“You’re not going to die,” Peary said. “You’re not even sick.”
“I can’t be moved again,” the old Poet said. “I’m already losing feeling in my feet and hands. Sickness has me.”
“Then we’ll go in tonight.”
“I can’t go. I’m finished. Just leave me here,” the Poet said.
“Not gonna happen, Poet.”
“You and your lady gonna die tryin’ to sell Danvar goods in Low-Pub. Can’t you see it?”
Peary cursed, then snatched up the old man again and carried him to the sarfer. He placed him in the craft and piled the haul packs on and around him, then went through the steps of readying the sarfer and raising the sail. After attaching the wind generator and plugging in his suit and visor batteries, he shook the Poet, whose eyes were closed. “I’ll grab the pyrinte ring and the pot, and we’ll be on our way. We’ll be in Low-Pub in an hour and a half, and Marisa will tend to your wound.”
The old man didn’t respond. He looked through Peary, as if his mind was somewhere else. Maybe deeper in the Thousand Dunes, or on some woman he used to call wife.
“You got that, Poet? I’ll be right back.”
No answer, and now the old man’s eyes were closed.
Peary dashed over the dune to grab the ring and the pot, then searched around to make sure he’d left nothing that might be used as a clue, or that could be traced back to him. When he was satisfied that he’d left no trail, he turned to head back to the sarfer. That’s when he heard the telltale ring of the rigging hitting the mast, and a pop as the sail filled, and the crunch of sand. He ran back toward the sarfer, and as he topped the dune he could just see the top of the mast as the sarfer disappeared from view.
Low-Pub
Chapter Eleven
Peary had not seen Marisa since he hit Low-Pub. It was morning now, and the cool gray was starting to give way to the sun and heat. He was too angry to see her, yet. Too embarrassed to tell her he’d lost everything because he’d chosen to help an injured old tinker half-dead. And he’d also have to tell her that the money she’d staked him for the trip was all lost… not to mention his sarfer, his dive suit and visor, and all of his gear. How could she love a man who let a pirate take everything from him? A thieving pirate, old and sick… was the old bastard even sick? Peary kicked at the sand and muttered under his breath. Marisa always told him that his kindness to strangers, more often than not, tended to hurt him. She said she loved him for that, but still she said it.
So he walked the town, from alley to alley, up and down the sandy rows of shops and sheds, looking for the Poet. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the old bastard. Wanting to kill him. His hands shook as he thought of the prospect of taking a man’s life. Then he squeezed his hand into a fist and struck his thigh. I’ll do it, though.
That’s when he saw it. The solitary piece of sand he was searching for in all the dunes of Low-Pub. He saw his sarfer, half hidden behind a shed structure that itself was mostly buried. One that used to be some kind of shop. The roof had collapsed, and someone had already begun to salvage the materials but hadn’t quite finished. The sarfer was tied down, but the haul rack was empty and the gear was gone.
He banged on a door and shouted, and eventually a woman, worn down by sand and life, hobbled to the door and glared out at him without saying a word. He felt his feet sink into the mush, probably wet from the drained wash, or the piss pot being dumped.
“I’m looking for the old man who came in that sarfer.”
“Look at the bar around the corner. Don’t know nothin’ here. Look down at the pub.”
***
The pub was thick at that hour with the regular kinds, the sand-stained refuse of life in the dunes. Morning drinkers and souls left over from the night before. A diver here and there, but not many of that kind, since most were up north or west looking for Danvar. The inevitable coin-changers were here though, and the clerks were too, drinking early after a yesterday with little trade. Up on the balcony were whores and their clientele, and here and there a seamstress or sandal hop plied the customers for work. There was a raising of voices, and then a clatter as a man who’d been playing cards was kicked backward and he and his chair toppled and slid across the spill and spit. This was met with laughter, and then the embarrassed man smacked a sandal hop for not moving fast enough to get out of his way, and everything reverted to type: shit flowing downhill.
