Dead Boys (10 page)

Jacob envied her leisurely pace, as his company only got clumsier the more excited they became, and gained no speed by rushing. Jostling one another, they slammed their shoulders against the slick walls, and banged their heads off the slumping ceilings. With every awkward step they were dogged by the steady slapping of the river-mud, the rough orders of the Leather Masker, and the clattering of bones and boot-heels. It was enough to curdle Jacob’s marrow, but his dread only trebled when the lopsided runner led them to a moldy plaster wall at the end of an alley, where she stopped short.

“It’s a dead end, you dizzy slut!” cried Leopold. “Give me back my jacket!”

“It’s a push,” said the runner, shoving the wall down with her hands. By means of rusted pulleys hidden above, the wall came down like a drawbridge, revealing a great concrete ring through which a dim sepia light spilled onto the floor.

“My thanks, dear woman,” said Jacob, bending as he climbed into the tube. “Would you pull the trap-door shut behind us?”

“No use,” said the runner, “the bonehead’s already here.”

Chancing a look over his shoulder, Jacob saw the debtor standing at the end of the alley, holding a dripping fistful of clay. Launching himself up the tube, Jacob clasped the Living Man close to his chest and whispered, “If you can hear me, little Orpheus, pray.”

The concrete tube they ascended was an industrial smokestack rising sideways through the city’s substrata. Like bubbles from the neck of a champagne bottle, the company burst from its open end into daylight.

“Trapped like rats!” cried Leopold, for they had emerged at the bottom of Southheap, hemmed in on one side by a sheer wall of corroded metal, on the other by the River Lethe.

“They’re climbing up the smokestack!” said Jacob.

Remington tottered out toward the dark water at the end of the rubble, where a bathtub floated swiftly by. “Gee, the current’s strong here,” he said.

“Would that it were strong enough to carry us to oblivion,” said Leopold. “I’d plunge in happily, just to deny them the satisfaction of giving us over to the Mortar and Pestle. They’ll grind us down, Jacob!”

“For
what
?” shouted Jacob, clenching his leather-lined fists hard enough to hear them squeak. “What have you done, Leopold?”

“All I wanted was time,” murmured Leopold, edging closer to the surface of the river. “Just a little more time, enough to plan my—”

“Hey, wait,” said Remington, calling Adam and Eve to his side. The three of them, through Remington’s eyes, watched the bloated shape of a naked corpse sailing past on the current. “We’re not trapped: we can float!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Jacob, looking balefully at the smokestack, which emitted laughter in lieu of smoke. “You’re fresh enough that you’re still full of gas, but Leo and I deflated years ago. You’d bob like a cork, but the weight of our preservative treatments alone would drag us to the bottom, where we’d lie waterlogged for eternity. If only we had wooden body-molds, like Shanthi!”

“An excellent point,” said Leopold, snapping irritably out of his funk. “Had your prices not been so exorbitant, I’d be floating to safety as we speak.”

“Really, you can shift the blame to me at a time like this? You’re the author of this travesty, L’Eclair!”

But Leopold broke off the argument, pointing at the water’s edge. “Jacob, look! Your idiot boy’s a savant!”

While they were bickering, Remington’s companions had stepped arm-in-arm into the current, where they slowly reclined so that he could hold fast to their ankles. Once afloat, each bent one knee, which Remington linked together, so that their conjoined bodies, buoyant with the bloat of decomposition, formed a small but serviceable human raft. Shrieking like children at a carnival, Jacob and Leopold splashed into the river and clambered aboard.

As Remington kicked off Southheap’s edge, the Masker and his retinue spilled from the smokestack, staggering to the end of the rubble as the company spun off on the current. There was no time for Jacob to bid his city goodbye. The last thing he saw was the Masker striding past the edge of the rubble, where he planted both boots in the river, paying no mind to the water that tugged insistently at his robe. His eyeless stare, the cracks in his mask, the single finger unfurling from his gloved fist, the laughter that rose from his skull-faced debtors when he spoke in a voice like gravel in a meat grinder, his words incomprehensible to the company: these were the things that haunted Jacob long after the raft had left the city’s mangled skyline behind.

