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and it won’t be a waste. Ol’ Gibbs
had his run anyway. Time for him to retire proper in the Drain Line
and free up that hoard of his. Ain’t proper for the old to linger
‘round, holding out on the rest of us. Right, fellas?”
    “Right,” the boy’s said in unison, though
Eddy stood silent.
    “Thanks, chum,” said Fen, holding up the rat
corpse and examining it. “But I already ate today, and this things
ruptured and the meats gone tainted.” He tossed it to Nickle’s
feet.
    “Yeah,” the albino shrugged, “unfortunately
that’s the case with most of them…but hell, it was a wicked sight
to see them go, right Ratty?”
    “Real neat.” The boy nodded eagerly. His head
looked like some valve cover let loose and flapping uncontrollably
in the escaping steam.
    Fen began to walk away.
    “Where you goin’, Sunshine?” shouted
Nickle.
    “Got errands to run in the Node…for my
sister.”
    “Errands for your sister…?” Beaut crudely
adjusting his pants, “Oh, I can help your sister out for you,
alright.”
    Fen turned on the pompous ass in a flash and
clocked him square in the nose. A torrent of blood came pouring
down the boy’s acne-riddled face while he howled and clutched at
the wound.
    “Where will you all be later,” Fen asked as
he rubbed out his bruised knuckle and turned towards the stairs,
eager to be gone.
    “Around,” replied Nickle indifferent to it
all, but as Fen walked away, Edrika grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t
go away mad, Fen,” she said knowingly. Of all the mates, she was
the one who seemed to possess a keen insight into his mood, but
then of course she would. She’d known him since he was six.
    “I ain’t mad,” he lied, but the girl just
smirked back at him through a face painted grim with makeup. Though
her watery eyes betrayed her tough façade by glistening with
genuine concern. “You and the art of lying just don’t see eye to
eye. Stick with what you’re good at.”
    Walking away after that, Fen made a show of
nonchalance for the sake of appearances, but once he hit Skitter
Road he was off at a bound, dashing up the crowded byways, and then
shoving his way across the Axillary Line’s bridge towards the Node,
happy to leave his mischief gang behind. Nickle creeped him out,
and the rest of the boys were steadily becoming more irksome than
entertaining. It suddenly occurred to him that if his fortunes
played out, he might never have to see them again, and that didn’t
upset him in the least. Of course, there was still Eddy to think
about, but then would he really miss her either? They’d been pals
since six, sure enough, after she’d found him crying lost in Maze
Town and grabbed him by the hand and lead him to her shanty on
South Scumside, but the years since had changed her. A year back,
when Edrika became Eddy, she turned too edgy, and seemed to take
keen interests in the vices of men, even beyond a snifter of gutter
gin or a mug of tank ale, and her devilish looks were only the
newest hurdle thrown down between their friendship. Fen found it
hard talking to a face painted up to look like death’s bride, or to
even take her seriously for that matter.

Chapter
5
    Hooking left onto the Chimes Way, Fen shook the girl
and the gang from his mind, then fell in line with the rest of the
shuffling traffic, glancing up as he did so at the hundreds of
chains that swayed and jingled in what little breeze moved through
the Pinprick. It was like walking into a storybook jungle; into one
of those far-off places in the Hamal or Procyon Clusters where the
isles grew thick with trees big as the Sentinel, and plant-ropes
called vines hung down all over the place. At an earlier age, Fen
might have imagined himself as the Wilderman, a pulp fiction hero
who grew up in the wild after his parent’s airship crashed in one
of those distant jungles. Swinging from vine to vine with the
native gargoruls, fighting barbarian Glutborn tribes, Elwyn
witch-weavers, and Candaran patrols