Low Town: A Novel

by Daniel Polansky

  Are blessed to lack, I should say. The world is an ugly place, and we ought to be grateful for any blinders that limit our comprehension—better to scuttle along the surface than dive in the noxious waters beneath. Their “gift” is the sort that makes a normal life impossible, the undercurrents of existence bubbling up at inopportune moments. Those born with it are inevitably drafted into the service of the government, simply because any other kind of work is more or less impossible—imagine trying to sell a man shoes and flashing that he beats his children or has his wife sewn up in a sack. It’s an unpleasant sort of existence, and most investigators are hardened drunks or borderline lunatics. I’ve had a few as customers—ouroboros root mostly, though once they move on to the hard stuff, it’s not long before the brass come calling, or they decide to circumvent the authorities by falling into a river or huffing up a half pint of breath. It’s a common enough fate among their kind—few indeed die of natural causes.

  Anyway, they’re useful enough as part of an investigation, so long as you don’t get too reliant on them. It’s a touchy thing, their second sight, and for every decent lead you’re liable to get two brick walls and a false trail. Once I spent a month digging through every hole in the Islander half of Low Town, only to discover that the man I was working with had never seen a Mirad before, and had mistaken the cinnamon tan of the murderer in his vision for the dark chocolate of a seafarer. After that, I stopped spending too much time in the Box, not that my presence was much in demand after I put the aforementioned scryer through a first-floor window.

  I stepped into an antechamber manned by an aging Islander, who slipped off the wooden seat he had been napping on and moved to unlock the interior door. There were a lot of locks, and the gatekeeper was straddling the line between venerable and ancient, so we had opportunity for conversation.

  “Who are we going to see?” I asked.

  Knowing something I didn’t perked Guiscard up a little. “Crispin wanted the best on this one, angled for Marieke. You remember her? She would have been just starting out when they gave you the ax.”

  “Not really.”

  “They call her the Ice Bitch.”

  It was the sort of jibe I could see making the rounds among the wits at Black House, misogynistic and unoriginal. That I didn’t laugh seemed to offend Guiscard slightly, and he switched subjects.

  “How did it happen, by the way?”

  “How did what happen?”

  “Your dismissal.”

  The Islander reached the last bolt and dragged the door open, struggling against the heavy iron. “I poisoned the Prince consort.”

  “The Prince consort isn’t dead.”

  “Really? Then who the hell did I murder?”

  It took him a moment to puzzle that out. “You ought not speak so lightly of the royal court.” He sniffed, like he’d gotten the better of the exchange, then turned at a brisk pace and headed down the dank stone hallway. The farther we got, the heavier the place started to stink, an unpleasant mixture of mildew and human flesh. Guiscard passed a dozen-odd doorways before choosing one to open.

  The room displayed the obsessive organization that suggests an unwound mind as surely as does chaos—rows and rows of cataloged boxes atop dusted shelves and a floor clean enough to eat off, if for some reason you were inclined to take your supper on the ground. Apart from its spotlessness, there was nothing to give the impression that anyone worked there—the worn desk set against the back wall was empty of mementos, even the usual detritus—pens and ink, paper and books—that signify a work space. You might well have assumed it to be nothing more than a well-kept storage room, except for the dead body resting on a slab in the center of the room and the woman who stood over it.

  She would never be called beautiful—there was too much bone where one hoped to find flesh—but she might have sneaked into handsome without the scowl that defaced her finish. To judge by her height and skin, so pale you could trace the blue web of veins up her neck, she was a Vaalan. And not city born either, if I had to guess. I wondered what series of events had brought her down from the frigid North and the stony islands her people inhabited. Taken bit by bit, there was much of her that was alluring—a graceful carriage, limbs long and fine, strands of strawberry-blond hair falling down past her shoulders—a surfeit of physical blessings, all submerged by the raptor thinness of her frame. She looked up as the door opened, an arresting scan with eyes that custom would label blue, but that were, truthfully, virtually achromatic—then her focus returned to the corpse atop her table.

  I did not find it altogether impossible to discern the origin of her nickname.

  Guiscard elbowed me and I noticed that his smirk had returned, like we were sharing some sort of a joke; but I didn’t like him and even if I did I wouldn’t have had the time for antics. Finally he spoke up. “Scryer Uys?”

  She grunted and continued taking notes. We waited to see whether she was capable of upholding the social courtesies developed to paper over the untrustworthy nature of the human species. When it became obvious she wasn’t, Guiscard cleared his throat and continued. In contrast to the scryer, I couldn’t help but find myself impressed by the gentility with which he hocked up a bead of phlegm. I wondered how many years of finishing school it took him to master that trick.

  “This is …”

  “I recognize your guest, agent.” She scraped her pen against the page like she was taking revenge for some past act of cruelty. Then, having made it clear that she ranked us well below the completion of routine paperwork, she deigned to offer her attention. “I’ve seen him grace our premises before, some years back.”

  That was a surprise—I’m good with faces, very good, it’s one of the relatively few job requirements that remained constant despite my change in employment. Of course those last six months in Special Operations had been … hectic. Śakra knew I’d missed more pressing things.

