Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens (2 page)

When the moment finally arrived for the
scamp’s judgment, the threshold to the Node was so packed with
onlookers that the sunkeepers had to climb the pipework just to
escape the eager stampede. The whole Chimes Way rocked beneath
their thundering passage, setting the overhead chains to jangling
madly, while Fen and his family rode the tidal crest of hapless
poor right into the Node’s open plaza. And as soon as they could,
they grabbed a spot on a bench…a real bench, as others packed in so
tightly around them it became hard to breathe. Every square inch of
the Node’s chamber was crammed full in no time at all, transforming
it into a cesspool of bodies. When room below failed, some even
dared the train trestle some twelve meters overhead, where a break
in the foundations made the Skylight possible.

Everywhere there were people, with but one
exception, a telling circle beneath the Sentinel Tree’s pale
up-reaching canopy. That’s where Fen had locked his eyes in
anticipation, and that’s when he’d first felt it…real light. After
having wound its way down through three hundred meters of upward
urban sprawl, a fleeting trickle of sun splashed against his face.
The heat and the light brought with it memories of an easier time,
of when his family had a real home, and of a special place on tier
two where Fen used to sneak off and talk with his only friend at
the time.

See, the second tier was almost as dark as
the Warrens but there was a place hidden behind the Tunk’s tenement
where Fen could wiggle through some piping onto a ledge. There was
a clearing punching straight up to the sky there, and every once
and a while Fen’s
friend
, the sun, would come peeping on
down. After, Fen would run back to their two room apartment and
tell his mom all about it. She’d smile and nod and comment, “oh
really, that’s fantastic!” and then give him a big hug and shoo him
away. There was a lot of happiness in those memories, and standing
in the Pinprick’s wash had been like being back there wrapped in
his mother’s embrace.

At eight Fen knew he was too old to be
crying, but tears sprang to his eyes almost instantly anyway, and
from there on out he had to watch the proceedings through blurry
vision. He felt a little better about it when he saw his sister
crying too, and at that time she was twelve.

What they watched together were two dangermen
leading the precession, with a host of bruisers behind them and the
scamp shuffling in their midst. Despite being chained, and held,
and facing the clippers, that young Hierarch, with his unassuming
expression, seemed brave enough. Though later Fen would come to
realize it was probably more defiance than bravery on the
condemned’s
part. The only eventual break in the scamp’s
stoic disposition came when he hollered something out to the
crowds, though no one could hear him over the tide of excited
murmuring and a bruiser’s fist quickly silenced his outburst.

Soon enough the cutters came out, and after
that screaming, then two more thumbs hanging from the only tree in
the Pinprick. And as for the man stupid enough to try and scam the
Boss and his bartermen, once they carted him off (with blood
flowing freely from those fresh nubs), no one ever saw him again.
Yet, from time to time, Fen thought about this scamp, if for no
other reason than that he’d brought down the sun for a few brief
moments.

Years later, as Fen Tunk pounded the filthy pavement
with a stolen sack slung over his shoulder, gutter water spraying
behind his heels and the whistlers shouting and blowing down the
tunnel after him, he wondered if he might lose his thumbs like that
scamp all those years back. Though Fen wanted to believe the old
trudger he’d pilfered from wasn’t all that important, events
afterwards seemed to suggest otherwise.

But then that young man looked like every
other scrounger in the byways. Nothing stood out. Just another
crawler winding through the nooks and crannies in search of
something to pawn, so Fen made his move. If anything, it was the
trudger’s fault. He’d practically given over the ruck when he’d set
it aside to piss down a drain, and in true fortune’s-fashion Fen
was all but invisible in the heavy gloom. Wearing his piece-work
crawler-hide, all greasy black as it were, kept him but a shade
lighter than oblivion, and with his hood pulled up tight he was
near a spitting representation of the Ol’ Crowscloak.

The trudger never saw him coming. Fen felt
like he could have danced the Candaran
sputtle
right there
in front of him and still been as stealthy as the hero him and his
mate Eddy used to play back before hair came sprouting from ‘neath
their pits.
Grab and dash
had been a simple matter under
that setup, and he might have gotten off scott-free had he not
mirthfully hooted upon flipping back the top to see all those
Ludwigs staring up at him. His eyes damn-near popped out his skull
when he held up the first fat stack of banded Iron notes, and there
were dozens more where that came from. It was right around then
that the whistlers came barreling out of nowhere to give chase.