Peary kept his head down, but his eyes worked the crowd, looking for the telltale sign of the old poet’s bandage. He’d walked the room several times before he realized he was starting to get some notice. A card player looked at him and then snarled. “You gonna walk, drink, or what?”
Peary met the man’s glare. “I’m lookin’ for a man calls himself ‘the Poet.’”
There was some laughter, then most everyone went back to whatever they’d been doing. Drinking. Forgetting. Dying. Sometimes all three. The card player sneered again. “Ain’t nobody wants or needs a poet, friend,” and then he turned back to his game.
Peary went to the bar and ordered a beer. He was thirsty, but he couldn’t afford water, and he knew he’d need to save coin. Even bad water, bean soak, or runoff could be used in the making of beer. Fermentation killed all pathogens. But pure water was precious.
The sandal hop who’d gotten a smack for being too slow pulled up a stool next to Peary and sat down. He was still rubbing his beard, and looked sideways at the diver. “If you’ve got coin and you’re needin’ a poem, then I’m your man.”
Peary took a sip from the flat, sand-temperature beer and then sat the glass down on the bar before looking over at the man. “Haven’t you been smacked enough for one day?”
“Day’s early, diver. Besides, I don’t sleep ’til I’ve been knocked around at least twenty times.”
“You’ll get there,” Peary said with a smirk. “At least you’re off to a good start.”
“I appreciate your confidence.”
“When it comes to motivating a good smack, you’re an inspiration.”
The sandal hop pretended to put his arms out for a hug, “Mum? Is that you?”
Peary sighed and turned to the sandal hop. “I’m not looking for a poem. I’m looking for an old man calls himself the Poet.”
“And again we come to the topic of coin,” the man said with a smile.
Peary rubbed his hand across his dive pocket. “I have coin, and a dive knife. One is for the exact location of the Poet. The other is for any man who even thinks about taking advantage of me.”
“Are you sure you aren’t my mum? You do sound just like her.”
“Do you know where the Poet is or don’t you?” Peary asked.
The sandal hop screwed up his face like he was considering his options. Then he exhaled and slapped the bar. “Okay, I’ve chosen to trust you, diver. Upstairs. Center room. Whore came out immediately so apparently he was only interested in the furnishings. But don’t tell him of our arrangement. Tinkers smack harder than coin-changers.”
***
“You had to know I’d find you.”
Peary took a threatening step into the room and closed the door behind him. He slowly drew his dive knife and held it up for the Poet to see.
The old man slid off the other side of the bed, stood, and then held his hands up before him, clasped in a sort of prayer. “I guess I misjudged your sentimentality, diver.”
“I’m going to take this knife, and I’m going to use it to carve the information I need from your soul. Then I’m going to cut you up and carry you out of here in the sheets and bury you in the dunes,” Peary said.
“I told you to kill me back when you were cooking my supper last night. It would have saved us all of this unpleasantness.”
“I’ll atone for my mistake right now, Poet. Where are my packs? Where’s the salvage from… the place?”
The Poet didn’t speak immediately, and when he didn’t, Peary stepped up onto the bed—which nearly caved under his weight�
�and put the knife to the old man’s throat. He held the blade firmly against the man’s carotid artery as he stepped back down on the far side of the bed.
“I was trying to save your lives—yours and your lady’s too,” the Poet said. He was sweating now, but his eyes didn’t flash with fear or indignation. They showed only resignation and defeat. As if whatever happened was only to be expected.
Peary lowered the knife and gave the Poet a stare through narrowed eyes. Then he head-butted the old man across the bridge of the nose. The Poet dropped like sand-cake from a slammed window, and crumpling to the ground, he began to laugh. Peary, enraged, kicked the old man in the ribs, which only elicited more laughs, interspersed with heavy, pain-drenched sighs.
“Where are the packs with the salvage, Poet?”
