"Those aren't all yours, right?" Levi cast a disappointed look at the slew of water-stained glasses sitting before Isabel at the bar, empty save for a few beads of amber-colored liquid. "How many?"
Isabel held up three fingers on each hand, her right index finger crooked from an early crash using the ODM gear. "Three!"
"That's six, dumbass."
She squinted at her hands as if a few more fingers had sprouted from her palms when she wasn't looking. "I swear I only had three! I don't know where these all came from!" Her voice echoed around the bar that had suddenly gone quiet when he walked through the door.
"That'll be sixty-four crowns," the bartender said as he stacked her glasses.
"Nooo!" Isabel cried, loud enough that every head in the bar whipped around; previously they'd been turned down to avoid eye contact. Levi drummed his fingers on the counter and set his gaze on the dusty bottles behind the bartender. If he needed to, he could level the bartender with a dark glare and tell him he'd get around to paying him back, running a finger down the blade holstered at his leg. But, better not to make enemies where he didn't need them. He already had enough of those.
Isabel pulled out her pouch, the one sloppily embroidered with what was supposed to be a hummingbird, and dumped its contents on the counter. Slowly, she pushed coins across to the bartender, lips moving as she silently counted them.
"Seven more," the bartender said, his eyes flicking to Levi nervously.
"You just got paid," Levi said. "Drink it already?"
Isabel held up her pouch. "See, there's a hole in the bottom! Some coins must've fallen out!" The hole was barely big enough for a fly to crawl through.
"Don't write checks your ass can't cash."
"But I didn't write a check."
Levi sighed. Slipping his hand inside his jacket pocket, he fished out the needed coins from the pouch safely hidden away. Though no one was stupid enough to try to snatch it out of his hand, he wasn't stupid enough to tempt them. He slid the coins across the counter to the bartender, who snapped them up as if he expected Levi to change his mind.
"Thaaanks!" Isabel jumped off her stool, nearly tripping in the process, and stumbled out the door. Brushing an invisible speck of dirt off his pants, Levi followed.
It was nearly two in the morning, but the Underground looked the same every hour of the day: gray, hazy air illuminated by the odd gas lamp that hadn't yet burned out, a miasma settling over splintered buildings held together with bent nails, curses, and spit. Above was the same black abyss, punctured by a few cracks to remind Levi that some idiot up there a few inches taller than him with no holes in the hem of his shirt was too lazy to fix the road. The sky it hid could've been pitch black or blue or even bright purple for all he knew. It seemed to be an unspoken rule in the Underground that they all set their watches to the same time and followed the same set of arbitrary rules regarding them; otherwise, they'd all go insane.
Isabel belched, then laughed at Levi's scowl. "Don't tell Farlan," she said, bounding down the steps onto the cobblestones. Extending her arms, she picked her way across by balancing on the uneven bricks jutting out of the road.
"What? That money spews out your purse faster than diarrhea?"
"Whatever. Whiskey tastes way better than tea."
"Tea doesn't make you stupid, or your breath smell," he said, following her. By his tone, Isabel had better know they were heading straight back to the apartment. No stops, no chatting with neighbors, no peeking in alleyways to spook the rats or search for forgotten treasures.
"I'm surprised you don't stick your pinky out like the king in his palace." Isabel pinched her fingers and lifted an imaginary teacup to her lips, one pinky straightened.
"That's bullshit. People don't do that."
Isabel tilted her head back, hands clasped behind her, ambling down the street as they passed the Double Heart, the card house where Farlan was scheduled to stand in the back, keen eyes watching for card counters or chip thieves. The work was easy and the pay decent; the only threats were drunkards fumbling with knives who, when caught, were more likely to injure themselves instead of doing any damage. Levi squinted, trying to peer inside, but the glass was dark and streaked with dirt. He shook his head sharply. Next time he'd tell the proprietor that he'd have to forgo their services if he tolerated such filth.
Isabel was walking too slowly, whistling tunelessly. The group of men standing under the eaves of the Double Heart looked up, but just as quickly cast their eyes downward when they saw him trailing her. Roving eyes and lecherous glances tended to lose their potency when he was around. Even so, no one worth speaking to ventured outside after midnight, though Isabel acted like she was strong enough to beat ten men at once. When he reminded her of a black eye or a chopped-off pigtail, she claimed that they hadn't fought fairly. But Levi always thought that people who fought fairly weren't trying hard enough.
