The Umbral Wake Page 9

  “Scribble!” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Scribble.”

  Gary reached over and they shook hands, an exaggerated adult gesture that made Scribble smile and even blush a little. It was the first time anyone had treated him as an adult, as an equal.

  “My dad always used to say that you should shake hands with people you like,” Gary went on. “He said that when you do it you always want to make sure it’s a firm handshake. Not a dead fish, as he used to say.”

  Scribble listened patiently. Every boy had a story about their parents, aunts, uncles—people killed in the cataclysm or those who died shortly after. It almost made him glad he couldn’t talk; it relieved him from this obligation. People simply assumed that he was just another orphan, the scars on the back of his neck from the lab explosion that tore a hole in this city.

  “They shouldn’t have named you Scribble,” said Gary, pointing to the notepad. “They should have named you Art or something. Those look way better than scribbles.”

  He blushed again and looked down, glad Gary couldn’t see it in the dim light. Gary reminded Scribble of Gripper, from Lassimir, and that made him quite sad.

  He flipped a page and drew Gary a sketch. It was a photographic drawing of an alley door, the sort you might find behind a shop. Off to a corner, he inserted a second window, a close-up of the padlock there, its rusted hinge and code in fine detail. Scribble didn’t know what numbers were, but he had seen that particular shop owner enough times to know what symbols worked and what didn’t. He tore out the page and handed it to Gary. It only took a second for Gary to cover his mouth for fear of waking the other boys.

  “I know this place!” he whispered, biting on his knuckle. “That’s the code?”

  Scribble nodded and Gary’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be tricking me because I’m new and dumb would you? Because that would be mean.”

  Scribble shook his head and then drew a cross over his chest in the air.

  After a moment of admiring it, Gary shoved the paper into his pocket, and then paused. “Hey, I don’t want to bum your haul,” he said. “You got this one. I should go find my own if I wanna get out of here.”

  But Scribble shook his head, doing his best to convince Gary to take it. He had his own plan, one far less risky than breaking into a shop.

  All boys could come and go as they pleased, but if word got out that you had defected, you’d better hope one of your own gang never found out. The upper chamber wall was marked with names, keepsakes, and crudely drawn pictures of bounties—boys who had deserted Hetch’s Fetches. They shared the wall with ears, tongues, scalps, eyeballs—trophies.

  A taller kid, Emil stopped Scribble at the door and made a note on a dirty notepad. “We’ll look for you,” he said without looking up. “You know the rules.”

  Scribble did.

  The other boys would have picked through the curio shop throw-outs by now, which was fine with Scribble. He wasn’t planning on stealing anything. He was going to buy it.

  *

  Morning fog swirled around his feet as he walked up the back alley behind Felton’s Curio & Repair. He set the picture on the doorstep, anchoring it with a nearby brick. He then knocked, ran, and hid behind a crate. If the nice man answered there would be no problem, but the older one made Scribble uneasy.

  This time it was the nice man.

  He peeked out, looked both ways, and then at the ground. He bent over and took the page, staring at it as he walked through the door, closing it behind him.

  It had been a simple request, but Scribble still wasn’t sure if it would be honored, just a cog, something to trade for food, something that wouldn’t draw too much attention. After a minute of holding his breath, the door opened again and a handed extended, placing the cog on the ground. The door closed, and Scribble breathed at last.

  He snatched it up, scurrying back home.

  Hetch was there, sitting on his garbage throne and staring curiously at Scribble upon his return. Scavenged Holy Guard armor hung loosely from the boy king’s limbs, revealing between them scars and scabs. The cuts weren’t from fights, but from shaving. Rumor had it Hetch shaved everything but his head. If any of the other boys showed as much as a black hair on their chin, Hetch would be on them in an instant, beating, scratching, cutting. Scribble had seen him on top of a boy once screaming “Shave it clean!” brandishing a rusty blade and scraping at the boy’s face until it bled. Nobody really knew how old Hetch was, and nobody asked.

