One Foot in the Fade, page 1
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 coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Luke Arnold
Excerpt from The Mask of Mirrors copyright © 2021 by Bryn Neuenschwander and Alyc Helms
Excerpt from Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City copyright © 2019 by One Reluctant Lemming Company Ltd.
Cover design and illustration by Emily Courdelle
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First Edition: April 2022
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948634
ISBNs: 9780316668774 (trade paperback), 9780316668743 (ebook)
E3-20220225-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31: The First Fire
Chapter 32: Cannonballs
Chapter 33: When One Doesn’t Wake
Chapter 34: Instinct
Chapter 35: Light in the Dark
Chapter 36: Kindred
Chapter 37: Over
Chapter 38: Pitstop
Chapter 39: Party Lines
Chapter 40: The Harpy House
Chapter 41: A Walk in the Woods
Chapter 42: The Hunt
Chapter 43: When Nightmares Come
Chapter 44: Interruption
Chapter 45: The Scrappers
Chapter 46: And Then There Were Two
Chapter 47: Ambush
Chapter 48: When You Get There
Chapter 49: Out of the Mud
Chapter 50: Storming the Castle
Chapter 51: Meeting the Shadow
Chapter 52: What the Cat Dragged In
Chapter 53: The Sculptor
Chapter 54: The Minotaur
Chapter 55: Rubble
Chapter 56: Rescue
Chapter 57: Rise, Shine and Shudder
Chapter 58: The Bridge
Chapter 59: Kaboom
Chapter 60: A Quest Complete
Chapter 61: By the Clouds
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Acknowledgements
Discover More
Extras Meet the Author
A Preview of The Mask of Mirrors
A Preview of Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
Also by Luke Arnold
Praise for Luke Arnold
To
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Ashley
Granny
Nanna
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Get up.
Get the fuck up, Fetch.
Get your ass out of bed and go fix the fucking world.
That’s what you said you were going to do, right? Isn’t that why you killed him?
So, get to work. Bring the magic back, you stupid bastard. Do some good like you said you would and get your ass out of the goddamn bed!
Clang!
Down on ground level, metal rapped against metal, and the sound resounded all the way up to the fifth floor. It was a pewter mug striking the outside stairs: Georgio’s way of getting my attention without paying the price of a phone call.
Clang!
Wiping the residual nightmares from my eyes, I dragged myself out of the sheets and over to the Angel door. The key was in the lock. I turned it and stepped out onto the fire escape; these metal monstrosities had been bolted to the front of every building on Main Street courtesy of the Niles Company and their city-wide redesign of Sunder City.
Every day she looked a little different. It wasn’t just the new paint or the neon signs. Not only the asphalt roads made to accommodate the multiplying automobiles, or the identical uniforms that strangled every filthy factory worker, blending them all together in an amorphous mix of grease, beer and obedience. It was more than the assembly-line firearms that dangled from the hips of cops, criminals and anyone who could afford them.
Her soul had shifted. Her smells and sounds. The way she moved. With every bite the Niles Company took from Sunder, the memory of her magic-filled glory days became harder to hold onto.
I stomped down every step, waiting for the day when I’d finally break through.
“Fetch, look!”
The silver-haired café owner waited on the street with his ever-present smile, crooked back, and a shiny brass plaque in his ancient hands.
“What is it, Georgio?”
He handed me the slab of brass. Etched into the front were the words:
Fetch Phillips: Man for Hire
Bringing the magic back!
Enquire at Georgio’s café
I held back the flood of sighs and eye rolls that attempted to pour down my face.
“What is this?”
“It’s a sign! If people come around and they need your help but you’re already off doing your investigations and your adventures and looking for clues, then they will come to me! I will take their information and you can call them when you get back!”
Georgio wielded his smile like a lance, sharp enough to pierce even my prickly disposition. His glory days as Gorgoramus Ottallus, pacifist adviser to wayward adventurers, were technically behind him, but he still managed to dispense his fair share of ancient wisdom over plates of greasy bacon and increasingly edible eggs. I’d humored him at first, then I’d learned to appreciate his insight, and I was getting dangerously close to relying on him as a friend.
Georgio’s nephew, Gerome, came out of the café and handed me a cup of coffee. A couple of sips brought some life back into my eyes and a more tolerant tone to my voice.
