Chapter 2
We found our way out onto Abyssal Street.
Zin found her voice first. “What the fuck was that?”
“The most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, but what was it? I mean, I’m not really familiar with how Guardians operate, but I kind of thought the law still applied.”
“Are there laws restricting the Guardians? ”
“Well of course there are. Be serious. This is not okay. We can’t have the police running wild in the city killing who they want, even if we knew how they were doing it, which we don’t.”
We eventually found our way to Fournic’s, the disreputable but very convenient drinking establishment under our apartment. We still had a little time before we needed to be home.
Fournic’s wasn’t exactly dirty, but neither would I eat anything from their kitchen. Its usual clientele was not always the polite sort; fights were a rare occurrence but I wouldn’t have wanted to be a woman there alone. Most of the Humans there seemed like low-income working folks; the local Skioti also preferred Fournic’s as a regular meeting place.
Our friend Gustam was there before us. He was with a woman I didn’t recognize, but this was more common than not; he didn’t see any woman for terribly long, or usually for more than one evening. As he had explained, his relationships all suffered from a mutual lack of interest.
He looked happy to have some company. “What do you know, it’s Anton and Zinnia. You two look horrible,” he said, by way of hello.
Zin groaned. I said, “We saw someone get killed tonight in a back alley.”
Gustam’s eyes widened. “What the? How’d it happen?”
Zin jumped in. “Fucking Guardians cornered some street performer and just shot ‘em dead.”
“No explanation?” asked Gustam.
“None at all,” she said. “It was summary execution. The guy hadn’t been doing anything except making pretty colored lights. And the really weird part was how it killed him: it seemed to just rip his heart out, without even leaving any blood.”
Gustam’s eyes got even wider. “Um, what? How is that even possible?”
“No idea,” I said. “None of it makes any sense.”
“He must have been dangerous.” That was Gustam’s date. The three of us swiveled to look at her. She was an attractive, petite woman, probably over thirty, not remarkable in any way, but she looked friendly.
“Um, maybe,” said Gustam. “By the way, guys, this is Mariçal. She works down at the Beetle Hollow Guardian’s Office,” he said, with a warning in his eyes.
I decided to ignore that warning. “Yeah, I suppose he must have been dangerous. So what’s it like working for the cops?” I asked Mariçal.
“Well, really, I just work a desk, record-keeping and that kind of stuff.”
Gustam was tapping his fingers on the table. Still ignoring him, I decided to push harder. “Don’t you think the Guardians are a little bit heavy-handed?”
She shook her head. “Honestly, I wish we had more officers down here. A lot of times I don’t feel safe on the streets. I mean, look at all the bugs in here tonight.” She indicated a group of Skioti across the bar. “That’s got to be a security risk if anything is.”
I imagine at this point poor Mariçal could feel the temperature drop. But maybe not. Her type can be remarkably oblivious when they step in it.
I furrowed my brow and acted puzzled. “Bugs?”
Mariçal looked confused. “Yeah… bugs…” and gestured toward the Skioti again.
“Oh!” I said. “You mean Skioti! ‘Bugs’… clever! Insulting and incorrect at the same time! Brilliant!”
“Um, well…” she stammered.
I looked over at the crowd of Skioti. “Hey, there’s Iskitik. I’ll be right back.” Gustam had his head in his hands. I got up and hurried over to the Skioti. There were ten or so of the mantis-like people mingling among themselves.
Skioti aren’t actually mantises at all; in fact they’re from an entirely different branch of the phylum Arthropoda — you know, things like insects and lobsters, and so on. They’re more erect than mantises, with a purple overtone to their exoskeleton. They also have three-fingered grippers for hands, and two additional smaller gripping appendages descending from their mouth region.
I picked a Skioti at random and said, “Hi there, I’m Anton, how are you?”
The Skioti looked at me for a second, then answered, “Can I help you?”
“Just pretend we’re talking for a minute.”
“Oh, is that it, are we cool now?” His friends responded in that high oscillating buzz that passed for Skioti laughter. I turned away, red-faced.
