A TEENAGE boy made of rags and dirt swerves and dodges through the busy street of a third-ring neighborhood, past shops of pottery and trinkets, under hung laundry and through groups of hagglers and angry old men with canes. He is chased by the ferrymen who have discovered the orphans and their hideout. He is the only one they have not caught. The others, both boys and girls as young as three and as old as sixteen, are already loaded into the death wagon, their hands tied to the bars. They are all crying for mercy.
The last orphan moves quickly this way and that. He is good at hiding and evading capture. He has hidden many years. But he is out of breath and slowing down. He glances about, searching for his next step. He took care of the younger boys and girls. He was a good older brother to them, and he liked the position. But he let them down. Somehow he became relaxed, not believing he could ever be caught.
He let down his guard and a ferryman who, no doubt, was hiding in the shadows followed him back to the hideout. Now they were all going to be carted off to the ninth ring. He would cry the first chance he got, but this is not the time for it. He says his apologies in a mantra as he runs: “I’m so sorry, boys. I’m so sorry, my sisters.” He names each boy and girl specifically. He sees each small tear-streaked face. “I’m so sorry.”
He has lost the ferrymen who were chasing him. He isn’t certain how, but he’s done it. He slows now and hides behind a large basket of damp clothing. He catches his breath. The people in the streets mill about, oblivious to him. He stops himself from breaking down into tears. His family, his brothers and sisters, are being carted away. He will never see them again. But he cannot think on it.
He cannot linger. He turns to run, but his face comes into immediate contact with the ferryman’s chest, as if he had formed from the shadows. He is a street demon with deep soulless eyes. He has the smell of the obscurities, of stale or lost things.
“I’m sorry, boy,” the ferryman says in a voice that carries no hint of emotion. “It’s time you stopped running.”
The boy begs, but his pleading falls as if on deaf ears. Cayden Lothair looks unmoved as the boy’s wrists are tied, and he is tossed into the death wagon with the others. The children are on their way to the ninth ring.
WE WATCH Cayden. He walks through the streets of the Immortal City ever mindful yet never fearful of the rules. Because that is what he is, after all. The rules are all he knows or remembers: the Law of GOD. His brown hair falls loosely around his broad shoulders, over his dark eyes so that he resembles an animal stalking its prey, head down but eyes up. He wears black leather boots and a long, faded leather coat. Hidden in the coat are the hook and the scythe every ferryman carries in case more deadly force is required. He prefers shadows to men, and he knows he is one of the best ferrymen the city has ever known. Even other ferrymen are cautious around him.
He nods to a young woman in an orange wrap as he stalks a lesser street of the third ring. She follows him to the ruin he temporarily calls his home, a flat on the second floor of a multileveled death trap. She does what he pays her to do. Nothing special. No noise or signs of any real affection. No signs of life at all. They are just going through the motions. A patterned existence. He pays her and she leaves.
He goes to the broken window, which looks out onto the street below. It offers a good view for what he has come here to do. The family who just recently lived here was quickly resettled so Cayden could have this view. A child’s doll with a painted-on smile still sits in the corner. He pulls up a chair, swings his feet onto the desktop with a heavy thump, and keeps watch out the window. Across the street, he sees no sign of the man he has been assigned to watch. Good for him, Cayden thinks. A few more days—a few more hours, to be true—and he’ll have to say good-bye to everything he ever knew. Let him have it.
In his travels as a ferryman, Cayden has observed an elegance to the older areas of the Immortal City that the first ring could never aspire to. The structures may be old and crumbling, they may be dirty and packed too full of squalor, but they have life in them. These places have been truly lived in. They are not the superficial edifices of the first ring. Cayden wouldn’t live in the first ring if GOD ordered him to. Here in the lesser rings, where residences have been built into and onto each other for centuries until parts of the city resembles wasps’ nests; this is where he feels most comfortable. There are shadows here. Give him the muddy and polluted waters of the River Hung over the purified spill of the first ring any day. The River Hung still sings of some purity, even if that is an impossibility.
“Don’t let GOD hear you think that,” he says quietly.
Life in the lesser rings is so much more believable. The struggle makes it so. The everyday struggle those in the first ring have forgotten. Why, the first ring itself is even built on higher ground so they may look down their noses at the others. A ramp leads down into the second ring offering an easy processional out of the first for the privileged. Yet here in the third, having something to eat at night can be cause for a celebration during lean months. In many districts, the food is digestible at best.
“Yet, the worse the food,” says Cayden, “the louder their shouts of celebration.”
What gets them through?