“Thanks for the sign, Georgio. I appreciate the thought. Though I could have done without the exclamation mark.”
“No! That’s the point! It must be done with gusto! No more talk, talk, talk.”
He laughed, and I had to laugh too. Georgio had spent many a generous hour listening to me yammer about all that needed to be done and how hard I was going to work to do it. He’d also watched me drink too much, sleep too late, and scrape my shoes along the sidewalk when I should have been running into action. He was right. There was no time for excuses. Not anymore. No more wasted days or half-cocked attempts at turning things around. If Hendricks had died so that this city, our magicless world and my dumb ass would have a chance at becoming something better, then I needed to spend every waking moment making it happen.
“Get a drill,” I said, “and let’s put her up.”
We screwed the plaque into the stone wall halfway between the revolving door of my building and the entrance to the café. It looked good, even with the overexcited punctuation mark.
Georgio, Gerome and I stood back to admire the sign, drinking more coffee and trying our best to believe that a few words etched into a slab of brass might make a lick of difference.
But they did.
It took a while, of course. Change doesn’t happen in a straight line; it’s a series of loops. Most of the time, you think you’re moving forward, but you end up right back where you began. Unless you work really hard. Then, when you loop around, you come back to a place that’s a few inches ahead of where you started. Then you do another loop and, if you keep working hard, that loop finishes farther ahead again.
That’s the most you can hope for, as ambitious as you need to be. If each time you come around,
And that’s when you’re really in trouble.
1
“C’mon, pal. Be a hero.”
The panhandling Ogre was a foot taller than me and twice as wide. His jaw was strong, but his left eye was cloudy, and he probably couldn’t see out of it too well. If I had to hit him, I’d hit him right around there.
“No,” I said, but he’d been told that word too many times and had become inoculated to its effect. He shook his tin can in my face and I fought the urge to slap it from his fingers.
“Just a couple of bits, mate. For the parade. Year of the Phoenix!”
He proclaimed it loudly, as if I hadn’t heard him give the same pitch to every other table at the Beggar’s Bread, Sunder’s complimentary kitchen for those of us who weren’t making bank in the city’s recent boom. The Ogre had moved from bench to bench around the Sunder streetcar, saving me till last. Maybe he’d seen me sneer every time Year of the Phoenix passed his lips: a stupid, flamboyant title to celebrate the anniversary of the Niles Company bringing the fires back to Sunder City.
“I don’t have any money,” I told him.
He scoffed, and all the pretend-friendly tone fell from his voice.
“You’re eating here for free, mate. The least you can do is cough up some change.”
“Ask me again and I’ll have you coughing up all kinds of things.”
The Ogre flared his nostrils, and his head was just as empty as I’d expected. Inside my pocket, I slipped my fingers inside my brass knuckles.
“You want a hero?” I asked him, putting my weight on the balls of my feet. “I’ll give you a fucking hero.”
“Brothers!” A soothing voice interrupted us. “Both of you know that there are no conditions put upon a meal at the Beggar’s Bread.” The Ogre and I turned to find Brother Benjamin, one of the winged monks who cooked and served food from the old streetcar, waiting with a paper plate in each hand. Like the rest of the Brothers Hum, he had an unflattering bowl-cut hairstyle and wore a hooded red robe with holes cut into the back to expose his featherless wings. “Here you are. I’ve added some extra sausage because the stars have been kind to us today.”
The Ogre looked from my face to his free meal, and his stomach finally won out. He took his serving of bread over to a table where another grubby panhandler, a Gnome, sat staring at me with an ugly smirk across his face. I was about to ask him what his problem was, but Benjamin sat down opposite and slid the second plate under my nose.
“Eat, Brother Phillips. I feel it may be the first time today.”
He wasn’t wrong. It had been seven years since the Coda. When the magic first left the world, I’d found plenty of work helping creatures who were struggling to adjust to the change. It rarely made much of a difference but it paid me enough to get by. In the last few months, as more Sunderites surrendered themselves to a magicless existence, fewer clients were interested in enlisting my services. I wasn’t bothered. I’d collected enough loose ends and tantalizing rumors to keep the investigations ticking over on my own time, but it was easier when someone else was supplying the funds.
Luckily for me, the Brothers Hum hadn’t changed with the times. Every night, without fail, they served free food to anybody who turned up to claim it, and I’d become their most loyal customer.