They crossed the bridge spanning the slow-running river that was more a communal dumping ground, stagnant water that had an oily-green sheen whenever the light hit it just wrong. Isabel never spoke while crossing it. Someone long ago had told her the spirits of the dead slept beneath the bridge and would attack if disturbed. Levi never spoke, either, to make sure the leeches beneath didn't detect his presence.
"Hutch was being touchy again," she said as soon as her feet hit the ground on the other side.
"I'll knock his teeth out." Levi curled his fist as if the boy were right in front of him, the scrawny teenager who stood a head taller than him but was about as thin as two of his fingers pressed together.
"I can do it myself."
"Then do it."
Isabel shrugged. "He bought me two drinks. I was trying to be a lady."
Levi snorted. "Farlan in a wig would be more ladylike than you."
"Hey!" Isabel balled her fists. "You're no gentleman, you're too short!" She stomped ahead, disappearing around the corner of a crumbling building.
He decided to ignore the insult, for now. "Didn't I tell you not to go to that bar?"
"You can't tell me what to do!"
Of course he couldn't. Levi jogged around the corner. Better to keep an eye on her before she ran off after something or fell into holes she couldn't claw herself out of.
He found Isabel crouched at the front of an alleyway, waggling her fingers and clucking into the shadows. When he squinted, Levi found a pair of bright green eyes staring back at him. The animal made a funny noise, like it was trying to squeeze its stomach out its mouth.
"Don't touch it," he warned, taking a step backward. "Those things have diseases."
"Did you know? Uppers keep cats in their houses!"
Levi tried not to blanch. "So they can piss and shit all over their nice feather beds? Hack up hairballs in their teacups?"
"Maybe, but they catch mice in return." She rose to her feet. "And they can get cats with pink curly fur, or ones with blue and red stripes, so they're pretty to look at."
"They can come down here and take one. Ours are just as good."
Isabel cackled like that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard, loud laughter echoing around them. Levi quickly glanced around for any movements in dark corners. "They keep birds, too, in little golden cages." Laughter dissipating, Isabel's smile faded. "For some reason, that seems wrong."
"Maybe they like it that way. No one can get in and hurt them."
"I guess you're right." From the tone of her voice, Levi knew she didn't believe him, but she didn't start needling him with arguments and hypotheticals like she usually did. Good. That would give him a headache.
The white chapel came into view and Levi could finally remove his hand from the blade at his thigh. They'd made it to their neighborhood, so named for the chapel that now was a cloudy shade of gray. The Church of the Walls had tried setting up shop there, but who wanted to worship something they couldn't even see? Whitechapel was one of the quieter neighborhoods of the Underground, though quiet was a relative term. At least one drunkard stumbled down the road shouting in the middle of the night. And tonight, that person was Isabel.
"You're wrong," she declared, marching along the road. "I am a lady. A magnolia is a flower, and real ladies always have flowers. So there." She jutted out her jaw, sneering at him.
"That's a stretch."
"You don't even have a last name!"
"Don't need one."
"Make one up! I bet you do have one, but you're not telling us because you're trying to be mysterious. Since you're an expert on ladies." She waggled her eyebrows, a demented grin spreading across her face. Anyone else would've gotten a punch in the face; the best he could give her was an eye roll.
Levi could make up a last name, but that would be sacrilegious. Doing so meant erasing any last trace of his mother, admitting that she meant nothing; it was as if instead of being a child once, he had just sprung into existence, infecting the world like a fever. It was accepting that she was just another brick in the wall of the Yellow Rose, built higher and higher on her back until it broke.
It was not for lack of trying. As the brothel owner's blood seeped out his neck, turning the worn wooden floor of the Yellow Rose a deep dark red, Levi pored through the ledgers searching for Kuchel, the sweep of the K and the loop of the L hidden behind dates and sums and deductions for medicines. Nothing. He'd read it again; still nothing. With that, his name became four short letters, an angry staccato swinging like a blade with no handle.
"Magnolias, they smell pretty," Isabel continued. "Opal says her perfume is supposed to smell like magnolias. But how does she know? She's never smelled a real magnolia."
