Low Town: A Novel

by Daniel Polansky

  The ringing faded as Tancred completed whatever ultimatum he was making. Spider rested a hand on his weapon. The unnamed thug flicked his tongue off a toothy grin. Somehow they had fallen under the impression that this was going to go easy—I was looking forward to disabusing them.

  I finished my last swallow of ale and dropped the tankard with my left hand. Spider watched it shatter on the ground and I lashed out with my right fist, breaking his nose back into his face. Before his partner could draw a weapon, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and launched us both through the open window behind him.

  For a half second all I could hear was the rush of the wind and the rapid pulse of my heart. Then we hit the ground, and my hundred-and-eighty-pound frame buried him faceup in the mud, a low crack letting me know the fall had broken a few of his ribs. I rolled off him and pulled myself to my feet. The moon was very bright against the dark of the alleyway. I breathed in deep and felt the blood drain from my head. The pockmarked man struggled to right himself, and I snapped a boot across his scalp. He groaned and stopped stirring.

  Dimly I was aware that the fall had done something to my ankle, but I was too gone to feel it yet. I would need to finish this quick, before my body had time to wake to the harm I’d done it.

  I walked back into the Virgin and saw Spider sprinting down the steps at full speed, blood seeping from his nose, his blade in his hand. He snarled and came at me wildly—foolish, but then Spider was the sort of man who gets rattled by a little pain. I met him halfway and dropped low, setting my shoulder into his knees and sending him hurtling down the stairs. Turning back to finish the job, I saw the white press of bone sticking out from his hand and knew there was no point in further violence. I left him cradling his wrist and shrieking like a newborn.

  Back on the second floor the patrons were pressed against the walls, waiting to see the outcome. At some point while I was busy below, Tancred had grabbed a heavy wooden truncheon, and he rapped it against his outstretched palm. His warped face was twisted into a death mask and there was a long line of notches on the handle of his club, but his eyes were wide and I knew he would go down easy.

  I ducked as his cudgel wheezed over my head, then balled my fist into his stomach. Tancred stumbled backward, gasping for air, waving his bludgeon impotently. On the second swing I caught his wrist and twisted it savagely, pulling him close as he screamed and dropped his weapon. I held his gaze with mine, his ruined lips trembling, then struck him a blow that collapsed his legs under him.

  He lay at my feet, weeping piteously. The small crowd of spectators stared back at me, bulbous drunkard noses and mongoloid idiot eyes, a menagerie of inbred grotesques, mouth breathers, and vermin. I had the urge to grab Tancred’s cudgel and wade into them, just start clubbing heads, crack crack crack, soak the sawdust red. I shook it off, telling myself it was just the breath. It was time to end this, but not too quickly. Theatricality mattered—I wanted these dregs to spread what they were seeing.

  I dragged Harelip’s limp body toward a nearby table and stretched one arm across the wood. Holding his palm flat with my left hand, I took his small finger firmly in my right. “What’s our boundary?” I asked, snapping his digit.

  He screamed but didn’t answer.

  “What’s our boundary?” I continued, breaking the next finger. He was weeping now, gasping for air and barely capable of speech. He’d need to make the attempt. I twisted another finger. “You’ve got a whole other hand I haven’t touched!” I was laughing and wasn’t sure if it was part of the act. “What’s our boundary?”

  “The canal!” he shrieked. “The canal is the boundary!”

  The bar was silent but for his wailing. I swiveled my head at the onlookers, savoring the moment, then continued in a voice loud enough to be heard by the first ranks of the audience. “Your business ends at the canal. Forget again and they’ll find you floating in it.” I pulled back his last finger and let him fall to the ground, then turned and walked slowly out. Spider sat slumped against the bottom of the stairs, and he looked away as I passed.

  A dozen blocks east, the breath wore off and I put my arm against an alley wall and spewed until I could barely breathe, sinking into the muck and grime. I knelt there for a while, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal. On the way up my leg gave out, and I had to buy a crutch off a fake cripple so I could hobble the rest of the way home.

