Blightborn (20 page)

A man clears his throat.

Ah. Yes.

Behind the desk sits a thick-chested, barrel-bellied man. Skin the color of dark, loamy earth. The man peers out from behind a curtain of tangled dreadlocks.

“You need something?” the man asks. He crosses his arms in front of him; he’s got salt-stung brands lacing up his arms, pink and puffy. Symbols of anchors and ocean currents, of biter-fish
and the barbed hooks that catch them. He’s a Brineborn. One of the men and women who know the Shattered Coast and the slate-gray water beyond.

“Salutations, Mr. Redjohn,” Balastair says with a small flourish. He hopes he’s not still shaking. The encounter with the addict has him rattled. So much so that he has to take a moment to remember the password. “The books are in alphabetical order, I see.”

Redjohn stares at him. Waiting.

Oh. Right.

He completes the password by stepping forward and knocking on the bookshelf three times—two quick knocks, a pause, then a third knock.

Redjohn nods and stands.

At his hip, a sonic scattergun hangs.

He points a small black box toward the wall and depresses the red button on it—

The bookshelf clicks.

Hums as the magnetic lock disengages.

Then the shelf drifts open.

Music. The din of the crowd. The smell of smoke and booze and sweat. Balastair gives Redjohn a small nod, and he disappears into the bowels of the Slap-Me-Dead Speakeasy in search of a friend.

It all blurs. Same passageways. Same conduits, same pipes, same cables and wires, same rust and steam. Her feet pound on the metal grates. Footsteps aren’t far behind her. The boy. She sees
him over her shoulder. Coming at her, arms stiff, hands reaching. His face is a leering mask, empty of anything but lust and hunger. Animal mad. As if he’s been twisted into something by this place. Maybe by that fat man. The boy makes these sounds as he runs: giggly squeaks and desperate grunts.

She thinks:
I could take him. I can fight.
Hell, she was the one who taught Cael to throw a punch.

No. Don’t stop. Not now
. She doesn’t know this place. Doesn’t know these people. She’s tired. Achy. Lost. This is not the time to—

A bellowing laugh.

The fat man steps in front of her. Clapping his sweat-damp hands.

But how—

She’s been running in circles.

Damnit.
Damnit
.

She skids to a halt. The boy almost slams into her, but she shoves him back even as he tries to paw at her. The flabby arms of the old man wrap around her from behind and pull her tight against him—the boy comes at her again, and she lashes out with a foot, catches him between the legs.

The boy brays like a willow-lashed donkey and drops, clutching his pearls as his head thunks dully against the wall.

“Feisty,” the old man says. “Daddy will have to teach you a lesson.” A rough hand slides under her shirt, hot and clammy at the same time, his middle finger thrusting into her belly button and pushing so hard it hurts—

She slams her head back. The man turns his head just in time and catches it on his cheek—he snarls in response, but he doesn’t
let her go. He only renews his vigor by pulling her tighter. His one hand clamps over her throat, thick fingers pinching the sides of her neck, cutting off blood flow. His other hand searches the hem of her pants, begins to slide under—

Her own hand darts to the bag even as darkness pushes in at the edges of her vision, even as her heartbeat is dull, booming cannon fire, deafening her to all other sounds—

His hand slides farther down—

Her own hand wraps around something.

She brings it up against his head.

Crash
.

The bottle of Klee-Ko Club Soda smashes against his head. He staggers backward as she stumbles forward, over the boy’s moaning body. Her attacker roars, soda foaming over the glass shards stuck in his flesh and mingling with the bright-red blood.

His face a mask of crimson froth, he rushes toward her.

A warbling shriek fills the air—

Then the old monster pitches forward onto his hands and knees.

His vest is ripped at the back, the leather torn open like petals of a flower. The skin, too, is torn open: muscles exposed, looking like raw steak.

Behind him stand a man and a woman. They’re wreathed in dark leathers, their faces barely visible behind blast-shields.

The woman holds a sonic pistol in her hand.

Gwennie tries to say something, tries to find words for what just happened, but none seem eager to leap from her lips into the air—and then the feral boy on the floor scrambles for a pipe and hoists himself to his feet, suddenly panicked.

The man steps forward.

His wrist flicks—a telescoping baton descends with three quick clicks. He cracks it down on the boy’s head. Once. Twice. A third and final time before the boy drops, shuddering once, then remaining still.

