by Clea Simon
‘Tick, why are you really here?’ I confess, I am surprised by her question. Maybe she is more aware than I credit. Or, maybe she sees more in the boy’s troubled face than I can understand.
‘Just, to warn you.’ He looks down, a poor dissembler.
‘Tick?’
‘You aren’t working with anyone else, are you?’ His eyes, wide, plead like a child’s.
‘Never.’ The smile returns, and she reaches for his hand. ‘Only Blackie here.’ She nods toward me, and I start back. She gives too much of herself, this girl. Shares too openly with the boy. But I know that she is lonely, with a craving for her own kind that I cannot assuage.
‘Good.’ The boy nods, as if confirming a private thought. ‘I’m glad, Care. I’m really glad.’
And with that, the boy turns tail and runs off, leaving the girl behind. She stands and looks after him as he races down the rutted street. While I have mastered the art of reading faces – the human visage being so much more mobile and expressive than my own – I cannot fully explicate the mix of emotions I see in hers. Sadness, for certain; regret, though at the boy’s words or the way he runs; anxious to complete his task; I do not know. But there is also longing and something like anger in the grim set of her mouth. Not at the boy’s words, I think, for they held no surprise for her. No, I realize, as she watches him race down the deserted street, at his having brought them. She does not approve of the boy serving as a messenger – or believing that he is her caretaker.
Two blocks down, the boy looks up and turns. Checking a marker, perhaps, since street signs are nowhere in evidence in this part of town. His shoes are worn, the mud in the road dried to dust, and he slips slightly. Care gasps as he stumbles, one hand out to catch himself on the rutted road. But the boy is young and agile, and he rights himself before his pale palm can hit the dirt. His course checked, he runs on without stopping, and the girl beside me waits, staring after him as he veers around a grey stone building and disappears.
Her sigh is deep, lifting her narrow shoulders as she resumes her walk, and I press close once more, rubbing my side against her leg.
‘Thanks, Blackie.’ That is not my name, but I have grown used to it. Grown used to the girl’s casual assumption of friendship, as if in some small way she recognizes me for who I am. ‘I know you don’t like Tick much, but he can’t help it. He’s a boy.’
I twitch one ear in acknowledgment. I do not know what cruelties the boy is capable of, but it is not the casual malice of a child that puts me off. His appearance just now spoke well of him, showing up as he did to warn the girl. Unless … my back stiffens. My ears and whiskers stand at full alert. No, I see no sign of any other human. None of the shuffling footsteps or heavy breathing that announces their presence. It may well be that the boy was sent on a mission – sent to identify the girl and mark her for another – but I do not anticipate an immediate attack. Yet, I am not easy about his arrival, and I still my tail only with a mindful effort.
It is with a more vigilant air that I accompany the girl through the narrowing streets and into the area once known more for printer’s ink than for blood or water. Leading Row, I recall the name, like an echo from a distant past as we turn into a passageway barely wide enough for two humans to walk abreast. It must be close to midday by now, but the way is in shadow, from the buildings that loom above, and the air here is musty still, as if the rag fiber from a long-lost trade still lingered from days long past. Type Square lay ahead, the open area where once the hawkers gathered up their bushels and plied their trade. Already, ahead, I see the few paving stones that remain, shining silver in the sun.
And a shadow. I freeze, desperate to pick up a motion. A scent. In this thick air, I cannot, but the girl notices my sudden halt and stops herself.
‘Blackie?’ One word, her voice dropped to near a whisper. She would query me but has the sense to keep silent as she follows the line of my gaze, staring out at the bright opening ahead. Pressing herself against the pitted brick wall of the narrow passage, she inches forward. Her brow furrows as she strains her eyes to see, and I find myself again regretting her human frailty. Only vision truly avails her, and in such a circumstance as this – her field limited, the way ahead wiped clean by the noonday sun – she is as blind as a day-old vole, unearthed and vulnerable.
It is not a choice. I creep ahead of her, toward the alley’s end.
