thaddeus chuckled. He pushed the four pairs back toward me, having satisfied himself with their inspection. "You're missing a nose pad on that rimless pair, but I might have a match; the others are in decent enough shape."

  "How much?" I asked.

  Thaddeus scratched behind his left eye. "I'll give you fifty for the lot."

  "Fifty? Those browlines are worth twice that by themselves. I'd need at least a hundred and fifty," I declared. "And don't pull the 'how much do you really know about spectacles' line with me. I've learned quite a bit over the last few years."

  "One hundred," said Thaddeus, completely deadpan.

  "One twenty-five and you throw in a bottle of that brandy you keep in that desk of yours."

  "One fifteen and the bottle," he said. "Final offer."

  He extended his hand and pulled out the bottle of brandy.

  I shook it and took the brandy. We avoided a paper trail. Made both of us more profit without the city's tax collectors dipping their hands into our pockets.

  "You know, every time you try to haggle with me, you scratch behind your eye."

  Thaddeus frowned. "I do not."

  "You do so. Don't ever play cards, Thad. You'd be terrible at it."

  He handed me a wad of bills, which I slipped into my pocket.

  "It's going to be humid tonight," he said, looking outside the windows of his storefront at the curtain of water. "Rain's really coming down. Maybe you should just forego the bath and go stand under that."

  I grinned at him. "I might. Want to get dinner later this week?"

  Thaddeus turned his amphibian-esque face to me and nodded. "Sounds good. How about this weekend? I usually close up around six — come by then?"

  "Sounds good to me," I said.

  We shook hands again as a farewell and I walked out of the narrow shop and onto the street. The bell at the door sang out as I passed through.

  Maynard Avenue was quiet. A few folks milled about. I passed a group of dimanian teenagers—their horns just sprouting—and I bought a newspaper from a friendly guy on the corner. His eyes crinkled as he smiled, taking the small bit of change in wrinkled, leathery hands. I tucked the soft newsprint under my arm and cast a look toward the end of the street where Thaddeus had indicated the religious artifact dealer had set up shop. None of his "weirdos" seemed to be around. I considered checking it out, but I didn't need an idol or prayer book or some charm for a necklace. And at this moment, hunger took precedence.

  The rain hadn't let up but I was careful now to avoid the spouts of water that had cropped up. I walked west, toward a lift that would take me down to Level Two. There was a place in King Station that sat just above the Sunk. It was always where I ate my first real meal upon returning home.

  That was my plan. Grab dinner. Find a room to hole up in for a month. Spend the rest of the evening drinking brandy and letting all the dirt soak out of my pores in a bath somewhere. Glorious.

  I really wished things had worked out that way.

  THREE

  The waiter set down a warm beer the color of piss. I looked out the dirty window of the small shop and absently
ran the tips of my fingers over the butcher paper. Spills from previous diners stained the top in greasy splotches. Outside the rain continued to drip and wash down from the upper levels. I could see some of the lower races walking past: anur and their broods, cephels moving in that awkward gait on their powerful leg-arms. An occasional pitchfork addict stumbled past, scratching at scabs while hunting down his next fix.

  I don't normally seek out restaurants this close to the Sunk, but I didn't come to Shuai Tan for the atmosphere.

  The best places to eat in this city aren't the elevated, celebrity chef-run restaurants with a cover charge just to see the inside. I'm sure they are fine in their own right, with interiors richly filled with gilded columns and hanging tapestries, with ingredients sourced from the finest merchants, fishermen, and ranchers. In places like those, the cost of dining alone could pay a small family's rent for months.

  Not my style.

  It's places like Shuai Tan where the true culinary treasures can be found. It's in the grubby down-in-subs, hole-in-the-wall dives; that's where one finds the best Lovatine cuisine. In a city of ninety-three million souls with generations of families going back to the Aligning, some recipes have been perfected. Dishes that are prepared following traditions, hundreds even thousands of years old. Food made from the heart.

  Shuai Tan only had two customers at the moment: me, and a fat old kresh with long face whiskers that passed as his beard. He spooned mouthfuls of fried rice into his face. His bulging, heart-shaped eyes were cloudy with cataracts; a walking stick leaned against his table. He breathed heavily when he wasn't smacking his lips. He was taciturn, eating and watching a monochrome that blazed gray and white light across the back wall of the small restaurant.

  A lone waiter flittered between the two of us. Human. Probably a member of the family that ran Shuai Tan, a grandson in a long line of grandsons. Most of his muttering was drowned out over the hum of an ancient air cycler that clattered above us, small paper streamers fluttered from its grate.