I sat on the very edge of the drain, looking down and out upon Belows, the warren of canals and low buildings with rooftop gardens. The sun was going down, bruised and bloody into the blackened sea, and I dangled my bare and aching feet over the edge, airing them. I ate the last of my eel with something resembling contentment, wishing I had something more than rainwater to wash it down.
A flight of terranic pigeons rose from the street corner, and I watched a paper votive lantern rise above the rooftops. They were always rising from the city, carrying prayers toward Mother Earth, entreaties for the souls of the Rot’s victims. I leaned against the side of the drainpipe, resting my head on the whitewashed concrete.
“You!”
How is it you can always tell when a word is directed at you? Every muscle in me tightened like bowstrings ready to fire, and I looked round, terrified for a moment that someone had come through the barred grate behind me. But no. I saw the culprits at once: a man and a woman in the dun khakis of the urban prefects. They were standing on the edge of the sidewalk by the canal, hurrying toward the accessway that arched over the water to the ladder bracketed into the wall.
“Come down!”
I scrabbled to my feet, tripping back and falling over the cooler in my panic. It was a damnably stupid thing to do. One of my spasming feet caught the cooler I’d been sitting on and kicked it right over the ledge. I felt a yell choke off behind my teeth, dismay and frustration coloring my surprise. Everything I had in the world—excepting my clothes and my family’s ring—was in that little blue crate. My extra food, the two magazines I’d lifted from a newsstand three days earlier, the empty bottles I used for collecting rainwater. And my money. I had managed to scrape together a few dozen steel bits until I had nearly so much as a single silver kaspum. That kind of money could have bought me a night in one of Belows’s many flophouses. I was saving it for shoes.
A ragged yell escaped me, and before I could much think on it, I hurled myself down after it, diving feet first toward the green water of the canal. The prefects yelled, but the sound fell away in the liquid rush of air past my ears.
I hit the surface of the canal like a boulder, my legs tucked up around me. When I surfaced, I cast about for the heavy plastic of the cooler. I hadn’t seen where it had fallen. Had it sunk? Had it managed to fall on the street instead of in the water? Damn it, I’d acted too fast. Stupid, stupid, stupid. There it was, bobbing low in the water by the concrete wall I’d leaped from. I swam to it, mindful now of the shouting behind me. “What were you doing up there?”
Maybe I could talk my way out of this. Treading water, clutching the cooler’s handle in one hand, I pushed off the wall of the White District and made for the sidewalk just above the canals. The prefects both hurried from the arched access bridge to intercept me, but I was faster, vaulting onto the sidewalk, trailing green and stinking seawater. A line of schoolchildren hurried by under the watchful eye of their teacher, pointing and laughing at the dripping man with his wild hair. “Just enjoying the view, ma’am. You can see the whole city from up there.” I tried to smile, tried to pass off my wild state as the fault of my spectacular dive, not of more than a month spent without a wash.
The prefect glowered at me, black eyes measuring as she tapped her stunner in its thigh holster. “Them drains is off-limits to the public. Everyone knows that.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I bobbed my head, taking a step back, clutching my cooler to my dripping chest. “Sorry, I—”
“Papers,” the other prefect snapped, holding out a hand. “Let’s see your identification.”
I took a step back. “I . . .” What could I say? “I don’t have it with me.”
The second prefect sighed. “You’ll have to come with us, then.” He held out a hand.
Crispin’s unconscious shape moved just beneath my vision, haunting me. What was I supposed to do? My signet ring seemed to hang more heavily about my neck, and I glanced from side to side. There was a small alley wedged between two shops not far off. If I could make it to that alley . . .
“Come on, you.” One of the prefects made a grab for me. I took a violent step back. The prefect seized my wrist. I panicked, swung the still-dripping cooler in a wide arc that took the officer in the side of his head. He reeled back, released me with a cry of surprise and pain. And the lid sprang open. Coins and magazines and half an old sandwich fanned across the two officers, damp banknotes and napkins sticking to the inside of the box. I choked back a sob and turned and ran.
