RUST AND AETHER - Steel and Street Rats

The wind off the back crags didn’t w

The wind off the back crags didn’t whistle; it hissed through the narrow stone gullies like steam escaping a cracked boiler.It was past midnight.

Julian stepped over a frozen puddle of slops, his teeth clamped tight against the ache in his hamstrings.

The half-hour he had spent practicing the

Sixteen at the

Wash-Pool was paying its toll now.

His calves felt like rolled lead, and every time he took a deep breath, his ribs gave a dull, hollow throb.A starving seventeen-year-old’s body didn’t recover just because the soul inside had changed.

It needed marrow soup, boiled fat, and spirit herbs.He didn’t have marrow or fat.

What he had was a rusted iron sword wrapped in an old strip of canvas, a burlap sack tucked into his belt, and forty minutes before the moon dipped behind the western ridge of

Ascendant.The paths through the stone forest were worse than the alleys near his hut.

Here, where the mountain’s granite skeleton burst through the thin soil, the

Dregs turned into a labyrinth of jagged shale pinnacles and dead-end gullies.

It was where the slops from the upper kitchens washed down during rainstorms, leaving behind a slick crust of black grease and rotting bone.It was also where the scum of the

Dregs gathered to pick over whatever the sweepers missed.Julian kept his head down, the hood of his gray hemp tunic pulled low over his eyes.

He held his breath as he passed a low-roofed shanty built into a rock cleft.

Inside, by the red glow of a charcoal pan, three men were dicing for brass coins.

One of them—a fat-necked brute with a shaved head and a greasy leather vest—was

Mercer’s local errand boy.

Toby himself, the third son of a wealthy merchant guildmaster from the lower towns, rarely smelled the sewage of the

Dregs in person.

He preferred paying street rats a few coppers to keep the sweepers in line and buy up any unusual junk hauled out of the trash-slopes before the scavengers could reach the black market.Julian didn’t care about

Mercer tonight.

He kept moving, stepping softly over loose shale.He was twenty yards from the choke-point—a narrow fissure between two chimney-like stone pillars that led out to the garbage cliffs—when a boot crunched on gravel behind him.”Well, look at what crawled out of the dung pile.”Julian didn’t jump.

He stopped, his right hand slipping under his tunic to rest lightly on the hemp-wrapped grip of the iron sword.Three figures stepped out from the shadow of a shale pinnacle ahead of him, blocking the narrow pass.

Two more closed in from behind.The man in the center was

He was nineteen, broad-shouldered, with a neck as thick as a fence post and a face scarred by smallpox.

He carried a heavy iron-capped cudgel over one shoulder, and his greasy leather apron smelled faintly of old blood—he worked mornings at the slaughter-pens in the lower market.”Scrap-Pig,” Seth spat, turning a blob of yellow phlegm into the dirt near

Julian’s boots. “Thought you were tucked in your straw bed, weeping over your little sister’s coat.”The two cronies behind

Seth chuckled—a low, raspy sound like dry stones rubbing together.Julian turned his head slightly, taking in the positions without moving his torso.

Seth in front, six feet away.

Weight leaning heavily on his left hip—Seth had a bad right knee from a pig kick two winters ago.

The crony to his left held a notched butcher’s cleaver; the one on the right had a short length of rusted chain.”I’m working,

Seth,” Julian said.

His voice was flat, devoid of the trembling whine the sweeper boy usually produced whenever these thugs cornered him. “Let me through.”Seth blinked, his small, piggish eyes narrowing in the dark.

He wasn’t used to that tone from the “Scrap-Pig.” Usually,

Julian cowered, dropped his head, and handed over whatever copper bits or dry crusts he had scavenged that day.”Working?” Seth let out a harsh bark of a laugh, stepping closer.

The smell of cheap grain alcohol and raw mutton washed off him. “You’re heading for the trash slopes.

Toby’s boys put out the word this morning—nobody scavenges the upper drop without paying the three-copper toll.

You got three coppers,

Scrap-Pig?””No,” Julian said quietly.”Then turn your pockets out,” Seth growled, bringing the iron-capped cudgel down off his shoulder and tapping the heavy wooden end against his palm.

Thump. “Or maybe we take that coat hanging in your hut instead.

Hear some merchant from the lower town likes small red clothes…”Julian’s breath didn’t hitch.

His pulse didn’t race.Instead, a cold, unnatural stillness settled over his mind—the same terrifying clarity that had taken hold of him at the

Wash-Pool.Seth.

Height: six feet one.

Weight: one-ninety.

Stance: sloppy.

Center of gravity shifted three inches to the left.

Bad right knee joint—collapses under seventy pounds of lateral force.

Weapon: forty-inch iron-capped cudgel.

