Tobias the Cat: A Short from the Nexus

The sun beat down unmercifully as she leaned against the brick wall closest to the gate. With a cocky grin, she flipped the bronze gnip into the air. It was her first tip from her first message run. She reached down to yank up her new-to-her trousers, and tightened the string that held them up.

"Th's w'n't b'ta h'rd after all," she said, carefully practicing the cant she'd picked up from McDougal's crew in the week since they'd welcomed her into their home. It was pretty simple, she'd decided after listening for awhile, even if it was very different from the crispness of her homeland. She tossed her head at the memory and flinched at the flash of glossy brown hair in her peripheral vision. Her grin faded. She missed her long golden locks.

Motion in the gate caught her attention, distracting her from her sudden melancholy. Someone entered, stumbling a little on the rough cobbles. He was tall, and slightly gangly as if he hadn't grown into it yet. He wore unfamiliar clothes - pants and a buttoned shirt with a strip of cloth tied around his neck - but that wasn't unusual in the Nexus. Everyone wore strange clothes here. His skin reminded her of a copper bracelet her sister had dropped in the fireplace. She tilted her head, trying to get a closer look. He really looked like he'd been dipped in ashes and very badly dusted off, but the dirt did little to hide his prettiness, just as it hadn't dimmed the beauty of the bracelet. A quiver of arrows and something that sort of looked like a bow hung from straps at his side, and he clutched a small case in one hand. His black hair was cut in short spikes, and it looked so soft she wanted to run over and touch it.

Before she decided to act on this impulse, he looked at her and she gasped. His eyes were a startling red-orange, and his turned head revealed a stone earring that just matched them. But those eyes … they held a desolation that called to the emptiness inside her. She had a strange flash of the boy cleaned up and dressed in brown suede pants with a matching beaded vest that exposed a wiry muscled chest and arms. The phantom had longer, braided hair, but still carried the arrows and bow. She shook her head again, and the ashy boy stood in the street staring down at her.

"Hi!" she called, forcing cheerfulness into her tone. "Are ya new?"

"I … don't know? Maybe?" he answered. She frowned, thinking this was an odd response, even for the people who came to the Nexus.

"You sure? Do you have a name? How old are you?" she pressed, stepping closer.

"I'm Akicita," he answered readily enough even as he stepped back to keep some distance between them. "I … think I'm almost fifteen? Maybe …" He paused as if searching internally before continuing. "What about you?"

"Me? I'm …" She hesitated, and then answered. "I'm Tobias. I turned twelve a couple weeks ago. I'm part of McDougal's crew," she concluded, tipping her chin up to smile at Akicita.

"You sure?" he echoed back with a wry smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Maybe you should write it down. Who's McDougal?"

"He's one of the leaders in this district - the bricky one. I bet he'd let you join his crew."

"I don't know." Akicita gripped the maybe-bow. Tobias frowned. Why would he be nervous about meeting McDougal? She pictured the tall, beefy young man with his bushy brown beard and equally bushy brown hair. Most days he wore pants, like the woolly pair Rose had found for Tobias, but sometimes he wore a funny knee-length skirt. On those days, he tended to swing around an impressive broadsword and swear oaths on his ancestors' blood. She smiled. That must be it - if Akicita wasn't new, he saw McDougal sometime and was frightened.

"Aw, he's a big softie. You'll see." Tobias winced and forced her light alto voice to gruffness. "I mean, h's a b'g softie. Y'll see!" Tobias grabbed Akicita's wrist, jostling the bow free to hang from its strap. She started to pull him deeper into the district.

"Don't touch -" Akicita began to say as he yanked back against her grip. A cruel chuckle interrupted him, and three broad figures emerged to surround them. Tobias looked around with a hint of panic. She couldn't tell where they'd come from, and she suddenly remembered the warnings Rose had forced her to listen to before she was assigned the message run - the most pressing of which was to avoid loitering near the gate.

"What've we got here? Fresh meat, eh? Why don't you come with us - we'll show you around town." The leader grinned at them, revealing rotting teeth. Tobias glared, looking at the small gaps between the men. She could probably slip through, and if she got a head start, they'd not catch her before she got to a bolthole they were too big to follow her into. However … she glanced at Akicita. He seemed paralized, staring through the leader as if he saw something else. She gripped his wrist tighter.

