Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens (8 page)

Fen rubbed at the back of his head, trying to
make up his mind on what to do. Nowhere else was Fen going to find
someone to hawk all his notes with, and everything he experienced
with Time thus far told him the man could be trusted. Maybe old Art
would have been disappointed in his son’s naiveté, even Fen’s
sister might have smacked him in the back of the head for what he
was working up the gumption to do, but if everything worked out, he
could change in all those Ludwigs for tokens and live the highlife
in the slum after that; bench-time every day, the freshest and
choicest finslug eggs, and battery arc-torches for every room of
the hovel. Lydia couldn’t be mad at him for that, especially when
she stopped scroungin’ and started eating herself fat like the rest
of her gals. And worse case, Time swindled him and he was out a
stack, and with dozens more back at the first Sister that was a
risk he could take.

“I’ve one stack with me right now,” Fen
finally confessed, feeling a rush of blood to his head. “I can
leave it with you, and I have two more I can trade to you
later.”

Time threw back his head and laughed into the
tent’s pointed ceiling. “Ah, now ain’t you a cunnin’ pup, doing a
little of the both. Might you be testing me with a little to keep
me honest, then takin’ the safer route with the rest? Could be I
underestimated you, you little scamp. You’re just full of
surprises.” Time grinned wide with his sharp, white teeth
glimmering in the weak overhead lamplight.

The moment of truth had come. Fen pulled the
bundle of cash out from his jacket pocket and held it up to be
seen. Time’s narrow eyes widened and he took to licking his lips.
“Full of surprises,” he repeated at a murmur.

With Time on his side the tokens began to flow. Fen
started buying bench-rent every day, even on days that weren’t
sunny, and he got around suspicion by noting the sunkeepers’
schedules and avoiding repeat business too often. The daily traffic
helped. Hundreds passed beneath the Skylight, shuffling between the
Exchange and the Claw’s Cradle so that no one took notice of him as
long he kept his head down. He also made sure to sit near men and
woman who might have been his parents’ age, so no one thought to
inquire how a child could afford the light on his own.

From the lightbringers Fen bought candle
after candle after candle, stashing them in his room until he could
figure out a way to use them without his sister growing suspicious.
Lydia had already flipped-out over him quitting the scrounging
business, but she just thought he’d gone back to running with his
gang, so a few candles here and there was no problem, but in a week
he had a pile under his blankets that amazed even himself, and that
was bound to bring her wrath if discovered.

But food, food was the hardest part, not
necessarily for himself; he just bought what he wanted and ate it
wherever, sometimes sitting up on pipes with his legs dangling over
the foot-traffic, sometimes along the Drain Line staring at the
water, and sometime in the Bartermen’s under the twinkling
arc-globes. What was hard was sharing it with Lydia. Anytime he
tried to pass her off a piece of food she’d wave it way, telling
him she wasn’t hungry and that he needed it more than her. That was
probably the most frustrating part; Fen standing there offering her
food while he was stuffed-full near bursting, and her refusing
while she wasted away to skin and bones. What good were all those
tokens if he couldn’t even feed or provide light for his
sister?

But after a few brief weeks it all dried up
anyway.

“Sorry, kid,” said the trusted merchant one
morning as Fen came strolling in, whistling jolly with a pocketful
of Ludwigs, “Can’t exchange out anymore for a while.”

“But why?” Fen protested.

“Listen, Gord-O, tokens don’t just grow on
the old Sentinel, so’t goes. I got to purchase them from the rat
lord’s mint-master, and he’s starting to take note of the frequency
in which I’m popping in and out. Now I’ve waylaid his suspicions
thus far by telling him I’ve enticed a slew of wagies, and so
business’s been a-hummin’, so to speak, but here’s the thing. There
ain’t a score of workers in these slums who can bring what you
bring in one bundle at a time, and you brought in four last week.
You perchance see my dilemma now?”

“Well…I guess,” replied Fen dimly, “but…ain’t
there anything you can do, Time. See…I’m all out—”

“All out!” Conrad roared, incredulous. “How,
oh how, can you be out, Gord-O? I set you up with close on a half
thousand—A half thousand, kid! And you blew through that in under a
month? You’re just a half-pint, ain’t no way you’ve got vices that
cost that much—not yet—so where did it all go?”

