Page 6 of The Only Way Out Is Up

“Because it stinks up the whole house!”

It takes me a little longer to descend, easing my bad leg onto each step. The sweet-sour smell of mash-bread is everywhere, the day’s first batch cooling on the table. The front door’s shut until we open for business, so I go to the back. That takes me past Somi’s room, and I give a surreptitious glance at the money jar. The big glass cylinder has never been more than half-full of steel bits that I can remember, but what’s left in there now barely covers the bottom.

My lip twists. Whatever Somi says, we need whatever I can bring in. Another pair of hands in the bakery isn’t going to accomplish anything, but if I can win this fight…

I clench my fists to keep them from shaking and take a deep breath.

Somi himself is outside the back door, surrounded by a horde of pint-sized monsters. He has a tray of small loaves, as he does every morning, and he holds it high in the air while handing one to each of the grubby children who shout and tug at his clothing. Sometimes he reaches down to gently smack one who tries to steal from their fellows.

“Everyone gets some,” he says with the exasperated air of a person repeating himself for the hundredth time. “No snatching.”

“Taj!” says Ema, a girl with a mass of filthy, unmanageable curls.

“Tah!” says Athie, a boy with a finger permanently wedged in his nose.

Gort, Ema’s brother and barely old enough to walk, takes the opportunity to try to chew on Somi’s pant leg.

“Hi,” I say to them. I haven’t learned the names of the rest of the skinny, faceless horde. Don’t want to. Get too attached to them and you end up like Somi, soft as dough.

“Can we see Star?” Ema says breathlessly.

“Star!” Athie shouts, and the others take up the chant. “Star! Star!”

Well. I need to meet up with Star anyway. I give a whistle, purely for show, and send, Your appearance is requested.

[Pride: my adoring public.]

Most people can’t think to their runics; they have to gesture or speak aloud. When I was a kid it took me a long time to understand that, and I nearly got into trouble several times because of it. Most runics also don’t have much to say back. Star is unique, and not just because I built his body from scratch.

He emerges now from a hole in the wall, kicking his legs grandly to the delight of the crowd. I’m the only one who winces at the sight of his two latest replacement limbs, crude work not up to my usual standards, but all I could manage in the time we had. They work, at least, though I don’t know if they’ll stand up to sustained use.

If we win, I’ll have time and money to fix them properly. If we lose…

Star does a little hop, then a flip, inverting his legs to land with a clatter. The kids laugh and applaud.

“Careful,” Somi says, shooting me a look. “You could hurt someone.”

Hard to explain that Star knows what he’s doing. Not even Somi and Spike know he’s not a typical runic; they just think I’m particularly good at commanding him. I give a nod.

Wrap it up. I’ve still got a few tweaks to make before the fight.

[Excitement: but they are so adorably fragile.]

And filthy.

[Agreement: as well!]

The outside of the Heap is bounded by the cavern wall, which Heap-dwellers with their boundless creativity refer to as “the Wall.” That’s where most of the people live, as far as possible from the twin threats of junkfall and marauding Twisted. Our bakery is on the inner (that is, poorer) side of town, a lopsided two-story building leaning against a massive pile of broken concrete. It’s surrounded by shacks and shanties built from whatever material the junkheap provides, all filled with a seething, noisome mass of humanity.

Walking outward (directions in our circular world are inward, outward, clockwise, and anti), you quickly reach a better part of town, marked by houses that seem to actually have been planned instead of grown. A little farther anti and there’s Stair #3, an endless pile of metal steps supported by a web of girders and gantries, stretching all the way to Malkuth high above.

At the base of the stair is the market, and I make my way there step by painful step, Star scuttling obediently behind me. It’s bustling as always, thick with desperate energy: children selling pots of water for an eighth-bit (for those too lazy or broken to make it to the public fountains); stitchers with fabric fluttering from their outstretched arms, living billboards for their work; butchers offering so many different cuts of meat that with a fat coin-purse you could reassemble the pig. Workhouse stiffs in their Malkuth clothes, mass-issued and ill-fitting but still finer than most, taking advantage of a day’s leave to strut tall among their less gainfully employed fellows. And, of course, the Clawmark enforcers, easily picked out by the three scarred lines on their cheeks, gliding through the crowd in little bubbles of quiet deference.

Ekkeban has his own shop, buried at the back of an alley between two overflowing shanties, invisible except for those who know what to look for. He deals in hard-to-find items the Arbiters might frown on. Not that we get a lot of Arbiters wandering around down here, but stick out too much and they might make an example; hence the low profile. The door squeaks and groans, and I hear more twisted metallic complaints from the back as Ekkeban levers himself out of his chair behind the counter. He’s a big man, dark-skinned, with a face that’s a wasteland of pockmarks and ash-gray hair coiled in tight locks.

“Starting to wonder about you,” he says when he sees me. “Usually you’re in here next day.”

“Ran into some trouble,” I tell him. “Left a couple of liters behind. Had to rest for a bit.”