The poet pulled his arm up to support his bruised rips, then flipped over onto his back. He stared up at Peary and his old rheumy eyes were blurry from the crack across the nose. He blinked them to try to clear his vision. “I buried them in the sand so you wouldn’t be tempted to commit suicide by trying to sell them.”
Peary held the knife up again and turned it in his hands, anticipating its use. “And I suppose I’m supposed to believe that you stole my sarfer and my salvage, left me in the dunes to walk home, and were hiding out here in a whore’s workroom all for my sake. To save my life?”
“And your lady’s,” the Poet said.
“And my lady’s.”
The Poet nodded. “That’s correct.”
The two men stared at one another before the Poet continued. “Hard time for me to choose to be heroic. Damn hard. And now you broke my nose for it.”
“Okay,” Peary said. “Enough chit-chat. It’s time for answers.” He pulled the old man up by his hair until he was standing, then pushed him against the far wall. He held the knife with one hand and with the other he began to untie his ker. “I’m going to use this to muzzle you so you don’t scream like a wounded dog when I start to cut parts off of you.”
The Poet held his hands up, meekly imploring, but he didn’t struggle or fight. “I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “I buried the stuff in the sand fifty meters down. Just out in the dunes. I could take you to it, but I won’t. If I wanted to steal from you I’d have already sold the sarfer, and I’d have sold the information I know, too. I’d be rich and gone already. I was hoping to hide out until you gave up looking for me.”
Peary worked at the knot in the ker, but remained silent.
“I’m telling the truth,” the Poet said.
Peary finished untying the ker and stepped closer to the old man.
“I’m not lying. I just needed time to figure out what to do. I would have gotten the sarfer back to you, I swear. I wasn’t going to sell it, or it would be gone already, scrapped for parts in some dive shop. You know it, too.”
Peary grabbed the old man’s face and held the knife up to his throat. “Where are the packs, old man?”
“I won’t take you to them, because if I do you’ll try to sell that stuff, and your life won’t be worth the coin you spent to buy the beer on your breath.”
Peary heard the door open behind him, and when he turned, he saw Marisa standing there. She had a worried look on her face, and when she saw him holding a knife on an old man, her alarm multiplied.
“Marisa!” Peary said. “What—?”
“I… I… a friend saw you come in here. A coin-changer my father used to use. He—he sent word to me. I’ve been worried sick.”
Transactions
Chapter Twelve
Between his own story and corroboration from the old Poet, Peary was able to fill Marisa in on what had happened during his absence. She eyed the old man nervously, even as she tried to convince Peary to abandon his efforts to make the man talk.
“Let’s just go, Peary. We can start again. You have the sarfer. If this old man won’t at least tell you where to get your dive gear, we can scrape enough coin to buy more. You know where Danvar is, and he says he hasn’t told anyone.”
Peary laughed. “This old man is nothing but a liar and a thief. He’d sell us out in a heartbeat, and I’d never surface from another dive to Danvar. Every pirate and brigand for a thousand miles would descend on that place.”
Marisa pulled at Peary’s arm, trying to turn him from his intentions. “Then let’s just forget it all. We still have our lives. Let’s just go.”
Peary pulled his arm free from Marisa’s grasp. “I’m not letting anything go. This old man is going to tell me where he buried my salvage, or I’m going to bury him. That’s the only way the story about Danvar stays secret long enough for us to cash out. That’s the only way I can pay you back the money you loaned me.”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t want the money back. I just want us to get out of here without you doing something stupid… or wrong.”
Peary turned to Marisa. “I hear you. Really I do. I’m doing the best I can.” He turned his attention back to the Poet and held the knife back up to the old man’s throat. “If there was any other way to make this come out right, I’d do it.”
An explosion shook the room, and Marisa ducked down as gunfire echoed in the distance. “What—?”
Peary lowered the knife. Unconsciously he lowered his head until he was nearly in a crouch. He glanced at the Poet. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” the old man said. “Rebels, maybe?”