I didn’t make it far.
The stunner bolt grazed my leg, and the muscle there went slack as old rubber. I stumbled, lost my grip on the now-empty cooler. It clattered away across the pavement. I struggled to stand. Before I could so much as reach my knees, a boot slammed down on my shoulder, pressing me to the earth. My vision went dark as my head struck the pavement, and it was all I could do to crawl forward. The stunner had only grazed me. I could still run, if only I could ignore the needling sensation humming up my leg, if only I could find my feet. Someone kicked me below the ribs, and I winced. Visions of that night in Meidua spasmed in me, and my breath came hard and caught. The ragged sound of my blood pounding in my ears drowned out the prefects’ muddy swearing. Something battered me across the head, and my vision blurred again. I lay quiescent, flat on my face, and gritted my teeth to keep from sobbing or crying out.
I felt hands patting me down, turning out my pockets. They found a pair of steel bits and a coupon from a chain of fish carts promising a discount. They did not find my ring, did not so much as bother to turn me over. “Bastard’s poor as dirt,” the woman said.
“He’s gutter trash, Ren,” the other prefect said. “Ain’t worth booking.” He spurned me with his toe, and I bit down on my tongue, tasted iron blood. “Should have run faster, neg.”
She swore, and I felt a pressure on the back of my neck. Something hard slugged me square on the back of my head, but I didn’t black out, just groaned. The stunner fog turned my whole side warm where it had skimmed me, and now I doubted I could have so much as walked in a straight line, much less made a break for the alley. I thought of how I’d trashed that dockworker a month before and felt shame rise in me. The prefect was wrong. I shouldn’t have run faster. I shouldn’t have run at all. I bared bloody teeth and spat on the cement beside my head.
Just then the woman seized me by the hair and peeled me off the concrete. She crouched close, breathed in my ear. “Don’t let me catch you where you don’t belong again, neg, or you’ll regret it.”
A retort—something about laying off the illegal horse hormones—formed and fell from my lips. I let it go, struggled toward a calm like the apatheia. I went limp, felt my face bruise as she dropped me to the pavement. I do not know how long I lay there or why none of the passing men and women stopped to help me.
CHAPTER 26
CAT
THE RAIN SHEETED OFF the canted roofs, over choking gutters, and into canals so bloated they swallowed the roads. I splashed over an elevated walkway, glad of the fresh water despite the storm. Whole sections of Borosevo—the poorest—drowned whenever the storms came in. Lightning spasmed across the underbelly of the sky, caroming from one cloud to the next. I leaned against the plastic rail, shoved my hair from my eyes to protest the gusting winds.
I needed shelter. I needed food. I needed to stop hurting.
The streetlights went out, and the swinging chain of lights strung over the bridge with the power lines died too. Darkness stole over the raised street, and I scrabbled on, bare feet scuffing the worn cement. I tarried a moment in the leeward face of a shuttered grocer and contemplated smashing the windows. The prefects were not likely to risk action in a hurricane, not even for burglary . . . but no, no.
Out beyond the dark shapes of low buildings and the tiered sprawl of the city, a bolt of lightning struck the sea, turning all that darkness to gleaming glass. The thunder shook
me to the marrow, rattled over Borosevo like the descent of starcraft. A striped awning snapped above my head, rain bouncing off it like the beat of a thousand tiny drums. Driven by instinct, I curled myself up on the stoop and hoped to wait out the storm. From my vantage point, I could just make out the looming mass of the palace ziggurat rising over the city, its black shape crouched over Borosevo like a dragon on its hoard. The lights in its high towers flickered. Even the count’s power systems shivered in the wake of Emesh’s fury.
