The Sunken City Trilogy Read online

  “One kid,” Mix said, tightening the straps. “Citizen Barton caved for the sake of his dear darling girl before, he’ll cave again, won’t he?”

  Fresko shifted away from the wall as he put together Mix’s plan. It was a new angle, one they hadn’t needed to consider before. Not when they had Rufaizu to win Barton over. It made sense, though. “Threaten the kid, force the Citizen to harvest some electric weed.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Fresko weighed it up, watching Mix scanning the archaic tool. This would definitely put them on the dumb side of Letty’s scale, but Mix was right. Plans like this had worked before, and sneaking about talking with humans evidently hadn’t. And they needed that weed. Letty had been a bitch, but she’d known where they stood. A thanks-fucking-much for returning the weapon alone wouldn’t get them back in. A functioning weapon, maybe the means to make more, that’d set them up. A choice of positions in the FTC, enough wealth to sack off ever working for or with anyone else. Renewed access to the best Fae tailors and cuisine, at last.

  “You’re worried about going back, aren’t you?” Mix asked, into his silence.

  “No,” Fresko said, but the old mercenary gave a deep laugh.

  “Sure you are. It’s been a pipe dream for so long. Letty making promises that none of us thought would amount to anything. Now there’s a chance we can get back in and you don’t know what you’ll do when we get there. See women again, real women. Eat proper food. Think it’ll be hard?” Mix laughed again, even louder, and grabbed his crotch as he boomed, “Yeah, it’ll be hard!”

  As his companion kept laughing, Fresko sighed and pushed off from the wall.

  “Never bothered me too much, being away,” he said. “I just want the choice.”

  “And this is how we do it!” Mix slapped the gun contraption. “Not through sweet-talking and negotiating. Honest to goodness brute force, that’s our way.”

  Fresko couldn’t help but smirk. He said, “Letty never sweet-talked anyone in her life.”

  “No,” Mix agreed. “She wouldn’t have loved this, though.”

  Fresko nodded at the device. “That’s because you’re half-cocked, like always. How’d you see that playing out?”

  “Get her scared, dictate a call to daddy, all done,” Mix said, plainly.

  “We need more than that. The lummox is a brute, he’d answer a plain threat with anger. We want to put the fear in him, we need to take her away, completely, at least for a while.”

  Mix’s face glazed over with confusion, like there was no other plan possible than simply threatening one of the lummoxes. Fresko checked the room, searching for something among their piles of treasure. Near a wall, a hefty chunk of plastic served as a table for a pile of precious stones, pried from jewellery. It was an electronic device, a souvenir from one of their more ambitious pranks against the humans. Mix followed his gaze and frowned.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  “Daylight robbery,” Fresko said, the plan forming even as he said it. “No one’s gonna see us, holding that gun to her neck. We lead her to a car, she gets in willingly, we move her right across town and get her hidden. Just need a car that we can control.”

  “Last time you drove, you hit a damned lamppost.”

  “Yeah,” Fresko shrugged. “But this time I’m sober. All we need is the right motor. We’ve got an inflatable Joe, don’t we?”

  Mix looked from the electronic key back to Fresko. As he let the plan sink in, his rough jaw twisted into a leer. He started filling in the blanks, thinking out loud. “Gotta be a recent model, something super fancy, with those electronic controls. Gotta have those dark windows, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we’ll need gas. Knock-out gas.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You see, my man…” Mix walked past Fresko, towards the door. “We put our minds to something, it gets done. We’ll get it done damn well. Val and the FTC are gonna squeal when they hear what we’ve done.” He patted Fresko’s shoulder, moving out. Fresko followed with his eyes.

  Gambay would’ve loved this, but he would’ve gone wild with excitement and blown the whole operation. Letty wouldn’t have let them anywhere near the idea of kidnapping a lummox, she would’ve axed the plan before it was one. The pair of them were gone, though, weren’t they? It was just them left, and maybe, just maybe, they had a better balance of balls and brains between the pair of them than there had been before.

