Within a Name Read online

  Within A Name

  Robert Fisher

  Contents

  Biography

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Dear Reader

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  Copyright (C) 2019 Robert Fisher

  Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

  Published 2019 by Shadow City – A Next Chapter Imprint

  Edited by Tyler Colins

  Cover art by Cover Mint

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

  Biography

  Robert Fisher has lived in Hiroshima, Japan, with his wife and five-year-old son since 2015, where he occasionally teaches English, writes, and pretends to learn Japanese. Before that, he lived in Vancouver, Canada, where he worked in the beer industry and mostly just cavorted about, getting into trouble and eating Thai food. He placed fourth in The Vancouver Courier’s literary contest with his short story “The Gift,” which appeared in that paper on February 20, 2009. His science-fiction novella The God Machine was published by Blue Cubicle Press in 2011, and The Kalis Experiments, the first book in the Tides Trilogy, was released by Next Chapter in August, 2019.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Tomomi, for everything (literally). Thank you Beckett, for knowing when I needed a break. You shan't ever be forgotten.

  Thanks to the 3 Day Novel Contest, for forcing me to write the first draft of this book over one weekend.

  Chapter One

  Ranat Totz’s worn shoe made a sodden, squishy noise when he poked the corpse with his toe. The sound was barely audible over the soft patter of the drizzle.

  He glanced around. Somewhere, beyond the low rough slate of clouds, the sun edged its way over the horizon. People already thronged the narrow street behind him. This early in the morning, it was traders and merchants with their servants and hangers-on in tow, bustling down Grace’s Walk, eyes on the wagons hauling bolts of cloth or lumber or smoked fish, or whatever else could be sold in the markets. Minds on wealth, their accumulation of it, or their lack of it. Spitting, coughing camels pulled the carts, snipping and grunting at anyone who stumbled too near. Beggars from the Lip weaved between the knots of merchants, their pleas riding across the din and rattle of the street: “Tin? Have a Tin? A Three-Side? A disk? Even a ball? One copper ball? A draw from your cask, there?”

  The thrum of it was familiar music to the old ears of Ranat, but the last question, which carried to him before the bray of a disgruntled camel cut the voice off, made his mouth water. Not that he’d ever resort to begging traders. They weren’t known to part with their booze or tin. Still, he could use a drink.

  He took a furtive glance around again and ran a long, weathered finger down his jawline, felt the steel wire tangle of his short white beard. A tremor, the first of the day, shuddered through his fingers, taking on a life of its own as it fluttered down his arm. Yeah. A drink would be good.

  No one was paying attention to Ranat, where he hovered on the edge of the darkness cast between two crooked windowless tenements, and no one but he had seen the corpse so far, obscured by a moth-eaten sack of stiff, coarse cloth that had been thrown over the body, but had failed to completely cover it.

  He crouched by the figure and tugged off the ragged shroud of burlap to get a better look. The alley was cobbled here, but close to the Lip and coated in a fingers-width of slick black mud, grasping at anything that sunk into it. A few paces further in, a soft low belch rumbled from the ground. A brass-release valve rigged to the Tidal Works began to sigh thick white steam. The warm cloud churned over Ranat for a moment before a subtle shift in the air, unseen and unfelt, funneled it upward in a slow tornado, where it vanished in the eternal grey ceiling that hung above the city of Fom.

  It was a man. Face down. Black hair shot with a few dashes of silver. Well off. Some Church official, though what he’d been doing out here on the edge of the Lip before dawn was an interesting question.

  Ranat took a deep breath, held it, let it go. Forced his hands to stop shaking. Then, he went to work. The coat was nice—heavy, light grey leather dusted with a coating of fine white hair. He worked it over the dead man’s shoulders and tried it on, brushing without success at the mud caked onto the front of it. It fit. A little big, but Ranat wasn’t going to complain about that. The boots were better than the ones he was wearing now, too, but way too big. Still, he pulled them off and bundled them in the damp wad of burlap that had hidden the corpse. He knew a guy by the arena that would pay cash for the leather if he couldn’t find another taker for them.

  He suppressed a shudder as he flipped the body over, and the mud made a soft, sucking sound as it clung to the man’s chest and thighs and face. The body was pudgy, but pasty mud masked all other features, except the color of his hair. Just another body, he told himself. No reason it should be any different than the ones he normally picked from, except that this one wasn’t already buried.

  The man’s shirt was black with old blood, where it wasn’t crusted in mud. There was a tear just below the heart, as long as Ranat’s thumb. He shuddered again, looking down at the stains on his new coat. Just mud stains, he told himself, peering at them, not too close, in the shadows of the alley. Just mud.

  The dull clatter of tin as he’d rolled the body had made him pause, and now he saw what caused it: a heavy-looking, once fine belt pouch pregnant with coins. He couldn’t have been laying here for more than a few hours then, even this early in the morning. Someone would have taken the cash. Shit, Ranat thought. One hour in this part of town was stretching it. More like twenty minutes. He felt panic rise in his stomach, sure someone must be watching him, and he rose to check the street again, but amid the teeming mass of people, he was still alone.