‘What is it?’ I hear alarm in her voice. Concern. She would not have me risk myself, although she knows not what we face. No matter. My senses are not limited by the confining walls of the passage. Sound and smell tell me more of the outside world than even my keen green eyes. I flick one ear backward, hoping she can comprehend this as my acknowledgment, and move on.
The passage is clear, my senses tell me. But as I scan the square, where vendors of another sort have set up their tables and their wares, I hear the girl come up behind me. My advance has emboldened her, I fear. I would that she had stayed behind. And as I hear the rasp of inhaled breath, I descry the reason why. In this open square, there are a plethora of sounds and aromas. But the girl, with eyesight attuned by familiarity, has picked out one face among the others. A moment after that startled breath, I too spy what has provoked it. That man, AD, is standing at the far side of the square. His face is in shadow as he rests against the wall. There is no doubt, however, that he is waiting. I do not know for whom he waits, nor if he is aware of the girl’s role in his downfall, but I cannot discount the possibility. Nor have I forgotten the tool he carries with him, not that his own hands, his wiry build, would not be enough to overpower one who is smaller. Who is younger and more gently reared.
We have one advantage. AD is not the kind to welcome a fight. He would want surety of success before he risked a confrontation. A guarantee of pain and of punishment. He is not likely to make a move in the open, even if he hopes to find her here.
He will not catch her unawares. Not now that she has seen him. I hear the effort with which she controls her breathing. I feel her lean back once more against the damp brick of the wall. I would she would talk to me. Share with me her thoughts. Does she suspect the boy of setting her up? Does she wonder why he came to her with his news, his warning? Or does she credit him for it? My ears flatten against my skull as I mull the reasons for such duplicity. The opportunities the boy has had to serve his masters, to better himself without turning on the girl.
A shift. A foot sliding on the dirt, and I turn as the girl does and see the man across the way stand. I see him straighten up, his attempt at concealment abandoned. I brace as he reaches toward his waist. I recall too well the potential weapon he carries there.
But he only hikes his loose pants higher and then brushes empty hands on the thighs, as if he would clean them, before setting off out across the square – and away from us. Whether he had counted on the element of surprise or some other factor has played into this change of course, I do not know.
As he walks away, I find myself nearly regretting the missed opportunity – a confrontation here, with warning, would be preferable to other options – and worrying, as well, about when he may next appear. We will have to be on our guard, I know. For whatever else the boy has said, in one respect he spoke truly. That man may have put out an invitation to his former cohort, but it is no more than a ruse. He looks on us with hate. Indeed, I am impressed by the discipline he now demonstrates, leaving without another glance in our direction. He strides quickly, perhaps to avoid the temptation. Or perhaps, I muse, he goes off in search of that substance in which he once dealt. A source of courage, perhaps, to bolster any plans for revenge, at least by the light of day.
It is with only a slight twinge of concern that I follow the girl as she leaves the darkness of the alley in pursuit. I am as eager to follow this strange man as she is, to learn what compels her former leader and tormentor. That he may have been stalking her, I would have her realize, although I lack the means to tell her. No matter, we are the hunters now, and our quar
ry is in sight.
SEVEN
The man is heading toward the waterfront. I should have known. The riverfront, with its hulking warehouses and shipping traffic, is home to trade of all sorts, and to violence as well. The river brings both here, opening to empty itself into the basin and, beyond that, the sea. Ships are fewer now. The long pier is often empty, even when the tide floods in over the flats, and the air about us stings with salt. This is where I met the girl – and met my end, in some sense – it is where death and life commingle. That is the nature of the waterfront, a place for worlds to cross.
Or was. Men from foreign lands still make their entry to the city from the wharfside docks as well as from that one remaining pier, although fewer come than before. Now more wait than work, as what trade remains avoids our failing harbor with its silt and shoals, and those who labor are as likely to be paid in blows as any coin. Women, too, I know, their strange tongues and tattoos marking them as exotic, a dangerous distinction in what has become a tribal and vicious land. Maybe it was always such. Although I have no recollection, the murmurs keep the memory alive. Of vessels packed to bursting with goods destined for abroad. A commerce underlaid by labor of another sort, a trade whose name is whispered still, its curse upon the land.