Then the woman comes for her, the sonic pistol pointed.

Gwennie screams.

The speakeasy offers a dim brown half darkness punctuated by oil lamps on tables. The crowd here is thin at this time of the day, though down in the Wolf’s Lair it’s always night. The patrons are ill-seen in the dark, just shapes blending with muddy shadows, flickering light playing off their moon faces.

Balastair passes through a haze of perfumed smoke. He feels the capillaries in his face and eyes go flush. A dizzy rush sweeps over him, and it takes a moment to once more find his balance.

Bodies shift. He sees a flash of skin. A head bobbing in a lap, hands gripping the sides of the recipient’s knees. In the other direction, two young men, almost boys, twine their arms, tipping back fluted glasses of something that looks silver, like liquid mercury. They laugh and begin to kiss.

Discordant music from a string quartet fills the air—the ribald pull of clashing notes does little to ease Balastair’s nerves as he winds his way through the tables toward the bar.

The bar. Long, flat, slate-top. Itself a bookshelf: at knee level are more old books stacked next to and upon one another. Balastair lets his fingers drift along their dry, papery spines. It centers him.

He sits on a high-back stool, an oil lamp flickering right in front of him. He taps the rim.
Ting, ting, tinnnnng
. The fire jumps with every tap.

From the far end of the bar comes a small man. Ink-black hair in a midnight topknot.

His mouth breaks into a wicked boomerang grin, and he laughs and reaches across the bar. Balastair meets his reach, and they engage in a clumsy yet earnest embrace.

“Kin,” Balastair says, “It’s good to see you, friend.”

“Balastair,” Kin Sage says, clucking his tongue. “It’s been too damn long.”

“Has it?”

“At least a year.”

“Then it has.” He shakes his head. “Time escapes me.”

“You sound like an old man.”

“I feel that way sometimes.”

Kin shrugs. “They don’t let us be young anymore, do they? Always expecting us to make something of ourselves the moment we pull free of our mother’s tit.” They both laugh; nobody breastfeeds anymore. “I hear that you’re on the Pegasus Project. That’s an honor, right?”

“If you say so.”

“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise.”

“It’s not what I want to be doing. Plus: politics. Which I’m not very good at. I’d rather be down here with you.”

“You’d never make it down here.” Kin’s eyes flash. A bit of that old competitiveness flaring there like match-tips. Balastair’s not really sure who’s winning so far in the game of life.

Kin lifts a finger and holds it out: a perch. Erasmus instantly hops from Balastair’s shoulder and flies over to the finger. A bit of sleight of hand, and Kin conjures a palmful of sunflower seeds out of thin air.

The grackle eats greedily.

Peck peck peck
.

“I see Erasmus is doing well.”

Balastair nods. “He’s quite the charmer. And the eater, as you can see. Shen is still everyone’s bird girl, I presume.”

“She is. Just hatched a few new eggs. They don’t all talk like Erasmus here.”

Erasmus stops pecking seeds for a moment and, as if in defiance of his gift, merely chirps instead of mimicking words. “If ever the day comes that you don’t want him anymore, my sister’ll gladly have him back.”

“Never. He’s my constant companion. Don’t know what I’d do without him, honestly. Come, Erasmus, stop bothering the nice man.” He taps his shoulder twice with a finger, and the bird returns, cheeping and peeping.

Kin continues: “Why
are
you down here? This isn’t your scene, Bal.”

He’s not yet ready to go there yet. “A drink, to start?”

“Micky Finn’s?”

“And Klee-Klo, yes.”

The leering, toothy shark from the Micky Finn’s bottle greets Balastair as Kin flips it, pours some into a glass shaker. A squeeze of lime, a few marbles of ice. But then Balastair sees Kin’s eyes dart, casting his gaze toward the back of the speakeasy.

“What is it?” Balastair asks. He starts to turn around, but Kin issues a short, sharp hiss that gives him pause.

“I think it’s time to cut the fog and tell me why you’re here.”

Deep breath.

“I need passageway off the flotilla.”

Kin pauses in making the drink. “For you.”

“For me and the girl.”

“The Heartlander.”

“Mm. Yes. She’s . . .”
In trouble
. “She’s gone to the Engine Layer. I think. Someone will need to . . . to find her there and get her off the Saranyu. Somehow. Some way. As for me—”

“I can’t do anything for you.”