  It was impossible to return the cog to Hetch without smiling. Hetch looked at it with surprise, then at Scribble before tossing the cog into a box behind his throne and pointing to the well guarded food cache in the far room. “Take more than a handful and you’ll lose that hand.”

  Scribble nodded and nearly skipped over to the door where he felt a sudden pain as someone grabbed his hair. Struggling to keep his balance he rolled his eyes to see Emil looming over him.

  “How’d you get that by yourself?” he hissed. “You ain’t got no crew. Retards like you usually starve.”

  “Let him go, Emil!” Hetch yelled from the throne. “He paid his dues for the day. You should be so lucky.”

  “I was gonna do ten times better tonight,” said Emil, still gripping Scribble’s hair. “I just wanna know his secret.”

  “No one asks you your secrets,” said Hetch, adjusting the Holy Guard helmet on his head.

  Emil stood a moment without moving, then let go. Scribble ducked away and into the storeroom. He didn’t look back, didn’t want to see the stares; he only wanted food. The storeroom was lined from floor to ceiling with boxes, and he took a small wedge of cheese from one, showed it to the boy guarding the door, then went downstairs to his bunk.

  He thought of Gary and hoped he had his share of luck as well.

  Chapter 12

  Rhinewall

  “HAROLD, YOUR OPINION, if you don’t mind…” Felton called him from the front of the store.

  A man stood there, across from Felton at the counter. It wasn’t Quentin again—Harold was pretty sure he’d recognize that beaked mask anywhere. This man looked vaguely familiar, his coat collar pulled up around his face, a hat and scarf obscuring his features. Something about his eyes… Harold couldn’t quite place him. And it occurred to Harold that he never heard the man enter the store at all.

  “Sir?” Harold asked, standing in the doorway.

  Felton continued to stare at the newspaper. Across the front were the big bold words:

  PLAGUE SPREADS

  NO END IN SIGHT

  IS THIS PENANCE?

  “My friend here and I were having a bit of a debate,” Felton said. “What do you make of this disease that’s swept across our once great city?”

  “You mean the plague, sir?”

  “I meant exactly what I asked,” said Felton, a hint of irritation in his voice. The stranger continued to watch Harold with curious eyes.

  Harold cleared his throat. “I think it’s a tragedy, people getting sick and dying before their time.” He thought of his late wife, Francine. He thought of the strange but gifted mute boy. “Every day I see young gang boys missing teeth and fingernails, growths forming on their faces and legs. We should do more for them, I think.”

  Felton and the stranger listened to all this with a distant attention, Felton’s eyes still focused on whatever news story was before him. He finally turned the page, shaking the paper to straighten it, then exchanged a glance with the stranger, then turned back to Harold.

  “That’s all good and noble of you, Montegut,” he said. “But I’m not talking about the Cataclysm plague, though I’m sure there is a special place in Hell for the people who invited that upon this city. What I am talking about is the actual disease that runs rampant.”

  “I… I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir.”

  “We were speaking of inaction.” The stranger’s voice, even though muffled through the scarf was deep and confident. Harold was certain he’d heard it bef
ore. “Paralysis brought on by uncertainty and fear.”

  “Pardon?” Harold asked, confused now.

  Felton turned to him. “We were not speaking of a disease that causes the lesions you see on the faces of people every day, not the rogue energy that gave me this scar, nor am I speaking of the crime epidemic that rots this city from the inside out. We were speaking about apathy, Harold. We did this to ourselves; the physical wounds of this city are sadly self-inflicted.”

  Felton rubbed absently at the dark line that slashed down his right cheek before continuing. The stranger listened in silence.

  “The people of this city believe they deserve this, Harold. They’re angry and broken by the idea that they somehow brought this upon themselves, sacrificing their souls for the promise of power and money. I believe they may actually want the pain. It’s masochism, plain and simple. Self-inflicted retribution.”

