Low Town lt-1

by Daniel Polansky

  “And what exactly does a court magician do, other than occupy the lowest rung to which an artist can descend, short of selling love potions at traveling fairs?”

  “I guess it must not seem like much-but then we can’t all sell drugs for a living.”

  “I’m going to cut you off there, because I wouldn’t want your attempts at banter to get in the way of a last shot at saving your ass. I know you and the duke are up to something. You give me your side now and I might be able to swing it so you don’t catch all the weight-it doesn’t take a candle to see you aren’t running the show.” The tip of a match flared to life against the wood of the banister, and I brought it to my cigarette. “But if you put me to the trouble of sniffing it all out, you’ll get nothing, hear? The chips will fall where they fall.” I took a quick huff of smoke. “Think it over, but do it quick-the clock is running, and if you suppose the blue blood is going to have your back when shit crumbles, you’re dumber than you look-and you don’t look like no genius.”

  I hadn’t expected him to crack, but I’d hoped for some sort of a reaction beyond a repeat of that grating laugh he was always giving me. That was what I got, though, and for the second time I had the unpleasant impression that I’d misplayed it, that as far as Brightfellow and I were concerned, he was up two nil.

  I could hear Tucket making his way down the stairs, and figured that was as good a time as any to make my exit, out the servant’s entrance and through the back gate. Dunkan was gone, replaced by a grim-faced counterpart who discharged his duties without comment. It was just as well-I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the Tarasaihgn’s exuberance. I rubbed the skin around Celia’s talisman, its heat only now beginning to diminish, and headed back to the Earl, hoping to make it to bed before I passed out.

  I spent half the night tossing and turning through the haze of dreamvine I’d immolated before going to bed, and woke the next morning later than I’d meant to. Later than I should have, given that, as things stood, I’d only have six more opportunities to sleep in. The sun peering through the window was halfway to its zenith by the time I pulled on my pants.

  The bar was empty, usual for this time of day, and Adolphus was sitting at the counter, his jowls dragged down in sorrow. Adeline was dusting under a table and nodded when she saw me.

  I took a seat next to Adolphus. “What’s wrong?”

  He made an attempt to cover his grimace with an unconvincing smile. “Nothing-why would you ask that?”

  “Fifteen years and you still operate under the misconception that you can lie to me?”

  For a moment his smile was real, if slight. Then it went away. “Another child is missing,” he said. Adeline stopped sweeping.

  Another one, Sakra. I hadn’t expected it to stop, but I had hoped for more time between this one and the last. I tried not to think about how this would affect the Old Man’s deadline, or if the neighborhood toughs would take the opportunity to make trouble in Ling Chi’s territory. “Who is it?”

  For an unhappy second I was afraid he would start to blubber outright. “It’s Meskie’s son, Avraham.”

  A bad day got worse. Meskie was our washing woman, a sweet-natured Islander who raised a brood of children with methods equal parts loving and severe. I didn’t know Avraham particularly, except as one of the mass of amiable youths that surrounded their matriarch.

  Adeline ventured a question. “Do you think he might still be…” She trailed off, not wanting to form the thought in its entirety.

  “There’s always a chance,” I said.

  There was no chance. Black House wasn’t going to find him-it was me or no one. And I couldn’t move on the Blade, not with what I had. Hell, he might not have even done it. Maybe something would break open soon, maybe I’d get lucky, but these were hopes, not expectations, and I’m not an optimist. The child was as good as dead. It was ten thirty and already I needed a hit of breath.

  Adeline nodded, her round face looking very old. “I’ll bring you breakfast,” she said.

  Adolphus and I sat there for a while, neither bothering to fill the air with conversation. “Where’s Wren?” I asked eventually.

  “He’s off at the market-Adeline needed some things for supper.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “This came for you before you woke.”