"We're from McDougal's clan. H' w'n't t'ke k'ndly ta yer mesin' w't h's people!" Tobias jerked her chin up, staring down her nose at the leader.

"McDougal? He'll not be able to touch you where you're going." Tobias opened her mouth to argue, but a sudden pain in her head stopped her. She fell, struggling to retain consciousness. Akicita was falling to, and she turned her head just enough to see the two who'd been behind them grinning as they tucked their blackjacks away. She fought against the encroaching darkness and heard the leader continue, "Good job, boys. Uncle Tom will be pleased. It's hard to get soft boys, and the tall one's too pretty by half."

****

Tobias glared at the tall, tuxedo-clad man seated on the desk in front of her. She twisted her bound hands, trying to work her wrists free, but the coarse rope was too tight. Akicita stood beside her, similarly bound, but he didn't fight. She glanced at him, trying to catch his eye. He stared ahead, unblinking. Tobias frowned. Had the blow to his head addled him? The man on the desk cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him.

"It's nice of you boys to sign up for my crew. You can call me Uncle Tom, and I'll be just like family to you. That's what we have here - a family business." He smiled, thinly. He gestured at a stocky man that Tobias didn't have to look up at who stood next to the desk. "Davey here will get you set up. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask him." He made a shooing motion and Davey, grinning, turned Tobias and Akicita around, pushing them from the room. The door thudded shut behind them.

In the hallway, several men jostled. They stilled as Davey gestured to them. Tobias frowned - the shorter man seemed to be telling them something without talking.

"Yeah, I kin clean the pretty one," one of the men replied. "How about the mousey one? He's clean enough, right?" Davey grabbed Tobias's arm and yanked her toward him. She looked at his still-grinning face and shuddered. The man who'd asked held up his hands in surrender. "First dibs're yours - no problem!"

He reached over and grabbed Akicita. But the boy responded for the first time since they'd woken up and jerked free. He pressed close to Tobias's ear and whispered something that made the blood drain from her face.

"Don't scream, and don't fight. Try to relax when they -" His desperate instructions ended abruptly as the man grabbed Akicita again, yanking him away.

"Here now, none a that! Davey'll take good care of 'im, and I'll take good care of you." The man drug Akicita down the hall. Davey noisily sucked in air, smelling Tobias's hair. She shuddered again and tried to pull away. His grip was too strong, and he thrust her forward into the room directly across from Uncle Tom's office.

The door had barely shut behind them when Davey spun her around and shoved a rude hand down her trousers. The worn string that held them up offered little resistance, slipping free. Davey recoiled at what he found … or didn't find … inside the wooly garment. He shoved Tobias away from him and she fell to the rug in a cloud of dust, unable to catch herself with her bound hands. Without looking back, the stocky man almost ran from the room, slamming the door behind him. Tobias pushed herself up awkwardly as she heard another door slam. She looked around the room, trying to spot anything that could help her escape.

The pile of blankets in one corner didn't look promising. Tobias could smell them from where she sat, and they were musky, like an animal's den. She wrinkled her nose. An unlit lamp hung from a hook embedded in the wall above a pile of bound papers. They looked larger than the paper she would expect in a book, and they lacked the leather covers she was familiar with. She wondered if the books that Davey stripped of their covers for some reason, but dismissed her curiosity. It did nothing to help her escape.

Before she could crawl over to a pile of discarded junk, the door behind her slammed open. She rolled over to look up at a red-faced Uncle Tom. His tuxedo jacket was gone and the buttons on his shirt were half-undone with the sleeves rolled up.

"Yer no boy!" he snarled. "The market's glutted with pretty females. No one will pay for a brown lump in boy's clothing!" He raised his hand and, before Tobias rightly knew what was happening, backhanded her. She fell back to the dusty rug, too shocked to cry out. In all her years, until Uncle Tom's men had coshed her on the head, she'd never been struck. Her mind reeled, and she added safety to the list of things she'd sacrificed for her people.

When the hand moved toward her again, she reacted and sank her teeth into the exposed wrist.

"Gah!" Uncle Tom screamed, shaking her loose. She grinned up at him, baring bloody teeth. "I'll teach you!" Tobias couldn't evade the next blow, or the next, but she managed to return the one after that. Soon, she was lost in a blur of pain as the punishment continued.