3

It’s at this point in my narrative that I’d like to pause for a bit and explain a little about my circumstances.

See, I lived on the top floor of a humble but lovely little apartment building owned by an even lovelier lady named Nora Promise. I don’t believe that’s the name her parents gave her, but it was the name she used for herself, and when a woman tells you that her surname is “Promise,” you can either accept that or you can get your teeth knocked out of your skull.

Miss Nora was a businesswoman, and not just of the landlording variety. Lord no—in fact, calling her a landlord was also liable to get your teeth knocked out of your skull. There was a myriad different ways to get your teeth knocked out of your skull where Miss Nora was concerned, you see. She owned a finely-crafted set of iron knuckles that she was always looking to show off. Custom made, in fact, and as she liked to explain, they was purchased with the first month’s proceeds from her primary business venture.

In her youth, Miss Nora’d fallen on difficult circumstances, as many young ladies in the Muck Quarter tend to do. And like so many of those young ladies, to make ends meet she turned to selling the only thing a woman has that men are always interested in buying. Soon enough she found herself under the sway of a nasty fella who fancied himself a manager for such women, and she was quick to ingratiate herself to him and became his favorite.

He liked her so much, in fact, that one night he got particularly drunk, married his prized whore, and then promptly took a terrible tumble off the docks and drowned. Awful accident, that, I’m sure y’all would agree. Truly a terrible tragedy that no one could have seen coming, least of all his new widow, who’d just inherited all his business ventures and I’m sure was quite torn up about her dear husband’s sudden and unexpected demise.

She took over, and under her watch the girls started to thrive. So did the business. Turns out there are plenty of fellas out there who prefer the company of clean, healthy, and happy women. Her bold business philosophy really gave the brothel an edge over the competition is what I’m saying.

Now before all this, Miss Nora had been a little girl, and that little girl grew up next to my daddy. Granny never did approve of the young lady’s choice of vocation, but that old lady weren’t nothing but polite, so she never let it show. Miss Nora had a certain fondness for my family, and when we fell on hard times, she was there to lend us a hand.

And when times got even harder, she pulled some strings and got me a meeting with Eric Etterna. But I do believe I’m getting ahead of myself a bit.

Anyway, my apartment was in her building, on the floor above her storage area, which was in turn above the floor where her girls made their living, a floor above the lobby where they met with their clientele. As a family friend, I received a small discount on my rent, with the understanding that I’d be down there to help deal with anyone who got too rowdy or violent should the need arise. Thankfully it never did come to that—y’all may have noticed I ain’t exactly the largest or most imposing fella. My talents tend to lie more in avoiding confrontations than ending them.

The morning following my freaky dream, after I finally gave up on getting back to sleep, I washed up and headed downstairs to the ground floor. Miss Nora had an exquisite dining room with a beautifully carved antique table—I’m almost positive it’s the most expensive piece of furniture she owned—and I had a standing invitation to join her and the girls for breakfast whenever I wished.

“Morning, Jackson,” she greeted me as I walked in. Miss Nora was sitting at the head of the table, where she always sat during mealtimes. A big plate of flapjacks was in front of her, and her dark hair was pulled back in a tight and serious bun even at this early hour. If not for the light but noticeable scar that ran across her left brow, she would have looked the very image of a motherly governess.

’Course I never would’ve told her that to her face, on account of I was rather attached to my teeth and preferred that they stay in my noggin.

“Good morning, Miss Nora,” I said, and I sat down toward the middle of the table. The girl across from me, Lilly, had her nose in a chapbook and had hardly touched her flapjacks at all. I looked to the girl I’d sat down beside. “Morning, Rita.”

There are lots of girls who end up in the sexual profession because of poor circumstances, but sometimes you get a woman who absolutely thrives in it. Rita was one of them women. She kept her hair in a blonde bob and on that morning she was wearing a gown with a neckline that plunged as low as a neckline could be without breaking any decency laws. I had no objections to her garb, as Rita had also been blessed with the sort of bosom that men might go to war over, and getting to see it was always a pleasure.

“Jackson,” she said with a nod. Rita was well aware that I was eyeing her assets, and she was also well aware that I couldn’t afford to do more than that. Well, I could’ve after the job I just did, but a hundred Crowns was two months of rent, and throwing it away for an hour of sexual escapades was not something I was prepared to do.

