Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens (7 page)

His mates would certainly give him a hard
time about scrounging for sure, and with his sister and her friends
no less, but he could take a little ribbing from the likes of
Shoat, and as for Durreem, he wasn’t the sort to tease anyway.
Beaut was too busy fussing at his hair and clothing to care, and
Ratty was about the biggest loser any of them knew. Any attempt he
tried at giving Fen a hard time would amount to a rash on the
Necrosis (meaning not a whole lot at all). The only real issue was
how Nickle would take it. He was the only one who might look on Fen
leaving as a personal slight, but Fen would find some way to work
around him… But all that was for a another day to figure out, and
when Fen finally fell asleep it was to the grinning face of a
clown, advertising some exotic circus show that happened years and
years ago on tier three.

When Fen woke the next morning it was to the
afternoon bellow of the Three Fat Sister’s horns, just before they
began their cyclical flush. By then he should have been well into
his day, but he was still in bed when the hovel trembled and
vibrated in time to the giant tanks. Once he got up and made his
way down the ladders, it was really of no surprise when he found
Lydia sitting at their table sorting scrounge by the light of her
own tin can lantern. She was waiting for him alright, with a scowl
on her face, and words waiting on her lips. But Fen grinned. She
could be mad all she wanted, but he’d already made up his mind; and
was she in for a surprise.

“I made some breakfast,” Lydia snapped. This
morning she was wearing her faded blue head-wrap, and the way it
pulled back her dark hair gave her an already severe look.

“Great.” Fen could feel his stomach rumbling
like the Sister’s pipework and he eagerly planted himself at the
table, where in amongst the bric-a-brac Lydia had set out a broken
plate for him. It was piled high with finslug eggs and fried rat
strips, and she’d even sautéed up some gutterweed, but when he
started into it he found it cold. She must have made it hours ago,
and if the meal hadn’t cost a half-token he might have pushed it
away, but instead he choked it down while his sister watched.

“You mind not glaring at me like a harpy
while I eat,” grumbled Fen.

His sister’s stately eyebrows lowered. “Just
finish your breakfast…so we can talk.”

“There’s no need to, Lyd—”

His sister was quick to interrupt, and her
tone was already heated. “Now you listen to me, Fen Tunk—”

“I’ll go with you,” he stated, and then he
gobbled up a spoonful of eggs. In the silence his chewing echoed in
the small room, and when it got uncomfortable he turned to look at
his sister. The expression on her face nearly made him choke.
Befuddlement made Lydia look a fool; like the clown on his circus
poster.

She frowned fiercely and folded her skinny
arms over her nonexistent bosom. “Don’t mess with me, Fen, I’m
hardly in the mood for your crap.”

“Not messing with you, sis,” he spoke around
the food in his mouth. “I’ll go.”

“Go,” she muttered the words in disbelief as
she stared off at the wall in front of them, looking for some sort
of clarity in the rust. “Well…good.” And suddenly she seemed to
decompress like a hydraulic piston turned off. She even ventured a
smile. “Glad to hear.”

Fen returned to eating, glancing once at his
sister beside him. She was leaning with her knobby elbows resting
on the table, and it occurred to him how loose and baggy her
tank-top hung off her shoulders. Through the sleeve of her armpit
he could even see clear on through from one side to the other, and
how her homemade bra wrapped around fleshy ribs rather than any
sort of breasts. There wasn’t an ounce of fat to be found on her,
anywhere, and that got him worrying. Their father had been in a
similar state when they’d dumped him into the Axillary. He’d been
so light, hardly heavier than a piece of damp cardboard, and now
Fen shuddered to think of the same thing happening to Lydia.

“Here,” he offered his plate up.

“I already ate,” she said tiredly, and pushed
it back.

“What…like yesterday? You on some sort of air
diet now?”

“Funny. Just finish eating, Fen.”

For four days Fen tried to find some sort of
contentment in crawling through trash heaps and drain grates and
narrow catches with his sister and her gals; sifting through
up-level flotsam; but it just reminded him of why he’d left it all
and joined the Bednest Gang in the first place. When contentment
failed he tried reason alone, but when days of scrounging had
brought them nothing but a few product boxes and some spent
tobacco, the hours of labor looked less like making a living and
more like torture. He was sure kids sent to the sweaty were better
off. At least they got fed and could count on a token a week.