  I opened it. Five words scrawled in black ink, the letters sharply drawn against the parchment: Herm Bridge, six thirty. Crispin

  He was quicker than I had expected, although it didn’t figure him wanting to set a meeting when he could have just sent over the list. Maybe he wanted to apologize for our earlier exchange, though I thought it more likely he expected me to grovel a bit before he coughed up his information. I lit a match off the bar and held it to the paper, letting the ashes drop to the ground.

  “Adeline will have to clean that,” Adolphus said.

  “We’re all cleaning up somebody’s shit.”

  Halfway through breakfast, Wren returned with a sack of goods. Adolphus’s face perked up a bit. “How much did you save me?”

  “Two argents and six coppers,” he said, spilling the change on the counter.

  Adolphus slapped his leg. “He don’t say much, but you’re looking at the best damn haggler in Low Town! You sure there ain’t no Islander blood in you, boy?”

  “Dunno. Maybe.”

  “Doesn’t miss a trick, this one! Sees everything, everything there is to see.”

  “You hear about Meskie’s son?” I asked, interrupting Adolphus’s praise.

  Wren looked down at his feet.

  “Head over and make sure the ice are finished with whatever perfunctory investigation they managed to pull together.”

  “What does ‘perfunctory’ mean?”

  I drained my cup of coffee. “Not serious.”

  I went upstairs to grab my armaments and snatch a hit of pixie’s breath. A boy this time. What was the connection? Three children, different sexes, different races-all from Low Town, but that didn’t tell me anything except that it’s a lot easier to grab a street urchin than a noble. I thought back on my interview last night with Beaconfield. Had that sick son of a bitch finished our meeting, then turned around and snatched up a kid? Was Avraham hidden in some corner of the Blade’s mansion, tied to a chair weeping, waiting for the torment that was to come?

  I took another snort and tried to clear my head. I didn’t have anything on the duke yet, and if I tipped my hand and was wrong, I didn’t imagine the Old Man would have much sympathy. Better to follow the trail than ruin the scent by trying to jump ahead.

  I took one last bump and put the rest of the vial into the bag. I had always liked Meskie, to the limited extent we had interacted. I wasn’t wild about the idea of intruding on her grief, even for the purpose of making sure she was the last weeping mother.

  The breath shook me out of my morning torpor. My mind felt clean again-it was time to get it dirty. I grabbed my coat and headed downstairs.

  Wren waited at the foot of the steps, tense as a muscle. “She’s alone. The law came and went.” I nodded and he followed me out.

  Low Town in winter is pretty miserable. Not quite as bad as summer, when the air is stale with soot and whatever doesn’t rot bakes in the hot sun, but pretty miserable just the same. Most days the smog from the factories congeals into a miasma that hovers at about throat level, and between that and the cold your lungs have to work double just to keep up.

  But once in a while a strong southern wind comes off the hills and sweeps the city clear of the haze enshrouding it. The sun radiates that particularly perfect blend of light it offers sometimes in place of heat, and it seems like you can see all the way down to the docks, and it even seems like you might want to. I’d been a child on days like that, and every wall had stood to be climbed, and every vacant structure demanded exploration.

  “Did you know him?” Wren asked.

  That was right, we weren’t out on a morning stroll, were we? “Not really. Meskie h
as a clutch of children,” I said by way of explanation.

  “I guess there are a lot of kids in Low Town, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why him?”

  “Why indeed?”

  I had been to Meskie’s house once or twice, dropping things off for Adeline. She’d always invited me in for a cup of coffee, insisted really. Her home was small but well kept, and her children were unflaggingly polite. I tried to conjure up an image of Avraham in my mind, but nothing would come. I might have passed him the day before and not known it, one more offering to She Who Waits Behind All Things from her most devout congregation.

  If Avraham had been dead, his home would be packed with mourners, weeping women and mounds of fresh-cooked food. As he was only missing, the neighborhood didn’t know how to respond, the usual gestures of sympathy premature. The only people outside Meskie’s were her five daughters standing clumped together. They looked up at me in dumb silence.

  “Hi, girls. Is your mother inside?”