Fen shrugged. “Sunkeepers, lightbringers, and
food peddlers,” he admitted, unable to look the merchant in the
eyes.

“
Sunkeepers, lightbringers, and food
…”
Time burst into an uproar of laughter. “That’s what you spent all
those tokens on, Gord-O? No wonder you’ve grown a foot since I
first saw you! And whatever corner you call a home must be bright
as the sun with all those candles.
Ha!
The things a kid’ll
buy… Well, I can probably toss you a couple tokens just to keep
your face fed—”

“Just a couple? No more?”

“Guess you’ll just have to cut back on the
bench-time, kid.
Bench-rent
…” Time shook his head in
disapproval, “can’t believe you wasted money on that racket. Two
tokens a sixth hour…and I thought my prices were steep. You must
spend damn near every minute of daylight beneath the Pinprick.
Enox Unon
, I can’t say it enough; the things children spend
money on.” Time took a moment to pace his shop, stopping to snatch
a battery off the shelf so he could toss to from hand to hand like
a ball. “Alright, I got a soft spot for you, Gord-O, so here’s what
we’re going to do. I’ll work something out with the mint-master;
cash in every single one of your notes in one big score.”

Fen watched the battery, mesmerized by the
way the merchant juggled something so prized as though it were
nothing but a rock. “One big score?”

“Yeah, Gord-O,” Time caught the battery in
his left hand and pointed it at him, “it’ll be easier to explain it
off that way. We can call it good fortune; we can call it a
robbery; we can damn-near call it anything we want. The fact of the
matter is, it’ll be a lot easier for the minter to swallow that
cockamamie nonsense than us continually bringing him in a flood of
notes.”

The idea of handing over all his stash in one
shot got Fen feeling nervous and Time seemed to sense it. Laying a
comforting hand on the reluctant boy’s shoulder, Conrad toned his
voice towards sympathetic. “I get it, Gordon, this is a big thing
to trust another with, and I’d rather not push you into it. But
this is the only way. I can’t continue to risk operating the way
we’ve been operating, I just can’t. When you said you had lots I
hadn’t expected it to be so much. Now you don’t have to do this
deal with me, you can go out and try to find others to exchange
with, but that brings its own sort of danger…need I remind you of
the day we met?” Time lowered his head and probed the boy’s
eyes.

Fen shook his head, having to admit to
himself his mentor had a point. His nose was still whistling from
the beating he’d received.

“Good,” approved Time. “Now it might take a
while to arrange this, so you’re going to have to be patient—but,
in the meantime, I want you to consider coming to work for me.”

The boy screwed his face up in befuddlement,
“Here?” He motioned to the shelves as though they held mysteries
he’d never understand.

“Here?” Time doubled over with laughter.
“Kid, you’re something else! No, not here, you dolt.” He wiped away
the mirthful tears from his smiling eyes and chucked the expensive
battery aside, heedless of where it might land. “You know when I
said I had kids working for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, do you see any kids here?” Time
directed his attention to the empty shop.

“No.”

“That’s right, ‘cause I got them out
there
working.”

Fen followed Conrad’s pointing finger towards
the front door. Despite the gesture being made as a simple
illustration it seemed important to look, though all he saw were a
couple of shelves flanking a door of screwed together planks. The
boy turned back. “Working, like how?”

Time raised a well-fashioned eyebrow. “You
know about mischief gangs, Gord-O?” He locked his piercing eyes on
Fen before folding his arms across the lapels of his striped coat.
As he waited patiently for a replay he tapped a covered finger on
his narrow lips.

Fen scratched at the back of his head and
feigned ignorance. “Yeah…sure,” he said noncommittally.

Time nodded. “Well this organization is sort
of the same thing, only my kids bring back a wee little bit of what
they take, and in return I take care of them.”

To Fen, it seemed Time’s services were
needless. The allure of a mischief gang was in not having anybody
bossing you around like some rat lord. “Take care of them…how?” he
asked, skeptical.

Time lowered his head and tilted it to the
side in a sly manner. “I bring them into
the know
, Gord-O.”
A smirk crawled up from the corner of the man’s mouth.