I took a mouthful of the fried bread – made from restaurant scraps and grass flour – and thanked Brother Benjamin for his charity. As always, he waved away my words.
“I tell you every night that your thanks aren’t mine to receive.”
“And every night I tell you that I’ll give them anyway. But can you spare your thoughts on something?” The monk nodded sagely, and I opened up the little leather-bound notepad I’d made a habit of carrying around. “Things are going missing around town: artefacts, once magic, that we all assumed had lost their spark.” I flipped through the pages, showing off my amateur illustrations of ancient wands, jewel-encrusted ornaments, and other rare trinkets. “If someone’s gathering these things up, perhaps they know something we don’t. Dozens of items have gone missing in the last few weeks. Some have even been stolen from displays at the museum. The thieves are rarely seen, but there have been three reports: a red-scaled Reptilian teenager, an elderly Werecat gentleman and a Wizard with mutton chops. I think they must be some kind of collective: a gang of thieves, working together to steal ex-magical treasures.” I opened up the page where I’d drawn my impressions of the criminals, taken from the witness accounts. “Have you seen anyone like this around here recently?”
Benjamin’s smile pulled tight, and his eyes were patronizingly apologetic.
“Look around you, Brother. The Beggar’s Bread collects Sunder City’s most needy and its most misunderstood; those in the process of regaining their footing, as well as those who may never find their feet. There are no judgments here. No questions. The police know to leave this place alone so that anybody, no matter their situation, can receive our offerings without fear.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a cop.” Benjamin raised a questioning eyebrow. “I’m not.”
“You are known to work alongside them, though. You share information. But it matters not. Police officer, debt collector, estranged family member or overenthusiastic investigator, it is not my place to share the information of any of our guests. The bread must come with no conditions, lest our operation be compromised.”
“Benjamin, this is important. I’m not trying to arrest anyone or get them into trouble, I just want to know what they know. If these things are magic, they could be the key to fixing everything!”
Benjamin stood up.
“Then I hope you find them, Brother Phillips. Until then, enjoy your meal, but please respect the privacy of your fellow guests as I have always respected yours.”
I was about to enquire as to who might have bothered asking about me, but my eye was drawn to the table where the two panhandlers were waiting. Watching. The Gnome was talking at the Ogre, who was looking at me with his one good eye. I had a strange feeling that they were discussing some part of my history and wondered which chapter it might be. Was it the one where I defected from the magical alliance known as the Opus to join the Human Army? Or how that betrayal led to the invasion that turned the sacred magical river to crystal and killed all the magic in the world? Maybe they were talking about the time I found a mutated Vampire in a library basement, or perhaps the Gnome was telling the tale of the time I teamed up with the cops to squash a violent revolution, allowing Niles Company goons to take the city unopposed.
Whatever story it was, the Ogre didn’t like the sound of it. He was getting ready for a confrontation and it wasn’t a good idea to let him make the first move. I pushed back my seat and got ready to jump over the table.
“There you are.”
The glare from my gossiping neighbors was interrupted by the far more pleasant face of Eileen Tide: librarian, bartender, one-time Witch, and occasional accomplice in my quest to bring the magic back. It had taken her a while to forgive me for the part I played in burning down her old library, but we’d managed to patch things up over the previous few months; more because of her love of a good mystery than any of my pathetic attempts to apologize. She sat down, pulled her long braid into her lap to keep it off the filthy cobbles, and leaned over the table with a conspiratorial smile.
“I’ve got something for you,” she whispered.
“I hope it’s not another two-hundred-page tome of Dwarven history. Can’t you just give me a summary this time?”
“Don’t worry, this is something tangible. Maybe. I overheard a couple of customers at the bar talking about buying a rock of Hyluna.”
“And you believe them?”
“I don’t know, yet, but they gave me the number of the guy who sold it. I was thinking we could invite him down here and find out for ourselves.”
I agreed, and Eileen went over to the pay phone to put in a call. A rock of Hyluna was on my list of stolen artefacts. Only last week, I’d been at the apartment of an old Elven lady who’d had one pilfered from her mantelpiece.
I was distracted by the eyes of the panhandlers: twin death stares over gritted teeth as they did the math on how much trouble I’d give them if they decided to follow me home. They might be respectful enough not to start anything here, but once I’d left the relative safety of the streetcar, I was fair game.
