Howdy folks, thanks for dropping by! The usual warnings apply: This is a rough draft so expect questionable grammar, hackneyed dialogue, adult language and situations, dropped plotlines, continuity errors, and the occasional typo. If, despite all these things, you still find yourself enjoying the story, consider sharing with your friends.
Aristarchus raised an eyebrow and his eyes darted to the people flowing in and out of the gate. “Well then. You’d better come back to The Armoury,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of conversation we should have out here.”
“You might need more people on the gate. You might need a lot more.”
He looked to the other black-uniformed members at the gate and spoke to the gear. “Miranda, run ahead and let Duke Penhold know we’re on our way. Bring twenty more constables back with you—” He saw the expression on Aleph’s face. “Thirty more,” he amended.
He gave Aleph a questioning look. She shrugged. “That might do it. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but you might ask the SWAT and SMAT teams to begin gearing up as well.”
“SMAT?” asked Sam.
“Special magics and tactics,” said Alpeh.
Aristarchus cocked a white eyebrow. “Really? Is it that bad?”
“It’s worse than that, but we’ve got to start somewhere,” she said tensely.
Aristarchus gave Miranda, a nod. “Get them back here double-time.”
“By your command,” she said in an oddly musical voice, and the gear sprung off into the crowd and out of sight.
Sam did a double take at the construct’s back as she wove through the dense crowd and looked at Aristarchus in question. “Did I? Did she just…?”
“Noticed that? They think it’s funny as hell to mess with the rest of us. Fracking toasters,” he said with a smile that contained no trace of malice.
“You might want to start paying overtime to the members about to go off shift and bring in anyone who can work on their day off,” said Aleph.
Aristarchus shrugged. “No phones, no network, no overtime.”
Aleph looked to Dimitri.
“What?”
“Can you help with that?”
“I’m talented as fuck,” began Dimitri.
“And modest,” said Sam.
“And modest,” agreed Dimitri. “But there are limits. I can’t just make a high-speed network out of thin air.”
“I don’t need a high-speed network, I need basic two-way communication. I’d be happy with two cans and some string if it meant I could get in touch with people.”
“Oh, yeah, I could probably arrange that, then,” he said reaching into his pocket. “Gimme a sec.”
“We’ve had our people working on the problem for the last three hours,” said Aristarchus. “The hardware at the network towers has been sabotaged. How are you able to do what our own technomancers cannot?”
“Thank you!” said Dimitri, pointing at Aristarchus. “Thank you. At least someone can manage to not call me a Webmage.”
“I’ve had sensitivity training,” said Aristarchus without missing a beat. “Please answer the question.”
“Well, your guys could get in trouble for, say, co-opting someone’s device without their knowledge, right?”
“Yes.”
Dimitri swiped his screen and spoke quickly and quietly into his phone. “Oh, look! A bird,” he said pointing up at the black sky and tapped his screen.
There was a chorus of chimes and chirps around them as the notification beeps of other phones and devices immediately around them sounded.
Dimitri’s shoulders hunched and he turned to face the two officers who had been standing silently behind Aristarchus. “Not that there’s anything wrong with birds,” he said, careful not to make eye contact with the constable who had red feathers for her hair.
Aristarchus gave him a level look before reaching for his pocket.
“Don’t bother,” said Dimitri. It’s just going to show that an app updated itself.
There was another more faint chorus from devices further away. Then another. Then another, the chirps, quacks, and dings spreading in an expanding ring until they were too faint to hear.
“It might take a couple minutes, but you three should be able to text in a couple minutes.”
“What about you?” asked Sam.
Dimitri cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’d be a pretty shitty technomancer without connectivity, now wouldn’t I? Unlike yours, my device has some special mods.”
“How long will it last?” asked Aleph jiggling her phone at him.
“As long as I want it to. The outage is affecting the network, not the devices themselves.”
Aristarchus turned to Aleph. “Should we be alright with this?”
“Not normally, but I’m willing to let it go for now.”
Aleph turned to face him. “With all due respect, I’d suggest that it’s time to start tracking down the duty officer to start getting in touch with members who can be brought in.”
“You sure about this?” Aristarchus asked, looking worried. “The overtime is going to be worth a king’s ransom.”
“It’s not my call to make, but I’ll make you a deal. If we end up not needing them I’ll pay the overtime myself.”
“You’re starting to worry me, Aleph.”
“You have no idea how much you should be.”
Aristarchus turned to the remaining two constables. “Grab the barkers from the gate to keep you company until the reinforcements arrive. They’re used to cracking the odd skull. Stay here as a visible presence, but don’t hang around if things start to get dicey.” They nodded, the avian constable’s red feathers puffing slightly as she did.
Aristarchus motioned for the rest of them to follow and began to quickly make his way into the bustling market. The gate opened onto a wide avenue packed with shoppers and semi-permanent vendors. Sam could just make out the rise of the Whitebridge over the heads of the crowd and walls of the Armoury a kilometer distant.
The stretch of cobbled avenue between the gate and the Armoury was known as The Armoury Walk. It ran straight as an arrow between the Black Market on the left side and the White on the right. It was one of the most walked stretches of cobblestones in the Aether and it was only the very tip of the iceberg that was the Wandering Market.
It was common knowledge in the Community that different parts of the Aether were known for different things. If you wanted interior design, you went to Fey for custom-grown furniture and living wallpaper. If you needed dental work, you went to see the Shojo and got fixed up for the price of a kiss and a bottle of good whiskey. Had a craving for the best noodles in all of known existence at three in the morning? No problem, you took a trip to visit the Panotii and made certain you brought your own drinking water. If, however, you needed to find the impossible—or at the very least the improbable—on a tight budget, the only place to go was The Wandering Market.
The Market itself occupied a square exactly two kilometers on each side. It was often said it this size, not for any love of the metric system, but because the beings who originally conceived it realized that the area of four square kilometers is the perfect size one needs to become utterly lost.
The Market was packed with every sort of creature that the human brain could fathom, and a healthy assortment of others that it tried its very best to ignore. Intelligent colonies of fungus bartered with the sentient shadows cast by divinities long since forgotten for the best price on a case of macaroni and cheese. A family of octopus-like beings, out for the day to shop and see the sights, piloted conveyances of glass and metal through the crowds, the largest with a garland of tinsel strung around the clear pilot’s dome. Vendors of every description attended wheeled carts, collapsible tables, and fabric-draped stalls of all possible configurations. Strings of fairy lights made with real fairies, hissing kerosene lanterns, and glowing glass vials of different hues and brightnesses propped the market up against the surrounding darkness.
Fragrant smoke rose into the still air like weeds rising from the bottom of a mill pond to be consumed by shoals of giant, luminous, goldfish who flashed and swam lazily through the rising columns. As they passed overhead they cast golden disco ball light onto the rows and stalls beneath them. As Sam watched, one of the enormous fish attempted to eat another’s gently glowing poop, only to spit it out a moment later.
It was The Market in all its filthy, noisy, smelly splendour and Sam was so caught up in his surroundings that he completely missed the assassin. They passed her, just another Christmas shopper inspecting a selection of Fey silks, completely failing to notice anything unusual about her. None of them could be blamed since there really was nothing unusual about her. Until she drew the gun
Whether one of her crows had spotted the gun or if Aleph’s instincts were just that good, Sam would never know, but the goddess reacted so quickly that by the time Sam realized anything was happening at all it was over. Aleph spun on a heel and slapped at the woman’s hand. The gun went off with a cough of compressed air and Aristarchus collapsed to the ground without so much as a grunt.
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