Yeah, y’all heard me right: a hundred Crowns. Rita was the only girl there who was gutsy enough to charge that much, and she was also probably the only one who could away with it.

“You’ve been out late these past two nights,” Miss Nora noted. “I’m surprised you’re up this early.”

“So am I,” I said. “But I was paid well for my last job, and I suppose the excitement of it kept me up.” It wouldn’t do to worry anyone about my strange dreams, I figured; especially seeing as how I was pretty sure said dreams had been about the Wild God.

“Thinking of what you’re gonna spend it all on?” Miss Nora asked. “I understand if that money is burning a hole in your pocket, but you better not go throwing it away, young man. Save it! Your grandmother sure didn’t want you living in a whorehouse all your life.”

“I think you could stand to spend a little though,” said Lilly, not looking up from her book. She had wavy brown hair, and a thick pair of spectacles on her face. Her lips curled up into a small smile. “I’ll give you a discount.”

“Well, that’s appreciated, Lilly. Thank you.” I raised an eyebrow at Rita.

She laughed. “I don’t do discounts.”

By this time, Quinn had come out of the kitchen and set a steaming plate of flapjacks in front of me. She’s a quiet one, Quinn—always has been, long as I’ve known her. I got the impression that she worked the floor less often than any of the other girls, and instead tended to focus on cooking up food for everyone. I reckon somebody had to.

“Thank you, Quinn.”

She gave me a nod, brushed her black hair out of her eyes, then disappeared back into the kitchen.

All in all, there were a little over a dozen girls who worked for Miss Nora, but you’d be lucky to see more than three or four of them out and about before noon. Considering how late they worked, it was only natural that most of them would sleep their mornings away.

“Speaking of work,” said Miss Nora, “Eric came by last night asking for you. He said he’s got a job.”

If it’d been anyone else, I’d’ve probably paid them no mind. I reckoned that the payout from the Cerenite was big enough for me to take it easy for a bit. But as I’m sure most of y’all are aware, only a fool turns down an Etterna.

His great great grandpappy had been one of the convicts brought down here to work on New Alms, back when the city was nothing but a twinkle in the eye of some Cerenite Abbot with too much time on his hands. Old Carlton Etterna worked hard to earn his freedom, then used all the connections he’d made in prison to set up a mighty successful smuggling enterprise. By the time New Alms was well-established, so was the Etterna crime family, and to this very day they got their fingers in every sort of scheme and vice y’all can imagine.

My family was just me, my Granny, and my little sister Therese when Miss Nora introduced me to Eric. My oldest brother had run off to join the Cerenites—last I heard, he was scrubbing latrines in some abbey up north, so I don’t reckon he did much to stand out among his peers. My other brother decided to elope with one of Miss Nora’s former employees, and they left town talking big talk about striking rich and moving on up in the world. I ain’t heard from either of them since, though I like to imagine they’ve gotten some new identities and hold lavish parties for rich folk to attend in some city somewhere. It’s probably a better story than whatever actually happened to them anyway.

As for Eric, he was only a few years older than me, and at the time he was running a small gang of thieves under his father’s employ. I’d been pickpocketing since I was little—not like there’s much other ways for a child in the Muck Quarter to help his family finances—and I’d always had a talent for the craft. Me and Therese also used to climb all over the buildings up and down Earl Street, no matter how many times Granny scolded us for doing so. So when Miss Nora heard Eric was looking for new blood for his thieving crew, she figured I’d be a good candidate.

Turns out I was. I ran with Eric’s crew for six good years, from the time I was thirteen to nineteen, learning the fine art of thievery and constantly working to improve my skill at it. Once Eric’s old man judged that he was ready for a higher position in the organization, the crew was disbanded and we all went our separate ways. I mostly went freelance, but me and Eric kept in touch and he occasionally tossed jobs my way, for old time’s sake.

So once I finished up my breakfast, I said goodbye to the girls, kissed Miss Nora on the cheek, and headed on out.

It was too early to go see Eric. If I knew him—and I absolutely did, as I’ve just explained in detail—he wouldn’t be up until well past noon, much like most of the girls at home. So instead of making my way to Lowery Road and Etterna Manor, I strolled on over to Ristand Lane, where a woman named Fiona ran the finest damn bakery in the city.