But there remains brutality here of a more domestic variety as well. As the man makes his way, and the girl follows by a more circumspect and cautious route, I find myself remembering. A drainage ditch – there, along the side of the road – where the paving has given way, in a steep slope down. I had thought it a channel, at first. A violent flood in torrent, as I struggled to right myself. To pull myself ashore, to breathe. Now I see it for the low, dirty thing it is: a sewer, and no more. An outlet for the effluvia of the city. Only I was caught in it, my sodden fur working against me as the rush of a rainstorm pulled me under. As the girl pauses, crouching in the cover of shadow to mirror the actions of the man ahead, I glance over toward the ditch. I cannot see its depth from here, beside the girl, and I would not leave her to revisit it. But I can discern the foulness of its mud, now drying in the sun. In it the remains of other creatures less fortunate than I.
A shiver comes over me, rustling my fur in waves. Smell brings back the memory, even without the roar and tumult of the water. That mud, that low place. I would have perished there had the girl not saved me, pulling me from the flood by my scruff as if I were a kitten. As I sank for a final time.
The rattle of a pebble, and I start. The girl has moved on, her passage nearly silent but for the loose gravel that fills in for the cobblestone and tarmac now. I recall myself to the present, and watch her, taking in her fledgling stealth. She could be a proficient hunter, this girl, the way she tracks her prey. Almost she seems at home here, as we progress. As the scarred and scrawny man makes his way to the waterfront. To what end, I cannot guess. That he answers some summons is clear from his open and purposeful progress. That he has found some matter to become involved in does not surprise me. Not here, where land and sea mingle, throwing all together.
Long before the rotting wharves come into view, I can smell them. The sweet decay of fish and garbage. The tang of salt in the brackish water and the sweat of those who labor there upon those docks or beneath them, scratching out a living in the silt and mud. One more block, and they are upon us – the buildings giving way to open space. More gravel, to accommodate the transit of trucks that growl and bustle more mindless than any beast. More dangerous, too, to such as we.
The girl stops by the last building. Observes as the man advances toward one group of men. Laughter rises, the sound of bonding based more on shared cruelty than on humor, and then two break off. As we wait, we see them pass along the line of piers to where one small building, grey stone and low, sits alone. Too small for a warehouse, I think. A memory tickles at my conscious thought. But the right size for an office of sorts – a counting house, perhaps, where jobs are levied and accommodations reached.
If this, then, is where AD was headed, it raises questions about his purpose and his goal. Working for the boss, the boy said. Well, his presence here lends that concept credence, although I question how the brutal small-scale alchemy that AD once practiced fits into such a stolid establishment. Not that it matters much. Stone or straw, this is no place the girl can enter. Not in safety. Nor can she even cross the open ground undetected to peer within the low, small windows set on each side of the door.
If she were other than she is, she could make use of the men here. Of their greed and casual cruelty. The hook boys have no love for the laborers. They call them slaves – reviving that once-forgotten term – and beat them for no reason, while the laborers will do most aught just to survive.
Instead, she hunkers down to wait. It is the wise move, and I am grateful. The building sits smack against the harbor’s side, where tar-stained logs make a low barrier, preventing trucks from backing to their hazard. It is isolated, and when the man leaves, she will be able to pick up his trail again, though part of me would wish him gone. If he remains inside, perhaps, she will relent and leave this place. Remember her commission and return to her original quest to seek out the scribe and keeper who held that fateful message for our client.
The sun moves slowly, this near its peak. But here, against the warehouse, none have spied the girl. The brightness of the day only deepens the shadow cloaking her. For myself, I have no such concerns. Beasts such as I are welcome here, one of the few places where this is true. These traders count their losses dear, and vermin like the fat grey rat I see darting across the open cost them profits they cannot risk.
