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  Low Town

  ( Low town - 1 )

  Daniel Polansky

  Low Town

  Daniel Polansky

  In the opening days of the Great War, on the battlefields of Apres and Ives, I acquired the ability to abandon slumber with the flutter of an eyelid. It was a necessary adaptation, as heavy sleepers were likely to come to greeted by the sight of a Dren commando with a trench blade. It’s a vestige of my past I’d rather lose, all things considered. Rare is the situation that requires the full range of one’s perceptions, and in general the world is improved by being only dimly visible.

  Case in point-my room was the sort of place best viewed half asleep or in a drunken stupor. Late autumn light filtered through my dusty window and made the interior, already only a few small steps from squalor, look still less prepossessing. Even by my standards the place was a dump, and my standards are low. A worn dresser and a chipped table set were the only furnishings that accompanied the bed, and a veneer of grime covered the floor and walls. I passed water in the bedpan and threw the waste into the alley below.

  Low Town was in full stream, the streets echoing with the screech of fish hags advertising the day’s catch to porters carrying crates north into the Old City. At the market a few blocks east merchants sold underweight goods to middlemen for clipped copper, while down Light Street guttersnipes kept drawn-dagger eyes out for an unwary vendor or a blue blood too far from home. In the corners and the alleys the working boys kept up the same cries as the fish hags, though they spoke lower and charged more. Worn streetwalkers pulling the early shift waved tepid come-ons at passersby, hoping to pad their faded charms into one more day’s worth of liquor or choke. The dangerous men were mostly still asleep, their blades sheathed next to their beds. The really dangerous men had been up for hours, and their quills and ledgers were getting hard use.

  I grabbed a hand mirror off the floor and held it at arm’s length. Under the best of circumstances, perfumed and manicured, I am an ugly man. A lumpen nose dripped below overlarge eyes, a mouth like a knife wound set off center. Enhancing my natural charms are an accumulation of scars that would shame a masochist, an off-color line running up my cheek from where an artillery shard had come a few inches from laying me out, the torn flesh of my left ear testifying to a street brawl where I’d taken second place.

  A vial of pixie’s breath winked good morning from the worn wood of my table. I uncorked it and took a whiff. Cloyingly sweet vapors filled my nostrils, followed closely by a familiar buzzing in my ears. I shook the bottle-half empty, it had gone quick. Pulling on my shirt and boots, I grabbed my satchel from beneath the bed and walked downstairs to greet the late morn.

  The Staggering Earl was quiet this time of day, and the main room was dominated by the mammoth figure behind the bar, Adolphus the grand, co-owner and publican. Despite his height-he was a full head taller than my own six feet-his casklike torso was so wide as to give the impression of corpulence, though a closer examination would reveal the balance of his bulk as muscle. Adolphus had been an ugly man before a Dren bolt claimed his left eye, but the black cloth he wore across the socket and the scar that tore down his pockmarked cheek hadn’t improved things. Between that and his slow stare he seemed a thug and a dullard, and though he was neither of those things this impression tended to keep folk civil in his presence.

  He was cleaning the bar and pontificating on the injustices of the day to one of our more sober patrons. It was a popular pastime. I sidled over and took the cleanest seat.

  Adolphus was too dedicated to solving the problems of the nation to allow common courtesy to intrude on his monologue, so by way of greeting he offered me a perfunctory nod. “And no doubt you’d agree with me, having seen what a failure his lordship has been as High Chancellor. Let him go back to stringing up rebels as Executor of the Throne’s Justice-at least that was a task he was fit for.”

  “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, Adolphus. Everyone knows our leaders are as wise as they are honest. Now is it too late for a plate of eggs?”

  He turned his head toward the kitchen and growled, “Woman! Eggs!” Aside completed, he circled back on his captive drunk. “Five years I gave the Crown, five years and my eye.” Adolphus liked to slip his injury into casual conversation, apparently operating under the impression that it was inconspicuous. “Five years neck deep in shit and filth, five years while the bankers and nobles back home got rich on my blood. A half ochre a month ain’t much for five years of that, but it’s mine and I’ll be damned if I let ’em forget it.” He dropped his rag on the counter and pointed a sausage-sized finger at me in hopes of encouragement. “It’s your half ochre too, my friend. You’re awfully quiet for a man forgotten by his Queen and country.”

