For a moment, he watched the dinghy sail out into the bay where there were now more small craft from the other freighters as they searched for survivors—none seemed to have found any and scudded desultorily back and forth in the ring of searchlights. Occasionally one of these would move over the shoreline but quickly, perfunctorily. The crews, obviously, weren’t expecting survivors. Even if one or two had made it to shore, they’d be here to stay—if he was where he thought he was. Perhaps he might have rowed to one of the other vessels, but how would he prove he wasn’t from the shore. Even if he managed to convince them he was from the Beluga Fay, how would he explain what had happened when he wasn’t certain himself. Then there was the knife wound—that wouldn’t help him at all.
Over and above this sketchy bit of business, there would be the issue of who he was. His papers would not stand up to any serious interrogation. Once these collapsed, he’d be looking guilty. If they ever found out who he was, then it would be back home—there were even more questions that would need answering there from both authorities and family. No, there was no choice but to come ashore and take his chances—as bad as those would be. With another searchlight sweeping in his direction, the man stepped behind a large pylon, angling himself sideways. Not overly tall, for the North, he was still almost one-hundred eighty-six centimeters. In the South, this was going to make him standout, and his fair complexion would make him noteworthy amongst the otherwise tan and dark-skinned islanders. Yet, there were supposed to be a number of northerners down here. That would help.
With the light gone, he picked up the pack, gingerly, and slung it over his shoulder. Turning, he caught the first steps of the stairs up to the main dock, and there was a shifting of shadow and sound behind him. Turning, his upper right bicep caught a glancing blow from Boru’s metal pipe, and he stumbled back, falling on the stairs. As Boru righted himself, after overextending the blow, the man kicked out a foot and caught the derelict hard in the groin. This must have caught him right because there was a winded scream and the man crumpled to the stairs, clutching the offended area. The pipe clattered onto the steps; grabbing this up, he turned and fumbled his way up the stairs. There was an animalized scream behind him—he wasn’t sure but it sounded like food.
Turning on this, Thranig was tottering out of the shadows with his hands extended. As these almost closed over his throat, the pipe came down on Qinkop’s head with a hard ring of metal and a thunking crunch of skull. Thranig toppled forward onto the man. Tossing him to the side there followed a splash. By this time, Boru had picked himself up from the stairs, though still holding his balls, and stepped back unsteadily. The new owner of the pipe took another step forward, and Dortmund’s courage collapsed and he turned and disappeared into the lower dock. More or less satisfied the threat had passed, the man turned and dashed unevenly, because of the heavy pack, up the stairs, then along the dock to disappear into a maze of heavy, abandoned machinery.
The bay swarmed with rescue craft from other freighters, and gunboats from the blockade. The latter tore over the inner part of the bay searchlights, panning not over the wreckage but along the docks and shoreline, looking for any that might hope to use the chaos to slip by them. There was no movement from the city or in the water; from beneath the landing he could see that much. Every now and then, because of the heavy chop being created from the wake of the boats, he had to spit out a foul mouthful of water. The taste was of decay—organic decay. That was, he assumed, to be expected, what with what was happening in the city and the archipelago, but if he wasn’t careful, the consequences were going to be frightening.
However, before boarding the freighter during its last continental landfall, he’d been supplied with a broad assortment of designer antibiotics, which should take care of anything he might come into contact with here, or anywhere in the southern archipelagos. Even then, it had been certain where the target had been heading. How this was known didn’t matter to him. All he needed to be worried about was how to get the job done, and his first pass had been a miserable failure—but that had been luck; though trained not to believe in it, that had not stopped him from confronting this again and again over the years. But that never moved the trainers and theorists—they’d their algorithms and this was the only place they were going to put what faith they had. Apparently, all he’d experienced was a variable in the equation.
At least they were together, and neither of them were going anywhere for some time. He was uncertain of the equation that would account for this variable, but undoubtedly there would be one. The dinghy pulled alongside the landing, and spitting another mouthful of water, the swimmer pushed deep beneath it. Above him, he could hear Boru’s moan.
“They broken?” Thranig asked.
“No.” Voice near a whimper.
“Let’s get after him.”
“You said food.”
“He’s got the pipe.”
“You gave him the pipe?” There was the sound of one of the men lunging for the other, followed by a piteous cry.
The swimmer smiled and moved farther up the landing to just beyond the pair. If he could get past the stairs, he’d seen those approaching the landing, then their retreat would be blocked and he could find out what they knew.
The uninjured one had said nothing following the revelation about the pipe. That was interesting, but not surprising. After what had happened in the hold, it was obvious the target was a lot more than he’d been led to believe; more than Control had been told—if they’d been told more than the name and the price. Control rarely cared about more—research had been his job, and that was based on what public information there was about the target. This one had had a minimal digital footprint, and research had been further hampered by the fact that he’d already been in the wind for a few weeks. He warned Control about that, but this had done no good. So there they all were—and the poor sod with the ruptured testicles.
