“Jealous?”
“Yeah,” I said blankly, “of my nose.”
Luckily, she’d kicked me round too many times to still get any satisfaction from it. Instead, she spat into the corner of the alley and headed back inside, calling to Richie. “Kites, come take inventory.”
Richie put a hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll check the dental records tomorrow. I’ll let you know when we have a match.”
“Thanks, Rich.”
“Now get out of here.”
I thought about arguing but it wasn’t worth the effort. There wasn’t any reason to hang around. Either my guy was a pile of dust in that room or he wasn’t. I just had to wait and find out. There was cash in my pockets and booze in my veins, so I decided to make my way home.
Goblins took a few decades to embrace Sunder City, but once they arrived, they made it their own. Goblin technology mixed Human equipment with magic to create new, often dangerous, inventions.
Their greatest addition was the Sunder streetcar that once ran the length of the city ninety-six times a day. The Coda put the shuttle out of commission, but like a lot of residents, it adapted to a new occupation. Every night after sundown, parked in the middle of Main Street, the streetcar transformed itself into the distribution window for the Beggar’s Bread. The magical engines were refitted with Human-made motors. Not enough to push it up the hill, but enough to get a bit of heat. A metal plate placed over the top of the engine became a giant frying pan, on which the scraps of Sunder City were fashioned into food for the homeless. Some barely filtered river water, grass-flour and collected restaurant off-cuts were thrown into a barrel and anyone with an empty belly could ladle a piece on to the pan and get themselves some grub. Had I done it? More than once, and it wasn’t the worst meal I’d eaten by a long shot.
Running the show were the Brothers Hum, a religious sect of winged monks. Historically, the Brothers had never believed the Elven story of the great river being the source of all life and all magic.
The Brothers Hum had preached that the world was sung into creation by the voice of the moon. It was a complicated and attractive belief system, save for one small problem. It was wrong. We know that now. The Coda was proof that even if the Elves and their scriptures weren’t right about everything, they were certainly closer than everyone else.
I suppose it’s nice to know which creation myth is the right one, but what a price to pay for certainty. The one true legend is dead and belief in any other idea seems foolish. Faith has left us. The gods are gone. Yet, the Brothers Hum remain.
They started serving from the streetcar a few weeks after the world went dark. Rather than give up their calling, they redoubled their efforts and devoted their lives to assisting the city’s most needy.
In my short and sorry life, I’ve seen many people hide a desire for terrible deeds beneath an apparent higher calling. It’s not hard to find a belief system that will support your own selfish needs. The big surprise for me was discovering that it works the other way too. These broken-winged brothers, even without their story, just have naturally decent hearts.
“Not dining tonight, Brother Phillips?” asked Benjamin, a tall monk with a shaggy blond bowl-cut.
“No, thank you. Actually…” I fumbled in my coat pocket for some coins and dropped them into his shaking hands. “For the nights I have.”
He nodded, taking my charity with good grace. I kept my head down and walked away as fast as I could. I always found it more embarrassing to give assistance than to take it.
The night was warm but the breeze was cool and I was happy to step back inside my building. The booze was leaving my body and old aches and pains came in to fill the space. Questions came too: little niggling things that kissed the back of my neck with poison lips.
What good do I think I’m doing?
I’d probably found my guy already: a sprinkling of sand on a cold, concrete floor. Hooray for Fetch Phillips, collector of crumbs, let’s sing his praises through all Sunder City.
I climbed the stairs, pulled my bed down from the wall and longed for the days when three dead bodies would have troubled my sleep.
The first mark was made by my father…
Not my real father. He died along with my mother in the first home I ever had; a village called Eran, tucked into the woody hills south-east of Sunder.
I was under our house, in the space where the neighbor’s dog had gone when it got sick. We thought she was missing till Mother noticed the smell. There were a couple of broken boards and, if you were small like I was, it wasn’t hard to climb inside.
The killer came right past me, panting and dripping with blood. I could smell some kind of meat, like in the ice box after Father brought something back from the butcher.
Either I passed out or my mind stopped making memories to save my sanity. When the soldiers found me, I knew I was the only one left. I didn’t talk when they asked me questions and I didn’t complain when they stripped me and washed me and dressed me in clean, oversized clothes. I didn’t look for the parents I knew were gone and I didn’t resist when they sat me in the carriage and took me away.
I slept all the way to the city of Weatherly and they probably thought my brain was toast. I didn’t cry and I didn’t leave the safety of the blanket or even open a window. I regretted that later, after being stuck inside the walls. For years, all I would dream about was the chance to see something outside that damned city.
When I finally opened my eyes, it was too late. We were inside, and I was lifted from the carriage into a large stone room where a young man in a gray uniform was waiting. He was Patrolman Graham Kane – my new father.
Graham had a kind but troubled face, like he was always trying to remember where he’d left his keys. He seemed huge at the time, but he must have been barely a man when he knelt down, put his arms around my shaking body and told me I was safe.
I never asked him, or anyone else, why he was chosen to take me in. It could be because he was capable and loyal and towed the line of the city laws without question. Maybe they hoped he was warm and caring enough to make me forget the life I’d left behind. Honestly, I think it was just because he opened the door.
He had plenty of weight on him but he carried it well, even as he got older. He had workman’s hands, and around his left forearm there was the tattooed black band of the Weatherly patrol. For as long as I knew him, he wore the same pair of square glasses, even though they needed to be shoved back up his nose every two minutes.
He was thoughtful, and never spoke till he was sure of what he wanted to say. Then he would say it once, determined never to be interrupted, and nod, once, to signify that he was done. I called him “Dad” after only a week. After a month, it almost felt normal.
I loved him. I did, despite how things turned out. Though, as I got older, I couldn’t quite relax when he was around. He’d taken me in and treated me like I was his own but I wasn’t his own. More and more, I felt like I was in the home of some generous man who was doing me a favor and I needed to do something to pay him back but I could never work out what it was.
His wife Sally, who became my mother, was the ideal woman on paper (if the paper was written by a committee of boring politicians). Cheerful, manicured and obedient. Weatherly had many laws and a strict moral code, so Mrs Sally Kane followed those rules as if her life depended on it. She was loving and supportive and never complained about anything I did, but if I ever tried to scratch her surface, I couldn’t find anything underneath. At a certain point in my youth, I stopped asking her advice or her thoughts because I could always guess the answer. She never seemed to struggle. She never contradicted herself. It was as if she wasn’t really there.