Authors: Matt Stephens
"Not exactly." Dorcan took the cup back. "Tecca and Wotcha know her. Knew her. We send our children up Above to get vaccinations, check-ups… You live tightly packed in a room with a bunch of people, one gets the flu, the whole town gets it minutes later. We look after our health as best we can."
Vincent suddenly realized. "Connie's a medical receptionist."
"Yep. We know the free clinic she volunteers at. She helped out the homeless, kids in poverty… We actually thought about recruiting her. She was great with the kids at the clinic. But you've seen how she lives. She'd never fit with us... She met a few of the regulars at your soup kitchen, when Tecca brought them into the clinic. He mentioned her to Wotcha, who came in and… well…"
"Wotcha talked Connie into coming to volunteer at the kitchen." Vincent finished. "Explains why she seemed so nervous her first night there."
"Wotcha is…
was
, a hopeless romantic." Dorcan summed up, rising to his feet. ""Yasi asked me to check in, see how you were doing. I think she was a little surprised to see things with Connie going so well."
"Two years is a long time." Vincent said, feeling something akin to guilt, but he wasn't sure why. "I... I knew I was never going to see Yasi again."
"Nor would you, had things stayed as they were. So you can thank Owen for the hooded looks your girlfriend is giving you." Dorcan rose. "It's been two years, and Yasi moved on too, but I think she would be happy to know that you're happy."
~oo00oo~
"Do I look
happy
to you?" Yasi snarled.
Owen pulled his head back as far as the chain would allow, her sword still close enough at his throat to give him a shave. "No. No, you don't look happy at all."
"A sane person would be
begging
right now. What the hell is your problem?" Yasi growled. She placed herself at the edge of the shadows cast by the hatch to the oubliette. A position that let her eyes catch the dim light, but not her face, making her eyes glow in the dark. "Who are you working for?" She demanded.
Owen said nothing. He didn't even seem nervous. He just looked back at her.
"You're not Lostkind, I can
smell
the surface on you." Yasi snarled ferociously. "So what do you care about any of us? What's your interest? Profit? Revenge?"
Owen just shrugged. "Well, you're the Top Cop in this town. You should have a brain in that hat-rack of yours. Figure it out."
"Oh, I will." Yasi promised him, not a trace of doubt in her voice. "And the second I do, you will cease to be of interest or use. When that happens, you...
most
of you at least, will be shipped out of here. Seems we're not the only ones who have an axe to... grind." She smiled toothily, and crouched low, gathering herself for a leap. With one powerful jump, Yasi had managed to gain enough height to catch the edge of the pit, and pull herself up without pause.
"How's Vincent?" Owen called after her.
Yasi paused, still at the edge; but she didn't turn.
"He's alive, but it's obvious you didn't get to him in time or he would have got his girlfriend out before I got there, and if you were protecting her after hacking apart my escort then he must be here." Owen continued, with calm, brutal logic. "I imagine Connie was a surprise. He's really quite taken with her."
The hatch closed with a heavy bang, and Yasi kept moving.
Was that a dig at me?
She wondered to herself, looking for all the angles.
If it was... how did he know it would work? What does he know?
~oo00oo~
"My god, what
is
this place?" Connie asked in awe.
"This is Twelfth Level. Years ago, this is what we showed Vincent." Archivist told her warmly, pushing the small boat along. "But this is not our destination."
"There's more?" Connie said in surprise as the small boat passed into a small tunnel.
"You have entered the Great City by Night." Archivist intoned, weaving a spell with his voice. "Every one of those clustered chambers encloses its own secret."
"Dickens." Connie recognized the quote.
The older man dropped the spooky voice instantly. "Oh, you know that one."
"Tale of Two Cities. Which, I suppose, is appropriate." Connie nodded, as Archivist guided the boat toward their destination. Connie felt like she was in Phantom of The Opera, being guided down the misty underground passages to the light of Victorian lanterns.
"Well, it's true. Every room has its own history. They all have their own secrets, their own story. Every dark shadow, every tunnel. They aren't there by accident. If they've been forgotten then it means they weren't needed any more. But they're all there for a purpose."
"It's very... elegant, here." Connie nodded as she stepped out of the boat. "Nothing need be added, and nothing to take away."
"Elegance born of purpose." Archivist nodded. "We have to climb now. Up to it?"
Connie chuckled, despite herself. "Yeah, I'm up for it."
There were stairs, then ladders, then more stairs, then an elevator like something you'd find in a mine shaft. Connie wasn't sure how high they went, but she knew she wasn't moving quickly, so distance was hard to guess. "Where are we going now?"
Archivist pulled the control level back and the elevator stopped. "Above the Twelfth Level." He said, his deep voice leading her through the dim passage, bouncing off the walls. "Above the Throne Room, above the Round Table. But far below the subway, far below your world. This is the highest point before leaving the Underside. For all that, there's only one way to get here yourself. The entrances and exits all moved, found better locations." They had reached the end of the passage, and Archivist held up his lantern. It was a huge ornate oak door.
Archivist drew a large brass key from a chain around his neck and put it into the lock. "You aren't wrong; the whispers do echo all over the place." He told her. "This room is where they all come from."
Connie didn't know what to say to that. Archivist opened the door, and she felt her jaw drop open, yet again. The first thing that hit her was the heat, the room was much warmer than the rest of the Underside. The second thing to hit her was the sound. The whispers were louder in here, grander. There were thousands of them, voices whispering out of the walls, from every direction, going non-stop. Connie actually had to raise her voice to be heard over them, but she couldn't begin to guess at where they were coming from.