But day after day took its toll; wading,
breath held tight, sometimes in mud, sometimes sewage, and
sometimes in waist-deep rotted food littered with broken glass; and
his mind drifted to the stash with more frequency. Here he was
slaving just to survive when a fortune lay waiting for him. He
wondered what his mates might be up to, or how they’d taken to his
sudden disappearance. Fen tried to find them at one point, but they
were off causing mischief, and Lydia was something of a
taskmaster.

“We’ve a narrow window with some of the more
choice locations, Fen. Those high-dwellers dump on a pretty regular
schedule and there’s not a scrounger who hasn’t taken note—”

“I know, I know.” Fen grumbled as he tromped
behind his sister through ankle deep muck along some long-buried
access way. “I used to do this too.”

“Well not for years, and things change.”

“Yeah, like your gals,” He’d looked around
the darkened passage to a trio of squat forms lumbering just past
the circle of light thrown out by Lydia’s arc-torch.

“Fen Tunk, what is that supposed to
mean?”

“‘
Supposed to mean’
”, he repeated as
though his sister was being dense. One needed only look at the
girls. They looked like they’d each devoured another person and
double in size for it. No more than a few years back they were like
Lydia, thin, and each with their own enticing attributes. Sasa with
her charcoal skin and perfect complexion, fiery Dalana, and coy
Mitz with her ample features. Though he’d just been a kid when they
came around on the regular, he remembered them fondly. “I just
don’t know why you’re all skin and bones and those three look like
they’ve been feasting on the regular.”

“Well…we all find different ways to survive,
Fen,” she’d whispered, “and sometimes consorting with the rat
lord’s bartermen brings in much needed perks.”

Fen pointed off to where Lydia’s friends
probed the darkness. “Maybe they oughta try taking less of those
perks.”

Right then and there Lydia had turned on him
and smacked him in the face. Wearing gloves, his sister’s assault
wasn’t particularly painful, but it was shocking. “These girls are
out here for us. They don’t need to be scroungin’, Fen, and they
don’t need some creep like you putting them down for nonsense that
don’t affect you one bit. Their life’s goal ain’t exciting you, so
if they take extra today, ‘cause tomorrow there might be none, then
that’s their call, and we should be happy for ‘em. Their bodies
their prerogative. You understand, Fen? Honestly, I worry what’s to
become of you if I’m not around.”

Fen rubbed the spot where she’d struck him.
“So then why aren’t you taking the rat lord’s perks if it’s all so
dandy?” He barked back, on the defense, while his cheek
throbbed.

After that question she’d clammed right up,
saying only, “We all got different measures on what’s
tolerable.”

By the end of the fourth day the arc-torch
had stopped working and that sealed the deal. Their prized battery
had become just another piece of scrap to be sold, and the lantern
a relic to be stashed with the rest in their loft. Now, not only
were they starving, but they had to crawl around in the deepest
dark from then on out, seeing ahead by match, or what little
phosphorescent gel they could mix up from the tullywogs they found
from time to time.

When they’d come back to the Pillars Fen had
all but made up his mind. Perhaps enough time had passed that he
could trade in some notes. He could stash them in his pocket when
they went out to scavenge and then claimed to have found them. It
might even have worked, but by then his wounds had healed and his
confidence returned. The slums had been quiet, and no one was
talking about a rat pup who lost a fortune in the Exchange. All had
returned to normal. Taking in another stack seemed more and more
reasonable. What sealed the deal was remembering Time, and how Time
had treated him, and he deduced if there was any man to be trusted
in the Exchange, it was the man who’d saved him from the bruisers.
After all, why save him one day to turn on him another. In that way
he could keep Lydia totally out of it.

So he fixed his mind to climbing the Sister,
to pull a stack from the ruck and trade it at the Exchange. This
time, to avoid the sunkeepers, he’d leave in the dead of night. So
when the time came he snuck out while his sister slept peacefully
in her second floor room. He’d avoided a confrontation by telling
her he was staying up to tinker with some scrounge. She seemed
convinced when she yawned wide, ruffled his hair, and told him not
to stay up too late. Soon after she was snoring up a storm.

