Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

young
adult, shy of a draftable age, and who just couldn’t seem to decide
on what he wanted. So the merchant had to walk him around the
store, seemingly forever. A few times Conrad grew frustrated, but
Fen couldn’t hear the exchange over the ringing in his own ears,
and Time seemed to keep his voice to just above a whisper anyway.
Fen guessed it was so as not to disturb him, which amazed. Fen had
never known an adult to take an interest in a child’s wellbeing
before, at least not one they weren’t related to. In the Warrens
children were ghosts, and ghosts were best ignored, but here was
Time, nursing Fen back to health and humoring some idiot who
couldn’t make up his mind.
    When the time came, and Fen had finished his
drink and wiping his face clean, he picked himself up to make the
long walk home. As he did Conrad Time said his goodbyes with a
friendly nod. “Now watch yourself out there, you hear? And if
you’ve got business in the Exchange,” he raised a thick, yet neatly
arranged eyebrow, “I’d suggest stopping on by the Sin’s Devil
Cat ; it’s what I call this place. I’ll treat you fairly. But
don’t hesitant ether if you find yourself around these parts for no
particulars; just stop on by. I got some kids like you who do work
for me on the occasion; you might even enjoy their company; and I
could always use a hand for one thing or another, so’t goes.”

Chapter
6
    Fen limped his way back to the home, feeling
physically better than earlier, but also feeling as dejected and
morose as the rotted buildings that peeked out from the foundations
from time to time. He was plagued by the notion that he’d a fortune
in tokens not more than an hour past, and now he’d next to nothing
but a busted nose and some bruises and cuts, and a feeling of being
as far from the light as the old city that sat crushed beneath the
tiers overhead. Sure the stolen rucksack still sat hidden in pipe
on the Sister, filled with a whole bunch more notes, but he’d
traded with a fair number of Bartermen that day already, and the
spectacle of getting robbed would only make it more conspicuous
should he attempt trading more. Notes didn’t exactly fall from the
sky on the regular…unless you were fortunate enough to be a
wage-maker (like his mother had been before she’d run off), but
seeing as how he was just some rat pup, Fen knew he’d lost his
chance at riches in the Exchange. About all he had now was a pack
full of pretty paper, all-a-glitter with little portraits of the
first official Iron Emperor, Ludwig Wilhelm the Second.
    After he slinked into the family hovel and
got caught on the ladder up to his room, he had to lie when Lydia
hopped up from their parent’s old mattress on the second floor and
struck a match. With the light held close to his face, Fen spun a
tale of dusting up with another mischief gang while she tilted his
head this way and that, brushing back his shaggy bangs, and making
a bigger fuss than need be. Examining his nose, she didn’t seem
convinced in the least of what he was telling her, and if not for
the lateness of the hour she might have kept on pressing him.
Fortune be she couldn’t stop yawning every couple minutes, and
eventually she collapsed back down in her bed out of sheer
exhaustion and waved him away to deal with later.
    Fen finished his climb to the third floor and
felt his own hard-won relief when he dropped into the nested pile
of mildewed blankets that he called a bed. He laid there for some
time staring up at the various poster fragments he’d recovered over
the years, pieced together, plastered on the steel walls, and aglow
in the light from a tin can of burning rubbish.
    He was nearly asleep when Lydia hollered from
below, “Starting after tomorrow you’re with me again, mister, back
like it used to be, and I won’t take no for an answer…even if I got
to drag you out by your ears.”
    Fen’s initial reaction was rebellious, but as
the hours drifted by he began to