Twin Cities

5 September 2020 | R-18 | 36,344 words Jacklyn Whitewood brushes closer to the dealings of the Black Thorns than he can stomach. That same day, Jayden Blackthorne glimpses an underbelly to the Black Thorns that even she fears to touch. Peace is ever a rarity in their city of East Welding, rotten from its very heart out.

ON THE RAILS —bound cocytus—

Jacklyn dried the suds from his hands at the first call of his name, then dumped the dishrag on the counter at the second. The waiting stacks of dirty plates might not forgive him, but Marinne, proprietess of the Fat Rat Diner, would – unless his slowness stretched her voice again with yet another: Oh, Jackie!

The light clatter of the scrap-bead curtain heralded her presence in the kitchen doorway, jabbing her thumb back to the diner floor. “A friend for you. Little dinner lady like me, doesn't stand in the way.”

“That she doesn't. Gimme one sec, I'll sort it.”

“Very good.” She held the curtain open politely.

Jacklyn's friend was seated at a booth in the main diner, bald head twitching, stubby leg bobbing, fingers rapping staccato on the unopened menu. Between his odd appearance, and a rumour that he had once lived off nothing but flies, the city of East Welding had collectively christened him Lizard.

But even those unaware of his story would recognize him immediately by the red of his jacket. Black Thorns regalia, like a peacekeeper's uniform, intimidated everyone who saw it, from merchant lords to faceless pedestrians to the innocent patrons of the Fat Rat Diner, all abruptly transfixed with their menus.

Jacklyn slid into the booth seat across from him. Best to keep this quick, and if it couldn't be quick, relocate soon for the sake of the patrons. “Hey.”

“Hey Jackie. Save me. I'm fucked.” Lizard twined his wrists as if halfway to prayer in confessional. Jacklyn nodded for him to continue. “My girl. Okay. No—Jay, right. Jay says I gotta do this thing, right, today, right, but my girl, right. Every day my girl crying I ain't there, I say, babe, doing it for you, she say, babe, just fucking do me.”

“Beaver got nothing on your busy, eheh.”

“No shit, huh! Fucking—point of making money when you can't find ten seconds—”

“Ten seconds?”

“Nympho cunt,” Lizard grumbled, shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat.

“Right right. Stopping thinking how fucked you ain't so we can think how fucked you are, eheh. Seriously, though. What's up?”

“Okay. I was—right. Now my girl saying, babe, I got needs, you ain't filling them, I ain't staying. So I say—I promise my girl—she getting love today. Then Jay!” Lizard slammed his fist onto the table. When the rattling waned and his hand lifted, there upon the tabletop, deposited like an egg from a hen, remained a small voice recorder. “She says, hey donkey, take this down to Commons. I ain't got fucking time!”

So you wanna make some fucking time, supplied Jacklyn's brain. He discarded that input as he set his elbow on the table and chin on his fist, fiddling with the recorder. “Your first call weren't gonna be me for this, yeah?”

Lizard rocked his hand over his menu. A sheen of his sweat sucked against the laminate, every time his palm left the plastic. “Nobody wanna.”

“Alright." Jacklyn set down the recorder and loosely steepled his fingers. "Liz, I'm fine to do some delivery, but Jay gonna skin you hard. You're losing least an eye for this.”

“So she ain't gotta know.”

Jacklyn leaned back in the booth. “She gonna know.”

“So tell her to reassign. It's my girl, Jackie.”

“Thorns comes first. I'm hearing you, but I'm telling you, lotta girls, one you. Jay won't budge.”

“One day that girl gonna have my kids,” Lizard whispered.

Jacklyn leaned in. “You could lose the recording.” Then leaned back, leaving the implications with Lizard. “Prospects quit light – you ain't too late. Staying with Thorns gonna force sacrifices. Not trying to be an asshole, I just ain't got great solutions either...”

“The fuck're—I make thirty dracht a week in this jacket,” Lizard hissed, tugging the corners of his coat wide open.

“Issa great living, I get it, for a donkey.” Jacklyn leaned again on his elbow, dispelling Lizard's rebuke with a flick of his fingers. “Lookit where the track's going, real. Get shackled, then you're her mule proper. Jay gonna want you on-call 24/7 day-night-redlamps-whitelamps and all hours between, hell, say, your ma sick in hospital, or your da wants your visit, your kid's birthday's up, or you making honey with your sugar when oh there knocks Jay, you're losing more'n an eye or a jacket saying no. She ain't gonna let you get used to thinking that table got any concessions.”

Lizard slumped back in the booth, not so much limp, but like a seething coal, heavy. “You think I'm a wuss.”

“It's not like that Liz. But things like this or that, they gonna always keep happening. At some point, me, the trampoline, I ain't gonna bounce you back to smooth ground. Your options then are gonna be worse. That's why 'm saying, now's best time to think of what you really wanna give up.”

“You given up anything, Jackie?”

Jacklyn paused. “I haven't.”

“Then shut up. Losing my gang, my girl, or my eye, fuck the eye,” Lizard spat. The contempt in his glare could shred a man's soul, soaked admirably by the recorder. The contempt in his voice, though, landed on Jacklyn. “Says you gonna do it then talks circles, you got one tricky, disgusting mouth. Doing a service to everybody when you plugging it with all those cocks. Cuz if you got any mind to help me, you'll do what I fucking asked you!”

The room buzzed with silence. Jacklyn quietly palmed the recorder. “Address?”

“Tila at the granary. Just get it done.” With that, Lizard scooted out of the booth and out of the diner, shoulders arched and face red. The patrons' chatter swelled smoothly with his exit, restoring the Fat Rat's ambiance to its usual cheery pitch. For Jacklyn, however, every voice simply meshed together into band upon band of radio static.

Marinne's hand landed softly on Jacklyn's shoulder, rubbing circles into his skin. He looked up to see her glaring out the door. “Nasty dog. His bark can rest for when he has made a single right dracht.”

“Who here ain't desperate for those,” Jacklyn sighed. He fingered the recorder idly. Tricky and disgusting. Not that Jacklyn had said anything untrue. But whatever strength laid in truth, the fragility of his spine undermined, and the slickness of his tongue perverted. Even if Jacklyn ran after him now, imploring without any agenda – “I can get you the fastlane! You can wrap this up quick, see your honey, and please Jay!” – every temptation would shatter under the press of Lizard's newfound resolve.

Conviction, was its name. I can accept pain for my love and my work. I can accept loss and hardship. These are the things that matter to me. By mutilation he'd wear that resolve on his face and anchor himself in those principles upon every glimpse of a mirror. Resolve, conviction, principles – decoded from their native tongue by Jacklyn's effete will, it degenerated into masochistic babble that his weak stomach demanded erased.

He unclamped his teeth from his lip. “Sorry. Don't think I'm finishing those dishes.”

“No, no, no. You are a lovely boy even for coming.” She clapped his shoulder once, then his back as he rose from the booth. “Strong and lovely boy.”

“Aw, thanks. Well, eh, call this another plate then. Gonna be cleaning until is squeaky as a tin whistle and clear as shiny crystal. Then thinking to drop by again, yeah. Marinne you're so good to me.”

“And you to me!” She clapped her hands once, like a diligent pixie. The thought of her flitting about the tables on gossamer wings, huffing and puffing in and out the kitchen on belled shoes, trailing golden stardust about the floor, for its dumb levity, warmed him to smile.

He leaned in closer to her, eyeing some spy among the patrons. Marinne gazed after him perplexed. His hand shielded any eavesdropping ears from his intel, “all their bills on me, okay?”

She drew back with a smile so scandalized, he might have told her he'd forgotten his boxers. “Oohhhhh!” she squealed as she bobbed his hands up and down in a puppydog handshake. In harbouring these tidings across the floor to the other patrons, she bounced on air, fairylike indeed.

Jacklyn shot her a smile and a wave, acknowledged with bobblehead grins and nods between her announcements. The tailwind of that cheer petered like smoke on his heels as he strode out into the street.

