The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,35

that I wouldn’t be able to get her back from. I stood up and went over to the mantel. There was a picture of January in front of the house that looked more recent than the rest.

“Mind if I take this?”

She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. I slid the picture from the frame and tucked it into my jacket.

“Thanks for your time, Deirdre. As I said on the phone, I wasn’t hired to find your daughter but I promise I will do whatever I can.”

She thanked me through tears and let me out. I left her in the empty house with sadness, silence and two cold cups of tea.

I hadn’t eaten anything all morning. That wasn’t an anomaly for me, but when I passed the old man in his empty restaurant I made myself stop.

A Specials menu had been painted up on the wall over the counter.

“Fried rice and coffee,” I requested, taking the same seat as last time.

“Are you sure, sir? I can try again with the eggs.”

He was so eager to improve upon the previous day’s effort that I couldn’t say no.

“All right. Breakfast Special.”

“Runny eggs.”

“If possible.”

He lumbered into the kitchen leaving me to marinate in the aftershock of my morning. The sadness of that poor woman was sticking to me like a damp sweater.

If you held up my life and measured it against the rest of the world, it wasn’t so great. But it never had been. That, in some ways, made me lucky. I’d never had anything to lose. Not like that poor Siren and her house of paper memories.

I took out Edmund’s journal on January and ran my eye across the meticulous notes. Most of them were song ideas or book recommendations. One page was a calendar marking the days of each lesson. There was one scheduled for today, Test – KA, which I doubted either of them would be attending. Every four lessons, KA was written again beside a number and a couple of words: KA – 5th Better. KA – 10th strained. KA – 10th Windy, excusable. The most detailed notes were at the beginning, before it all became shorthand. The first KA section was on the third lesson and accompanied an extended but still cryptic description: KA – fine up to the fifth row but lacks the resonance to carry further with any emotion. Fifth to Tenth can hear words but lacks punch. Eleventh row and beyond almost inaudible.

He was testing her in a theater. Somewhere outside. Probably a public space that was easy to access. I hadn’t grown into the cultured man I’d once hoped to be, so if there were a theater in this city, I’d certainly never been a patron.

I racked my brain for half an hour, waiting for the fabled breakfast to arrive. Every now and again, I heard swearing from the kitchen and the silver-haired man would poke his face around the corner.

“Sorry, sir. Little hiccup. Trying again!”

Then he would disappear before I could respond. Eventually, I just left payment on the table and let myself out. I wasn’t hungry anyway.

The information center was a ten-minute walk up the road: short in footsteps but an age in memories. The once-glossy posters that promised opportunity and equality were shrunken and brown inside their cabinets. Brochures with the title Sunder: A World of Work featured an excited Ogre with a pickax in his hands. A banner over the barred kiosk window advertised The Sights to See! with an illustration of the waterfall that came through Brisak Reserve in early spring. In a sad coincidence, the poster had faded to reflect the current reality of the landscape. In the image, as in life, those shimmering blues had faded to a septic green.

There was a map on the outside wall that had cracked and flaked beyond comprehension. The row of pamphlets along the side had mostly turned to mulch, with pieces scattered like confetti in the soggy leaves. I flicked through the fragile remains of the papers that hadn’t completely fallen apart. Advertisements for zoos, shows and museums had merged into solid blocks. One frayed brick had some kind of circus on the front: Mr Majelin’s Magical Jamboree. The clown’s face was made even more horrific by the warped peeling of the paper. I cracked open the pages and found a rock-hard sheet whose cover had been preserved by the others. The dates of the shows were written across the center: First five days of Summer – Only