The Builders (3 page)

Given that he stretched perhaps triple the combined size of the creatures waiting for him, Barley managed to enter the bar without drawing undue attention to himself. It wasn’t stealth, exactly; he was much too large for that. More a sort of unassuming quality that allowed eyes to pass over him without demanding the notice his dimensions rightfully demanded. In one hand he gripped the top handle of a black trunk, wide and presumably quite heavy, though you’d not have known it by the ease with which it was carried. Apart from whatever was inside, Barley had come unarmed.

The conversation at the back table had long since gone silent. The Captain was not one for small talk, even in his cups, and Boudica and Cinnabar’s studied muteness made the mouse seem positively loquacious by comparison. Generally speaking, Bonsoir didn’t see the silence of others as a barrier to conversation, but even the most committed orator requires some assistance from the chorus. Without it he had turned, like his companions, to the rewarding but largely silent task of getting drunk.

So Bonsoir looked up happily when the creaking floorboards indicated the arrival of another member of their merry band, and his smile widened as he discovered the newcomer’s identity. Barley matched it with a grin that overran his snout and spilled over into a booming laugh. Unlikely as it seemed, the ink-black stoat and the broad-chested badger had been thick as thieves during their service, to use an overly sympathetic euphemism to describe years spent in the business of violence and mayhem.

“That’s an ugly hat,” Barley started.

Bonsoir’s eyes went wide with mock fury. “This is the greatest hat anyone has ever worn,” he said, pointing at his beret. “This hat was a a gift from the Emperor of Mexico, after I saved his life from a rampaging skunk. He begged me to stay on as his chief adviser, but I said, ‘Emperor, Bonsoir cannot be caged, not even with bars of gold.’”

“Mexico doesn’t have an emperor.”

“That is Mexico’s misfortune, for all of the greatest countries have emperors.”

Barley laughed a second time and made his way to the oversized stool that Reconquista had put out to accommodate his ample backside. He set his case next to his chair and called for more liquor. From behind the counter the rat brought another jug to join its siblings scattered about the table.

If, as Barley had insisted, he had turned over a new leaf, and was no longer willing to countenance murder—he seemed altogether comfortable in the presence of creatures who had made it their calling.

The Captain slunk through the back streets of the Capital like waste through a drainage pipe. There were few enough now who could remember him, and the likelihood that any of them were spending this stormy evening in the slums north of the docks was slim—but the Captain was careful even when he didn’t think he needed to be.

So he stuck to the shadows, and cut through alleys, and kept his hand firm on his revolver. The Captain did not like being in the Capital, had not been back since that grim final night five years past. But he had one more visit to make, one last strand to pull together, and it was not coincidence that he had saved it for last. The rain trickled down from the top of his hat to the brim, dripped over his dead eye and into his whiskers. It was the kind of storm that made walking feel like wading, the kind of rain that wet the ground without cooling the air. It was the right kind of weather for the business ahead. The Captain stifled a sniffle.

He took a turn down an unremarkable side street and stopped in front of a battered wooden house. No sign established it as a place of trade, and there was nothing to indicate it was anything but what it seemed; except the door was heavy, and thick, heavier and thicker than a door needed to be for a shack in a slum. The Captain banged on it, three solid blows.

A peephole slid open. A beady pair of eyes peeked out from it. “What you want?” a voice asked. It was not a friendly voice. Voices coming through peepholes rarely are.

“I’m here to see the Underground Man.”

With most of his body obscured, it was an open question how exactly the gatekeeper responded to this piece of information. But the eyes, at least, clouded up with fear. “Who you be?”

“Someone who knows who to ask for.”

The peephole slammed shut. The Captain heard the sound of a bolt unlocking, then the door opened to reveal a massive porcupine in a fine suit, perfectly tailored to allow for his prickly pines, any one of which was half again the size of the Captain.

“Welcome to the Setting Moon Café, sir. House policy requires all weapons be passed over for safekeeping.” The bouncer’s thick patois had been replaced with an upscale accent, but a quiver broke through it, as if the mention of the Underground Man was an invocation sufficient to unsettle him.

The Captain handed over his revolver. It represented perhaps a solid quarter of his armaments, though if the porcupine realized this he was wise enough not to make it an issue. “Speak to the bartender, sir, about your business,” he said, then, breaking role suddenly, he set a hand on the Captain’s arm. “If you’re certain you want to be about it.”

