Low Town lt-1

by Daniel Polansky

  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 sma
rt 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.

  I had to see Beaconfield. If Celia’s talisman was right, and he was involved in this business with the children, then I needed to try and suss out his purpose. And if he wasn’t, then I still owed a shipment to my new favorite client. I took another hit, then headed west to see the Kiren.

  A mile and a half later I stepped into the Blue Dragon. The bartender, morbidly obese and yet to offer me his name in three years of patronizing the establishment, stood watch at the counter. Beyond him the room was mostly empty, its usual clientele finishing out their shifts at the factories that dotted the area.

  I grabbed a seat at the bar. Up close, the proprietor’s flesh undulated in a singularly unappealing fashion, a hillock of fat rising and falling with each haggard breath. Apart from his labored panting he was motionless, apathy wearing a groove in his face.

  “What’s the good word?” I opened, knowing my pleasantry wouldn’t earn a response. It didn’t. Sometimes it gets boring being right all the time. “I need to make a pickup.” One of the high points of dealing with the Kiren is you don’t need to talk in code-no heretics work for the hoax, and a white man inside the pub stuck out like, well, a white man in a pub full of Kirens.

  The bartender’s eyes fluttered once, like the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.

  I took that for acknowledgment. “I need half a pint of Daeva’s honey and six stalks of ouroboros root.”

  There was a long pause, during which the man’s face betrayed no hint of comprehension. This was followed by the barest shifting of his pupils toward the back door.

  The Blue Dragons and I did a lot of business together, there shouldn’t be any need to see the boss just to grab a few ochres’ worth of narcotics. “Not now. I have somewhere to be. Tell Ling Chi I’ll swing back around later.”

  Another interminable intermission, and another sideways glance.

  It seemed I was going to see Ling Chi after all.

  Behind the back door was a small room occupied by a pair of Kirens holding half-moon axes and looking equal parts menacing and bored. They guarded a second door, as nondescript as the first. The one on the left bowed politely. “Please put your weapons on the table. They will be returned after your meeting.” He spoke with a slight accent, but his grammar and diction were perfect. His associate yawned and scratched at the inner wall of a nostril. I tossed my armaments on a bench in the corner, then moved toward the next room.

  The guard on the right dropped his hand from his face and raised his ax threateningly. I shot a look at his partner, apparently the brains of the outfit. “We must regretfully insist on a search of your person,” he said, without discernible regret.

  This was unexpected, and like any unexpected event in a criminal transaction, ominous. The Blue Dragon Clan had been supplying me with product for three years, ever since taking over the Dead Rat’s territory. In that time we had developed a mutually beneficial relationship, founded like any relationship on trust and constancy. Nothing positive could come from altering the routine.

  I allowed no trace of worry to flicker across my face. Heretics are like dogs: any sign of fear and you’re as good as lost. I held out my arms and the guard who had been picking his nose gave me a quick but thorough search. The other opened the second door and waved me through. “We thank our esteemed guest for accepting indignity with grace.”

  In stark contrast to the bar that surrounded his court, every inch of Ling Chi’s inner sanctum was enveloped in the oppressively opulent fashion that is the height of taste among the heretics. Lanterns of red-lacquered wood provided dim light while casting strange and grotesque shadows across the walls. The floor was covered with intricately woven Kiren rugs, man-sized figures consisting of thousands of colored strands spreading out to the back of the room. In the corners, braziers shaped like strange half-animal demigods puffed at yard-long sticks of joss, filling the interior with their heavy musk.

  Ling Chi sat in the midst of it, lounging on a silk divan, a striking beauty carefully massaging his bare feet. He was in his early middle age, slight even for a Kiren, but projecting a presence the envy of someone twice his size. His face was a mask of white powder, interrupted only by a pair of false beauty marks, and his hair was elaborately styled, a black mane stretched across a gold wire that rose above his scalp like a halo. He watched me with the faintest hint of a smile, hands clasped, the artificial tips of his elongated nails clacking rhythmically.

  For all that he played the part of the degenerate despot, there was something about the man that made me wonder how much was pretense. I could never quite shake the feeling that as soon as I was gone he’d kick away the maidservant, don a pair of slippers, and replace the mad contrivance on his head with a decent hat.

  Then again, maybe not. No foreigner can ever understand a heretic, not really.

  But if his image was fabricated, his position was very much earned-Ling Chi, the Death That Comes by a Thousand Cuts, whose word is law from Kirentown
to the city walls. Rumor placed him as either the bastard son of the Celestial Emperor or the child of an immigrant prostitute who died in childbirth. Personally, I’d put my money on the latter-nobility tend to lack the drive necessary to maintain control over such a vast enterprise.

  In less than a decade he had turned a neighborhood gang into one of the most powerful criminal entities in Rigus, and done so in the face of the entrenched underworld interests. His leadership during the Third Syndicate War had made his coterie one of the rare few which left that bloody business stronger than when they had entered it, unifying the smaller Kiren crews into a single horde vital enough to stand toe to toe with the Tarasaihgn and Rouender mobs. These days, he ran half the docks and had his fingers in almost any illicit enterprise run by his countrymen within the city proper.

  He was also an utter madman, completely lacking in any of those qualities like empathy or conscience that might prove a hindrance to the expansion and consolidation of a criminal organization. The story went that the year after his rise to power was the best for shallow water fishing in fifty years, made so by the supply of human flesh Ling Chi had seen fit to dump in the harbor.

  He smiled at me, his teeth inked black in the Kiren fashion. “My dearest comrade has returned after too long away.”

  I bowed very slightly. “My most intimate confidant does me honor in marking my absence.”

  “A small recognition of the many fine services my beloved ally has provided.”

  The slave took up an emery stone and brought it smoothly across his toenails, elevating his bare foot slightly as she did so. Ling Chi’s face betrayed no sign that he had noticed. “Much has happened to my closest of friends since last we spoke.”

  I waited to hear where he went.

  “Some weeks ago my brother asked for permission to enter my territory. I was grateful to be able to render so dear an associate service. My brother entered, my brother asked questions. A man, a Kiren man, died. Later, agents searched his house-they said the dead man was a killer of children; they said he killed a little white girl. Now my people speak of dark things that hide in the shadows and prey on the children of the Venerable Lands, and they speak of the constables of their new home, who are happy to let this happen.” His golden fingernails continued their drumbeat, click, click, click.