Swing time: approximately eight-tenths of a second from current position.The analysis happened in less time than it took for

Seth to finish his sentence.”You shouldn’t have mentioned the coat,” Julian said softly.”What did you say, you little—”Seth took a step forward, raising the cudgel to jab

Julian in the sternum.Julian didn’t draw the sword.

He didn’t have time to pull three feet of rusted iron from his belt in a six-foot space.Instead, he stepped into

Seth’s reach.It was the fifth footwork variation from the

Julian’s lead foot glided across the frozen grease on the stone, his hip pivoting with a sharp, mechanical snap.

Seth’s jab went wild, the iron tip of the cudgel whistling harmlessly past

Julian’s ear.Before

Seth could pull the club back,

Julian’s left hand shot out.

His fingers, calloused and stiff from broom handles, clamped like an iron vise around

Seth’s right wrist, pinning the heavy arm against

Seth’s chest.”What the—” Seth grunted, his eyes going wide.Julian didn’t give him time to think.

He drove his right heel straight into the side of

Seth’s bad right knee.CRACK.It sounded like a dry pine branch snapping in a winter gale.Seth let out an ear-splitting shriek, his knee joint bending outward at a horrific, unnatural angle.

His leg gave way completely, his heavy body dropping toward the muddy gravel.As

Julian drew the rusted iron sword with his right hand in one fluid, rising motion.He didn’t use the edge.

The blade was too dull to cut thick hide anyway.

He used the heavy, iron pommel.THUD.The iron hilt slammed squarely into

Teeth rattled.

A spray of blood and spit flew across the dark shale, and

Seth’s shriek cut off instantly as his head snapped back.

He hit the frozen mud like a sack of grain, unconscious before he touched the ground.The alley went dead quiet.The wind hissed through the stone chimney-pillars.The two cronies behind

Seth froze, their weapons half-raised, their mouths hanging open in utter disbelief.

Seth was towering over the skinny sweeper boy; the next,

Seth was twitching in the dirt with his leg turned sideways and blood bubbling from his lip.Julian stood over the fallen bully, his chest rising and falling in slow, controlled breaths.His right arm was trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer physical shock of driving his frail heel into a grown man’s joint.

The impact had sent a spike of white-hot pain straight up

Julian’s hip, and he could feel his calf muscles cramping under the gray hemp trousers.Too weak,

Julian thought, his teeth grinding against the pain.

The leverage was right, but the bone couldn’t take the impact smoothly.

Two more strikes like that and my own shin will crack.He turned his head slowly toward the remaining four thugs.Under the grey hood,

Julian’s dark eyes were completely void of emotion.

Just a cold, calculating emptiness that looked terrifyingly unnatural on a seventeen-year-old boy’s face.The crony holding the chain backed up a step, his boots crunching loudly on loose gravel. “He… he broke

Seth’s leg…””He’s… he’s got

Aether,” the one with the cleaver stammered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle. “The

Scrap-Pig’s been hiding

Aether!””I don’t have

Aether,” Julian said, his voice flat in the dark alley.

He took one step forward, the tip of his rusted sword scraping against the shale with a harsh shah. “I just know how to hit things that don’t move fast enough.”He raised the sword, pointing the dark, pitted tip straight at the cleaver-bearer’s throat.”Run,” Julian whispered. “Or

I start breaking the rest of you.”The two men didn’t hesitate.They dropped the chain, turned, and bolted down the narrow gully, their heavy boots slipping on the frozen slops as they scrambled over each other to get away into the dark.Julian didn’t chase them.

He couldn’t have chased them if he wanted to; his right calf was locked in a tight, burning knot, and he had to lean heavily on the rusted sword just to keep his balance.He stood in the dark gully for two long minutes, listening to the fading sound of panic-stricken footsteps dying away toward the

Dregs.When he was sure they were gone,

Julian knelt beside the unconscious

He reached down with his left hand, unclipped the small leather coin pouch from

Seth’s belt, and weighed it in his palm.A few copper bits.

Maybe fourteen or fifteen.

Enough to buy two loaves of real rye bread or a small jar of lard at the lower market.Julian tucked the pouch into his tunic next to his dried turnip.He looked at

Seth’s twisted leg, then at his own trembling hands.”Street rats,” Julian muttered, wiping a drop of cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “Always picking on the ones they think are dead already.”He turned away from the bleeding bully, picked up his burlap sack, and limped toward the narrow gap between the stone pillars.Past the gap, the smell of coal smoke faded, replaced by the bitter, ozone-heavy stench of black fog rising from the depths.

The ground sloped steeply downward, covered in centuries of compacted trash, shale, and frozen mud.And beyond that lay the drop.

Nether-Chasm of

Desolation.Julian paused at the mouth of the gap, his eyes searching the dark void below.”Fifteen days,” he said to the wind.Then he stepped out onto the garbage slopes.