Aethosphere Chronicles: The Rat Warrens by Jeremiah D. Schmidt

you, Gord-O, eight…nine?”
    “Thirteen.”
    “Close enough…guess you might get it. I’m
going take down Trask by first taking down his Exchange; by freeing
the people from his token sham. I’ve already pulled the rug out
from under him by seizing the children’s loyalty. Something he
never had the smarts to do—”
    “ Token sham ,” Fen blurted in
interruption, “I don’t understand.”
    “Course you don’t, so let me explain. Tokens,
kid-O, tokens are what’s keeping you and everyone in this slum
down. You trade out a Ludwig ‘cause it ain’t worth anything down
here, and for it you get a couple tokens, seems real dandy, right?
Wrong. What you don’t get, until you try and climb out of the Rat
Warrens, is that tokens ain’t worth a spit-in-the-drain. You know
they’re nothing but pieces used in up-level gaming halls; used to
play strike-rack and tables, and such. You can buy at least a
hundred tokens for a Ludwig; even more. But you can’t trade in a
hundred, or even a thousand—ten thousand—tokens for a single note,
anywhere.”
    “Anywhere…hundreds of tokens…” Fen’s mind
whirled at these concepts, and it suddenly occurred to him that his
rucksack of cash was worth far more than he could have ever
imagined.
    Time climbed off the table and wrapped his
hands around the boy’s biceps, holding him rigid at arms’ length.
“I see you’re having a hard time with this concept,” he said
craning his neck to probe Fen’s eyes, “but that’s the truth. You’re
all tied up in the rat lord’s scheme, Gord-O, and all his bartermen
are in on it too; to the point it’s become the norm. It’s been like
this so long most don’t remember; ‘specially since this War’s
taking everyone except the women and children—and not a one of
them’s schooled in economics.
    “Now I’m given you the truth here, Gord-O,
and I’m giving you an honest opportunity to come clean and bring
back my money…help me do some good down here in the slums. Madam
Coven hinted that you might be important for something to
come—”
    For all Time’s altruistic talk of helping out
the people of the slums at present, Fen couldn’t help but think
back to all those speeches he gave to his children about
climbing and ‘taking what’s yours’. ‘By hook or by crook’ he’d
said, and these two versions of Time seemed to clash. Was this just
the merchant’s way of tricking him out of the rucksack of cash by
crook, or was the cash really going to be used as Time said, to
lift them out of the rat lords clutches, by the hook?
    “This big score,” he asked the man,
probingly, “you were actually going to do it for me?”
    Time tucked his gloved thumbs into his
suspenders and rocked back on his heels, nodding. “Sure was.”
    Fen’s muscles wound tight. His father used to
make promises like that, promises that he ultimately broke. “What
was I going to get?”
    “I would have given you a flood of tokens,
Gord-O.” Time thrust out a hand as if pointing to the pile.
    And there in lay the rub. “But you said they
were worthless.” Fen’s head felt close to bursting with having
unraveled Time’s scheme.
    “To an extent.” Time shrugged as though it
didn’t matter in the least. Given the merchant’s carefree display,
Fen thought maybe he was wrong. Or did the merchant’s bravado
extended to all situations, even to ones he was losing? “You’d
still enjoy some perks down here, Gord-O. A few thousand tokens
will leave you living in relative comfort for…a long while; and
anyway, there’s this place to consider. I invited you in.”
    “But all those Ludwigs…” Fen reasoned, “I
could have just bought my way out of the slums…for me and my
sister.”
    “Could have, but that’s hypothetical
now.”
    “Hypo-what?” Fen scratched at his head, and
the merchant chuckled at his ignorance.
    “Nothing,” said Conrad, “Now I’ve run out of
time, Gord-O, The Madam’s said my opportunity will manifest