As embarrassing as that was, it had its intended effect. When I got back to the table, Mariçal was gone. Gustam was sipping his beer, looking dejected. “Hey, thanks, Anton, now I look like an asshole.”
Zin laughed. “To some girl you’ll never see again.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry, Gus, you’ll find the right one. Hey, An,” — meaning me — “we need to get home. The sitter will be waiting for us.”
“Do you mind if I talk to Gustam for a few minutes? If you go up to the apartment, I’ll be there in a little while.”
Zin looked at me dubiously. “Okayyyy… just please only be a short while. I want to go to bed soon.” I kissed her and she left.
Gustam was an artist. Not a very successful one; he made most of his money doing fairly ordinary commercial work, but he still tried to pursue the independent life of a painter. I thought he was pretty good; Zin and I had a striking abstract watercolor of his in our apartment. That night I wanted to propose a not-entirely-honest scheme to sell some of his unsold art uptown. He wasn’t having any of it, but we got to talking about other things, and time kind of got away from me.
When I slipped in the apartment door several drinks and nearly two hours later, Zin was curled up on the couch asleep. I woke her up. She looked at me bleary-eyed and said, “Dammit, An…”
“I’m sorry —“
“Fuck it. I’m going to bed,” she declared, stomping off to the bedroom.
I slunk after her.
The next morning Zin was up and out of the apartment before I’d even opened an eye. She worked as a legal aide to a local relief agency there in Beetle Hollow. I did eventually have to get up, though. I had plans.
I suppose that I should introduce myself. My name is Anton Dinzeni, and I am… well, I don’t know what I am anymore. I was one of a million small-time grifters in the city of Sarcanth, or as I would have termed it, an “independent operator”.
Picture me then: late twenties, tall, dirt poor but dead handsome, loud, quick to laugh, not really taking much very seriously. My job was staying free.
So that day I traveled up to Upper Stekson district. From Chethurst I rode uptown to Orgent Station and walked the remaining mile to the Stekson Market. The Market was four city blocks of everything a scrounger like me could ever want. It was located in what was said to be the ancient remains of an arena, gone for a millennium or more. The ruins had long been cleared away, but one remnant of the old city still remained: the same old light columns as in Mardenol Square in a huge ring around the outer reaches of the Market. Here they were used as lamp posts and notice boards.
Spreading like lichen across this expanse was the most diverse collection of vendors you could hope to find in Sarcanth. None were more numerous than the lowly junk dealers, my personal favorites. If I was looking for something more upscale, I might try one several dozen antiques shops. Other places I might be found were in the book stalls, second-hand clothing shops, and Drog’s, the most marvelous cheesemonger I could actually afford. Finally, you might have found me in any number of fine drinking establishments the Market boasted.
As usual at the Stekson Market, I was looking for anything interesting I might be able to buy low and then sell at a profit in some more fashionable neighborhood. I had already picked up a very pretty stained glass glow bug lamp for next to nothing that I was sure I could pass off as a valuable antique to the ladies uptown.
After the junk shops I ended up at a book store. It’s hard to run the antique scam with books, because you can’t fool an antique book buyer; they’re generally experts. Instead, I would wait for a junior employee who knows nothing about books to be minding the store. Then I would switch price tags between a cheap and a valuable book. You get the idea.
A woman came up next to me while I was looking through a crate full of books. I didn’t think anything of her at first. But when I realized she was looking at the books I was sorting through, I stopped to take a look at her. She was middle-aged, skinny but not emaciated. Her clothes were slightly ragged, and her greying hair unkempt. Probably not homeless, but not completely alright.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“What? Oh yes, yes. Is that Fendrak’s Compendium of Venomous Plants you’re holding there?”
Sure enough it was. “Yeah — you want it?”
She didn’t respond, but grabbed the book out of my hands. Okay fine.
“Boy! Boy!” she shouted to the bookseller, who looked at least ten years older than her. I was still watching; this lady was strange.
“Sure grandma, whaddya need?”
She waved the book in the man’s face. “What are you charging for this book?”
“Two hundred crowns.” Wow. That must have been some rare book. To my surprise our friend whipped out two hundreds on the spot, bought the book. My mind raced with the scams I might run on someone with that kind of cash.
