I was less worried about how he got in than why the League might be trying to shake me off. I wasn’t hot on the heels of any trail that I could see. Maybe it was just like the kid said: a sloppy drunk, stumbling around town asking half-cocked questions about Vampires wasn’t helping anyone.
I crushed three empty packs of Clayfields as I searched for something in the house to stop the hammers dancing in my head. I checked under the desk and in the dustbin. No luck.
I looked in the mirror. A mistake. An impressionist painter had tried to do my portrait while riding a runaway carriage. None of the cuts were seeping or bleeding but the bruises had moved in. It looked like someone had stuffed a bunch of opals under my skin while I slept.
I mopped at the crusted blood that had collected in the corners of my eyes and mouth. I ran a comb through my haggard mop of hair and brushed my busted teeth and gums. Half an hour later, I still looked like a bucket of shit, I just had a cleaner bucket.
Thunder rolled through the bricks of the old building. The floorboards shivered, the gutters shrieked and the fixtures jangled in their sockets. I opened the Angel door and the wind tried to push me back into bed.
It was stupid to think of her at that moment. What could I do if the storm wanted to try to take her down? Heading up to the old mansion wouldn’t do anything for anyone.
But I already knew I wouldn’t be able to help it. I found some clean, dry clothes and headed out the door.
CONDEMNED.
Red tape was stretched across the rusted gates.
CONDEMNED.
The sign on the fence said that the site was due for demolition. I pulled it off to read the print but my eyes stopped on the logo at the top of the page.
I found the business card in my pocket. The one given to me by the cheesy developer who wanted me to kick all the Dwarven steelworkers out on their asses.
The logo on the card was the same.
I tore away the tape and slid inside but the pot and the key and Amari were all untouched. She was still sitting there, in her place, right where she should always be. For ever. I marched north to make sure it would stay that way.
Nobody believed that Sunder would survive the Coda. The fires died in an instant. Without the flames, Sunder had nothing. No power. No industry. No heating. Nothing to trade and no way to go on. A good chunk of the city died in the first month. The poor went cold and hungry in their homes and the rich took their carriages out to the wilderness to search for medicine or magic to try to change things back.
The Governor never returned, and most of the other Ministers had enough money to leave town. To their merit, some of the police stayed. Once they’d adapted to their new bodies and patched up their pride, they were the first to hit the streets and try to bring some order to the city. Then suddenly one morning, we had a Mayor.
Henry Piston was a Human; a hard-faced businessman who came to Sunder a few years before it fell. His trade was meat. With trucks and trains and wagons, Piston would provide the chicken, buffalo and bison to the hungry stomachs of the city.
Luckily for him, all the animals he farmed had no magic in their genetic make-up. The abattoirs were Human-run, non-magic machines that only took a little post-Coda calibration to get working again. He had no horses, but the biggest of the bison were saved from slaughter and employed to pull the wagons instead. So, before we had salad or new clothes or hot water, we had steak and hearty soup on every street. For most of us, that was about the best Mayor we could imagine.
Word still hadn’t spread about exactly what happened or why the world had died the way it did. Blame was thrown in all directions and, as usual, the politicians in power got a lot of the blame. The missing Governor Lark had spent taxpayers’ money on his own mansion and countless other luxuries. Many believed it was the choices made by greedy governments that caused the world to crumble. Therefore, Piston thought it would be wise to distance himself from the previous leader.
He shunned the marble mansion and instead took over two manors at the top of the city. He made one his home and the other his office: colossal brick buildings built by the greatest masons around, with wooden interiors that never seemed to age.
On the hill beside the manors, there stood a huge boarding house created for the sons and daughters of wealthy foreign dignitaries. Every room was once reserved for the self-important spawn of favored nations. Now, each was assigned to a Minister whose duty it was to put the city back on track: The Officer of Automation, The Senior Head of Flocks and Herds, The Minister of Aging and Mortality. I marched past each room, reading signs, till I found the door marked Land and Housing. I went for the knob without knocking.
Locked.
I slammed my fist against the door. Nobody came, so I hit it even harder. And harder again. I would have broken the panel if it hadn’t been made of old-world mahogany.
“He’s not in.”
The calm voice was carried on the heat of a huffing steam-engine. I turned to see Baxter Thatch waiting behind me, hands in the pockets of a death-black suit. Balanced over a beer barrel chest was the face of a nightmare brought to life. Skin of smooth obsidian held eyes of fire and fixed into a furrowed brow were the curled, red horns of a ram.
Baxter had been a friend of Hendricks. At one time, even a friend of mine. If Baxter was male, you would call them a gentleman, but Baxter was something else, in more ways than one.
“Hello, Fetch. Long time.”
I nodded, suddenly aware of the state of myself: shaking and violent and out of breath. Around the room, civilians were standing at attention, worried that the madman might be tired of hitting doors and would turn to them instead.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
Baxter placed their stone hand on my arm and gave it a little squeeze.
“I only have a few minutes, but they’re yours if you’d like to talk.”
15
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” Baxter said, with more empathy than I’d expected. There was no ignoring the noise outside the office walls where people called for justice in events far more immediate than mine. My pain was old and dry and covered in cobwebs. It was decayed and clichéd and had become a bore to everyone but me.
“It can’t happen,” I said.
“It is happening. This city must move forward. Away from the pain of the past and everything the Coda put us through.”
“By destroying her?”
This wasn’t the first time Baxter and I had had this conversation. A couple of years ago, I convinced them to come to the mansion with me and try to move her body. That was before we realized Amari had sprouted roots that were embedded into the floor. The worst damage was done that day. I was so angry with us for breaking her that I made Baxter swear they’d never touch her, and hadn’t seen them since.
“She’s dead, Fetch. But you aren’t. Neither am I. Neither are those poor voices out there who need land and hope and a fresh start. It’s time to clear the corpses from this city and start again.”
Baxter had already taken their own advice. The room was newly decorated with the kind of government paraphernalia that screams, We have a plan! Maps and charts and positive messages, photos of empty plots under labels like Center for Rehabilitation.
“When the hell did you become a bureaucrat?”
“A year ago. The Mayor needed more strong minds to steer this wayward ship back on course. You’re looking at the Minister of Education and History. I curate the museum, help with the syllabus for the new school system and have a say in city preservation.”