  Coin. He’d got lucky. The pouch bulged as he fondled the clasp that attached it to the dead man’s belt. Not just tin balls and disks, but Three-Sides. Ranat would be able to drink for a month. Maybe more, if he paced himself and stuck to glogg.

  His long fingers hesitated over the belt buckle he was trying to unlatch as his gaze fell on it for the first time. He sucked in a little whistle of breath through the gap made by his two missing upper-front teeth. Even through the greasy, briny mud, he could tell the buckle was precious. Crystals—or were they diamonds?—peeked through the seeping gaps of black ooze where Ranat’s fumbling fingers had scraped it clean. Other gemstones, green and yellow, formed the angular, stylized shape of a phoenix, with a single square ruby serving as the bird’s eye. All of it set into the metal of the buckle itself. And not just copper or bronze. The thing held the grey, dull weight of iron.

  Ranat finished tugging the belt loose and bundled it with the boots. He patted down the rest of the body. In a narrow pocket on the inner thigh, he found a letter, chunks of a broken seal of black wax still attached to it. One edge of it was stained dark and ruddy with blood. His heart lurched with excitement, but he resisted the urge to read it. Better to wait until he was out of the rain. Better to get away from this damn corpse before someone saw him standing over it and got the wrong idea.

  He took a few steps tow
ards Grace’s Walk, paused, and went back to the alley. He crouched down, one last time, this time to wipe the mud on the dead man’s face with a handful of dripping rags heaped by a nearby doorway. The sheer wealth of the dead man was astounding, more so for where he’d ended up in the end, and Ranat half expected to recognize the soft round features, but wiped clean there was nothing familiar in the face.

  “Well,” he said to himself. “I’ve got to get the hell out of here.”

  He stepped onto Grace’s Walk again and crossed to the unnamed streets beyond, still doing his best to pretend the uneven, dark stains on the lapels of his new coat were from the mud. He heaved the sack with the boots and belt over his shoulder, and every few steps double-checked to make sure the pouch of tin was still secure under his threadbare linen shirt. He’d need to unload the boots and the buckle soon, if for no other reason than he didn’t want to carry them around, but first, he needed a drink.

  Noble sir,

  Please consider this an invitation to discuss the new situation in a more informal capacity. While you will find me in reluctant accord regarding most details, there are a few points I would like you to consider.

  I have reserved a booth at The Crow’s Marquis for the balance of the day, where I hope you will grace me with your wisdom.

  With the utmost respect,

  Your servant in Grace

  Ranat drained his glass and set it among the empty ones lining the edge of the warped table, a leaning construction of driftwood and ancient shattered pallets, fitted together and tossed with apparent randomness, along with other similar bits of furniture, into the basement that everyone referred to as “the bar.”

  He took a long pull from the next glass—the eighth on the table and the last one to be emptied—and examined what remained of the wax seal, thankful the quiver in his hands was gone.

  Black wax. An image of a tree, a crescent moon hanging over it, some sort of creature seated among the stylized roots. Enough of it had crumbled away to keep what sort of animal it was—other than one with antlers or horns—a mystery.

  Ranat read the letter again, savoring the shapes of the words as they panned across his eyes. He didn’t understand what it was telling him. He’d never heard of The Crow’s Marquis. Still, it was a more interesting read than the usual manifests and shipping lists that he ended up collecting most of the time.

  The note explained a few things, though. Whoever the corpse had been, he’d been up to something. A Church official, maybe, trying to do some business on the side. Something shady. Something that had gone south in a hurry, and left the man a crumpled body in an anonymous alley in Fom, stabbed through the heart.

  “Should have minded his own goddamn business,” Ranat muttered, glancing over the paper one more time before folding it back up and slipping it into the pocket of his new coat.

  “What was that? Shit, Ranat, I guess that’s not your blood, or you’d be passed out with seven and a half beers in you.”

  He looked toward the voice. He’d been focused on the letter for longer than he’d thought. The bar had filled from the smattering of vagabonds that had been there when he’d first arrived, the sawdust floor almost hidden through the mass of legs, and the stone walls bled condensation from a hundred alcohol-infused breaths. Light seeping around the front door, loose and crooked in its frame, was a watery yellow from glow lamps instead of the watery grey of daylight. Somewhere, beyond the gritty overcast, the sun had set.

  The speaker was a pocked, wiry woman with sharp, clear eyes and a knotted ponytail of sandy hair that looked like she’d tied back weeks ago and ignored ever since. Her face was craggy and pitted, like an old woman drained of her beauty, though Ranat knew she wasn’t half his age. Life in the tunnels of the Lip was cruel even to those it was kind to.

  “It’s not blood, Gessa. It’s mud.” Ranat gestured the chair opposite him, where his empty glasses cluttered the table.

