Curses, Crones and Unspeakable Things by Justin Depaoli

Author:Justin Depaoli [Depaoli, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 2_read, UrbanFantasy, -new
Publisher: Conduit Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Alena finished braiding her hair while sitting in a sewer. That’s usually the sort of image that shattered hopes and broken dreams are made of. But Alena had all the hope of a black bird aiming its beak at a newly filled feeder.

She’d found the sewer entrance, or exit as it were, without much issue. The pipes emptied out into the Glouth River, whose banks had previously been a source of fresh water for Ginallis’s sister city, Sillanig, sixty years ago, before the pipes were installed. Some say the sewage system was a foul trick played on Sillanig by the then-Patriarch to force the consolidation of the two cities. But the truth is more sobering and reveals the problem with the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach taken by the Assembly’s Engineering division.

The walkways were still mostly intact within the sewers, so Alena was able to traverse the great distance with general ease. It smelled down there, much like Chicago’s sewers smelled. Alena thought back to that night. She’d felt an adventure brewing then, the beginnings of a fascinating, bizarre and extrinsic journey.

And here she was one short week later, in the midst of a jaunt through a sewer beneath a city whose daily life had more in common with Chicago than she would have ever believed possible. When she’d arrived here with Caval, she’d expected to see flying cars and neon signs pointing you to the nearest biotic enhancement center. She’d thought she’d experience elevators that moved horizontally across the whole of the city, delivering you to your destination within seconds.

But the people walked about, eating, shopping and existing like they did in Chicago. The inhabitants were different, sure, and the politics were interesting—what with the Assembly and the mysterious Matriarch—but the heart of Ginallis beat the same as Chicago’s. The blood ran red through both cities, even if the veins wound through two vastly different anatomies.

She wouldn’t be investigating a witch in her hometown, though. Witches didn’t exist on Earth, and this she knew was an indisputable fact.

But the funny thing about facts is the more indisputable they are, the more they’re webbed with tiny, almost imperceptible fractures. You’ve just got to find them.

Alena came to a ladder, the fourteenth such ladder she’d passed. Loo had told her, after setting her down and pointing her in the direction of the sewer entrance, that once she came to the fourteenth ladder, she was to climb up and press hard against the round cover at the top. This was because the cover had been deformed many years ago, and the Assembly Engineers were too cheap to replace it, so it could not be locked. The Engineers were convinced this wasn’t a problem, because who would wade through a sewer to get into a city when you could walk in through the front door?

Alena climbed to the top and pressed the cover aside. The evening of Ginallis coolly brushed across her face as she stuck her head up, and she drank in the candied air of the Square.

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