“Hope. That magnificent old bitch, Hope.”
We had forgotten about her. She shows up in the strangest places. And she is radiant.
Cayden watches the residence across the street, his face as solemn as the great statue of Iol, which still stands, though maimed, in a fountain of filthy water nearby. The father had been smart. He was getting very ill and trying desperately to hide it. But gypsies are nomads and live their lives in the open. There came a point when the father, named Aidan, feared he could no longer hide his illness. Some non-gypsy folk took pity on him and offered he and his son, Key, a place to hide in the bottom floor of a towering heap. But that type of secret cannot be kept for very long. Their whereabouts were discovered, and Cayden moved onto the street to keep an eye on them. GOD needed proof of deceit. Proof can discourage revolution.
Cayden sees the little boy’s messy brown head of hair pop out from inside the door of the heap. The boy, his face filled with wide-eyed wonder and fear, looks around quickly, biting his lower lip. He is a newborn fawn, watchful of the hunter. His father has taught him to be cautious, the first lesson children learn here. Key sprints from the door, quick and barely noticed by the crowd. Cayden has thought for some days now the child would make an accomplished ferryman. The boy goes darting through the streets and is soon lost to Cayden’s sight. It would be pointless to try to follow Key. He is a gypsy. He can easily slide through the cracks and holes no adult can see.
Cayden tried to follow Key once, but the boy knows the city better than any child Cayden has yet come across. He is immune to confusion, the mazes of built-upons offering him no problems at all. They seemed to move for the boy. Cracks in walls impossible to squeeze through even for him, opened wider so Key could slide through them. Key goes anywhere, does anything, for his father, bringing back food from as far away as the forbidden and supposedly hidden Shrine of Iol, where pilgrims leave daily breads and fruits in supplication.
Cayden waits in his apartment for the boy to return. He cannot wait outside. Aidan and those helping him would know something was going on. They know they are being investigated or else they would not hide. And while Cayden blends in well with the people of the lesser rings, a stranger is still a stranger and he cannot hide in shadows during the day.
The boy returns. It was a short sprint. Under his tattered shirt, he most likely carries a vial of medicine from one of the street doctors, paid for with anything from a piece of fruit to an old trinket. Gypsies all have their favored street doctors, usually one they distrust slightly less than the others. Still, Aidan and Key chose and trusted badly. This street doctor had talked very easily to Cayden. All he required was a few drinks.
Aidan is doing everything right. He’s staying well out of sight and as quiet as air. If Key isn’t picked up as an orphan, this life could go on for a while. At least until Aidan dies naturally. That is, if they had not already been discovered.
Cayden realizes, of course, he needs to swoop in and pick up the pair. It is his job. He is the bringer of death. He has already watched them longer than he should. GOD’s good favor shines down on him for capturing the enemy and apostate, Colm Archer, but that will only last so long.
“And you don’t want to get got by Queen Mags, do ya, boy?” he says to himself. “She’s in the area, and you know how she loves a good ball loppin’.”
ROSSA BOUADICA stands in the shadows of the doorway until the boy returns, her hands on her hips and her emerald eyes ever cautious. She is busty, her ample breasts serving as protection of a large and tender heart. Age has not dared touch her appeal or her figure. She has a cascade of long, red curls that are the envy of many a wigmaker.
She sways in the shadows. She knows when she is being watched. She has an intuition for it. Looking the way she does, it’s a feeling she has had many years to fine tune. The streets are busy today. She hopes Key is careful. Many new strangers are about, and some of them are less than savory.
She has known the child from infancy. Rossa was a good friend of the boy’s mother, Claire. Claire saved Rossa’s life years ago from a back-alley rapist when they were younger. She killed the man. This, in turn, cost Claire her life in the five rings. The rapist was a man of GOD, many of whom travel to the lesser rings to satisfy their desires. Of course, they ran, bringing Aidan and Key with them to the backwoods of the third ring. But they were eventually caught, and Claire was carted off to the ninth. Rossa swore she would look after Aidan and the boy. She blames herself for Claire’s death, for she was surely dead by now. She apologizes to Aidan whenever she sees him. Not with words, but with her eyes. Since that attack in the alley, Rossa has taught herself to fight.
She heads to the back of the heap, passing under leaky walls and foul stenches. She resides on the ground floor with her extended family and above her are miles of tenants and rotting history. Once she leaves the front kitchen area, the light in the home hastily diminishes. She cannot afford many candles, so she uses them sparingly. The way is best known by touch and smell. Her father’s area smells of onions, her brother Frulu’s space has more of a rotten-egg smell. She passes into a long, narrow hallway made of stone, then through larger rooms where members of her extended family rest. There are no children here. None but Key. Her line has nearly been wiped out. They are breathing their last and they blame her for this, for she has refused to bear any children.
