Fletcher Neverflinch

Fletcher had been fighting back a cough for the better part of a long moment.

Gunfire racketed inside the warehouse. Sounded bad. Would be worse if some wetfoot misfired right out the alley door. Still, his contract had the money going to the right place even if died.

His lungs heaved. Fletcher strained, throat tightening, and the cough retreated, left him thinking he’d won, then surged up and he buckled against the assault, the little spatial rift t-hole inside his lungs torn a little wider as water and silt and debris poured into his lungs from wherever the Stacks had its own bit of existence tangled up in his—hacked right into the kerchief covering the lower half of his face. Like drowning from the inside out.

When the coughing stopped and the t-hole closed again, he adjusted the soaked kerchief. It had a skull’s smile on it. Downside of being a heavy-for-hire? Dealing with everyone’s branding. You could tell two things by how much work a gang put into their branding: how put together they were, and how far up their own rear-ends they were. The Grinning Dead were pretty good in both.

More gunshots, screaming, some other screaming, lots of cursing in a couple different languages, pounding feet, then one loud bang crashed into the alleyway. It died in a sad attempt at echoes. Nobody’d told Fletcher what was inside the warehouse, or why they were raiding it, and he hadn’t asked.

He ignored the smoke trickling out the doorway.

On the opposite side of the doorframe, Salvador didn’t.

Whiteteeth. Never look in the door. Fletcher glared at the alley wall opposite. His stomach growled. Who did a job before breakfast? The Grinning Dead and their branding, that was who.

“Think they need a rescue?” Salvador asked.

Where’d Ostes find this kid? Salvador talked like someone gonna die before thirty. Talked like already slated for a bullet to the brain, but looked a heavy. Looked like a diet of too much meat and always being the biggest and meanest. Like two-fifty pounds of muscle accented by ready-pop veins that signature Stacks’ blue. Like looking at brain-freeze. All in all, he looked like a Fletcher Neverflinch knockoff. Minus the big pink mohawk.

Salvador inched closer to the door. Fletcher looked away harder. Blue soot from blue smog coated the red bricks stacked together into haphazard buildings relying too much on magic and not enough on engineering. Graffiti and faded posters peaked out under the grime. THE LAST HONORS. MANAUI WOMAN FUCK APES. WITETEETH GET OUT! Fliers for a brothel down Churchlin that’d burned down last year. Fliers for brothels that hadn’t. Factory-job adverts. A few green pages with a cartoony ear, eye, and mouth dancing above the words, Revelations Abound! Donate to the Ministry of Insights today! Below that were the prices you’d get. For one eye, or both. One ear, or both. Your mouth. Fletcher had considered selling before. If you didn’t have any debts—ha ha—the money might get you out the Stacks, maybe up Little Bridge or Watershed. River, maybe even Cogit’s Crossing. But the way the lurches moved, like someone was yanking their missing bits …

Unlike most neighborhoods in the Stacks, the posters were the only real character around here. Not like Elvtønsk End, where the Elatonians painted the bricks with stencil-neat murals and saltfish hung drying in everyone’s window. Or Little Nhulans, where ghulanese sihyua and jejebangs smooshed next to Ntonglans obok, eikibanko, and tsabanko—or the closest approximation you could get here. Barely any spirit shrines too. No statues on the street corners or windowsills, no red-painted planks nailed over the doorways to bar mischievous spirits. The few paper lanterns hanging were unlit and ragged.

The neighborhood had been South South when Fletcher was a kid. But that was a while ago and South South had migrated South, pulled along by the endless tide of immigration and annexation. Now people called it, Shells. It was big buildings some business someone from up Highgreen or Cogit’s Crossing erected for business-somethings. Except the business-somethings went right in the River and now it was just a lot of places too big, too expensive, too deep in the Stacks for anyone to do anything with. Except blue spooks and the gangs.

Out the alley and up, a circus of grey apes cackled on the rooftop of another warehouse, shorter but longer than the one the Grinning Dead were assaulting. Half the windows were smashed in. Little hoots turned into wild ooh-ooh-aah-AAH-AAHs, then screeching, fighting, and a small body tumbled over the roof’s upper ridge. The unlucky ape hit the roof’s second tier, bouncing down the tarwood slope before flying free. A dark blotch in the rising sun smokestacks skyline. Then it splashed down in the water that filled every street and alley of the Stacks. Several of its kin jeered. The ape lay face-down in the water. No danger of it being stepped on this time of morning, but the apes turned cannibal sometimes. The City wasn’t kind to cripples. The stupid thing shuddered upright and Fletcher saw he was too late to feel bad: bashed-in back of a skull crusty with blood and grey bits, chunks of its chest torn off by sharp little teeth, cloudy-lifeless eyes. The ape had probably died several days back. Just a body.

Fletcher said a silent prayer for the thing’s lost soul. River run easy.

Something crackled behind him and he spun, readying for the gun/knife/fist/whatever. Salvador glanced up from the fat little bun he was unwrapping. One of Auntie Lai’s buns. The kid tossed the pink wrapping paper—littered too? Whiteeth—which turned translucent when it touched the water, drifting several inches above the cobbles. Fletcher plucked up the garbage and pocketed it.

“Really sounds like they need help,” Salvador said, spraying crumbs as he craned to look inside. Fletcher’s stomach growled. Yeah, one of Auntie Lai’s alright. No one got custard like her. Like oozing sunlight. Holiday sunlight.

Unlike Fletcher, Salvador had skipped the kerchief, opted to paint his face with the Grinning Dead’s motif, and now custard dribbled down the grinning skull, yellow on white on his blotchy face. Fletcher only wore kerchiefs now. Facepainting sent the wrong message.

He grunted. The kid was right, sounded like they needed help. Shame they weren’t paying him for it.

Inside the warehouse, the brawling faded. The gunshots ricocheted into quiet. Underneath it all he heard … something. Whispering, but not words he could make. Bad sign.