  The eldest nodded, her jet-black hair bobbing up and down.

  “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “Boy, wait out here with Mrs. Mayana’s girls. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Wren looked uncomfortable. Domesticated children were a separate species to him, their trivial games unfathomable. He’d never be able to fake their easy camaraderie. The trials of his childhood had marked him as other, and the status quo has no more rigorous champion than the adolescent.

  But he’d have to endure it for a few minutes. This business was subtle enough without a teen at my side.

  I knocked lightly but didn’t get a response, so I let myself in. It was dark, the wall sconces unlit and the front shades drawn. A short hallway led into the kitchen, and I saw Meskie leaning over her wide kitchen table, dark flesh spread like an ink spot over the sanded wood. I cleared my throat loudly, but she either didn’t hear or chose not to respond.

  “Hi, Meskie.”

  She inclined her head slightly. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said, her tone suggesting the contrary. “But I’m afraid I can’t do any washing today.” Despair wore heavy on her face, but her eyes were clear and her voice steady.

  I mustered up the courage to continue. “I’ve been looking into some of the things going on in the neighborhood the last few weeks.” She didn’t answer. Fair enough. I was the interloper-it was time to put some cards on the table. “I was the one who found Tara. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head.

  I tried to think of an explanation for why I was banging on her door before noon, a virtual stranger violating the bounds of intimacy to pimp her for information about a child likely dead. “We’ve got to look out for our own as best we can.” It sounded more puerile out loud than it had echoing through my skull.

  Slowly she slid her eyes up to mine, not saying anything. Then she turned away and muttered, “They sent an agent around. He asked me about Avraham. He took my statement.”

  “The ice will do what they can. But they don’t hear everything that I hear, and they aren’t always listening.” That was about as much as I could say for Black House. “I’m trying to find out if there was some common thread connecting Avraham and the other children, something about him that stood out, something unique…” I trailed off feebly.

  “He’s quiet,” she answered. “He doesn’t talk much, not like the girls. Some days he wakes up early and helps me with the wash. He likes being up before the rest of the city, says it helps him hear things better.” She shook her head, the colored beads set in her hair trailing back and forth. “He’s my son-what do you want me to say?”

  That was a fair enough answer, I supposed. Only a fool would ask a mother what made her child special. Every freckle on his face, as far as she was concerned, but that wouldn’t do me much good. “I’m sorry, that was tactless. But I need to understand why Avraham…” It was hard to gauge how imprecise a euphemism I should insert here. “Why Avraham might have gone missing.”

  She choked an answer back down in her throat. I followed up with what finesse I could muster.

  “You were going to say something. What was it?”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Sometimes we know more than we think. Why don’t you tell me what you were going to say.”

  Her body seemed to expand and contract with every breath, like the only thing keeping her upright was the air in her lungs. “Sometimes he’d know things that he couldn’t have known about, things about his daddy, other things, things I had never told him, things nobody could have. I’d ask him how he found out, but he’d just smile that queer smile of his and… and…” Her composure, firm as stone up to this point, broke, utterly. She buried her face in her hands and wept with all the force of her matronly body. I tried to think of some way to calm her but failed-empathy was never my stock in trade.

  “You’ll save him, won’t you? The guard can’t do anything, but you’ll bring him back to me, won’t you?” She took me by the wrist, and her grip was strong. “I’ll give you whatever you want, I’ll pay you anything, whatever I have, please-just find my boy!”

  I pried her fingers off as delicately as I could. It was beyond me to tell a mother she wouldn’t see her child alive again-but I wouldn’t lie either, put my name in hock to a promise I’d never redeem. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Meskie was not a fool-she knew what that meant. She set her hands in her lap, ending her despondency by sheer force of will. “Of course,” she said, “I understand.” Her face had that terrible calm that comes when hope lies buried. “He’s in Sakra’s hands now.”