  What was there to say? The High Chancellor would do what he wished, and the rantings of a one-eyed ex-pikeman were unlikely to do much to persuade him. I grunted noncommittally. Adeline, as quiet and small as her husband was the opposite, came out of the kitchen and offered me a plate with a tiny smile. I took the first and returned the second. Adolphus kept up his rambling, but I ignored him and turned to the eggs. We’d been friends for a decade and a half because I forgave him his garrulousness and he forgave me my taciturnity.

  The breath was kicking in. I could feel my nerves getting steadier, my eyesight sharper. I shoveled the baked black bread into my mouth and considered the day’s work. I needed to visit my man in the customs office-he’d promised me clean passes a fortnight ago but had yet to make good. Beyond that there were the usual rounds to the distributors who bought from me, shady bartenders and small-time dealers, pimps and pushers. Come evening, I needed to stop by a party up toward Kor’s Heights-I had told Yancey the Rhymer I’d check in before his evening set.

  Back on the main stage the drunk found a chance to interrupt Adolphus’s torrent of quasi-coherent civic slander. “You hear anything about the little one?”

  The giant and I exchanged unhappy glances. “The hoax are useless,” Adolphus said, and went back to cleaning. Three days earlier the child of a dockworker had gone missing from an alley outside her house. Since then “Little Tara” had become something of a cause celebre for the people of Low Town. The fishermen’s guild had put out a reward, the Church of Prachetas had offered a service in her honor, even the guard had set aside their lethargy for a few hours to bang on doors and look down wells. Nothing had been found, and seventy-two hours was a long time for a child to stay lost in the most crowded square mile in the Empire. Sakra willing, the girl was fine, but I wouldn’t bet my unpaid half ochre on it.

  The reminder of the child provoked the minor miracle of shutting Adolphus’s mouth. I finished my breakfast in silence, then pushed my plate aside and rose to my feet. “Hold any messages-I’ll be back after dark.”

  Adolphus waved me out.

  I exited into the chaos of Low Town at midday and began my walk east toward the docks. Leaning against the wall a block past the Earl, rolling a cigarette and glowering, I spotted all five and a half feet of Kid Mac, pimp and bravo extraordinaire. His dark eyes stared out over faded dueling scars, and as always his clothes were uniformly perfect, from the wide brim of his hat to the silver handle of his rapier. He strung himself up against the bricks with an expression that combined the threat of violence with a rather profound indolence.

  In the years since he had come to the neighborhood, Mac had managed to carve out a small territory by virtue of his skill with a blade and the unreserved dedication of his whores, who, to a woman, were as enamored of him as a mother is her firstborn. I often thought that Mac had the easiest job in Low Town, seeming to consist mostly of ensuring that his streetwalkers didn’t kill one another in competition for his attentions, but you wouldn’t
know it from the scowl etched across his face. We’d been friendly ever since he’d set up shop, passing each other information and the occasional favor.

  “Mac.”

  “Warden.” He offered me his cigarette.

  I lit it with a match from my belt. “How’re the girls?”

  He shook some tobacco from his pouch and started on another smoke. “That lost child has them worked up worse than a clutch of hens. Red Annie kept everyone up half the night weeping, till Euphemia went after her with a switch.”

  “They’re a sensitive bunch.” I reached into my purse and surreptitiously handed him his shipment. “Any word on Eddie the Quim?” I asked, referring to a rival of his who had been chased out of Low Town earlier in the week.

  “He works a stone’s throw from headquarters and doesn’t think he needs to pay off the hoax? Eddie’s too stupid to live. He won’t see the other side of winter-I’d go an argent on it.” Mac finished rolling his cigarette with one hand and slipped the package into his back pocket with the other.

  “I wouldn’t take it,” I said.