That rat. He pauses, and I believe he catches my scent. I have his, rich and glossy with the oil of fish carcasses and more. He has fed recently, on the unlucky young of one of his own kind, a meal that should repulse the remnant of civilization within me. Perhaps it does, and I desire vengeance. For suddenly, I am overcome by the urge to hunt him down. To feel my still sharp teeth breaking through that lustrous hide.
I peer at the girl. She waits, so quiet she could be sleeping, but for her eyes, intense and focused as mine can be. I follow her gaze. The low building, its door unopened since AD and his companions entered. I lick my chops. I will not leave her. The rat, unaware of his salvation, leaps forward to the tarred barrier. I see him hesitate, sniffing at the wood until he finds a rotted part. The logs give way there to a fall of earth and stone, a gap that grows with use. He could leap the low wall easily but, vermin that he is, slinks through the wreckage. In a moment he is gone.
My eyes follow him and linger, until a gasp recalls me. A truck has pulled up, obscuring our view of the stone building. Beside me, the girl rises, stretching, as if through her height alone she could view over metal and wood. She takes a step, and then another, and I must act.
Crossing in front of her, I dart out into the open. It is a risk, for she may see me and cry out, simply out of a misguided concern for my safety, as a smaller and apparently witless animal. It is a risk I must take, moving too quickly for her to grab me, as she is wont. I trust her not to pursue, once I am in the open square, for she, as well as I, know that I am better able to elude pursuers, even if any in this area would choose to chase a cat.
But she is wise, this girl. She holds her silence as I dash across the open space. Beneath the truck, now still and idling, and onto the pavement on the other side. Men mill in groups, here, by the wharf’s side eyeing the two small skiffs at anchor. Hook boys to one side, laborers off on their own. The flatboat making its way to the sagging pier. The door to the low building remains closed, as I approach. I am circumspect: such buildings must have another exit; it is a bolt hole for those seeking anonymity or freedom from pursuit. If only she will wait, I will spy out the ground beyond. I will make my way around the small gathering – six men, no eight – that even now is breaking up. Once this outlier passes, I will—
I stop so short, my leather pads can gain no purchase. I skid off a cobblestone – one of the few remaining – and catch my
self at a puddle’s edge. Yes, it is he. Our client. I recognize his tread, the waddle that marked his passage up our stairs. Even his smell, this close, is distinctive, despite the area’s headier perfumes. He hurries, despite that swinging step, head down, along the wharf front, his passing hidden from the girl. I cannot tell from where he came, but that he is walking quickly, away from that low stone house is worrisome, and I would inform the girl.
Then it happens. A growl – a roar that shakes the earth – and I realize I am trapped once more. Exposed. No cover as even the broken stones have been pounded flat by usage and by time. A rumble and that roar again, and I dash, as fast as I am able, to the wharf’s edge. To where that low wall of tar-stained wood holds back the sea. To where a log has given way. The scent of one fat rat is only the latest contribution, the damp and constant attention of a thousand tiny creatures have left their scent on this pulpy mass, no match for the rain or tide. No match for the trucks that must maneuver—
I catch myself. I turn. The scent of prey, intoxicating as it is, gives way to reason once again. The truck, for that is what made the fiendish noise, is growling still. A grind as of gears working, and a roar like hell’s own cry, as the driver shifts the giant vehicle once more. He backs up toward the broken wall but stops, and, managing a turn, drives off.
I sit, abashed. I should be inured to such aural violence by now, as a denizen of these streets, this city. I should recognize the difference between a mechanical and a sentient growl. Yes, I was distracted. By hunger and by fear. Made restive by my concerns and by my discovery of the man Peter, who so lately visited our office. But still …
I see now that my self-recriminations have had the effect of compounding my error. For not only have I humiliated myself, I have lost the man. I stand and stretch, reaching out with mouth ajar to catch his scent. I seek the pattern of his walk, that slight off-center limp, among the dockside crowd. I cannot hear him, for he was not speaking and the truck now on its way drowns out any lesser sound. I have lost him. He is gone, but before I can head out in search of him, I hear a familiar voice. The girl.