The Human Army had won their war, but their victory destroyed the spoils. The magic they’d hoped to harness was gone, so they changed their name and moved their focus. The generals became managers and the soldiers became salesmen. They only waited a courteous couple of months after breaking the world before offering to sell their products to it.
Of course, no ex-magical business wanted to hand over their savings to the idiots who screwed up the future of existence, but what choice did they have? When Mortales started coughing up ovens and radios on the cheap, even the most vocal Human-haters had to crack.
The phones came next; bright boxes on street corners or plugged into post office walls. Once they’d rolled the lines down every street, we all stopped being squeamish about the moral implications and accepted their presence as a necessary evil. Even so, each coin I put into the slot still cut my fingers.
“Sunder City Switchboard,” said the voice. “How can I connect you?”
I asked for the police department and then for Richie Kites. He agreed to meet me when he got off work, which would be in about two drinks’ time. I didn’t even need to order. Boris had mixed me up a burnt milkwood and I took it to the corner and made friends with it.
At the back of the room, two swaying Elves played an endless game of darts on one of the special boards you only find in Sunder.
After Ranamak was assassinated, a Sunder-born Human took his place. Governor Ingot was a businessman. In theory, that suited the population, but he turned out to be more concerned with selling Sunder to the world than looking after the current inhabitants.
The first piece of propaganda was a brand-new map. Not of the whole world, only our continent: Archetellos. All other islands were ignored. Archetellos itself was skewed and scaled in a way that brought Sunder into the center. While it was a novel idea, the effect was immediately offensive to anyone with a basic understanding of geography.
The posters were mounted onto thick board and handed out around town. The plan was to send them out across the world to convince other lands of Sunder City’s importance, but they were so vehemently mocked that production was stopped almost instantly.
Only a handful were displayed in local establishments, probably as a joke. One night, when the other dartboards were busy, a few drunken patrons got creative.
Sunder City, fudged to be the artificial center of Archetellos, is worth fifty points. Elven hubs like the Opus Headquarters or their home in Gaila are thirty. The eastern city of Perimoor and western cliffs of Vera are both twenty-five. The Dwarven Mountains that border the north are worth twenty but they guard the way to the Ragged Plains and if you land in those you lose five points.
Islands are ten points apiece, including Ember (where the Faeries come from) and Keats (where Wizards are trained). There’s no punishment for landing in the water but there are house rules, depending on where you play. In The Ditch, out of respect to Boris, the Banshee home of Skiros is worth thirty-five.
Human cities are worth zero. Weatherly, Mira and the old Humanitarian Army Base are all a wasted throw. In some bars, you even forfeit the game.
The drunk Elves were still landing most of their shots in the ocean when Richie arrived.
He’d put on a pound a week since joining the force a few years earlier. Ogres can be an unpredictable bunch, but Richie was a Half-Ogre raised in the city since birth.
Around his left wrist he had a single tattoo that matched one of mine: the intricate pattern that flashed green under firelight. Like me, he’d spent a few years of his youth working for the Opus. Back then, there wasn’t a problem his battering-ram hands couldn’t manage. Now he prayed in the church of paperwork. I tended to tiptoe on the boundaries of our friendship. Professional custom made us enemies but he could occasionally be counted on as my ear inside the establishment.
“Milkwood? You still drinking that sugary shit?”
I gulped down the last mouthful of my cocktail and gave Boris the signal to send over another round.
“Ale for me,” Richie called out as he sat down opposite, “because I happen to know I’m not a teenage girl. Now, what’s your big problem?”
Without mentioning any specifics, I asked Richie what he’d heard about the Blood Race.
“Vampires? Fetch, if you insist on digging around where you don’t belong, at least stay out of the cemetery.” Boris delivered our drinks. Richie took a long sip from the metal tankard and licked the foam from his lips.
“How many are still around?”
He shrugged. “Not a lot. Most of them are still living up in that castle in Norgari like they did during the days of the League. They call it The Chamber. I wouldn’t imagine there’re more than a hundred of ’em up there. In this city, maybe a dozen. They tend to hang out at an old teahouse off the piazza. The Crooked Tooth.”
I’d never heard of it. The piazza was the kind of a tourist trap I tried to avoid.
“You sound fairly well informed. Does that mean the cops keep tabs on the Vampire community?”
Richie looked at me out of one bloodshot eye. He knew he had to think twice before letting anything loose around my ears. He’d spoken too freely more than once and it always came back to bite both of us.
“Fetch, there’s been no reason to worry about the Blood Race in decades. They’re old. They’re harmless.”
I made a grunt of non-commitment and Richie took a sip of his drink.
“How do they die?”
Richie stopped mid gulp and put down his pint.
“In pain,” he growled. “They’re hollow shells. Vessels that can’t be filled. They dry out like old fruit and crumble into dust. In the old days, the sun would do it to them in seconds. Now it takes a few years, if they’re lucky.”
“So, they’re mortal. Do they still need a stake through the heart or could they just fall over, hit their head, and kick it like the rest of us?”
Richie chewed his lip. These conversations never got any easier. Everybody felt bad about the Coda. It even broke Richie’s bowling-ball of a heart.
“They’re less than mortal,” he said. “I don’t know what it is that keeps them going but it’s running out. One day soon, a breeze’ll blow them all away and we’ll never see their kind again.”
With that, he finished his drink, slid out of the booth and left me with the bill. He didn’t say goodbye. He must have known he’d be seeing me again real soon.
Sunder City began as a working-class town full of blacksmiths, miners and metal-workers. It wasn’t all honest work but it was the kind of thing I understood: digging ground or moving shit around. That sort of gig made sense to me.
The piazza, on the other hand, fostered the kind of hustle that made my skin crawl.
Fast-talking hosts that got up in your face trying to drag you into overpriced restaurants. Finely dressed crooks with fake accents selling tours to nowhere. Street performers who made most of their money serving as a distraction for the pickpockets.
Torches were lit around the little square to keep business turning over after nightfall. I passed through the fading crowd, my hands deep in my pockets, moving with purpose.
A couple of Kobolds watched me from the shadows. They weren’t from this part of the continent. Kobolds have a kind of chameleon skin that changes, depending on their environment. City Kobolds are gray and hairless, but this pair were rock-pool blue with thick manes of fur around their necks: recent arrivals from the wild far north. Two more lost souls hoping to hack off a piece of Sunder for themselves. I flashed them my brass knuckles and gave them a stare I wouldn’t be able to back up. It seemed to do the job. They turned their yellow eyes back to the darkness and I slipped into a side street.