The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge (28 page)

Mehkans were zipping in such a flurry that it was impossible to tell which were creatures and which were vehicles. She wondered where they were headed. Were they going home or racing to their jobs? Did they even have jobs? Did these growing buildings contain libraries or restaurants or hospitals?

Phoebe wanted to touch those buildings, to climb to the highest point and coast through the city on whatever transport was crossing overhead.

Dollop squealed and sprinted through the crowd. He plucked off his hands, stuck them on his head, and hobbled clumsily on four short limbs. Then he squeaked again and stacked his pieces so he wobbled on teetering stilts. Dollop was looking for a resemblance to every mehkan that passed, mimicking them and trying to engage. But the pedestrians just brushed him off, annoyed.

With one arm dangling from his rear end like a tail, he slunk back.

“I j-just thought…You know, maybe…Oh, w-w-wait!”

Then he was off again.

“Poor little sop,” Mr. Pynch muttered. “Perhaps he's got no one after all.”

“He's got us,” Phoebe said firmly.

“Darn tootin'!” agreed Micah.

The tilbury diverted off the main path and rolled across a raised band of walkway. Off to the side were new growths poking up through bluish ore muck, an organized cluster of bronze sprouts only a few yards high. There were filth-spattered mehkans hunched over and ambling slowly around. A long appendage grew from each of their heads like the proboscis of a butterfly, tipped with gleaming thresher blades. They tended to the buds, doting over their shining surfaces and carefully shaping them.

This was a garden of new buildings, Phoebe realized.

Flat mehkans with serrated bodies were scuttling across a nearby skyscraper, gyrating their carapaces back and forth like jigsaws to carve honey-colored swaths from the skin of the structure. Braying, bulbous mehkans hauled away the bronze cuttings—their speckled bodies and sharp, stubby fins were darkly reminiscent of Zip Trolleys.

The hurried pulse of the city faded as the walkway descended into another cluttered thicket of buildings. These were unrelentingly gray, their tattered skyline blocking out the suns. The facades were shriveled, and gaping holes had been gnawed through their skins. Some of the structures were splintered or limbless, and others were skeletal ruins threatening to collapse. Eroding rust caked the creaking buildings and littered walkways.

“What is this place?” Phoebe whispered.

“Folks call it the Heap,” gritted Mr. Pynch. “Where all the mehkan scraps and detritus be relegated to.”

There were packs of battered, grimy creatures huddled on corners. Some chattered in Rattletrap wheezes, while others shouted and slurred drunkenly. Sunken, haunted faces peered out of hovels that were precariously balanced in teetering stacks. Curled bodies lay beneath sheet-metal lean-tos, while mehkan children screeched and played in a dump of rusted building clippings.

Dollop hopped from group to despondent group, reforming his limbs to imitate each in turn. A familiar shape hobbled out of the shadows—a chraida limping on a cable-bound crutch with a ragged stump where one of his legs should have been. He spat and clutched at the golden dynamo on Dollop's chest. The hapless mehkan registered the danger of his situation with a jolt, but a mangy mob surrounded him, cackling and pawing and closing in.

Phoebe was about to cry for help, but the Marquis leaped to Dollop's rescue. With his umbrella, he bopped a few heads before snaring Dollop around the neck with the handle and dragging him out of the crowd.

“All I—I—I wanted was to find my clan,” he whimpered.

“If yer people occupied the Heap, you wouldn't want to consort with them anyway,” said Mr. Pynch. “Most mehkies wholly reject these refugees, consider 'em a bunch of needy laggards. Especially those pathetic tchurbs. Bleh.”

The Marquis wiped clean his umbrella where it had touched the destitute mehkans.

“Refugees?” Phoebe asked. “From the Foundry?”

“They left their homes for this dump?” Micah asked.

“Fled, more like it, but that be the shape of things.”

“P-p-poor mehkies.”

“True, they haven't a tinklet of gauge to their names.”

“No—no, I f-f-feel, um, sad for them.”

“Don't,” Mr. Pynch grumbled. “Those ragamuffins would have pummeled you for that tiny ingot of yers without a second thought. They be contemptible gut-scum.”

“All embers gl-glow,” Dollop stated with conviction. “W-when we turn our backs on the M-Mother of Ore, we—we turn our backs on each other. It is the Great D-Decay. Err, this treatment of fellow mehkies is sh-shameful. The—the Way is quite clear on this m-m-matter.”

