Orphan of Mythcorp (11 page)

Anne Thrope laughed. “You have more people
than you realize. You’re going to meet two of them inside the City
in just a few minutes.” Another snort. “But you won’t like it.”

Not sure about the protocol for responding to
a prophecy, I said, “Are we almost there, because my knee is
buggering me something bad.”

Anne Thrope stopped and held a hand up.
“We’re here. What do you think, orphan?” gesturing at a
side-by-side pair of brick building.

“
What do I think about what?” I said.
“It’s just a couple of buildings. A funny set of doors between
them, but it don’t look like anything special.” I rubbed my leg.
Pain was spreading and I was lost, darn it.

Anne Thrope strode up the steps to the
double-doors, peeped back at me. “You shouldn’t always trust your
eyes, orphan. This city is filled with deception.” Then,
straightening her grungy shirt, Anne Thrope rapped on the door
using the lion head brass knocker; three rapid taps and then a
fourth, softer rap.

I was leaning heavy on the stick by now,
trying to steady my hand, when a panel on the upper portion of the
door slid open with a whoosh. This particular stretch of street,
far from Alpha Circle, was not blessed with a lamp, so I couldn’t
make out the face behind the panel, but I could hear a booming
voice. Hobbling up the bottom step, I squinted to try and see the
man behind the door.

Anne Thrope nodded and then stepped aside. A
whiz-bang beam of light streamed into my peepers. I snapped them
shut and staggered back. “What the freak?”

“
Relax, Dominic,” she said. “Put your
light-stick back in your pants and open up.”

Dominic slammed the panel shut. We listened
for a few ticks as he undid half a dozen locks. The bottom of the
doors grumbled against the concrete stoop as Dominic shoved them
open.

Anne Thrope entered. I limped up the steps
after her into a small dark room.

Marie bamfed into existence beside Dominic.
She was cringing and looking kookier than ever, the light of her
essence like a sun in this dark room. I could barely make out the
recliner behind Dominic. Other than that the room was a humdrum, a
box full-o-nothing and a real disappointment. ‘Don’t go into the
City,’ Marie pleaded.

Dominic shuffled to the back of the little
room, set his meat hooks on the curtains to part them. “Hold up a
sec,” Anne Thrope said. “He’s never been in before.”

She then faced me. I whiffed something
odd: she smelled like a fine butterscotch candy and doojee all the
way, whiz-bang and dynamite rolled in a grungy dish of ripped jeans
and no bra; and me standing there famished, shaking, shivering and
tired.
They better have drugs in
there
.

“
You with me?” Anne Thrope snapped her
fingers. “Remember the three things I told you and you should
survive.”

“
Should
?” I
burst. “What the heck kind of place is this?” My pumper gushed
blood into my ears. I could barely hear anything.

“
This is a place where you can buy
anything and find everything, a place beyond the reach of
government, a place outside the law,” Anne Thrope declared with a
smile. The next tick the smile vanished. “Such a place is naturally
a den of thieves, cutthroats, swindlers and bastards scrambling
over each other in attempts to become its lord ruler.” Here she
gave me a penetrating gaze. “But don’t be fooled by their bull.
There is only one King of Vera City, and he is not easily
replaced.”

The whole time Anne Thrope was
speaking, Dominic was staring at me, and Marie was pacing. “What do
you mean? You think
I
want to
replace him?”

Anne Thrope shrugged. “Do what you want. Just
remember, I warned you about Arthur King. Now, are you ready?”

“
Um, no?”

Anne Thrope shoved me through the bead
curtains. “Welcome to Vera City.”

She stayed behind with Dominic, leaving me to
tour the kooky underbelly of Philicity alone.

What can I say about Vera City? Anyone who’s
been there knows that it is unlike any other place in the world—a
good and terrible thing.

An assault on the senses, sure as sure. The
aroma of popcorn and sweat blended with the stench of dung, filling
my sniffer. Hot on its heels were the harpings of laughter and
arguing, the rabble of haggling and the shuffle of thronging
bodies. Eventually my peepers adjusted to the onslaught of a
neon-lit world. I could barely take it all in.