“You got anymore?” Fletcher asked.

“What?” Salvador said, squinting to see inside.

“Custard buns.”

“What about them?”

Protheus in a pisspot, this kid. “You got another?”

“Nah, just the one.”

“Shame,” Fletcher said. He coughed, then coughed again, then couldn’t stop coughing for long enough that Salvador gave him a look. The kerchief was beyond soaked. But they were paying him to wear the thing, so he’d wear the thing. He gave one last hacking cough and the circular cold of a blue gold coin ripped through the t-hole in his lungs, up his throat, and out over his tongue. The Priest said Fletcher might have a few years still—sure didn’t feel like it.

Fletcher Neverflinch, Wolf of the Stacks, dead of T-lung before his hair turned grey.

Using his tongue, Fletcher pushed the coin against the inside of his cheek, then took several heaving breaths. He kept his teeth closed, blocking the silt and grit he’d already coughed into the kerchief. Salvador’s moment of concern passed. The lightweight heavy braced against the doorframe, head going half into the fading smoke still drifting out.

“Can’t see them.”

“Back up,” Fletcher said, and Salvador leapt back, expectant expression melting when Fletcher didn’t go charging in, roaring glory.

Inside, far inside, someone screamed. Then another someone. Another. Another.

Shame. Fletcher liked a lot of the Dead. Still, he was getting paid either way.

“Aren’t you going to help?” Salvador’s caterpillar eyebrows knitted together.

“No.”

“But they need help.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Well then come on!”

“Getting paid to stand lookout.” Fletcher turned away. A cluster of waterlilies floated down the street past the alley. Beneath the kerchief, he smiled. Good omens today.

“Fletcher fucking Neverflinch, huh?” Salvador jeered. There it is. “Fletcher fucking Neverflinch. I knew what they said about you was yak shit. Wolf of the fucking Stacks. More like puppy.” The apes had spotted the waterlilies too and were scrambling down to get at them. Shame, She had liked waterlilies. Would’ve made a nice offering.

“Yep,” said Fletcher, cutting off Salvador’s heckling. Always better to get it over with. “Go help. If Ostes is alive, tell him extraction’s my usual rate.”

“Fuck you, catbee.” Then Salvador was up the step through the doorway.

Kid curses too much.

Alone in the alley, Fletcher dragged his foot through the water. Art was probably something like the little ripples his feet made in the water. The water. He couldn’t remember a time before it, but he could remember playing Ganth Come Calling and how easy it was finding rocks to throw. People in the Stacks liked to tell you it was because the river spirits finally got fed up with all the runoff from the factories. They were tired of their home glowing when it was time to rest, or the fish getting too weird. So, one day all the river spirits got together and decided to take a piece of man’s land in return. Except before they could flood the entire City, they did what spirits do and started arguing. Eventually the whole plot was forgotten and in the end all they flooded was about a foot of the Stacks. Just the Stacks. Water didn’t even reach Little Bridge, and you couldn’t flood out Stiltmire much more. Just the Stacks.

Always just the Stacks.

One of Fletcher’s regulars at the Happiest Bed House liked to blab after they finished. The guy worked a few days a week cleaning up the Synod, and said councilmen never noticed him. So, maybe it had been spirits. Or maybe some University brains did what they do and messed with things they shouldn’t, then realized the water helped cool the factories and the refineries. Malfires were still common, but not like they used to be.

The screaming inside rose. The whispering-not-words prickled behind Fletcher’s eyes, scratching his brain, memories

carrying her twitching

stumbling into the steamy kitchen. It smelled burnt, one of the replacements let the water get too low

her face when she saw her

howling, clawing, better than his own mom leaving ragged nail-marks along his chest, his face, his forearms

“Get out get out get out get out get OOOUUUUUTTTTT!”

Footsteps and wild breathing in the here and now of the alley pulled him back as two people tumbled through the door. One was Salvador. One was Yuna. Most of the blood was hers.

“Fletch …” Yuna panted. Auburn hair along the left side of her head had gone dark with blood. Under her eyes were shadows she hadn’t had when she’d gone inside. And her right leg now ended at the knee in a wet red mess. Shame, Yuna wasn’t a bad gal. She cheated at cards and never paid for breakfast, but there were worse thugs around. She took a shuddering, rattling breath, then tried again. “Fletch. Help. Ostes says help.”

“It’ll be extra for hazard pay. Sounds bad in there.” Fletcher pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against. Salvador stared into the water.

“Course.” She was ashen and going limp. “My leg …”

“Course.” Fletcher reached into a back pocket and pulled out a little jar of blue salve. He always brought some on a job like this. It cost an ear and an eye, but you could regrow a limb. Even the geniuses up at the University hadn’t figured out how to fish out a soul and jam it back in right.

Kneeling, he inspected the carnage. He’d taken off limbs from time to time and always tried keeping it clean. This was not clean. Slathering blue salve on his palm, he gave a little prayer to stave off any overeager unpleasant spirits, then placed his hand against what was left of her leg. Yuna hissed but didn’t scream. The end of her leg warmed as he rubbed in the salve. Then it burned, bubbled, and the flow of blood slowed to a dribble.

“That’ll hold. Get her to the Priest,” Fletcher said, washing his hands in the water. Blood ran off them in dancing red swirls.

“Take me to Sawbones,” Yuna wheezed.

“Leg’s already gone,” he said.

“Nobody needs the Priest,” Yuna spat.

“Nobody needs the Priest,” Salvador echoed. His face was blank, his pupils eating the whole iris. Fletcher stood. Shrugged. Her choice.

“What’s in there?” he asked.

Yuna laughed. It was the dizzy sound of a girl who’d have nightmares for a long while.

Salvador blinked, blinked, blinked. Blood trickled from his nose.