“What?”

“You’ve got a tail. One of the peregrine’s people.”

“He . . . he might not be here for me. You don’t know—”

“He’s Frumentarii.” Kin slides a fizzing glass toward him, plops a slice of lime down over the rim. Juice drips to the bar-top. “If they’re watching you, I can’t risk it.”

“But that’s
why
I need you,” Balastair says between clenched teeth, suddenly angry. “If everything were acey-deucey, I wouldn’t require your help, would I? For Crow’s sake, Kin, we’re old friends; we were kids together playing on Palace Hill; my mother treated you as if—”

“Your mother’s gone. The fix is in. Things are happening, Balastair. Big things. We can’t jeopardize our plans and turn the peregrine’s eye toward us. Not now. Maybe soon. Get safe. Hide if you have to. Contact me again—maybe then we can do something for you.”

“Damnit, Kin.” He holds the drink with white knuckles but does not take a sip. “The girl, then. The Heartlander.”

“We’ll find her.”

“What’s the price?”

A puckish smile twists his face. “I’ll add it to your tab.”

Balastair lowers his gaze to his drink. He takes a long, slow sip. The bubbles tickle his tongue, but he barely feels them. The horse kick of the herbal gin is warm. He tries to relax. Forces out the breath he’s holding.

“I need to get out of here, then.”

Kin nods. “You do. I can help with that.” He lifts a finger, makes a small gesture toward the back, mouths a few silent words. Now Balastair risks a glance, sees a tall, fire-haired waitress with legs as long as the sky heading toward a gruff, silver-haired thug in the back. She swoops over him, pouncing like a cat, pinning him to the back wall.

“Now?” Balastair asks.

“Now.”

He hops up. Heart beating.

Erasmus shifts nervously from foot to foot.

Balastair winds his way through the tables.

The thug pushes the girl aside.

He turns, looks in Balastair’s direction—

But she’s on him again. Like ants on honey.

The man shoves her—

Into a table. A glass breaks. The noise reverberates.

The distraction is just enough.

Balastair winces and ducks through the doorway back toward
the antechamber of books. The shelf opens and then closes behind him. Guilt and fear chase his steps like a nipping hound.

Gwennie drools blood.

She makes a small, panicked sound in the back of her throat as her tongue finds a molar toward the back—the tooth wiggles in the socket.

Tears run hot through the dirt on her cheeks.

Her hands are bound tight behind her. Legs tied to the chair legs beneath her. Her head throbs. Her arms, too. Her hip.

Everywhere they hit her.

The man and woman she thought were her saviors were anything but. They beat her. They dragged her here—to a small room in the Engine Layer. A storage room by the looks of it: crates of provisions, tools bracketed to the walls with chains fixed by padlocks.

The man comes back into the room. His face shield is raised. He’s handsome. Young, like Balastair. Face like a fox.

“I am Adrian,” he says. He removes the face shield entirely, sets it on the ground. Then he pulls from his pocket a couple of small green leaves, which he begins to chew. “The woman was—well,
is
—my sister, Adriana. We’re twins, if you’re wondering.”

He holds up a visidex. Her picture is on it.

Gwennie tries not to whimper. Tries to turn it into a snarl.

“This is you?” He tilts the visidex, peers at it. “Gwendolyn Shawcatch. You went off your leash, poor puppy.” He clucks his tongue in faux disappointment. “Oh, my manners—I still haven’t told you exactly who I am. I am a member of the Frumentarii.
The Peregrine Guard. Curious point, there: in the Old Words,
Frumentarii
means ‘corn,’ or ‘corn farmer.’ Now obviously”—here he does a small spin—“I’m no corn farmer. But just as corn, or what we derive from it, helps keep this city flying, so too do we keep it flying by protecting it from the threats above, below, and beyond it. So, you’ll see, the metaphor is quite apt.”

He takes a few steps closer. He sets the visidex on the ground by his feet and then draws from his back pocket a pearlescent handle from which emerges the square blade of a straight razor.

He flashes it in front of her eyes—not a threat, not yet, but to show off. “Whalebone. So I’m told. You don’t know what a whale is, do you? Big creatures. Apparently bigger than most boats. They’re dead now. Have been for years when the seas changed after the coast . . . broke.”