Levi's mouth twisted, but he froze the muscles in his face, focusing on that white chapel. Opal worked at the Yellow Rose, looking decades older than her seventeen years. Isabel always slipped her childhood friend a few crowns on her slow months; though she tried to hide it from Levi, he knew where every single coin that entered their hole in the wall went. But who was he to forbid it? The only person Levi knew from his childhood was long gone, maybe even decaying in the dirt somewhere. He wouldn't follow Isabel there, instead taking long winding paths to never see even a sliver of that sickly yellow in his periphery. She'd have to protect herself. And Opal's back would inevitably break, with or without Isabel's coins.
"Ahh!" Isabel's shriek caused Levi's hand to fly to his blade again. She was suddenly writhing on the ground, grasping her knee and spewing curses at a brick jutting up from the cobblestones. Levi groaned. There was going to be dirt all over her clothes, and if she tore open the hole in her pants that he'd just sewn up last week there'd be more than hell to pay, her face shoved in a bucket of bleach cleaning the walls and scraping gunk from the floorboards—
But her face screwed up like she was about to cry, and though Levi scanned her for scrapes or blood beading from a cut, he found nothing. Still, her lower lip quivered and she bit down on her knuckle, that stupid habit she should have given up long ago since it revealed her fear and pain to anyone with working eyes.
Levi extended his hand. "Come on, get up—"
"I want to see the sky," she said, her voice strained. "And the sun, and the rain, and the snow. And I know you're gonna say that you can see the sunlight through the grates but I mean the real thing."
He wasn't going to say that, because he knew what she meant. "But there's Titans out there," he said as if the idea of leaving this shithole was something only fools entertained.
"I know. But maybe they're not so bad." She made no effort to get up, frizzy red hair radiating from her head like flames. "I want to know it's winter because of the snow and not just because it's freezing down here. And that it's summer from the trees and the flowers, not from the smell getting worse. I want you and me and Farlan to see all of it, together. On horses, the pretty white ones that the king has. And I want a whole roasted pig, all of it, just for me."
Impossibilities, hazy things that vanished as soon as you opened your eyes in the morning; locks of black hair extending from a featureless face. "Maybe lower your expectations."
She slammed her fist on the ground, curling her knees into her chest. "I don't want to! I want my pig!" Ignoring Levi's outstretched hand, she turned onto her side and whimpered, a pathetic and heartbreaking sound. "Levi, what do you want?"
"Me? What do I want?"
"Yes, you! Who else is here for me to ask?"
"I want my dishes spotless and uncracked, to never feel dust on my fingertips, and for every cockroach to die in the flames of hell. And I want you to get up."
Isabel laughed, but her smile faded. "No. I mean, like…" She traced her finger along the cobblestones, trailing behind an insect that disappeared into a crack. "I mean, the last thing you think about before you go to sleep, and what you think about when you're sitting in the rafters at the Double Heart waiting for someone to throw a punch, but no one's done anything for hours and you're bored out of your skull. What you'd buy if instead of ten crowns after a job, you got a thousand."
Nothing came to him. His mind was empty as a boarded-up attic, motes of dust floating in the air. It was a waste of time to consider those things. "You should be thinking about what you'd do if someone crept up there and got the jump on you."
"I've got ten different scenarios planned out, just like you said!" She pounded the ground. "Now tell me!"
Levi folded his arms. "I guess...a new pair of boots would be nice. And…" He knew what he didn't want: a bullet in his brain, a knife twisted in his gut, his body left cold and broken on a rooftop instead of someone else's. "A full tea service. In silver. With my name engraved on it." Might as well dream big.
"Oh." She sounded disappointed. But what was there to be disappointed about? He'd told her the truth.
He waved his hand. "Come on." Isabel always got too idealistic when she drank. She took it, her palm warm and sweaty, and grunted as she hoisted herself up.
"Sorry my hands are dirty," she said. "I didn't think you liked touching other people."
"I don't."
"So me and Farlan, we're not just 'other people?'" Isabel asked, lacing her fingers together. A small smile tugged at her lips, one she tried to tamp down, but he saw.
"Keep draining me of money and you'll be on my list of things I don't want."
The smile faded, her eyes downcast. Don't cry, don't you dare start bawling and let everyone in a mile radius know exactly where we are. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her bite down on her lip. Stupid. You didn't have to say it like that.
"We're almost home," he said to fill the silence.
Isabel sniffled and swiped a hand across her face, leaving a trail of snot across her cheek.