We had storms on Delos, blown in by the sirocco across the sea to our eastern shores, but they were nothing—nothing—next to the storms on Emesh. Cloudscapes vast as empires towered over the city, filling the sky and burying all the stars. Despite the heat and steaming air, I shivered. A light flicked on behind me, and a beet-faced man slammed on the glass with his fist, shouting dull words. I got the message, lurched awkwardly to my feet. How long had it been since I’d last eaten?
Rain lashed the concrete, pelted off glass storefronts and off tarps shielding boats broken and bobbing in the swell. I hurried on, darting into an alley in the hope of finding some loading dock left open by mistake. But the people of Borosevo were diligent, well used to their storms, and I was left to wander. Old garbage stuck to the soles of my bare feet as I scuffed along, leaning against the tin wall of a shed a block back from the front street. I clutched my ring on its chain through the front of my soaking shirt, held it as a sorcerer might a talisman.
As a child I had wished for an adventure. I had wanted to see the galaxy, to plumb the hidden depths of the human universe and prize secrets from the darkness between the stars. I had wanted to travel like Tor Simeon and Kharn Sagara in the old stories, wanted to see the Ninety-Nine Wonders of the Universe and to break bread with xenobites and kings. Well, I had gotten my adventure, and it was killing me. At least the buildings in the alley overhung the street. It wasn’t much, but the hanging eaves allowed for a stretch of space about a meter deep that stood dry. Drier. Trying again, I pressed myself down between two garbage bins, shielded from wind and water as much as was possible.
Why had it all gone wrong? What had happened to Demetri? It wasn’t fair. I had done everything I was supposed to do, followed Mother’s plan as carefully as I could. I should have been on Teukros in a scholiasts’ cloister by now, listening to lectures on warp-space math and the diplomatic ties between the Empire and client states among the Normans and the Durantine Republic.
“What you doing?” I thought I had imagined the voice at first, so small was it, hissing sharp beneath the pounding of the storm. “You!” I looked up—all the way up—to the roof of the building across from me. A small, dark face peered down at me, plastered with sodden hair. I wanted to slink away, to vanish. I had not spoken to anyone in weeks, not since the time a sailor on shore leave had given me half a sandwich when I asked for a kaspum. You may think it odd, but if you have ever been well and truly alone for any length of time, you will know how hard it is to come back to the world of people. So I just stared at her.
“Are you stupid or something?” When still I didn’t move, she added, “They didn’t sandbag the alley, rus. Fall asleep there, and they’ll have to fish you out of the lagoon come sunrise. Climb up!” She jerked her head at a broken gutter that ran up one corner of her building.
I almost bolted. Maybe I would have if I had been healthier, if my ribs didn’t still ache from my third beating in as many weeks. But when I stood pain lanced up my side, and I keeled sidelong into the nearest garbage bin. The huge plastic tub slicked on the drenched concrete, fell sideways with a dull bang. I swore, apologized to no one and nothing. The girl’s face had vanished from the lip of the building. Had I imagined her? I clambered to the gutter. Its bulky brackets were nearly as good as a ladder, but they were far apart, and the sheet metal was slick. I only slipped twice, biting my lip as I splashed in the nearly two inches of water that pooled at the base of the building.
The third time a small, strong hand seized me by the wrist. “The fuck’s wrong with you?” She wasn’t strong enough to haul me up, but she bought me time to plant my feet again, time enough to finally seize the lip of the building and pull myself over. A light flier passed overhead, running lights blinding in the close air. “You some sort of idiot?”
“I’m not!” I snapped, baring my teeth. She recoiled, wiping the rain from a face suddenly poisoned by fear. All at once the wind went out of me, and I said, “Sorry . . . I . . .” I bowed my head, darted a glance back at her. “Thanks for the leg up.” She was younger than I, perhaps sixteen standard, copper-skinned and round-featured, her eyes smiling out of her rough, plebeian face despite the wary set of her jaw. Her clothes were patched and torn worse even than my own, suggesting a body lean and undernourished. She was like me: homeless, helpless in the storm.
She cocked her head to one side. “You’re not from here, are you?”