Shaking his head, Fletcher stepped aside to let the unsteady twosome limp down the alley. At the end they turned right. Right towards Sawbones. Yuna was too stubborn. The Priest knew things. The Priest could do things. None of the things Sawbones was good at applied to Yuna. Maybe if they’d brought the rest of her leg along. But not anymore.

Removing the kerchief, Fletcher dried it on his pants and spat out the circular blue gold coin. His lungs took the opportunity to let loose another short storm of coughs that splattered the blue-grimed bricks bright red and woke up the water around his feet. But nothing else came out this time. Wiping his lips, he nestled the coin back between his teeth and cheek, then retied the kerchief.

Requirements in place, he tugged on the string around his neck, freeing the little bronze bell from where it sat trapped between his chest and his shirt. With his free hand he pulled a piece of dry bun from his pocket. Dry bun, courtesy of Wen’s. With each tinkle of the bell, Fletcher crumbled it into the water. He named the spirits he knew, spent extra time on the finicky ones or the prideful ones or the especially great ones, spent the longest on Her, asking for apology—always for apology—then finished with a general appeal to all the spirits he didn’t know but might be watching today. Prayers done, he replaced the bell and stepped up, out the water, inside.

Outside, the place had the same look as every other building around it. Same windows boarded up and doors that wouldn’t open or shut depending on how they’d been abandoned. All a little more jibbledy than jabber, the old brick crumbled, the metal rusted and warped, no integrity but a quantity buttload of thaumaturgic mortar. Stacks through and through.

White smoke filled the inside. It stung his eyes. Smelled almost like the fizzy green vinegar you’d drizzle at Elatonian food stalls. He guessed whatever went bang earlier left it, and thanked the spirits for the kerchief. It had dissipated though, enough for Fletcher to see. Inside was too big.

The floor was a stretching slab of concrete going way past where the place should have run into another building. Tables lined the room in clusters, hidden under papers, and thaumaturgical doodads. Massive apparatuses blocked section of the walls, some connected by wires, other by metal tubes and vats, several by hand-drawn lines of symbols on the floor or the wall or floating in midair.

Illuminating it all was the blue glow of thaumaturgic batteries. Raw magic mined from under the City, refined into safe, stable power for the great and mystical practice of thaumaturgy—miracle working. They glowed in light fixtures. They glowed in the machines. They glowed in storage racks and racks and racks. More magic in one place than Fletcher had ever seen.

On the wall to his left, big and painted in dripping red, almost black in the blue glow, was a handprint. Five fingers and a thumb. Not a symbol he recognized.

Skylights broke the vaulted ceiling, and through them Fletcher saw a night sky. He looked behind him, saw morning light outside, then back up at that night sky. Except it wasn’t right even beyond the obvious. It was black, but filled with tiny glowing pinpricks, like some great spirit had sewn bits of the sun into it.

Spirits pull my soul from the River.

Stars.

Ghulanese was a poetic language, but Auntie Lai hadn’t done them justice. Stars. He was seeing stars. For a moment he forgot he was on a job going real bad. Forgot about being the Wolf of Stacks, forgot he was Fletcher fucking Neverflinch. Stars. He almost laughed. Almost.

Amongst the stars hung the moon, clearer than he ever saw but otherwise just the same: big and shattered, exploded chunks frozen in place always and never drifting away from the ruined whole, held forever in its death-throws by Myrddin’s final work. If your eyes unfocused, you could see the Myrddic tree’s branches in the dark spaces between the silver chunks.

Beside it was another moon. Full and unbroken. White as milk.

Crying brought Fletcher back to the now, and for the first time he took in the people scattered across the floor. Some moaned. Others held wounds or curled with hands clutching their heads. Most were just bodies. There were scattered pieces too, ripped and torn right off, and not by whatever went bang. Fletcher thought he saw Yuna’s leg but didn’t investigate.

He counted twelve faces painted with the Dead’s chalky white skull. The rest wore a six-fingered handprint in dark red. He looked for Ostes but the man wasn’t there. Good. Dead wouldn’t pay.

The crying came from the body nearest to him. It twitched, and Fletcher readied a kick, but relaxed when it didn’t show any signs of living. Just the stupid echoes bouncing around its brain, knowing it had lost something but unable to understand what, and mourning all the same. Deadcrying. Fletcher recognized the body. It had been a half-Ntgonlans kid going by the name Dziedzi Enshoulman. His birth name was Cepos Catson, but last Fletcher heard the kid had been trying to join the Southern Crop’s Blight and wanted to fit in with the kin. Now Dziedzi’s face wore the six-fingered handprint and a bullet hole in its forehead, right through the third finger. Guess joining the Blight hadn’t worked out.

The body reached for him, and Fletcher stomped down hard on its head.

Screaming echoed up from a corner of the room lost in smoke. Sounded like it was coming from a real long way down.

He set off at a jog, smoke clearing as he went. Further in the place looked more like your run-of-the-mill low-market flux lab-in-a-basement. Big metal tubs, shelves of chemicals, burners and beakers of assorted size. He saw a furnace and kiln too. Some smithing kit. A table supporting hunks of metal, dull lead obvious among the gold and silver. Everywhere he looked, little thaumaturgic batteries glowed soft blue as they powered who knew what.

Then, deeper in, it all stopped looking run-of-the-mill. Some tables had bones on them. Others had jars with dead animals floating in liquid, and organs that might have been from dead animals but probably not. There were books too. Big old books with weight. Never good when you saw books like that anywhere but the University. And that night sky of course, with its stars and moons. All that in a place a tenth mile long inside a building maybe a hundred feet on the broad side. If not for the six-finger symbol, Fletcher might have said this was Grimm Wardens getting into some bad stuff. Except the Wardens ran reliable operations. Clean. Predictable. Practically upstanding institutions in the Stacks. This felt like whatever was in that basement might melt his brain, pop his eyes, and send him running wild until they finally threw him into the Brutal Psyche ward at Rosemuth.

Ostes was gonna owe double hazard pay.

