BagsNPockets

[joegoda]

Bedraggled and rundown, cast out buildings that housed the folks that were invisible. Bags blinked in the sunlight, after having navigated the near pitch-black of the maze. Here and there broken windows and shattered doors gaped at him, in wonder at the visitor.

"Ain't this a pretty sight." he murmured, wiping the odd cobweb off his trouser legs.

The street he was on was narrow, and the buildings leaned into it as if gravity had decided they weren't even worth the effort. He glanced back at the alley, wondering what sort of mad mind created the twist and turns of it, and why?

"Pockets would probably tell me it was art, and then ramble on about the significance and who started the movement." He stretched out his back, adjusted the sword and shifted his neverfull and looked.

Piled outside of doors were heaps of garbage, clothes, broken furniture. Here and there were sleeping remnants of society, those people, like this street, that the world had forgotten. All of them turned away from his gaze, except one.

She was an old crone, hunchbacked and dressed in a gray shapeless shift. A red and white bandana was tied over her head to keep her long gray hair out of the way. Nose like a beak, mouth open to reveal as few teeth as possible, because there just weren't that many.

"And what you looking at, buddy?" She asked Bags.

Bags crossed the street and began, politely, "Ma'am, I'm..."

"Ma'am? Did you just call me Ma'am? Where in the seven hells do you think you are, bud? This ain't no tea party here. You call me BeJay, like every one else does. You call me Ma'am again, and I'll poof you into nothingness, just like all the other youngsters that come here." She shook her fist at him, meaning business.

"All right... BeJay." Bags said hesitantly. "I'm looking for anything that might prove there was a man kidnapped here last night. The man was my friend, and he may be dying."

"Well, that's certainly the absolute wrong thing to go looking for." she said. "Why not look for a bit of hookey smoke, or a lady fair along the streets where the righteous live?" She looked him up and down, taking in his musculature and the weapon on his back. "You're a fighter, ain't ya?"

"BeJay, today, I'm a hunter. And I'm hunting bad men. Ever heard of a man named Corwin?"

"Corwin?" the old woman laughed, showing a mouthful of gums. "Hell, bud, who hasn't heard of Corwin, the bastard son of the Chancellor?" She reached up into her bandana and pulled out an old, bent cigar. "Bastard son of the Chancellor Corwin comes down here to kick us around every so often. So yeah, I've heard of a 'man' named Corwin." The tone she used on the word man showed she thought of him as anything but. "Every so often he brings his bitch down here to hump." She sniggered at that.

"Where does he go to..umm.. hump?" asked Bags.

"He and that skinny bitch go down into the drains. See that grate over there?" she pointed at a spot about ten feet away. It was partially covered by an old crate and a cloth, but it was there, rusty and heavy looking. "Don't let it fool ya. The strength in it was gone years ago, probably bout the time you were suckin you're first tit."

Bags walked over to the grating and pushed the crate to the side. A noise came from inside the crate, and an old man crawled out, cursing.

"Winston, quit your whining and get your skinny ass up stairs." BeJay yelled at the man. "There's dishes to do. Did you think I didn't know where you were hiding, you lazy bastard?"

Winston disappeared into one of the broken doors and Bags heard him tromping up a stairway, cursing all the way.

"Why do you care about your friend, buddy?" BeJay asked. "If Corwin took him, there's probably nuthing you can do, cept call the next of kin and the undertaker."

Bags reached down and pulled the grating from it's place. He slung it to the side and turned back to BeJay.

"Lady, I am his next of kin." He sneered back at her.

"Oh! Hey! I'm sorry. The way you were dressed I thought you were a bounty hunter." She crossed over to Bags and touched his arm.

When she spoke this time, there was none of the previous harshness. She spoke like a mother who has lost her own children. "Look. I'm sorry I was rough on ya. Life here," she wave her old arms to indicate the street. "ain't no bed of roses. The folks that have to live here, hell, most of 'em would have given up long ago."

"If I didn't push 'em to remember they were still human, some of them wouldn't even get up in the morning. They'd just lay down and die. See, this is the Tears this place was named for, far as I'm concerned. We're the folks that are just forgot."