The morning sun was shining down through the haze as I walked down the roads of New Alms. If any of y’all ain’t sure what I mean by that, then go take a stroll outside the city some time. This place pumps out so much steam and smoke that there’s a constant haze all over it, and it’s easy to get so used to its presence that you don’t even realize it’s there until you see clear air for the first time. And when the sun catches that fog just so, the haze takes on this sort of golden hue, and the whole of the city looks like a maze of bronze and copper sculptures.

On that particular morning, the sun and the haze were doing their thing, and the air was thick with the smell of brine coming off the water. Even though it was so early, the humidity was already out in full force, and I’d broken a sweat by the time I turned my first corner. It wouldn’t be long before the mosquitoes came buzzing in out of the bayou to seek out a buffet of human blood. On the corner of Kline and Wulrest, I passed by a work crew that was dismantling some old tin pipes off a building and unrolling some copper wires. Doubtless the building’s owner had paid to have the place disconnected from the steamworks and attached to the Cerenite’s viarc grid. It seemed like viarc power was becoming more common by the day.

Through the haze I went. I cut across an alley that was covered in soot and grime, where near-boiling water dripped out of leaky pipes and a man in torn and dirty clothes sat on the pavement playing the harmonica. We all know that New Alms is a crime-ridden place, but we tend not to think of what that means for those of us living here. New Alms was built by criminals who was promised freedom for their labor. It’s a center of trade, where the trains and rail lines meet the shipping routes of the southern seas. This could so easily have been a city of second chances, but instead most of us’re impoverished, repeating the sins of our ancestors in a desperate bid to get by. It’s a hard life in New Alms, and when you got a hard life, you just never get the chance to slow down and feel good about things. It’s always work and work and work some more until you’re too exhausted to do much else. And if you ain’t working, then you’re probably so stressed out about your lack of work that the Lord Cerenis himself could appear before you and work a miracle and you wouldn’t even notice.

But there are good things about New Alms. What trees and flower beds exist here always bloom bright and beautiful, even if the air’s hazy and hardly ever smells nice. Children are always playing in the streets, and even though walking down the wrong road could get a fella killed, there’s always people around willing to lend a helping hand as well. We in the Muck Quarter are all stuck in this together after all.

’Course I wasn’t really thinking about that sort of thing that day. Oh sure, if someone’d asked me, I’d’ve said I was definitely appreciating the good things in life, and I’d’ve believed it too. I was the proud owner of four-thousand-five-hundred Crowns, after all, and I aimed to celebrate that fact with what little family I still had left. So I strolled on down Pequin Street and crossed that bridge there that goes over the canal, and I stopped and looked out over the dark and murky water and I said to myself: “Today’s gonna be a good day.”

I remember there was these kids down there near the water. They had fishing poles and they had high hopes of catching something. Me and Therese used to climb down there to fish too, when we was little. Technically, you ain’t supposed to do that, but not even the most hard-nosed cop had ever enforced that particular law. Far as most folks were concerned, anyone fool enough to fall into the canal deserved what he got.

So I stood there and watched those kids for a bit, wondering if they might be the lucky one in a hundred who actually manages to catch something in that dirty water, and I drummed my fingers along the bridge’s railing, and I felt the vibrations in my palm of the pipes connected to the bridge pulling water up to send through to the steamworks, and I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Opened them back up few seconds later, feeling calm and happy, and I noticed that a line of hornets had perched on the rails on either side of my hands, and they was all looking right at me.

It ain’t a great thing to realize that you’re in the presence of a bunch of little bugs known for their sharp stingers and wicked tempers. There must’ve been about two dozen of the things, maybe more, all lined up and focused on me, twitching their little antennas back and forth like they were eager for something to happen. Yeah, that’s the right word for it. There really was an eagerness about them. Somehow, I was sure of it. The air around me was suddenly thick with a certain anticipation.

Well, I stepped away from that handrail right quick, and then I walked fast as I could the rest of the way cross that bridge. Whole time, I was stealing looks back at the hornets, half-expecting them to take flight and come after me. But they didn’t. They just remained on the rail, turning their bodies to watch me go.