  “Self loathing is nothing new to the residents of this city,” said the stranger. “But it seems the Cataclysm has left our residents in a state of illness greater than the dark times of the Confessionals.”

  Harold turned to the stranger. “And what would you propose?” He wanted to ask Who are you? And what business is it of yours? But that seemed imprudent at the moment. Harold also liked being employed.

  “Sadly, I am not in a position to take the necessary actions,” the stranger said. “I am, however, in a position to react in accordance with the peoples’ wishes.”

  “And how would you exactly go about this?” Harold could feel his voice rising. He didn’t like being left in the dark.

  But the stranger only squinted from behind his scarf, his eyes hinting at a smile. “I imagine Lancaster would rather talk to you alone.”

  And with that, the man nodded, tipping his hat to the two gentlemen before turning to unlock the shop door to leave. The bell jingled.

  “He locked up the shop to talk to you?” Harold asked, astonished that anyone would have the gall to usurp the store business just to chat politics. “I never even heard him enter.”

  “Never mind that now, Harold,” Felton said, folding the newspaper so that he could look him in the eye. “I’m more interested in your commitment to this city.”

  “Sir?”

  “When I met you, Harold, you were helping tend the wounded, helping to try and repair the damage done to this city—though at the time I found your methods amateurish. But you had passion for humanity. Am I far from the mark in my assessment?”

  “No, sir…” Harold said.

  In the two years he had worked with Felton, he had never seen the man passionate about anything other than the day’s profits. It was surprising, and somewhat unsettling to see the man concerned about anything other than the bottom line at all.

  Felton smiled. “Human nature is a funny thing, Harold. We hit our thumb with a hammer and we become furious with ourselves, curse our clumsiness and incompetence. But someone else comes at you with a hammer and what do you do? You duck! You punch back, push the maniac away! Survival kicks in. Suddenly you want to live, you want to fight. You no longer feel you deserve what this brute is doing to you, even though a moment ago you had clearly done it to yourself.”

  Harold frowned. “I… I’m afraid I don’t follow, sir. Last I checked, there were no hammers bearing down on Rhinewall.”

  Felton gave him a look and Harold felt a thrill of fear run down his spine.

  “The world is full of hammers, Harold. All it takes is for the tensions with our neighbors up north to boil over, or for the authorities up on the hill to decide they should come do the same to us that they did to that unfortunate little settlement along the Lassimir River… or perhaps for the Church to and its associates to catch wind of our little accident.”

  “I doubt that would happen,” said Harold. “This new Rhinewall is a legitimate city-state, not some pirate enclave. We are perfectly capable of defending ourselves.”

  “Capable, yes. But you’re assuming the people of this city want to,” Felton said, his face growing dark. “They’ve forgotten themselves, Harold. Between those recovering from the Confessionals, and the people simply scraping by to feed themselves, the residents of Rhinewall have lost their drive to live at all. Something drastic may have to happen before these residents realize just how surrounded by hammers we really are.”

  Politics, Harold thought dismally. It was the last thing he wanted to be dragged into at work. Still hung over and tired, all he really wanted right now was a cup of bad coffee and some privacy to go over the broken metronometer sitting on his desk.

  “There’s a rally I’d like to see you at,” Felton went on. “It’s a remembrance rally.”

  “I’ve seen the fliers,” Harold said.

  “Then I expect you’ll be there?”

  “I… I will,” Harold said. “But who was that man?”

  “Good,” Felton said, ignoring the question. “I’ll see you then.”

  He waited for Felton to continue, but the man simply went back to his newspaper as if the conversation had never taken place. Harold retreated to his office.

  A knock at the back door made him check his watch. This early?

  For the last several weeks now, Harold had heard the knock and opened the back door into the alley. He had never expected to see the boy again, frankly, but now their unspoken arrangement was something he felt obligated to honor. It felt almost cruel to let the door go unanswered, the hungry child left to starve.