She passes through hole-riddled curtains that divide one area of living from the next. The Immortal City has no privacy. Not really. But there is darkness, and there is dreaming.
She comes to the very back room of the house. It is the darkest and the most secret. It smells of illness. She lights the stunted candle that sits in the small cubby hole in the wall beside the doorway. Aidan is lying on the floor on a pile of blankets, as still as a sarcophagus.
“You are awake,” Rossa says. She sees his watery eyes glisten.
“Aye, I’m feeling better today,” Aidan replies in a tone that is not at all encouraging. “I donna feel as though there is as such a sizable monster on my chest as there usually be.”
He rises to a sitting position, perhaps too quickly, and falls back down. Rossa rushes to him.
“Be careful, ya silly basterd,” she says. “How will you recover if you treat yourself so? Just you rest.”
“Dearest Rossa.” He kisses her knuckles. “We both know there is little hope for any kind of recovery.” He coughs and the echo travels from his chest until it fills the room.
“Hush,” she says. “It is a flu. A bug. What do we do with bugs? We squish ’em.”
“It is Death.”
She knows this is the truth, so she does not protest. She merely bites her lip and brushes back his hair.
“Will you take care of Key when I am gone, Rossa? He needs a family. I do not want him to be an orphan, to be carted away.”
“Hush.” She puts her hand on his shoulder. “We have been family since his birth. I am his mother now. He will have a place with me as if he were my own child. We have discussed this before. Claire… she was my… sister.”
Aidan smiles in relief and relaxes. “You are a kind woman, Rossa.”
Rossa watches him. He was once a strong, stout man. Not what one would call handsome, but attractive in other ways. When Claire was taken, it nearly destroyed him, but in time he mended. Then he and the boy went out adventuring in the Immortal City until just recently when he came to her, asking for help. Aidan loved life when he was well. He loved food and music and bringing up the sun in the morning. Music he loved most of all. Now, covered in sweat, he was as close to death as Rossa had ever seen him. She feels his forehead, and he groans at the touch. The man is on fire. He’ll burn to cinders.
The boy comes rushing into the room, breathing heavily and pounding on his drum. He pulls a small vial of medication from a pocket in his tattered shirt and hands it to Rossa, smiling with pride. His hope breaks her heart. He has sold his shoes to get his father this useless drug. She takes it and kisses him on the forehead.
“I’ll go make you both something to eat,” she says as she rises. “I’ll cook this fine medicine into your father’s meal so he won’t even be able to taste it.”
The boy kneels beside his father’s pallet.
“Why don’t you play something for him?” Rossa says, gesturing to the small drum wrapped around his shoulder. This is Key’s only possession. His only toy. It was a gift from Aidan two years back, and the boy has worn it every day.
Key seems to delight in this idea.
“But not too loud, love,” Rossa reminds him. “We don’t want to wake the snovelfarks.”
As she leaves the boy with his dying father, she hears the soft smacking of little hands on stretched animal pelt. It is not a random beat. The boy has real talent, and she hums a wordless lullaby as she walks to the kitchen. Rossa finds she is crying.
EVENING DESCENDS on the Immortal City. The street lanterns are lit. Key has taken his drum and is strolling the streets, looking for fun or trouble: frouble. His father seemed to enjoy the song Key played for him. This lifts the boy’s spirits. He left Rossa’s place with a smile. Rossa did not see him go. If she had, she would have stopped him. Especially at this hour.
Key taps on the drum with his index finger as he walks, looking in wonder at the sights around him. He sees jugglers with fire, lewd puppet shows, and graceful dancers in colorful rags. Mingling with the dusk, the smells of the city are more fragrant at night. Sweets are sweeter. They even smell sticky. Breads are carried steaming and fresh to tables, and meats cook in the open at small eateries his father could never afford.
He stops in front of a café to watch a young couple. They catch his eye because they seem such an odd pairing. The blondish man is very animated and very clean. He dresses in a sharp waist coat, a clean white shirt, and a top hat, and he smiles and gestures most flagrantly at times. He must be from the first ring. What he is doing here is anyone’s joke. The other man, clearly a gypsy from his dusty attire, has his back to Key. His hair is thick and black, and he sits in a slouch with his arms folded on the table. The blond man clearly means to impress, but the gypsy merely mumbles in return. Key decides they are having an argument.
