Daniel Polansky - Low Town

“Run. Get out of Low Town. If it’s the Old Man you’re afraid of, run, run and don’t look back. I’ll make sure there are no reprisals against your people. Just… disappear.”

I dug at a loose stone with my boot.

“What? Nothing clever? No witty retort?”

“What’s your point?”

“Is this just to show how much smarter you are than the rest of us? Is there some scheme of yours I’m not seeing? Get out of here. You aren’t an agent. So far as I can tell, you’re the furthest thing from it. In case you’ve missed the last five years, let me condense them-you’re a junkie and a crime lord, you string out fathers and mothers, and you cut up anyone who gets in the way. You’ve become everything you ever hated, and I don’t need you fucking up my investigation.”

“I was the best detective the service ever had, and I’d still be thinking circles around you and everyone else if I hadn’t pissed off the brass.”

“Don’t pretend your failure was a choice. Everyone else might buy your bullshit, but I know why you aren’t an agent, and it isn’t because you weren’t willing to toe the line.”

I thought about how much fun it would be to scuff up that spotless gray uniform. “I haven’t forgotten, don’t worry. I remember you standing in judgment with the rest of them, when they struck my name from the record and shattered my Eye.”

“There was nothing for it. I warned you not to join Special Operations, and I warned you double not to get involved with that woman.”

“Cautious, responsible Crispin. Don’t make any waves, don’t see anything you aren’t supposed to. You’re worse than Crowley-at least he’s honest about what he is.”

“It was easier to run off. You never needed to put in the work, never needed to make any hard decisions. I stuck it out-it isn’t perfect, but I’ve done more good as a cogwheel than you have selling poison.”

I could feel my fists clench at my sides and had to resist the urge to go for Crispin’s face, and to judge from the black look in his eyes he was thinking the same. “Fifteen years cleaning up shit,” I said. “They oughta strike you a medal.”

We eyeballed each other, waiting to see if our dialogue wasn’t about to end in violence. He broke first. “Enough-I’ll get you the list and then we’re through. I don’t owe you anything. You ever see me on the street, you act like you would with any other agent.”

“Spit on the ground?”

He rubbed his forehead but didn’t answer.

“Send the list to the Earl when you get it.” I walked back to the bridge and ripped Wren off the rail. “Let’s go.”

We were halfway over when the boy displayed another example of his recent loquaciousness. “Who was that?”

“My old partner.”

“Why was he yelling at you?”

“Because he’s kind of an asshole.”

Wren had to double-time it but his legs kept pace with mine. “Why were you yelling at him?”

“Because I’m kind of an asshole too.”

“Is he going to help us?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“You were better company when you didn’t talk as much,” I said.

I took a last look at Crispin, now bent over the body, puzzling out some detail. I figured I had said some things I regretted. I figured I’d have the opportunity to apologize, out of practice at it though I was. I was wrong about that. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but that’s one that hurts.

I’d been on the streets about four years the night I found Celia. I would have been ten or so, maybe a little older-birthdays tend to fall by the wayside without a family to celebrate them. This was after the Crane enacted his wards, so the bodies of the fever victims weren’t piled like cordwood in the streets, but no one could rightly place Low Town too many steps above unadulterated anarchy. At night the guard retreated to the boundaries and didn’t return except in force. Even the syndicates didn’t much trouble with us, likely because there wasn’t much worth taking.

Back then the borough had a haunted, lonely quality to it. It took almost a decade for the population to recover to what it had been before the Fever, and for years after there were still parts of the neighborhood where you could walk for half an hour and never see a living soul. It made finding a place to sleep easy-just stumble down an empty block, throw a stone through a window, and crawl inside. If you were lucky, the owners had run off or died somewhere outside their residence. If you weren’t, you had to share a room with a corpse. Either possibility beat a night in the cold.

I would never again live my life with such mad abandon as I did during those early years on the streets. I needed nothing-Low Town provided. Food I stole, my other small needs I satisfied by force or cunning. I grew hard as a kettle and dog wild. At night I ranged the streets, watching the city’s detritus scuttle about in the dark. That was how I found her-heard her first, really-her frightened cries drawing me from my back alley wanderings.

There were two of them, wyrm addicts, thick with it. The first was ancient, a stutter step from the abyss, rotting gums attesting to the frequency of his habit, worn rags thick with urban fauna. His protege was a few years older than I but preternaturally thin, sparse red hair spurting out over uncomfortably wide eyes. Both were fixated on the small child between them, her shallow weeping quieter now, fear stealing her voice.

Years sharing territory had initiated me in the secrets of the cockroach and the rat, and I moved in a fashion more closely resembling their scurry than the saunter of most children my age. Between that and the darkness I was practically invisible, though the pair ahead of me were so focused on the girl that nothing short of a marching band could have drawn their attention. I hugged tight against the alley wall and slunk toward them, more out of curiosity than anything else, careful to stay outside the arc of the moonlight.

“Three or four stems at least we’ll get for her, three or four stems at least!” the old one said, running his gnarled fingers through the child’s hair. “Just give her straight to the chief heretic and tell him to send on over a pipe of his rawest choke.” The target of his glee stood mute, his sallow, idiot features betraying little evidence of comprehension.

“I’ll buy her from you.” It was out before I could take it back. I did things like that a lot in those days-no sooner did a stray thought flicker across my mind than its consequences echoed at me from the firmament.

The younger one turned, his awkward frame and clouded senses robbing his movement of grace or much speed. The older one was quicker, snatching the girl across the shoulder, his grip almost protective. For a moment her whimpering was the only thing to be heard. Then the elder laughed, the sound rolling over a thick veneer of rheum.

“Have we intruded upon your hunting grounds, gentle sir? Worry not, we won’t be here long.” He was one of those junkies who had been something of substance before the wyrm had hollowed him out, a professor or a lawyer, and though his mind had long been reduced to its basest urges, still he retained a certain incongruous ability for fine speech.

I reached down to my boot and pulled out my stash, three argents I’d found or thieved and an ochre Rob One-Eye had given me for serving as lookout when he’d knocked off the old Light Street bank. “There’s yellow in here. It’s a fair trade.” I didn’t know what the price of a child was exactly, but there were too damn many wandering the streets of the city for it to be worth much more than that.

The two stared at each other numbly, their slow reptile minds trying to process this new development. Given enough time, one of them was going to realize that it was easier to kill me and take what I had than meet my demands-better not to allow them the opportunity.