Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens (10 page)

Fen shifted in discomfort. “Well…yeah.”

“Then you should realize this place is only a
means to an end, not an ultimate goal. Don’t disappoint me now with
a narrow scope of vision, Gord-O. I like you too much to realize
you’re just another schlub, like ninety-nine percent of those
little rascals down here playing in the seats—
Enox Unon
bless their little hearts—they’re here ‘cause it’s a social club,
not ‘cause they got real ambition. Now don’t get me wrong, there
ain’t a lad or lass down here that won’t come scampering at my
call, but they ain’t exactly filled with the sort of initiative
I’ve seen displayed in you.” Time resumed his stroll and Fen
scrambled to keep up. “So you ready to make the deal?”

Fen skidded to a stop in the ancient debris
piled on the slanted floor, but Time took a few more steps before
he realized the kid had stopped. He turned in confusion. “What is
it, Gord-O?”

“It’s just…I’m not sure—”

“You don’t trust me,” Time threw his hands
out in a show of pleading, yet his face remained set with a sly,
sideways smirk. “I’ve opened up your eyes and mind, kid, and you’re
still reluctant…?”

“It’s not that, it’s just…all those tokens
haven’t helped me out one bit, and I can’t even share them with my
sister because she might get mad. She told me to throw all those
notes into the Old Big River and let the Maw have ‘em.”

“She said what?” Time roared, sending his
voice bouncing off the ruined walls and dripping ceiling. Those
kids gathered on the balcony, playing or schmoozing nearby, went
still and locked their wide-eyes on Conrad. But within a second the
merchant had composed himself, smoothing his riffled mustache and
rearranging his hair into a perfect wave. He then barked out a
laugh. “This sister of yours is something alright: ‘throw it into
the Maw’, that’s A-one crazy right there. So, I’m guessing she
don’t know you still have it then?”

“Nope.”

“
Hmm
, and you love this sister of
yours?”

“I guess.”

“
Hmm
… Listen, Gord-O. I got a meeting
with a special friend of mine and I think I want you to come along
with me. She’s got a knack at cutting to the heart of things, and
I’m thinking she could help you out with this dilemma of yours;
might even help clear things up between us; then, maybe…maybe I can
let you in on a little secret.”

When Time said he had a meeting, Fen didn’t
think he meant right away, but that’s exactly what the merchant
meant, and in no time at all they were walking through the
Shambles. Time took the lead as they crept down passages cut even
deeper into the Barrows. These narrow lines were old, older still
than anything Fen had yet experienced, and in places the ancient
brick used to construct them had turned to chalk and crumbled away.
Cobwebs, dense as wool blankets hung from the ceiling, and the
smell that permeated this place was like the dirt their father used
to track in after working hard for Hanns Company.

Besides their footsteps and their breathing,
only the distant sound of falling water broke the eerie silence,
and something familiar about this place haunted Fen’s thoughts. He
tried not to dwell on it however, least it set fear crashing over
him. The last thing he wanted was for Time to see how scared he
was, not when the merchant seemed like an unflappable rock. If the
man was as nervous and scared as Fen was it certainly didn’t show.
Rather, he walked with a deliberate gait, and with his head held
high and his broad shoulders set in confidence. It served to help
Fen with his own reluctance. After all, he wasn’t alone anymore,
and for the first time in years he had an adult watching over
him.

As they walked on, the falling water took to
roaring, and the air turned damp. The cobwebs overhead glistened
with dewy drops, and below them the floor slowly turned rife with
fungus and lichen. Up ahead a light could be seen beyond the one
Time carried, and the merchant spoke for the first time since they
began their trek. “We’re nearly there, so mind your manners,
Gord-O.”

At the end of the line, a tattered curtain
had been strung up across the tunnel like a door. Here, the floor
was so thick with fungus as to be completely buried, and the walls
were lost to tuberous vines. Just on the other side of the curtain
water roared, and the moisture in the air was so thick it saturated
Fen’s clothing and dripped off his hair, making him feel clammy and
gross. He didn’t realize it at first, but he was hiding behind
Time’s shadow as the man held his lantern aloft, and when he
stepped aside to do something, it left Fen out in the open and
quaking with dread.