Mounted on the iron ceiling, halogen lamps bleached the plaza before him into a cold grey smear. Jacklyn, hands in pockets, walked swiftly past the grated windows of neighbouring diners, a dentist's, a laundromat, a grocer's, and the gargling pipe-choked alleys between. Overhanging buildings clustered into gawky skyscrapers, the tops of which twisted through the ceiling into the tier above, and the depths of which churned into a suburban labyrinth. Even guided by the tangles of tramway tracks running persistently across the floor, a foreigner would find the city utterly unnavigable. Which Jacklyn, poor civic planning aside, suspected somewhat intentional.

The mess bred pockets of nothing. Amid a city of a million, of shady entrepreneurs, of emboldened miscreants, of escaped slaves and refugee warren-rats, fallen politicians and flyby aristocrats, and all sovereign hopefuls between, incredible how the silence survived. But there it lurked: far down the sidestreets, past winding airducts, through brambles of barbed chain-link fencing. Here specifically atop a skinny old ladder, rusted to the wall of some unknown building, purpose remembered by a brand of faded yellow paint: WM-750 SERVICE.

By the dust, nobody had visited Water Main 750 in decades but Jacklyn. The massive old pipe filled the service platform like a spine, tight beams and girders hugging it securely as ribs.

Seated back to the wall upon a girder, he stared at the tangle of silent pipes overhead, then at the grated flooring below, affixed barely a handspan above the roof of somebody's house.

Jacklyn put his hands to his face, and sobbed.

The dam took some time to drain. As always.

Breathing in one, two, three, four, out one two three four, he soon cleared his chest and mopped his face back to order. The voice recorder dug into his closed palm. To business, he thought, slipping himself off the girder.

The East Refinery Commons – colloquially, the Commons – was one of the several cities that neighboured East Welding. For someone like Lizard, the trip through the warrens stretched several hours, give or take a couple for run-ins with cannibal rusties or tollkeeping gutter-rats, then give or take a few more at customs. Jacklyn would just take the tram.

Easy ride or not, though, the Commons demanded some preparation. He stopped first at his apartment (Jay at work – empty), to excavate from his closet his rattiest trenchcoat and ugliest, most unworn fedora. His socks went to his drawer and shoes under his bed. Even with those contingencies, the mirror presented a man who could've walked – not quite out of the warrens, but perhaps a charity shop, betrayed by well-maintained nails, unpocked skin, and the rosy scent of his imported Kitt soap.

Should've cooked these rags in a puddle months earlier, he thought, pocketing an extra box of ciggies on his way out. Though he drank them all through the hike back to the main streets, to the outskirts, to the intercity tram outpost, he still worried enough to pause a ways outside guard-gate and sniff his wrist discreetly. Nose too shot from daily batterings of nicotine. Smelled like nothing.

Sighing, coughing, striding forward towards the bare white table that composed the guardpost, he glanced down as he fingered though his pockets for another cig. Well, at least on this little adventure he got to see—

“Oi! Back up!” the guard's voice struck like a fist. Jacklyn startled still, his eyes jerked up, and his hands snapped open to his shoulders at the sight of the crossbow. The bolt it held squared his chest perfectly, glistening under the lamps with the wickedness of a talon.

“Enzie, it's me,” Jacklyn called back, too confused to be speechless.

Whatever the guard muttered, Jacklyn suspected it unkind. Regardless, it only took a moment of scrutiny before Enzie's face bloomed with recognition, joy, and slight embarrassment. Jacklyn smiled back as if it had all been a joke.

Enzie dumped the crossbow onto the table and his ass into the seat. “Jackie! Was bout to stick you a good minute there! Cuz all the,” he gestured vaguely to Jacklyn's outfit.

Jacklyn ran his fingers over the brim of his hat. “Fuck me. It does work.”

“Whose this ratbag?” Enzie laughed, then glanced over his shoulder to the single rectangular hallway open in the expanse of steel wall behind him. “Out to the Commons?”

“Yeah. Just some business.”

“Where's Jay?”

“Not coming.”

“Ah.” The curiosity in his tone died instantly. All that remained was an uncomfortable breed of suspicion Jacklyn knew had nothing to do with the Thorns. Of course, Jacklyn sneaking solo and incognito for quote-unquote business a city over would also have nothing to do with the Thorns, by most assumptions. Enzie's gaze stuck to the wall. “Well. You have fun then.”

“Yeah, eh, a little out of the usual. It's nothing... crazy, y'know.”

“Mhm.”

Clarifying things would provoke questions more dangerous than they were embarrassing. Jacklyn grinned. “Well cheers Enzie. Have a good one.”

“Same to you. Cheers,” he looked up long enough to return the smile, which Jacklyn tried to accept as heartening. Still, he witnessed the hallway in slideshow, for how urgently he blinked his eyes dry, and by the time he met the landing for the elevator, had flattened his hat stupidly over his face.

Why did something so minuscule have to affect him so much? He shook his head, exhaled, fixed his hat. Through spindly iron gates, the black pit of the elevator shaft waited on, quietly.

Jacklyn fished a small metal disc with an oddly serrated edge out of his pocket. Upon the corridor's guardrail was mounted a terminal, its face a mosaic of dead buttons, screws, and a slot. Jacklyn's key slid through with minor resistance. As if clearing its throat, some deeper mechanism in the slot whirred, the panel's buttons flashed alive, and the iron gates catapulted open with a SNAP.

Soon rumbled along the next car in the circuit, which settled still and waited at the landing. Jacklyn flurried at the terminal to unlock the car's outer cage, zipped through to the inner compartment, breathed again once buoyed on the guardrail. Everyone told stories of unlucky sods who delayed in boarding a tram. Guy's chatting, strides in distracted, tram fucks off, and halfway in, halfway out – well, Jacklyn preferred not to think of it.

The longer the motionless hall watched him through the gate, the stronger his abrupt conviction that those stories had probably been spread by commuters, sick of dawdlers freezing the circuit. Some taps to the onboard terminal ordered the car back to motion. With a great heave from the pulleys, the car shuddered like a beaten animal, and descended.

Pipes rattled, chains clanked, gears shrieked. Hands crossed behind his back, Jacklyn leaned against the handrail, staring at the machinery outside. Inside the walls and between the layers of Ordanz, pistons surged, gears groaned, copper tubes sputtered and sparked. They writhed over the walls, flashing in and out of pitch darkness whenever the car passed a maintenance light.

The car lurched still, bathed in halogen white. Jacklyn squinted up between his fingers.

That pause was someone, headed somewhere, to do something. Despite cities of distance, in ignorance, in routine, in motion, lives brushed together as slickly as skin feathering against skin. Faceless mystique, glory-hole tease. So who are you today, stranger? A big-boss overseer humming through leaves of pricey spreadsheets? Friends off to lunch in a fancy café? Stowaways looking for trouble? Couriers?

The car juddered to motion. Jacklyn flipped the recorder in his palm. Like him.

Nothing crazy.

Well, Jacklyn doubted Lizard himself crazy enough to task him with anything dangerous. Still, under intermittent light, he inspected the recorder. One of those cheap reusable models. The magnets would activate and wipe the wires on the first run of the recording.

Bets on whether it was thriftiness, or Jay's foresight in stumping nosy peepers like his. Probably, nothing so involved. All the same, Jacklyn wished—

A buzzer screamed as viciously as a needle on the point of a jackhammer. Jacklyn's head rang, the cages sang, and his palm mashed the terminal to save himself from tinnitus. A placard trundled along the wall, late: APPROACHING. EAST R. An overhanging pipe blocked the rest.

At the next platform, the car stilled like a settling boulder. Jacklyn hopped out the cages, managed a smile to the guard, and still didn't unclasp his hands from his ears until upon the promenade of the East Refinery Commons.

The faces here were hollower, and the bodies skinnier, than in Welding.

Children swam in the clouded waters of the cistern, oasis of the Commons. Its banks were bordered by long walkways, themselves bordered by residential bunkers and rickety stallfronts. Jacklyn bowed his head and clenched his hands in his pockets around his belongings.