  Fresko followed Mix out of the lair, calling after him, “When we’re done, I’m going back for that girl. We’ll plug that Ministry man, too. It’s what I’d want you to do for me.”

  “Sure,” Mix laughed from up ahead. “We’ll slaughter whoever the fuck we have to.”

  After two hours prowling the Ten Gardens Arndale and a light lunch in a rooftop bistro, with the sun out and a party to go to in the evening, Grace couldn’t imagine a better Saturday. She and Kylie Taylor and Jenni With An I had laughed themselves stupid watching a bin-man trying to fend off a seagull. They had raided vintage clothes stores for bargains. They had tossed a bottle of water at a cute street-side coffee clerk and run. Grace felt like she was getting wrinkles from smiling too much.

  By mid-afternoon, they were languishing in one of Ten Gardens’ many parks, a place packed with up-and-coming artists in multicoloured clothing, strumming acoustic guitars. Kylie had persuaded a man coming out of the supermarket to get them a bottle of cider, and they had quickly become merry, rolling on the grass and heckling buskers to take their tops off. A young guitarist did as they asked, to uproarious laughter and cheers.

  When the cider rushed through Grace, she excused herself to the public toilet. Normally they would’ve gone together, but Katie was busy chatting with the busker and Jenni was half asleep. It didn’t matter – the park’s green-tiled outhouse was too small, anyway. Grace squeezed in, sat down and read lewd graffiti as she peed. Guys had snuck in and written nasty sexual stuff, which made her giggle.

  Finishing up, she left the cubicle, ran her hands under murky water and gave herself a look in the grimy mirror. The reflection was a metallic blur, but she guessed she looked good. She turned to leave, eager to rejoin the sunny day, and felt the barrel of a gun press hard into the nape of her neck.

  Grace gasped as a rough male voice snarled near her ear, “Don’t move a fucking muscle.”

  Sober terror hit her like a slap. She couldn’t move if she wanted to.

  “We’re going for a walk. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even think about running.”

  Some life came back. Grace trembled, her extremities shaking. Run? Could she run? Just bolt out the door? But it was a gun. What did he want? She blubbed, “I don’t have any money –”

  “Shut up,” the voice said. “Out the door, to the right. Walk real slow, to the gate.”

  She hesitated, desperate for a solution. If she stalled, someone might come in, save her. She couldn’t die – not here – not like this. That happened to other people. Oh Christ was it going to happen to her? Was this her life? She’d be a face on the news. Dead in a public toilet because she had been dumb and gone in alone. Everything wasted.

  “Now.”

  She did as she was told, focusing hard on moving one foot after the other, away from the toilet, between the hedges. The people of the park joked and played games together, none looking her way. She pleaded with her eyes, notice me, do something. Don’t let them take me, don’t let me die. No one saw there was anything wrong, though. Surely they didn’t think this sicko was with her? Tears streamed down her face. Another step and she was out of view, almost at the gate.

  “Good girl. See that car? Get in.”

  “No,” she whimpered. “No no no please – please – you’ve got the wrong person –”

  “Real slow, calm, how about a smile?”

  “Please please I’m only fourteen!”

  “Got a lot to live for then, don’t ya?” the man growled. “Do as you’re told.”

&nb
sp; She walked to the car, glancing from side to side, this corner of the park opening onto a dead road.

  “Open the door.”

  “Please –”

  “Make me repeat myself again and I’m gonna cut your kidney out. Understood?”

  She nodded and opened the door. She paused, looking over the car, across the road, as a man turned the corner, walking his dog her way.

  “Get in.”

  “Oh God,” she cowered, trying to catch the man’s eye. He looked her way, a disinterested glance, then looked away again. Hadn’t he seen what was happening? Why wasn’t he doing anything? There was a man behind her with a gun!

  “Now.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed and ducked into the car. The gun pulled away.

  “Close the door.”

  She looked out. There was no one there. The engine started and her eyes darted to the front. Her eyes rested on the driver, sat rigidly at the wheel. His skin was shiny and bulbous, like plastic. Unreal. She looked back to the door. There was no one there. Where had the man with the gun gone? Had she even heard footsteps behind her? Was it –

  Something dropped over her head and the world went black. Material smothered her face – a cloth sack, tugging back. It muffled her responsive cry, then the gun barrel pressed into her neck from the side. The man was back. “Close the door.”