The doors we’d come through were stationed
between two eight-story buildings, where an alley should’ve been.
Great sections of the ground floor walls had been knocked out,
providing plenty of space for vendors to set up their shops in a
chaotic mélange of booths. I saw now that rising about twenty feet
over our heads was a network of glass panels, lit like a rock
concert, threatening to burn my peepers out of my skull. I cocked
my head in awe. Booths and plywood stations stretched as far as I
could see, their vendors keeping watch on their wares by night.

Every few feet a new aroma would attack my
sniffer. Being in Vera City was like being high.

“
Out of my way, pillager,” a man toting
a large vinyl bag roared as he charged right past me, heading
towards a booth covered in graffiti.

A fifteen-foot stand beside this tattoo
parlor, filled with all manner of blades, caught my peepers. The
yellow and red neon sign above the stand read THE KEEN EDGE and
there was a brand beside the name painted red. It looked like a
shield or a round table bisected by a long sword. I could feel the
heat from all the bodies whizzing by behind me as I stood gawking.
So I shuffled out of the lane, closer to the booth. All the blades
were caged behind locked glass, and there was enough stainless
steel framed glass here to windowize an entire city block. Okay,
that was hyperbole, but only just.

Jackknives and hunting knives, short swords
and samurais and swords so long they looked forged for giants.
Switchblades and those slamming butterfly blades I’d always wanted
to try. Blades with wooden handles and blades with carved ivory
hilts. I hobbled to the right, rounding a woman with a shaved head,
to get to a glass case filled with a variety of cripple-sticks,
gleaming and bejeweled.

“
Ah yes,” the vendor, a man with more
hair on his face than on his head, said. “I can see you need one
with a little more . . . style, eh?” nodding at my plain-Jane
cripple-stick.

“
Yeah,” I drooled.

The bearded wonder nodded, clapped his hands.
“I thought as much. I saw you and I thought ‘here’s a man who knows
what he wants’. Now, you’ll want to try one out, eh.” He whipped
out a set of keys and unlocked the cripple-stick case. “Ah, here we
are. This is the one. I know it! Go on, try it out.”

I leaned mine against the booth to grab the
silver cripple-stick. The top was a heavy-duty eagle-head with red
peepers. I backed up to try it out, walked right into a
behemoth.

“
Oh don’t mind Naaman,” Bearded Wonder
said. “He’s just going to make sure everyone plays nice and doesn’t
walk off with my googs, eh.” He then turned to address Shaved Head
Woman. His peepers zipped back and forth, reminding me of
Pellinore.

To Naaman I said, “It’s dynamite. But what is
a cripple-stick doing in a knife emporium?”

He reached out for the stick. I released it
and took up mine. Naaman twisted the eagle-head, as if he were
trying to decapitate the bird, and then yanked on it. A two foot
sword slid out of the shaft.

“
Whoa, that’s sick!” I sounded about
ten years old. “Man, I wish I could afford it.”

BOOM! Naaman rammed the sword back in place
and stuck the cripple-stick back in its glass case. Bearded Wonder
appeared opposite me, inside the booth.

“
You come to my store, try out my wares
and you got no greenbacks?”

I stumbled back a smidge, got knocked down by
a zipperdick in a rush. “Watch it.”

“
I have paper,” I declared. “Just not
enough for that. Maybe something a smidgen smaller?” I said,
because it seemed wise to purchase something.

Naaman, the Eighth Wonder of the World was
hovering over me. The DT’s returned.

Bearded Wonder nodded, played with his gray
face bush. “Less grand, eh? I think I got something like that.
Maybe,” with a smile. He bent down, came up with a book-sized glass
case.

“
Pens?” I asked.

He unlocked the case, plucked up a purple
pen. Bearded Wonder raised it up to my face and twisted the halves.
In one swift move he drew the top off, revealing a mini blade. He
peeped around, leaned in close. “The blade and the pen itself are
made entirely with plastisteel. You can take this through any
detector in Philicity without setting it off. A Jackson and a
Lincoln, and it’s yours.”

I doled out the money and fingered the
penknife. “Ah, you made a great choice, coming to see me, eh,”
Bearded Wonder whispered. “The King himself buys his swords right
here at the Keen Edge.”