The room ended in a massive yawning pit from which the screaming echoed. Metal cables fell from the too tall ceiling into the darkness. After a moment, he found a heavy lever on the wall to his right and yanked upwards. Whatever jump he had vanished in the screeching, gnashing, clanking network of cranks and pulleys, a metal lift fifteen feet wide and half as deep rising into sight. It stopped level with the floor. Flickering orange lanterns glowed in each of its corners. All the magic in this place, and they were using actual fire. Keeps getting better. Fletcher stepped in, pulled another level, and the lift descended.

Dancing firelight illuminated jagged stone walls, moss and lichen, the mouths of tunnels only glimpsed before they were past. Overhead, everything vanished in towering darkness. The whispering that wasn’t words grew heavier as he descended, like diving too deep underwater, except it pressed inside his head. It was like knowing the worst kind of secret. Hurt in a way that made Fletcher, who had been shot, stabbed, and hit with everything from spiked brass knuckles to one lucky kanabō swing, grit his teeth.

Without warning the lift struck ground. He stumbled, careened over the open ledge and into the cavern beyond, going down hard in a tangle of over-muscled limbs. Behind his kerchief, he gasped. The coin tucked into his cheek reversed down the vacuum of his lungs and he gagged, fumbled with the kerchief, retched, convulsing as he ripped the cloth off half-a-heartbeat before street water and all its detritus erupted through the t-hole in his lungs, up his throat, past his distending, cracking jaw. Rocks, silt, coins, trash, algae, his own blood, all puddled on and around him. Shame, these boots had been expensive. When the deluge finally stopped his body ached and his mouth tasted like licking boots for a living.

Sure didn’t feel like he had several years still.

He knelt, probably at least one rib cracked, and collected the coins he’d coughed up. The blue gold from earlier, two two-thirds circle iron gangue, another blue gold. He broke one of the gangue in two and both thirds turned copper, then he clicked one of these new copper iodes into place with the remaining gangue. The complete circle turned blue. Three blue gold and a copper iode for dying slow. Good omens all around.

Light from the lift’s lanterns illuminated the cavern, or should-been-abandoned mine, or whatever you called it, in gentle orange sprays. It was maybe sixty feet almost-round of generic brown stone. Off to a side were a dozen tents, several dead campfires, and the shapes of other left-behind gear.

Black tunnels pitted the walls. Most were boarded up or caved in. Cart tracks raced down one which looked like it boarded up a while back but had been reopened, and from it echoed far-off voices, machines going chunka-chunka-chunka, and whispering that wasn’t words.

Fletcher scowled. His contract had money owed going to the right places no matter what happened to him. Still, you didn’t mess with the old mining tunnels for iodes.

“Triple hazard pay.”

Get Ostes, get out, get paid.

Deciding not to risk another coin in his mouth no matter the good luck, Fletcher reaffixed the ruined kerchief, then set off down the echoing tunnel, moving gingerly across the cart tracks, right hand against the wall. The air felt thick and humid and quickly went cold as a hug from Old Crone Winter. Soon he was shivering. He reached for the little bell around his neck. Not that it would help. No friendly spirits here.

He'd been in total darkness for a while when the stone beneath his fingers softened. It went spongy, then grew wet. Even through the ruined kerchief, half-frozen and burning cold, he smelled something like bile and shit.

A while back, the Last Honors had hired him for a shipment coming in from Ntonlgas. It went bad. Someone snitched and lawbos jumped them on the edge of Stiltmire. Most of what happened was a blur—shouting, gunshots, normal violent panic, then Fletcher kneeling on a lawman, left hand around the guy’s throat, right hand, knife-hand, buried up the forearm in guts.

Now, in this softening cave he would get paid enough for being in, Fletcher thought that was what the wall felt like: cold innards.

His fingers trailed over a ridged groove, then pressed something firm. It felt wet and round. Bulging from a socket in the wall. It twitched. Shifted. The whole thing rolling in place like it was trying to center on Fletcher’s fingers.

He tried to step back. One foot came free with a wet pop. The other stuck. He grunted, pulled, and the ground pulled back, flexing like a muscle. His hand was still pressed to the orb in the wall, and he reposition himself, sliding fingers to the edge of the socket and grabbing on with both hands, pulling against the sucking floor until his foot popped free too.

Get Ostes, get out, get paid.

He was moving, not running, but moving fast through the mineshaft, keeping his stride even as he stepped from one plank of the cart tracks to the next. One hand on the wall until it passed over a fissure. Something wet licked across his palm and he pulled back to what he hoped was the middle of the shaft, keeping on, arms out for balance until his foot missed the rail and instead of scraping the soft, sucking floor, went down into nothing, clipping something hard about a finger’s length past where the ground should be. He went to all fours in the darkness, yanking his leg up right before something clacked closed where his ankle had been. Then he was up again and now he was running. Stumbling. Tripping. Moving in a headlong fall down the black tunnel. Something brushed his arm. Somethings. Fleshy tendrils pulling at him in the darkness. They reached up around the cart tracks and out from the wall. He pushed through them, pulled, tore, a living brush of grasping tendrils and mouths biting in the dark.

Light glimmered ahead. Around him the darkness receded but he focused on that pinprick of light. He ignored the glistening orbs rolling in the walls, the ceilings, the floor. He ignored the opening and closing fissures, white shapes clacking and flicking red glinting inside. Tendrils reaching for him from everywhere.

Get Ostes, get out, get paid.

“Fletcher.” The voice was hoarse, and Fletcher grunted in surprise. The tunnel was rock again, wooden supports, and cart tracks. A man slumped against the wall. The white lines of a grinning skull were painted on his face, broken by a blindfold pulled up to reveal half-closed eyes. A little puff of cotton stuck out his left ear. His right hand clutched at the twisted, crushed nub of his left arm. He sat in a puddle of dark, glistening blood.