The ceiling soared unobstructed overhead, but to admire it was to announce: “Hiya fellas, new face here, oh please oh please mug me gently.” Equally he strained not to grimace at the reek wafting from the cistern, or at the fog of the flies buzzing above it, since none of the locals apparently minded their home stank like a well-used latrine.

Just poor timing. Whole thing must be due for a flushing. Fidel's blood let this hat do its job.

Squinting back tears, Jacklyn glanced about persistently from under the hat. An old man sitting on a porch staring at him, smiling at him, bobbing his pointer finger at him, but who looked away when Jacklyn passed. A child's voice calling, “my sister is weak, sir. We need just a coin, sir,” that faded to nothing behind him. A woman in a yellowed dress holding a covered basket to her hip. A man in rags who kicked a beggar into the cistern, then scampered into the house she'd been outside. The keeper of a knick-knacks stall smacking a boy with a cudgel. A man with a rash red as fire. A woman passed out in the street.

In the cistern, a girl swimming after a rat. A pair of boys with a net and a jar, catching and bottling flies. Waste bobbing by. A woman washing her clothes in the water. Another with cupped hands, drinking the swill.

Normal scenes, of normal people, whose normal chaos dissipated at the end of the promenade into a long, and orderly, line.

The granary, looming distantly in its own smog, explained the line. The peacekeepers, armed with prods and notoriously watchful, explained the order. They stood straight as fences in their olive-green uniforms, nudging a man here, a woman there, back into proper assembly at prod's-length with the perfectionism of professional chefs, plating sacrifices for an aesthete dragon.

Bit by bit, they ushered more clouds of people into the procession, until tidiness infected half the promenade. A dignified-looking peacekeeper whistled to a group wafting nearby, “supper sup-sup!” and like scouts they happily jabbered “sup-sup sup-sup sup.” The peacekeeper's gaze locked to Jacklyn, “sup sup supper! All along!”

Jacklyn's nerve in walking away certified him as East Weld boujee. Curious heads peered along, then trailed one mournful, concerned plea of, “sup-sup! Lad, get sup-sup!” but steadied by another whistle from the Peace, nobody further minded his departure. He passed locals in the streets nearing the granary, each cradling in their arms or under their clothes a small tin bowl of nuts and ambrosia. Every day, nuts and ambrosia. Jacklyn could not imagine the starkness of hunger it took to live with a palate beaten numb by nuts and ambrosia, and still love the damn stuff like treasure.

The massive bellows of the granary huffed louder. Two Peace guarded the chainlink fence outside its back exit, slouched on their prods and chatting. Jacklyn folded his trenchcoat over his forearm and smoothed down the delicate fabric of his shirt. From it gazed the intricate design of an eye within stained-glass, hand-woven from snail-dyed esketti cotton in Amsherrat. Translation for the masses: expensive.

Flaunting his wallet on his chest, Jacklyn sidled to the gate and jerked his thumb to the granary. “Hey boys. Got a message for Tila in there.”

The slimmer guard straightened from his prod. “Uh-huh. Well, get in line or wait until she's off.”

The price tag either didn't matter or didn't register.

“Your ID?” the stockier, more grizzled-looking guard interrupted. The first guard eyed him askance.

Jacklyn pulled down the collar of his shirt, displaying the tattoo of the rose on his chest.

Slim thumbed the button of his prod, only for Stocky to yank him aside and erupt into whispers. A storm of glances surged from them to Jacklyn. Snippets flickered: “foreign-looking... ...runs the... cities over... ...Jayden...”

Jacklyn rolled back his shoulders, set his arms akimbo, and cricked his neck. “Schedule's ticking.”

Stocky scrambled with the gate-latch as though slapped to it by a drill sergeant. Shit, Jay's got reach, part of him marvelled. The rest of him, seeing the terrified tremor in the guy's step, wished to go back in time thirty seconds, present his proper ID, find the granary dunny, and vomit at his stupidity for even trying to play gangster.

Stocky soon returned escorting a twitchy little woman along prisoner, promptly deposited before Jacklyn. Her chipped teeth quivered over her well-chewed lips, while her fingers knit over and between each other incessantly, as if she were tying knots with her knuckles. Blank, round eyes like those of a fish peered through the fence at Jacklyn. “Oh... hello,” she said.

“Tila.”

“Yee-es?”

With a glance to confirm the guards too distant to eavesdrop, Jacklyn ran the recording.

“Well ain't you so fucking clever!” Jayden's voice crackled. Jacklyn hurriedly suppressed his grin. “Sexy meat is pulling good work, all as we figure, good, great, great purchase, 'till she horking up gibbles over the client's dick, coz just slipped your fucking mind to tell us the bitch got lung rot. Huh! Sure you 'preciate the premiums we paid for that, eh? Had a little fun of your own? Better hope you didn't. Better hope you got every coin left. Coz if you ain't in our office with five thousand dracht and some big fucking enthusiasm about reimbursements, tomorrow, that's your neck in the gutter the day after. Hear that? Commons ain't as far or safe as you think, Ti. Neither is anywhere else.

“Five thousand. Our office. Tomorrow.” Click.

“This isn't what... reimbursements, but then I-I need to...” A shudder coursed through her so vigorously it seemed that she might vomit. What came out instead was a sob of, “Linnie!”

“That your girl?” Jacklyn asked.

“Please, I didn't know she was bad. I... she looked so beautiful. You've seen her? You'd never think, she was sick...”

“Your daughter.”

“Yes.”

“And you do have the money.”

“Five thousand, yes, but, oh...”

“Then you'll be fine. Listen – Thorns' reputation isn't for nothing, but the heart of the whole thing is business. Keeping safe business, doing good business. What we don't want is clients scared we gonna fuck 'em when they come to us with honest proposals.”

Tila nodded.

“And these mistakes do happen. Jay's rattling you right now, but if you show you didn't know, she won't be unreasonable,” Jacklyn finished, amazed at the fluency of his own bullshit.

Purest, high-fidelity, raw utter bullshit. Not the same breed as denial, which conceded truth how a sizzling vampire conceded the presence of the sun, nor even as deception, which catechised moonlight as sunlight, but a well-strung sequence of pleasurable noises that genuinely meant nothing about anything. Whether you took it or didn't, like a biscuit offered with tea or a handjob in the loo of a diner, no consequence waited but a cheap hit of afterglow. So was his libertine dialect: careless, inconsequential, cocksucking twaddle.

He knew fuck all of Jay's operations, fuck all of her intentions with this woman, and fuck all of anything else. Still, it wasn't that Jacklyn fancied himself irresponsible. Just a little freer to whisper nothings than most.

Tila untwined her hands, and with one hooked finger, twanged the wire of the fence. Though her eyes remained voided, at least her smile was pleasant, and as Jacklyn liked to think, reassured.

“I need to work,” she said chipperly, as if she were some jaunty bee.

“You sure do. Cheers, eh.” Jacklyn adjusted his hat and threw on his coat.

“Yes...” she murmured. He strode away, futzing with the coat's buttons. The burn of her stare itched on his back, even as the granary's bronze mist, thickening ever by distance, veiled her into a phantom – invisible, and haunting.

The elevator to Welding strained upwards. Under the intermittent glare of the maintenance lights, the smoke curling around the car flashed with strange patterns, like motes of dust dancing in the ray of a wary miner's headlamp. Jacklyn snuffed his cigarette on the handrail. Through the haze, overhead, the pulley's chains disappeared into darkness.

He took a drag. Stared at the fresh cigarette that had appeared between his fingers, sighed out smoke, popped it back in.

Got it done.

That was one person's ass covered, at least, until his sister came to butcher him.

The elevator lurched still in the darkness.

Pipes rattled, chains clanked, gears shrieked. Jacklyn lightly tapped a rhythm on the handrail.

When the brakes screeched loose, and the car moved again, there struck a sunrise in halogen – seeping over the floor, swelling up the walls, blazing so perfectly white that it purged near every shadow to nothing. What remained, cast over Jacklyn's face, was only a grid, fallen from the cages.

