Low Town: A Novel

by Daniel Polansky

  “You leave us for five years, disappear completely without a message, without a word.” She didn’t seem angry, or sad even, the wound no longer tender but still visible. “And now you can’t even offer an explanation?”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “They were bad ones.”

  “They might have been. I make a lot of bad decisions.”

  “I won’t argue that.” It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was enough. “It’s very good to see you,” she said, laboring over each word as if she wanted to say more.

  I stared at my boots. They didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. “I hear you’re to be commissioned Sorcerer First Rank. Congratulations.”

  “It is an honor I’m not sure that I deserve. Certainly the Master’s word went far in smoothing my ascension.”

  “This means you get free rein to destroy any stray bit of architecture you find objectionable and turn misbehaving servants into rodents?”

  Her face assumed the strained pose I’d often see her adopt as a child when she didn’t get a joke. “I have trained myself to follow in the footsteps of the Master, and thus studied the specialties he has perfected—alchemy, spells of warding and healing. The Master never saw fit to learn the patterns by which a practitioner does evil to his fellows, and I would not think to pursue avenues he has determined to ignore. It requires a certain kind of person even to practice the darker shades of the Art. Neither of us is capable of it.”

  Anyone is capable of anything, I thought, but didn’t say it.

  “He’s extraordinary. I don’t think we ever quite realized it as children. To be given the honor of learning at his feet …” She held her tiny hands to her chest and shook her head. “Do you understand what his spell of warding means to this city? To this country? How many died from the plague? How many would have died if his safeguards didn’t still protect us to this day? Before his working, they needed to run the crematorium twenty-four hours a day in the summer just to keep up—and that was when the plague was at its ebb. When the Red Fever hit, there wasn’t even anyone left to dispose of the bodies.”

  A memory crept to my mind, a child of six or seven walking gingerly over the corpses of his neighbors, careful not to step on their outstretched limbs, screaming for help that would never come. “I know what his working means.”

  “You don’t know. I don’t think anyone does, really. We don’t have any idea of the numbers killed in Low Town, among the Islanders and the dockworkers. With sanitation like it was, it could have been a third, half, even higher. He’s the reason we won the war. Without him, there wouldn’t have been enough men alive to fight.” Her eyes trailed reverentially upward. “We can never repay him for what he did. Never.”

  When I didn’t respond, she blushed a little, suddenly self-conscious. “But you’ve got me started again.” Her loose smile revealed a thin cobweb of lines stretching across her skin, lines that contrasted sorely with my memories of her as a youth, images I knew to be defunct but couldn’t discount. “I’m sure you didn’t return to us to hear my tired bromides to the Master.”

  “Not specifically.”

  Too late I realized my half answer allowed her to conjure her own explanation for my arrival. “Is this a forced interrogation? Am I to tie you down and tease it out of you?”

  I hadn’t planned on telling her—but then I hadn’t planned on running into Celia at all. And it was better to let her know my real motive, rather than stoke whatever fantasies she had been clinging to. “You heard about Little Tara?”

  She blanched, and her sultry grin dripped away. “We aren’t so far removed from the city as you seem to think.”

  “I found her body yesterday,” I said, “and I stopped by to see if the Master knew anything about it.”

  Celia gnawed at her bottom lip—the tic, at least, one thing that had held over from our time as children. “I’ll light a candle that Prachetas might bring comfort to her family, and one to Lizben, that the girl’s soul will find her way home. But frankly I’m not sure what business it is of yours. Let the Crown handle it.”

  “Why Celia—that sounds like something I would say.”

  She blushed again, faintly ashamed.

  I took a few steps toward a towering plant in full bloom, stripped from some distant corner of the globe. Its odor was cloying and heavy. “You’re happy here, following in his footsteps?”

  “I’ll never have his skill, nor be capable of his mastery of the Art. But it is an honor to be the Crane’s heir. I study day and night to be worthy of the privilege.”

