Feed the Machine (23 page)

Food didn’t matter now.

The quota didn’t matter.

Only the percentage she could negotiate. The difference between slavery eternal or eventual freedom.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. Come in or move along.”

Dia focused on the guard. Ah, there it was. That look.

“I’m here to sell our quota.”

The guard patted her down for weapons and then waved her in.

A blast of cold air hit her, pushing away some of the headache that had been throbbing since she’d awoken on the floor of their house. Nola had been awake, slurring her words and trying to stand. Ash and Silver were still unconscious, victims of whatever they’d been hit with. There was a scent in the air—something burnt—and a thin chalky residue coating every surface. Some sort of gas? The hasdee was gone—sliced off at the base—along with the remaining few gold watches. The sourcecube went with the hasdee.

The door closed behind her and Dia stopped, breathing in the refrigerated air. It was cold and pure. The type of air only the rich could afford. She closed her eyes and let heat of her skin radiate away.

There was only one goal: negotiate for twenty percent. Don’t get angry, don’t beg, don’t go crazy.

Don’t push your thumbs into Fat Man’s eyes until the feeble orbs burst.

Dia took a few deep breaths of the cold air and then opened her eyes. This wasn’t the end. It would be okay.

Silver had grabbed her on the arm—a miracle in itself—and told her so. It will be okay she’d slurred.

Dia walked down the corridor and into a larger room. Fat Man sat behind a table that stretched down most of the room. Saliva squirted into her mouth. Roast chicken, slices of beef pink inside scattered with thyme, fish in a white sauce, slices of cold meat, cheeses of every color and hue. Bottles of wine, beer, spirits.

Two guards, not quite as fat at their master glaring at her. Ledger man holding a black book filled with debt entries. Two servers waiting for commands.

“Debt?”

Fat Man picked up a grape, dropped it in favor of another.

“Minus eight zero one,” Ledger man said.

“Ooh, did you feel that chill? Cold in here.”

Fat Man laughed at his own joke, his fat jiggling as he shook himself. He still hadn’t looked at Dia.

“All finds you get ten percent. Work is sunup to sundown Monday to Saturday. Sunday off. You do not own a hasdee. All purchases are made through me.”

“Twenty percent.”

Fat Man continued on as though he hadn’t heard her.

“You can stay in your own home but there is also mandatory paid accommodation available. Hot water, clean clothes, good food, all for a minimal fee.”

“Twenty percent,” Dia repeated again.

“In exchange for all this, I will buy your quota debt and pay it off. You will join my family. Agreed?”

“I. Want. Twenty. Percent.”

Fat Man looked up from his food at Dia, his blue eyes twinkling with delight.

“In a few hours, silver bugs will come streaming out of the Machine to kill anyone below negative one thousand. If you accept my offer, you and your family will live. If not…”

He waved his hand dismissively.

Dia looked at the food. A beef roast sat surrounded by glistening vegetables. Roast potatoes still hot from the hasdee. Did he have it brought out deliberately before each petitioner walked into the room? A curl of steam twisted from it and vanished in the cold air. It couldn’t stay hot for long. It was…
performance
.

“I know you negotiate. This is a big debt and we’ll be paying it off for years. You want this debt. You know my son finds the best in the Scour. Nola is the bartender who will pull back everyone you lose to the Wire Pub. Silver is clever and can repair anything. So you want this debt and I want twenty percent. We keep twenty percent.”

Fat Man nodded to one of his servers. He brought over a silver steaming pot, pouring hot coffee into a white porcelain cup. Dia tried not to breathe in, coffee a distant memory, but failed. It brought back memories of a table, a red tablecloth, a husband, two younger children eating and a baby sitting in a high chair, sneezing through mouthfuls of porridge.

“You’re right. I do negotiate and I do want your debt. It would please me greatly to buy the Rose family debt, especially given what your husband did to me.”

He stroked his finger down the scar running from temple to jaw. Then he leaned forward.

“But there is a certain satisfaction to seeing your shit-eating family wiped from existence, too. Ten percent. Take it or die, I don’t care.”

He waved his hand at the coffee, had the server take it away, began tearing a crusty bread roll apart.

Dia glanced at his scar and then down at the food again. The story of the scar was hazy. A year after Hanlon arrived in Cago and swept Dia off her feet one of the other circus performers, Yull, had somehow become indebted to Fat Man. It was so many years ago—he was only just beginning to build his tangled web of debt, obligation, control and power. They were living together then and she was pregnant with Ash. Yull arrived late in the evening babbling about debt and death. She was sick with that morning sickness that lasted all day and only overheard fragments. Hanlon took him outside and calmed him down. Later that night she awoke to an empty bed and Hanlon sneaking back into the house. He brushed aside her questions and she’d let it go. A few days later Yull left town debt-free and a week after she saw Fat Man at the Machine, a long livid red scar down the side of his face.

There had always been a secret joy to it—the idea that Fat Man carried a scar reminding him that he was not all-powerful. That for all his guards and fistful of debt, a knife would still make him bleed.

The secret joy that it had been
her
husband who did it. The one who did not fear a bully.

But now, watching Fat Man methodically shred the roll into pieces on the table, it was clear the scar was one last poisonous gift from her husband. Sent through time, a long cut and attack that went unavenged and if he wasn’t disfigured perhaps she could negotiate twenty percent.

“Twenty percent.”

Fat Man dropped what was left of the roll and picked up a blood-red grape. He rolled it between his fingers.

“A sugary bag of water. So fragile, it’s hard to believe such a thing grew naturally.”