  Mac tucked the tab loosely into his sneer. We watched the ebb of traffic from our post. “You get those passes yet?” he asked.

  “Going to see my man today. Should have something for you soon.”

  He grunted what might have been assent and I turned to leave. “You oughta know that Harelip’s boys have been peddling east of the canal.” He took a drag and exhaled perfect circles of smoke, one following the other into the clement sky. “The girls have seen his crew off and on for the last week or so.”

  “I heard. Stay slick, Mac.”

  He went back to looking menacing.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon dropping off product and running errands. My customs officer finally came through with the passes, though at the rate his addiction to pixie’s breath was progressing, it might well be the last favor he’d be able to do for me.

  It was early evening by the time I was finished, and I stopped off at my favorite street stand for a pot of beef in chili sauce. I still needed to see Yancey before his set-he was performing for some toffee-nosed aristocrats near the Old City, and it would be a walk. I was cutting through an alleyway to save time when I saw something that clipped my progress so abruptly that I nearly toppled over.

  The Rhymer would have to wait. Ahead of me was the body of a child, contorted horribly and wrapped in a sheet soaked through with blood.

  It seemed I had found Little Tara.

  I tossed my dinner into a sewer grate. Suddenly I didn’t have much of an appetite.

  I burned a few seconds taking stock of the situation. The rats of Low Town are an immodest bunch, so the fact that her body was intact suggested that she hadn’t been left out long. I crouched down and set a palm on her tiny chest-cold. She’d been dead for some time before being dumped here. Up close I could see the indignities her tormentor had inflicted more clearly, and I shuddered and withdrew, noticing as I did so a strange smell, not the sickly sweet scent of decayed flesh but one abrasive and alchemical, harsh against the back of my throat.

  Retreating from the alley to the main street, I flagged down a pair of street urchins idling nearby. Among the lower classes my name carries some small weight, and they presented themselves as if they expected me to draft them into a scheme and were excited at the opportunity. I gave the duller looking of the two a copper and told him to find a guardsman. When he was around the corner I turned to the one who remained.

  I keep half the Low Town guard in whores and watered-down beer, so they wouldn’t be a problem. But a murder of this sort would demand the attention of an agent, and whomever they sent might be foolish enough to think me a suspect. I needed to get rid of my merchandise.

  The boy stared up at me with brown eyes deep set against pale skin. Like most street children he was a mutt, features of the three Rigun peoples intermixed with any number of foreign races. Even by the standards of the dispossessed he was painfully thin, the rags he wore as clothing insufficient to hide the bony protrusions of his shoulder blades and elbows.

  “You know who I am?”

  “You’re the Warden.”

  “You know the Staggering Earl?”

  He nodded, his dark eyes wide but unclouded. I thrust my bag toward him.

  “Take this there and give it to the cyclops behind the bar. Tell him I said he owes you an argent.”

  He reached out for it and I dug my fingers in the crook of his neck. “I know every whore, pickpocket, junkie, and street tough in Low Town, and I’ve marked your face. If my package ain’t waiting for me, I’m going to come looking for you. Understand?” I tightened my grip.

  He didn’t flinch. “I ain’t bent.” His voice surprised me with its cool confidence. I had picked the right urchin.

  “Off with you then.” I released the bag and he sprinted around the corner.

  I went back into the alley and smoked a cigarette while I waited for the hoax to show up. They were longer than I thought they’d be, given the gravity of the situation. It’s disturbing to discover your low opinion of law enforcement is still unduly appreciative. Two burnt tabs later the first boy returned, a pair of guardsmen in tow.

  I knew them vaguely. One was fresh, new to the force six months, but the second I’d been paying off for years. We’d see how much good that would do if things curdled. “Hello, Wendell.” I held my hand out. “Good to see you again, even under these circumstances.”

  Wendell shook it vigorously. “You as well,” he said. “I had hoped the boy was lying.”