“
You don’t say,” I said. “And
what
a king, huh?”

“
The once and future, indeed,” Bearded
Wonder boomed. Then, stroking his disgusting beard, he added, “Tell
you what. I like you. I have a sixth sense when it comes to
customers.” He leaned down behind his booth and came up with a
plain gray case. He opened it up and lifted a small tool that
looked like something an insane dentist might use. “This will pick
any lock, anywhere. I’m giving it to you.”

“
For free?”

“
Yes,” he said, “well, nothing’s free.
Tell you what. One day I may need a favor. When that day comes,
you’ll grant me my boon, eh?”

“
Eh,” I said, not knowing what a boon
was, and doubting I’d ever see this kook again.

“
Now go on, and don’t try out any goods
without you have the money.”

I nodded and started wandering down the
aisle, alternately checking out my penknife and searching for Anne
Thrope. After depositing the thing in my flannel pocket, I took my
moula out, counted it. I was checking to see if I still had enough
to purchase a few ounces of doojee, just in case I stumbled on a
pharmacy in here.

Thinking it wise to get out of the main flow
of traffic (didn’t anyone sleep?) I hobbled over to an alley and
paused to steady my jittering hands. I was slammed to the ground
real slap-dash like. My stick flew away as I landed on my knees.
Agony shot through limbs-torso-head as I crumpled to my face.
Greenbacks floated down to the ground. They didn’t linger long;
hands shot out of nowhere and the bills vanished. When I scrambled
to reach for the Grant lying a few feet away, a black boot stomped
on my arm. I screamed.

Oh yes, I screamed and then screamed a little
more.

The pillager (I was starting to get the hang
and terms of this place) scooped up the Grant and then kicked me
over so that I was face up. My vision blurred from pain and
withdrawal symptoms and the megabomb annoyance of all this. I’d
escaped the school to find out what Sanson was up to and here I was
in this insane neon world getting my ass handed to me.

This pillager was a young woman with
dreadlocks, sporting blue tats along her forearms and denim cutoffs
on her booty. It would be too cold outside for her getup, but in
Vera City, the temperature was a good twenty degrees warmer. This
sister bent down, put her face to mine. She smelled of tuna fish
and java. “Don’t you know the rules?” Without waiting for an
answer, she kicked me in the ribs.

I wheezed, curled up into a ball.

Blue Tats laughed and her pillaging friends
joined in. “Betcha don’t count your money outside a booth
again.”

“
Bet you’re right,” I moaned. “Still,
you might have told me the rules and avoided the hassle of beating
me up.” At least the throbbing of my ribs distracted from the agony
in my knee.

“
And miss out on all the fun and free
dough?” she laughed. She then looked at her friend, an ugly dude
with a silly goatee. “You know, Titus, I don’t think our friend
here has learned his lesson.”

“
I would have to agree,” Titus said.
“Perhaps he requires further teaching.”

“
No thank you,” I groaned. I could’ve
really used that cane-sword right then.

Without further absurd dialogue, Titus and
Tattoo went to town on my hide, beating and kicking and punching
the piss out of me. I screamed, but this took too much effort and I
soon left off. It was only after I was sure one of my ribs had been
snapped-crackled-and-popped that I remembered my gift.

Ash would’ve used the Mesmer
before
being attacked.

I crawled away during a lull in my
‘lesson’.

When Blue Tattoo came at me, I sat up and
grabbed her face, yanked her so close that my peepers were mere
inches from hers. We were locked on now.

“
Hey! Whatchu doing?” Titus asked. He
came forward, started kicking my legs. I ignored him. Other senses
become dull during a Mesmer. It’s just you and the victim. I had
Blue Tattoo. But Titus, no doubt desperate, called out for help.
Soon I was surrounded by tattooed goons. I drew the girl tight to
my body, using all my strength to keep her pressed
close.

I could feel one of them trying to yank her
out of my grasp, while another was busy pummeling me. But I could
sense Tattoo now. Her name was Lindsey and she’d run away years
ago, been living in Vera City ever since, pillaging and pulling all
sorts of mayhem.