“We’ll be happy there,” the blond man says rather loudly. “We’ll be safe. My new position in the first ring is going to be the best thing for all of us. I promise ya.”
The dark-haired one mumbles something that chases the smile from his companion’s face.
The blond man reaches for the gypsy’s hand. “Gran will be well cared for. She’ll want for nothing. She might even get better.”
The gypsy jerks to attention, as if the statement was an accusation. He looks around to ascertain who, if anyone, heard it. Then he hushes the blond. Everyone knows being ill in the Immortal City is a sin.
Key has wandered too close to the café as far as the owner is concerned. The boy is shooed away with a broom. Before he leaves, the blond man sees him and gives him a wink, throwing him a large slice of bread from the table. Key catches it and grins. Frouble achieved. He runs off with the warm bread between his teeth. It is the best tasting bread he has ever had. He stores some in his shirt pocket to share with his father and Rossa.
The city at night is aglow. Campfires and lanterns line the streets. Key finds a gypsy band to watch. They play a lively number on stringed instruments and a flute as a lovely pair of girls dance in cheap silks enlivened by elaborate designs. Key does not wait for an invitation to join in. He merely begins beating his drum harder and in time with the sprightly music. The gypsies smile and encourage him. Key sits on the ground nearest the guitarist and plays along. There is much laughter and merriment in the dark when GOD is not watching. The music helps to drown out the rumblings of unfed stomachs.
They applaud Key and slap him on the back with mighty guffaws when the number is over. He enjoys their gratitude, their tousling of his hair, and their invitations to return the next evening. His smile brightens the night.
Yet he starts for home when he sees a woman watching him from the crowd. He cannot miss her. She steps right in front of him, a rotund white spirit. She is a Sister of GOD. The gypsies go quiet.
“Nice playing, my boy,” she says. She looks about. “Where be your parents?”
Her words are kind, but her voice is tinged with rotten juices. The smile falls from Key’s face as he takes a step back from her.
“Why do you look at me so?” she says. “I am no boogeyman. Do I seem like the boogeyman? Like the snovelfark?”
She drips venom all over him. He wants nothing to do with her acidity, yet she seems to crowd around him like a fat cloud. He feels closed in. Caught.
“Key!”
Rossa’s voice rips the cloud apart.
“Key,” Rossa says. She wears a shawl to cover her breasts. “I have been looking for you, child. You should not have gone out so late.”
Rossa looks at Mags Hensil as if she knows who she is, though she has never seen her before this night. Mags’s painted white face cracks.
Key runs to Rossa.
“You should keep a closer eye on the child,” says Mags. “There be all sort of beasts about at night.”
“Yes, Sister,” Rossa says. She and Key turn and walk away. “You need to stay with me,” Rossa says. “Do not wander. At least for a few nights. You hear me?”
He nods. No more frouble.
“Good boy,” Rossa says. She ruffles his hair. His arms are wrapped around her waist. He wonders if the large, painted woman is still watching them.
MAGS HENSIL watches the redheaded woman leave with the child. Her face relaxes from its false smile to a more comfortable scowl. The gypsies are making her uncomfortable. She heads for an alleyway entrance and stands, waiting and watching.
“He is not an orphan,” says Cayden, stepping from the shadows just enough to be heard by Mags, but not enough to be clearly seen.
Mags looks over her shoulder at him. “Lurking, are we?” she says. “He is not an orphan. That is true.”
Cayden is a quiet wall.
Mags does not move to venture near him. “You’ve done well today. You’ve rid the city of some pests, I hear. The ninth ring will cleanse them of their sins.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a compliment, boy. Just a fact. Here are a couple other facts. You need to bathe. I can smell that whore you had from here. And then you need to do your job, ferryman.”
“Sister?”
“We have more than enough proof. Bring in the father and the child. This is not like with Colm Archer. You did not need to build a relationship with this man to gain his trust. Aidan and the child should have been tossed into the wagon days ago…” She watches her volume. She does not want anyone to hear her.
“Sister, I was only—”
“Get it done, ferryman!”
“Yes, Sister,” he growls.
“Watch yourself, Cayden Lothair. One might begin to think you were developing feelings for the lesser folk and the sinners.”
“I will bring them in, Sister, the father and the boy.”
Mags chuckles. Her whole body shakes. “Boy? If that child is a boy, so am I.”
Cayden steps closer. “Sister?”
“Anyone with the sight of GOD can see it as plain as day. That child may prefer to live as male, but I have no doubt he is a third-sexer.”
WE FIND interest in the pair the child saw at the café. They may be of some importance to us. We follow them home.