The Captain shook off the porcupine’s grip and descended the stairs without responding.

It would have come as a surprise to the homeless and destitute creatures who eked out a miserable existence on the streets above that their block—indeed, the neighborhood—was little more than camouflage, rough casing for the subterranean organs below. Beneath the boarded-up row houses was a sprawling citadel of sin, decadent and opulent, beautiful and corrupt. Scantily clad females carried trays of liquor to powerful males, threading their way through poker tables and roulette wheels. In one corner was a stage, though at the moment it was vacant of any entertainment. In another a door led to a suite of back rooms, and the pleasures on offer there were always available, so long as you had coin to pay.

The Captain paid no attention to the decor, or the females, or their clientele. The Captain was singular in his single-mindedness. He took an empty stool at the back counter, far away from the few packs of revelers, and he waved down the bartender.

“Whiskey? Smoke? Something more satisfying?”

“I’ll take the first,” the Captain said, pulling a cigar from a pocket and lighting it. “And I’ve got the second.”

“How about the third?” the bartender asked with practiced charm.

The straight line of the Captain’s mouth didn’t waver. “I’m here to see the Underground Man.”

The bartender went wide-eyed and threw back the shot of whiskey he had just poured for the Captain. “She knows you’re coming?”

“Who knows what the Underground Man knows?”

“Who indeed?” The bartender poured himself another glass and drank that as well. “I’ll let her know you’re here. If she don’t wanna see you . . .” The bartender shrugged. “You probably won’t be seen again.”

The Captain didn’t seem impressed by that. The bartender disappeared into a back door.

It was a slow night or the guinea pig probably wouldn’t have bothered. The Captain did not seem desperate for company, though on the other hand, company was usually the reason animals made their way to the Setting Moon Café. So she sidled two seats over, drawing the Captain’s attention with her ample bulk.

“Not interested,” he said flatly.

She smiled. She was pretty, for a guinea pig, if you didn’t mind them heavy. If you did mind them heavy you probably wouldn’t go for a guinea pig. “Slow down a minute, sugar. No one’s asking for a ring. How about you just buy me a drink?”

“I’m not paying for this one,” the Captain said. “I could not pay for another.” He reached over the bar and grabbed a glass, then filled it from the bottle before sliding it to her. He had to stretch.

She recognized his courtesy with a quick bob of her head, then took a sip of her drink. Time passed. She fluttered her eyelashes and offered a coquettish smile. But the Captain’s shallow reserve of gentility was depleted, and he ignored the bait.

She decided to go for broke. “I could put a smile on your face,” she whispered, running the pink of her tail down the Captain’s leg.

“No, you couldn’t,” he said, and his one good eye didn’t look at her.

Another moment beside his ground-glass scowl and she decided he was probably right. As her hope for a transaction evaporated her demeanor changed, leavened into something more natural. “What’re you here for then?”

The Captain rolled a few fingers of liquor down the recess of his throat. “I’m here to see the devil.”

A flicker of fear, though she hid it swiftly. “I’m not sure I know him, stranger.”

The Captain poured another charge into his cup, disposed of it with one neat motion. “Everybody knows the devil. But not everyone works for her.”

The guinea pig swallowed hard. “I don’t know anything about that, stranger. I stick to my own business.”

Now the Captain did smile, though she found she wished he hadn’t. “Let’s hope that’s enough to save you.”

The bartender came out from the back then, shaking his head in wonder or fear. “She’ll see you, stranger,” he began. “Follow that passage to the end.” He opened his mouth as if to say something else, perhaps to try to dissuade the Captain, but in the end he remained silent. The mouse did not look like the sort of creature who left a place with his aims unfulfilled. And besides, security had already marked him. One way or the other, he was going to see the Underground Man. The open question was whether he’d come back out again.

The Captain slid off his stool and walked into the back, without a word of thanks or farewell for the bartender or his erstwhile companion. The door led to a long corridor, and then to a second door, grim and featureless. He banged his tiny fist against the wood. It opened almost immediately, the dour rats behind it apprised of the Captain’s arrival.