“Dollop is right,” Phoebe said. “They didn't choose this.”

The Marquis's light dimmed. He flickered at Mr. Pynch.

“Don't you start again,” Mr. Pynch snapped, then scowled at Dollop and the kids. “And don't you be so naïverous. Such scoundrels be unworthy of yer bleeding-heart empathies.”

“Come on, they're just trying to survive,” Micah said.

“As we all be,” Mr. Pynch replied, dismissing him. “Now keep yer traps shut. Last thing I need be them nefarious sorts getting curious about me cargo.”

Phoebe steeled herself. Nervous energy buzzed in her chest like an overcharged battery. Soon they would get some information about how to infiltrate the Citadel and make the Foundry answer for everything they had done.

The tilbury glided through the crowded slum. Dollop chanted a wistful Rattletrap prayer, blessing the refugees they passed, but staying close. Gaunt families crowded around grease fires, their smoke and ash clouding the air. Despite the strangeness of the mehkan faces, the kids recognized sorrow in their eyes and hunger carved into their unfamiliar features.

The tilbury descended a narrow passage, choking out the light. Mr. Pynch was consumed by darkness, the Marquis's shutters were closed, and they could no longer hear Dollop's solemn prayers. There was a clank of chains and the jarring shudder of some kind of gate. Then out poured a shrieking maelstrom of Rattletrap, a harsh cacophony like a taunted pack of rabid dogs.

“What is it? Can you see anything?” whispered Phoebe.

“Nothin',” came Micah's startled reply.

She wanted to call out to Mr. Pynch to make sure everything was okay, but she couldn't risk revealing herself. The tilbury rang with the racket. Bodies clanged against the side, too close for the kids to be able to make anything out.

Micah scrabbled for his Lodestar. Before he got the chance to use it, the lid swung open, and they were dumped out. Blinding lights. A clamorous roar.

Shadowy figures loomed. Claws grabbed them. Micah struggled with his weapon, but fat hands wrenched it away.

The hands of Mr. Pynch.

Everything was a blur. Phoebe twisted around, unable to see who was holding them. Dollop was nearby, seized by the numerous cinching arms of a nasty-looking scarlet mehkan. His glistening eyes bulged in terror.

In the shadows, a hulking creature was handing something heavy to Mr. Pynch and the Marquis. A jingling sack filled with shiny, oval rings.

“Our business be concluded,” Mr. Pynch called to the kids over the din. “The world be cruel, dear hearts.”

His face was hard, devoid of mirth. The Marquis offered a tip of his hat.

“And gauge talks.”

 

olcanic rage seethed within Phoebe. Scorching magma exploded through her veins. She screamed. Every pore of her being vibrated with the sound. That set Micah off, launching him into a kicking, spitting frenzy.

“Pynch! When I catch you, I swear I'm gonna—” he shrieked, and fought against the clasping claws that held him.

The two traitors bustled toward the exit. The Marquis carried the massive sack of gauge over his shoulder while Mr. Pynch held up the Lodestar, his wonky eyes lighting purple with possibility. They were quickly lost within the malevolent, churning crowd.

Why!?
Why hadn't Phoebe trusted her instincts? Those two had been plotting this payday from the very first moment they laid eyes on the kids. It was Micah's fault for inviting them along, but she wasn't free from blame. She had been suckered. Even Dollop was paying the price for their terrible mistake.

She tried to make sense of her surroundings, but it was hard to see past the glare of painfully bright spotlights. They were in the middle of an oval arena, about thirty feet long. Mehkan guards lined the perimeter, holding back a surging crowd. Tiers crammed full of spectators rose steeply on all sides.

The brute restraining Micah was easily eight feet tall and built like a bulldozer, with dented gray hide and patches of wiry orange hair. Boasting I-beam arms that bulged with fibrous muscle, he subdued Micah with thick, six-fingered claws that Phoebe recognized from the Foundry's Over-cranes. She looked down at her own captor's hands and saw they were identical. There was no point in resisting.

Dollop was pinned by an unsettling creature with a wide, scarlet-banded body that sat low on five skeletal legs. Extending up from its front was a long, slithery thorax like a giant centipede. Dozens of blunt, chittering arms encased Dollop like a crimson-striped sarcophagus and squeezed until he gave up the fight, his furious cries cut off to pained wheezes.