He squeezed the grape. It split, dripping red juice on the pile of torn bread. He dropped it and waved a server over who passed him a hot towel.

Hands clean, he looked at her and smiled.

“The next word out of your mouth will be
yes
. If it is anything else then there will be no deal and I will sit with the rest of Cago and watch the silver bugs tear your recalcitrant family to pieces. If you leave without selling me your debt then there will be no deal. Ten percent, terms previously mentioned.”

He waved to another server who again poured him a cup of hot coffee. This time he picked it up and breathed in the rich scent.

Dia took a breath and let her gaze pass over the sharp carving knife that sat beside a roast duck glistening with fat.

Two guards, two servers, Ledger man, a broad table and distance between them.

Too much distance.

“There is no miracle coming to save you,” he whispered into his coffee.

She knew in that moment he’d sent the men to attack them last night. He had stolen the sourcecube, had stolen the hasdee and the gold watches that would have kept them free for another year.

“Yes,” Dia said.

Ledger man instructed her to follow him out of the room and to the Machine. Guards followed, one carrying a heavy bag. It took but a minute for her to request joining Fat Man’s family, pressing glowing buttons on the screen and pressing her hand against it. Ledger man accepted the application on Fat Man’s behalf.

It was nothing really, a brief animation of their names joining a list of hundreds. The Gould Riley family. The debt moved across and then one of the guards methodically fed platinum bars into the Machine until it was cleared away.

“At two o’clock your family will report to the main gate at the end of Golden Street. No pets. Don’t be late.”

Ledger man wrote something in his book and walked away, leaving Dia standing before the Machine.

The chill of Fat Man’s room was still on her, fighting a losing battle with the hot sun climbing across the sky. It felt like relaxation, a gentle warmth, a calmness and peace. Dia knew it was just a trick—her stupid skin unaware of the
why
of the chill, ignorant of the
why
of the heat.

There was calmness down somewhere deep but it had nothing to do with avoiding death at the claws of silver bugs.

Her husband had sliced a knife down the side of Fat Man’s face.

She was going to finish the job and cut his fucking head off.

Chapter 38

Silver

Between one tick of time and the next, a new number added to their files and she knew it was done.

They were now part of the Gould Riley family.

“How the fucking fuck does your name and a message get etched into the bottom of a trapdoor? That was Fat Man’s trap.”

“It was done with bugs I think. I dug down and there was the bomb. Who put it there?”

Nola and Ash were ranting, arguing, questioning, taking fury and passing it back and forth between them.

“That fucking asshole has a room full of collars. There are a hundred families out there paying off quota debt they don’t have to because he has their collar.”

“More people must have fallen into his traps and died. Damn I wish you hadn’t lost that map. It was evidence.”

“There were fucking Scabs chasing us!”

“Yeah, I know.”

She idly surfed through the information on the tablet. Bell Dorrit was still alive, her numbers now even further out of alignment. Without heal she’d die soon. Thirty-one people had joined Fat Man’s family today. Nola was wrong—there were three hundred and forty-one collars locked in Fat Man’s palace.

“I guaran-fucking-tee Fat Man stole our hasdee and the sourcecube. Silver found one of his bugs under our house while you were gone.”

Ash looked to her.

He wants confirmation. Nod.

Silver nodded.

“So he has a bug under our house and when I bring the sourcecube in he knows it. He waits until night and sends in his thugs with some sort of knockout gas to steal it and the watches.”

“He’s probably done it a hundred times! People go missing all the time but we think its hazels or Scabs or the fucking pile falls on them! It’s him!”

The voice was stubbornly silent on the topic of the dead Silver and Hello. The still-living Hello seemed to have been shocked into speechlessness by seeing a dead version of himself. Currently he was sitting high on a shelf watching Kin who was stalking around the house sniffing everything.

“Kin, come here,” Silver said. Kin walked over and nuzzled his head against her hand, purring. She watched the tablet searching, the temperature rising. Before it hit the cutout it found an entry. It wasn’t like a human. Some of the variables looked familiar—heartbeat, weight, location—but there were ten thousand more. Kin nipped her and walked away. The location changed. She’d found him.

“We break the fuck in, get the fucking collars and show them to everyone. Then the whole town marches in and strings that fat shit by his balls. If he has any.”

“How did the power to the gate get cut off? Who talked to you through Garrick?”

Silver slipped in the ebb and flow of their conversation. It looped and shivered down dark alleys, hit dead ends and turned back on itself. Nola wanted war—find some way to get the collars out. Ash wanted to be patient, be cautious. Back to the bomb waiting for Ash to find it. His name scratched into the bottom of a trapdoor. Hefnan ready to help at just the right time. They returned to Garrick, nose bleeding, speaking in a strange accent. Silver hadn’t told them about Sheriff Toll doing the same or the cat in the Collector’s house who let them go.

There was much she hadn’t told them.

The dead Silver.

The voice down the deep dark hole giving instructions. Build the compass. Kill Gould Riley. Kill Fat Man.

An entire alternate family, fat and rich, laughing as they walked through town dressed in the finest clothes, a million years from worry.

It’s a trick. You’re being fooled and you’re too stupid to see it.

“Explain,” Silver mumbled.

Nola glanced at her but then returned to planning bloody revolution. She’d already told Ash about attempting to steal platinum bars from Fat Man’s storeroom. The way she skipped about her story Silver knew she’d left parts of it out. It was a family trait.

It just is.

“How very helpful.”

“Silver has a screen that displays the collars locked up. We could show people!”

Nola and Ash turned to her and the loose objectives that had been floating around contracted and crystallized into a plan.