Duncan and Lawl lie in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. Duncan is the blond one. He is stream-lined and clean-cut, his back ever straight and proud. He is a trusting man. Lawl is shaggier of hair and attitude. He slouches and is often incoherent. He is darker in every way, both seeable and unknowable. But they are of one soul. This one night every two weeks, they can lie together and find bliss. They meld. Every night until their next engagement is fitful.
Duncan has a place of his own in the second ring. Tonight, however, they sleep in Lawl’s cramped, two-room compartment in the third. It is high up and pushed deep inside the guts of a stinking ancient structure of fanged latticework and cackling stairs. Lawl’s aunt Gran, his only living relation, sleeps in the other of the two rooms where the chamber pot is located. On the days Gran is feeling better and wants to be outside, Lawl helps her through the maze of rooms and hallways to one of the frail hanging-tooth balconies that look out over the city. It is dangerous for her to be seen, but she needs fresh air from time to time. Gran’s feet have not touched true earth in many years, though. Gran is Lawl’s full-time job.
Duncan kisses Lawl gently. Lawl is half asleep. “Think about it, won’t ya?” Duncan says.
“Think about what?” Lawl says, his eyes still closed. Lawl mumbles. He does not space his words. He barely moves his lips. That is how he speaks, as if he is uncertain of anything he says, so he does not want to speak it too forcefully. Duncan finds this endearing.
“About what we were talking of earlier at the café. About you moving to the second ring to live with me. Gran, too.”
Lawl opens his eyes. The sparse candlelight allows Duncan to see the wells of tender darkness there.
“I’ll be making more than I’ve ever made now that I’m working at the Glass Halls. Cleaners are well paid, ya see. And who knows? Maybe we can get a place closer to the first ring. A nice big place with a courtyard for Gran. And you… why, you’ve got a great mind for makin’ things, for fixin’ broken things. Maybe you could open a business from our house.” He is all smiles when he speaks his dreams aloud.
Lawl brings his hand to Duncan’s cheek. “You’re a dreamer, love,” he says. “I love you for it, but the laws of society don’t allow movement like that. Not anymore. You grew up better off than me. Maybe you can dream. But I can’t afford to. It would break my heart.”
Duncan does not like such talk. His eyes moisten with tears. “I’ll get us a new life,” he says. “You wait and see. We’ll figure it out.”
“Gran is sick,” Lawl says “The fact that we have not reported her ourselves makes us unholy sinners against GOD. Living here far from the first ring, we can get away with it. But we cannot move any closer. They’d throw her in a death wagon.”
Duncan has been through this argument before. He knows the danger of being with Lawl, but to be without him is a horrifying, unnatural thought. They kiss tenderly and embrace even tighter.
Gran awakens in the next room, screaming from a nightmare. Lawl goes to her. Duncan knows Lawl does not see it as a burden to care for his aunt. She is family, and she raised him. He feels shame for it, but sometimes at night when his arms are empty, Duncan thinks it might be better if Gran would die. He shuts his eyes on the thought.
He forgot to mention to Lawl that he saw some ferrymen in the area today. He wonders how he could have forgotten such a thing. But it is late, so he decides he’ll tell Lawl of it in the morning.
We appear in Duncan’s dreams tonight. He is high on scaffolding, cleaning the Glass Halls on a night with the moon hung low and full, as big and luminous as he has ever seen it. Not a single cloud is in the sky. The moon distracts him from his work. He seems to be the only cleaner, the only being, in the entire city. He looks around in awe. He is higher than he has ever been. As high as GOD’s Tower. The stars wink at him.
And my, he can see so well. For miles and miles. Nothing moves. The city seems abandoned and pristine. And then, across the rings, farther than any human has the ability to see, Duncan sees the beauty of the Garden of the Passions. He sees the moonlit rivers curving through the green hills and past the barrows. Red and gold flowers climb the columns of the temples, and lilacs crown the statuary of the Passions.
He shivers. We appear to him as Abrythnia’s twin brother, Brachnol, the god of strength, naked and virile. Our penis, ever erect, points to victory. In ancient times when gods walked the world, men could not look upon him for too long, else they would dissolve into fatal erotic self-satisfaction and forget to do anything but dream of him and spill their seed on the ground.
Duncan sees another stand beside us in the Garden, a human woman of dark skin and dressed in a white gown. He has seen her before at the Glass Halls. She works inside the building, and she arrives in the morning just as he is leaving. She is one of the few who has ever acknowledged him with a greeting. He does not know her name, but we think he will. She is Gemma Kerr.