  I awoke with a headache that made my swollen ankle feel like a hand-job from a ten-ochre-an-hour hooker. I tried to stand, but my vision swirled and my stomach let me know it was up for a repeat of last night’s performance, so I sat back down. Prachetas’s cunt, if I never took another whiff of pixie’s breath it would be too damn soon.

  The sun streaming through my window meant it was past noon. My feeling has always been that if you’ve missed the morning you might as well go ahead and skip the afternoon as well, but there was work to do. I steadied myself, then pulled on my clothes and walked downstairs.

  I took a seat at the counter. Adolphus had forgotten to cover his eye, and the recess in his skull wagged disapproval at me. “It’s too late for eggs. Don’t even ask.” I had figured one o’clock was probably past the breakfast rush but wasn’t happy to have my suspicions confirmed. “The boy from last night has been waiting for you to wake up for the past three hours.”

  “Is there any coffee at least? And where is my shadow exactly?”

  “There is none, and he’s in the corner.” I turned to see the youth uncurl from a wall. He had an odd talent for remaining unnoticed, or maybe my hangover was worse than I’d thought.

  We looked at each other in silence, some natural reserve keeping him from beginning. “I didn’t idle half the morning away in front of your door,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “A job.”

  He was direct, at least, and concise—that was something. My head was pounding and I was trying to figure out where my breakfast would come from. “And what possible use could you be to me?”

  “I could do things for you. Like last night.”

  “I don’t know how often you think I stumble over the corpses of missing children, but last night was kind of a rare occurrence. I don’t think I can justify a full-time employee waiting around for it to happen again.” This objection seemed to do little to sway him. “What is it you think I do exactly?”

  He smiled slyly, like he’d done something wrong and was happy to let me know it. “You run Low Town.”

  And what a lovely fiefdom it was. “The guards might dispute that.”

  He snorted. It was worth snorting over.

  “I had a long night. I’m not in the mood for this nonsense. Get lost.”

  “I can run errands, deliver messages, whatever you need. I know the streets like the back of my hand. I can tussle, and nobody sees me that I don’t want to.”

  “This is a one-man operation. And if I was to bring on an assistant, my first requirement would be that his balls had dropped.”

  The abuse did little to faze him. No doubt he’d heard far worse. “I came through yesterday, didn’t I?”

  “Yesterday you walked six blocks and didn’t fuck me. I could train a dog to do the same thing, and I wouldn’t need to pay him.”

  “Give me something else, then.”

  “I’ll give you a beating if you don’t scramble,” I said, raising my hand in something meant to resemble a menacing gesture.

  To judge by his lack of reaction, he was unimpressed with the threat. “By the Lost One, you’re a tiresome little bastard.” The walk downstairs had reawakened the fierce pain in my ankle, and all this conversation was upsetting my stomach. I fished into my pocket and brought out an argent. “Run over to the marketplace and get me two blood oranges, a dish of apricots, a ball of twine, a coin purse, and a pruning knife. And if I don’t get half of it back in change, I’ll know you’re either a cheat or too stupid to haggle a fair price.”

  He hurried off with a speed that made me wonder if he would re
member everything. Something about the boy made me unlikely to bet against him. I turned back around and waited for breakfast to arrive, but found myself distracted by the scowl atop Adolphus’s girth.

  “You have something to say?”

  “I didn’t know you were so desperate for a partner.”

  “What did you want me to do, clip him?” I rubbed slow circles into my temple with my middle and forefingers. “Any news?”

  “They’re having a funeral for Tara outside the Church of Prachetas in a few hours. Don’t suppose you’ll attend?”

  “You don’t suppose correctly. Anything else making the rounds?”

  “Word has spread of your encounter with Harelip, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It was.”

  “Well, it has.”

  It was about then that my brain decided the time had come to free itself from its long years of imprisonment, and began a furious if unproductive effort to batter through its casing. From the back Adeline noticed my agony and set a pot of coffee boiling.