“Into
the know
,” Fen baulked in
confusion, “what you mean?”

But Conrad Time held back and gave his
mustache a mischievous twist. “
Ah ah ah
, my little friend,
for that you’ll have to come by my Sanctuary in the Barrows.”

Fen’s face went slack. “The Barrows,” just
saying it brought fear, “like where all the crypts are?”

Time pivoted on his heels and threw a hand
back over his shoulder dismissively as he walked towards the
counter. “Unless you know of another.”

“But…”

“But what…it’s
haunted
!” Time jumped
around and tossed his arms out wide. “
Boo!
”

Fen startled, and then immediately clamped
his mouth shut as he felt his temper flare.

“Easy there, kid. You wear that anger of
yours on your sleeve, and that’s bound to get you in trouble sooner
or later. Now I’ve made my offer, and for me to trust you, you’re
going to have to trust me. You see how we’re in this together? I
scratch your back, you scratch mine, and in the process you might
just discover there’s more to life than scrounging for tokens in
the dark. So you in, or are you out, Gord-O?”

Time’s directions to the Sanctuary were very
specific; “Take the Suture north, pick up the Shambles, and make
the turns at the landmarks I’ve laid out. Easy as mud pie,” and yet
Fen still quaked as he crept through the narrow concrete passages
of the Barrows, sure he was lost. The side tunnels whispered with a
chill breeze like death’s breath, and the pattering of unseen
things, distant yet altogether unnerving, sent his mind racing.
Even the arc-torch he’d brought with him did little to sooth his
growing fear. Most of the Warren denizens avoided the various slum
barrows, more out of superstition than respect, so Fen didn’t think
it was one of them making the noises that frightened him. With no
other logical solutions, his mind instead drifted towards the
macabre; to scare-stories of vapor wraiths and ghouls, and that
pushed his heart to crashing in his chest. His nerves became
livewires left exposed to the elements. At one point he freaked out
so bad he fell on his butt, and that just turned out to be his own
breath-vapors swirling up into his face after the winds
shifted.

Despite being alone, the humiliation drove
deep, and Fen managed to gather his wits and steel his resolve, but
more out of a sense of spite than anything else. He wasn’t going to
let the dark get the better of him after all, but then the darkness
of the Barrows tested him to the breaking. Even his torch seemed
powerless, and the light it cast was pale and lacked in substance.
When the scared boy turned a corner the dark slammed down like a
wall behind him, and when he passed at an intersection it reached
to swipe at him. There was only so long Fen could take it, and soon
enough he just wanted his sister to be there, protecting him, and
leading him along.

Fen was close to turning back when the Avenue
of Remembrance appeared in his path. It was the second to last
marker, and well within the Barrows. Time said once he reached it,
he’d be closer to the Sanctuary than turning back for the exit.
I can do this
, he encouraged himself while trying to rebuild
what little confidence he had left. So as quiet as a mouse, the
adolescent tiptoed through the old antechamber, where decades ago
people went to tie ribbons on the columns in honor of the dead.
However, as the Barrows expanded, the room became swallowed into
the system, and now the newest of the ribbons were faded and
brittle to the touch and surrounded by human skulls.

There were so many skulls here, it seemed
enough for every person Fen had ever known, and piled one atop
another into pyramids as tall as he was, with some so old they
looked wooden or made of rock, and they all watched him pass with
pitiless black sockets. He wondered briefly why only skulls until
he remembered the day him and his sister dipped their father’s body
in the drain line.

Lydia had made mention of taking their
father’s head to the crypt keeper and having him interred as the
Church of the True God would have dictated, but neither wanted to
do the deed of sawing off Art’s head, or carrying it off to the
Barrows, so they’d just fed his entire body to the waters instead.
They didn’t feel bad about it. Most disposed of their dead in the
same way, a kind of ‘completing the circle’ ceremony they called
it. The bodies would help feed the finslugs and the finslug eggs
would help feed the ratties, and round and round it would go. Only
the most devout Truists adhered to the burial customs anymore, and
then only if they had the token to pay the church’s crypt keepers.
Owing to
their
prices, the cheaper option was to just give
over the head; and here they’d been piled, and in some cases right
to the vaulted ceiling.