  She felt sideways, groped for the handle and pulled it shut.

  “Good girl. Now go to sleep.”

  As the man finished his sentence she could already feel wooziness overtaking her. Her body was numb, blending into the car seat beneath her. The car engine was a distant sound, like she was hearing it through water. She slumped down, into sleep.

  7

  ...Fae society used to be just unconnected family units and raiding parties. In the middle of the 20th century, the Fae were driven together, maybe by humans coming into their territory, digging underground. In Ordshaw, around the start of World War 2, the Fae built the first Transishional City, an above-ground community. They fite a lot, but have an elected counsel with one main leader. Currently Valoria Magnus, who took over from Retcho.

  “Retcho?” Pax commented, looking up from her translation of Apothel’s text. The dense pages covering the Layer Fae provided a brief history alongside the basic characteristics of their people: small, winged and difficult to spot. She’d already learnt they were uniformly addicted to a powder substance dubbed dust, which had psychotropic effects on nearby people. When Pax asked Letty for clarification on that, the fairy told her to spin on it.

  Letty had otherwise been quiet since Pax had tried to explain what had happened in the safe house. The fairy had glared furiously and said nothing, her anger reaching a silent zenith. She barely even protested when Pax lifted her back into the box, though she did later snap that a toilet would be nice. The best Pax could come up with was the plastic lid from a jar of hot sauce. It stopped the complaints, though Pax decided not to check on the results for the time being, instead trying to find something in the book that she could use to relate to the diminutive woman.

  Stood over the open shoebox, holding the book, Pax said, “You really had a leader called Retcho?”

  “It sounds as stupid to us as it does to you,” Letty said. “Big whoop.”

  “This is incredible.” Pax knelt down. “A whole civilisation – a community – right under our noses, and no one knows about it? With your own politics, history, culture?”

  Letty gave her a bored look.

  “I’m not your enemy,” Pax told her.

  “You’re a dead bitch, is what you are,” Letty told her, more factual than insulting. “My boys came for him, they know what happened. They’ll know to come for you next.”

  “So why haven’t they?” Pax countered. Letty had no answer for that. Casaria had made it clear Letty wasn’t alone in this, and the bullet hole in the wall was a constant reminder of what the Fae were capable of, but it had been the better part of a day and Letty’s people hadn’t come. “Either they don’t know you’re here or they don’t care?”

  Letty glared at her. From the attitude this fairy was giving her, Pax suspected it was the latter. If they were anything like her, their focus would be Casaria. Now that they had apparently tracked Rufaizu, what did they need her for? Pax said, “Well, either they’ll come and it won’t matter if you talk to me, or they won’t and you might give me a better idea of how I can help you.” She tapped the book. “There’s a comment here, from Rufaizu I think. He says this is inaccurate. Why?”

  The fairy couldn’t resist snapping an answer. “Because no fucking human should be talking to a Fae, and anyone that writes shit about us is probably making it up.”

  “But Retcho was real? And the Transitional City exists?”

  “Of course it exists,” Letty spat. “Nice and above ground where it doesn’t belong.”

  “And your people would prefer the Sunken City for your home?”

  “It is our home. Those monsters drove us out.”

  “It didn’t look like much of a home to me.”

  This gave Letty pause. “What do you know about it? Casaria took you down a couple of entrance halls?”

  “I saw bare tunnels,” Pax said. “Nothing down there but bare walls. Human-sized tunnels, at that. What’s so special about it?”

  “It’s a whole other world,” Letty said. “A place where we’re hidden from the prying gaze of people like you. A network that takes us everywhere with total freedom of movement – where we don’t have to rely on dust to stay hidden. The halls are empty because it all got taken from us. Those creatures came in and ruined everything. But if you’d seen it in its prime…” Her voice softened, with the fond recollection of a childhood fantasy. “There were vistas of Fae buildings – the sort of architecture that’d make you curl up and weep. Fucking vistas. All we’ve got now is prefab huts and towers that can be dismantled for moving at a moment’s notice. They even built ‘transitional’ into its name.”