The chamber Archivist had led her to was large, and filled with shelves, Shelves in rows, more on the walls; more shelves than any library, packed together so tightly that Connie had to turn sideways. They were covered in books. Thousands of them, on their sides to stack higher and heavier. First editions, paperbacks, collectibles. Of all languages, all styles, all ages. The dusty tomes were all over the place, most of them with some kind of visible damage or stain, but all of them were beautiful.
And rising into the high domed ceiling of the chamber, was a thousand brass pipes, secured to each other like an enormous tree trunk. The pipes came from the highest point in the ceiling, and branched off from the main trunk, off into all directions, going straight into the walls. It was a secret Lostkind library, at the roots of an enormous brass tree.
Connie walked slowly into the room, her head turning non-stop in an effort to see everything. Her eyes lingered on the endless shelves of books. "Archivist." She said his name finally, soft as a psalm. "As in, the one who keeps the Archives."
The older man nodded, pleased. "These archives have the combined history of the entire New York Underside; plus the books that have been collected and passed into our collective ownership, plus what the locals have created or dreamed. It's all in my keeping."
Connie ran a hand over the large leather-bound volumes. "Moisture must be a nightmare this far underground."
Archivist nodded. "In some places. The Dewcops keep a close eye on it."
"Dewcops?"
"They harvest the condensation; keep it off anything that can be bothered by it. On some nights; you actually get rainfall in the Twelfth Level. For the bigger stuff, like the flooding in 2012? The place is designed to channel most of that floodwater down as far as the River; or back into the Sewers. We actually tapped all that raging floodwater for Hydro power."
Connie leaned against one of the shelves and tilted her head, listening upwards. "The whispers are stronger here too."
"The Steam Pipes cover half the city above, and they provide us with our air circulation, which is a rather serious matter this deep underground. Heat isn't so much the problem as fresh air. The pipes also form a natural echo, like listening through an air vent. There's very little strength behind it, but the sound carries through. It's strongest here, because this is where the most pipes are together. This room is my Whisper Gallery."
Connie shut her eyes a moment, letting herself hear the sound properly, not suspicious of it for the first time. The moment stretched, and Connie almost started to smile.
Archivist's cane began to tap slowly, and Connie opened her eyes. He was moving back down the shelves to the door. He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Connie, you are welcome to stay as long as you wish. My home is your home. I have to take care of a few things."
"I..." Connie swallowed. "I'll never find my way back."
Archivist waved to the opposite side of the room. "Don't worry, when you're ready to leave, you'll have a guide."
Connie nodded her thanks as Archivist swept out of the room.
Once he was gone, she turned back to the shelves. They filled her vision, carried away her attention. She felt like she had been turned loose in a fantastic marketplace, where the wondrous things lived. She wouldn't have been surprised to see Merlin around the next corner, hunched over a cauldron. The whispering was no longer a source of fear, she listened to it like a gentle rain, wondering what all those people far above were talking about, how they'd react if they knew she could hear the tiniest echoes of everything they said.
And then over the whispers, she heard a sob. It was small and hidden, like they were trying to keep it quiet, but Connie had worked the desk at a free clinic too long not to know the sound of pain concealed.
She followed it down the shelves, in the direction that Archivist had pointed, and peeked around to see a small boy, bent over a large hard-backed book that he hugged to his chest.
A boy she recognized.
"Tecca?" Connie blurted.
"Hiya Miss Connie. Welcome to the Underside." Tecca wiped his face as he turned to her; and despite himself, he smirked at the way Connie's mouth flopped open and closed.
"W…What are you doing here?" She demanded.
"I live here." His small voice said wearily. His eyes were red, his hair was messy, and his face drawn. He looked miserable. She looked the question to him, and he sniffed again, stubbornly keeping the tears back. "Wotcha." He confessed. "They got Wotcha!"
"From the kitchen?" Connie nodded. "How did you know her?"
"She was the Eyes of the Lostkind. Like I was going to be when I grew up..."
Connie nodded, filing that away, comparing it to what she thought she knew. "Tecca… That woman you come in with at the Clinic… She isn't your mother, is she?"
"Never said she was." Tecca shot back, sounding a lot older and smarter. "She meets me in the park, she walks me to the clinic, she holds my hand, and she doesn't talk about it. She's my disguise."
Connie shook her head. "Why can't your real paren-"
Tecca cut her off instantly, clutching the book like a magic talisman. "Whenever you're ready, I'll take you back."
Connie nodded, realizing it was a sore point.
Tecca wiped his face again, shaking off the emotion while he had an audience. "Yasi says I'm a full-blood Watcher now. I direct the lightning."
Connie shivered at the pure Iron coming from the young man, still a child to her eyes. She looked to the book in his hands. It was a beautiful big hardcover volume. She leaned a little closer to read the title. "The Secret Garden. Did Wotcha read that with you?"
Tecca's jaw worked. "Yeah." He challenged, daring her to comment on it.
Connie tread lightly, pushing gently. More than a few times at the clinic, mothers had left their kids out in reception with her while they went into discuss delicate adult matters with their doctors. Connie gave him her friendliest smile. "Where'd you get up to?"
After a long moment, Tecca handed her the book, and she sat down in Archivist's chair. "Let's see..." Connie started to read from where he marked. "It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses in India."
Connie glanced at Tecca. The kid was as tough as anyone Connie had ever met, but he was still so young. He was listening earnestly, as only a kid could do when listening to a story, and his eyes were red with unshed emotion, memories of Wotcha reading to him like this bubbling up.