Page 31 of The Only Way Out Is Up

Fuck. So much for that idea. At least Ky is close enough to grab the Arbiter—their uniforms supposedly have sigwork that’s proof against knives, but that won’t help against a punch to the throat—

Slowly, Ky reaches into her pack. I tense. To my surprise, her hand emerges holding not a weapon but a small leather folder, which she hands to the Arbiter.

Our interrogator flips it open, and very abruptly everything changes. The woman takes a step back to make room for a bow, handing Ky’s folder back with both hands like an obsequious servant.

“Apologies, miss. Proceed, please.”

“This never happened,” Ky says dismissively. “We were never here.”

“Of course, miss. I will tell no one.”

“Tell no one of what?”

“Of… nothing, miss. Because nothing occurred.”

“Very good.” Ky beckons me imperiously. “Come along.”

I shuffle past the stunned Arbiter, who remains bent low. Ky strides out of the park and starts down a switchbacking stairway surrounded by fences and wire.

“What did you give her?” I ask in a whisper. I’ve never seen an Arbiter act like that. Normally they treat all civilians with barely veiled contempt.

“A Hod pass,” Ky says nonchalantly.

“A Hod pass?”

“And a couple of stripes.” She waves a hand. “She probably would have let us through without the bribe, but she would have told everyone she meets what happened, and that would have gotten back to the Cavcante. This way she’ll stay quiet.” Ky frowns. “Probably, anyway. I hope I gave her enough.”

There are too many absurd things in this remarkable sentence for me to handle. Stripes are the currency of the upper tiers; one stripe is worth something like ten thousand bits. Ky has just given this guard enough money to keep my family eating for years. But mind-boggling as that is, it pales in comparison to the information that this girl has documents entitling her to pass into the highest tier of all.

Nobody is allowed on Hod. Money goes up, and orders and Arbiters come down.

“Why,” I manage, once I get my voice under control, “do you have a Hod pass?” If it’s stolen, it must be the single most valuable piece of contraband in the world.

“Because I’m from Hod,” she says, brushing at nonexistent hair again. “The Trantos are a Council family. Or we were, at least.”

“Then why—”

“I’ll explain everything, I promise,” she says. “But can we get under cover first?”

I give a shaky nod, and we descend the rest of the stairs into the red-tinged streets of Malkuth. I watch Ky and find myself wondering, with only a slight twinge of guilt, how many stripes she has left in that satchel.

TWELVE

Malkuth is nearly as filthy as the Heap, but a lot more crowded. Even now, in the small hours of the morning, every twisting street and alley seems to be jammed to capacity. We pick our way around food stalls (my stomach growls), dice games, off-duty whores, piles of trash, and people curled up in filthy corners who are either sleeping or dead. The buildings rise high overhead, ugly slabs of metal with barred windows. Clotheslines and bridges form a spiderweb above us that gets nearly as much traffic as ground level.

The whole thing is bathed in noxious crimson light. No work-lights here, so sigwork lamps are ubiquitous, and red lights are the cheapest and easiest to make. Every surface looks like it’s been coated in blood. It makes the stray traces of gore on Ky look like brown spots, which probably stand out less. But nobody around here would care one way or another.

I know not all of Malkuth is like this. There are the workhouses, with their orderly campuses patrolled by armed guards. And there are the vast sorting-and-smelting operations where the scrap gathered from the Heap is processed and shipped on to its eventual fate, whatever that is. But this densely packed red mass is the part of the tier where people actually live. Everybody here is fighting for elbow room, and fighting even harder to avoid losing their grip and falling to the Heap below. A fate worse than death, they say.

Ky strides with confidence, but she seems to be making turns at random. Eventually we stop at a building where the character ROOM is written three stories high and picked out in sigwork lighting. Ky exchanges a few words with a woman in a barred office and comes back to me with a key.

“Third floor,” she says, pointing to an external staircase. “I got us twelve hours, so we can rest for a bit.”

I can feel weariness tugging at me as we climb, the high of our escape starting to fade. The doors we pass emit moans and other sounds of passion, and I can see a slight flush creep up Ky’s cheeks. Our own room is mostly bed, and Ky’s lip twists.

“It’s a bit… sparse,” she says. “Malkuth, I guess.”

“It’s a sex pit,” I tell her. Not that I’ve ever been able to waste money on one, but you hear stories. “A place where people take whores to fuck. Or their dates, but usually whores. That’s why it charges by the hour.”