Daniel Polansky - Low Town

Are blessed to lack, I should say. The world is an ugly place, and we ought to be grateful for any blinders that limit our comprehension-better to scuttle along the surface than dive in the noxious waters beneath. Their “gift” is the sort that makes a normal life impossible, the undercurrents of existence bubbling up at inopportune moments. Those born with it are inevitably drafted into the service of the government, simply because any other kind of work is more or less impossible-imagine trying to sell a man shoes and flashing that he beats his children or has his wife sewn up in a sack. It’s an unpleasant sort of existence, and most investigators are hardened drunks or borderline lunatics. I’ve had a few as customers-ouroboros root mostly, though once they move on to the hard stuff, it’s not long before the brass come calling, or they decide to circumvent the authorities by falling into a river or huffing up a half pint of breath. It’s a common enough fate among their kind-few indeed die of natural causes.

Anyway, they’re useful enough as part of an investigation, so long as you don’t get too reliant on them. It’s a touchy thing, their second sight, and for every decent lead you’re liable to get two brick walls and a false trail. Once I spent a month digging through every hole in the Islander half of Low Town, only to discover that the man I was working with had never seen a Mirad before, and had mistaken the cinnamon tan of the murderer in his vision for the dark chocolate of a seafarer. After that, I stopped spending too much time in the Box, not that my presence was much in demand after I put the aforementioned scryer through a first-floor window.

I stepped into an antechamber manned by an aging Islander, who slipped off the wooden seat he had been napping on and moved to unlock the interior door. There were a lot of locks, and the gatekeeper was straddling the line between venerable and ancient, so we had opportunity for conversation.

“Who are we going to see?” I asked.

Knowing something I didn’t perked Guiscard up a little. “Crispin wanted the best on this one, angled for Marieke. You remember her? She would have been just starting out when they gave you the ax.”

“Not really.”

“They call her the Ice Bitch.”

It was the sort of jibe I could see making the rounds among the wits at Black House, misogynistic and unoriginal. That I didn’t laugh seemed to offend Guiscard slightly, and he switched subjects.

“How did it happen, by the way?”

“How did what happen?”

“Your dismissal.”

The Islander reached the last bolt and dragged the door open, struggling against the heavy iron. “I poisoned the Prince consort.”

“The Prince consort isn’t dead.”

“Really? Then who the hell did I murder?”

It took him a moment to puzzle that out. “You ought not speak so lightly of the royal court.” He sniffed, like he’d gotten the better of the exchange, then turned at a brisk pace and headed down the dank stone hallway. The farther we got, the heavier the place started to stink, an unpleasant mixture of mildew and human flesh. Guiscard passed a dozen-odd doorways before choosing one to open.

The room displayed the obsessive organization that suggests an unwound mind as surely as does chaos-rows and rows of cataloged boxes atop dusted shelves and a floor clean enough to eat off, if for some reason you were inclined to take your supper on the ground. Apart from its spotlessness, there was nothing to give the impression that anyone worked there-the worn desk set against the back wall was empty of mementos, even the usual detritus-pens and ink, paper and books-that signify a work space. You might well have assumed it to be nothing more than a well-kept storage room, except for the dead body resting on a slab in the center of the room and the woman who stood over it.

She would never be called beautiful-there was too much bone where one hoped to find flesh-but she might have sneaked into handsome without the scowl that defaced her finish. To judge by her height and skin, so pale you could trace the blue web of veins up her neck, she was a Vaalan. And not city born either, if I had to guess. I wondered what series of events had brought her down from the frigid North and the stony islands her people inhabited. Taken bit by bit, there was much of her that was alluring-a graceful carriage, limbs long and fine, strands of strawberry-blond hair falling down past her shoulders-a surfeit of physical blessings, all submerged by the raptor thinness of her frame. She looked up as the door opened, an arresting scan with eyes that custom would label blue, but that were, truthfully, virtually achromatic-then her focus returned to the corpse atop her table.

I did not find it altogether impossible to discern the origin of her nickname.

Guiscard elbowed me and I noticed that his smirk had returned, like we were sharing some sort of a joke; but I didn’t like him and even if I did I wouldn’t have had the time for antics. Finally he spoke up. “Scryer Uys?”

She grunted and continued taking notes. We waited to see whether she was capable of upholding the social courtesies developed to paper over the untrustworthy nature of the human species. When it became obvious she wasn’t, Guiscard cleared his throat and continued. In contrast to the scryer, I couldn’t help but find myself impressed by the gentility with which he hocked up a bead of phlegm. I wondered how many years of finishing school it took him to master that trick.

“This is…”

“I recognize your guest, agent.” She scraped her pen against the page like she was taking revenge for some past act of cruelty. Then, having made it clear that she ranked us well below the completion of routine paperwork, she deigned to offer her attention. “I’ve seen him grace our premises before, some years back.”

That was a surprise-I’m good with faces, very good, it’s one of the relatively few job requirements that remained constant despite my change in employment. Of course those last six months in Special Operations had been… hectic. Sakra knew I’d missed more pressing things.

“So the introduction is unnecessary. While you’re here, though, perhaps you might enlighten me as to what the fuck he’s doing in the Box, since, to judge by the number of times I’ve heard his name reviled by members of your organization, he’s no longer in the good graces of Black House?”

I gave a quick little laugh, half because it was funny and half because I wanted to trip her up. And indeed she seemed shocked at my reaction, her ability to cause offense for once falling short of the mark. Guiscard stroked the peach fuzz below his nose, considering how to answer. He wasn’t himself sure why I was there, who had decided to incorporate me into the investigation-though obviously, decorum and his own unflappable sense of self-importance stopped him from saying so. “Orders from the top.”

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.”