The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,10

be seeing me again real soon.

Sunder City began as a working-class town full of blacksmiths, miners and metal-workers. It wasn’t all honest work but it was the kind of thing I understood: digging ground or moving shit around. That sort of gig made sense to me.

The piazza, on the other hand, fostered the kind of hustle that made my skin crawl.

Fast-talking hosts that got up in your face trying to drag you into overpriced restaurants. Finely dressed crooks with fake accents selling tours to nowhere. Street performers who made most of their money serving as a distraction for the pickpockets.

Torches were lit around the little square to keep business turning over after nightfall. I passed through the fading crowd, my hands deep in my pockets, moving with purpose.

A couple of Kobolds watched me from the shadows. They weren’t from this part of the continent. Kobolds have a kind of chameleon skin that changes, depending on their environment. City Kobolds are gray and hairless, but this pair were rock-pool blue with thick manes of fur around their necks: recent arrivals from the wild far north. Two more lost souls hoping to hack off a piece of Sunder for themselves. I flashed them my brass knuckles and gave them a stare I wouldn’t be able to back up. It seemed to do the job. They turned their yellow eyes back to the darkness and I slipped into a side street.

I found the sign for The Crooked Tooth on a building that had once been an apothecary. I used to frequent it when I first moved to town, running errands for an arthritic old Witch who warned me that I’d better watch myself if she ever got her hands on a potion-of-youth. I thought she was kidding but after the Coda I heard she’d poisoned herself with a concoction of black-market herbs in a desperate attempt to reverse the aging process.

Tar Street was empty but there was a glow in the window of the teahouse that spilled on to the sidewalk. I’d seen places like it before: tiny cafes that catered to a particular crowd of elderly gentlemen. They’d play ancient tile games all day long, consuming sweet black tea and not much else. More of a social venue than an actual business.

I knocked loudly but there was no response. The door was bolted and the light inside was dim. A handful of candles had almost burned to nothing at the back of the room. I walked the perimeter, pushing lightly against the windows, searching for movement but not finding any. The rear wall of the teahouse backed on to a narrow alley so I stepped across the cobblestones searching for an entrance.

I slid one hand along the wall while the other reached inside my jacket and pulled out my lighter. With a few flicks of my thumb, I summoned the flame.

The alley contained little of interest, just a pile of rotten-smelling garbage and a wide door that served as the storage entrance for the teahouse. I knocked loudly and got nothing but silence. The handle was locked but loose; latched on the inside.

I gave the door one hard shove with my shoulder and it gave in. The whole thing did. The doorknob came off in my hand and I stumbled into the room, landing on all fours.

It was the worst entrance I could have made if anyone was waiting for me. Luckily, I was alone. I had to be. There wasn’t a creature on the planet who could have waited around in such a face-melting stench. The smell outside wasn’t garbage; it was a gentle warning not to fall headfirst into the place unless you wanted your stomach climbing up your throat.

I covered my nose with my collar, which was like trying to hold back the ocean with pepper spray. My lighter was still burning so I moved the fire to a candle on the pricket by the door and waited till the wick took the flame.

It was a bare cement garage with packing boxes in the corner and chairs stacked beside them. Those were the only objects in the room I could identify on sight. Everything else was a mystery.

The stench was coming from a pinkish substance that had slid down one of the walls and settled in a puddle on the floor. It was a thick, oatmeal-looking goop filled with large chunks of flesh. On either side of the room were two piles of brown sand littered with scraps of