  I was nursing the second cup, dark and sweet, when the boy returned. He set the bag of goods on the counter and put the change next to it.

  “There are seven coppers left,” I said. “What did you forget?”

  “It’s all there.” He wasn’t quite smiling, but there was a distinct upturn to the thread of his lips. “I swiped the pruning knife.”

  “Congratulations, you’re a pickpocket. It’s a real exclusive club.” I took an orange from the bag and started to peel it. “Who’d you get the fruit from, Sarah or Yephet the Islander?”

  “The Islander. Sarah’s are half rotten.”

  I ate a wedge. “Did the Islander have his son or daughter helping him today?”

  “His daughter. His son hasn’t been around for a few weeks.”

  “What color shirt was she wearing?”

  There was a pause. “She was wearing a gray smock.” His quarter grin returned. “But you wouldn’t know if I was right, ’cause you haven’t left the bar yet.”

  “I’d know if you tried to lie to me.” I finished off the orange and tossed the peel onto the bar, then set two fingers against his chest. “I’ll always know.”

  He nodded without taking his eyes off mine.

  I scooped the remaining coins into the purse he had bought and held it in front of me enticingly. “You got a name?”

  “The kids call me Wren.”

  “Consider this the rest of the week’s pay.” I tossed him the bag. “Spend some of it on getting a new shirt—you look like a bum. Then stop by later in the evening. I might have something for you to do.” He accepted this development without response or expression, as if it were of little importance one way or the other. “And quit thieving,” I continued. “If you work for me, you don’t siphon funds from the neighborhood.”

  “What does ‘siphon’ mean?”

  “In this context, ‘steal.’ ” I jerked my head toward the exit. “Off with you.” He headed out the front door, though not with any great hurry. I pulled the second orange from the bag. Adolphus’s frown had returned. “You have something to say?”

  He shook his head and began cleaning glasses left over from the night before.

  “You’re as subtle as a stone. Spit out whatever you’re choking on or quit shooting me daggers.”

  “You are not a carpenter,” he said.

  “Then what the hell am I doing with this pruning knife?” I asked, flourishing the tool. Adolphus’s brutish lips kept their curl. “All right, I’m not a carpenter.”

  “And you are not a blacksmith.”

  “Nor was there confusion on that account.”

  Adolphus set the tankard down with a start, and in his flash of anger I remembered a day at Apres when those massive arms had cracked a Dren skull as easily as you would an egg, blood and brain bubbling out from white bone. “If you ain’t a carpenter and you ain’t a blacksmith, then what the hell are you doing taking on an apprentice?” He spat this last sentence at me, along with a fair bit of, well, spit.

  The void where his left eye once sat gave him an unfair advantage, and I broke contact first. “I don’t judge you for your trade. But it isn’t one a child ought learn.”

  “What’s the harm in getting me breakfast?”

  Adolphus shrugged, unconvinced. I finished my second orange and started on the apricots in relative silence.

  It’s always unsettling when Adolphus is in an ill humor. Partly because it reminds me that if he ever lost his temper it would take half the hoax in the city to bring him down, but mostly because there’s something unpleasant about watching a fat man mope. “You’re in a hell of a mood today,” I began.

  The flesh on his face dragged downward, menaced more than usual by age. “The child,” he said.

  It was clear he wasn’t talking about the one who had just left. “It’s a sick world, but this isn’t the first we’ve had evidence of it.”

  “Who will do right for the child?”

  “The guard will look into it.” I could well appreciate what dubious comfort that was.

  “The guard couldn’t catch pus in a whorehouse.”

  “They called in the Crown. Two agents in their prettiest bits of finery. Even sent for scryers. They’ll find something.”

  “If that child has to rely on the Crown for justice, her soul will never know peace.” He let his one eye linger on mine.

  This time I didn’t flinch. “That’s not my problem.”