  The alley was, as expected, empty—a solitary folded paper rested under a brick on the back steps. He bent down and plucked the paper, unfolded it, and once again admired the clarity and detail of the image. It was of a simple brass balancing chain, something he knew Felton would never miss, and something that was apparently of some value to the child. If the boy was smart enough to not be greedy after all this time, Harold suspected perhaps he was smarter than most.

  Hell, most boys would have asked for the moon at this point. All this child is doing is asking for a small trinket to sell for food.

  Stepping back into the shop, he glanced at Felton, still buried in his paper.

  “Who was that, Harold?”

  “Just the usual deliveries,” he said, jingling a crate of old bent cogs with a foot.

  “Mm hmm…”

  Harold took the chain to the back, placing it on the step. Beside it he placed a spare notepad from the shop and a small stack of pencils.

  It’s like I’m feeding a stray cat, one that draws, he thought.

  Giving the chain one last glance, he closed the door. It would be gone the next time he looked. A good thing too. If Felton found out that he was leaving perfectly saleable store property outside, he would have a lot of explaining to do.

  He returned quietly to his bench, slipping the picture into his breast pocket where he would add it to his collection back home later.

  Chapter 13

  Bollingbrook

  “ISN’T THIS PARTY just the best?” Victoria said, nearly vibrating in her shoes. She stared at Dona with animated blue eyes bordering on hysteria. “It’s as if you were a goddess and this was your kingdom!”

  “A queen, you mean,” said Dona.

  “Yes! That! Isn’t it wonderful?” Victoria tittered, holding her hand in front of her face, self-consciously covering those two false incisors. Even her father, a dentist, couldn’t repair the damage the twerp had inflicted.

  “Yes… it’s great,” Dona said flatly. She scanned the crowd in their home, more family members than friends, but she supposed she should have felt relieved that they had shown. Beth had been here earlier, but had left in a huff. Now it was just Dona, Victoria, and Tom.

  Tom stood chatting in one corner of the room with her uncle Memford, grinning his grins and telling his jokes. Dona knew for a fact that her uncle was deaf as a dumbwaiter, but he smiled and nodded all the same, just happy to be in the presence of a minor celebrity. Her mother stood in the kitchen guarding the liquor cabinet, swaying from the
effects of her fifth glass of whatever-was-at-hand. It was a party of strangers.

  The only friend who hadn’t drifted away over the last three years, stood before her, chittering away like a windup doll.

  “…do you think I’m wrong for saying that?” Vicky asked. It then occurred to Dona that she had all but completely tuned Vicky out.

  “What?”

  “For calling Beth a cow. She did steal my seat at the dance recital, and I felt that such rudeness should be brought to her attention. She can be so dense otherwise, poor girl. I’m sorry she had to dampen your party with her touchiness… are you alright?”

  Dona blinked. “Oh? Sorry. Yes, I’m fine.”

  “It’s my fault.” Victoria pouted. “Beth would still be here…”

  “No. It’s not that. I’m just overwhelmed, I guess.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be? It’s your seventeenth! You know I overhear Tom talking about you all the time and he says nothing but the best.” She winked. “I can’t imagine how wonderful it is to be marrying someone with so much promise.”

  It was a lie, Dona knew. If you knew the real Tom and the real me you wouldn’t be saying that at all. But secrets were secrets.

  Tom broke free of his conversation and swaggered over. His blond hair sparkled from the overhead chandelier. Dona thought he looked especially handsome tonight. It wasn’t a romantic observation at all, simply that Tom had a date later that evening.

  Vicky turned to him. “Tom! We were just talking about you!”

  “Who isn’t these days?” Tom said. “I can’t get a moment’s rest from the press after that jumper. Maybe I should start wearing a mask.”

  Victoria squealed at this, quickly covering her mouth with a lace gloved hand. “Oh, Tom! Always such a card!”

  Tom shot Dona a brief glance. It wasn’t an eye roll, but it was enough that Dona giggled in spite of herself. Watching someone else tolerate Vicky was refreshing for a change.