II

CHAPTER SIX

On Lethe

T
he River Lethe narrowed as it outran city limits, passing swiftly between the rising walls of the Lethean Valley, offering the company’s fleshy raft no place to rest. While Jacob and Leopold clung to the headless corpses, bickering fearfully as they picked up speed, Remington lay face-down behind them, his hands clasped around Adam and Eve’s ankles. He was immersed in a calm analysis of the river, though the only conclusion he had reached so far was that it was deep and murky. Lethe swirled through his head, stirring hundreds of questions that came and went without any hope of finding answers: its color was a mystery, as were its cargo, purpose, and connection to the world of the living, to say nothing of its rumored droughts and floods, or its points of origin or ending; and yet, to Remington, the greatest mystery was what the river would taste like if the tongue he thrust into it were operational.

Grape jelly? he wondered. Red wine? Ketchup?

Maybe the Living Man will know, thought Remington, setting his mind on waking him. Pulling his head above the water-line, he called out to the others, “Make room!”

“You’re doing a fine job as our rudder,” snapped Leopold. “Don’t spoil it now.”

Remington moved his hands from the headless’ ankles to their calves, causing the raft to rock.

“Really, Remington, these two aren’t structurally sound,” said Jacob. “You’ll have to stay where you are.”

“No fair,” said Remington, ignoring the increasing velocity of their spin. “How come you two get to ride the whole time?” As the valley whirled around them, he slapped a hand on Eve’s thigh, pulling himself out of the water. “Stay down, boy!” snarled Leopold, aiming a savage kick at his chin. Teeth clashing, Remington flew backwards, snatching Eve’s ankle as he plunged beneath the surface. The current caught his body and twisted it like a loosely-held oar, turning the raft’s spin into a sudden somersault.

In an instant, the entire company was submerged. The river wrenched Remington free from his fellows, flinging him about in the bubbly murk with astonishing force. Down he plunged, then up he came, buoyed briefly into the air before smacking against the river’s surface. As he thrashed upright, he let out a cry: his friends were nowhere to be seen.

That’s horrible! he thought. They’ll be so sad, stuck in the mud, waving around like little weeds—except for the head.

Just as he began to wonder if the headless had deflated, Eve surfaced, her arms wrapped around Leopold, who would otherwise have sunk like a stone.

Adam popped up a moment later, with Jacob clinging to his legs, howling, “The head, Remy! I’ve lost hold of the Living Man’s head! Dive, boy, dive!”

Remington did his best to oblige, tilting his torso into the river and flailing his arms and legs, but due to his natural buoyancy, his legs were still scissoring in the air when the plaque rose to the river’s surface, carrying the Living Man’s head on its underside.

“Look, the river washed off his makeup!” said Remington, tossing the head to Jacob before linking his elbows and knees with those of the headless to become the raft’s middle plank. He was facing skyward this time, and as the waters of Lethe filled his empty skull, he started to feel a little funny—not intoxicated, but profoundly, almost passionately awake—and began to question the monotony of the hazy sky.

“We ought to chastise him for dunking us, I know,” said Jacob to Leopold as they climbed aboard, “but it’s nearly impossible to stay angry at the little bugger, wouldn’t you say, Leopold?

“Leopold? Are you all right?”

But Leopold didn’t answer. He was perched atop Eve’s ribs in a fetal crouch, his face buried in his folded arms as if he were about to weep.

“I know how you feel,” said Jacob. “I thought we were done for. As soon as the water closed around me, all this leather started to pull me down to the bottom, and it was only by chance that I caught on to this fellow, who, as luck would have it, was headed in the opposite direction. Even then, it was a battle between my ballast and his gas!”

Leopold made no sign that he’d heard, and Jacob noticed that the scarf holding his head erect had slipped from its broomstick and was dangling amidst his dripping hair.

