Jade woke with her cheek pressed to cold stone and the taste of metal at the back of her throat.

  For a moment she didn’t move. She counted breaths instead, which came out slow and shallow, and listened. The streets have taught her that playing dead was often better than rushing headlong into a fight.

  The sound of water dripping was accompanied by skittering that came and went, like fingernails scratching brick. And there was something heavier nearby, too.

  She opened one eye.

  The ceiling above her was a tangle of pipes, with fungal patches clinging to the brick like pale bruises. The air stank of damp rot and something else, sharp enough to sting her nose. A lantern hung from a hook in the wall, its light a sickly yellow. The chamber was wider than most sewer rooms and old enough that the bricks had darkened with age and slime and history.

  Rats were everywhere, perched on ledges, on pipes, in neat rows along a broken beam like birds. Their eyes reflected the lantern’s feverish yellow glow. A few bloaters twitched their whiskers, or what was left of them, in unison as Jade lifted her head.

  She sat up slowly, keeping her hands close to her body. Both her wrists and her ankles were free. Jade flexed her fingers and looked down at herself. Her coat was still on. Her pockets had been checked — she could tell by the way the fabric sat — but whoever searched her hadn’t been thorough.

  She swallowed, mouth dry, and shifted her weight. Her shoulder protested where she’d been dragged. The memory came back in pieces: the surge of bloaters, the stink of sludge, Kaelen’s annoyed voice, the sudden grip from behind.

  Paws. Hands. Rough cloth. A rag over her mouth. Then darkness.

  “Ahhh,” a voice said. “At last she wakes.”

  Whoever was speaking had a heavy lisp, so the last word sounded more like “waketh”. Jade turned her head, but her eyes still hadn’t adjusted, so she could only see a washed-out blot.

  “We greet you, surface-dweller,” the figure announced, spreading its arms wide. “Now bow, for you see before you the ruler of the deep paths. The keeper of the black gift. The Great King Rat, first of my name.”

  Jade rubbed her eyes, allowing her to see her captor in full glory.

  The Great King Rat was a dirty old man. Contrary to his title, he was also incredibly small and had a knobby chin. Nobody would have ever accused him of being fair to look at. His eyebrows joined over the bridge of his broken nose, but mercifully, his ugliest features were hidden behind thick, matted red mutton chops that covered two thirds of his face.

  His clothes were tattered and faded too, but he smelled no fouler than the sewage around them. His shrewd grey eyes were closely observing Jade’s every move. She observed her captor in return, trying hard not to turn away in disgust. To her amazement, she found that his every finger, save for thumbs, was adorned with at least two expensive rings each.

  , Jade realized, though she decided against saying anything. The man was clearly crazy, and pushing his buttons was the last thing she needed right now.

  “You and I are kindred spirits. I can feel that,” the strange man continued, ignoring Jade’s obvious disgust. “You’ve lived in the underbelly of this vile world and are no stranger to suffering. Same as I.” He repeated the last phrase in a low, somber voice, “Same as I.”

  “Who are ya, man?”

  The self-proclaimed Great King Rat paced around her as he spoke, his long untrimmed claws clicking against stone and his words spilling out in uneven bursts. He clearly had carried them for years. They’d been his main sustenance.

  “I was not born a king,” he said. “I was born a nobody. An ordinary man, sickly, small, forgettable. In fact, there wasn’t even anything to . My own mother did not bother to find a suitable name for me before she neglected me.” His lips curled. “I learned early that if I wanted to eat, I would have to earn it. The first words I ever learned were ‘Do you have a sphere to spare?’. It was always a gamble whether they would toss you crusts or call the guards on you.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “Stealing came next. Then robbing. And when all else failed, there were worse ways. for a warm bed and a stale meal.”

  He did not elaborate, but Jade understood him well enough.

  , she decided. She had to think about something else, lest her imagination ran wild.

  “You are young,” the man pointed out. “You probably don’t remember the great plague that hit the slums above almost ten years back?”

  Jade had heard about it, of course, though the Rat King was correct: she herself was too young to recall any of it. The slums had suffered grievously, from what she could tell. One in six died.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Aye, what of it? Did ja get sick or somethin’?”

  “Sick?” the Great King Rat echoed with a cackle, pacing in a tight circle. “No, the plague only opened my eyes to the real sickness of this world.”

  Jade shifted against the stone, carefully so as not to rouse the bloaters. She wasn’t sure what this lunatic expected her to say. “Talk ‘bout soundin’ bitter.”

  “No more bitter than the pill I was made to swallow,” he replied with a snap, then immediately calmed. “When sickness came and all their medicine failed, they started dragging the dying away so the rest could live. The laws of nature. The ultimate precept of survival. I know it well.” His eyes narrowed. “I must have been a sorry sight – fevered, sickly, malnourished – for them to mistake me for a corpse.”

  He paused, then shrugged. “But I hold no grudges. Their instincts drove them to it. The surface-dwellers did what the miserable city above taught them to do, those poor mindless creatures.” His voice lowered. “All the better. The tomb they buried me in became the altar of a new world.”

  He resumed pacing, more slowly now. “Fever. Rot. Misery. Loneliness.” Each word landed like a stone. “For a long time, I wanted nothing more than to die and let the pain end. And yet, against all logic, I clinged to life. I learned how long a man can survive when he is not allowed to truly live. I ate whatever scrapes I could find. I drank whatever water was available. It’s how I found ,” the Great King Rat pointed at the pool of black goo in the middle of the room. “The precious gift.”