That’s when Fen made his move; grabbing his
patchwork hide jacket and slipping out the pipe towards his secret
hideout. Though late, it seemed the Pipeyard was always active, and
Fen carefully climbed and balanced his way up the Bednest towards
the first Fat Sister, leery of any curious eyes. After ascending a
couple dozen meters through intertwining pipework he came up on the
first of the giant tanks, confident no one could have followed him,
and when he climbed to the split pipe sticking off the First Sister
like a pimple, he found the rucksack right where he’d stashed it.
He pulled one stack at first, and then a second.
Getting up
here’s treacherous, so why not a second?
He reasoned, tucking
one in his pants and the other in his jacket.

When he slipped into the
Sin’s Devil
Cat
Conrad Time’s face lit up, and he hopped off his chair at
the counter to greet the boy with a merry shake and an affectionate
pat on the back. “Gordon! Good to see you, kid. I say you’re
looking much ado, just a little yellowed where the bruises linger,
but otherwise A-okay. Though got to admit, I didn’t expect you back
here any time soon. Thought the pounding you took might have scared
you off for good.”

“Naw,” said Fen, “Takes more than that to
dissuade me.” Though truth was his nose still hurt and would
probably never be the same again.

“Ah, now there’s a-boy. Don’t let no one else
guide your destiny…least, that’s what some seem to think on the
matter. There’s those out there that believe we’re all threads on
one big rug, so’t goes.” He ushered Fen into his establishment.
“Anyway, what do I owe for the late-night visit, Gordy-boy?
Something tells me you’re not here to offer a simple thanks for
patching you up.”

“You said if I ever had business I could come
here.”

Time slipped past him and secured the rickety
door with a latch. “It’s what I specialize in, kid. Business keeps
the isles afloat and the highdwellers in the sky, so’t goes. Now
what is it I can do for you?”

“Well, it’s… I got some…” Fen drove his
boot-toe into the floor and fidgeted at a seam in the
stonework.

Conrad interrupted with an upheld hand. “Just
out with it, kid, don’t play coy. You don’t strike me as the
type.”

“Do you exchange notes for tokens.” He lifted
his eyes and rested them on the merchant. The man didn’t look
phased in the least. If anything he was just as passive as ever.
Only his carnival clothing offered any sort of amazement.

“Course, every barterman does,” he said.

“I mean a lot of notes.”

“Any quantity your heart desires, kid.” Time
threw out his arms as though offering up the world.

In this case, Fen didn’t think Time
understood the meaning of
lots
, and so taking a deep breath
he dared to pull out the full stack stuffed in his pants’
pocket.”

Time’s colorless eyes went wide as he caught
sight of all those Ludwigs and a smirk cut sideways beneath his
waxed mustache. “Gord-O, you are just full of surprises.”

Because of the quantity, Time wasn’t able to
give Fen as many tokens as he would have liked, but it was still a
haul, and after it was all counted out the merchant helped him wrap
them all up so they wouldn’t jangle. “Now don’t dally in the
passages,” he said, “get it home, and get it hidden. A burglar or
troller’ll cut your throat for sure for a fraction of this hoard,
so’t goes. Good luck, kid.”

When Fen reached the door, he stopped. “What
if I come upon more?”

“More? What…you got some magic hole where
Iron notes miraculously appear?”

“Just wondering.”

“Well, you find more, you bring ‘em right
back here and we’ll trade again.”

“And should it be lots.”

One of Time’s brushy eyebrows crawled halfway
up his forehead in puzzlement. “You talking more
lots
than
you just traded in?”

Fen shrugged, not willing to spill it all
right then.

“Tell you what,” offered the merchant in a
reasonable tone, “I might not have the token on hand to trade at
the time you bring in this
lots
, so you got a couple of
choices here on how to proceed. One, you can either tell me how
many
lots
you intend to bring in, and I can have the token
ready for you ahead of time. Or two, and if you’re feeling
particularly trusting, you can bring it here, leave it with me, and
I can get you the token after the fact.” Time brought a gloved hand
to his chin and rubbed in contemplation. “I’ll let you decide on
this one.”