After a few moments of eerie silence, there was a knock at the door, and the sandal hop from downstairs poked his head in. He wasn’t smiling or clowning around now. “You should probably either accelerate or terminate your transaction,” he said. “Something’s going on out there. People hearing explosions around town. Rumor is that whatever happened to Springston is about to happen here. Panic coming, by the looks of things.”
“What all did you hear?” Peary said.
The man shook his head. “Me? I don’t hear things. Deaf when it comes to other men’s business.”
The Poet pushed Peary out of the way and headed for the door, and for some reason—perhaps a combination of confusion and a reflexive reaction to the Poet’s immediate projection of authority and single-mindedness—Peary didn’t try to stop him. “Follow me,” the Poet said. “We’ll finish this other business once we’ve gotten someplace safe.”
There were more sharp cracks of gunfire and shouting coming from the pub and out in the streets. Peary, Marisa, and the sandal hop all looked at one another for a few beats before the hop broke the silence with a smile. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m following the old man. He seems to know what he’s doing.”
***
Outside the pub, bodies lay here and there, their faces splattered with gore and surprise. Everywhere blood soaked into the sand, sanctifying it. The market area had almost magically been cleared of living men and women, and looking over his shoulder, Peary noticed that some sort of confrontation was happening in the market center. The smell of burning flesh filled the air—meat from the stalls whose grills were now unmanned, or perhaps it was the stench of bodies charred by explosions. A group of divers and brigands were in the market center, and in their midst, a column of sand held aloft a shiny sphere. Some kind of religious ceremony? Or perhaps rebels had taken the town. His thoughts raced as he recalled all the messages and whispers about Springston.
Peary saw a pistol lying near one of the bodies. A young coin-changer had been shot in the gut. Apparently he’d dragged himself several meters before he finally bled out. Peary picked up the weapon and checked it; it was loaded and ready to fire. He knew little about guns, but he was certain he knew enough to shoot it if he needed to. He hoped that just having it would be enough for most of the things he might need it for. He tugged at Marisa to get her attention. “We need to get out of here, Mar. Something’s happening.” She probably didn’t know about Springston, and he didn’t want to scare her.
Marisa looked at the gun and then back up to Peary. She nodded her he
ad.
The Poet was waiting for them near the dilapidated stall where he’d failed in his attempt to hide Peary’s sarfer. He was tying a ker he’d snagged from a drying line around the wound on his head when the others ran up to him. He grabbed a couple more kers from the line and stuffed them into his tunic. “Can you get your hands on a second sarfer?” he asked Peary. “With four of us it’ll go faster and better if we have two.”
Peary shook his head. “No.” He wrapped his own ker around his face and tied it in the back. Then he pointed at the sandal hop. “And why are we taking him with us?”
The Poet glared at Peary. “Because he’s a man, diver. Have you forgotten all of a sudden?” He waved out at the town with his hand. “Looks like everyone out there could be dying.”
“I can get another sarfer,” Marisa said. “My family has one we almost never use at the Sand-Hawk Marina. My uncle pays good coin to keep it there and ready.”
The Poet pointed at Peary. “You run with her and get the other sarfer. Me and—” He pointed at the sandal hop and snapped his fingers. None of them knew the man’s name.
“Reginald,” the scruffy man said. He shrugged and rubbed his hands together. “Reggie… for my new friends.”
The Poet clapped Reggie on the back. “Reggie and I will push this sarfer back out of town. We’ll get it rigged up and meet you just southwest of the marina.”
“None of that is going to happen,” Peary said, “because I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He nodded at the Poet, emphasizing his steadfast intention to get his property back. “We stay together.”
The Poet grimaced, clenching his teeth. “It’ll be faster the other way.”
“We stay together.”
“Well, we’ll need to stop by a place I know and get food and water.” The old man sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “It would be much faster if we could just meet you—”
Dunes Over Danvar Omnibus Page 4