Even when I was leaving the bridge well behind, they didn’t follow me, and I thanked Cerenis for that. But still, the strange little scene had put me right out of my good mood. I was jumpy the rest of the short way to Fiona’s—constantly looking over my shoulders, glancing up at the sky like something could drop down on me at any moment. I was absolutely certain that it was only a matter of time before a swarm of angry hornets came buzzing after me, but none ever did materialize.

By the time I got to Fiona’s, I’d nearly convinced myself that I’d imagined the whole thing. I wished I could fully convince myself of it, but my brain can be a damn stubborn thing when it wants to be. Lucky for me, the bakery was a perfect distraction.

You could always tell when you were getting close to Fiona’s. New Alms smells like a salty manure-and-grease stew on the best of days, but round that woman’s bakery there’d always be the scents of dough and sweetness in the air. The ripe odors of the city would fade into the background, and all you could smell would be the appetizing allure of bread and pastries.

It weren’t much to look at, I admit. The building was a simple block of bricks with a wooden sign out front depicting a crude drawing of a cake and the word “Fiona’s” carved over it. But the sign weren’t really what mattered; the smells drew people in better than any advertisement ever could.

I headed inside, where the smell was strongest and bestest, and the bell on the door jingled as I opened it, letting Fiona know a customer was there. Soon enough she was hurrying out of the kitchen, flour all over her apron, using a rag to wipe the dough off her hands.

“Well if it ain’t Jackson!” she exclaimed, tossing the rag down on the counter beside a basket of fresh-baked loaves. “Been a while since you saw fit to grace me with your presence!”

“Been busy,” I said with a shrug. I was smiling though, and she was smiling too. It was a hard thing to avoid smiling around Fiona.

She was a plump lady, and a sturdy one. Her red hair was usually pulled back in a ponytail while she was working, but whenever she let it down the sunlight would catch it and give her a halo like y’all ain’t never seen. That smile of hers was never a small one, and it was damn infectious. Between that and her baking, I do believe most would’ve agreed that her husband was a lucky man indeed.

“Is there a special occasion?” she asked.

“Just that I got a nice fat payout,” I said. “Figured I should use some of it to treat my nieces and nephew.”

“In that case you’ll be pleased to know that I got some lemon bars ready as of this morning. And I just pulled an apple pie out of the oven.”

“Got anything chocolate? You know how much they like that stuff.”

“Wish I did,” Fiona told me with an apologetic smile. “But there’s this bean shortage up north. Haven’t had a shipment since last month, and I used up the last of that this past week. My supplier tells me there’s a train carrying a new shipment coming in in a few days, but what with the shortage the prices are out of my reach. Some rich fella’s chefs are probably gonna snatch it all up.”

“Well, that’s a shame,” I said. “Want me to go fetch you something from that shipment? Free of charge—except maybe save a cake or two for me.”

Fiona laughed. “I appreciate the offer! But you know I like to keep things above board here, Jackson. Last thing I need is your antics getting traced back to me. Now, what’ll be hon?”

“I suppose the lemon bars and apple pie will have to do.”

“How many bars?”

“How many you got?”

She laughed again. “Now I can’t go selling them all to you, Mister Balor! Think of my business.”

So I did. I thought about her business, and then I grinned and put three Crowns on the counter. They weren’t a part of my payout—I hadn’t had the chance to get to the bank and switch the fifty-Crown coins out for smaller ones—but given what I had now I felt that I could afford to go throwing money around.

Fiona’s laughter stopped. “That pie’s only three-quarters,” she said, all serious-like. “And the bars’re an eighth-Crown each. There’s only ten of them, Jackson. Those coins’re a full Crown too much.”

“That’s alright,” I said. “Keep it. Like I said, I just got myself a big fat payout.”

“You ain’t gonna have it for long if you keep tossing money around like this.”

“Nah, that depends on how big a payout it was.” I didn’t tell her how much I’d actually been paid. By Perdition, I hadn’t given the real sum to a soul. Y’all know as well as I do what happens to folks who go around flashing their money for all to see.

In the end, Fiona accepted my Crowns with minimal fuss, and soon enough I was walking through town with a box of delicious sweets under my arm. I made my way down to my sister’s, near the edge of the Muck Quarter.