“It’s all right now, we’re floating freely. Look, there’s some riverbank up ahead! Perhaps we’ll stop for a moment.”

Leopold muttered something into his knees.

“Come again?” said Jacob.

“I said, ‘You were right.’ It’s not a phrase you’re likely to hear again, so savor the moment.”

Grasping the crimson scarf from behind, Leopold hoisted his head aloft. The last clumps of painted river clay fell away from his cheeks, plopping onto Eve’s belly. Denuded of cosmetics, his face was like an acid-eaten cheesecloth.

“You told me not to put all of my eggs into one basket, didn’t you? ‘Treat yourself to a full-body treatment,’ you said, but I treated you like an opportunistic salesman, and now I’ve paid the price. Well, go ahead and laugh: laugh through all of that fine, waterproof leather! Don’t worry, these withered ears can still hear the echoes, even if I emulate your disembodied friend and squeeze my eyes shut, so as not to catch sight of my reflection on this rancid river’s surface.”

Slowly, with his head lolling freely on the shattered pivot of his neck, Leopold began to peel off layer after layer of clothing, littering the river behind them with frills and ribbons, until nothing remained but a long-sleeved black undershirt, a pair of purple corduroy trousers, and his boots. Carefully, as if approaching a strange dog, Jacob extended his hand toward Leopold’s neck and looped the scarf over the broomstick.

“If you didn’t give him a regular treatment, what did you do?” said Remington from below, startling both men, who had grown accustomed to riding a raft that didn’t speak.

Jacob looked uncertainly at Leopold.

“Oh, out with it,” Leopold said. “We’ll leave the legend of l’Eclair back in the city.”

“As you wish,” said Jacob, rubbing his palms together.

“I first met Leopold in the months before Shanthi’s arrival, when I was still tied to my studio and could only rely on word-of-mouth for business. Word was spreading, slowly but surely, as the success of my first full-body casting prompted a savage rivalry between myself and John Tanner, who was, believe it or not, my toughest competition. As my star rose, he lost his hold on the richest corpses in Dead City, notably that notorious pervert known as the Plucker, whose appetites kept me busy renovating the fresh young ladies his minions found on the riverside.

“Weeks earlier, Tanner stood outside my window backed by two rejects from the Plains of War and threatened to bury me in quicklime if I didn’t agree to become his partner. So, when I caught sight of his massive head floating up my street like a piebald parade balloon, I shut the window and prepared to ignore whatever vitriol he might utter.

“Ultimately, I found it impossible to ignore his roaring apology, followed by a declamation that he needed, nay, begged for my help in a matter that was quite beyond his skills. The last part intrigued me, and against my better judgment I let my rival inside.

“‘Now, Jacob, you know it was only a little ribbing,’ he said, ‘fraternal in nature, a sort of initiation ceremony or brotherly encouragement, quite similar to tough love. I meant no harm, and I certainly wouldn’t know where to find enough lime to eat up more than a few of your toes! We’re builders-up, after all, not breakers-down. Let’s put the past where it belongs, let us amend, for I really and truly need you today.

“‘It’s this ghastly boy the whole city is talking about, the kick-stool who won seventeen years on a single throw!’

“Sequestered in my quarters, I’d missed out on the gossip, and Tanner was delighted to fill me in. ‘Some sullen, teenaged madman,’ he said, ‘his neck still warm from the friction of his belt (you can count the notches!), walked into Caesar’s yesterday and staked his lifespan on a single throw. Well, wouldn’t you know the lucky little dangler won and took his credit-pebbles to the District, where someone was kind enough to refer him to me.

“‘I was thrilled to see him, and with seventeen years lining his pockets, why wouldn’t I be? I offered him a top-of-the-line Tanner tanning, thinking that I’d suggest some additional enhancements once his skin was off, since, as you know, the indignity has a way of loosening their wallets, but the awful child said no! “There’s only one thing I’m interested in preserving,” he said, and then he showed me what he meant, and I realized I’d have to turn away business for the first time in a decade.