They walked side by side, footsteps echoing around them. Levi's eyes lingered on the broken porcelain and rotten food spilling out of trash cans, brown twisted weeds sprouting from between the bricks. Want was a word of luxury, not something that existed down here. It was pointless, like trying to plant flowers outside his window when he knew they'd be dead in a month. He had needs, like food and water and blood running through his veins and not splattered on a wall. Legs in working order, ten fingers to grip his weapons. But beyond that, what could there be? To sit beside a window twice his height, sipping tea while the sunlight warmed his skin, thoughts lingering on that instead of money or the scrape on Farlan's calf that refused to heal or the possibility of someone lurking in the shadows beneath him, brandishing a knife? Those all were things for somebody else. They said the grass was always greener on the other side of the fence, but the only grass he'd ever seen was in the overgrown patch of mud beneath the grate where the Uppers slopped their shit.
The apartment came into view just as Levi's thoughts were beginning to grow teeth and gnaw at the back of his head. The small flat sat on the third floor of the only building on their street that didn't look like it would collapse if you sneezed at it. Levi picked it specifically since burglars were less likely to put in the effort to climb all the way up there to rob them; that same logic came to bite him in the ass as he dragged Isabel's unwieldy body up the crumbling stairs.
As soon as he unlocked the door, Isabel stumbled inside and threw herself on the couch. The sagging, pathetic excuse for furniture groaned under her weight.
"Take your shoes off first," Levi said for the thousandth time.
She moaned like someone had stabbed her in the belly, hoisting herself up to unlace her boots. "If I puke, will you clean it up?"
"You already know the answer to that." But he filled her a glass of water from the fast-dwindling supply they'd hauled from the one clean well two miles away. He set the kettle on the stovetop, sprinkling in a few tea leaves before filling it with the dirtier water that came from the well at the end of the street. It was the only way that piss was palatable.
Setting the glass on the table beside her, Levi took his place in the cushioned chair at the corner of the room, forcing himself to ignore the growing hole in the brocade fabric on the armrest. Isabel gulped down the water, belched again, and stretched out on the couch.
"Maybe staying like this is good enough," she said. "You and me and Farlan, always. Even when we're old and bald and can't use the bathroom on our own."
"I'd rather die before it gets to that," Levi said, and Isabel hiccuped a laugh.
But that wasn't good enough. Staying like that meant they were trapped like the bugs caught in the flypaper Levi hung by the windows, a pointless endeavor because they kept swarming no matter how often he changed it.
The things he wanted, things that tugged at his hands despite his best efforts to convince himself they were a waste of time, came to him in flashes like knives swinging at his face that he couldn't possibly defend himself against. He wanted to know why, out of every other woman at the Yellow Rose and everyone in the Underground, everyone who'd ever dared to exist, it had to be his mother who'd drowned in the phlegm of her own lungs before he'd gotten the chance to figure out why he'd even been born. He wanted to know why Kenny had plucked him up out of the dirt, dusted him off, taught him everything he needed to know but left before telling him why he was worth the effort. He wanted to know why power surged through every muscle in his body, crackling out his fingers and snapping the necks that stood in his way, but he didn't have the strength to punch through that cracked ceiling and make the Uppers bow at his feet.
His mother and Kenny were long gone as if they'd never even existed. And someday he'd be gone too, ashes dumped in that slow-running river, and the sun would rise and set above him and he'd never even know, just like now as he spent his hours adding and subtracting coins, breaking the noses of men who didn't pay their debts or stole the wrong thing, paying for medicine that staunched diseases but never healed them. The futility of it all threatened to clench his throat shut and suffocate him.
A silver teacup was useless when it held tea that tasted metallic if he drank it too slowly. New boots were worthless when he could only wear them to walk the same five square miles. He didn't want to remain a rusted wheel on a cart going nowhere, stuck in the ground with weeds wrapping around him to trap him in the dirt while the sun blazed above him.
"A purpose," he said. "That's what I want. Not to live and die down here like trash. When I die I want people to remember who I was. But not for this meaningless shit. I don't know what, but I'll figure it out. For something better, for something—"
An ungodly snore erupted from Isabel, echoing throughout the apartment like an explosion. Levi cringed, praying the downstairs neighbors were asleep. Better she hadn't actually heard him. Now he'd turned into the idealistic sap and he wasn't even drunk.
The kettle whistled and Levi rose to his feet. Good enough, for the moment.