Rats are not, generally speaking, friendly creatures, but even by the standard of their species the small plague rats were particularly menacing. They did, however, upend the age-old species stereotype of being unhygienic and ill-disciplined, in fact exhibiting a neat uniformity in dress and manner, clad in well-fitting black fatigues and scowls to match the Captain’s own. Or nearly, at least; the Captain was a hell of a scowler.

This time the search was thorough, and the Captain ended it without his irons or much of his dignity. The former concerned him more than the latter.

Two of the rats hustled the Captain down another wandering corridor, spending a long few minutes in silence. They were thorough professionals, and the knowledge that they might well find themselves firing their shouldered scatterguns at the mouse’s back precluded any misplaced cordiality. For his part, the Captain just didn’t like talking.

They came to a final door, ebony accented in rosewood, a centered doorknob of sterling silver. “She’s ahead of you,” one of the rats ventured. “And we’re behind.”

If the Captain felt any way about this, you couldn’t have told from his face. He opened the door and stepped inside.

The Underground Man’s sanctuary was a towering cylindrical chamber, as dissimilar to the rest of the Setting Moon Café as the Setting Moon Café was to the surrounding neighborhood. Its defining feature was the bookshelves that wrapped around the walls, housing thousands upon thousands of leather-bound volumes, a rolling ladder offering access to their wisdom. At floor level the concentric circles of an Oriental rug strangled a jet-black desk. A single gas lamp dangled down from a long chain attached to the distant ceiling. There was a small door opposite the one the Captain had just come through, which led, presumably, into the owner’s sleeping quarters.

In the center of this vast edifice of erudition, surrounded by a ring of the most jaded debauchery, encompassed finally by abject poverty, stood a fat mole in Eastern pajamas. She took a few steps toward the Captain, her blind eyes twinkling through bifocals. Her hands were crossed inside her wide sleeves. Her pink snout quivered in the air, inspecting the new arrival. Behind the Captain the guards fingered their weapons, prepping for the kill.

“My old friend,” the Underground Man said, extending her hand. “My dear old friend.”

The Captain took it. “Gertrude.” He nodded to the books, or perhaps to the building that surrounded them. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

Gertrude shrugged self-effacingly at the surrounding splendor. “One has to keep busy. And you? How have you occupied the last half-decade?”

“I joined a nunnery.”

“Here soliciting donations?”

“Not exactly.”

“No, I imagined not. Now would be the time—the Capital rots, the country boils, the roads are awash in banditry and disorder.” She scratched her chin, settled her arms around a rotund belly. “Have you thought about how you’ll do it?”

“Yes.”

“Loquacious as ever.” Gertrude burped a laugh. “I assume it begins with the Elder.”

The Captain grunted.

“He should be easy enough to find. And if you’ve got everyone together, easy enough to get. But what happens after?”

The Captain shrugged. A silent moment dripped away. “I figured that was where you came in.”

“I suppose I might be of some assistance. Though that does raise another issue.” She went to the bar on her desk, filled two glasses with a golden liquid trapped in an opaque decanter, turned, and handed one to her guest. “What’s in it for me?”

The Captain sipped his drink, but above it his eyes didn’t leave the mole. “You could be the Lady of the Manor.”

“I couldn’t. And besides, I don’t want to be Lady.”

“Me, neither. But I wouldn’t mind whispering in her ear.”

“You say that, but I’m not sure I believe you.” Gertrude drained a few fingers of alcohol through her long snout. “At the bottom, I think there’s nothing in this for you but blood.”

“So what do you want?” the Captain asked testily. He was not a fellow who enjoyed having his mind probed.

Gertrude gestured casually at her surroundings, opulence flavored with refinement. “I have it. What we had hoped to gain collectively, I’ve taken on my own.”

“Would you do it for the sake of old times?”

“I rather think not. We are creatures little troubled by such extravagances as loyalty—and even still, your probable suicide mission would be stretching the bonds.”

“Then do it because we’re going to go for it whether you throw your hand in or not. If you stay out of it, and it goes our way, then you’ll be left in the cold. And if you stay out of it, and we fail . . . I imagine you might experience a brief twinge of regret.”

Gertrude smirked. “Very brief.”

A few more seconds drifted by, then Gertrude sighed and made a motion dismissing her guards. “It would be nice to see the Dragon again,” she admitted. “And of course, there is that lingering question of who exactly betrayed us.”

“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” the Captain said, his visage more than usually terrible.