The whole predicament might have gotten Fen
to worrying, if he was the sort for that kind of thing, which he
wasn’t. And he might have dumped the sack in the midst of those
crowded byways and let the chaos throw off the whistlers, but then
a sack of cash was a sack of cash and a fortune beyond measure. His
only real concern was how he could trade out his loot for tokens.
Notes might have been the currency of the sky-levels, but down in
the Rat Warrens they were only good for trading out for tokens. And
so the whistles continued to blow shrilly behind him, promising
that somewhere not that far back down the crowded tunnel of Skidder
Row, a small unit of smartly dressed imperial constables were
pounding the pavement in pursuit.

Fen Tunk ducked and weaved a course through
the gloom towards escape, but when he spotted a pair of legs
stretched across the crowded causeway tunnel he couldn’t help but
alter course specifically to leap over them. Not a lick of adult
sensibilities meant a thing to a “rat pup” living in these crowded
slums, no matter the circumstances. Besides, he’d enough of a head
start, and the murky twilight of the Pinprick Slums made an ever
faithful companion, so why not a little fun.

“Stop”, and “halt”, and “give it up”,
followed, and when Fen landed on the other side it was with a
satisfying splash. Up went a torrent of brackish water, and the
three sleeping
dog-ears
who’d made an indent in the wall
their home, suddenly woke to a drenching cascade of filth. Nothing
could have been more satisfying than hearing the angry tirades and
hurled threats of Candaran immigrants. Their comically foreign
words meant nothing to someone who only spoke Dunshule, but the
sound of their anger made Fen break into laughter all the same. He
just continued to pound his way over the swamped pavement, while
the worn heels of his boots flopped and slapped loosely in the
putrid puddles.

More insults and threats were hurled his way
from those he sprayed, but when the whistlers came along seconds
later, shoving them aside, that shut them up. Others just scurried
helter-skelter out of the way, disappearing into the concrete nooks
and crannies of the titanic building overhead.

“Is that you, Sunshine,” a high and broken
voice squeaked out as Fen dashed past a side passage, and when he
turned his head midstride he found a mate of his mischief gang
scampering from the throngs to join him.

Fen groaned. Ratter was a bugger of a rat pup
who was about the size a four year old and had about the same sense
and demeanor. Fen wanted to deck the little tart for calling him
‘Sunshine’, but then seeing as how he didn’t have a moment to stop,
he let the irksome nickname slide. “Not now, Ratter,” he husked
breathless instead, though the kid still sidled on up next to
him.

Rattigan fought hard to keep pace with Fen’s
longer strides. “What you got there,” the lithe boy pressed as he
skipped and bound around some scroungers hauling bits of scrap
metal.

“A big ol’ bag of ‘shut the hell up’,” Fen
snarled out the side of his mouth, just before skidding to a stop
and hooking left into a narrow split in the foundation. He’d poked
down the Crawl in hopes the whistlers wouldn’t dare follow him into
the winding crush of hovels and structural supports. As quick as
up-level constables were to give chase, they were equally quick to
give up once it moved beyond the service causeways and utility
corridors they were comfortable patrolling. Barring that, this
little slice of heaven was a hard route for even a seasoned rat
pup, and when the whistlers kept coming, Fen felt his stomach fall
to his feet.

“Gypsum! Whatever you filched’s got the
whistlers all a squawking, Sunshine. If you don’t end up in the
cages come find me and the rest of the gang out on the Pipeyards
later. We’ll be palling around the Little Brothers, like usual;
till about three horns past the second Sister’s flush. You can tell
me all about what you’ve got in the pack then.”

“Yeah, yeah,” dismissed Fen through heaving
breaths, and just like that Ratter ducked off into a narrow
crawlway, leaving Fen to ditch the whistlers on his own. He’d have
been mad about the abandonment under different circumstances, but
with a sack full of money in tow, having that particular gang-mate
slip off was probably for the best.