  “So the introduction is unnecessary. While you’re here, though, perhaps you might enlighten me as to what the fuck he’s doing in the Box, since, to judge by the number of times I’ve heard his name reviled by members of your organization, he’s no longer in the good graces of Black House?”

  I gave a quick little laugh, half because it was funny and half because I wanted to trip her up. And indeed she seemed shocked at my reaction, her ability to cause offense for once falling short of the mark. Guiscard stroked the peach fuzz below his nose, considering how to answer. He wasn’t himself sure why I was there, who had decided to incorporate me into the investigation—though obviously, decorum and his own unflappable sense of self-importance stopped him from saying so. “Orders from the top.”

  She narrowed her eyes in controlled fury, preparing to give full vent to her spleen. Then she froze, blinking as if lost and settling her hand against the table for support. Slowly she pulled herself upright and stared at me with a disturbing intensity.

  I’d seen enough of these fits to know she’d flashed on something. “If you’ve got tomorrow’s racket numbers, I’ll go half.”

  She kept right on staring at me, seeming not to notice the joke. “All right,” she said finally, and turned back to the meat on the table. “The girl’s name was Caristiona Ogilvy, age thirteen, of Tarasaihgn descent. She was taken two days ago from an alleyway near her father’s shop. There’s no signs of struggle on her body, nor any evidence that she was restrained.”

  “Someone drugged her?” Guiscard asked.

  She didn’t like being interrupted, even as part of the normal back-and-forth of a conversation. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I assume she wouldn’t have let herself be slaughtered without some sort of protest.”

  “Maybe she trusted whoever took her,” I said, “but I’m going to guess you’ve got a theory you’re waiting to share.”

  “I’m getting to it. The wound to the throat was the cause of her death—”

  “Are you sure?” Guiscard asked. He was kidding, intimidated by her and trying
to leaven the mood, but she couldn’t see it, conditioned to take whatever she possibly could as an insult. Her upper lip, which had joined its twin in a placid if not particularly affable dash, curved back up to reveal her canines, and her eyes sparked in anticipation of the coming conflict.

  Much as I liked the idea of watching Guiscard get himself knocked down a peg or two, it had been a long day and I really didn’t have the time for it. “What else can you tell us?”

  She snapped her head back at me, in her brittle gauntness and sharp movements resembling nothing so much as a kestrel scanning for prey—but I ain’t Guiscard and after a few seconds she seemed to realize it. Sparing a quick glance for the agent, who, if his head wasn’t lodged completely up his ass, was grateful for the reprieve, she continued. “As I said, the wound to the jugular is what killed her. There were no other injuries on the body, nor any signs of sexual trauma. She was bled out, then dumped earlier this morning.”

  I rolled that over. “We’re caught up on the physical evidence. You get anything off the body?”

  “Not much. The echo of the void is so heavy over her, it drones out almost everything else. And even if I push that aside, I can’t get anything. Whoever did this erased his tracks.”

  “The Kiren, the one who took Tara, he worked at a glue factory. I had assumed he had scrubbed her body with lye or some other chemical that hampered your work. Could that have happened again?”

  “I don’t see how. I wasn’t on the Potgieter case and didn’t get the chance to scan the scene fresh. That trick with the caustic might have worked for some of my less talented colleagues—I would have been able to find my way through it. But I was at the scene of the man who killed her, and the … thing that killed him had the same resonance I hear on Caristiona.”

  I’d figured as much. There wasn’t one chance in a thousand the deaths were unconnected, though it was good to have official confirmation.

  “You pick up any other connections to Tara?” Guiscard piped in belatedly.

  “No, the sample I had from her was too decayed.” She shook her head, angry again. “I might have had more luck if you’d had the balls to pick up a piece of her, instead of leaving it to rot in the ground.”

  We don’t make a big deal out of it, but the best thing for a scryer isn’t hair, it’s flesh—doesn’t have to be a lot, just a taste. The good ones insist on it, and back when I wore the ice, I made sure to deliver whenever possible. The little finger, sometimes an ear if we don’t expect the newly deceased to get an open casket. I had no doubt if I searched the scryer’s meticulously cataloged shelves I’d find jar after jar of pickled meat, short sprouts of sinew floating in brine.

  This last insult managed to nerve Guiscard into a response. “What was I to do, Marieke—slip in with a pair of garden shears before the public funeral?”

  The Ice Bitch’s eyes narrowed down to dark slits, and she ripped the sheet off the corpse, letting it flutter to the ground. Below it, the child lay in stiff repose, her mouth and eyes shut, her body white as salt save the dark tufts of her private hair. “I’m sure she appreciates your willingness to uphold decorum,” Marieke said, ferocious without being animated, “as will the next one, I don’t doubt.”

  Guiscard looked away. It was hard to do otherwise.

  “You said you didn’t have much to tell us,” I began, after I thought enough time had passed. “What were you leaving out?”

  It was a thoroughly innocuous statement, but she took a moment to work it around in her head, examine it from all angles, making sure there was nothing she could take offense over, no unintended insults to catch on and toss back. “Like I said, I didn’t flash anything off the body, and the scryings I’ve performed have come up useless. But there is something odd, something I haven’t seen before.”