At the back of the landing, he had purchase on the earth, but this was muddy and more like quicksand. Holding firmly onto the side of the landing, he gently pulled up, until his feet were reluctantly released. Still, he lost one boot in the effort. Coming to rest on the landing with no sound, he waited to see if he’d been heard. He’d not. The soft moaning continued and there was some muttering, probably cursing, from the other one. Even though he’d had to leave most of his kit back on the ship, he did have his automatic and the tactical blade. Pulling the blade, he stepped out from behind the stairs, his gait made uneven by the loss of the boot. Still, when the pair saw him, the wet one bolted up the stairway; and his friend, though badly injured, lumbered to his feet and stumbled over the first steps.
The injured man had only made the upper level of the dock when he collapsed again. As he attempted to crawl away, the swimmer stepped, hard, on his ankle with the booted foot. “Where did the other one go?”
“Thranig’s a coward—he’s gotta be halfway to the Wall by now.”
“No, the one that did this to you?”
“Don’t know—he was up the stairs and gone. Into the city, poor bastard.”
“You sure you don’t know where he’d have gone?”
“No. Please, let me go.” With a grunt, the swimmer jabbed the derelict several times in the abdomen with the tactical. He was going to take the shoes, but these were little better than rags. Deciding against it, he left the body and ambled, unevenly up the dock toward the city.
Once the swimmer had passed, Thranig came out from behind the machinery and returned to his friend. “You dead?” Boru moaned softly, but it was from a great distance. “Soon enough.” Rifling the body, he took all he could use, which was little enough. Turning back up the dock, he took off after the swimmer. Thranig did not intend to catch him, he’d only end up as Boru, but someone would want to know what happened and would pay for it. As he passed the machinery, he heard voices coming down from the streets above. Some, at last, had taken notice of the explosion and the sunken vessel. There’d be salvage to be h
ad, but with a dead man on the dock, this would not be the place to be if you were the only one left alive. That would be a good way to end up with a dragon tat.
Rickety.
Buildings would be a generous assessment of what rose on either side of him. The streets were narrow and cobbled. These, however, were much as the steps leading from landing to dock—decayed, slimy, and dangerous. The small, round stones appeared held in place by a mortar that was chipping loose in places. At one point, after coming out of the maze of machinery—which took a good long while to make his way through, partly from a lack of light and partly from the sheer complexity of passages between the rusting hulk—the escapee had nearly taken a header down a withered and decayed stairway leading to a basement apartment, but righting himself managed to bump and slither his way down.
There was a series of movements and muffled disagreements from inside. An old woman appeared with a twig broom screaming something in what he took to be Tagolam, and she began smacking him on the back as he ran down the street. After chasing him about half a block, eliciting cheers and catcalls as they went, the old woman gave up, spat in his general direction, and turned back, cackling with satisfying pride. What a younger woman would never have attempted she did without fear, for two reasons: the first was age bestowed a general social immunity; and two, if the stranger had turned on her, this would have ended the daily contention with aching bones and bad teeth. Mersa, or mother as her son and daughter-in-law referred to her, did not think she had much longer anyway.
One of the old woman’s few remaining back molars had become infected. The local apothecary, a nasty, filthy, sodden man of not fewer years than she, had drained the infection a few times, but it didn’t seem to help. All it would take is for the poison to get into her blood or bones and that would be it. So chasing another derelict down the street did not seem such a great sacrifice if they’d turned on her. This one hadn’t, but it might have been a kindness if that man had shown some spine. Mersa knew what waited for her now. That would be bad enough, but her daughter-in-law would believe it necessary to nurse Mersa through the last illness—normally this meant keeping the old alive as long as possible, no matter the shame and suffering this brought and the emotional trauma it caused the family.
The end goal of the woman in the marriage was only to fulfill the obligation as the wife of Mersa’s first son. There was no love-loss between the two. Life with Henny and she had always been that of two cats in a bag. Mersa knew, before the marriage, she would become a harridan, that she’d be unfaithful as well. The problem with Karter, however, had always been that he led with his cock, and Henny had been a beautiful slattern that could and would fuck in any way her son wanted. However, Karter had never been much in bed. Even if he had, Mersa was certain, Henny was too beautiful to be left alone by men, and the woman would have no compunction about turning their lust into profit and a satisfaction for her own hunger.
There was an upside for the family here—in the beginning. More food and money came in than Mersa thought reasonable. When she understood what was happening, Mersa made certain the woman had taken precautions so that the children were Karter’s. One obviously wasn’t his, but the old woman had made her daughter-in-law take care of that. It was all a great tragedy as far as her Karter was concerned, but this passed quickly when Henny found herself pregnant shortly thereafter. Mersa loved Karter desperately, as mothers tend to love their first-born, but the man was the dumbest thing she’d seen. This incident was years ago, and time had not been kind to Henny. Men no longer came sniffing after her quim. This left the woman outrageously randy—hardly giving Karter a moment’s peace—and bitter for the loss of income. As a result, Henny’s spleen was taken out on Karter and her two daughters.
