Steam Ch. 03

Sylvia shuddered.

"That's wonderful," she said.

"Yeah," he replied. "You get used to that in the north. 'Fair weather makes foul play for walks in the mountains.'" She cocked an eyebrow. "Dragons won't go flying in bad weather, they move too fast." She nodded. "How did that shield stop those big rocks? I've never seen a caster stop something bigger than cannon shot."

"I don't know," Sylvia replied. A low murmur had risen up at the front of the formation. "I couldn't stop that rock on my own, and even trying to cast a spell in the neighborhood of being strong enough could take hours, days even." She shook her head. "The only thing I can think of is hundreds of mid-level casters casting in tandem, but the energy and concentration that would take is unbelievable."

"Well...shit," he replied, sticking out his hand. Sylvia took it. "Malcolm."

"Sylvia," she replied, shaking his hand.

"Brothers!" Called a voice, magically amplified, from the front of the formation. Caan himself. "The dragons themselves challenge our resolve. ARE WE IMPRESSED?"

"No!" Came the resounding call down the line, echoing strangely off the inside of the barrier.

"Shall we falter? Shall we fail?"

"No!"

"Then onward, my noble sons! The lady of the east spreads her legs for thee!"

The soldiers beat their chests furiously, and Malcolm shot Sylvia a worried look. The call came down the line, and they began marching again.

"So," Sylvia said, after a time, "who were you before all this."

"Just another soldier," he said. "A nobody in need of a paycheck. There's no work in the northern colonies now outside of mining and farming. I wanted to see the world I guess." He gestured to the mountains. "This same range continues all the way up into my homeland. I may as well have never left. And you?"

"Steam Trainer," she said, "with Compton E&L. I... grew up in the capital, and my parents paid for me to go to a very nice college out there. I wanted to major in spell craft, but my grades weren't very good. I have a very high natural tolerance for magic though, so I became a Steam Trainer." She sighed. "And here I am."

"Well," he said, "at least you're getting paid better than me." They both laughed.

"Yeah, I guess there's an upside," she said.

They rounded a final curve and the path opened onto a massive valley, covered in green grass despite the weather. Sylvia could make out speckles of snow gathering atop a massive invisible bubble arching hundreds of meters into the sky. Then they saw it, an almost limitless sea of crimson.

"Behold my children, my brothers and all our new blood," Caan said, his voice once again amplified. A hundred thousand soldiers at least, stood ready in long, well-organized rectangles, awaiting the arrival of their leader. Caan drew his sword and held it in the air above his head.

"Behold," he screamed, facing his legion, "the Army of Caan."

Their answering roar shook the mountains hard enough to spite a dragon.

Lucy finished rolling a cigarette, lit it, and passed it to Buckle. She brought it up and took a drag, enjoying the brief moment of relief when the buzz hit her. Lucy rolled another for herself. They didn't talk. Only the occasional quiet splash of one of their boots in the alleyway puddles and the bobbing cherries in front of their lips gave away their position.

Coalton was quiet on the outskirts. Most people out here couldn't afford the power companies' prices. The poor went to bed early, or they left for brighter streets. Either way, they always minded their own business.

Buckle had seen her own face on a wanted poster a mile out of town. Younger, softer, but unmistakably her in the photo. She ran a gloved finger down her cheek and wondered which bit of leather was softer. The picture had been taken by some clerk in the capital years ago, when young skin was all she needed to hide the meanness in her. Now it crinkled up the skin around her eyes, ran in lines away from the corner of her mouth. She cracked her jaw without dropping the smoke.

"Lantern," Lucy said, moving closer to the building to their left. The Coalton alleyways were cramped and twisted, like the spaces in a broken mouth. Even longtime residents could get lost here at night, but not Lucy. She always new where she stood, where she was going. Buckle respected that about her.

Some porter, his face half covered in shadow, popped around the corner a block ahead. Buckle tipped her hat forward and hunched her shoulders, following in line behind Lucy. The man held his lantern up to see who he was passing.

"Put those eyes to bed, son," Lucy hissed. "Lest I find them a new home."

The man snorted and continued on, but not before switching the lantern to a different hand. Buckle peaked back at him, watching the ball of light bounce and bob until it was gone into some other alley.

"Lot of 'em out tonight, eh Buckle?" Lucy asked.

"Yeah, Luce," she replied, peaking at the building tops above her. "How much further you reckon?"