Jacklyn leaned his elbows on the countertop. “Do we have a Linnie? A Lina, Linette?”

“Try a Jasmine, a Crystal, a Bunny,” grunted the clerk of the Honeyheart Boutique. A red neon rose flickered behind him on the wall, the one vaguely pleasant adornment in an otherwise dingy, cramped reception room. Minus the porcelain floor-tiling, sable couches, silk curtains, and pumping bass of the Thorns' usual brothels, any decent punter would turn and walk out the door. Not simply repelled by the poor accommodation, but at the clear message: this isn't for you.

Well. It wasn't.

Those brothels hired. The Boutique imported. You wandered into the luxury playpens, coaxed by cheeky touts and inviting billboards, enjoyed a sneaky, sordid little hour of fun. You did not wander to Honeyheart. You journeyed, with your fat, topsie wallet.

The clerk snorted phlegm from the back of his throat as he reached for an acrid-smelling rag, which rested upon a small wall-lever. Smells of sweat and sex pervaded the room so thickly, Jacklyn figured even the stinging reprieve, as the clerk swiped the rag over the raw red skin of his upper lip, more than necessary.

“Right, alright.” Jacklyn leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “How about a girl with lung rot?”

“No.”

“No,” Jacklyn echoed. “I was looking to buy.”

“Hard luck, then.”

“I'm Desiree's son. You know?”

“Yeah, the sleazy brother. We don't keep sick girls.”

“I could give you a suck.”

The keeper's rag slapped wetly on the counter. “Fucking hell. I'm telling you, whatever you're after, we don't have any girl with lung rot. Why the fuck would I lie 'bout this?”

Jacklyn glanced to the doorway ahead. “I'll browse the merchandise.”

“Go ahead. Fuck.” With one heavy yank on the lever, a shutter closed over the entryway while that over the doorway screeched up into its frame, revealing a long, narrow staircase. The red glow emanating from its bottom sharpened while the muggy air thickened, as though, with every step, he was plunging deeper into the throat of a monster.

Its belly was a hexagonal chamber, bathed in sensual red lamplight. Cells with portcullis doors and criss-crossed bars spanned four of the walls, with the other two occupied by a hall into another, identical chamber and the stairs Jacklyn had just descended. He stepped into the centre. Circling him, inside each cell, was the merchandise.

Three of them responded to a call of “Linnie”. None of them, Jacklyn figured, were her.

In every girl he hunted the woman he'd met in the Commons. Hair too curly, hair too light. Skin too freckled, skin too dark. Jaw too heavy. Face too thin. Some flirted through the inspection with playful professionalism, others kept their heads bowed and said nothing. Where one banged at the bars like an animal, another curled in the corner as if refusing to exist. All that unified them was beauty: smooth curves, sleek hair, lush flesh, that Jacklyn cursed himself for naturally noticing.

Thorns wouldn't shell money for anything but quality product. Clinical observations as these blanketed thoughts of – screaming, running, sobbing, as if he even had the right to. Composure further prevailed by his self-awareness that, no matter where he went, what he did, who he met or how he felt, always, in some corner, by every busy street and crowded shop, every carefree smile and healthy fat-roll, by every person and thing in Welding, he'd remember Honeyheart anyway.

It never numbed. But with reminders as ceaseless as water surrounding a fish, he'd learned to find a detached grace in something. That for every imagined censure, every self-authored accusation of inaction or complicity, he could answer, with total sincerity: I know. Truly, completely, I know.

One girl, who wobbled rather than jerked to her feet when instructed, looked so unsteady she might faint. The straps of her skimpy black slip dangled off her shoulders and her long, ashy brown hair flowed in distressed, asymmetrical paths. Jacklyn unlocked the latch to her door. Her face was slight enough, her build tall enough, and though clouded enough that no signal reflected in them could be reaching her brain, her round eyes peered uncomfortably at him.

“Linnie?”

She grinned like a pig.

“Come with me.” But she didn't move. Jacklyn set his hand on her back to ease her, her gait tottering, out of the cell. The latch on her door clicked shut behind him, and the stares and whistles and hisses of the other women followed them both to the staircase.

At the final step, the clerk's voice howled, “Fuck are you doing with a girl up here!?”

“Taking her,” Jacklyn said. “Buying.”

“Not without process you ain't!” He thumped his fist on the counter. “Girl goes back in the pen, I schedule you a meeting with the S–”

“Hey.”

“With the...”

“You're a bit new, eh.”

The clerk swiped his rag over his lip.

Jacklyn leaned on the counter, chin nestled in his palm, and smiled. “Don't worry about it.”

The clerk glanced over his shoulder, as if checking for shadows, and leaned in. “I listen to the bigwigs. It's the one thing I gotta do. Don't fuck me here kid.”

“Well you ain't talking to a gnome.”

“See the problem?”

“No.” Jacklyn's hand sliced a flat, lazy line in the air. “I talk to Jay, Jay says okay. Everyone clear, no problems.” He jerked his chin to the woman, tracing circles on his palm. “Now what is a problem is every second that girl ain't in my cellar.”

“Your lung rot girl,” spat the clerk, craning his head to peer over Jacklyn's shoulder. “She don't have it. As it were.”

“Ahhh,” Jacklyn nodded. “Never done a still lady before?”

The neon sign buzzed in the silence.

Jacklyn tapped his temple, grinning. “You don't have the eye then.”

The clerk yanked the wall-lever. “Just go.”

“Cheers.” His hand on the woman's back, Jacklyn ducked under the rising shutter and exited into the courtyard outside. With dripping pipes, flickering lamps, and rats skittering through overhanging air duct, the squat alley hardly deserved a moniker so regal. But that was the promotion it got, when someone, years ago, erected buildings over the intersection's former exits.

Now the only routes in or out were through the back doors of adjacent businesses, regulated by the Thorns, of course. Alternatively, and more obscurely, was the old service ladder behind its tangle of pipes.

Between the hazed look in Linnie's eyes, the sluggishness of her movement, and her unnatural passivity, Jacklyn doubted she could do it. Or make the trip to the Commons, in this state, at all.

“Alright,” Jacklyn muttered, stamping the smouldering stub of his cigarette.

Guiding Linnie by the wrist, Jacklyn marched through the back door of the connected salon. His confidence silenced whatever questions the guard might have had for him, which left only a jaunt though a dinky hairdresser's between himself and her definite escape.

Six steps to home. He turned the corner out the backroom.

Five, to scissors snipping through the air.

Four—and there in the chair being serviced was the Skinslipper.

He was a fair man, high in the Thorns, though the navy of his suit didn't suggest it. Even without broadcasting those affiliations, anyone passing him would tense, as something in his arrogant poise outed him immediately as a civilized predator. The kind that signed execution papers in a back room then watched the affair from a VIP box, with a margarita toast to the corpse.

He was reclined, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle, engrossed in some kind of manual or dossier while the cutter did her work.

Without pause, Jacklyn willed himself to keep moving.

Three, and two, and one. His image flashed in the mirror. Keep moving.

Zero. Just as his foot hit the threshold, a great force cracked through Linnie's wrist to him in a whiplash. It yanked him backwards like a bug on a string, stumbling a rocky one, two, three, halfway back to where he started. Barely tripping around, rather than onto Linnie, it was all Jacklyn could manage to crash himself safely into a chair. When he looked up to breathe, there stood the Skinslipper.

His face and tone were light. His grip on Linnie's wrist was not. “Jacklyn, are you stealing one of my girls?” As if asking a cat if it meowed.

Jacklyn quickly smiled. “Errand for Ma. In a bit of a rush, not up to chatting, sorry. Need that girl.”

The Skinslipper's hand slid down Linnie's waist. Her hip must have held Jacklyn's heart – at the very least, the Skinslipper had tightly clenched both. Jacklyn waited for a voice to undo the knot. All the Skinslipper gave was a stare.

“You know Ma. Always doing whatever. Unpredictable, yeah, there's her. Real mess of my day here, too.”