I shook my head, looked away, taking in the rain-swept rooftop. A bank of dinted solar panels marched along the far edge, and a washing line hung barren and swinging in the wind. Another peal of thunder shook the world, echo of some unseen lightning. From our meager vantage point the low sprawl of Borosevo unrolled like trash caught in a gyre.
“You offworld?” she asked.
“Yes.” I eyed the bank of solar panels at the far edge of the roof, shuffled toward them. With the girl’s help, I lowered myself beneath one of them. The roof was still wet, but at least the rain no longer fell directly on our heads.
She slunk in after me, making me budge aside to make room. “You hurt?”
“I ran afoul of some . . .” I was about to say local color. “. . . people.”
The words sounded lame even to me, and the girl made a face. “Ran afoul?” she repeated. “That mean yes?”
I grunted in answer and leaned back, ducking my head where the panel canted backward at an angle to face the south. The concrete roof felt unspeakably good just then, and I lay flat on my back, not moving. “Nice spot you’ve got here.” For a storm, I was hard-pressed to think of a better one. The solar panels proved a good cover from the rain, and the rooftop was clean and above any level like to flood.
To my surprise, she brightened, revealing crooked teeth when she smiled. “Got lucky—owners ain’t in.” She went quiet then for a moment. “Why you trying to drown yourself in the street like that?”
“I was just trying to sleep.” My eyes were closed, my breathing deliberately shallow, protesting the pain in my sides. The waif didn’t say anything for five seconds. Ten seconds. After half a minute I cracked one eye, found her crouched, watching me. “What?”
“Ain’t you got money?” she asked, confusion obvious in her tone. “Offworlders always got money. You could get a room.” Was that hope in her voice?
“I don’t have anything,” I said, forcing my hand not to grasp my ring through my shirt. The last thing I needed was to give the little street rat an excuse to rob me. After another unsteady silence, I asked, “What’s your name?”
This earned me a sharp look. “What’s yours?”
I opened both my eyes but did not sit up. “Hadrian.”
She made a face that to this day I can’t describe. “I’m Cat.”
“Is that short for Catherine?”
Her nose wrinkled. “No! What sort of name’s ‘Catherine’?” She ripped a strip of tape off the roof beside her, exposing an old wire that ran down from the solar panel overhead. “It’s just Cat.” After another pregnant silence, she echoed, “What sort of name’s ‘Hadrian,’ anyway?”
I shrugged. “An old one. Mine.” My unfortunate gruffness stalled the conversation out again, and I pressed a hand to my ribs, wincing at the hot pain there. The girl moved, unsure how to help, hands hovering above me. Thunder rolled. The roof was drenched beneath me, but it didn’t matter. For once I was grateful for the uncomfortable warmth and the weight of the air.
; “How bad you beat?”
“Two fractured ribs, I think.” Remembering what had happened that night after the Colosso in Meidua, I added, “I’ve had worse.” Only this time I wasn’t going to be given medical correctives. I groaned. I had thought I could get away with stealing from a group of teenagers. They’d been stronger and meaner than I could have believed, and there had been twelve of them.
She bit her lip. “Can’t do nothing for that.”
“No,” I agreed. I listened to the lashing rain a moment, fighting the blurred vision of encroaching sleep. “Why’d you help me?” It didn’t seem like a smart thing for a girl alone to do.
Cat sat a little straighter. “I wouldn’t leave no one in the low streets in a storm, rus.” She gave me a speculative look. “Can you even swim?”
“Maybe if my ribs weren’t broken.”
“My ma said some offworlders ain’t even got water. I weren’t sure . . .” She trailed off, playing with the little strip of tape.
I offered a thin smile, hoping it would go some way toward repairing the damage I’d done by glaring at her. “I grew up by the sea. I can swim, I just . . .” I cast about the rooftop with my eyes. “Everything’s different here. Air’s all wrong, gravity’s too strong. People are strange . . .” I winced. I was rambling.
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