“Fletcher,” the man wheezed again, and he recognized Luis.

“Ostes still alive?” He wasn’t sad to see Luis dying. Luis always wanted you to know his opinions, and he had a lot, mostly about loyalty and honor. Once at the Happiest Bed House, after Yuna had paid and finished and she and Fletcher were lying together in the sweat-soaked sheets, she told him Luis kept trying to get Fletcher barred from working with the Dead. Still, Luis was a good lieutenant. He always made sure shares of a job were distributed rightly. But that much blood? Luis’ soul was already drifting down the River.

“Help me, Fletcher. Protheus and his disciples, I think I am dying.” Luis tried to sit up and gasped in pain.

Fletcher looked to the tunnel’s terminal, then back at the body who hadn’t realized it was just a body yet. “Extraction costs two blue gold, both upfront.” Luis wouldn’t live long enough to pay later.

Luis opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking. “You must help me.”

Fletcher shook off the dead man’s feeble grab. It left bloody fingerprints on his pant leg.

Luis’ screams echoed all the way out the tunnel.

He exited onto a cliff beneath the same night sky he’d seen in the warehouse above. So many beautiful stars, and the fractured moon hanging beside an immaculate twin. The cliff underfoot and the looming crag behind Fletcher were smooth and almost like ivory, but patchy with faded brown-green-yellow splotches. Howling wind tore at people buzzing around a series of squats machines at the cliff’s edge. Past them a dark ocean churned. Islands of ice bobbed in the storming water. And beyond that, far out to sea, were the crosshatching bars of a titanic cage. Grey pillars like the struts of the world rose from the water. Glyphs glowed massive green on every inch of every beam. Like it’s holding up the sky, Fletcher thought.

Behind the cage, so many miles and years away it should have been just a smudge, something was coming. Something immense that made Fletcher’s hands want to reach for his eyes to rip them out. Something that didn’t fit. With a mouth hanging open like the end of all things, whispering without words. Something wading through the horizon of another world. Coming for them.

Wiping the blood gushing from his nose, he forced himself to look away.

Get Ostes, get out, get paid.

Nobody noticed as he strode from the cave, too busy flitting around the machines which were large and rectangular, like more complex versions of ones he’d seen upstairs, with dull metal bodies sprouting black pumps expanding and contracting like mechanized lungs. Knobs and dials and readout displays, gauges, lights, buttons, curled mounds of white paper riddled with black ink ticking endlessly out of slit-like metal mouths. Several people were yelling readouts as they pulled along the tickertape. Everyone wore heavy black earmuffs. Above all this, inset into each machine and blazing like blue blind eyes, glowed the largest thaumaturgic batteries Fletcher had ever seen.

A golden slab lay in the center of the semi-circle of machines. As he neared, he saw what he’d first taken for dents and scrapes were thousands of carved sigils. Cables ran between the slab and the machines. There were leather straps attached where someone’s arms and legs would go.

To his right, clustered figures slumped back-to-back-to-back by the cliff’s edge. All wore white skull face paint cut across by blindfolds. None had been given earmuffs. Looming over them was Geni Ledoitte.

Fletcher grabbed the bell around his neck, and began to pray

Geni Ledoitte, the gentle giant of Stiltmire.

Geni Ledoitte, who sometimes worked Springtime out in Farmlands pulling up dead trees barehanded, roots and all. Who politely refused every gang’s offer to join because his momma wouldn’t like it. Who had undoubtedly torn off Yuna’s leg and Luis’ arm and every other tossed bit of body Fletcher’d stepped over upstairs.

Geni Ledoitte, wearing that six-finger handprint across his face.

People were seeing Fletcher now, pointing at him, and he charged. He recognized faces. He shouldered hard through Yuwei Dou, who used to own a samssamum den down Churchlin one street over from the Happiest Bed House. A wild elbow crunched into Mali Olali’s nose. She used to trade fresh, spiced flatbread with the other food stalls in the morning before customers came. An Elatonian that Fletcher knew by sight from all the money he spent at the Happiest Bed House on discrete girls with specialties. All wore the crimson six-finger handprint painted on their faces. How had a new gang grown this big with this much hege without him knowing?

Gunshots or thunder roared through the storm and Fletcher dove, hit hard, rolled, feet pounding around him, after him, then he was back upright grabbing the nearest person and yanking them around in a human shield. Another roar of gunfire and the guy’s head exploded. He threw the headless corpse at the nearest attackers. Two people broke away from working on the machines. One ran to join the group coming after Fletcher, the other hurtled towards the cliff’s edge in an apparent suicide sprint before stopping short to fiddle with a bundle of cables the size of a tree trunk.

People were backing away now, and Fletcher knew what would be there when he turned around. So, he got it over with and turned around.

Geni Ledoitte. Nine feet tall. Broad as an alley.

Geni pushed the curtain of shaggy black hair out of his eyes and mumbled something. Fletcher shook his head, cupping a hand to his ear. A doglike pink tongue darted across Geni’s lips. Barely raising one long arm, like he was embarrassed, the gentle giant pointed a finger thick as Fletcher’s wrist back towards the cave. Fletcher shook his head and pointed around Geni at the blindfolded group. Double moonlight cast shadows on the mostly dead Grinning Dead. That small one looked like Ostes. It was Geni’s turn to shake his head. He pointed with more force towards the cave.

As a rule, Fletcher didn’t take favors for payment, but Geni Ledoitte was the exception to a lot of rules, especially when he came in snot-covered and red-faced and begging Fletcher to help little Liezel Ledoitte out of some nasty business with the Last Honors last year. Now Geni was trying to make good on that favor. Nice of him. Nicer than ripping off Fletcher’s arm.

Fletcher held up both hands. He couldn’t outmuscle Geni. No one could. Protheus on the hill, the big boy had once thrown a tantrum and ripped his neighbor’s house right out the water, stilts and all. And that’d been before his face got stubble.