“I was just going to see your Mother, once I had myself presentable.” The Skinslipper gestured to his newly, neatly-trimmed hair. “By her appointment. I did expect some surprises.” His bland smile broke into one of amusement. “Her spirits must be good, to be bringing yourself and a friend.”

“Sorry, Skinny, but where she got me peregrinating, ain't in direction of her.” As he rocked himself onto his heels, Jacklyn slapped the armrest to punctuate, “So!”

A hand clamped shut on his neck. Tight fingers strangled his yelp into a whine, the pressure playing his throat like a shrieking boiler-pipe. Through the pain – fuck fuck fuck what was that cracking – and blurred vision – fainting or crying hope the second yes not too black not too black good good good – the Skinslipper's gaze burned clearly, his eyes blue as crystals and cold.

“Regardless, I think I'll surprise her instead.”

Whatever you want just don't kill me, but all that came out was a puff of air Jacklyn instantly regretted losing. The tightness in his chest attested: the man had made his point, he had, made his point but kept going, kept choking, you'll die, you're dying! Jacklyn's throat bucked, to no release. He wrenched at the suffocating hand, to nothing. All of it, motion dictated by the shrieking of mindless adrenalin, useless before purposeful strength.

It was only once Jacklyn forced himself to relax that the Skinslipper freed his neck. Euphoric from almost fainting or dizzy from the rush of air, he buried his face in the first thing in front of him without considering it must either be the Skinslipper or Linnie. It was warm, and it was Linnie.

The Skinslipper generously released her when Jacklyn sheepishly looked up. Then, blinking the heat out of his eyes, he announced his renewed composure with an, “Mmn.”

“Now you'll behave.”

“Mm.” His throat throbbed.

“Good. Come along, then.” The Skinslipper quickly clapped twice, as if commanding a dog. Pride was a virtue Jacklyn never much held, but not even this egregious insult roiled a speck of shame or resistance in him to action. Such was the way of a coward, shed of fast words and beguiling chutzpah, that fell away like loose feathers at the first demonstration of violence.

It'll turn out alright. Things could go nice, maybe. But as he looked to Linnie for reassurance, he saw only the blankness in her eyes and the sickness in her smile. He had to turn away.

The Skinslipper waited cooly at the door, smiling. Jacklyn smiled back weakly as he crossed the threshold out, leading Linnie along, the Skinslipper soon in step beside him.

With the berth the crowds gave them, the path to Desiree's might as well have been carpeted with red or tiled in green. Instead it was black in the shadow of a tower, grand enough to hold a city in itself, whose thousand beams twisted like sinews into two intertwined, spiralling helices. Once the Skinslipper ushered him and Linnie into the elevator inside the central column, Jacklyn found himself with little to do but watch the latticework blur around him and the city shrink.

“Don't be so tense. You'll pay more than enough to keep her,” the Skinslipper chuckled, watching Linnie's shoulder. A yellow bruise had flowered there – peeking from under Jacklyn's clenched fingers.

He let go, rubbed his throat, and squinted back a wince. “Get—,” he rasped. Though he tried to cough the thorns out of his throat, they clung persistent as burs. “Get done here and have Jay toss the money through, yeah. Ma's gonna be pissed I showed up.”

“Hardly.” The Skinslipper snorted. “You're rather a nuisance. All this sneaking about.”

“Figured it weren't a big thing. And didn't wanna piss off Ma.”

“I'm sure it was no big thing to you, either, when you made Jayden fire my clerk. Or the one before him, or the one before him. I do not have the time to be perpetually training newbies.” The Skinslipper scowled at his nails. “Neither am I impressed that your mother permits it.”

“Iunno what Jay's doing. Sounds like she don't like your clerks.”

“I'm not stupid, Jacklyn.” Spoken like an axe through bone, the conversation promptly died there.

The growing silence inside the elevator grated more than the whining of the pulleys above. But to speak may anger the Skinslipper, to breathe may anger the Skinslipper, the rustle of his clothes may anger the Skinslipper. Though grasped in a frozen hand that demanded his silence and stillness, Jacklyn's nerves buzzed hot as live-wires round his head to his chest to his fingers. Soon he couldn't help pinching the skin on the back of his hands, or stop his head from flitting about like a bird's.

Outside, smears of skyscrapers. Across the cage, the Skinslipper, boredly inspecting his cufflinks. Above, the mural etched into the iron ceiling of a serpent eating the people. His mother's tastes had never much encouraged him to visit.

Beside him, there issued a droning groan. Linnie's mouth hung agog like a corpse's, with her gut emanating the deep squeal of a dead bellows – putrid air pressed from the stomach of a cadaver. Jacklyn cringed: she's gruesome, distressed, visible.

“Terrible noise. Shut her up, will you?” ordered the Skinslipper.

Jacklyn set his hand on Linnie's back. Her taut muscles complimented his taut nerves as he rubbed loose circles over her shoulderblades, murmuring, “it's alright, it's alright, easy now, it's alright,” but still she only groaned.

“What are you doing? Gag her.”

Oh, right, fuck.

Jacklyn clamped one hand over her mouth – the sound vibrated deep through his fingers – as he trawled through his pockets. Did he have a rag or kerchief or well anything? He hooked his nails under his shirt, ready to strip the thing off, when a pedicured hand pushed Linnie down to her knees by the shoulder and foisted Jacklyn's crotch, by the belt, to her face.

“Gag her,” the Skinslipper snapped. “Is there a problem? She's your purchase.”

“I don't—” Jacklyn stammered, “don't like that mural.”

Arcing his head to the ceiling, the Skinslipper cursed and shoved Jacklyn aside. Explosions of white consumed the world even before the pain hammered down, right into Jacklyn's skull. He moaned – whimpered – whined. The iron bars of the elevator's cage dug into his back as he slid to the floor.

Rising from grey smudges ahead, a shifting blue smear coiled over a white blot as if to envelop it in a vampire's cloak. The image snapped lucid – Skinslipper, Linnie, Skinslipper, over Linnie. A shot of fire surged through Jacklyn's blood potent as cocaine, incandescent as he charged off the wall, his mind a scream: You get the fuck off her!

The cage jerked to a stop. Inertia kicked Jacklyn roofward, and the Skinslipper, and Linnie, all jumbled weightless in air. Jacklyn hop-stumbled well as he could once gravity slammed down, but no sooner did he reach Linnie than did the Skinslipper nab his collar. Hissing swears, he foisted them out the elevator door and corralled them into the adjacent hall like sheep in a slaughterhouse line.

Jacklyn hugged Linnie closer to his side and proceeded obediently.

Without windows, forks, or decorations, the austere hall hinted nothing of its destination. An empty cell? A holding chamber? The answer was ritz! Glamour! Intrigue! All at home in the Rose Room, called so for the roses etched into the walls, which glittered as if bleeding under the pulse of red strobes. In Jacklyn's memory, only that image survived with lucidity. Everything else was interchangeable faces, indistinguishable voices, the stench of spirits and haze of smoke, his mother's soft lap and the maître d's wristwatch, suited figures across the table, and girls wreathed in boas on the catwalk.

But when the door-shutter rose, and Jacklyn stepped inside, all that awaited was – nothing.

A bare skeleton of a room surrounded him. Furniture absent, amenities missing, sterile white fluorescents for light. Under his step there crinkled sheets of plastic that carpeted the floor, then smothered the walls, like a body-bag.

Some things about the space were familiar. Dimensions: correct. Wall etchings: correct. The catwalk, its pole, and its curtains: correct. But why or how had the Rose Room been stripped like this, unless he had somehow, impossibly, trespassed into some alternate version of it?

Hairs prickled on his neck. He had stumbled upon a graceful courtesan, mugged, murdered, and dumped under daylight. Nobody was meant to see this or be here. That much, he instinctively got.

Linnie less groaned now than gogged, as if she were choking, but Jacklyn couldn't think of anything to do for her, or what it meant or what was wrong. With the Skinslipper only seconds behind them, every half-formed idea in Jacklyn's head to run or hide or bargain or something, diverted into cravings for cigarettes.