Now Mersa wanted it over, but Henny could not allow that, out of a sense of responsibility that had less to do with love than appearances. The reality of life waiting back in the small two-room apartment was not a kind thing, but it was all she had. The cackle was one of the few joys she had left, and Mersa milked this for all it was worth.
Meanwhile, the stranger darted down one alley after the other, periodically turning to see if the old woman was following, or what had come after him in the hold. He was dead, along with the rest of the crew, that much was certain. Certainty, nevertheless, was not proof. He’d learned on the Beluga Fay to deal with certainties—if there weren’t any; don’t assume there were. The consequences of this misjudgment had manifest themselves a couple of times on the vessel. Lesson learned.
Even as he twisted and turned from side to side, he was looking for that which should not exist—but could well. Up one street and down another—street might have been an overly generous sentiment. These were cobbled alleys fitted on either side with dreary shanty constructions made to no plan, with no goal other than temporary housing that with the generations, had become suspicious dilapidates with more spite than purpose. Certainly, there’d been the occasional implosion or fire, but they clung to life if not ambition.
“You be needing food.” A grouse of a voice brought the runner up short. Wheeling, he aimed the pipe at the sound and stepped back into a gloaming. “You shouldn’t back into the shadows ‘round here—they’re not always empty.” With a wall against his back, he looked from side to side.
“How do I get off the docks?”
“Lost—meet a lot that’s lost down here. But why you want to be leaving—we’ve not been visited in many weeks. Up north you can’t move without making your peace.”
“My peace?”
“That’s a nice watch?” The stranger peered into the shadow from which the voice emerged.
A hem of a long skirt emerged from the deeper darkness and fluttered in a light breeze catching the corner of the last street and twisting, erratically, up the new one. The foot wore a straw sandal and was old and thorny with long, twisted toenails—encrusted with dirt, calluses, and a coral of offal wound about them in a tight embrace. As the moon emerged above them, the woman’s side of the street became illuminated. Beside her was a smoldering brazier with three tubular vegetables on it. They weren’t giving off any smell and didn’t look that good to begin with. There was a little blight on at least one of them. The woman, as his nose crinkled at the food, leaned out of the shadow that still clung to her upper torso and smiled a mostly toothless grin.
She wasn’t old, maybe forty, but she’d looked to be twice that. Her face was deeply lined and a tawny brown—partly because she was an islander and partly from the years she’d spent in the sun. The skin had a leathery quality because of the latter. The eyes were almost round with black pupils swimming, uncertainly, in a white sea. The nose was broad and flattish—she’d not had any work done there, not like the younger women were supposed to favor. There was a scattering of hair over the jowly meat of the jaw and chin—course black things they were, with a hint of grey. The hair on her head was long and looked soft, but also greasy and peppered with the same grey that was showing on the coarser hair on the face. Her belly, under the ratty shawl, appeared distended—not pregnant. There’d be a lot of this in the city; he knew that much for a certainty.
Pulling a fist full of bills from his trouser pocket, he stepped into the new light. The woman leaned forward and saw what he was holding. “Pah! Northern money; no good here, but I’ll take the watch.”
“What else will you give me for it?”
“Besides directions?”
He nodded and the woman waggled a tongue at him. Though he’d been aboard the Beluga for over two months, he wasn’t that desperate. Besides, a few of those rotten shards looked as though they could do serious damage—and the woman was starving, or very nearly.
“How ‘bout that knife?” The woman’s hand tightened around the haft of the short blade she held, so much so the knuckles whitened.
“Worth more than a watch.”
“That and directions are not worth the watch—take one of whatever those are.” Pointing at the starchy tubes. “O
ne without rot.”
“They all got some rot. Use the knife to cut that bit off.”
Unfastening the watch, he handed this over. He hoped she wasn’t going to try anything because his patience was wearing thin—and the wound was causing him even more pain than it had on the skiff. The roll with the derelict had not helped, may have even torn it open some more. The woman then stabbed a tube and handed this over with the knife. Sniffing at the vegetable, he touched it—it was soft but not very warm. Pulling the knife from it, he tested the weapon. Dull. Not any good for cutting but he’d be able to use it as a stabbing weapon. Better than taking out what he’d packed away. That bit was only in case of emergencies—taking what had happened so far that would come soon enough. Until that time, he needed to husband his resources.
“Now, how do I get off the docks—fastest way?”
“Turn right up here and go straight until you come to a crossroads; there, turn left, heading north; and when you come to another crossroads, turn right again, then the next right. That will open on a main road—follow it north. If you get lost, just keep heading in a northerly direction and you’ll get out soon enough, but my way is fastest.” He nodded. “You from that boat that exploded?”
“How do you...”
“I’ve lived down here all my life. We’ve heard more than a few freighters and munitions vessels blow in our time. When I was a girl, a munitions transport exploded and took out the better part of the docks—lost my whole family in the blast, but I was on the beach selling these,” pointing to the tubes, “and lived.” The last didn’t sound happy about itself, but he supposed her life, though hard before, had taken an even harder turn afterwards.
Beluga Fay (Dragon Bone Hill) Page 2