When my dear old Granny passed away, it was Therese who ended up inheriting her house. She and her husband Lonnie were the only ones in any position to do so, what with our brothers being out of town and myself bunking at a brothel while I plied my less-than-legal trade. By all rights the house should’ve gone to my father, but he’d passed away in a construction accident back when I was six years old and Therese was four. As for our mother, she’d left to rejoin her own family after deciding that four kids was enough and that life with a working man wasn’t about to get any better.

She was the biggest mistake my daddy ever made, or so Granny used to say. As a young man, he’d gone and wooed himself a rich girl who was hungry for some adventure in her life, and for rich folks there ain’t nothing more adventurous than a life of being poor. They married and lived in the Muck Quarter and she spent seven years pumping out children before realizing that she missed her life of luxury far more than she loved any of us. Well, I don’t reckon I can blame her for that—I’ve seen the way the wealthy live and I’m not sure I can say I wouldn’t’ve made the same choice in her shoes. If you got a chance for an easy life, you’re probably gonna take it.

Besides, it’s hard for me to resent someone I can’t even remember. Far as I was concerned, she was a fool for ever leaving the White Quarter for the Muck in the first place.

But my daddy? He’d been a fool in love, and I don’t reckon I can blame him for that either. Granny was helping him raise us since mom walked out when I was two, and she and Dad did the best they could. It was never fair that a woman like that would be saddled with kids like us, or that she’d be solely responsible for us after her son got crushed by falling steel, but life in this city ain’t never been a fair thing, so our family made do with what it had.

Then Peter went to join the Cerenites, Eliot ran off with some girl, Therese married a construction worker whose dad’d been a friend of our own, and finally Granny passed away. My sister and her kids were the last family I had in the city, and I tried my best to see them as often as I could, even though it was difficult since Therese didn’t approve of my living arrangements and Lonnie didn’t approve of my profession. But I’ve found that offering sweets is often a good way to keep folks civil, so I weren’t too worried about my visit going sour.

Compared to the kinds of houses I burgled, Therese’s wasn’t exactly impressive. It was a small thing; two stories crammed tight between two other houses. The paint on the front of it had been yellow once, but now was a sickly kind of white that was peeling off something fierce. Still, it was a right bit more impressive than the little room I called home, but then again that ain’t really saying much.

But one thing they did have that was genuinely impressive was a shiny new viarc-powered cooling unit. Lonnie’d gotten a nice bonus from his work a few months back, and that’d gone a long way toward paying for the thing. His home was the envy of the neighborhood, cuz his was the only house on the block with one installed. I’d reckon it was definitely an investment that paid for itself, given how hot New Alms can get in the summer.

I could see the machine as I approached. It was a blocky metal device installed on the front of the house, just beside the door, and it had these tubes coming out of it that ran up to the windows. There was this soft blue glow in the center of the machine that occasionally flickered with flares of green, and the viarc pulsed with a sort of laziness; like a sleepy cat kneading something with its paws.

Well, I don’t wanna oversell it too much—the unit was one of the less expensive ones on the market, obviously. I’d seen a few here and there in rich folk’s mansions that were much nicer and less conspicuous, and those were easily worth a dozen times as much as Lonnie’s contraption. But still, there weren’t any other families nearby that could boast even a hundred-fifty Crown unit like my sister and her husband had, so I guess Lonnie was probably top dog of the block.

Thankfully it wasn’t Lonnie who answered the door when I knocked, but my lovely sister Therese. She opened the door, and I watched her eyes widen in surprise when she saw me standing on her porch with a box of pastries in my hands.

“Jackson!” she exclaimed. “I weren’t expecting to see you today!”

“Pardon me for not messaging ahead,” I told her, and I did a little bow all fancy like. That used to always make her laugh when we was smaller, and I still sometimes acted fancy with her out of habit even though she’d long stopped thinking it was funny. “But I had these extra sweets on me and figured the kids could help make sure they all got ate.”

“Really! They’ll be running wild all day if you put all that sugar in them!”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t swing by at bedtime,” I said with a wink.

That one did earn me a laugh. “Don’t even joke!” she told me through her chuckles. “Constance refused to sleep at all last night. Just kept jumping up and down all over the hall. No idea what got into the girl! I don’t know what I’d do if she did all that a second night in a row—strangle her, maybe. A woman can only take so much.”

“Sounds like we’ll just have to make sure she don’t eat them all, then,” I said. “Make sure she splits them with her brother and sister.”