Fletcher nodded and made like he was taking the favor. Then pivoted hard and drove a fist into Geni’s crotch.

Geni Ledoitte crumpled.

Vaulting over the fallen little giant, Fletcher landed wrong and went into a fumbling dive across the smooth not-ivory rock. He bowled into the cluster of Grinning Dead. Everyone was a tangle of confusion and limbs. The group of people who had backed away to let Geni deal with him were advancing again. Geni was sobbing louder than the storm. Fletcher almost felt bad about that, but the big kid got what he got for being here. Then Fletcher was looking up into the slack-jawed, blindfolded face of Ostes Sensenadora. Fletcher yanked the blindfold up. The small man’s dark eyes, strained red and sunken like he hadn’t slept for days, rolled madly. But Fletcher’s fingernail caught something. A patch of what felt like flesh pulled away from Ostes’ face, and with it came the eye itself, peeling halfway off, a two-dimensional illusion pasted to his face. Under the patch, where Ostes’ eye should have been, was smooth skin. Fletcher saw, then smoothed the patch back into place.

Ostes opened his mouth to say something but Fletcher scooped him up over one shoulder. The other Dead were in various states of awareness. A few had head wounds. Others were flat out unconscious. One, a newer recruit name Hector with a bowl of brown hair and a chin like a pickaxe, kept opening and closing his mouth.

Ostes secure, Fletcher bolted for the tunnel.

He swerved around the still-fetal Geni Ledoitte, barreling through the crowd. A Ntonglans woman stepped into his path, raising a gun which Fletcher smacked out of her hand before knocking her down, knocking her earmuffs off, and running straight over her.

At the mouth of the cave, he turned for one last look. In all the confusion he’d forgotten—blocked out—the thing coming towards the other side of that cage. But now, as he stopped, its whispering-not-words came rushing back in. Looking at it made his eyes hurt and things sizzle in his brain. Whatever this was down here, whatever they were doing, it was bad.

An argument had broken out, people pointing between Fletcher, the machines, and the cage. They vacillated, drifting towards him, then away, back to the machines but still looking at him. Something gave and, with several last looks, they resumed whatever they were doing with the machines. Two figures hauled one of the Dead—Hector, Fletcher thought—onto the golden slab, strapping him down without a fight. Everyone backed away from the platform. A round man pulled first one massive lever on the central-most machine, then a second, then a breath before the great batteries in each machine blazed to life one after another. Humming rose over the wind. Blue light blazed across the cliff. It glowed through people, and Fletcher could see the skeletons beneath the skin of each person caught in it, the six-finger handprint on their faces black in the blue light, the little lumps of their brains working overtime inside their skulls.

Sparks flew from the golden slab where cables met metal, mechanization to magic. Light seeped into the gold, one tiny carved symbol after the next glowing in a spreading slow wave towards Hector. A light on the central machine turned red. On the machine furthest to the left, a woman threw a switch, and a bolt of light streaked upward from an antenna into the storm.

Nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

Then the world ripped open. A tear of blazing orange from the clouds to strike Hector on the gold dais and hold. Finally, Hector thrashed. His back arched, his wrist and ankles strained against the straps like that tethered tear in space was reeling him in. Squinting, Fletcher watched light flow in waves from the orange bolt through Hector back into the table, back through the symbols, back up the cables connected to three different machines. From there it flowed out, down more cables and wiring extruding from the machines. These had been pulled and bound into one mass thick as a tree trunk. It dropped over the cliff’s edge into the water. Miles out to sea, Fletcher saw the waves of light traveling along the ocean floor. They met one of the titanic pillars and, at a point in the cage far into the sky, a glowing rune flickered.

Flickered

Went out.

Fletcher was sprinting back down the mineshaft, Ostes babbling on his shoulder.

“Our territory, Flinch! They were moving in and we couldn’t, you know this?” Something grabbed Fletcher’s ankle, and he stumbled, slamming into a wall, grunting as his shoulder pressed into one of the slick orbs. Tendrils pulled at him but he tore free with a roar. Ostes went on as though nothing happened. “Small but they weren’t, were they? They weren’t! There were lots of them, Flinch. Lots of them, Flinch. Flinch! Where did they come from? Ñetal wouldn’t give me more men.” He bounded from cart track to cart track. Get Ostes, get out, get paid. The kerchief was drowning him. He could feel a cough coming on. “Said it was some textiles. Ghoulies and Urdans getting their own in the textiles. TEXTILES!” They were out of the tunnel, Ostes spewing words as Fletched slammed the lift’s lever. It rose. He muttered prayers to every spirit he could think of. After too long the lift jerked to a halt at the top.

Back through the too-big place, out the door, into the sunlight, feet splashing in the alleyway. He dumped Ostes into the water.

Some of the old Urdans liked to tell stories about back in the homeland, where bodies stayed down after the person died. Apparently the old old Urdans preserved their real special bodies by removing all the innards and wrapping them up like the worst Holiday gift ever. They got brains out by jamming a rod up the noses and jiggling around until everything drained out. That was Ostes now. Babbling like something had crawled into his head, stirred up his thoughts, and like his brains were dribbling out his mouth.

Fletcher sagged against the alley wall, soaking in the weak morning sunlight through the clouds. Across from him, the little Elatonian went on talking, and talking, and talking until finally he stopped mid-sentence. Ostes blinked hard once, twice, then sat up straight.

“Shit,” Ostes said. Then again, louder. “Shit. Shit! Who told you to go inside?”

If he listened, Fletcher could still hear that whispering that wasn’t words. What would it be like when that thing finally reached those bars? Cage. Yeah, a cage. And when that thing reached it—maybe a year, maybe a hundred—it wouldn’t be whispering anymore. Forcing these thoughts away, he answered Ostes, “You did.”

“No I didn’t,” Ostes snapped.

“Ask Yuna, if she’s still around later.”

