Previously on The Economancer, my morning commute was hijacked into the Soul of New York City by Boss Tweed, the City’s own personal spirit of greed. He tricked me into accepting a job to evict Bill the Butcher, the closest thing the City has to a war god, from his home in the memory of the Five Points. Unfortunately, since he basically kidnapped me, I didn’t have a chance to properly equip myself for the job.
So now here I am in the Five Points, facing Bill the Butcher with my good luck charm, a gold double-eagle coin from his day, which was worth twenty dollars in his day (which of course bought a lot more than twenty dollars does now), is worth a lot more today, and in my hands is basically a nuke, which is why I carry something that valuable around with me.
I’ve just given him his eviction notice. He’s just metaphorically torn it up and thrown it back in my face.
“Let me tell you a little secret about weapons, little girl,” he says. “If you’re not willing to use it, it’s not a weapon at all. It’s a prop.” He nods toward the coin in my hand. “And you’re not willing to use that. Not to serve an eviction notice.”
He’s right. But he apparently doesn’t want to spook me while I’ve got it in my hand, because when he gets up it’s slow and casual, with no threatening moves. Which must have taken some effort on his part, because every move he makes is threatening. He takes a long drag on a hand-rolled cigarette.
“You know, you wouldn’t know it from that stupid moving picture, but I’m older than Bill Tweed. Just a couple years, but still. I died a lot younger than he did, but that’s just the difference between our ways of life. He died in prison, I died in the street. Kinda think I won that one.”
“But the things we represent, now, those thing are older than either of us. Older than both of us. Put together. He goes back to when this island was bought for a handful of beads. I go back to the first time a musket was fired in anger. As far back as this city goes, there’s always been those two things, always fighting to prove just who was really in charge. The violence and the greed.”
He took another drag and then he grinned at me, and the rather pleasant working man in front of me is gone. In his eyes, I can see the thing of hate and blades that he might have been even when he was alive.
“Him and me, we had a grand old time in the Seventies. He wants a rematch? That’s fine with me. I can feel the dark times coming, too. The kind of times that are just full of opportunities for folks like him and me. Him or me, I should say. We’ll see which one of us is in charge after this.”
One last drag and his cigarette was finished. He tossed the butt into the mud of the Five Points and turned back into the shadows of his shop.
“Now run along, little girl,” he said. “You’ve delivered your message.”
…and then I was standing waist deep in the Collect Pond, the reservoir that had provided the city’s drinking water until 1811, before it was filled in and the area had become The Five Points.
The Lord of the Five Points had kicked me out. Nice little reminder that he wasn’t just the violent street thug he appeared to be. Not anymore.
As I waded ashore, ignoring the stares from 18th-century ghosts, my mind was racing.
I had messed this up badly. Not that I’d had much chance to do it right. So what did I do now? Let the two of them fight it out and hope the winner didn’t come after me afterwards? No, that wasn’t an option. Whichever one of them won, the City wouldn’t be livable.
Wait.
They talked about two forces, but there was a third. There’d always been a third. And its center was here in this place, but a much later time. Layers above.
I didn’t have time to arrange transport. I was buried so deep in New York’s memory that it could take me geological amounts of time to get back to where I needed to be if I looked for gates and pathways. I needed to punch straight through.
I looked at the gold coin in my hand. Looked like I was going to need this power after all.
I gathered myself like a swimmer at the bottom of a pool…and I…
Pushed off.