Therese’s smile faltered, which immediately put me on edge. “Jackson,” she said, and from her voice I could tell she was about to deliver some mighty heavy and terrible news. “Valerie can’t eat none of it. She’s got the Ice Flu.”

It took my brain a moment to parse her words. You never wanna hear that folks you’re close with have come down with the Ice Flu. I’d had it once or twice years ago, and I still couldn’t quite believe I’d survived. Worst experience of my life.

Damn thing killed our Granny too.

“I’m sorry,” I told my sister. Suddenly my gift of sweets was seeming like a cruel thing for my eldest niece. Ice Flu makes you cold to the touch—hence the name—but it also makes your stomach queasier than any other disease I reckon I could think of. Anything solid gets hurled right back up. It’s what kills most folks that get the disease—either they starve to death, or they puke themselves into dehydration.

“She only came down with it in the last day or two,” Therese told me. “I’m hoping that it’s just a mild case of it, but who can tell?”

“You brought her to see a physician yet?”

Therese shook her head. “You know we ain’t got the money for one.”

Without a word, I reached into my pouch and handed her one of the fifty-Crowns. Therese examined it like I’d just handed her some funky little puzzle she didn’t understand.

“Where did you...?”

“I came into some money recently.”

“Did you steal it?”

“That? Nah, I didn’t filch any coins. I was paid well for stealing something else though. Paid very well. The sweets was sort of a celebration.”

My sister stared at the coin in her hand, then shook her head. “We can’t accept this, Jackson.”

“You can,” I told her firmly. “Use it for the doctor. And medicine. And soup! Valerie’s gonna need her soup. Maybe y’all could take a vacation out of town like the rich folks do. I hear that’s a good way to fight off the Ice Flu.”

“Jackson, it’s just too much! What would Lonnie think?”

“That I’m a damn good uncle and a decent human being and he’s horribly judged my character and vocation?”

Therese closed her eyes and huffed. She knew she weren’t gonna convince me to take the money back, and I knew she didn’t really want me to. Therese was a proper lady, and propriety says you gotta try and refuse any money someone gives you, and it’s only after they insist that you can accept it—but only reluctantly, mind. That’s how the polite folks do it, and Granny raised my sister to be just about the politest woman to ever grace this city.

“Thank you,” she said at last, and she closed her fingers over the coin and slid it into some hiding place in her clothes. “Come on inside.”

Stepping over the threshold of my sister’s home was like stepping through a wall of coolness. That viarc cooling unit sure was something else. Outside was all hot and humid and the air just made me sweat like a raincloud, but once I was within the house’s walls all that sweat just made me chilly. There was clutter all over her floors, and the wallpaper was starting to peel, and the board near the door creaked and groaned whenever it got stepped on, but you’d hardly notice the old house was falling apart because that unit was so impressive.

“Now that is something else,” I said. Then a thought occurred to me. “I can’t imagine that machine’s helping Val none, though.”

“You can disable what pipes it pumps the cool air through,” Therese told me. “The cooling up in the kids’ room is shut off. Constance and Eugene is sleeping with Lonnie and me til Valerie gets better.”

If I’d thought of anything else to say, I wouldn’t’ve gotten the chance to say it anyway, cuz Constance and Eugene came zipping round the corner as if speaking their names had summoned the little maniacs. Looked like they was playing tag by the way they was running, but they came to a stop when they saw me and they looked at me and my sweets with wide eyes and wider smiles.

“Uncle Jackson!” Eugene declared. His little sister tried to follow suit, but at three years old the best she could do was something more like “Unka Jackin.”

“Well howdy, kids,” I greeted them. “Y’all want some treats?”

I don’t suppose it’d surprise y’all none to learn that they did. Me and Therese did our best to keep them from celebrating the pastries too loudly—Valerie needed her rest if she was gonna recover, and her siblings screaming about sweets would not have been conducive to that. By the time I left my sister’s, her two healthy children was running around with some brand new sugar energy, and Therese was looking at me half-pleadingly and half like she wanted to murder me.

“Take care now,” I said with a smile and a wave of my hand, then I was out the door and headed down the street.

Strangest thing though; when I stepped out of Therese’s home, I could’ve sworn I saw a black cat with an extra eye watching me from her neighbor’s roof. But when I realized what I’d seen and looked a second time, there weren’t no sign of it.