A blustering, brassy voice cut through the clamor and reverberated through the arena. The mob fell silent.

A figure emerged from the shadows and waddled into the pit. It looked like a giant wrecking ball with brawny elephant limbs, and a misshapen warty face dotted with piggy eyes bubbled out from its chest. The mehkan was draped in heavy foil sacks that jingled with gauge. Strapped to its back was a device that extended up and over like a bundle of fishing poles.

The blaring voice trumpeted again—no, three or four voices, maybe more. They spoke in rapid Rattletrap, and the crowd went wild.

It took Phoebe a second to place where those voices were coming from. Suspended at the end of the dangling poles was a mehkan in a capsule. He was sickly silver, with flaps of sagging skin that had the pimpled texture of an uncooked turkey. A series of fleshy horns like megaphones jutted from his flabby body, each screaming with a different voice. He manipulated the rods so that the capsule swung over the crowd while his bleating voices incited them.

At a shrill command, the three monstrous mehkans displayed their captives. Even Micah had given up struggling, though his face was fixed in defiance. With a startling blast, the megaphone voices rang simultaneously, and the crowd erupted into deafening, screeching cheers.

“What's he saying?” Phoebe yelled to Dollop.

Their friend's eyes were pinched closed, his color ashen.

“Dollop!”

Powerless against the cinching centipede arms, he could only turn his eyes to her. “H-h-h-he says, ‘The—the Gauge P-Pit is open for b-business.
'
”

The blustering announcer swooped over to Phoebe. He was even more foul up close. Veiny glands bulged around his many horns, each secreting a white, wire-thin tentacle. The quivering tendrils slithered toward her, grabbing at her hair and tickling her cheek while his multiple voices cooed at once.

She screamed again.

The crowd cheered. The clammy, boneless probes wrenched her mouth open with unexpected force as the announcer belted so loud it made her head throb. Tendrils prodded her tongue and raked her teeth. She would have bitten them off if they didn't taste like pocket change wrapped in spoiled cold cuts.

“What do they want?” Micah yelled to Dollop. But their friend was speechless with fear.

With a little ticking sound, the announcer's suspended capsule swept toward Micah, spewing unintelligible shouts that seemed to mock the boy's futile struggles against the crane claws. He pinched the boy's chubby cheeks with his tendrils and tousled his hair. Then he eased in very close and with delicate precision forced open Micah's eyelids to expose one frantic hazel orb.

He let out a chilling gurgle, and the crowd hooted.

The flabby creature whizzed over to Dollop, staring wordlessly for several stunned seconds before drawing back with dramatic flair. He made an offhand comment with one horn, followed by braying laughter from his others. The audience responded with ratcheting hoots. His wiry probes tapped Dollop's dynamo, and the cackles grew louder.

The megaphone mehkan silenced the room, and the air became electric with anticipation. Then out pealed a phrase so loud Phoebe could feel it in the roots of her teeth.

“N-n-no, no, no, no, no,” Dollop babbled.

The guards at the perimeter of the ring stepped back.

“WHAT?” Phoebe demanded.

The surrounding crowd surged into the arena. They tripped and tore past one another, fighting to get a better look at the captives. They pressed in, their undulating mass indistinguishable in the floodlights. Phoebe closed her eyes.

There were sharp barks from the mob, words volleying from one mehkan to the next as they tried to outdo each other. Phoebe didn't need a translation.

They were being auctioned.

She watched as the vile Auctioneer cheered and blathered, bouncing on his rig with unmistakable merriment. The buyers edged closer. A few eager ones gathered their nerves and dared to touch the kids with pincers and tentacles, calling out their bids all the while. Dollop burbled in Rattletrap, his voice hitching with sobs as the masses scrutinized and prodded him.

Countless fingers probed the kids, some coarse and grating and others unnervingly slimy. One lifted Micah's pant leg and tasted his ankle with a sticky tongue, and another slid its thin eyestalk up his nostril. A mehkan tested the bones in Phoebe's arm while the next one inspected her ear. The throng convulsed, piling up around the merchandise. Fingers like pliers pinched Phoebe's neck, and a feverish creature covered in rusty, seeping sores put Micah's fingers in its gear-toothed mouth and bit down, causing him to cry out. The delighted horde discovered that Dollop's limbs were detachable, and they plucked off his parts to toy with them cruelly.

