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Authors: Ben Macallan
Tags: Urban Fantasy
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supposed to carry you, it just feels so much more effort when they don’t. Like having to push a bike when you should be riding it, or –”
“Or having to push a conversation one way, to stop it taking you another way that you don’t want to go, maybe? Desi, when you talk about this place you always say we . We do this, we do that. When did you become one of these people?”
“When I had to run away from you, of course.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“I T HAPPENS ALL the time,” I said – it’s not just you, not just you and me – “that people find themselves in trouble with the Overworld. Someone’s after them, or someone’s broken their heart or taken their place, stolen their life or their reputation or their lover, and they just need space, they need to step away and hole up for a while.
“The kind of places that people go, the hostels and the hideaways, the all-night cafes and the all-night buses” – the places I’d tracked Jordan through – “there’s always someone there who knows about this place and how to get here. Where to pick up an Oyster-knife.” That’s what we call the special cards, because they slip through the cracks and open this place up to you, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll find a pearl. “You wouldn’t ever have heard about it, because you’ve never been needy that way.” And he still wasn’t, of course, and probably I shouldn’t have brought him here, but I couldn’t have left him to the Corbies. Power or not. He might be right, that he could take them – but he might not. Asher was still dead.
If I was going to be in trouble for bringing him along, I’d find out soon enough. Here we were at the top of the stairs. No barriers here, to touch our cards against for rights of passage: straight out into the old ticketing hall, all gloss green walls and immaculate ’twenties styling, lovely ironwork everywhere: from the lamps to the balustrades to the illuminated signs to the doorhandles.
“Right,” he said. “It’s a refuge. Got it. How long can people stay?”
“As long as they like.” That boy with the sax might never leave. Where else could he go, who would take him in? What would he do? Here he had a life of sorts, a horn to blow, a place to stand. A place to sleep, among his own people, the brutalised and the terrified and the torn-apart, all the most needy refugees from the worlds above. “But it’s more than just a shelter for the homeless, it’s a sort of employment agency too. Reno likes to find places for us back in the world, where we can be safe and make a life again. Nothing’s compulsory, but – yeah. Come on. Let’s check in.”
I was fairly sure that Reno would know already that I was back, and who I’d brought in tow. Not sure how, but sure, oh, yes. Even so: new arrivals always did do this.
Down to the end of the hall, past the shuttered windows, each of them framed like a painting in tiles of darker green, each with its sign hung above on an iron curlicue bracket, proclaiming Tickets ; down to where a full door was similarly framed, where the sign said Stationmaster’s Office.
A quick formal rap of the knuckles on one panel of the door, though again I was quite sure that Reno knew we were here. There’s no CCTV, but even so. Reno knows everything that happens at Savoy, and a lot that doesn’t. Pretty much everything the Stranded get up to, here and elsewhere. If it’s known anywhere, if it’s knowledge, it belongs to Reno, pretty much. As we do, pretty much.
As I still do, pretty much, though it’s been years.
As I always will, a little bit, most likely. You can take the girl out of the Savoy, but.
A NYWAY.
Rap-rap and in we go.
The decor outside may be all bright and open and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but the office feels pure Victorian, wood-lined and sombre. I guess that’s the way they thought offices should be back then, even when they were ready to be freethinkers with their public spaces.
Reno
“Or having to push a conversation one way, to stop it taking you another way that you don’t want to go, maybe? Desi, when you talk about this place you always say we . We do this, we do that. When did you become one of these people?”
“When I had to run away from you, of course.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“I T HAPPENS ALL the time,” I said – it’s not just you, not just you and me – “that people find themselves in trouble with the Overworld. Someone’s after them, or someone’s broken their heart or taken their place, stolen their life or their reputation or their lover, and they just need space, they need to step away and hole up for a while.
“The kind of places that people go, the hostels and the hideaways, the all-night cafes and the all-night buses” – the places I’d tracked Jordan through – “there’s always someone there who knows about this place and how to get here. Where to pick up an Oyster-knife.” That’s what we call the special cards, because they slip through the cracks and open this place up to you, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll find a pearl. “You wouldn’t ever have heard about it, because you’ve never been needy that way.” And he still wasn’t, of course, and probably I shouldn’t have brought him here, but I couldn’t have left him to the Corbies. Power or not. He might be right, that he could take them – but he might not. Asher was still dead.
If I was going to be in trouble for bringing him along, I’d find out soon enough. Here we were at the top of the stairs. No barriers here, to touch our cards against for rights of passage: straight out into the old ticketing hall, all gloss green walls and immaculate ’twenties styling, lovely ironwork everywhere: from the lamps to the balustrades to the illuminated signs to the doorhandles.
“Right,” he said. “It’s a refuge. Got it. How long can people stay?”
“As long as they like.” That boy with the sax might never leave. Where else could he go, who would take him in? What would he do? Here he had a life of sorts, a horn to blow, a place to stand. A place to sleep, among his own people, the brutalised and the terrified and the torn-apart, all the most needy refugees from the worlds above. “But it’s more than just a shelter for the homeless, it’s a sort of employment agency too. Reno likes to find places for us back in the world, where we can be safe and make a life again. Nothing’s compulsory, but – yeah. Come on. Let’s check in.”
I was fairly sure that Reno would know already that I was back, and who I’d brought in tow. Not sure how, but sure, oh, yes. Even so: new arrivals always did do this.
Down to the end of the hall, past the shuttered windows, each of them framed like a painting in tiles of darker green, each with its sign hung above on an iron curlicue bracket, proclaiming Tickets ; down to where a full door was similarly framed, where the sign said Stationmaster’s Office.
A quick formal rap of the knuckles on one panel of the door, though again I was quite sure that Reno knew we were here. There’s no CCTV, but even so. Reno knows everything that happens at Savoy, and a lot that doesn’t. Pretty much everything the Stranded get up to, here and elsewhere. If it’s known anywhere, if it’s knowledge, it belongs to Reno, pretty much. As we do, pretty much.
As I still do, pretty much, though it’s been years.
As I always will, a little bit, most likely. You can take the girl out of the Savoy, but.
A NYWAY.
Rap-rap and in we go.
The decor outside may be all bright and open and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but the office feels pure Victorian, wood-lined and sombre. I guess that’s the way they thought offices should be back then, even when they were ready to be freethinkers with their public spaces.
Reno
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