  Pax didn’t think it’d help to say the Fae might be equally disappointed with the tunnels she’d seen, so she asked, “Why kill Apothel, then? Even if he stole from you, he did it to fight those creatures.”

  “What would I know?” Letty said. “He didn’t let me in on his plan, did he?”

  “But it was your people that killed him, right?”

  Letty gave her another harsh, uncooperative look. That was a question too far.

  “Okay. You’ve got guns, you built this weapon, what’s stopping you from taking the place back?”

  “There a section in there on wormbirds?” Letty replied.

  Pax sat back to leaf through the book. The monsters got more horrible and unlikely the more she read. She paused on the page about the griffix, which stripped the flesh off its victims while they were still alive. Taken by its disgusting visage, she wondered what she would do if faced with one in the flesh.

  Perhaps kneel down quietly and cry.

  She continued until she found pictures of winged creatures with tendrils hanging from their abdomens. She showed the fairy to confirm. Letty said, “They lay eggs under the skin of living prey.”

  Apparently a lot of these creatures fed on living flesh. The wormbird had maggoty offspring, the glogockles fed on flesh where the blood still pumped, the tuckles boiled your unblinking eyes. That was, it seemed, the uneasy truth Letty was highlighting.

  “Those things sound bad enough to a knuckle-dragging human,” Letty said. “Ten times worse for us. And they come at us ten times quicker. Like they can smell Fae. Guns ain’t enough for that shit. The weapons we did develop never got used – we’d need...” She trailed off, not wanting to go there. Pax was about to prompt her when she angrily said, “You gonna feed me some time, you crater of filth?”

  Pax stared in silence for a moment. She said, “I give you some food, you gonna talk to me? Properly? Without the insults?”

  “Oh, poor baby. Didn’t realise I’d upset you with my mean words. Here,
let me sing it better. Fae are fantastic singers, you know?” Letty began a warbling shout that sounded a little like a tiny dog barking. Pax sat back, waiting for it to stop.

  It did not.

  When she leant back over the shoebox, her captive was marching in a circle, throwing her arms up and down as she squawked.

  “All right,” Pax said. “Enough.”

  Letty started hopping on the spot, though, picking up volume, lost in the moment like a wild child jumping on a bed. Pax gave the shoebox a small push. The movement tripped Letty onto her back. She rolled, grimacing and touching the point where her wing had been severed. Pax shifted with concern, raising a protective hand, but Letty cursed anew: “You goddamned fat stick, I’ll cut off your ears!”

  “Does it hurt?” Pax asked. “Where your wing...I mean...”

  “What do you think?” Letty snapped. “It’s like a dog ice-skating down my back.”

  Not sure how to picture that, Pax sat back again. She asked, “What do you eat?”

  “Human babies.”

  “That’s not –”

  “What? You can eat us, we can’t eat you? Fuck off. Get me a baby.”

  “I did it to get you out of there. Thanks would do.”

  “Centuries of coexistence” – Letty waved a hand – “no one gets this sick idea. Then you come along, now people will be wanting to eat Fae all over the shop. I feel so violated.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Pax said. “You’d have been burnt alive.”

  “It’s a smoking gun, whatever it’s called – that thing, where you see a gun in the theatre, someone’s gonna get shot. That’s what it is. You’ve said it, now it’ll happen.”

  “Chekhov’s gun?” Pax replied with surprise. “You read our literature? I used to study –”

  “Look at the space between my fingers and calculate how much I care,” the fairy instructed, holding up a middle finger again. The perfect Letty Action Figure pose.

  Pax left the fairy to check her kitchen. She had protein bars, cereals, old pasta and some leftover Chinese. Nothing seemed appropriate for such a small person. She broke off a piece of protein bar and placed it in the shoebox. Letty stared at the lump of date and nut, bigger than her head, and said, “Did you literally just hand me a nugget of shit?”