Upon stepping inside and seeing the room, the Skinslipper's face twisted like a rag. “That woman...”

Right. Her. “Must be upstairs,” Jacklyn muttered.

“Upstairs?”

Click, went something at the doorway.

BANG!, crashed the shutter over the exit.

Even the Skinslipper flinched. Jacklyn grabbed Linnie and braced against the wall – right as the room, from ceiling to floor, began to ferociously quake. The Skinslipper splayed out his arms for balance, just in time to stay upright.

“What is this, Jacklyn?!” the Skinslipper yelled, barely audible over the heaving of giant machinery.

“It's just turning, it's just turning!” Jacklyn yelled back, holding Linnie against his chest. “The building's—” a shadow darted—his heart jumped—the catwalk!

Its curtains were swaying strangely, as if someone were rocking against them from beneath. Ice in Jacklyn's throat froze his call of, Hello?, but the tremors rocked the whole room. Of course the curtain would sway. Some ancient instinct against darting shadows of lions had simply misfired for a glimpse of a curtain on an empty catwalk.

But bless his heart for the lump of chicken crap it was. He'd still rather be nowhere near the thing.

Plastic crinkled with his every step backwards, his fingers matted in the hair draped over Linnie's shoulderblades. His gaze fixed on the catwalk's bare nothing. Stared down the absolute nothing. Look away and I'll kill you, to nothing.

Below his chin came a shriek. Linnie. The sharp tenor, familiar, speared his chest like a pick into a glacier, drew a frozen breath from his throat. Nevermind his fucking heebies. She needed out. Of this room, first of all.

He wetted his lips. So door? Hello? Not there. Closed still. The Skinslipper beside it, found refuge by the wall, pale-faced, tight-lipped, eyes bulged staring, also, at the catwalk.

Jacklyn glanced over, braced for claws down his back.

Nada, except a strip pole. For everything Jacklyn could say about the Skinslipper, the man at least had composure. That he accorded with Jacklyn's random fear, a baseless thing bred from timidity, less validated his terror than simply baffled him. Hold on, he thought, what's going on here?

Like a wave cresting into the water, the rumbling of the room stilled. But soon as the shutter lifted, in flooded the mindless urge to flee, to move, as if the room were on fire. Jacklyn anchored his grip tightly on the plastic of the wall. When the Skinslipper flit out the doorway – at a pace not quite running, but certainly brisk – that brief presence of mind petered like a spent cigarette. Before he even knew he'd left the wall, he was bolting to follow.

He shot out his arms. Caught himself on the doorframe.

The hot, frantic, bestial terror shoving at his spine hissed against the glacial, rational, human dread seeping into his gut at the sight of that hallway, its stairs – and in his mind, reclined in her room, of the woman waiting atop them.

Jacklyn fumbled through his pocket for his keys, ripped open a hole in the plastic. His trembling heart soared at the catch of the control panel hidden in the wall, identical to the ordinary Rose Room's. On the second attempt, his key caught the slit, he twisted the dial, and Jacklyn for the last time glimpsed the Skinslipper's back as the crashing shutter cut him from view.

Jacklyn collapsed backward onto the floor in relief.

The room rumbled. Jacklyn breathed. Linnie was still screaming.

He darted up with a mind to soothe her, but knew it was impossible. She was batting and clawing at the air hysterically, as if swooped upon by spectral vultures. Jacklyn dove in to at least secure her – all he achieved was her nails across his cheek, an inch from gouging his eye.

He stumbled back. With a heavy quake from the floor, both him and Linnie thunked to the ground.

She seized there, screaming screaming screaming, feral as a ghost. Liquid dribbled over Jacklyn's fingers as he massaged his aching cheek. Did she hit herself in the fall? Was it the drugs? What was wrong? Even as he crawled through the tremors to her, he could do little but smooth her hair off her face.

It was another of those situations – of those many, many situations – where Jacklyn had to accept his impotence. Anyone's impotence. The kind that couldn't make everyone wealthy and full, that couldn't stop people from lying or killing, couldn't conjure love or temper its fading, couldn't undo a habit or bring back the dead, but validated every cruel and cynical word he'd ever heard from his sister.

Heat welled in his eyes. Tailed on a wispy sob, his throat sputtered and jammed. A breath solid and hard as an iron ball simply refused to go in. He squeezed his neck to force the air down, panicked enough to find such a thing sensible, though his practice run with the Skinslipper told him he was more likely just strangling himself. But even as he forced his hands off, the blockage stuck firm around his gulps and swallows.

What if Desiree had installed gas vents in this room? The noise of the machinery would drown out any hissing. Was that why it was empty?

Had he just tripped a trap meant for the Skinslipper.

Nightmares flooded his mind with every beat of adrenalin. His body, slumped against the door smirched red, his fingers worn to bloody stumps. His corpse rotting unnoticed for months. Jayden slapping Lizard's recording from Jacklyn's hand shouting, “for fuck's sake you gotta stay outta this, there's bodies here, every day! For fuck's sake you gotta—”. Her pacing their apartment, glancing at the entryway. The hours, the slow realization. Her sprint out the door, her grip on her knife, her scream to the city: “where is he!?”. The bloodbath, the wailing, the frenzy. Faces he recognized – Marinne, Enzie.

“Stop it,” he murmured, hands over his eyes. “Please. Stop it.”

Through the noise, and for its frailty, his voice held like a single thread of light in darkness.

The pressure lifted. The rock in his throat dissolved back into air, Linnie fell quiet and still. Once the room settled, the shutter lifted in silence.

They were alone, he sensed. Truly, finally.

But, wrapped around Linnie's hand, Jacklyn's fingers still trembled.

With a click, the shower's stream of water ended. Jacklyn wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror. The bruise on his neck, yellow like a rotten egg, greeted him. Okay, he sighed to himself. High neckline outfit then.

The change of clothes helped. After quickly towelling his hair, he slapped his cheeks lightly, smiled to the mirror, nodded. Presentable. He stepped out to the living room, safely back in his apartment.

Linnie was, as he'd left her, still bundled in blankets asleep on the couch. Until the snooze saw her sober, Jacklyn found himself with little to do but attend to his usual routines and ensure she woke to something pleasant.

He clicked on the oven, set some butter to sizzle, kneaded balls of ground pork, and ran a zucchini through the spiralizer. Rich savoury smells soon drifted from the kitchenette through the apartment, and it was just when he added the spiralized noodles to the mix of herbs, spices, and sauces popping in the pan, that he heard a shuffle of fabric from the couch, and felt Linnie's gaze upon him.

He resumed cooking as if he hadn't noticed. Best give her a minute to get her bearings.

Two plates of meatballs with zucchini noodles, liberally basted in butter and garlic, finished with lemon slices. Jacklyn smiled from his creations to Linnie, staring at him in turn. Her eyes had lost that unnatural haze, but somehow, still seemed a touch tranced. “Hey. You're up?” he asked.

“Oh!” she startled, as if she hadn't expected him to speak. “I-I, yes, I am.” The breath she took to steady herself must have struck her breastbone like a hammer, for how tenderly she laid her palm against it. Jacklyn congratulated himself for remembering to take Jay's pillywinks off their slot on the coffee table as Linnie's gaze swept slowly, analytically, over the room. “I do not know where I am, or who are you. It has made me—nervous. Forgive me.”

Tink, went the forks upon the plates. “It's alright. You're doing great. Fuck knows I woken up in these places pants 'round my ankles and why's it smell like detergent and whose couch is this? Not knowing where's left and where's right and which's way back to,” he spread his arm with a flourish, grinning, “my abode, in Welding.”

His bravado was back in good order. Zig one sentence, zag the next, and leave the poor girl baffled. Taking his cue, she smiled half-heartedly. “Wh—pardon? Detergent?”

“Guy was a stickler 'bout his clean upholstery.” Jacklyn leaned on the countertop. “Me though, I'mma stickler 'bout having my lunch. Made enough for you too. Want some?”