  Jade frowned despite herself. The idea of even touching that made her stomach twist. “Ya couldn’t pay me ‘nuff to drink this filth.”

  “I was already dying. What was one more poison?” He laughed again. “I drank deep, and as soon as I did, the weakest parts of me sloughed off, like rotten flesh. What remained was…” he raised his hands, “...something more.”

  Jade watched him, half in disbelief, half in disgust. “Yer coo-coo, man.”

  The Great King Rat ignored her. He closed his eyes, entranced with his own tale. “They say when the kings of old descended into the underworld, they took their servants and the treasures to be buried along with them. None for me. It is in this crypt that I my servants. My treasure. My purpose.” He opened his eyes suddenly. They gleamed with madness. “It burned. The first sip I took. Gods, how it burned. But when it stopped, I could feel them.”

  He pressed two claws to his temple. “A thousand tiny voices. My loyal brethren. Their hunger was mine. Their fear. Their movement through stone and dark. I could sense it all.” His tone softened, almost reverent. “As any monarch should listen to his people.”

  “The black water. It… something sleeping deep inside me. A new ability. Any living creature that drinks from the same fountain is now forced to become my loyal subject. My retinue grew, and so did my hatred.”

  He pointed at the rats all around him. “They felt as betrayed as I did. The surface world denied us all our dignity. We were forced to fight just to keep the wheel of suffering spinning. But the day of retribution comes.”

  He spread his arms, rats shifting around him like moths near a lantern. “And now the Belowground, my unseen empire, grows beneath their feet. Year by year and day by day.” His grin widened, giving Jade a nice view of his yellow, splintered teeth. “It will devour everything above. Not even the Scourge could have dreamed of something so devious.”

  He looked at Jade then, eyes bright with conviction. “This time, history will not forget our names.”

  “names?” Jade did not like the sound of that.

  “Come now,” the ugly man said softly. “I am no charming prince, ‘tis true. But in the dark of the Belowground, even a malformed little creature such as I is no less beautiful than the Knight of Roses.”

  He picked her chin with his disgusting claws. His face got so close, an entirely new stench hit Jade’s nostrils.

  , she realized incredulously. For half a heartbeat, she almost wanted it to happen, just so she could see his face when she puked all over him. She could barely tolerate the abominable smell of him without tearing up.

  The Rat King’s eyes lingered on hers for one long moment and finally he let go of her face.

  “It is beneath a king to become a robber. I will not steal your first kiss.” His lisp made it sound like “kith” but Jade understood the meaning well enough.

  “What makes ya think it’d be my first?” Jade asked, raising an eyebrow.

  The Rat King snickered. “Do not tell me your companion means anything to you. Oh yes, I observed you two through the thousand eyes of my loyal subjects.” He turned away dramatically. “That… is wholly undeserving of your beauty, my lady.”

  It was a good thing that the man faced away from Jade, because she rolled her eyes hard. She grew up on the streets and was no stranger to salacious comments, even if they were masked as cheap poetry. Kings or not, most men fancied themselves conquerors, but Jade was not some strip of land to surrender herself so easily.

  “That boy? Yer talkin’ ‘bout my fiance.” Jade tried to sound nonchalant, to better sell the lie. After that long-winded speech of his, she wanted nothing more than to rattle the old bugger.

  True enough, he turned with a face twisted in agony. “FIANCE?!” He kicked one of the rats and sent it flying.

  For a second, Jade even thought he might strike her. She looked right back at him, defiant.

  “I could force you to drink black water right now and submit to my will,” the Rat King growled, then smiled. “But I have slaves aplenty as it is. A willing queen, that’s what you will be. You will learn to respect my rule, my lady.”

  No sooner than he turned away from Jade that a thin blade flashed from her sleeve, which she lunged straight for the back of his head.

  , she thought. But there was not telling how quick the man’s reflexes were.

  The blade never reached its target. A rat launched itself suddenly into the blade’s path. The steel sliced halfway through the creature’s neck and got stuck.

  Jade swore and twisted her wrist, trying to recover for a second strike. Too late. Three more rats flung themselves at her arm, claws digging into her sleeve.

  The Rat King stepped back, laughing madly. “You see?” he said almost gently. “My people love me. They would hate to see me harmed.”

  Jade tore her arm free, flinging two rats against the wall hard enough that their bodies went limp. She flung a second blade, but as she feared, another rat hurled itself between them. The Rat King did not even flinch.

  “You are spirited,” he said. “That is why you are worthy.”

  “Worthy my arse!” Jade snapped. “I don’t wanna be some rat royalty.”

  The Great King Rat’s grin tightened. “You mock me?”

  “I’m sorry, Yer Grace,” Jade said insincerely, “it’s just… ‘Great King Rat’ is a bit on the snout, innit? That ain’t gonna impress any girl. As for my… fiance,” Jade’s smirk sharpened as she uttered this word, “he’ll be here any minute.” She let the statement hang, hoping against hope that she sounded confident enough.

  Her strange companion did not care for her safety one bit, he made that obvious. Years on the street taught Jade that expecting compassion from other people was a foolish proposition. Especially from one such as that dark-haired mage, whose name she never bothered to learn.

  That was the plan, at least. Her only leverage.

  The Great King Rat paced a slow circle around her, rats parting to let him through. “You’re hoping the boy comes for you, is that the way of it?” he asked her and smirked. “Well. That makes two of us, my lady. Let us wait, then. Let us wait.”

  Great King Rat is, of course, a reference to the eponymous track by Queen on their second album. In my opinion, it’s one of their strongest albums, alongside A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.