  “You aim to replace him?”

  “Not replace of course, no one could ever replace the Master. But he won’t be here forever. Someone will need to ensure his work continues. The Master understands that, it’s part of why I’m being raised in rank.” She lifted her chin, confident bordering on imperious. “When the time comes I’ll be ready to safeguard the people of Low Town.”

  “Alone in the tower? Seems like a lonely pursuit. The Crane was past middle age when he retired here.”

  “Sacrifice is part of the responsibility.”

  “What happened to your clerkship at the Bureau of Magical Affairs?” I asked, recalling the position she had occupied the last time we had spoken. “You seemed to be enjoying it.”

  “I realized I had ambitions beyond spending the rest of my life shuffling papers across a desk and arguing with functionaries and bureaucrats.” Her eyes iced over, unhappy contrast to the sweetness she had heretofore offered me. “It’s an aim you would be more familiar with, had you bothered to speak to me in the last five years.”

  Hard to argue that one. I turned back toward the greenery. The anger leaked out of Celia, and after a moment she was her jovial self. “Enough of this—we’ve years and years to catch up on! What are you doing with yourself these days? How is Adolphus?”

  There was no good to be found in prolonging this, not for either of us. “It’s been good seeing you. It’s a comfort to know you’re still looking after the Master.” And that he’s still looking after you.

  Her smile flickered. “You’ll return tomorrow then? Come by for dinner—we’ll set a plate for you, like old times.”

  I tapped at one petal of the flower I had been staring at, sending grains of pollen wandering through the air. “Good-bye Celia. Be as well as you possibly can.” I walked out before she could respond. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairwell I was practically sprinting, pushing open the tower door and fleeing into the early evening.

  A half block past the Square of Exultation I leaned against an alley wall and fumbled in my pouch for some breath. My hands were unsteady and I found I could barely open the top, finally forcing out the cork and shoving the vial to my nose. I took a slow, deep draw—then another.

  It was a shaky walk back to the Earl, and I would have been an easy mark for any thug who cared to make prey of me, if there’d been any around. But there weren’t. It was just me.

  The boy was sitting at a table across from Adolphus, whose wide smile and broad gestures told me he was in the middle of some exaggerated anecdote before I could actually hear him speak.

  “And the lieutenant says, ‘What makes you think that way is east?’ And he says, ‘ ’Cause that’s the morning sun in my eyes or I’m blinded by your brilliance, and if it was the latter, you’d know how to work a compass.’ ” Adolphus laughed uproariously, his huge face wagging. “Can you imagine that? Out there in front of the entire battalion! The lieutenant didn’t know whether to shit his pants or court-martial him!”

  “Boy,” I interrupted. Wren slunk slowly from his chair. “How well do you know Kirentown?”

  “I’ll find whatever you need me to,” he said.

  “Follow Broad Street past the Fountain of the Traveler and you’ll see a bar on your right beneath the sign of a blue dragon. At the counter will be fat man with a face like a beaten mutt. Tell him to tell Ling Chi I sent you. Tell him to tell Ling Chi that I’m going to
be snooping around his territory tomorrow. Tell him it isn’t related to business. Tell him I’ll consider it a favor. He won’t say anything to you—they’re a cagey bunch—but he won’t need to. Just deliver the message and return here.” Wren nodded and slipped out the exit. “And get me something to eat on the way back!” I yelled, unsure if he’d heard me.

  I turned on the giant. “Quit telling the boy war stories. He doesn’t need his head filled with nonsense.”

  “Nonsense! Every word of that story is true! I can still remember you smirking as he walked away.”

  “What happened to that lieutenant?”

  Adolphus lost his smile. “He slit his wrists the night after he forced that charge at Reaves.”

  “We found him bled out when he didn’t show at reveille—so no more about the good old days. They weren’t any fucking good.”

  Adolphus rolled his eye at me and stood. “By the Firstborn, you’re in a mood.”