“You will give some? I am quite hungry,” she muttered to herself, as her gaze drifted to the door.

Jacklyn traced its path back to her. “Give yourself a minute. Going by straits you was in when I picked you up, you got some pretty nasty folk on your tail.”

“...It is true.”

“Now, I got a mind to be getting you outta it. But do wanna hear you locked-in a plan first, so you ain't winding yourself back where you started.”

“I see.” She leaned her mouth into her fist, thumb on her chin. “I will eat, then, I think.”

He set a plate on the table before her with a reassuring smile, which she again returned. Still, rather than reach for her fork, she kept smoothing the same stretch of blanket.

Jacklyn popped one meatball off her plate, teasing. The flavours of the garlic and seasonings had mixed perfectly, with an immaculately tender texture on the pork. He allowed himself to visibly savour: Damn, I did good on these.

It convinced her. Watching how she guzzled the food, once hunger overwhelmed her reservations, Jacklyn figured this the first decent meal she'd had in months, if not ever. It shouldn't have surprised him.

“This is—very good. Are you a chef?”

“Nah. I just wash the dishes. Picked up a few tricks though, eh?”

“Hoh.” She hummed, pecking around the plate with her fork. “This is small pork. You are wealthy.” Then she laughed at herself. “Well, you are foreign. In a day, I have heard, you will make the wage of a year.”

Jacklyn, back at the counter, smiled down at a knot of noodles. “Yeah. That math's about right.”

“Of course.” Clink-clink-clink, sounded her fork as she twisted it to and fro over the plate. “How—” she closed her eyes and took a breath. “How have I come to be here?”

Saw some thug dragging you around and beat him up. Found you drugged in an alley and couldn't leave you there. What story would work. No, he knew. “With some of that daily wage, bought you from the Skinslipper.” Her face stiffened on the word. Jacklyn tilted his head, rubbing his fingers together. “His Majesty's tenets don't include slavery, and being in Ordanz ain't made it one of mine. Emancipating's something of a hobby.”

“A hobby. I...” She trailed off, kneading the blanket. “It is almost disgusting, to think you may do such a thing at a whim. Rather, I cannot believe it can... happen.”

“It's how you're here on a cozy couch under a warm blanket eating delectable meatballs.” He twirled his fork lazily. “Well you can figure out if you believe in it later. Ain't like you're sticking around, eh.”

“No,” she muttered. “Then you are new to Ordanz? But you speak the language well.”

“Must be a quick study then, thanks.” He shrugged. “Hey – clearing up confusion is well and good, but we gonna play twenty questions here? Gift horses, clean mouths, all that.”

“Maybe not so new,” she murmured. She stared contemplatively at her plate, until her mouth quirked sardonically. “May we be strangers once I leave that door, I find I do not need to know.”

“Completely agreed, lady. Completely.” Frankly it was more surprising she hadn't put the situation together already. Perhaps he'd overestimated his own infamy – and, he had to note, perhaps she just wasn't a Welding local to know of it.

Speculating such a thing about Linnie was pointless. She was a Commons homebody. What he instead had to speculate, dripping like tar in the back of his head, was that maybe, a thousand to one, a hundred to one, just maybe, this wasn't Linnie.

How she ate, how she talked, how she looked. She just didn't seem sick.

Sure, that had been the issue to begin with. It wasn't atypical for lung rot, either. But the clerk's assertions of the girls' health had been earnest, and even supposing, ahem, that he was a new hire, how long would the Skinslipper leave his underlings ignorant to the actual state of his products? Were the drugs not painkillers? Just there to make her suggestible? He could see her being rowdy.

She did have enough muscle in her malnourished arms to be a miner, the demographic most vulnerable to the rot. And Jacklyn's intuition for picking out relationships, familial or not, had long proven itself trustworthy. Just not infallible. Abruptly, his food soured.

He needed to confirm.

“Now here's something you can field for me. You sure you got nowhere to be I can get you?” Her fork froze, halfway into a meatball. “Not exactly my thing to pick up a girl just to throw her back out on the streets.”

“Oh, the gentleman.” She clicked her tongue. “No, no, it is already enough. If you must, a fare for the hotel, for the tram, and to move... I will handle myself. I need only money.”

Jacklyn leaned his chin on his hand, smiling.

Damn.

He slid open a terminal panel on the wall over the sink. With a few swift clicks, punched keys, and whirring gears, the latch of the hidden safe popped open. The golden coins inside – some bound tightly in stacks with thin plastic wrapping, others chucked freely in and abandoned – would fund anyone decently for decades, and modestly, for a lifetime.

Jacklyn thunked a stack of wrapped coins on the countertop. No need to count it. It was enough.

Linnie's eyes bulged like grenades. “I-” she stammered, her feet whisking her straight to the counter, fleet as iron filings to a magnet.

As if winded, she stared at the coins, then at Jacklyn, the coins, again Jacklyn. “Truly,” she whispered. She set her hand on one end of the stack.

Even when he felt the tug, Jacklyn did not lift own his from the other.

Linnie's head jerked up. The sequence of emotions that played through her face whirled as a tempest, of confusion, of suspicion, fear, realization, and with uniting clarity, of dread.

Her hand flashed away from the stack as if seared. Just as quickly, she turned and made the first few steps of a sprint for the door – for Jacklyn to catch her by the wrist and yank her backwards like nothing. She stumbled. She was light. Had he really used that much force?

Or had he just learned too much from the Skinslipper.

“Aaaalllright, let's calm down a second now,” he said.

“The brother of that monster!” She howled. “And a foreigner in the East Weld! Of course. I do not know—what insanity I was thinking!”

“Seriously, settle down. Settle down...” The thumping of her fist against his chest informed him just how well this track wasn't working.

It didn't hurt. She was rather weak. Jacklyn grasped her free hand and brought it, gently as he could, down beside its restrained twin. Within a few minutes, her struggling ebbed into only brief bolts of resistance, then to nothing except ragged breathing.

“It was aphrodisiacs? I have heard what you do,” she spat, glaring at him through her dishevelled hair.

“No, it wasn't. You gotta listen to me for a second. Okay? Now...” he started. “Yes, bingo, full marks, the sleazy brother, monster's brother, that guy, there's me, there's who you're talking to. That noted, I ain't my sis. I do things a little different. You'll be outta here perfectly fine, I ain't kidding about that, but you do gotta work with me. Clear?”

Her breathing calmed minutely. Good enough.

“'Kay. Now. Million dollar question for you.” He tapped the stack of coins. “Your name is?”

“It is Ruby.”

“Eeenht. No. Your real one.”

“It is Linaea.”

Anything except a slave name would have been correct. All the same, hallelujah. As his half-conceived plans to return to Honeyheart dissolved, he relaxed the doubts he'd until then restrained. Stealing one girl was a fun misadventure, stealing two would be pushing his luck. Three was a visit to his mother. That thought, he sealed immediately.

Jacklyn passed the stack of money to Linnie. She gripped the thing like a baton and raised it like a cudgel. Telegraphed. Slow. He smoothly caught the blow in his palm before it could hit his temple, redirecting her hand harmlessly back down to her side.

“Don't do that,” he scolded.

She fell quiet.

“Don't run.” He released her hand.

Sure enough, she didn't. Her only movement was the trembling that coursed over her skin, soon a quake. Hands clasped over her face, she wailed that same horrible, anguished sob she had made in the Rose Room – a far more effective sucker punch than anything physical she had attempted.

Jacklyn's hand flicked to his chest, the pain to his heart keen as a knife. “Seriously, you're doing great,” he began, but she only cried louder, sharper, and backed away into the couch. Nothing kind he could say or do would console her. He was just the wrong person.

So he said, “you pulled one over on Jay.” The effort it took her to restrain her sobs was audible in her hard, heavy breaths, but proof enough she was listening. “Now she on a warpath on your Ma. Lucky for you two, us two are fighting. Fucking with her plans drives her up the wall, and letting you off free sounds a good way to do it.”