“Yuna … shit! Her leg.” Ostes sprang to his feet, then splashed back into the water. He clutched his head in both hands. “My head! Ayé, my head! I can’t fucking think.”

“That kid Salvadore took Yuna to Sawbones,” said Fletcher.

“But her fucking leg was already gone.”

“Told them that. She didn’t want to see the Priest.”

“Ah, nobody needs the Priest.” Ostes splashed the water like an angry toddler. “Shit. Ñetal’s going to fucking murder me I lost so many men. ‘Send a message.’ Ayé. Hard to send a message with Geni Le-fucking-doitte ripping people apart, Flinch. What was Geni doing there?”

 “No idea.”

“My head, Flinch. What happened in there?”

“No idea.” Any second people with six-finger handprints painted over their faces were gonna come streaming out the building. But time kept passing without any sign of trouble.

Ostes let out a long string of curses in Elton. Fletcher’s Elton was passable, and he got the gist. Glowering, Ostes switched back to City. “And now we have to pay your fucking extra fees too. Ñetal’s going to fucking murder me.”

“You owe me—” Fletcher began.

“I know what we owe you!” Ostes snapped.

“—quadruple, for hazard pay and hush money,” Fletcher finished.

“The fuck is this? You are telling jokes now?” Ostes sneered. In response, Fletcher tapped his left eye. Ostes blanched.

“Ñetal doesn’t know you’re a lurch.”

Ostes swallowed. “Quadruple.”

“Since I’m alive, money goes to—”

“I know!” Ostes cut him off again. Fletcher didn’t mind; Ostes had convinced Ñetal to hire him for this job and was gonna pay hush-money out of his own pocket. Lurches were common down in the Stacks, but the gangs didn’t take kindly to having one hiding among them.

“I know,” Ostes repeated. Puffing out his chest, he narrowed his eyes and made his voice deep as he could. In a theatrical City accent he declared, “Thirty percent to Madam Mini for rent and expenses.” He dropped the imitation. “You know this is fucking crazy you pay that litñequen oksa rent? She should be paying you for the business you bring in. The number of whiteeth I get asking where you work. ‘Do you know the Wolf of the Stacks?’ ‘We want to meet the Wolf of the Stacks!’ Wolf of the Stacks, Wolf of the Stacks! Ayè. Isn’t your little garucho always tired?” He waived at Fletcher’s crotch. Fletcher said nothing. “The people come to you, Flinch. Why the shit jobs like these anyway?”

Fletcher shrugged. “Why do fish swim?”

Ostes laughed. “A fucking poet too.” His expression softened. “You know, Flinch, I’ve seen that death clause you put in the contracts, about where the money should go …” Fletcher grunted. Ostes took the hint. This time when he got to his feet, he winced but stayed standing, running a hand through the long fall of dark hair plastered to his skull.

“I need to fix this mess. I’ll get a runner out with the money by tomorrow night, and I’ll make sure they know the thirty percent for your pilloula.” Ostes slapped Fletcher’s proffered hand and stumbled off, still cursing to himself. At the end of the alley, he reached up and smoothed down the eyepatch hiding what he’d sold to the Ministry of Insights, then turned out of sight.

With Ostes gone, Fletcher let his head fall back against the brick. For a little bit he just breathed. Long, deep breaths. When he felt ready, he grasped the little bell around his neck. A warm breeze tickled his face. The spirits were happy.

He was almost out of bread and Wen charged an ear and an eye, but there was still one more task before calling the job done. Spirits didn’t have any use for hard money. They bartered in the metaphysical—the work put in to making a steamed bun, the relief of new shoes after yours had worn through half a year back, the pain of standing memorial for someone gone too soon. Hard money was pure transaction. It meant nothing to them, and everything to Fletcher.

He pulled out what was left of Wen’s dry bun and crumbled it into the water. He didn’t really pray this time. Couldn’t bring himself to, knowing what came next.

He left the alley with the slow steps of the gallows-bound, wanting to miss the morning rush. He should have been on watch checking every bleak face heading to morning shifts or back from night ones, looking down the thin alleys barely different from the thin streets. Upside of being a heavy-for-hire? Everyone was your friend. Shame everyone wasn’t everyone else’s friend. But he was trying not to think about where he was going. Instead he let himself get wrapped up in the morning’s job. A building being bigger on the inside wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare down here outside the factories, especially in Shells. Then there was this Sixfingers gang. A new gang was good news for him. A new gang meant new jobs. Except this one had gotten serious hegemony without even him hearing about it.

There was that old mineshaft too, and the cliffside. The tunnels spiderwebbing beneath the City weren’t a secret. Everyone had heard about someone’s cousin’s brother’s friend who’d found an old mineshaft the Ministry of Natural Resources hadn’t sealed off, and that cousin’s friend swore it was the one Protheus had discovered magic in because of the things they’d seen down there. People found ways in from time to time. But if you were getting in, that tunnel was either decommissioned, never had any magic to mine in the first place, or you were headed for a quick trip to Rosemuth and never getting out. The City ran on magic. No other country had it, and the City Council intended to keep it that way. All operating mines were only ever touched by the rigs way Southeast, and the whole operation—every in and out, every machine, every person coming within a mile of spitting distance—was watched by top-secret all-around no-escape no-hiding security.

But far as Fletcher knew, none of those caves were alive. None led out onto a cliff made of ivory-ish rock under a starry night sky with two moons. Nobody ever mentioned that cage.

Ostes was alive though. Secrets were out now. A new gang meant war, meant Fletcher’d get paid to fight the battles. Until then, it was all someone else’s problem.

He rubbed his nose, and his hand came away red. Dimly, he could hear whispering, and the slow, inexorable footfalls of a giant.

A skinny man, looking like he was coming back from his factory shift and staring at the ground, slammed into Fletcher and grunted, “Watch it!”

Fletcher grabbed the guy by the throat. The man’s eyes went wide, first with fear, then terror when he saw who he was dealing with. His pallid, blue-tinted City complexion went pale pale pale.