A noise rang out:
Clack, clack, clack
,
and Fen jumped with fright as the curtains sprang open, as though
pulled back by invisible hands. Time just laughed at him. “Madam,”
He then called ahead into the room, while Fen shrank at the sight
of the gruesome doorknocker; a skull stuck to the top of a pole.
“Madam,” repeated the merchant, louder still. “I’ve come for a
reading as arranged. I’m feeling the moment’s approach, and am in
need of the Taleweaver’s guidance.”

When the Gutter Lady appeared it was as if by
magic, materializing from the cascading waters that dominated the
back of the room, and yet she hadn’t a drop of water on her. Fen’s
heart nearly leapt from his throat and he staggered back in terror
of her. She was just as he remembered all those weeks back; thin
and skeletal beneath an off-white tunic, skin like ancient
parchment paper, and tattoos from toe to neck. She still wore the
veil, and Fen still thought he could see her glass mask and the
terror it held beneath it. Every ephemeral step she took, set the
boy closer to passing out. The fear throbbed in his head and
warbled in his ears. And when she tiled her head, in a way as
though looking around Time and directly at
him
, that was
it.

When Fen woke he was in a bed surrounded by draped
cloth colored red, much like the
Sin’s Devil Cat
, only the
room turned out to be much bigger, and he was up in a loft that
overlooked a work area of mismatched arm chairs and couches. At the
center were a series of tables arranged in a horseshoe, and on the
middle one lay a map as big as a blanket, with a dagger stuck in
its center.

Fen felt like he was alone, and he crawled
from the comfortable bed, reluctant because it was real, like the
one he’d had in the worker tenements of his youth, and it even
smelled of soap; like his mother every day when she came back from
the scullery…until she didn’t. But his curiosity got the better of
him. He climbed down the loft’s stairs onto the lower level and
approached the tables, on course for the map and the dagger. Once
he was within a meter, he realized it was a map of the Pinprick
Slum, with the names of the locations coming slowly to his
pseudo-literate mind. As for the map itself, it looked to be
fashioned out of black cloth, with the various locations
embroidered in gold thread, and where the dagger stuck firm,
beneath it lay the Node.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,
Gord-O,” said Conrad, sleepily, and when Fen turned he found the
Sanctuary’s master sitting up on one of the couches. He stretched
and yawned and made a show of climbing laboriously to his feet.
“Slept as snug as a bedbug did you?”

Fen shrugged and nodded.

“Good.” Time planted his hands into his spine
and pushed out a kink. “Glad to hear one of us did anyway. Remind
me to burn this couch for the uncomfortable deathtrap it is.”

“Where am I?” asked Fen as he swept his gaze
around the room. Beyond the red fabric of the walls and ceiling,
and the piecemeal furniture, there wasn’t anything to suggest where
he might be. He wasn’t even sure if he was in the Sanctuary, or
back in the Exchange somewhere; though something told him Time
wouldn’t have carried him that far.

“You’ve the privilege of my abode, kid. After
you went ahead and pulled a ‘damsel in distress’ I had nowhere else
to put you…much to my chagrin, so’t goes.”

Fen rubbed the back of his head in an attempt
to remember the last thing that happened, which for him seemed to
stop at the threshold to some tunnel. When he tried to pry further
he felt dizzy to the point of vomiting. “What happened?”

“What happened…? What happened is you passed
out, and right before the reading, Gord-O.”

It all seemed to come back in a flash; the
chamber with its wall of water, the dread eating him from the
inside out, and then the appearance of a nightmare. “The Gutter
Lady…” Fen managed before he shuddered.

Time swiped a bottle off one of the tables
and took a haul. “She prefers Madam Coven, truth be told,” he
explained, wiping his lips off on his shirt sleeve when he was
done, “but Gutter Lady’s as good a nickname as any, I suppose.” The
merchant offered him the bottle, but Fen turned away out of shame
and focused his sights on the knife’s edge. It twinkled back at him
with the room’s lamplight.

“No need to get all mopey,” Time went on
talking as he walked around the table opposite the boy. “Things
happen,” he then planted his gloved palms on the table and looked
up to Fen. “She’s a sight to be sure, and the stories I’ve heard
paint a gruesome picture. But once you get past all that she’s not
a bad broad. Helped me out, she did, with some medical issues I had
some years back, and from there on…we’ve had an equitable
arrangement. Readings in exchange for my services and such. Anyway,
there’s a lot I learned through the Madam’s cards last night, and I
got to tell you, she had quite a few things to say about you,
alright…and not all of them good I’m afraid.”