Coalton was plugged with pollution. The sky was black. The building tops were grey. No stars. No color. Just a couple red cherries swaying through the dark.

"Not much," Lucy said. "Gettin' loud yeah?"

"Yeah."

Low, reedy catcalls from some lonesome oboe player had begun to echo into the alleyway. Buckle could see the red glow of kerosene lanterns against the sky.

"Maybe, Buckle," Lucy started. "Maybe this idea's not quite got wings on it, you get me?"

"Aw Luce," she replied, her eyes still on the glowing red in the clouds. "You don't think my baby chick's gonna fly?"

"I've no love for Fries," Lucy replied, flicking her cigarette into a puddle. "Got love for you could make me see different, maybe, but this whole town feels sick right now."

"You just don't like pimps," Buckle said, chuckling. "Or madams or whatever. Don't sweat it Luce, me and Fries go way back." Lucy laughed.

"Oh, so this mug definitely got sommit planned for us then, yeah?"

"Yeah," Buckle said, "I'd reckon so."

Buckle had sent word to Fries through the usual backchannels before setting off for Coalton, letting him know something would be in it for both of them if he could help her with a thing she was planning. Fries hadn't wasted any time responding.

"How great am I?" Lucy asked as they emerged from the alleyway onto a wide, dark cobblestone street. Fries whorehouse loomed across the street. Like a fat, red sore, it emanated its own heat into the winter night. Every window on the street was shuttered to the massive eyesore. Even the poor had a sense of dignity.

"Least the hangar rails are well polished, yeah?" Lucy said, pointing at gleaming brass bars hanging in couplet over the street. Coalton's public transportation system. The only stops in these outer wards were at places like these. Places that didn't exist in the inner ward. Places you didn't want to have to walk to, or back from.

"Yeah," Buckle said. The dull roar of drunken voices and brushes on a snare drum had joined the oboe. The song was long, slow and sickly. A hangover in elegy. "Hey, Luce, roll me another one of them, will you? I'm no good at it." Lucy chuckled and rolled the cigarette as they walked.

"Last chance boss," Lucy said, handing over the home roll. Buckle took it, grinned around the smoke and lit it.

"Keep saying that and someday you'll mean it," she said, blowing smoke up at the rails. "Let's say hi to an old friend."

They entered through a set of swinging double doors, pushing past a sleepy-eyed bouncer. The place had its own special sort of aroma. Sickly sweet incense, dry and smoky, mixing with the cloying stink of sweat, sex and spilt alcohol drying into the rug. Below all that, faint, but strong enough to stay with you, eggs that had gone over.

"Lovely friends you keep Buckle," Lucy said, stepping over a pair of legs jutting out from beneath a coat rack.

Fries' place was a big, cobbled-together network of other, older buildings attached in a slapdash manner by aftermarket corridors. Everything was built at a slant. Seeing further than ten or so meters was impossible in the hallways. Red electric lights did little to illuminate the hallways. The few people they passed shambled by like ghosts, faces to the floor, covered in shadow.

The band, wherever they were, could be heard all throughout the building. The thick, tacky red carpet softened the noise from the instruments and suffocated their footsteps. Occasionally, some thump in a distant room threatened to break the silence, or a muffled chorus of voices. All the while, the oboe, the snare and a trumpet reigned supreme.

"I don't think we're going to look back on this moment as your crowning achievement Buckle," Lucy said, craning her head around to look behind them. "Place here has my hairs upended."

"On end," Buckle corrected.

"'On end' means something different in the broken sea," Lucy said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Lucy said. "On your butt like, have it? You'd be having me say I've a hairy ass." Buckle laughed.

"Well I'll be keeping that under advisement," Buckle replied. The hallway twisted sharply up ahead of them, and they found themselves walking into a relatively large barroom. The music was louder here, but the band was still nowhere in sight. A few patrons sat here and there, quietly chatting over beers and petting thighs beneath tables. The same red light from the hallways lit up the interior of the bar, except for the tables lining the far walls, which were bathed in hideous blue. The entire room was a perfect circle.

They approached the bar.

The bartender, a slim man in a dark suit, raised an eyebrow when they approached. He poured a single drink for a man at the bar, set it down and turned to them.

"Drink, fuck or smoke ladies," he said, resting his hands on the bar and leaning toward them. "What'll it be?"