Linnie's crying eased into hiccups. That was the secret to everything. Pro bono, for Linnie, did not exist, but vengeance and fighting and backstabbing all certainly did. Present something normal, expected, that one sensible point they were looking for, and familiarity would handle the rest. Scum so became saints in seconds, by functioning ears and some half-assed wordplay.

Jacklyn took his ratty trench from the coatrack and held it to her. She accepted, only to stare dumbly at the thing until realization hit. With a final teary breath, she stood and threw it on.

“Everything together?” Jacklyn asked.

“Yes. Yes...” she sighed.

“Food's only half-finished, but...”

“No.” She dumped the stack of coins into one of the coat's wide pockets. Her head darted to the door, posture bent oddly and shoulders set back while uncomfortably smoothing her sides, as if trying not to let the coat's fabric touch her skin.

“I'm coming with,” Jacklyn said. Linnie's head whipped back to him. “My house, yeah? Tits deep in Thorns territory and not very navigable. You want someone along.”

She sighed again, buttoned the coat, and nodded.

“Know a guy who mans a tram to the Commons. Thinking to drop you off there.” With a light whine of metal, Jacklyn slid open the front door.

“Commons? Yes...” Linnie murmured in step behind him, eyes to the ground.

“That good?”

“Yes.” She looked up. What she saw so greatly amazed her it scoured her resignation like a thunderbolt. While shutting the door, Jacklyn glanced over too.

They stood upon an outcropping of an otherwise sheer cliff of iron, both high above the building-tops of the tier below and far below the ceiling of the tier above. Across the panorama, clots of buildings broke into plazas, tracts of suburbs choked into alleys, and dots of people teemed in indistinct masses. In the distance, his mother's tower jabbed out of the mess of twisted streets and congested buildings that, from this vantage point, spread over the city like tumours.

And that was his home. For how it repulsed him, he couldn't deny some affection for it, nor completely cast away his gratitude – for being born into circumstances that, personal discomforts aside, were beyond enviable to many.

That he could possibly want more than this disgusting, grand empire. Well, it was just spoiled.

Shaking off the thought, he guided Linnie down the walkway abutting the wall, which curved back inside into a series of tunnels. The passages widened and constricted erratically, jammed with locked gates at every intersection and countless forks into pitch-black chambers, every footstep an echoing peal.

Jacklyn paused to unlock another gate. The daunted look on Linnie's face as she glanced about the hallways, an admission that she would not have made it alone, was somewhat vindicating.

“Old maintenance stuff from when they first made the vault,” Jacklyn said conversationally, continuing on. His voice echoed – so did Linnie's footsteps behind him. “They started some housing projects, factory prep up here. Think this was gonna be the floor of another tier.”

Linnie didn't acknowledge him. Jacklyn pretended she did.

“Never finished them though, left it all abandoned. Moved the—” he ducked under a narrow, low-hanging beam, “—mind your head there. Moved the steelworks northside and water pumps, diesel pumps east. Wonder what made them quit here?”

“Hm,” Linnie hummed.

“I think something scared 'em, something came out of the tunnels...” Hands in his pockets, Jacklyn turned on his heel to grin, then completed the turn forward and shrugged. “Jay says that's stupid and the location's just bad though, that or the supervisor changed. Figure she's right, eh.”

“Your sister. She will not be angry?”

“She will. But she ain't gonna do anything 'bout it, cuz then I snitch to Ma. That's a fire not even she gonna play with.”

“I would not play with it, either...”

“Ain't you already done that? Granted, fell in Jay's purview, so doubt Ma 'zactly cares.”

“I am uneasy, in this place,” she said abruptly, peering down an unlit passage. “Does it go much longer?”

Jacklyn clicked open another gate, this one guarding a walkway between knots of rumbling pipe. “Not much,” he replied.

Halfway across the bridge: SKCEEEE! the pipe shrieked behind him on its forgettable cue. Jacklyn turned just late enough to see Linnie yelp, and jump, and bump herself against the guardrail. Though rattled, and a little dinged, she collected herself fine.

“Does that. Ice or something stuck in there.” Jacklyn tapped the pipe reassuringly. The metal was frigid cold, as usual, and left a sheen of condensation on his palm. Droplets pattered on the floor as he shook his hand dry. He grinned.

Linnie winced into her coat, and urged him on.

“Should maybe name that pipe,” Jacklyn wondered aloud, proceeding. “Used to get me a lot, that bastard.”

“How sentimental,” Linnie muttered dryly over her shoulder.

“Well there is sentiment. Half the place weren't working when me and Jay found it. Had to mess with water mains and such to get everything flowing again.”

“So it is your child now. The faulty pipe.”

“Why not?”

Linnie choked out a single, bitter, “hah,” and answered no more of Jacklyn's prattling.

Freely he'd admit that he screamed and bawled too, coming here as a kid, yanked along into darkness by Jayden. Now he accepted whatever might lurk in the shadows as friendly, or at least as unconcerned with its neighbours. Still, he never ventured unaccompanied down any uncharted chambers, always followed the lamplight, and through every quiet hall, mentally monologued tedious bullshit like what dinner he'd make or where he'd shop next to an enraptured audience of nobody. Something about the silence here, if left unbroken by such distractions, was ominous. Why though, he could never say.

Once the chatter of a human crowd burbled in from the streetside alleys, and the general noise of life and bustle took them inside its veil, Linnie's shoulders eased, as did, naturally, Jacklyn's.

The incantation to equip Linnie with elevator keys was thus: “Hey Enzie, she's with me.”

She knew well enough how to work a tram. She strode into the corridor without a second glance back, far too composed to want or need another word from Jacklyn, leaving him and Enzie to chat over a shared box of cigarettes.

Enzie smudged the white table with ash then flicked the snuffed butt aside. “Lovely girl. So where'd you find that one?”

Jacklyn finished his drag. “One of ours, actually. Skinny's.”

“Ohhh.” Enzie leaned his mouth into the crook between his thumb and forefinger. “I'd suppose you would have the premium picks then.”

“Well, yeah, if I want.” Jacklyn shrugged. “She's just sick though, what, two months 'till she croaks it? Thought it'd be nice to get her back to her Ma, see each other again before then.” Another puff.

“Mercy me. She doesn't look it.” Enzie gazed after the hallway, but her silhouette had long disappeared.

“Right? But she is. Too long in the mines.”

At that, Enzie leaned back in his seat. His expression was hard to read with his hand over his mouth, but the way his free fingers tapped on his table betrayed some impatience – and deliberation. In the end, it was, “you better get back to her before that tram arrives, or she's going to steal your coat.”

“Oh that one's a favour. For me.” They laughed. “See, she and her Ma...” a small voice, probably called his 'conscience' or 'self-preservation' reminded him he shouldn't be talking about this. But fuck it. The whole thing was over and it was Enzie. “...did this whole thing, where she's dying anyway, so sell her to the Thorns. Right? So then her Ma gets this huge... huge thing of money, even though she's gone. It was really sweet she did that. She must love her Ma a lot.”

“Jacklyn,” Enzie started, after another pause, “you're a very... romantic sort. What...” again, he stopped. “...a blessing it is you have Jay. Truly, honestly, it is.”

“I'm so lucky,” he agreed. But what that had to do with Linnie, he couldn't begin or care to ponder.

The mouth of the hallway gaped empty.

Maybe say goodbye. But thinking of her face, all he heard was that horrible sob.

The characteristic thunk of a tram car sounded out from the hallway. A few seconds later, heavy whirring cut through the silence. “There goes your girl,” Enzie snubbed and flicked away another cigarette, hunching over the table. “Now you got any more business to be hanging out here with this fart? Spry young lad, better things to be doing.”

“Aw, Enzie.”

“Ahh, I'm teasing. Sides, I'm on shift anyway. But tell you what,” he said, “that pub Winston's is holding a darts tournament tonight. You and Jay should visit, watch me go, take a shot. All good fun.”

“Sounds like it. Sure, I'll drop by. And until then, welllll,” he pondered, grinning playfully as he danced backward a step. “Think Marinne's closed shop yet?”