The Auctioneer swooped overhead, pointing and barking as his guards broke through the crowd. The mob was spiraling out of control. Jagged hooks dug into Micah's calf, and a vibrating mehkan with frizzy wire hair lunged at Phoebe, some of its jittery strands scratching her face.

The sight of blood drove the crowd into a greater frenzy.

They were so close she could see nothing but their leering faces. Huffing diesel breath burned her eyes. She knew what would happen next. One of these salivating creatures would buy her, if the others didn't tear her to ribbons first. It would drag her away, and she would never be seen again.

A metallic squall split the air. The chaotic mass froze.

There was a splinter of silence. Then the Gauge Pit erupted in a chorus of fear. The mob scattered, flattening one another in a mad rush to escape. The Auctioneer blared his trumpeting voices, zipping about while the wrecking ball creature stormed up and down the arena.

BOOM.

The entire Gauge Pit shook. A floodlight jostled loose, then smashed on the ground, splatting like a balloon filled with bioluminescent glop. The crane-claw fingers that held Phoebe released. She fell to the ground and turned to see her captor barreling through the crowd, clearing a path with its concussive I-beam arms. Even the guards were fleeing.

“Micah!” she cried over the mad rush of bodies. There he was, scampering on his hands and knees, trying to avoid getting trampled. She hurried over and pulled him to his feet.

They saw a flash of scarlet off to the side of the pit. The ghastly mehkan that still held Dollop was scuttling away. They bolted after him.

An explosion threw them to the ground. Debris rained down from a smoldering hole at the back of the arena.

Micah rolled to his feet and vaulted onto the back of the red mehkan, clinging to its writhing centipede thorax. He pried back a few of its arms. Phoebe sprang to his side and yanked. With a crack like a lobster shell, its arms snapped open, and Dollop stumbled free.

The clatter of metal-soled boots marched inside.

Phoebe caught a glimpse of Watchman soldiers.

In a viper-fast strike, the scarlet mehkan pounced on Micah. Its thrashing arms whipped across his face in a blinding succession of blows. Blood splatted from his nose. The centipede arms opened wide. On the underside of its slithery thorax, a long gash parted to reveal vertical rows of black needle teeth. It bore down, fangs dripping.

A burst of strobing gunfire.

Bullets thudded into the scarlet mehkan, again and again. Its legs convulsed and spasmed, and Micah rolled clear.

A spiraling wave of rounds ripped into the beast. It staggered, thick white ooze spilling from the wounds. The creature still grabbed for Micah, but the white goo crystallized with a sound like crackling ice. Its limbs contorted and froze, and the mehkan collapsed, immobilized.

The three fugitives ran as Watchman soldiers spread throughout the Gauge Pit like a black bloodstain. Their rifles hissed open into four spinning barrels as they shot at the fleeing crowd. Muzzles flashed, but their guns were eerily quiet. Mehkans fell as the chemical ammunition punctured their shells. Even those with superficial damage were incapacitated by the white cement. Paralyzed, they shrieked as bullets chipped away at their bodies, shattering them like ice sculptures.

Phoebe and her friends searched desperately for an exit.

Behind them, they saw some mehkans rise up against the Watchmen. But it was futile. None who dared to fight survived their whispering rifles.

A shadowy aisle led away, pallid sunlight at its end.

They ran for a battered gate hanging half off its hinges. Fleeing creatures flooded past, clawing for freedom. Thunderous footfalls came from behind, but they didn't register what that meant until it was too late.

The Auctioneer coiled his wiry tendrils around Phoebe, voices blaring. He was not about to lose his costly prize. Micah and Dollop pulled at her legs as the wrecking ball mehkan swiped at them with boulderlike paws. They dodged his swings but couldn't tear Phoebe free.

A long shadow fell over them, followed by a barrage of crushing blows.

The wrecking ball mehkan's tumorous head was obliterated.

Hot gray fluid doused Phoebe and the others. The Auctioneer bleated and whipped to and fro in his capsule as the giant mehkan carrying him crashed to the ground, its jingling foil bags bursting in a gush of gauge.

The Auctioneer detached himself from his harness and tumbled away.

His floppy pimpled skin squelched on the ground as he tried to escape. But a leather boot shot down and crushed him, silencing his pathetic squawks.

The murderous shadow turned dead eyes upon Phoebe.

“At last,” said Kaspar.