“Me?”

In one fluid motion, Time hopped up on the
center table, folded his legs, and seating himself down
cross-legged. The edge of the map touched his knees and the knife
stood close at hand. “I do think it’s time we got on the level, Fen
Tunk.”

At first, Fen didn’t even realize what had
happened, and he lifted his eyes to the merchant innocently enough,
but as the ramification of Time using his real name sunk in, Fen’s
face flushed into open shock. He’d been discovered.

But Time didn’t look mad, not at all, if
anything he looked amused. “Told you first we met we were kindred
spirits, kid-O. You don’t think Time’s my real name do you? Kind of
pretentious don’t you think? I took it a few years back when I
needed a new identity. The name kind of suited me though, helped
remind me that Time can be a friend, but also an enemy if you don’t
give it the respect it deserves. And now I know your secret, and
you know mine.”

The merchant leapt to his feet and looked
down at the boy from nearly three meters up. The man looked
gigantic, larger than life, like a cloudscraper over the Warrens,
and Fen stood in both wonder and fear of him. “So here’s the
thing,” Time paced around the map, cat-like in his bravado, “you,
my little friend, have something that belongs to me. I’ve been
patient about it…had to be, you’re a hard lad to track, and I
admire your spirit. I’ve enjoyed our time together, and hell, half
a thousand tokens is hardly a bother between friends like us. But
here’s the thing…”

Conrad turned and dropped to a knee, so he
and Fen were face to face. The smell of gutter gin drifted heavily
from the merchant’s breath, and his eyes glinted with a wild
inhibition. “I can’t mess around with you anymore, just can’t,
Gord-O—do you mind if I keep calling you that? It’s got a better
ring to it and I have a hard time thinking of you as…
Fen
.”
Time sneered sour. “Anyway, let’s get down to the brass-tacks, so
to speak. That sack of notes you pilfered was mine, boy, and it was
bound to the constabulary of this little slice of Junction.” Time
waved a hand in vague reference to the map under his knee. “You
see, I got plans for this slum—always have—though I’ve had to
modify it a bit after the citizens down here turned on me once,
back a ways; I had to change tactics…when the carrot don’t work,
you use the rod, so’t goes.”

Fen stared down at the knife next to Time’s
leg; at how it was deliberately stuck into the Node, several other
stab marks solidified his assumption. “You plan on taking down the
rat lord?”

Time appeared genuinely please, and he sprang
to his feet, crying aloud, “Bingo, kid-O! I knew you was
whip-smart. It’s why I’ve been so lenient with you up till now…been
patient. Pops would’ve been proud, the ol’ firebrand!”

“But how? How can you take down the rat
lord?”

“How old are you, Gord-O, eight…nine?”

“Thirteen.”

“Close enough…guess you might get it. I’m
going take down Trask by first taking down his Exchange; by freeing
the people from his token sham. I’ve already pulled the rug out
from under him by seizing the children’s loyalty. Something he
never had the smarts to do—”

“
Token sham
,” Fen blurted in
interruption, “I don’t understand.”

“Course you don’t, so let me explain. Tokens,
kid-O, tokens are what’s keeping you and everyone in this slum
down. You trade out a Ludwig ‘cause it ain’t worth anything down
here, and for it you get a couple tokens, seems real dandy, right?
Wrong. What you don’t get, until you try and climb out of the Rat
Warrens, is that tokens ain’t worth a spit-in-the-drain. You know
they’re nothing but pieces used in up-level gaming halls; used to
play strike-rack and tables, and such. You can buy at least a
hundred tokens for a Ludwig; even more. But you can’t trade in a
hundred, or even a thousand—ten thousand—tokens for a single note,
anywhere.”

“Anywhere…hundreds of tokens…” Fen’s mind
whirled at these concepts, and it suddenly occurred to him that his
rucksack of cash was worth far more than he could have ever
imagined.

Time climbed off the table and wrapped his
hands around the boy’s biceps, holding him rigid at arms’ length.
“I see you’re having a hard time with this concept,” he said
craning his neck to probe Fen’s eyes, “but that’s the truth. You’re
all tied up in the rat lord’s scheme, Gord-O, and all his bartermen
are in on it too; to the point it’s become the norm. It’s been like
this so long most don’t remember; ‘specially since this War’s
taking everyone except the women and children—and not a one of
them’s schooled in economics.