He smiled, revealing a mouthful of immaculate teeth, save for two on the bottom left that looked as though they had been smashed with a chisel. A clean-cropped toothbrush moustache sat atop his upper lip. His eyebrows looked drawn on. His hand would be slick with slime if she touched it, Buckle thought.

"Neither," Buckle said.

"Oh my," he replied, "employment then." Lucy chuckled.

His smile widened, showing the broken teeth continued much further back into his mouth. The thought of a piece of his fractured teeth cracking off when he chewed entered Buckle's mind and she gagged a bit at the thought of it. Crunch.

"Not quite, honey," Buckle said, trying to keep some politeness in her voice. "We're here to speak to Madame Fries."

The bartender's face seemed frozen in smile for a moment. Buckle thought she could see the corner of his lip twitching somewhat. He drummed his fingers on the countertop, then stood. The smile vanished.

"Are you expected?" He asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

"Then wait here," he said, turning and walking through a door behind the bar.

"Strange creature," Lucy said when he had gone.

"Tell me about it," Buckle said, turning and leaning against the bar. The cigarette had almost gone out. She looked around for an ashtray or an empty bottle, but found nothing.

"What gods have you angered to make such lovely friends, Buckle?" Lucy asked, turning and mirroring her stance. Lucy's head swiveled, scanning the bar. There wasn't much to see.

"Just about half of them, I suppose," Buckle said. She plucked the cigarette out of her mouth and scratched her chin in the same motion. "Which is... what, a hundred and...65 million?" Buckle took the cigarette and snubbed it out on the palm of her glove, then set the dead smoke on the bar and clapped the ash off her hands.

"Whichever god is punishing me with Fries is a real cocksucker," she continued. "I met him, oh, fifteen or so years ago I think? Maybe more, I dunno. We were in the same crew at the time, knocking off casino bank cars coming out of Dulles Dane. Small time stuff, you know? He fucked off out here 'bout a decade or so ago and started up this lovely place, I guess. Only whore shop in town, far as I know. Guess he killed the rest."

"Lovely," Lucy said.

"Agreed," Buckle said.

"Ladies," said the bartender. They both turned to look at him. "Madame will take you in his chambers. Please, follow me."

"You sure, partner?" Buckle asked. "Wouldn't want this lot getting out of hand, would you?" She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the mostly empty room. He smiled without using his eyes and gestured to the door he had just walked through.

"Please," he said. "Madame is a very busy man. Haste is a necessity." Lucy shrugged and followed Buckle as she passed through the open section of the bar and into the doorway where the bartender's shadow had disappeared. The door opened immediately onto a crooked staircase of alternating red and black stairs. The colors hurt Buckle's head.

"Right this way," said the bartender from the top of the stairs, his voice almost being drowned out by the music. It had become almost unbearably loud in the stairwell.

Buckle and Lucy made their ways up the steps, turning right at the top into a hallway identical to the one at the entrance to the building. It was lined with polished black doors, some of which hung open onto empty bedrooms. Buckle caught the eyes of a tired looking prostitute. She was sitting on the edge of a rumpled bedspread in an oversized button-up shirt, smoking a cigarette and massaging her thigh. Like a fucking mirror, Buckle thought unexpectedly.

They followed the bartender till the hallway split into a Y-shaped fork. A door was set into the angle of the split. The geometry was off-putting to say the least. The bartender opened the door and gestured for the women to go inside.

"Please," he said, "after you."

"Thanks, partner," Buckle said, walking through the door and into Madame Fries office.

The room was bizarrely common in comparison to the rest of the manse. Normal, yellowish electric light filled the white-carpeted room. The office was relatively large, about half the size of the bar downstairs, and shaped like a pentagon. An uncluttered oak desk sat at the far end of the room, in front of a wall made completely of glass. The massive window looked out over the Coalton lights, which only glowed in the distance, in the uptown district.

"Have a seat ladies," the bartender said, gesturing to the chairs in front of the desk. "Madame will be with you momentarily." They obliged him.

"Lucy," Buckle said in a half-whisper. "I'm full-on promising I'll take you somewhere nice on our next date." Lucy snorted.

"Be holding you to that one, Buckle," Lucy said, reaching over and squeezing Buckle's thigh just above the knee. "We'll be having beefsteaks and wine after this then, yeah?"

"Yeah," Buckle said.

A door to the left of the desk opened and Madame Fries stepped into the room.