So I followed her home. She led me down a street of old row houses to a lone detached house. It was, well, strange. For one thing, it was built of stone; nothing’s been built of stone in the city in centuries, since the rockrot. This house must have been built in the last twenty years. And it had a tower. A big one, looked six stories tall, attached to a two-story house. It was weird, but it did make me wonder if there were a lot of valuables in that house.
I crossed the street to get a closer look. I got the name and address from the mailbox: Jeks, 19652 Thistle Street. By that time, however, it was getting late. I resolved to come back the next day and do some more research. For the time being it was back to Beetle Hollow.
Beetle Hollow was the lowest point, physically and metaphorically, of Sarcanth. The Hollow swarmed with desperate people, fitting for a place named after the teeming insects living below and sometimes among them. The Beetle Hollow Beetle, properly called the Purple Ground Beetle or carobus terram violaceus, survived underground by hunting — in packs — the rodents that were foolish enough to wander into the district. So there’s that: we had no rats in the Hollow. On the other hand, during quakes, which were fairly common in the city, the bugs would swarm to the surface in a panic, creating a purple flood in the streets and around meat vendors. Long-term residents took it in stride; newcomers and visitors, unless they were entomologists, were usually horrified.
All kinds of person, except the beautiful people of the upper districts, were represented in Beetle Hollow. A degenerate aging aesthete would rub shoulders with ex-convicts fresh out of Racken Prison. An inscrutable insectile Skioti, of the professional class but too little trusted to live uptown, might live next to a newly impoverished widow made to move downtown when the money ran out. A legless man, cast out of the upper class for his deformity, played Dukket in Mardenol Square with the daughter of a prostitute. I found something beautiful in all those crazy people mixed together.
But ultimately what was most appealing about the Hollow, a stinking mass of poverty, crime, and hopelessness? In a word, freedom. There was only one District in the city where you could walk without papers. There was only one district where Humans, Skioti, and Enjuri all lived together. There was only one district where a person could go without fear of judgment, and that was Beetle Hollow.
By the time I got to my building, I was thirsty, so I stopped in at Fournic’s. No sign of Gustam, so I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and then another. When I finished and headed upstairs, I was really very late.
Zin was sitting on the edge of the couch, tense, watching Raz play. “I put the rest of dinner in the fridge,” she said.
Shit. “Oh damn, it was my turn tonight wasn’t it? I’m sorry I’m so late.”
“Yeah, whatever, how’s Gus?
“Didn’t see him — how’d you even know I was down there?“
She sighed. “I’m the world’s greatest detective. I mean, what the fuck. After last night you think it’s a good idea to get a drink on the way home?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were so mad about last night…”
“Really. You hoped I wasn’t —“
She looked at Raz, who had stopped playing and was looking at us. “Damn,” she said, and put her head in her hands.
Twenty minutes later, after we’d put Raz to bed, she started again, quietly and calmly. “An, half of the time you’re apologizing to me for not paying attention to me the other half of the time. I hate it.”
“Oh c’mon,” I said. “I was paying attention to you last night at the festival —“
“Which comes once a year, An. I think I deserve better than once a year.”
And so it went. A couple of hours later we went to bed; Zin wasn’t happy with me, and I felt alternately pissed and ashamed. Sleep was a long time coming.
…
I wake to the sound of screaming
Oh shit, Raz — No, it’s not Raz
Zin’s sitting up in bed, staring at her hand, whimpering
I can’t see, what is it?
She turns, holds up her hand
My eyes don’t understand what they’re seeing
Then they do, and I recoil
The first finger of her left hand is one joint too short
The tip is gone, not cut off, but
Forgotten
Like a transcription error between one frame of reality and the next
As if it were never there
The finger, not healed,
But as if it has always been this way
Zin says, “Where is it?”
I don’t know
Zin repeats, “Where is it?”
I don’t know
Raz is in the doorway crying
I go to him, gather him up, bring him to his mom
She hugs him without seeing — she can only see her finger
I take Zin’s left hand, hold it between my own two hands
I tell her as if I believe it, “You will be okay”
She asks, “What’s happening to me?”
I don’t know
And she screams