  There wasn’t much to say to that. Wendell knelt beside the body, his chain coat dragging in the mud. Behind him his younger counterpart was turning the shade of white that prefaces vomiting. Wendell shouted a reproach over his shoulder. “None of that. You’re a damn guardsman-show some spine.” He turned back to the corpse, unsure of his next move. “Guess I should call for an agent, then,” he half asked me.

  “Guess so.”

  “Run back to headquarters,” Wendell ordered his subordinate, “and tell them to send for a chill. Tell them to send for two.”

  The guard enforce the customs and laws of the city-when they aren’t paid to look the other way-but investigating crime is more or less beyond them. If a murderer isn’t standing over the corpse with a bloody knife, they’re not of much use. When there’s a crime that matters to someone who counts, an agent of the Crown is sent, officially deputized to carry out the Throne’s Justice. The frost, the cold, the snowmen, or the gray devils, call them what you want but bow your head when they pass and answer prompt if they ask you something, ’cause the chill ain’t the guard, and the only thing more dangerous than an incompetent constabulary is a competent one. Normally, a dumped body in Low Town doesn’t warrant their attention-a fact that does wonders for the murder rate-but this wasn’t a drunk drowned in a puddle or a knifed junkie. They’d send an agent for this.

  After a few minutes, a small squad of guardsmen arrived. A pair of them began cordoning off the area. The remainder stood around looking important. They weren’t doing a great job of it, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them.

  Bored of waiting, or wanting to impress the newcomers, Wendell decided to take a stab at police work. “Probably some heretic,” he said, scratching at his double chins. “Passing through the docks on the way to Kirentown, saw the girl and…” He gestured sharply.

  “Yeah, I hear there’s a lot of that going around.”

  His partner chimed in, baby face spouting poison, choked-back bile heavy on his breath. “Or an Islander. You know how they are.”

  Wendell nodded sagely. He did indeed know how they were.

  I’d heard that in some of the newer mental wards they set the mad and congenitally stupid to rote tasks, having them sew buttons onto mounds of fabric, the futile labor working as a salve to their broken minds. I wonder sometimes whether the guard is not an extension of this therapy on a far grander scale, an elaborate social program meant to
give the low functioning an illusion of purpose.

  But it wouldn’t do to spoil it for the inmates. This burst of insight seemed to exhaust Wendell and his second, and they lapsed into silence.

  The autumn eve chased the last shreds of daylight across the skyline. The sounds of honest commerce, as much as such a thing exists in Low Town, were replaced by a jittery quiet. In the surrounding tenements someone had a fire going, and the woodsmoke almost covered up the state of the body. I rolled a cigarette to block out the rest.

  You could sense their arrival before you could see them, the packed Low Town masses scuttling out from their path like flotsam swept aside by a flood. The freeze prided themselves on the uniformity of their costumes, each an interchangeable member of the small army that controlled the city and most of the nation. An ice-gray duster, its upturned collar leading to a matching wide-brimmed hat. A silver-hilted short sword hanging at the belt, both an aesthetic marvel and a perfect instrument of violence. A dusky jewel trapped in a silver frame dangling from the throat-the Crown’s Eye, official symbol of their authority. Every inch the personification of order, a clenched fist in a velvet glove.

  For all that I would never speak it aloud, for all that it shamed me to even think it, I couldn’t lie-I missed that fucking outfit.

  Crispin recognized me from about a block away, and his face hardened but his step didn’t slow. Five years hadn’t done much to alter his appearance. The same highborn face stared at me beneath the fold of his hat, the same upright carriage bore mute witness to a youth spent in the tutelage of dance masters and teachers of etiquette. His brown hair had retreated from its former prominence, but the curve of his nose still trumpeted the long history of his blood to anyone who cared to look. I knew he regretted me being here, just as I regretted him being called.

  The other one I didn’t recognize-he must have been new. Like Crispin he had the Rouender nose, long and arrogant, but his hair was so blond as to be nearly white. Apart from the platinum mane he seemed the archetypal agent, blue eyes inquisitorial without being discerning, the body beneath his uniform hard enough to convince you of his menace, assuming you didn’t know what to look for.