  He wasn’t wrong. “It’s been a rough day.”

  “Come on, I’ll pour you a beer.” We adjourned to the bar and he drew me a tall flagon of ale. I sipped at it while we waited for the evening rush to arrive.

  “I like the boy,” Adolphus said, as if he had just realized it. “He doesn’t miss much, for all that he keeps quiet about what he sees. Any idea where he’s sleeping?”

  “In the street, I assume. That’s where street urchins tend to live.”

  “Don’t be so sentimental—you’ll get tearstains on the counter.”

  “You have any idea how many lost children there are in Low Town? There’s nothing special about this one—he’s no kin of mine. I didn’t know he existed until yesterday evening.”

  “You really think you believe that?”

  The day wore heavy on my shoulders. “I’m too tired to argue with you, Adolphus. Quit beating about and tell me what you want.”

  “I was going to invite him to sleep in the back. Adeline has taken a liking to him as well.”

  “It’s your bar. You can do whatever the hell you want. But an ochre says he makes off with your bedroll.”

  “Deal. Tell him when he comes back—I’ve got work to do.”

  Customers were trickling in and Adolphus returned to his trade. I sat drinking my beer and thinking maudlin thoughts. After a short while the boy returned, holding a small cup of beef with chili sauce. He had sharp ears—I’d remember that. I took the crock and began eating. “Adolphus feed you?”

  The boy nodded.

  “You still hungry? When I was your age I was always hungry.”

  “I’m fine. I lifted something from off a fish cart on the way back,” he said, as if this was something to be proud of.

  “I gave you money this morning, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You spend it already?”

  “Not a copper.”

  “Then you don’t need to be stealing food. Degenerates steal when they don’t have to—you want to go that route, you can get the hell away from me. I don’t need to give errands to some freak who snatches purses because it gives him a thrill.”

  To judge by his grimace, he didn’t much care for my comparison—but he didn’t say anything in response.

  “Where you bedding?”

  “Different places. I was sleeping under the quay when it was warm. Lately I’ve been bunking in an abandoned factory near Brennock. There’s a watchman, but he only checks once after dark and once before dawn.”

  “Adolphus says you can sleep in the back. Adeline will likely make up a bed for you.”

  His eyes contorted into little blips of fury, domestication the ultimate insult to a feral youth. “I asked for a job, nothing else—I don’t need your charity.”

  “One thing you ought to know about me, kid, if you’re too dumb to figure it out—I don’t do charity. And I don’t give a shit where you sleep—go nap in the Andel if you feel like it. I’m passing on an offer from the giant. You want to take it, go ahead. You don’t, I won’t remember we had this conversation tomorrow.” To prove it I went back to my drink, and after a moment he slipped off into the crowd.

  I finished my meal and headed upstairs before the bar got busy. Somewhere on the walk home from the Aerie my ankle had started to ache again, and the short climb was more unpleasant than it should have been.

  I lay down on the bed and rolled a long twist of dreamvine. The evening wafted in through the open window, airing out the musk. I lit the joint and thought about tomorrow’s work. What I had smelled on the body was strong, stronger than anything you’d use for cleaning a kitchen or bathroom. And a household cleaner wouldn’t be enough to throw off a decent scryer. Maybe the soap plants, or one of the glue factories with their heavy solvents. The Kirens had a monopoly on that kind of work, which was why I’d sent the boy to clear my presence with their chief. Wouldn’t do to make trouble for my real business while I was off pursuing this diversion.

  I blew out the lamp and puffed ringlets of colored smoke into the air. This was a good blend, sweet to the tongue and strong against my chest, and it filled the room with threads of brass and burnt sienna. Halfway through I stubbed the tab against the underside of my bed and fell asleep, the low-grade euphoria spreading through my body sufficient distraction to drown out the noise of our patrons below.