  “You will allow her violator to walk free?” The traces of Adolphus’s Skythan accent hardened during his frequent moments of melodrama. “To breathe our air, foul our wells?”

  “Is he around here somewhere? Send him over, I’ll find something heavy and brain him with it.”

  “You could look for him.”

  I spat an apricot pit onto the floor. “Who was it pointing out that I operate on the other side of the law these days?”

  “Shrug it off, make jokes, play the fool.” He banged his fist against the counter, setting the heavy wood shaking. “But I know why you went out last night, and I remember dragging you off the field at Giscan, when everyone had fled and the dead choked the sky.” The planks of the bar settled to equilibrium. “Don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you.”

  The trouble with old friends is they remember history you’d prefer forgotten. Of course, I didn’t have to stick around and reminisce. The last of the apricots disappeared. “I’ve got things to look in on. Throw the rest of this junk out, and give the boy supper if he returns.”

  The abrupt end of our conflict left Adolphus deflated, his fury spent, his one eye drawn and his face haggard. As I left the tavern he was wiping at the countertop aimlessly, trying not to weep.

  I started out from the Earl in a sullen mood. I rely on Adolphus for a dose of morning levity and felt ill equipped without it. Between that and the foul weather, I was starting to wish I’d kept to my original inclination and spent the rest of the afternoon wrapped in bed and burning dreamvine. Thus far, the best that could be said for the day was that it was half over.

  Last evening’s unexpected encounter had interfered with my intention of visiting the Rhymer—a circumstance I needed to rectify. He’d forgive my absence, likely he’d already heard the reason, but we still needed to speak. This time of day he’d either be working the docks or up at his mother’s house. His mom had a tendency to try and set me up with women in her neighborhood, so I decided he was at the wharf and hobbled off in that direction, the pain in my ankle proving as reluctant to dissipate as the one in my skull.

  Yancey was likely the most talented musician in Low Town, and a damn good contact besides. I had met him during my time as an agent—he was part of a clique of Islanders that performed at balls for court officials and aristocrats. I helped him out of a bust once and in return he started to pass me information—little shit, background chatter. He never rolled on anyone. Since then, our career trajectories had trended in opposite directions,
and these days his skills were in request at some of the most exclusive gatherings in the capital. He still kept his ears open for me, though the uses to which I put his intelligence had changed.

  The irony of the situation was not lost on either of us.

  I found him a few feet off the west quay, surrounded by a handful of indifferent bystanders, playing a set of Kpanlogo and spouting the rhythmic poetry for which he was named. For all his skill, Yancey was about the worst street performer I’d ever seen. He didn’t take requests, he set up in spots unused to traffic, and he was surly to onlookers. Most days he was lucky to make a few coppers, a modest reward indeed for a man of his abilities. Still, he was always cheery when I saw him, and I think he got a kick out of displaying his dizzying abilities to an ungrateful public. He made enough coin playing to the upper crust to make whatever he got busking meaningless anyway.

  I rolled a smoke. Yancey hated to be interrupted in the middle of a performance, regardless of the setting. I once had to pull him off a courtier who made the mistake of laughing during his set. He had that unpredictable temper common to small men, the kind of rage that flares up before fading away just as quickly.

  After a moment he finished his verse, and the tiny audience responded with muted applause. He laughed off their lack of enthusiasm, then looked up at me. “If it ain’t the Warden himself—finally managed a visit to your friend Yancey, I see.” His voice was thick and mellifluous.

  “I got caught up in something.”

  “I heard.” He shook his head regretfully. “Bad business. You going to the funeral?”

  “No.”

  “Well I am, so help me pack this up.” He began breaking down his set, wrapping each of the tiny hide drums in a collection of cotton sacks. I took the smallest of his pieces and did the same, slipping in his fistful of product as I did so. As a rule, Yancey was apt to injure any man foolish enough to touch his instruments, but he knew what I was up to and let it pass without comment. “The noble folk were disappointed you didn’t show last night.”