  “We all are,” I said, though I doubted it would help poor Avraham any more than it did the rest of us. I thought about leaving her some coin but didn’t want to insult her. Adeline would come around later with some food, though Meskie wouldn’t need it. The Islanders were a tight community-she’d be provided for.

  Wren was waiting for me outside, clumped with Meskie’s daughters, but easy enough to pick out. Contra their mother’s description they were very quiet. “It’s time to go.”

  Wren turned toward the girls. “I’m sorry,” he said. They were probably his first words since I’d left.

  The youngest burst into tears and ran inside.

  Wren blushed and started to apologize, but I put my hand on his shoulder and he shut his mouth. We walked back to the Earl in our customary silence, though somehow it seemed quieter.

  I dropped the kid off and headed out to see Yancey. The more I mulled over last night’s conversation with Beaconfield, the less I liked it. He knew where I slept-there was nothing I could do there. But if the Blade decided to move on me, he’d go through the Rhymer first, and that was a possibility I might have a hand in affecting.

  I knocked lightly on the door. After a moment it opened, revealing Yancey’s mother, an Islander in her mid-fifties, aging but handsome, her brown eyes smiling and vital. “Good morning, Mrs. Dukes. A pleasure to see you again after such a protracted absence.” There was something about Ma Dukes that brought out the courtier in me.

  She waved off my compliment and moved to embrace me. Then she pushed me away lightly, holding my wrists with her long-fingered hands.

  “Why haven’t you been round to see me lately? You found yourself a girl?”

  “Busy with work-you know how it is.”

  “I know all about your kind of work. And why are you so formal all of a sudden?”

  “No more deference than is due so revered a matriarch.”

  She laughed and ushered me inside.

  Yancey’s home was warm and bright, regardless of the season. The Islanders were renowned as the greatest sailors of the Thirteen Lands, and they served more than their quota in the Imperial Navy. True to form, her eldest took the Queen’s copper and was at sea nine months of the year, but even an occupant short the house still seemed crowded, overflowing with bric-a-brac acquired from foreign ports and
Yancey’s collection of drums and curious, hand-carved instruments. Ma Dukes led me into her kitchen and motioned toward a stool at the table.

  “You eat already?” she asked, spooning me a plate from the steaming mass of bubbling pots and pans on the stove.

  I hadn’t actually, not that it mattered. Lunch was fried fish and vegetables, and I tore into it with relish. Her duties as a host fulfilled, Ma Dukes eased herself into the chair across from mine. “Good, huh?”

  I mumbled something affirmative through a mouthful of onions and peppers.

  “It’s a new recipe. I got it from a friend of mine, Esti Ibrahim.”

  I shoveled another piece of cod into my maw. It never failed-somewhere along the line Ma Dukes had become convinced that all my troubles stemmed from the absence of an Island woman to share my bed and cook my meals, and was determined to make good this lack. It made visits a bit exhausting.

  “Widowed, lovely hair. You could do a lot worse.”

  “I’m not sure if I’m the most stable bet right now. Remind me next time you see me.”

  She shook her head with something approaching disappointment. “You in trouble again? Always gotta stir the pot, by the Firstborn. Smirk all you want, you aren’t a child. Closer my age than Yancey’s, am I wrong?”

  I hoped that wasn’t true, though it might have been.

  “He’s on the roof.” She slapped my arm with a damp dishrag. “Tell him lunch is ready when he wants it.” Her eyes turned steely. “He stays out of anything you’re into-don’t forget you’re a guest in my home.”

  I kissed her lightly on the cheek and made my way upstairs.

  Yancey’s house buttresses the Beggar’s Ramparts, a steep canyon that acts as de facto divide between the Islanders and the white citizens of the docks. At ground level the crevasse was filled with trash, and the sight of it would belie the suggestion that the divide was a positive addition to the landscape-but from on high the break from the skyline it offered was actually quite soothing. When I came up the Rhymer was lighting a banana leaf stuffed with dreamvine. We shared the blunt and the view for a few quiet moments.