  • • •

  In my dreams I was a child again, lost and homeless, my mother and father taken by the plague, my little sister crushed during the grain riots that had destroyed the remnants of civil authority three weeks earlier. That was my first fall on the streets of Low Town. When I learned to scavenge for food, to appreciate filth for the heat it released around you while you slept. When I first saw the depths the average man will sink to and learned what there was to win in wading deeper.

  I was in the back corner of an alley, my legs pulled tightly against myself, when I was jolted awake by their approach.

  “Faggot. Hey, faggot. What you doing in our territory?” There were three of them, older than me, only by a few years but those few years would be enough. Its tendency to spare children was one of the most curious of the Red Fever’s effects—it was quite possible these were the oldest living human beings within ten square blocks.

  I didn’t have a single object of value—my clothes were rags that wouldn’t have survived removal, and I’d lost my shoes at some point in the chaos of the last month. I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half and I was sleeping in a dugout I’d scraped against the walls of a side street. But they didn’t want anything from me apart from an opportunity to practice violence, our surroundings sharpening the natural cruelty of children to a fever pitch.

  I pulled myself off the ground, hunger making even this exercise exhausting. The three of them sauntered over—ragged youths, their attire and appearance not much improved from my own. The speaker was a fever survivor, the angry cankers discharging from his face attesting to a barely victorious battle with the plague. Apart from that there was little to recommend him from his fellows, famine and misery rendering them almost indistinguishable, gaunt scavengers, ghouls amid the rubble.

  “You’ve got some nerve, you little cocksucker, coming into our neighborhood and not even having the common decency to ask permission.”

  I stood mutely. Even as a child I found the inane exchanges that preface violence to be absurd. Just get to it already.

  “You ain’t got nothing to say to me?” The leader turned back toward the other two, as if shocked by my poor etiquette, then struck a blow to the side of my head that sent me spinning to the ground. I lay in wait for the beating I knew was coming, too inured to wonder at the fairness of it, too inured to do anything but bleed. He kicked me in the temple and my vision went blurry. I didn’t scream. I don’t think I had the strength.

  Something about my silence seemed to get to him, and suddenly he was on my chest, his knees pinning me to the ground and his forearm pushed against my neck. “Faggot! Fucking faggot!”

  From somewhere distant I heard m
y assailant’s comrades trying to call him off, but their protestations proved ineffective. I struggled briefly, but he struck me again across the face, terminating my halfhearted attempts at self-defense.

  I lay on the ground with his elbow on my throat, the world swirling around me, blood thick on my tongue, and I thought—so this is death. It took a long enough time coming. But then She Who Waits Behind All Things must have been busy in Low Town that year, and I was a small boy. She could be forgiven for such a minor oversight, especially now that She had come to rectify her mistake.

  The light started to fade.

  A great rushing sound filled my ears like the roar of falling water.

  Then my hand closed around something firm and heavy, and I brought a rock up against the side of the boy’s head, and the weight on my neck lessened and I brought my fist up again and then again until his grip was slack and I was on top of him now and the sound I was hearing were his screams and my own and still I kept at it and then I was the only one screaming.

  Then silence and I was standing over the boy’s body and his friends weren’t laughing anymore but instead looking at me like no one had ever looked at me, and even though there were two of them and they were bigger than I was they backed off warily, then broke into a run. And as I watched them retreat I realized I liked the look I had seen in their eyes, liked not being the one to wear it. And if that meant getting my hands slick with little pieces of the boy’s brain, then so be it, that wasn’t much of a price to pay, not much of a price at all.

  A wild spurt of laughter bubbled up from my gut, and I vomited it forth at the world.

  • • •

  When I awoke my chest was heavy and my breath short. I propped myself up and forced my heart into rhythm, counting the beats, one-two, one-two. It was nearly dawn. I slipped my clothes on and headed downstairs.

  The bar was quiet—our patrons gone home to beat their wives or sleep off their buzz. I took a chair at a side table and sat in the dark for a few minutes, then headed toward the back.