  She shook her head. “Got no tin for beer tonight. Surprised you do.” She glanced at the empty glasses. “Not rum or glogg, neither, but beer at that.” She paused. “Eight of them. So far.”

  Ranat shrugged. “Made a find. You want something, it’s on me, for once.” He shot her a grin, showing off his missing teeth. “Don’t expect that offer again anytime soon, either. If I were you, I’d take it.”

  “A find? Who’s tomb you dig up now? The former Grace? The goddamn Arch Bishop himself?” But as she spoke, she pulled out the chair, frowned as it wobbled under her, and pushed the empty glasses into the middle of the table.

  “No tomb, this time,” Ranat said. “Though he wasn’t any less dead for the lack of one.”

  He waved over the waiter, a boy nine or ten, with a vicious rough scar that traversed his shaved head from his right eyebrow to the nape of his neck. “Five more beers. And another one for my friend.” He reached into the coat and pulled out a triangular coin, a little smaller than the palm of his hand, stamped with the relief of a dour old man on one side and a stylized sun-and-crescent moon on the other. “And keep it coming,” he added as he flipped the coin towards the boy, who nodded and disappeared into the milling throng towards the bar.

  Gessa’s eyes were wide. “A Three-Side? You did make a find, didn’t you?”

  Ranat scratched his tortured beard and smiled. “Told you. Looks like some poor sot from the estates got into something he couldn’t handle. You ask me, they should stay behind their gates where they can feel superior and safe, like. It’s dangerous in the city. You hear anything about it yet?”

  “You mean about someone important turning up dead?” She shrugged. “No. Not yet, anyway. You know who he was?”

  “Nah. Found some boots, though. Too big for me. And a coat. Oh, yeah. And this.” He reached under the table into the sack and rummaged through the bottom until his fingers closed around the muddy belt. He pulled it out and draped it across the empty glasses.

  Gessa’s eyes grew even wider. Her expression was almost comical. Two giant eyes like white-and-blue plates on a narrow rack of a face, dishes set out to dry. “Damn,” she said under her breath as she picked up the buckle and felt the weight of it. “Iron?”

  “Seems like. Not to mention the stones. Recognize the work?”

  “Nah,” she said with a shake of her head. “Someone from the Church, though. No one else can afford this. Well, maybe one of the merchants. Where you find the body if he wasn’t already tombed up the way you like ‘em?”

  Ranat scowled, but ignored the jab. “Just yonder. A few streets from the Lip. Heaped in an alley.”

  Gessa nodded. “Guess he was up to no good, then. Still, what an idiot. Gonna do business on the Lip, at least dress the part. Come slumming dressed like that, someone’ll shank you.”

  He plucked the belt out of Gessa’s hands just as the boy returned with another tray of lagers and struggled to find room for them on the already cluttered table.

  Ranat spoke around the boy’s fumbling arms. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, but he didn’t get shanked for his money. Whoever killed him, they just wanted him dead. That’s weird, too. If you’re gonna murder someone like that, might as well at least make it look like a mugging.”

  “You know where you’re gonna unload?” Gessa asked, ignoring the boy, who’d gathered all the empty glasses onto his tray and was now waiting for a break in the crowd to take them back to the kitchen.

  “Meh. The boots I think I can take to Han. Even if he doesn’t want them, he still owes me for the time I pulled half his inventory out of that fire. Not sure about the belt. Don’t know anyone who has the kind of tin lying around to pay up front for something like that, and damn if I’m gonna take less than it’s worth. Shit, even without the stones, the iron is worth as much as the sack of cash the poor bastard had on him.”

  Gessa chewed her lip in silence for a minute. “I know a guy, maybe.”

  “Some smuggler on the Lip?”

  “Nah. He’s legit. Pays his Salvation Taxes and everything.” />
  Ranat scowled. “Then why would he deal with me?”

  “He knows he can pay you less than that thing is worth, and you’ll still walk away happy because it’s more than you’ll get anywhere else.”

  “Business first, faith second, eh?” he asked, tone wry.

  Gessa shrugged. “Isn’t that always how it works?”

  “So, I guess you’ll be wanting a cut, then, if you tell me where this guy is.”

  She smiled, revealing teeth the same color as the sawdust floor. “Thirty percent?”

  “Ha!”

  “Fine then. Don’t need to be like that. How about fifteen?”

  Ranat laughed, genuine this time. “Shit, woman. I’ll make it ten, and throw in a lesson or two on haggling since you seem to be so bad at it.”

  Gessa frowned, but managed to make the expression friendly. “Fine. Ten. But you owe me.”

  His smile didn’t fade. “What do you mean? I already bought you a beer.”

  It was late when they left the nameless bar, cold enough outside to condense the constant drizzle into a light rain.

  “I suppose this mystery merchant of yours doesn’t keep night hours,” Ranat murmured, turning up his collar against the chill.

  “Nah,” she said, and looked as if she might add something else, but fell silent.

  “Well,” Ranat said after a moment. “No use standing in the rain. My place ain’t far from here, you know.” He gave her a look.