She let go of Bags' arm and turned away. "But I don't forget you, you stupid bunch of lazy good for nothings!" she said this with arm raised and fist shaking. "And I can whip any of you, and don't you forget it!" She turned back to Bags.

"Your friend, if he's still alive... When you go down there, just follow the right hand turn. That will take you to where you're looking for. But you be careful. He's not a person you want to turn your back on. Not even the sort of person you want to have facing you, even."

"BeJay," Bags said, deadly serious. "I'm not going to sit down to tea with him. My friend is safe, though half-dead."

"So... you're going after revenge?" BeJay got a hungry gleam in her eye.

"No. I'm going after a jacket." Bags started to go down under the city, stopped halfway, turned back and said, "I won't forget you."

BeJay started at that, and for half a second a tear appeared in one of her rheumy eyes. "Go to hell." she said, turned and walked away.

Down he went, under the city, into the winding tunnels that connected all the drains. He faced first one way, the way that led under the Midway, turned and started the other direction. That way led towards the Keep.

He trudged through years of muck and slime, with side tunnels leading off to the sides. There was a strange glow from the mold on the walls, so Bags had enough light to see by. "Wonder what Pockets would make of it?" he thought.

Every hundred yards or so a grating would appear over head, adding to the light. When Bags came to a right hand turn, he took it, trusting the old woman's advice. He walked what felt like a couple of miles and the route dead ended in a set of stone stairs going up to a wooden trap door.

"Stone." he said. "This must be the place." He climbed the stairs, carefully lifted the wooden door and peered around. There wasn't anyone around, so he quickly climbed out of the hole, and placed the door back on it's ledges.

He was in an tiny alcove at one end of a stone hallway that ran about one hundred fifty feet, then turned to the left. He could see doorways dotting the walls on his left side, and thin slit windows on his right. He walked carefully down the hallway, softly as in any forest he'd been in. He stopped at the first door and listened. Nothing came to his ears, so he gently opened it.

It led to a balcony that peered down one floor to the next, which appeared to be a large hall. Across the way, he could see another balcony, like the one he was on. Bags noted that the balcony had doorways interspersed by blank walls. "Those must be rooms", he thought.

The hall was buzzing with activity, people coming and going. He spied the Chancellor at one end, talking to a small man dressed in red livery. The man nodded a few times and then left. The Chancellor seemed to contemplate something, then turned and looked up. Bags quickly ducked back into the hallway, fairly sure he had not been seen.

Back in the hallway, walked to the next door, placed his ear against it, and listened. Inside he didn't hear any movement, so he carefully pushed the door open. It opened into a room, not very large, but large enough for a bed, a table, two chairs, and an ornate dressing screen. On the back of one of the chairs was a black lump, folded roughly. It was a recognizable lump, and Bags' heart beat quicker for it.

He had just about reached the jacket, when he heard a woman's voice saying "And what do we have here?"

Bags didn't turn, instead he just said, "I came for the jacket." He reached down and took it from the chair.

"Well, you can't have it. It's mine. It's a souvenir." Chibi marched over to him with her hands on her hips, and looked up at him truculently.

Bags took a whole and entire minute to think about the situation. He was inside a stone fortress, inside a room where any moment now, someone could come wandering in. He took that entire minute and made his decision.

His right hand, the one not holding the jacket, flashed out and clipped Chibi on the chin. The look of surprise on her face right before she crumpled brought him a sparse moment of pleasure. "You've got an appointment." he said to her as she fell.

He carefully placed the jacket into his neverfull, and tossed Chibi unceremoniously over one shoulder. He then placed the chair upright again where it had fallen when Chibi collapsed into it, turned and carefully made his way back down the hallway to the alcove.

Looking back, he made sure no alarm had been raised. He figured it hadn't, because there had only been the noise of Chibi falling onto a hard stone floor. He lifted the wood door, and went down into the drains.

Down in the drains again, he came to the intersection where he had previously turned right. He thought about it for a minute, and turned right, to go down the way he had not been before.

"If I'm right, this will take me under the barracks." He smiled a bit and then said to the unconscious body he carried, "Maybe a bit of Pockets has rubbed off on me, huh?" He walked a few paces further, then stopped, smiled broader and said. "Naw, never happen."