The whistlers proved far more persistent than
Fen had ever seen, and he ducked down one narrow corridor after
another, shoving past throngs of woman and children, and when he
came to the crawlspaces he even had to climb over them. Soon enough
he was deep in it, and each twist and turn seemed to grow darker
then the last. The poor, crowded in this slum borough, didn’t even
have the luxury of building their own hovels so they just wiggled
and planted themselves into whatever space they could find, and
about all they had for light as a result were candles purchased
from lightbringers. With candles being a two-token each, seldom did
the Crawl have much in the way of illumination, but then Fen had
never known it
this
dark either. It was damn-near
abyssal.

Eventually the shriek of the constables’
whistles fell away, just about the time the world turned to
absolute darkness, leaving nothing but a humming in Fen’s ears and
his own erratic breathing to keep him company. As he shuffled on,
the walls grew tight, so tight he had to twist sideways, and just
like that, Fen entered into tunnels he’d never seen before. These
were tight circular shafts that even the Warren denizens seemed to
steer clear of, and for the first time since leaving his family’s
hovel in the Pillars, Fen found himself alone. The sound of it was
deafening.

Fen swallowed hard and lumbered forward,
slightly hunched beneath the ceiling’s endless curve, while a
creeping disquiet filled his legs with lead. There was almost no
light to be seen except the most fleeting circle ahead of him, and
that was only in the sense of a shade less black then the rest.

By the time the tunnel finally broke Fen’s
disquiet had turned to low-level dread and when he stepped out into
a corridor he stared around at his surroundings wide-eyed and
alert. He’d come to an access way of old brick all covered in
lichen and mold, and somewhere around the curve ahead a fire
flickered. Not a soul was in sight, and it was so quiet here he
could hear the water dripping from the ceiling, and his own heart
pounding in his chest. Fen had to remind himself to breathe when he
began to feel lightheaded. He hadn’t been lost in the Pinprick Slum
since he first started scrounging when he was six, but he had to
admit none of his current surroundings looked familiar.

Adjusting the pack over his shoulder, Fen
ventured towards the light while trying to reason it all out. The
Crawl was a labyrinth alright, but it was also surrounded by
thoroughfares. To the north was North Walk; to the west, the Drain
Line; south, the Chimes Way; and east, Skitter Row. To be in a
tunnel like this meant some sort of service corridor, but nothing
even close to it existed in the Crawl. Fen turned and looked back
from where he came, but it seemed he’d lost track of the tunnel
he’d come out of.

He turned to continue…

…But something appeared out of nowhere and
blocked his away.

With a startled yelp, Fen fell back, hitting
the ground on his rump before staring up in a panic. It was the
figure of a woman, not more than a meter away, and as thin as a
skeleton. This creature was wrapped in a dress of dusty white and
the brittle flesh of her legs and arms were covered in peculiar
tattoos. On her head hung a tangled gray mane of coarse hair,
beneath which hung a veil of black that completely covered the
face, leaving it a blank canvas to which one’s terrors could be
painted.

“
The Gutter Lady
,” Fen gasped aloud,
unable to stay silent. There was little doubt the immediate woman
blocking his path was the infamous witch rumored to prowl the
Pinprick. Eddy, the best of his gang mates, was often fond of
saying she moved like a ghost, appearing and disappearing in a
flash, but most disturbing of all, it was said she had no skin on
her face, just muscle and bone beneath a mask of glass. Staring up
into that gossamer veil, Fen almost thought he could see it all,
long teeth, slit nostrils, lidless eyes, and glistening red muscle.
Overcome with fear, he scrambled back through the grit and the mud
as the woman took a few steps in his direction.

The Gutter Lady’s feet didn’t seem to touch
the ground but instead appeared to float, and that made the snakes
of terror wriggling around Fen’s guts wriggle around all the more,
and between the mud and terror-sweats he couldn’t tell if his
bladder had let loose in his britches. He hadn’t much time to
contemplate it either before the specter lifted up a bony arm and
held out a dead rat dangling by the tail. Fen lost his ability to
reason, and as she dropped that corpse to the gutter, his vision
flushed to black and he bound up to his feet and ran.