  She fell silent, and I figured it was best to let her take her time rather than risk a tongue-lashing by speeding her along. “There’s a …” She paused again, trying to fit her thoughts into a language that hadn’t developed terms to accommodate the full range of her senses. “An aura, a sort of glow that animates the body. We can read it, follow it sometimes, track it backward from the spot of death, see it on things the deceased lived around or cared for.”

  “You mean a soul?” Guiscard asked, skeptical.

  “I’m not a fucking priest,” she snapped back at him—though frankly the profanity had already pretty much given that away. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but I know that it’s not here now, and it should be. Whoever is responsible for this took more than her life.”

  “You’re saying she was sacrificed?”

  “I can’t say for sure. This sort of thing is rare. In theory, the ritual murder of an individual, especially a child, would generate a pool of energy—the sort of energy that could be used to initiate a working of immense power.”

  “What sort of working?”

  “There’s no way to tell. Or if there is, I don’t know it. Ask an artist, they might be able to give you more on it than I can.”

  I’d do just that, as soon as I had the chance. Guiscard looked up at me, making sure there was nothing else. I shook my head and he began his retreat. “Your assistance is appreciated, Scryer, as always.” Guiscard was smart enough to know the value of maintaining a working relationship with someone as competent as the Ice Bitch, for all that her idiosyncrasies left something to be desired.

  Marieke waved away his gratitude. “I’m going to run a few more rituals, see if I can’t shake anything out before they bury her tomorrow. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Whoever wiped her clean was good, and thorough.”

  I nodded a good-bye that she ignored, and Guiscard and I headed for the door. I was already thinking about next steps when she called me back.

  “You, stop,” she ordered, and it was clear enough to which of us the command referred. I gave Guiscard the go-ahead, and he stepped out.

  Marieke gave me a long, piercing look, like she was trying to see my soul through my rib cage. Whatever she made out through my aging mass of bone and muscle seemed to be enough, because after a moment she reached over the body. “Do you know what this is?” she asked, drawing my attention to the child’s inner thigh and the small array of red bumps that defaced it.

  I tried to speak but nothing came.

  “Figure out what the fuck is going on,” she said, her constant bitterness replaced by fear. “And figure it out quick.”

  I turned and stumbled out.

  “What was that about?” Guiscard asked, but I brushed past him without answering. Wren was standing next to him and he set himself to say something, but I put one hand on his shoulder and skirted him along, and he was smart enough to take the hint and keep his mouth shut.

  Which was good, because at that moment I was no more capable of conversation than flight. The thought banging around my head was too big to allow anything else air to breathe and had upended what remained of my equilibrium, already battered by the events of the day.

  I had seen that rash before. Seen it on my father one evening when he came home from the mill, seen it on my mother a few days after. Seen it cover their flesh like a second skin, lines of pustules that crusted shut their eyes and swelled their tongues till they went mad with thirst. Seen it put so many men in the ground that after a while there wasn’t anyone left to do the burying. Seen those little red bumps upend civilization. Seen them destroy the world.

  The plague had returned to Rigus. On the walk home I muttered every prayer to the Firstborn I could remember, for all that they hadn’t done a damn bit of good the last time around.

  Marieke’s news kept my mind working at half speed, and it was a while before I puzzled out why Wren couldn’t stop fidgeting with his ugly woolen coat. When it did click we were almost back to Low Town, and I slowed my step to a halt. After a moment the boy did the same.

  “When did you take it?” I asked.

  He thought about lying, but he knew I had him. “When you went to say good-bye.”


  “Let me see it.”

  He pulled out the horn, then passed it over with a shrug.

  “Why’d you steal it?”

  “I wanted it.” His eyes conceding nothing. This wasn’t the first time he’d been caught pilfering, nor the first time he’d find himself whipped. It was part of the game, and he’d play it to the end.

  So I decided to go another way. “I guess that’s a reason,” I said.

  “He’s got plenty of shit. He doesn’t need it.”

  “No, I suppose he doesn’t.”

  “You gonna hit me?”

  “You’re not worth the trouble. I’ve got too much on my mind to worry about teaching ethics to a stray dog. It’s too late for you anyway—you’ll never be anything more than what you are.”

  His mouth curdled up furiously, face so poisoned with hate that I thought he’d take a shot at me. But he didn’t, instead he spat on my shoe and sprinted off.

  I waited till he disappeared before inspecting his loot. It was a smart pull—small enough to stash comfortably, and though only an artist would be capable of sparking its magic, it was well crafted. It might fetch an ochre from the right pawnbroker. My first time inside the Aerie I’d made a much more foolish choice, picked up a quartz ball the side of my head, so heavy it nearly dragged me double, and so clearly the product of magic that no fence would touch it. It spent two years hidden in a junkyard near the docks before I manned up the courage to give it back.

  I put the horn into my satchel and came out with a vial of breath. The vapor pushed out everything that had happened in the last hour, Wren’s petty betrayal and Marieke’s revelations. I needed to concentrate on the next task in line, otherwise I’d end up stumbling over my feet.