“S-sorry, Mister Neverflinch,” the guy choked out. “Sorry! Please!” He looked familiar. Lots of people looked familiar when you got around like Fletcher did.

He let go of the guy’s throat and shoved him hard in the chest. The skinny man fell with a splash. Fletcher kicked him hard in the side until he was sure a rib or two had been cracked, then kept walking.

He hadn’t missed the rush. Stewpot roiled and churned with more people than should be let in one place. Smells assaulted him as he forced his way through the overcrowded plaza. The comforting aroma of fresh steamed buns vied with juicy roasting meat fought with the sour tang of too many unwashed people all marinading in the rich, ever-present baking-sugar smell of magic. Voices screamed out from the stacked slot-stalls and arm-span wide countertops ringing the plaza—the second, third, and fourth levels reachable by steep, rusty metal stairs threatening to collapse under all the people jammed butt to belly. Anything anyone said got crushed under every other sound.

Of all the all the subsets of crowds, the one around Auntie Lai’s was both the largest and the most organized. Nobody waved fistfuls of money or forced their way to the front. Everyone would wait their turn or face her wrath.

Steam billowed across the stall’s counter. Inside the narrow kitchen, a gangly boy with a shaven head frantically searching through stacked steamers. Each bun he pulled was tossed blindly over his shoulder to land in one of several big woven baskets. A girl with red hair pulled buns from the baskets before wrapping them in the corresponding-colored paper and delivering them to the front. The girl had two arms, both on her right side.

At the front counter, calm as a statue at noon in summer, was Auntie Lai.

Fletcher’s stomach fluttered.

People stared as he strode up. Factory workers with skin speckled blue where masks or goggles or gloves weren’t enough covering. Janaela and Miri from the Happiest Bed House, just gotten off work and starving for a recovery meal. Like a scene out of dream, Yuta and Ruby of the Last Honors chatted amicably with Immanuel of the Southern Crop’s Blight. Grim Ezekiel Grimm, founder of the Grimm Wardens, stood behind Catalina Nogelan. Both pretended the other was not there. Catalina looking like a hangover, as usual. Grim Grimm looking like his mom never taught him to smile, with his long grey hair, in his too-big khaki shirt, weird-lumpy along the back and arms. Everyone liked to guess what those lumps were, but no one really knew. No one really knew anything with Grim Ezekiel Grimm.

Catalina made bleary eye contact with Fletcher and cocked her head in surprise, then gave a sly wave. She was one of his regulars at the Bed House. She was also Ñetal’s little sister, which meant not being picked for that morning’s job. Lucky her.

All around, folks who normally wouldn’t be this close without guns or knives drawn talked and laughed and shared their morning together. That was Stewpot. The round of food stalls and restaurants was truce territory. Happiness wasn’t easy in the Stacks. Everyone deserved a meal in peace.

Steeling himself, Fletcher put on his best, “don’t wanna chat” scowl. Nobody tried. Like Mekuthiel returning up the River, the crowd parted around him. He could hear their conversations stop. He felt hot and cold all at the same time. He swallowed hard. Then he was at the counter and Auntie Lai was looking up at him. Her face all crags and laugh wrinkles. She barely reached Fletcher’s belly, her knobby fingers quick and rheumy eyes sharp.

“What,” she hissed in Ghulanese, blue as brain-freeze smile going sour, “do you want?” The shop’s two workers stopped what they were doing to watch. All around him, voices were dying. Everyone stepped back.

“Hi, Auntie,” he replied, also in Ghulanese.

“What do you want?” she repeated.

“Got some money. Wanted to come by and pay reparations.”

“I do not want your blood money.”

“Everything’s blood money.” He sounded like a child arguing with, well, his Auntie. Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out the coins he’d coughed up earlier. They were still sticky. He should have found some soap.

She switched to City, her eyes never leaving his, making sure her voice was loud enough for everyone to hear. “You deaf? Head get hit too hard on one of your jobs? No money from you! I tell you last time and time before. I tell you every time! Nothing from you! Go away! Shai, shai!” She waved him off like a fly. Fletcher placed the coins on the counter in a neat stack. Slowly, she pinched one between her thumb and forefinger. “What I do with this? You think this fix everything? This bring back Lai Xiao Dan? This bring back my daughter? No. No. Nothing from you, Fletcher Neverflinch!” He tried to remember the way she used to say his name, and couldn’t. Back when it was him and Xiao Dan burning their hands on steaming buns. Back when Auntie Lai would yank his blanket off before the sun even got up and drag him by one foot off the little cot she’d saved up to buy for him. Back when she’d spend nights talking poetic about the place she’d get up in Highgreen for the three of them, one day, when she had enough coin. Back before anyone called him Neverflinch.

“Please keep it,” he said softly, turning to go.

A coin struck the back of his head.

He kept his shoulders back, chin up, “don’t say a word” blazing on his face like his own personal branding. No one spoke. No one would mention it. Overhead, the sun was getting high. His first appointment at the Happiest Bed House was soon—some whiteeth from Watershed who paid Madam Mini too much for letting him sneak in the back door. Stomach growling, empty pockets heavy, Fletcher started the trek away from home. He could smell Auntie Lai’s all the way out of Stewpot.

Later, he’d get the payment from that morning’s job. Maybe that wouldn’t be enough. Maybe the job after that wouldn’t be either, and the job after that, and after that too. But one day Auntie Lai would take the money. Cause that was all there really was down here. Just sweating in the shadows of lives never lived, stacking treasure high as the sky until it collapsed in the breeze. One day Auntie Lai would take the coin. Maybe then she wouldn’t look at him with so much hate. Fletcher would get his steamed bun with custard in the middle, and it would taste sweet like golden days.

His chest tightened, and he swung into an alley as another coughing fit came on. The hole in his chest tore a little bit wider.

One day. One day.