"Brass Buckle Betty," he said, opening his arms and walking forward to greet her. She stood to return the hug. "It has been far, far too long."

A sundress, covered in pastel wildflowers, hung over his massive frame. The man stood at least a couple heads taller than Lucy did. His body was carved, nearly perfect and tan. Ropy muscles propelled him across the floor, and even the heavy carpet couldn't absorb the thumps of his footfalls. He had been completely bald, even when Buckle had first met him, and he was now wearing a luxurious blonde wig.

He wrapped her in his arms, going so far as to pull her off the ground a bit, then slapped her on the back. She coughed a bit.

"Sorry about that, Betty," he said, standing with his hands on his hips. Buckle could see he wasn't wearing anything underneath the dress from up close. "It is just so good to see you. Have a seat and let's get started."

Buckle's head swam. Sitting down was definitely a good idea, she thought, hurrying to sit down without looking as if she was going to fall. The dizzy spell faded once she was down in the seat. Lucy flashed her a concerned expression, but Buckle shook it off. Fries beamed at them from across the table.

"Well," he started, "how long has it been Betty? I'd say ten, what do you think?"

"What do I think?" Betty asked. "Uh, I think you're right, I guess. And, um, I think you can help us...out...with something we've got planned."

"Buckle..." Lucy started. Buckle shook her head and held up a hand. Something was definitely off.

"I think you may be right," Fries said, leaning sideways in his chair and crossing his legs. "I definitely could help you, but I most definitely will not."

"Shit," Lucy said, standing up and arming the spell on her glove. Fries raised his palm toward her without taking his eyes off Buckle. Lucy's arms fell slack to her sides. He pointed down and she fell back into her seat.

"I know, I know," he said, smiling. "You girls must have a bunch of questions right now, and I'll do my best to explain them." The music was a steady thrum throughout the building, throughout the room, and throughout Buckle's head. She couldn't move either. The fucker had them dead to rights.

"You see," he continued. "We're friends Betty. Great friends. But I have made so many new friends in the last few decades and, ha-ha, they really, really want me to kill you. Do you know why?" Buckle's head shook involuntarily. "Because you are just way too good at your job!" He stood and spread his arms out to the side.

"You see Betty," he said. "That last job you did, that one really got some folks' notice. Some not to friendly folks that I just happen to love to death." He smacked a hand down on the table. "You see, I'm not very good at magic and spells and stuff, and you have just got to be good at those things to keep up with today's demanding economy. My new friends helped me with that a few years ago and...well let's just say I owe them more than a few favors."

He put his fingers into his mouth and whistled. The door to the right of the desk opened, and a naked young woman walked into the room. He clicked his tongue at her like a dog and she hurried over to him, the dirty leather collar on her neck bouncing as she walked.

She was a pretty, pale-skinned easterner, purple-eyed and silver haired. Fries slid a single finger under her collar and pulled her gently to him, then licked up one side of her face. The girl flinched a bit, but otherwise remained expressionless. He whispered in the girl's ear, and she laid down across the desk before him, her rump in the air. He caressed her ass with a single, rough hand. The girl's eyes just stared off into the middle distance.

"This is Tanya," Fries said, slapping the girl hard on the ass. She bit her lip. Buckle could feel the hatred emanating from Lucy. "She is from a very well-to-do family who lives near the capital, and all her life all she's ever wanted to do was become a writer." Fries stood and pulled his dress up, revealing a massive erection. He guided his cock into the girl, pushing in slowly.

"But Tanya trusted the wrong people," he continued, "and they took her off a train in the middle of the night, didn't they, sweet thing?" He began fucking her slowly. The girl reached forward and curled her fingers around the edge of the desk. "Now Tanya's one of my pretty little girls, isn't she?" Fries grabbed the girl's collar and twisted it, making her gasp for breath. He pulled her violently back, till her face was almost next to his. "Aren't you?"

"Yes Madame," she said, trying to pull down the collar and catch her breath. Fries smiled at Buckle and pushed the girl's face down into the desk. Tanya's body shook with every thrust. She moaned. The desk tipped forward a bit. Buckle ground her teeth and tried to move.

"Now, you see Betty," Fries said, breathing heavily. Tanya pushed herself back against him, her face a doped-out, expressionless blank. "You made the same mistake as Tanya. You wanted—ah, ha—to be a legendary outlaw, but now you're going to be one of my special girls too."