Daniel Polansky - Low Town

The plague had returned to Rigus. On the walk home I muttered every prayer to the Firstborn I could remember, for all that they hadn’t done a damn bit of good the last time around.

Marieke’s news kept my mind working at half speed, and it was a while before I puzzled out why Wren couldn’t stop fidgeting with his ugly woolen coat. When it did click we were almost back to Low Town, and I slowed my step to a halt. After a moment the boy did the same.

“When did you take it?” I asked.

He thought about lying, but he knew I had him. “When you went to say good-bye.”

“Let me see it.”

He pulled out the horn, then passed it over with a shrug.

“Why’d you steal it?”

“I wanted it.” His eyes conceding nothing. This wasn’t the first time he’d been caught pilfering, nor the first time he’d find himself whipped. It was part of the game, and he’d play it to the end.

So I decided to go another way. “I guess that’s a reason,” I said.

“He’s got plenty of shit. He doesn’t need it.”

“No, I suppose he doesn’t.”

“You gonna hit me?”

“You’re not worth the trouble. I’ve got too much on my mind to worry about teaching ethics to a stray dog. It’s too late for you anyway-you’ll never be anything more than what you are.”

His mouth curdled up furiously, face so poisoned with hate that I thought he’d take a shot at me. But he didn’t, instead he spat on my shoe and sprinted off.

I waited till he disappeared before inspecting his loot. It was a smart pull-small enough to stash comfortably, and though only an artist would be capable of sparking its magic, it was well crafted. It might fetch an ochre from the right pawnbroker. My first time inside the Aerie I’d made a much more foolish choice, picked up a quartz ball the side of my head, so heavy it nearly dragged me double, and so clearly the product of magic that no fence would touch it. It spent two years hidden in a junkyard near the docks before I manned up the courage to give it back.

I put the horn into my satchel and came out with a vial of breath. The vapor pushed out everything that had happened in the last hour, Wren’s petty betrayal and Marieke’s revelations. I needed to concentrate on the next task in line, otherwise I’d end up stumbling over my feet.

I had to see Beaconfield. If Celia’s talisman was right, and he was involved in this business with the children, then I needed to try and suss out his purpose. And if he wasn’t, then I still owed a shipment to my new favorite client. I took another hit, then headed west to see the Kiren.

A mile and a half later I stepped into the Blue Dragon. The bartender, morbidly obese and yet to offer me his name in three years of patronizing the establishment, stood watch at the counter. Beyond him the room was mostly empty, its usual clientele finishing out their shifts at the factories that dotted the area.

I grabbed a seat at the bar. Up close, the proprietor’s flesh undulated in a singularly unappealing fashion, a hillock of fat rising and falling with each haggard breath. Apart from his labored panting he was motionless, apathy wearing a groove in his face.

“What’s the good word?” I opened, knowing my pleasantry wouldn’t earn a response. It didn’t. Sometimes it gets boring being right all the time. “I need to make a pickup.” One of the high points of dealing with the Kiren is you don’t need to talk in code-no heretics work for the hoax, and a white man inside the pub stuck out like, well, a white man in a pub full of Kirens.

The bartender’s eyes fluttered once, like the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.

I took that for acknowledgment. “I need half a pint of Daeva’s honey and six stalks of ouroboros root.”

There was a long pause, during which the man’s face betrayed no hint of comprehension. This was followed by the barest shifting of his pupils toward the back door.

The Blue Dragons and I did a lot of business together, there shouldn’t be any need to see the boss just to grab a few ochres’ worth of narcotics. “Not now. I have somewhere to be. Tell Ling Chi I’ll swing back around later.”

Another interminable intermission, and another sideways glance.

It seemed I was going to see Ling Chi after all.

Behind the back door was a small room occupied by a pair of Kirens holding half-moon axes and looking equal parts menacing and bored. They guarded a second door, as nondescript as the first. The one on the left bowed politely. “Please put your weapons on the table. They will be returned after your meeting.” He spoke with a slight accent, but his grammar and diction were perfect. His associate yawned and scratched at the inner wall of a nostril. I tossed my armaments on a bench in the corner, then moved toward the next room.

The guard on the right dropped his hand from his face and raised his ax threateningly. I shot a look at his partner, apparently the brains of the outfit. “We must regretfully insist on a search of your person,” he said, without discernible regret.

This was unexpected, and like any unexpected event in a criminal transaction, ominous. The Blue Dragon Clan had been supplying me with product for three years, ever since taking over the Dead Rat’s territory. In that time we had developed a mutually beneficial relationship, founded like any relationship on trust and constancy. Nothing positive could come from altering the routine.

I allowed no trace of worry to flicker across my face. Heretics are like dogs: any sign of fear and you’re as good as lost. I held out my arms and the guard who had been picking his nose gave me a quick but thorough search. The other opened the second door and waved me through. “We thank our esteemed guest for accepting indignity with grace.”

In stark contrast to the bar that surrounded his court, every inch of Ling Chi’s inner sanctum was enveloped in the oppressively opulent fashion that is the height of taste among the heretics. Lanterns of red-lacquered wood provided dim light while casting strange and grotesque shadows across the walls. The floor was covered with intricately woven Kiren rugs, man-sized figures consisting of thousands of colored strands spreading out to the back of the room. In the corners, braziers shaped like strange half-animal demigods puffed at yard-long sticks of joss, filling the interior with their heavy musk.

Ling Chi sat in the midst of it, lounging on a silk divan, a striking beauty carefully massaging his bare feet. He was in his early middle age, slight even for a Kiren, but projecting a presence the envy of someone twice his size. His face was a mask of white powder, interrupted only by a pair of false beauty marks, and his hair was elaborately styled, a black mane stretched across a gold wire that rose above his scalp like a halo. He watched me with the faintest hint of a smile, hands clasped, the artificial tips of his elongated nails clacking rhythmically.

For all that he played the part of the degenerate despot, there was something about the man that made me wonder how much was pretense. I could never quite shake the feeling that as soon as I was gone he’d kick away the maidservant, don a pair of slippers, and replace the mad contrivance on his head with a decent hat.

Then again, maybe not. No foreigner can ever understand a heretic, not really.

But if his image was fabricated, his position was very much earned-Ling Chi, the Death That Comes by a Thousand Cuts, whose word is law from Kirentown to the city walls. Rumor placed him as either the bastard son of the Celestial Emperor or the child of an immigrant prostitute who died in childbirth. Personally, I’d put my money on the latter-nobility tend to lack the drive necessary to maintain control over such a vast enterprise.